They iterated on the combat too much from the original release to the point where they're two pretty different games and yet, the original is still probably the more interesting experience just for the sake of being... the original. You could chalk up the attacks redirecting off dead enemies as a quality of life change but the magic system caught a stray so it feels like FF4 with no ATB or any interesting abilities and thus, lil basic.

The Pixel Remaster is slightly more faithful but it's also a mess of clashing assets IMO. And also, it doesn't have the bonus dungeons in this version. Whenever I saw people mention this, I was a bit confused on why anyone would care about playing more of FF1. Like, the base game here took me about 15 hours to complete (would have taken way longer without a guide though) and for a simple JRPG, that's long enough to see your characters meaningfully grow but not long enough for you to notice all the bosses can be killed with the same strategy. Could the bonus content really do that much to change things up. The answer is: ehh kinda but not really. The only interesting thing about the new dungeons is how they're very slightly randomized. They all have bosses from other classic FF games and drop nice equipment but the way they're set up makes it so you have to go through them multiple times to fight all possible bosses, which is real annoying if you're trying to complete the bestiary.

After you beat these you unlock this big last dungeon where you have a time limit to complete annoying ass "puzzles" to fight the big superduper boss and I'll give it to you straight, I never beat the damn thing. I did get to it, having spent a couple of hours levelling my whole party 20 levels and an additional hour going through the dungeon, but once I fucked up on the boss fight I just kinda went "what am i even gaining from this" and didn't attempt it again. Also, this particular superboss has 8!! different forms depending on what puzzles you can and can't complete under the time limit so. Christ the bestiary.

All in all, I still mostly enjoyed it and for all the trash I lobbed towards the new stuff, it's decent if you're like, a kid in 2008 trying to get their money's worth out of a 15 hour game. The base FF1 experience is still fun, even moreso if you consider it came out 1 year and change after the original Dragon Quest. But for any subsequent runs, I'll probably just either stick to either the original or like, the WonderSwan version.

Jogo extremamente charmoso, uma aventura simples, porém muito imaginativa. Um mundo com dragões, sereias, elfos, onde tu passa por vulcões, ilhas no céu e o fundo do oceano. A gameplay é sólida, gosto das classes disponíveis aqui, a única pena é não haver incentivo de usar magia fora de lutas contra chefes. Vemos também que ainda com uma história bastante comum, uma tentativa de algo um pouco mais grandioso (marca futura da franquia) no final com a aparição do caos e o uso de viagem no tempo. Divertido e um forte início pra o que viria a ser uma das maiores e mais incríveis sagas de todos os tempos.

I tried the GBA version of I + II a couple of times but dropped it cause I wanted to do other things, but recently came back to play a bunch of the old Final Fantasy games I've always wanted to play. Decided to go with the PSP version this time and I ended up having a lot of fun. FF1 is really fun as a short experience with all the classic but cliche JRPG tropes. It doesn't have much substance in its story and the gameplay isn't special but it does a really good job at being that simple experience that I finished in 6 hours.

Being the first of the Final Fantasy really saves it from my harsher side.
It feels obviously dated with mid combat and mechanics that aren't really explained.
The story is pretty much non existent with loose threads that the player pieces together pretty much creating their own story; having entered the Final Fantasy train when it was a more narrative focused series, this lack of plot surprised me a bit.
The pixel art is amazing, the animations (although not many) are very fluid and the music is the absolute highlight of the game, I stayed with the combat system mainly because of that battle theme.
I got bored rather quickly of it so after a while I abandoned it and I don't think I'll pick it back up

wow. i didnt think i would come out of this game liking it this much in the end, honestly. this is the best version to play final fantasy 1 i think. it doesnt give you that much to work with storywise but i really enjoyed losing myself into this game and imagining my parts to it. as ironic as it sounds, this is the first installment of the series that really made my fantasy work on its own. the not so spectacular graphic as it is nowadays gives you a kind of outline of the world that you can fill in with a lot of imagination. the music may not have that many tracks but is absolutely amazing and always add up to that imagining part.
i found myself really loving this game and sticking to it non stop for the last 3 days which, at least these days, has become pretty rare for me. but on the other hand im a big sucker for these totally oldschool turn based rpgs so i guess i just had to like this in the end.

