Oh great, I’m reviewing Final Fantasy. A game that has been talked about for decades. While I do sometimes talk about popular games, it’s stuff like this I’m inexperienced with that makes me feel I shouldn’t really be one talking about the subject. I want to someday talk about a lot of the entries in this series. Besides the spinoff Seiken Densetsu, I’ve never beaten a Final Fantasy game. After all of these years I’ve finally done it and here is my story…
It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!
Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.
The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”
Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.
Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.
The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.
By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!
I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!
It all started with that blue screen that gives a small amount of story with a nice song to accompany it. I guess to start weirdly would be the music as I wanna get upfront and say the OST as a whole is amazing for the Famicom. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and it’s some amazing stuff, probably some of the best of the 1987 catalog of the Famicom. Once you start a new save I got to pick my party. If you’re wondering who I chose and will probably determine if you’ll keep reading or not. I picked a Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Really wish the letter limit wasn’t four letters so I just ended up using the closest canon names they had. So began the journey of Zest, Puff, Floe, and Teol!
Surprisingly it starts off pretty basic, saving a Princess from a guy named Garland. First I had to get ready and it can feel pretty daunting for me as I’m not really told what’s helpful for my team. Even weirder is you have to buy magic and not get it from level ups so it’s off to grind. Battles seem pretty simple but wow you can fight a lot of them at once, it feels like it can be daunting at times but with enough skill, It’s not too bad. The one nice thing about having mages is I can rely on both offensive and defensive magic. Though this weird spell charges mechanic is something I’m not a fan of and I’ll go over why later.
The first dungeon is short and you can’t even get every treasure in here at first and even the first boss Garland is a joke. So I beat him and save the Princess but obviously that’s just the beginning. A new bridge is constructed and when you cross it, one of the best things happens in the game. You’re given a bit of text as the title of the game and credits are shown, really giving me the feeling of “Yes, I feel so ready to save the day!”
Now I’m off doing things following the plot, going into dungeons, and even getting multiple vehicles to ride in. You get one pretty early which is the ship which is pretty cool. The world isn’t too big but it still feels like a big world especially once you get more into it. Then I eventually found what would be the first main dungeon that wasn’t a floor only dungeon and wow I wasn’t having the most fun. I kept having to leave the place to heal and I began to realize having spell charges really limits what I can do in fights. Though later on you’ll learn Cottages can heal spell charges which is nice. Since I wanted to preserve spells for bosses, I ended up just running away most of the time which isn’t the most fun thing to do in an RPG. It also doesn’t help that the Black and White mages are as frail as a piece of glass. It can be a bit frustrating at times.
Still going through the world, there’s some cool things here and there and beating bosses with relative ease, even ones like the Kraken. I gotta praise the design of monsters too, they really look nice and there’s a nice variety of them and while there are recolors, it’s understandable. The art for stuff like the box is also legendarily great as well and they are unforgettable. Even the player sprites are good looking too. The world also looks pretty nice too and I like how some parts like the Town of Melmond show the decay of the Earth thanks to one of the Chaos Four. I got a little sidetrack there, my bad.
The more I went through the game, I did start to really appreciate all of the magic I could use and even grinding wasn’t too awful as I didn’t do too much of it even for getting Gil. There’s also a cool airship you can ride late into the game and it’s so fast and fun but landing with it can suck sometimes. You even get to upgrade your characters with brand new sprites and abilities and it feels so good to see this happen! There are still some issues that pissed me off. The worst thing in the game has to be the poison status. It’s not even poison being annoying but it screws with your team placement, I hate rearranging it every single time! This is also one of those early RPGs where you can miss if you direct a character to hit an enemy that dies to someone else which can lead to strategy and thought but can be annoying when you feel it’s too RNG at times who dies at what. I wish it was easier to view stats for weapons and armor as it ends up being easier to use a guide for comparisons. I also struggled with inventory management and ended up throwing a lot of weapons and armor away. The game is also known for being buggy but I didn’t really have any issue with this regard.
By the time I got to the end of the game, I was ready but nervous. I was at level 34 and ended at 35. This dungeon isn’t too long but enemies can be dangerous so more running but you have to rematch all of the Chaos 4 again and they’re harder. Oh that reminds me, some might wonder did I fight the Warmech? No, I didn’t. Sorry. Oh yeah I forgot that place also took place in space? That’s really cool. This final place also takes place 2,000 years in the past which is something I would have never expected to see in a FF game. Finally I got to the final boss and wow it’s actually that easy first boss from the beginning but now he’s Chaos. This fight is rough and worse of all he can heal all of his health. I thankfully had a lot of buffs on so I was eventually able to defeat him and the game ends with the world saved. It was weird to see the game end on the characters getting amnesia? Like should I not feel happy it didn’t all end well? Maybe I didn’t read it right, oh well the world is saved!
I feel on and off about this game. I want to think I enjoyed it, regardless of the issues. I could have talked about more moments and I know this feels a little too small of a review but I just don’t want to bore people. In the end, I think it’s a good game. I find it such an interesting game for 1987 especially since it could have failed had Dragon Quest III not receive a delay. FF would become one of Square’s biggest IPs. Two sequels would get made on the Famicom and I’ll play through II sometime this year. FFI also got some remakes which first started on the WonderSwan Color. It also has a MSX2 version with a fan translation. Though I’m sure nowadays the Pixel Remaster is the go-to version for people looking to play the game. It was a good start but I’m wondering how the sequel will fare. Guess I’ll have to wait and see. Thanks for reading!