Final Fantasy

NES

Squaresoft / Nintendo - 198x

Final Fantasy One Baby. I'd like to see you get more old-school than that. Well, besides text-based games, and D&Ds, and other dice-games... Well, ok fine you can get old-schooler than that. But its still pretty old-school altogether.

Final Fantasy, named so because it was Hironobu Sakaguchi's supposed swan song for Square, and to software in a general sense. (wow there are too many 's' words in that sentence.) Well, it was to be his final game ever, and he wanted to make a fantasy game, after failing in games like Highway star (aka Rad Racer) and World Runner. Sakaguchi states that the basic concept was simple. It was: "A mythical concept of the whole earth, with fire and water representing everything on earth. I took that concept and represented those elements into a crystal, and that essentially became sort of the core theme for Final Fantasy. I took a preexisting idea- four or five basic elements of the world; sort of an orthodox and mythical concept- then molded it into an original fantasy story." (Quote courtesy of Steven Kent's The Ultimate History of Video Games).

Final Fantasy was an amazing game for its time. You choose 4 warriors from 6 classes; Fighter, White and Black and Red mages, Black Belt, and thief. I would have to say thief is the worst character because, for me at least, thief sucks monkey balls for money when, yes, he could easily steal the money. But he is that much of a piece-of-crap character that he has to work for it anyways. Black Mages also suck, you can get through the game very easily without any magic, except perhaps white magic for curing. Black mages also have a terrible hp and defense. I'd say, unless you were trying to reinact 8-Bit theater, or have an unnatural obsession with Vivi, don't use black mages. One white mage would help with curing characters, but you can also get by with buying a lot of healing items if you want. Red Mages are great early on, they can use swords and heal, but they have awful hp and a pretty bad defense altogether. Fighters are great, a team of just fighters, while the most expensive team ever formed EVER, would whoop the game really fast. But black belts are where it is at. They are awful at first, but after level 10 they become very helpful very fast. At the end they hit for 4 times the amount a fighter does, and have the most hp. One hit from them will take down a boss. The best team I have found is a fighter, two black belts and a white mage for healing. But I'm a big "fight every enemy and save magic for bosses" guy, even when you will take a boss down in one rounds. Mix it up and try your own.

The plot of the game is confusing at best, and began the trend in Final Fantasies where by the end you had no idea what was going on. Garland, the first boss, turns out to also be the last boss 1000 years ago or something. Some crazy time loop. Don't pay attention to the plot. The game has a great battle system, especially for it's time, and fun replay value, especially if you have the new Origins series that Square released, where it tallies the amount of every enemy you fought and every item you found.

What liked: the "choose 4 of 6" jobs at the beginning, so you can play it multiple times. The lack of cutscenes.

What disliked: A bit hard at the beginning, and the game is about gaining levels, not following a plot.

What to expect: Getting lost a lot the first time through. A simpler SNES Final Fantasy.

What not to expect: Cutscenes. FFX.

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: It was one of the first RPGs for game systems.

Ratings on:

Control: n/a - I can't rate that. You move up and down, left and right. Very simple.

Graphics: 6 - I really like the old NES graphics. The PSX Origins graphics I would rate better than FF6.

Sound: 2 - eww.

Style: 8 - But I'm partial towards Final Fantasies, and it is the first.

1st hour: 10 - Yay fun times for all.

5th hour: 8 - I have to be level three to take Garland.

1st week: 5 - This game sucks.

5th week: 8 - My Black Belt rocks my world. This game kicks high.

#1 reason why I hate this game: Leveling up wears me out quickly.

by Hawke