Final Fantasy a Casual Retrospective Part I

The year is 1987 and game developer Hironobu Sakaguchi and his employer Square Soft have a problem. For Sakaguchi a string of unsuccessful games have made him think about leaving the industry, while said unsuccessful games have also left Square on the cusp of bankruptcy.

For Square the issue was simple, none of their games were selling. They were not making any headway in the market, and they were also struggling with the rent of their new office building. If they didn’t make a hit game soon it would be game over for them.

Sakaguchi meanwhile was growing disenchanted with working on action games. What he really wanted to make was an RPG game inspired by the PC games he loved like Ultima and Wizardry. He had been asking Square to let him do one, but they always shot him down.

But in 1986 a little game called Dragon Quest came out and was a smash hit. Like a cultural phenomenon, everyone was talking about it, changed the entire tastes of the country type of smash hit. Seeing the money they desperately needed just sitting right there on the table, Square acquiesced and let Sakaguchi make his RPG.

Aiding him in the project were Koichi Ishii, Akitoshi Kawazu, Kazuko Shibuya, Hiroyuki Ito, Ken Narita and Kiyoshi Yoshii, as well as Nasir Gelli who was the only non-Japanese developer who helped code the first few games in the series. This was a team of Squares best talent, appropriately named the A Team.

A lot of these guys would continue to work on the series for years to come, as well as create other series like Mana and Saga, but there are still a few names that we need to mention. The first is the writer Kenji Terada. A freelance writer that had worked in a lot of anime productions. He was brought on as lead scenario writer, although the story itself was based on one created by Sakaguchi with some input by Ishii.

Speaking of Ishii, he would also recommend they bring on artist Yoshitaka Amano to handle the concept art and character designs. Amano was already a pretty big name having done the artwork and character designs for a lot of iconic anime series like Gatchaman and Cashern for Tatsunoko, and is one of the leading creative forces behind the popular light novel series Vampire Hunter D.

If you’ve seen any artwork attached to this series, there’s a strong chance it was done by Amano. While he isn’t the main artist for this series, in fact a lot of his art isn’t translated in the actual games, he is the artist most commonly associated with it. His art has this dreamlike quality that makes it feel like you’re peering into another world. It’s absolutely gorgeous to look at, and it’s a shame we haven’t got a game truly styled after it.

The funny thing is, Sakaguchi originally turned down bringing Amano on. Simply because he hadn’t heard of him. He wanted the game to have a similar style to some art he found in a magazine. The name of the artist who made said drawings? Yoshitaka Amano. You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried.

For music they would bring on Nobuo Uematsu. Now, Uematsu had already made a name for himself by composing the soundtracks for a bunch of games, but his work on Final Fantasy is what shot him into legendary status.

Uematsu’s work on the Final Fantasy series has created some of the greatest gaming soundtracks ever composed. One of the main points of praise people have with the series is the music. Even if the games have a more mixed reception the music is still considered excellent. It’s not an exaggeration to say Final Fantasy wouldn’t be as big as it is without the work of Uematsu. And other composers, but we’ll cross those bridges when we reach them.

With this talented team at the helm it should be no surprise that Final Fantasy would be a critical and commercial success. But about that name for a sec. Based on the story behind it, it was a common rumour that they chose the name Final Fantasy because there was a good chance it would be their final game. I even heard it mentioned in the old Gametrailers retrospective.

Turns out that’s not the full story. While the pressure of Square’s bankruptcy did have some influence, truthfully it was named Final Fantasy just so the series could have the initials FF. No seriously, in a 2015 interview with Wired, Sakaguchi said he wanted the game to have the initials FF. Since it would easily be abbreviated in the Latin script and be more easily pronounceable in the Japanese language.

He originally wanted to name it Fighting Fantasy, but that was already taken by a game book series. Final Fantasy was what they settled on, but according to Sakaguchi he didn’t care what they called it so long as the initials were FF. Now I’m just thinking of what other names they could have used. Fracas Fantasy, Frightful Fantasy, Feisty Fantasy, Fu… ok that’s enough of that.

But a rose by any other name would have probably sold as well. The game was a huge hit when it released in Japan, selling 520,000 copies. Not quite as impressive as what Dragon Quest did, but still a big success. Which is all Square needed.

Even in North America it sold really well. For the time at least. It sold 780,000 copies when it came out in NA in 1990. Which was a few years removed from its original 1987 release, but RPGs took a long time to translate back then.

780k copies sold is very impressive. Keep in mind that RPGs were not popular back then. In fact, Dragon Warrior 2, the localised version of Dragon Quest 2 that came out the same year, only sold 150,000 units. Despite it selling over 2,500,000 units in Japan.

It could be because the NA release was actually published by Nintendo themselves. So it got a larger marketing push in things like Nintendo Power. It could have also been Final Fantasy’s more western fantasy style was a lot more appealing, and therefore marketable, to a western audience than Dragon Quests anime inspired look. Since anime wouldn’t take off in the west until the mid-90’s.

I couldn’t tell you the reason, but the fact of the matter is that it sold well. It wasn’t a blockbuster or anything, but it was a decent success for an RPG released in America during the period. It would help lay the foundation for the genre becoming more popular and mainstream there.

The reason why I specifically talked about the US release is because that was the only major western release. Final Fantasy never came out in Europe, and in fact the series wouldn’t come out in Europe at all until VII. The only games Europe got were spin-offs and those had the Final Fantasy branding removed since it had no relevancy.

