Final Fantasy 1 offers a very simple D&D style of premise and gameplay. You head out on a quest with a party of characters that will grow stronger with every battle in order to restore the world from darkness and evil by liberating the four elements of Air, Water, Earth and Fire.

Looking back at the time of release, it was a simple and straightforward, dungeon crawling style of story and gameplay. The game in general is simple enough from beginning to end for anyone to try out and play at their own leisure with reasonable difficulty.

The GBA/PSP ports are the definitive versions to play, as the original NES version was riddled with bugs and dysfunctional features. This is the first title of a big franchise with some of the best turn based RPGs out there.

Third time playing this. First time on PSP. First time beating. This version of the game rocks. It's like the original Dragon Quest in that it's simple enough to be supremely casual, but it takes the formula of multiple party members and actually balances the difficulty enough to maintain that laid-back nature. Now, this is a 2007 remake of a 1987 video game, so it's obvious there was much improvement from that initial experience. I played the original NES Final Fantasy back in college and it was a neat game with way too much grinding. Dawn of Souls fixes the experience up a bit, but I didn't put a White Mage in my party for some reason and could not outheal the final boss. Basically, this game has been on the backburner of my mind as and experience I could not actively say I completed. It's still not, technically, as the one side dungeon I did, of which they added five, I think, took way too long and felt poorly balanced compared to the rest of the game. I think they're meant as some form of masochistic perversion for people who just can't get enough of Final Fantasy 1, so I'm happy that's there for those guys. PPSSPP also allows me to speed it up, so I just took my evening today to beat it. My play log says 15 hours but real-time it only took me about 6. In actuality, I suppose that would make this game a lot worse in the grinding department than I felt it was. Still, I chunked out a lot of new music in my backlog of that as I played, but most of what I listened too wasn't anything special, so that stinks. 4/6

I enjoyed my experience with this game, but I think I came into it a bit late to enjoy it at its fullest. I used a guide to get through it, and as I did, I wondered how I would have ever beaten this when it came out. so much is hidden and it feels like you have to explore endlessly until you find something worth while.
I imagine that in its time, with so much free time and not having an infinite amount of other games to play, that those moments of discovery would have been wonderful. I enjoyed the mechanics of the game well enough to get through it, and I respect it as the introduction of a massive series.