Upon replaying FFI PR with some friends, my opinion on this game has went up. Not skyrocketed, but certainly worth half a star’s boost. I don’t know if it’s something that took a bit to marinate, or there’s juxtaposition after playing FFIII/FFV/most-of-FFVI, but it became really apparent to me just how easy FFI is to pick up and play. On my second playthrough I used a different team, where I learned that the character differences are fine-tuned just enough to make it so that each composition feels unique, but nothing is detrimental and there’s a mostly-reasonable brute-force solution to everything if you need one. Probably. I’m not going to test that with four white mages anytime soon but for most party compositions I think it’s true.

And while Marsh Cave is still awful, the Pixel Remaster does have the in game map option to press a button and have a map of the entire room you’re in appear. While I did complain in my first review about dungeon design with its empty rooms and stalling so that you’re ground down with encounters being from the Fuck You era of NES game design, and I still think that’s true, you can simply just not go into the empty rooms this time around since you can see where they are, as long as you’re inside a room.

Otherwise, pretty much what I said last time. Play the FF1 Pixel Remaster, it's good.