This was a common trend for RPGs at the time. They almost never released in Europe due to the extensive translation work required to release them in the region. So Europe didn’t really play a factor into the sales for this series until much later.

Final Fantasy has since become a classic of the NES library. If you see a top whatever list of games for the system, there’s a good chance it’s on there. It was also one of the games included in the NES Mini. Even Captain N had an episode based on it, for whatever that is worth.

Suffice to say the game was successful enough to save Square from financial ruin, although it doesn’t solely deserve the credit for that. Another Square game that came out the same year called Rad Racer actually did a lot better and probably deserves a lot more credit than it gets in saving Square. But that one wasn’t as high profile and didn’t spawn a massive franchise so it’s importance in Square’s history is far more limited.

Final Fantasy has since been re-released and remade many, many times. Aside from direct ports of the NES original to things like the Virtual Console and NES Mini, the game was also ported to the MSX 2 in Japan, though from what I can gather it’s essentially just the NES game with better graphics.

The game would also see a fully remade version with updated graphics on the Wonderswan Colour. That version was later used as the basis to port the game over to the PS1 and GBA in the Origins and Dawn of Souls packs, where it was collected together with Final Fantasy II. Then there was the PSP version that was an even more graphically enhanced port.

Aside from the graphical enhancements, each version also brought new gameplay tweaks, remixed music, and some additional content. Including brand new dungeons featuring monsters and bosses from future entries.

If you read part 0 of this, you’ll know I’m looking at the newest version, the Pixel Remaster, for this review. It lacks the new dungeons from the GBA and PSP versions but still has a lot of the quality-of-life improvements and its gameplay more closely follows the original.

I’ll try to cover as many of the major differences between these versions that I can. There’s actually a ton of little differences between all the major releases, even the NES version has tweaks from the Famicom original, but I’ll only stick to the more notable ones. I don’t want to make this thing longer than it needs to be, I mean just look how long it is already.

With all that out of the way, let’s get this adventure started. The game begins with a cutscene explaining that the world is in peril. The crystals that govern the four elements of the world have been corrupted causing mass disasters. But a prophecy states that four heroes wielding a crystal will appear and they will be the ones to restore light to the crystals and save the day.

Now, I say this is all told in a cutscene, but if you were playing the original it was a simple text crawl. The cutscenes were added in later ports and revisions, including the Pixel Remaster. A lot of the cutscenes here are pulled directly from the GBA version, but with the new graphics from the remaster.

The cutscenes are one change the remakes introduced, but another is the script. Having never played the original I can’t tell you the exact differences between the original and this, but I do know there were some changes. For example, in the original the heroes were carrying four orbs but, in the updates, it was changed to crystals. A minor change but one that does tie it better with the actual plot.

Even if you’ve never played the original, you can still tell the script has been punched up a bit. It just reads as too clean to be a script from an NES game. It wasn’t uncommon for a lot of NES titles to have subpar translations. Even action games with very little text would still screw up when translating it. So I fully believe the localisation is far better here, even if I can’t confirm it for myself.

Despite the better script, don’t expect much from the plot. Everything I went over from the intro is pretty much the entire story. There are four crystals of the elements, they’re being consumed by darkness, go save the day. There really isn’t much more to the story than that. Even the four main characters aren’t really characters: they’re more like blank slates.

But that was common for a lot of RPGs at the time. You have to keep in mind that a lot of early RPGs didn’t have much of a story. Even the Ultima series, which is known for having an in-depth storyline told across multiple games, didn’t focus on having a story until the fifth game. Which came out a year after Final Fantasy.

The reason for this wasn’t due to lack of writing skill, or the game makers thinking the audience were idiots who didn’t like to read, it was down to technical limitations. There wasn’t much of a story because they couldn’t physically fit one on the disk/cartridge. The file sizes were just too restrictive.

Hell, some of the oldest D&D videogames by TSR actually had to get around this issue by printing the story in a separate booklet it would then direct you to at certain intervals. That was what developers had to do to work around the technical limitations just to have plots more in depth than save princess from dragon and/or evil wizard.

Because of that, a lot of older RPGs aren’t about the story; they’re more about the adventure. Less about the main narrative and more about the different quests and events you run into along the way. Even the characters being blank slates was done so you could imagine yourself as the characters. To allow the player to, well, role-play as them.

This is why Final Fantasy doesn’t have actual main characters. The Warriors of Light as they’re called in the story are four adventurers you name and make yourself. In fact, before the game even starts you need to make your party.

Final Fantasy introduces what would later be called the Job System. Where you can pick from one of several different classes that each play differently. This would go on to be a staple in multiple Final Fantasy’s but given this is the first game in the series it’s a lot more basic than it would later become.

In this game you pick the four classes and those are what you stick with for the rest of the game. You can’t change them or mix and match them like you can in future entries. What you are at the beginning is what you’ll be at the end. Well, kind of, I’ll explain later.

As for what classes are available, there are six you can choose from. The Warrior, originally named the Fighter, is the standard melee fighter. They can wield most weapons and equip the strongest armours in the game, on top of being able to wield shields. They act as the tank, having the highest defence, but they’re also capable of dishing out big damage.

