“An adventure unfolds, a new beginning…”

I think a year or so ago I wanted to try to get into the Mana series but just never did. When Visions of Mana was announced, it brought some interest in me to give the series another chance. Look I’m not gonna guarantee anything but I might play that game whenever it comes out. I wanted to at least try to play most of what the series had to offer. So without further ado, here are my thoughts on the first game.

So I’ll be honest I’m not really that knowledgeable on this series besides the fact they exist. This was the only one I had put a decent amount of time and thought into the past but never got past I think when you get the Chocobo. Final Fantasy Adventure reminds me of the Zelda series with the top down weapon based combat seen here. Though unlike Zelda, this one puts in some of the RPG elements you’d see in a game like Final Fantasy. I’m not sure if this is the case for later games but was surprised to see so much of the series still showing up here like many of the classes. I would later learn that the Japanese title was called Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden. So even over there it was seen as a FF spinoff. It made stuff like the sprite art look familiar even if I have never beaten an FF game in my life.

The progression in FFA was a nice surprise. Was expecting just some generic story but what is here is kind of touching and shows that not all stories can have happy endings for everyone. I think this was already a thing in FF games but I’m unsure. The game stars a slave to the Dark Lord that you can name whoever you want but since he ain’t a girl, I’ll just use the canon name Sumo. He swears to avenge the Dark Lord after he kills his best friend. There’s actually a decent amount of losses like Amanda becoming a Medusa and dying by the hands of Sumo with him having to get her tear afterwards to lift the curse of her brother Lester. The most tragic one for me had to be with Marcie where he says he’ll jump after throwing you to the other side only to realize he lied and went down with the sinking tower knowing he had to stay, I miss him. You can also name a girl but I also just went with the canon name being Fuji. I think her moment in the end is sad but I do feel like most of her time is just getting kidnapped now I think about it. I also really liked the part where Sumo didn’t want to be a Gemma knight anymore because he saw himself as a failure, while it’s not much there are moments I enjoy seeing his dialogue and I’m glad he has his moments of weakness. It’s hard to say much for the world itself as towns are small and almost no one is out in the overworld but what is here outside of that did get some feelings from me so I think it deserves a gold star for that.

The gameplay is the part where it shines the most for me because you can get all these cool weapons and spells to use. It’s not just a sword like the one you start off with. You get other weapons like an ax, chain, morning star, lance, and a sickle. Some have uses outside of combat like destroying some type of obstacle. They also have their uses in combat and swords & lances even use elements in combat. Even doing attacks is interesting thanks to the bar that fills up letting you do more damage as it fills up. Once you level up a bunch, it goes up really fast and when it’s fully charged, you can do a special move with it. I think my favorite weapon was the morning star as it had good range and power and it makes the mattock item irrelevant.

The magic is cool but it was never something I used a ton besides for cure. A lot of it is just too situational and I really only felt like using it since I knew I wouldn’t be running out of MP anytime soon. I should let you know that be careful when using Heal because if you use it, your defense bugs out and will be 0 until you pause. I also wish magic was more useful on bosses because most of them seemed immune to whatever I threw at them. Some enemies can also inflict statuses onto you and at worse they just feel like minor annoyances. I also felt items were very situational but maybe I was just playing too well to need them because I felt like I had a full bag for 90% of the game. This also meant I always had a ton of gold because the only expensive things are equipment and weapons and I always had enough of them.

Exploring the overworld is interesting to me because at first it’s pretty linear but by the time your chocobo gets the ability to run on water, you have a whole small world to explore and it can feel easy to lose yourself in but thankfully the areas you need to go to aren’t far off. That said however nothing in the world really screams landmarks outside of the tiles depicting what location you’re in like a desert of a snowy mountain. It can make the world feel very samey but it never really bothers me because I just like moving around hitting bad guys. There’s thankfully not many moments of needing help from a guide. There was one part I got really stuck at because the hint about palm trees and 8 make no sense to me though maybe I’m just stupid. The localization at times feels a bit rough and even left some stuff out from the Japanese version but it’s far from the worst. It should be noted that a fan translation of the Japanese version does exist if you wish to play that for a more accurate script.

There’s so many dungeons in this game that they all kind of blend in my mind as I’m writing this. None of them are really too hard, thankfully but one regret I have when playing them was not exploring them enough, I think I missed some weapons and equipment because of it. I don’t know why but it just never got old for me just exploring them and they never got frustrating, the only thing I don’t like about them is the overuse of ice magic puzzles. The bosses in these are also fine but none of them can inflict statuses on you and a lot of the patterns again blend in after a while. I swear a lot of them move in the same way. They do look pretty big and threatening but only a couple gave me much issue.

One story I have about my playthrough was how I almost had a dead save in the final dungeon. So, I made two saves, one before entering and one during the exploration. It was going fine until I accidently overwrote the one before the dungeon and then I realized I only had 3 keys. You can’t leave this area either, at least I wasn’t able to figure out how. I also couldn’t find any enemies that dropped keys. I’m sure there is some solution if you run out but I was very thankful I had just enough. Getting to Julius and facing him felt satisfying and was a good challenge and the story stuff at the end is pretty sad to think about but hey at least we get to see our chocobo be happy with another one before we leave to protect Fuji, forever…or at least until Sumo dies. Kind of screwed up to think once that Mana Tree dies, humanity is doomed.

The game does look nice graphically and it’s about what you’d expect from the genre at the time which isn’t a bad thing. Sprites look nice outside of the occasional ugly enemy, nice environments, it just works nicely. The music by Kenji Ito is amazing stuff. This has to be some of my favorite stuff on the system. Sadly there really aren't any good uploads of the OST on Youtube so I’ll refrain from sending many links of those but trust me when I say it’s great. The two overworld themes really give a great feel in my mind for the journey I’m going on. There’s some really nice sad and calming pieces in the game but my absolute favorite song has to be Courage and Pride from the Heart. The song plays for the Dark Lord and Julius phase 2 fights and my god it feels so perfect for the moment. Especially for the Dark Lord, a sword on sword action fight where you’re both moving around trying to get hits in, it’s perfect! Makes me wanna play more games with his music in them. This game even has the Chocobo theme! Everyone loves the Chocobo theme!!

I was very surprised with my final thoughts on the game. I thought it was pretty good. Don’t get me wrong, it has issues and I recognize that but I just had too much fun playing that game from beginning to end that the issues just don’t hurt the game enough for me. Final Fantasy Adventure is a very good action RPG for the Game Boy and it is a good start to this franchise. It has me very interested in the next game, Secret of Mana. If you can handle the issues with this game then it’s an easy recommendation. Maybe I’m going too nice on the game but when I beat the game I said “Well I thought it was really fun and that’s all that matters.” FFA is a game I’ll probably not replay in the near future but I’m satisfied with my finished playthrough of it! Not sure whenever I’ll get to Secret of Mana but expect that in the near future. Farewell for now.