The Final Fantasy Legend, also known as the first SaGa game, is a unique RPG for the Game Boy. You start alone and visit a guild to recruit party members, whether they're humans, mutants or monsters!

One of the most noteworthy aspects of this game is that you don't increase your stats with level-ups. Instead, you buy stat-raising items for humans, and mutants increase their stats and learn new moves randomly after fights. Monsters are highly interesting, though. When you defeat an enemy, they can drop meat. When a monster eats the meat, they transform into a new monster, using all of that creature's attacks and gaining all of their stats. This approach to party-building makes The Final Fantasy Legend a unique experience, allowing for players to really experiment with what kind of party they want to build up throughout the game.

Of course, being that this is a Game Boy game, there's a lot of things that the game does not explain, like weapon and armor stats, and the effects of items you buy in shops. Some are self-explanatory, and you can easily assume that the more expensive the weapon/armor, the better it is. However, each weapon gains its power from one of three stats, those being Strength, Agility, and Mana. It is very possible to find yourself buying a Mana-based weapon, not realizing this is the case, and then equipping it to a human, who can't improve their Mana stat like mutants can. Things like this will have players referencing online guides often for proper loadouts. Thankfully, you'll get used to the rules of this game quick, and soon you'll be referring to guides less and less as you play. Certain weapon types tend to use specific stats, making decisions regarding equipment easier to make. For example, bows always use the agility stat, and most swords rely on strength.

Speaking of weapons, all weapons and items (except armor) have a limited amount of uses before they break. This keeps players on their toes regarding their equipment and encourages players to use a variety of weapons instead of relying on the same ones throughout the game. Once you reach the end game, this becomes a non-issue since by then you'll be very powerful and you'll have more money than you'll know what to do with. Until then, though, this system proves to be interesting and keeps you thinking about what you have on your characters.

The Final Fantasy Legend is a fun short romp that will keep you engaged from beginning to end, exciting you with powerful monsters to control as well as cool abilities and weapons to tear through foes with. With how customizable your party is, it feels like the game encourages you to try beating it multiple times with challenging parties or with self-imposed rulesets. It's not a perfect game by any means, but it is one that will stick with me for a while. Hopefully it'll stick with you, too, but I wouldn't blame you if He Don't it didn't.

Reviewed on Mar 29, 2023


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