The Monk, Black Belt in the original, is all offense. They can’t wield many weapons or armour, but they don’t need them. They can deal damage with their bare hands and that’s pretty much all they do. This is a class that is purely about dealing a lot of damage, and because they don’t need weapons or armour, they are a much cheaper class to maintain than the Warrior.

The Thief is the class with the highest Luck and Agility. They can’t actually steal things, since that isn’t a command in this game, but they can deal out more critical hits than the other classes, and they can run from battles much more easily.

Then you have the mages. The Black Mage is all about nuking enemies with powerful elemental attacks and debilitate with status ailments. The White Mage is the healer/support class with magic to keep the party healthy and create barriers that can mitigate damage. To put it simply the Black Mage is about offensive magic while the White Mage is defensive.

Then there’s the Red Mage. Red Mages can wield weapons and armour like Warriors and can use both black and white magic making them a very versatile class. The catch being they aren’t the most proficient at anything. They can’t use all the black and white spells nor equip all the weapons a warrior can. So they’re a jack of all trades, but masters of none. Only thing they’re best at is design because they are the coolest looking class.

As of writing this, I haven’t tried all of the classes. So far the only one I haven’t tried is the Monk, so I have no idea how good they are in comparison to the rest. What I can say is that, based on my experience, the game is designed in a way that you can beat it with any potential party set-up.

For this playthrough I went with the Warrior and all three Mages. The Warrior was great for tanking hits and dealing good physical damage, the Black Mage’s offensive magic helped deal with large enemy mobs, the White Mage helped keep the party alive, and the Red Mage was a great support class, acting as a secondary fighter/healer.

The only class that is weaker than the others is the Thief. They have the weakest stats and don’t have access to a wide array of equipment. They’re higher critical hit rate also isn’t all that useful compared to the Warrior and Monks higher attack power.

The Thief can become a good class later on, but it takes a long time for them to get on the same level as the others. Even then there isn’t much they can do that the others can’t do better.

Mind you this is all based on the Pixel Remaster. The Thief was much worse in the original NES game. See, the NES version is kind of a busted, broken piece of shit. I’m not kidding when I say that half the game doesn’t work.

Some spells are bugged and don’t do anything, the intelligence stat didn’t work which made Red Mages just as good at spellcasting as the Black and White Mages, a lot of weapons with special effects do not work, critical hits are bugged so they’re less common until much later, and running from battles is bugged and doesn’t work as intended.

Meaning the two main things you pick the Thief for, do not fucking work properly. The Thief is the class more directly affected by the glitches in this game. How ironic that the Thief is the one who got robbed.

Most of these glitches are fixed in modern ports, and the Thief did get a few buffs to make them better, but I still find them to be the weakest class in the game. Still, they aren’t awful, and as I said you can beat the game with any team. You can even double dip on some classes if you want. If your so inclined, you can do a mono party run where everyone is a single class. It’s harder, but it is doable.

After you pick your team, you then start in the kingdom of Cornelia. And yes that is Cornelia not Corneria like in the original, that was a mistranslation. L’s a R’s get mixed up a lot when translating from Japanese.

Anyway, the king of Cornelia gives you your first quest. The princess has been kidnapped by an asshole named Garland and you need to get her back. This is where the game starts and there isn’t much to talk about with the gameplay. It’s about as traditional an RPG as you can get. You explore the overworld, battle monsters, get stronger, find treasure and new equipment in dungeons, defeat bosses, rinse and repeat until the credits roll.

I can’t exactly call it sticking to a formula because there was no formula then. Final Fantasy was one of the first JRPG’s ever made. If anything, it helped invent the formula. It’s actually weird going back to the first Final Fantasy because it’s like playing a JRPG in its most distilled essence. No gimmicks, no weird battle mechanics or quirks, it’s just a good old-fashioned RPG.

Emphasis on the old. Obviously the game has aged and can be seen as lacking when compared to more modern RPGs. For one, there isn’t much in the way of customisation. You do have some freedom in what team you have, but things like equipment are a lot more limited. It all boils down to picking what has the higher number.

Special effects aren’t that common, and there isn’t a lot of variety in them. Most just deal more or take less damage from certain enemy types. If you like RPG’s that let you create a ton of wild and crazy builds, this really isn’t the game for you.

That said, the whole point of equipment in older RPG’s wasn’t to give you tons of customisation options. It was really meant to add to the game’s progression. One of the joys of going to a new town in these games was hitting the weapons and armour shops to see what new kit you could get decked out in. Or, better yet, finding new stuff in the overworld that’s way better than the stuff you bought in town five minutes ago.

There’s a sweet dopamine rush you get from seeing those numbers go up. Getting a stronger sword that can destroy an enemy you had issue with is immensely satisfying. That the main loop in this game, getting stronger to get to area’s you couldn’t before. It was a lot of grinding, and you’ll certainly be doing that here.

When you first start playing, the first thing you’ll want to do is hit the shops to buy some items and equipment and magic. Yes, magic. You have to purchase spells for the mages since they don’t learn them naturally. If mages are going to spell cast, they gonna need to buy that shit.

That’s what you’ll be grinding out most in this game. You don’t really grind for levels since those come fairly frequently and the boosts you get are pretty minor from them, and also a little random. Or at least that’s how it felt. There didn’t seem to be much structure in how stat increases worked.

If you are grinding in this game, it’s for money. It’s not too bad early on, but later equipment and especially spells get ridiculously expensive. Seriously, mages have to be loaded in this universe because spells can cost an arm and a leg. Maybe this is why all they wear are robes, it’s the only clothes they can afford.

