An absolute masterpiece. Whereas its predecessor established the world-building locale, this game now expands further on it. Everything is polished, from graphics to sidequests and side character interactions. A must-play title in the genre.

This is one of the most incredible games that I have ever played in my 30+ years of gaming.

So much old school fun packed into a great game.

The pinnacle of pixel FFs, this game takes every lesson learned from previous entries and combines the best of them to make a franchise entry that remains top-tier to this very day, some 30 years and 10+ titles later.

Sure, the story isn't terribly involved, and the gameplay is basic, but returning to where it all began gives quite the sense of perspective on what would later come from the original that started it all.

Introducing the Job system for the first time, your characters here can be any role you'd like, and even change roles at any point in time, which would become a hallmark of later titles (and revised even better in FFV).
Unfortunately, the characters themselves see very little actual characterization. Only your first named character is ever even referred to by anyone, with the three others simply tagalongs. While the 3D remake fixed this, those changes are not present here in the Pixel Remaster.

This is really where the franchise kicked things into high gear, with specific characters with their own individual identities in a sprawling story. Gone for the first time here is the notion of "make any character anything you want" but rather each is pre-defined and plays a role as part of the overall story.

This is one of the most memorable in the series with characters whose very designs persist to this day.

This title is a noticeably massive step up from its original, with a fleshed-out story, actual characters, and laying the foundation of the franchise. While its battle system can be polarizing, you can simply turn on the included Boosters here and just play the way you want to (assigning a "role" to each character for the game's duration), and then it's never really a big deal thereafter.

I was really impressed by this title. It's so often overlooked, but the story here is quite epic, and the Job system implemented here is a delight to play around with.
I loved the characters, who all had their own personalities (much like FF4 before it), but were not locked into specific roles (unlike FF4).