In many ways the first Final Fantasy game was a culmination of many different RPG efforts to date. The influence from Dragon Quest is obvious, which itself was influenced by Ultima and Wizardry. Final Fantasy was the next child in this illustrious lineage, and easily my favorite.
Where Final Fantasy excels is that it manages to offer a mostly frustration free experience to newcomers of RPGs as well as veteran dungeon crawlers. It provides you with some customization options by letting you pick your party, and your spells should you choose to add mages to your party, but the rest of the game proceeds through a linear series of fetch quests and regulated upgrades. A reasonable encounter rate and leveling system keeps pretty good pace with the story and gives you a sense of growing more powerful as you work your way through the various dungeons.
I also prefer the battle screen layout here to that of the first person views in games like Dragon Quest. Seeing your characters move to attack the enemy sprites even with simplistic animations always felt more impactful than staring at an enemy sprite as it glows different colors in response to your menu selections. That said, the visuals are very similar to Dragon Quest, though I do prefer the sprite work in Final Fantasy. There are also some well documented bugs and stats issues that could cause frustration, but I personally never found any of them to be detrimental enough to cause significant grievances.
The story is generally straightforward, and while the setting is mostly a mishmosh of medieval themes and characters, it does lay the groundwork for some of the staple elements of the franchise that would span countless games after this one. Speaking of timeless elements, the game's soundtrack is fantastic and relentlessly humable. Easily some of the best music ever produced for a video game at the time of its release.
All in all, Final Fantasy was a wonderful addition to the burgeoning RPG genre and set the stage for sequels that would go on to become some of the best games ever made.
Where Final Fantasy excels is that it manages to offer a mostly frustration free experience to newcomers of RPGs as well as veteran dungeon crawlers. It provides you with some customization options by letting you pick your party, and your spells should you choose to add mages to your party, but the rest of the game proceeds through a linear series of fetch quests and regulated upgrades. A reasonable encounter rate and leveling system keeps pretty good pace with the story and gives you a sense of growing more powerful as you work your way through the various dungeons.
I also prefer the battle screen layout here to that of the first person views in games like Dragon Quest. Seeing your characters move to attack the enemy sprites even with simplistic animations always felt more impactful than staring at an enemy sprite as it glows different colors in response to your menu selections. That said, the visuals are very similar to Dragon Quest, though I do prefer the sprite work in Final Fantasy. There are also some well documented bugs and stats issues that could cause frustration, but I personally never found any of them to be detrimental enough to cause significant grievances.
The story is generally straightforward, and while the setting is mostly a mishmosh of medieval themes and characters, it does lay the groundwork for some of the staple elements of the franchise that would span countless games after this one. Speaking of timeless elements, the game's soundtrack is fantastic and relentlessly humable. Easily some of the best music ever produced for a video game at the time of its release.
All in all, Final Fantasy was a wonderful addition to the burgeoning RPG genre and set the stage for sequels that would go on to become some of the best games ever made.