After you buy all the spells and equipment you need, you head to the Shrine of Chaos to confront Garland who threatens to knock you all down. I love they kept that line in. Even when they were updating the script they still knew to keep some of the more memorably goofy lines.

After you knock Garland down and rescue the princess you take her back to the king and he promptly rewards you by… building a bridge. Ok it’s not the most orthodox reward, but it does let you get to the next continent. The princess also gives you a lute, which serves no purpose other than clog out the inventory. Thanks princess, you were clearly worth the effort.

This is where the adventure truly begins. You even get a nice cutscene of the characters overlooking the kingdom letting you know there’s a grand journey ahead of you. This isn’t exactly where the game opens up though. You’re still limited in where you can go next and the game doesn’t really open up until much later.

Final Fantasy is a very linear adventure. There’s only one path to get to the ending and there isn’t a lot of freedom in how you travel the world. It gatekeeps you from reaching certain areas without a specific form of transportation.

You sometimes get to visit towns in any order you want, but it’s pretty obvious there’s an intended order to visit them. You might miss out on information from one town that will help you in another if you do them out of order or miss an important clue on what it is you have to do. So even its non-linear moments are an illusion.

I don’t mind the linearity though. It helps to create a structure to the game and prevents the player from getting lost. There might be some instances where you don’t know where to go next, but so long as you look around the places you can go you shouldn’t be stuck for long. The game is good at guiding players in the right direction; without going too far that it feels like it’s handholding you.

There is still a lot you will need to figure out on your own. This is why whenever you find a new town it is imperative that you talk to every NPC you find because you’ll likely find a lead for where you need to go next. And sometimes you’ll need to remember certain NPC’s for later since you’ll need to give them an item to progress further.

It isn’t hard to remember them but keep notes handy just in case. Otherwise you’ll need to backtrack to previous towns and talk to everyone all over again. That was what you had to do in old RPGs like this, and it can get kind of annoying if you forget where to go or miss some crucial information.

This is why a lot of RPGs that came out in the west had some kind of a strategy guide, I know Nintendo Power had one for Final Fantasy. I can imagine a lot of stuck players forking out the cash for those. Thank God we have the internet now.

I don’t think you need a guide for Final Fantasy though. It’s not too hard to find where you need to go, although progression in this game can get a little convoluted. Don’t believe me, here’s what happens after you leave Cornelia.

First you’ll likely run into a cave where a witch named Matoya lives. Matoya has lost her crystal eye and can’t see, but you can’t really do anything about that at the moment. So for now you head to the nearby town of Provoka which is currently having a Pirate infestation. You kick the pirates asses and you get to take their ship.

Then you have two places you can go to, the dwarf kingdom and the elf kingdom. If you go to the dwarf kingdom you discover two things. One, all the dwarves are Scottish and that makes me smile. Two, there’s a dwarf who can blow up a land mass that blocks the way to the wider sea. The problem is he doesn’t have the Nitro he needs, and the only Nitro anywhere is back in Cornelia behind a door that needs a magic key.

Where is the key? In the elf kingdom held by the elf prince. So you go to the elf kingdom but the prince has been put under a sleeping spell by the dark elf Astos. You need to wake him up via a magic potion from Matoya. But Matoya can’t make it without her eye. So you need to find the eye. Who has the eye? Frigging Astos.

So you go looking for Astos. You don’t find him, but you find a ruined kingdom with a king inside who asks you to get a crown from the Marsh Cave to revive the kingdom. So you go to the Marsh Cave, get poisoned a bunch by the enemies there, bring some antidotes for this bit you will need them, get the crown, give it to the king, who turns out is Astos.

So you kill Astos to get the eye to give to Matoya to get the potion to give to the elf to get the key to open the door to get the Nitro to give to the dwarf to blow up the land to reach the sea to get to the house that Jack built. All of that, and you still haven’t gotten to the main quest yet.

This is mostly what the game is. A lot of it is running back and forth between places trying to figure out where to go. Again, this was something a lot of RPGs did at the time. Most of them were just wandering around trying to figure out where to go next.

You may see this as a flaw, but I don’t. I actually think the game benefits from this approach. Because you have to talk to NPC’s and interact with the world to progress, it creates a bigger connection between the player and the world. I think that’s why it’s still an engaging adventure despite not having much of a story.

To the games credit, so long as you pay attention you should never get lost. There’s always something in the game that gives you a clue on what you need to look out for. And while there is a lot of backtracking, there is still that sense of discovery that makes exploration in these games fun since there will be treasure or items you may not have been able to get the first time.

That said, it can still be annoying having to run between areas. The worst part is when you go for the Earth Crystal. To get to it you need to go through a cave and fight a vampire, get a ruby, go out back through the cave, go to a different cave to give it to a stone golem to reach another cave to get a staff. You then have to go back through the first cave; past the place you fought the vampire and then you can go further in and find the fiend with the crystal.

This is obnoxious. Having to do two full trips through the same dungeon is a little much. They should have just made the giants cave a separate dungeon or something; anything to make it less tedious. There is magic you can get that teleports you to the start of a dungeon, but you don’t get that until after this part. It’s a good thing the dungeons have teleporters at the end.