Some people say Final Fantasy started copying Dragon Quest, but the world in the first game already feels very different from DQ, and you can create your own party in the first game, in simillar way to DQ3, but working differently. It definitely was inspired by DQ, but that goes for every JRPG when the genre was beginningn, just like DQ was inspired by WRPGs.

That said, i will always have a soft spot for this game in this version specifically due to owning it physically and have made every side quest in my dead PSP, it's grindy as hell and cryptic sometimes, but i really like the create your own party feature, and how they evolve, it also looks gorgeous, and with this game the song The Prelude was created, peak series theme

FINAL FANTASY MARATHON RANKED
https://www.backloggd.com/u/fragilant/list/final-fantasy-marathon-ranked/

Final Fantasy I's biggest shortcoming is also its biggest strength.
While I enjoy the simplicity of this game, with its straightforward narrative and battle system, the main reason I go to this series is for the characters and the stories surrounding them. Going back to a game where that's basically non-existent was difficult at times, especially when 80% of the game is random encounters which have no real strategy.
Even the bosses are incredibly easy (I think I defeated Kraken in like 3 turns) until I got to Chaos and he absolutely destroyed me time after time until my 5th try.
I can see myself being much more harsh against this game if I didn't have speed-up by my side because maaaan does the gameplay sit on the edge of being tedious button mashing and my TikTok zoomer brain doesn't have the attention span for that.
Despite this, exploring the world map is a lot of fun and everything is made simple and is still incredibly effective. Spells are just taught by buying them, every class has a distinct and easy to understand role to play, even if you have no knowledge of them beforehand and there's so many gameplay features which would innovate many of my favourite games today.
More of a compliment to the remake and not the game itself, but the spritework, especially for the bosses, and the music in this game is incredible.
It's a very simple game, so I was pleasently surprised at how much effort was put in this, because I was just expecting a bit of an improvement on the sprites. Made the game so much more charming to go through.

Overall, FF1 is a fun and cute game, but suffers a lot due to the limitations at the time, and the remake suffers for trying to be a little too faithful to the original, making the gameplay loop very tedious, but for now it's a good reminder to myself that I am very stupid for doing this marathon in the first place.
Du-doy!

This is the first FF game I've played and the main problem I had with this game wasn't the game itself, but the added content in this port. Of course I chose it for that and the beautiful pixel art, later I realised the problems. In this port, the game expects that you've already played one of the versions without the extra content.

When you defeat the main bosses, a cinematic runs that shows you what appears to be where you should go next, but turns out that's not the case, it shows you one of the new extra dungeons being unlocked. As I didn't know what they were, I headed there and the enemies were stronger but not by much. Because this game's difficulty is low, I finally had a challenge and it was fun, the problem was that when you get to a boss, you get killed in a turn or at best at two. Not only that, those extra dungeons that are locked by a statue of a boss are not the only extra dungeons, there're more that you can easily get into without knowing until you get to their bosses and that's when you realise what happened.

When I was heading to the last boss an NPC appeared and ran away, thinking this is part of the game I followed him and after going through frustrating puzzles I realised for a THIRD time this is bonus content and actually the hardest which, like the other ones, it's waaay higher level. At the end I loaded a previous save file and got to the last boss, the last fight was long and underwhelming. I believe I never died, or maybe once or twice at most, except when I casually entered the high level extra dungeons.

If you want to play FF1 for the first time, I'd recommend playing the PS1 port or a similar one that doesn't have that added content. I really preferred playing the SNES port of DQ1 with a fan translation patch, it was a lovely game.

The game has a really good sense of adventure and I love the world but as a game it is a bit too esoteric for my liking. I beat this game using a guide and the speed up function on an emulator and it was still pretty rough on some points because of the obnoxious encounter rate. This is also one of the more modern iterations of the game with a lot of quality of life improvements so I imagine a lot of the later game stuff was hell in the original NES version. Music is really good though and I adore this iteration of the game.

My first time playing FF1. For a game from 1987, i think it holds up pretty well. You choose your party with 4 out of 6 classes and go on a journey to gather crystals to save the world. you go from town to town, gather new spells, gear and items and fight enemies. For the most part, its a relatively relaxing game. Combat is basic, but it does it job. dungeons are fairly simple designed and in general the games not really difficult. After 16h and reaching the credits, i think is a worthwhile experience to go through, if you want to experience the origin of this long running franchise. Just keep in mind everything is held to the very basics.