I think what makes it worse is the random encounter rate. It’s obnoxiously high and you’ll often not go that far without running into an enemy. Let it be known though that I fucking hate random battles in general. It’s the one part of these old RPG’s that I think has aged the worst. Nothing kills a game more for me than getting pulled into a battle I don’t want when I’m just trying to get somewhere. I am so glad this is something most modern RPGs avoid.

This is where playing the Pixel Remasters comes in handy. Since this version has a feature that lets you turn encounters off. I tried not using this since I want to play these games without these features, but I still used it on occasion if I ever wanted to just get somewhere.

The Pixel Remaster also comes with features that can help with grinding. You can increase the money and experience gained from combat to speed things along, but I never needed them. The standard rate for both is fine, and I was able to get through most of the game without needing to grind too much. It’s only at the very beginning of the game that you really need to grind.

You’ll find plenty of money in dungeons, and you’ll get plenty more so long as you don’t run from too many battles. Combine that with the money you get from selling weaker equipment, and you should have plenty of cash to get what you need. Even if you can’t get everything, just get the important stuff you can. You can always get the rest later on a return trip.

Honestly, the big reason random battles are so annoying in this game is because you don’t need to battle after a while. Eventually you’ll become so powerful that most encounters just aren’t worth doing. I ended up running from most battles in the end game simply because I was so powerful.

You know I had a bit of an epiphany when playing this. The Run command in RPG’s is meant for battles that might be too tough. You’re meant to use it to escape from fights you clearly can’t win. But often you mostly use it for fights you’re too powerful for. At least that’s what I do. It makes me wonder why they even bother having the weaker fights show up after a certain point.

Speaking of fights though, I haven’t actually talked about the battle system yet have I. Well part of that is because there isn’t a lot to say about it. It was the first game in the series, so the battle system is pretty basic.

It’s about as straight forward as turn based battle systems go. There aren’t many mechanics or gimmicks, it’s just issuing commands to your team and seeing them play out. Suffice to say if you don’t like turn-based battles you really won’t like this game. It’s pretty much turn-based combat in its purest form.

That said, if you are a fan of turn based battles then there is a certain charm to how stripped down it is. It’s simple, but with how complex a lot of modern combat systems are, it is strangely refreshing playing something like this. It actually makes it a perfect lazy day RPG. A game that you play when you don’t want to think about it too much.

At least if you’re playing one of the more modern ports. If you’re playing the NES version you will need a little strategy since there’s no auto-targeting. If you have multiple party members attack a single enemy and it dies, the members that hadn’t attacked yet won’t switch targets, they’ll just swing at empty air. It’s like they turn into the blind guy from Robin Hood Men in Tights.

The later versions fix this so they will auto-target other enemies. I’ve actually heard some conflicting opinions on this. Some fans of the original claim it was better without auto-targeting since it forced players to be more strategic during battles. Others think the lack of auto-targeting was clunky and made combat more awkward.

I’ve never played the original, but I would probably side with the latter camp. It just sounds clunky, and the way turn orders work in this, I think it would probably piss me off. I have no idea how the turn order is decided in this. I think agility affects it, but it just seemed completely random in which character went first.

I get it was an older game. A lot of the finer details hadn’t been ironed out yet. I can’t be too hard on something for being old, but that doesn’t mean dealing with the clunkier parts aren’t a pain in the ass. You’re definitely better off playing one of the newer versions.

The battle system is simple, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have things that stand out about it. One thing is just how many enemies you can face in one battle. You can fight up to nine enemies in a single fight. That’s a lot even by modern RPG standards. It might be the most enemies I’ve seen in a turn-based battle system.

I know that sounds overwhelming, and I guess it could be depending on the team set-up. I always bring a Black Mage because their magic can help deal with large mobs. If you didn’t bring one, you might be there for a while. I think there’s a reason future games never had enemy counts this high. It’s a little bit much, but it is something that helps this first game stand out.

Another thing that makes it stand out is how it looks.

Now you may be thinking, what stands out about this? It looks just like every other battle system. And you would be right. It does look like every other battle system, today. At the time though, this was very innovative.

Final Fantasy was one of, if not the first RPGs to show the player characters on screen fighting the enemies. Prior to this, RPG battles were usually shown from a first-person perspective. The exception was I think Ultima, but I don’t think it used the same kind of turn based combat like Dragon Quest or Wizardry.

Final Fantasy was the first RPG that felt like it actually showed the battles playing out. It wasn’t a first-person view; it had the characters on screen and actual animations of the characters battling and using their magic. By today’s standards it’s primitive, but for 1987 it was mind blowing.

Since we’re on the topic though, I think the game looks great. Even the original version looks decent by NES standards. It’s very bright and colourful, and the enemy designs look pretty damn gnarly for an 8-bit game.

The Pixel Remaster definitely looks better. It has more colour, detail, better effects, and it has actual backgrounds during battle instead of the black void the NES had, but a lot of the strengths of its visuals are down to the art-style. Which is based on the original NES game, and I still think holds up even today. There’s a reason why a lot of the class designs became iconic. I mean you look at the mages in particular, and you know exactly which game they’re from.

Although that’s not the case for the enemy designs. A lot of the more iconic Final Fantasy enemies aren’t in here. They hadn’t been created yet. There is concept art of the Behemoth but he’s not actually in the game.

A lot of the enemies are based more on traditional fantasy monsters. Goblins, Trolls, Zombies, Ghosts, Minotaur, you know the stuff you’d see in D&D. I didn’t just use that reference because it’s the first thing you think of when you think fantasy and you’re not normie enough to say Lord of the Rings either. No, I used it because a lot of the enemies and their designs are specifically taken from Dungeons and Dragons.

There are Mind Flayer, Sahagin, Wargs, the Big Eyes are basically Beholders, even a lot of the other monsters feel like they took the designs from a D&D handbook. If you need the strongest evidence though, the Four Fiends, the main boss monsters you fight, are all based on big bosses from Dungeons and Dragons. You’ve got the Lich, Marilith, the Kraken, and even Tiamat.

These are not coincidental references. They intentionally took elements from D&D when making this. Akitoshi Kawazu wanted to include more features from western RPG’s since he really liked them. It’s also why the game has the Job System. A lot of western RPGs had class systems like it, and Kawazu wanted to include it so the player could have more freedom in how they played the game.

Now this is a JRPG, so it is still a lot simpler than most western RPGs at the time but compared to the first two Dragon Quest games it does offer a lot more freedom. Things change when you get to Dragon Quest III, but I would argue that game wouldn’t be what it was without the first Final Fantasy.

Even the magic system is based on D&D. And by based on I mean blatantly ripped off from, because it’s literally the same system. For those who have never played D&D, the way magic works in that is that you have different levels of magic that each have their own spell charges. When you cast a spell of that level it costs a single spell charge for that level.

To be clear, individual spells don’t have charges, but the level of magic does. So if you cast a level one fireball that means you have less spell charges for your other level one spells. Final Fantasy works the same way.

Although unlike D&D where the spells on different levels are all unique, most of the higher-level spells in Final Fantasy are just more powerful versions of weaker level spells. So for example, you have Fire, Blizzard and Thunder and their higher-level versions, Firarra, Blizzarra and Thundarra, which I’m pretty sure is also the name of the Thundercats home planet.

There are still unique spells on every level, but to be honest you won’t use a lot of them. The elemental, healing and buffing magics are really all you’ll need. Every other spell either doesn’t work half the time or isn’t nearly as effective. Hell, if you’re playing the Pixel Remaster the Fear spell doesn’t work since Morale was completely removed. Amazing, they fixed a bunch of issues and added more. This game is cursed I swear to God.

There is still a plethora of magic to use though. Although one issue you’ll run into, beyond how expensive magic can get, is you won’t be able to have every spell on one character. Every spell level has four spells to learn, but mages can only learn three spells per level. This is why I like having the Red Mage since they can learn the spells the other mages don’t have room for.

I like this idea because it makes you think carefully on what spells you want. Although you can forget spells at any time and swap them for something else. So, if you feel like you made a mistake you can easily undo it. Unless you’re playing the original version. In that one you’re stuck with whatever you learned, so choose wisely.

I’m split on this system. On the one hand, I do like how it forces you to be more conservative with your magic use. Because spell charges aren’t as plentiful as MP in later games, you have to play smart in how you use magic.

The Black Mage is very powerful thanks to his spells, but he’s also worthless without them. So I tend to save his magic for when I’m dealing with larger hordes. Making him the go-to crowd control guy. And of course you’ll want to save on healing magic since if you run out in a dungeon you’re screwed. You want to save them for the bosses and rely on your healing items outside of combat.

Normally I don’t like it when games give you hundreds of healing items, I like it when items are limited, but I don’t mind it here since you do need them more, and you won’t have the money to get everything you need until the tail end anyway. Unless you use the increased money feature, but only cowards use that.

So I like it for making magic use more strategic. At the same time, it is a very restrictive system. It doesn’t let you play around with the magic too much. As I said you’ll largely stick to the basic elemental and healing magic. You might try out the other spells once just to see what they look like, but that’s about it.

Honestly, when it came to magic, I used the same strategy throughout most of the game. Used the screen clearing magic to deal with the large mobs, and when it came to the bosses, I just buffed my physical fighters, kept attacking, and healed up when I needed. I beat every boss the exact same way. There’s little need to change tactics since, outside their elemental resistances, they all play the same.

Although credit where it’s due, Final Fantasy was the first JRPG to introduce elemental weaknesses and resistances. Another element it took from western RPGs. It’s not a huge factor in the game, but it was the first to do it and it would be expanded in later games.

I’d say overall it is a decent magic system, but I can see why they changed it to the MP system in later games. Even the remakes on GBA and PSP would change to the MP system. It’s just an easier system to understand and gives a bit more freedom to the player.

I will say this magic system does at least stand out. I think the only other Final Fantasy to use spell charges is III, so it isn’t wholly unique, but it still makes it different than most of the other games in the series.

Ok, there was actually a bit more to talk about here than I thought. Make no mistake though, this is a very simple game. It’s not as complex or deep as later games in the series. But I find the simplicity is one of the games strengths.

Final Fantasy is a really easy game to just sit down and play. Even the way stats and damage work is far more simplified than it would get. The values never go beyond triple digits, so it’s a lot easier to keep track of how much damage you’re dealing. Although you do miss the high of getting a 9999-hit. Trust me, it’s one hell of a dopamine rush.

I like playing Final Fantasy. The simplicity of it does have a special kind of appeal. But it also has its share of drawbacks. It lacks a lot of the depth and challenge later games would have, and since it is the first in the series it isn’t nearly as refined as later games would be. The dungeon design is a bit too maze like, the random encounter rate is obnoxious, and the bosses aren’t all that interesting. I can see why some would think the game is a little too basic.

It’s also not a very difficult game. It has moments where the difficulty can spike, like with the final boss or the secret Warmech enemy, but I never found any part of the game that difficult. So long as you keep equipped with the best stuff and don’t run from too many battles, you should be strong enough to deal with anything you run into.

Despite its issues, I still found it compelling. And part of that is because the adventure is so much fun. The first half of the game already has you battling pirates, conversing with talking brooms and fighting vampires. Despite the story being about a world on the brink of destruction, the game has a very light-hearted adventurous tone.

But the second half is where it really gets fun. After you defeat the Lich and save the Earth Crystal, you then head to Mount Gulg to get the Fire Crystal. I don’t like Mount Gulg that much. There’s lava all over the place that does damage when you step on it, and it’s designed in a way where it is completely unavoidable. Bring potions, you’ll need them.

But you deal with that and find out there’s nowhere left to go. All you have is a ship and a canoe, and no other places you can visit. But you do get a lead on something called a Levistone in the Ice Cave that can raise something in a southern desert. So you go get that, and you take it to the desert to raise an airship.

Now you can fly anywhere you want, and you don’t have to deal with random encounters. I love this part. It’s so freeing being able to fly all over the place. The airship would go on to become a staple of the franchise. It’s common for every Final Fantasy to have some kind of flying machine, even if you can’t fly them yourself.

With the airship you can finally go after the last two crystals, but there’s something else you can do too. If you visit some small islands, you can find an underground society of dragons and their leader Bahamut. Another reoccurring aspect of the series. In this game he tasks you with finding a symbol of courage from the Citadel of Trials.

This is technically a side-quest. You don’t have to do it to see the ending, but it is something you should do. Because after you finish the Citadel and get a rat’s tail, which is a weird symbol of courage but I don’t know dragon culture, Bahamut will bestow upon you a class change. Now your party is supercharged with more powerful jobs.

The Warrior becomes a Knight, letting them wield more weapons and armour, and cast low level healing magic. The Mages become Wizards and can learn the highest-level spells, except the Red Wizard who can only learn magic up to level 7. Which is still effective and he does get better armour and weapons, so it all evens out.

The Monk becomes the Master and… basically does what it does before but better. Only it gains more magic defence. The Monk is a bit of a one trick pony isn’t it. And finally the Thief becomes a Ninja. Allowing it to wield more powerful weapons and cast some black magic spells.

Which sounds awesome, but it can only learn up to level 4 magic, which is basically useless by that point, and it doesn’t get access to its good weapons until the final dungeon. The Ninja is only good right near the end of the game. What a waste of a cool class. Don’t fret though, it gets far better in later instalments.

Ok, some upgrades are better than others, but this is still a cool moment. This is where you feel the most growth, where your characters go from mere adventurers to legendary heroes. They even get sick new designs to show the power increase.

At least in the original and Pixel Remaster versions. In other ports they were redesigned to be a bit more inline with the original classes. Which I suppose is more visually consistent, but it doesn’t hit the same.

This is the only real side-quest in the game. The only other one is getting the Excalibur and even that isn’t much of a quest. Even if it is optional, it does feel wrong to skip it. It just feels right getting the power-up at this point in the adventure.

Plus, since it’s something you have to intentionally look for or stumble across, it feels more rewarding. The game is good at that. There’s a lot of treasure that you have to go out of your way to get. Even dungeons have their treasure away from the main path. Which incentivises you to explore them more thoroughly.

I know a lot of that is standard, but with how stripped-down Final Fantasy is, it makes you appreciate the little things more. Like when you remove all the flash and the gimmicks, strip everything down to its base components, you can tell what makes a genre click a lot better.

You know what it reminded me most of, Super Mario Bros. I know that sounds crazy but hear me out. Obviously these two are very different games, but Super Mario Bros, like Final Fantasy, is a stripped-down game in its genre. In its case, platformers.

It doesn’t have all the weird level gimmicks, power-ups, movement options or anything else other platformers have. It just has the fundamentals. And yet, it still plays just as well today as it did back then because of how good those fundamentals are. By removing a lot of the stuff on top of it, it makes you appreciate those fundamentals a lot more.

I don’t think Final Fantasy has aged as well as Super Mario Bros, mainly because I think platformers just age better than RPGs, but it still gets the fundamentals right. If you want to play an RPG that really showcases the genre in its purest form, Final Fantasy is one to go for. Well, this or the first three Dragon Quests.

Even the story, by being as basic as it is, does make you admire the adventure you’re on. At one point you find a town of an ancient race called Lufenians who speak a strange language you need a special tablet to understand. You find the tablet in a sunken city destroyed by Kraken inhabited by Mermaids, and when you translate them, you find your way to their old flying fortress floating way high in the sky. That has robots in it!

Yeah, fucking robots are in this game. There are dinosaurs too for whatever reason. It’s never explained how, but it’s cool so who cares. You know what else has dinosaurs and robots? D&D. This whole game was just one of the developers D&D campaigns wasn’t it.

Honestly though, I love all of this. I love exploring these kinds of ancient ruins, especially the ones with more advanced technologies. It makes the world feel richer, like it has a denser history that you’re uncovering. None of this is explained in much detail, but I like that about it. It creates a mystique about the world.

Even what exactly the flying fortress is, or who the Lufenians are, is kept kind of vague. Is the flying fortress a space station? It does have a view of the whole planet so it might be. So are the Lufenians aliens or were they just that advanced. Just how old is this world?

I love that the game leaves a lot of the details open to interpretation. If this were a modern game there’d probably be a lore archive to explain everything, which, ok, isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it removes a lot of the mystery.

I think a lot of modern fantasy doesn’t realise that sometimes it’s better not to explain everything. Sometimes it’s better to leave things mysterious. It creates intrigue and makes the audience think about it more. If you explain too much, it can make it a lot less interesting. Especially if the explanation itself is convoluted or adds in details that clearly weren’t the initial intent.

Not everything needs a logical explanation. It just needs to create an emotional resonance with the audience. Final Fantasy’s story is not complex, nor does it really make much sense as you’ll see in a bit, but I still got a sense of awe and magic from the adventure, and a big reason why is because a lot of it is left to your imagination.

But I think I need to wrap things up. The ending of this game is pretty frigging bonkers too. When you go to the flying fortress to get the Air Crystal, you discover that the energies released from the crystals is actually conversing at the Shrine of Chaos.

It turns out the Four Fiends are actually from two thousand years in the past and were sent to the future by someone they sent back to the past, who sent them to the future to send him to the past to send them to the future to… my head is spinning. It's a time loop basically. One that’s causing the world to unravel.

So you go back to the shrine and travel two thousand years back to put a stop to all this. You fight through a dungeon filled with a bunch of enemies you’ve already fought, including the bosses, and finally come face to face with the true evil. The cunning mastermind whose machinations have led this world to the brink of ruin… Garland?

Yeah, the main villain is the jerk you fought at the beginning of the game. He did all this just to become an immortal god. If you’re wondering why he’s doing this, it’s because he’s in love with the princess and she doesn’t reciprocate. He did all this because he got rejected. I guess becoming a god is one way to get a girl to notice you.

But Garland isn’t the same push-over as before. Now he’s a giant demon named Chaos and way stronger than before. The same strategy of boost attackers, attack, and heal still works, but he can take a beating, and he has some spells that can mess up the party. You better pray the White Mage doesn’t die first.

But you wail on Chaos and his weird face crotch, and the day is saved. The time loop is severed, everything returns to normal, and your deeds are forgotten because of timey wimey bullshit. Well that sucks. I went through all that and didn’t get any glory. Talk about your pyrrhic victories.

The ending is buck wild. Anything that involves time travel is going to be confusing to some degree, but it is fun in how off the rails it gets at the end. It all comes out of nowhere and is just dumped on you at the very end. It’s convoluted and non-sensical, but it is entertaining. Which is something you’ll want to get used to with this series.

Final Fantasy isn’t one of the all time great JRPG’s. It is a very important part of the genre’s history, but it’s also one of the oldest, and its age is obvious. There are issues with the design that younger players might not be able to look past.

The gameplay is very simple and, depending on the version, clunky. There isn’t a lot of side content, and the story is basically non-existent. It introduced a lot of interesting concepts, but a lot of them were refined upon in later games. I can see why newer players would struggle to get into this.

On the other hand, if you can look past the rust and try to play the game knowing the context of when it first came out, I think there is a game worth playing here. It is very simple and easy, but I do think there is a charm in its simplicity and there are things I love about it.

I love the world it has and its sense of adventure, I love its D&D inspiration and the sense of progression, and I really like the music. I didn’t talk about it much, but I love the adventurous tone the soundtrack has. It makes it feel like you’re on an epic quest or battling for your life against dangerous creatures.

The best music though is the opening theme, and the main theme that plays after you cross the Cornelian bridge. They’re beautiful pieces that capture the magic the series wants to invoke. They would go on to be the main themes of the franchise, appearing in nearly every game in the series.

It could use more songs though. it would be nice to have an actual boss theme instead of the main battle music. I like the battle music, I just think the bosses need a theme that better shows how dangerous they are. But it was the first game, and an NES title. I can’t be too hard on it for only having a few songs. Especially when later games more than made up for that.

The Pixel Remaster comes with a remixed orchestral soundtrack, which is absolutely gorgeous, but I actually opted for the original soundtrack for the review. Simply to listen to the songs in the original format. I still think the original soundtrack holds up. The orchestral versions are better, but those original 8-bit tunes still slap nearly 40 years later.

Final Fantasy is a good game. I can’t recommend it to everyone, but if you’re a fan of JRPG’s it’s worth looking at if for no other reason than to see one of the genres founding games. It isn’t too difficult to get into and isn’t too long. I beat it in about 13 hours and ignoring times paused and the hour I spent looking for Warmech, it probably only took 11-12 hours. By RPG standards, that’s pretty short.

It’s not a demanding game, and the features added to the Pixel Remaster make it very accessible to new players. It’s also pretty cheap if you buy it separately, and the full collection does go on sale a lot, so it might be worth getting that. if nothing else buying it with other games, three of which I know new players will love, does sweeten the deal.

Final Fantasy was a big success for Square. It brought them back from the brink and put Hironobu Sakaguchi on the map. With them finally having found their big money maker, a sequel was inevitable. And we’ll see how that sequel went next time. Knowing what I know though, it’s going to be a rough ride.