Final Fantasy

It's been a while since I reviewed an RPG. It almost seems like it is not my favorite genre. I have been playing RPGs for the longest time I can recall and I've went on a very long phase without them so looking back and reviewing them should liven up my curiosity for them. I feel I am behind on RPGs so I'll make sure to review one a month at least starting with the original Final Fantasy. The one that started it all and the one that could have been the last. Here is to hoping by the time I finish reviewing the rest of the series, Final Fantasy XV would be out.

Created by Hironobu Sakaguchi in 1987 as a last resort for a company that was facing bankruptcy, this turned based Role Playing game was going to be named Fighting Fantasy but given there was a game of the same name, it was renamed to Final Fantasy in hopes of saving the company. Luckily it not only saved its future, but it spawned way too many titles that I loved to play once at least and spin offs that I can't care a lot about these days. I do admit now that the first Final Fantasy I got my hands on was the seventh installment but I suppose I got excited at some point and wanted to see the rest of the games for myself. This is one of the most ridiculous series in terms of release where one would expect its games to be stuck in outdated devices but till this day they are being released in almost every platform it is hard to imagine them nonexistent in any and I'd easily dare you to name one platform where they are not on. I can't say this review is collective for all versions but I can recall picking up Final Fantasy on the Gameboy Advane in 2005 and later on a PSP remastered edition was out and I beat that one as well 2 years after it.

This screen may have upgraded at least 4 times

Final Fantasy has the most generic plot and it's quite simplistic enough for one to play it on handhelds that it is hard for me to imagine how it was played on the SNES. The story follows four youths known as the Four Heroes of Light that must save the world from evil by restoring the four orbs of light corrupted by the four elemental fiends of darkness. That's way too many fours in one sentence but sadly I can't give any more details than this story or simplify it more than what it is. Obviously there is more to it. When it comes to RPGs, it cant be simpler than this. You have four main screens to interact with in Final Fantasy, your equipment screen, the overworld map and dungeon/town map and lastly your battle screen. 

If you're familiar with RPGs, you'd know the many combinations it is to have a party of different classes, which is nice given there is barely any backstory for your characters or personalities (obviously not that nice in terms of story) so the player can choose whichever class they want among black mages, white mages, thieves and warriors. These are the basic classes available and I can't recall if there are more in terms of variations since most of them are related in some way to the original ones I mentioned such as red mages that use both black and white magic but to a limited level. White mages are the healers of the party and the black mages are their opposite, casting offensive magic. Warriors are the brawn of the party and mages being the brain of the party, I suppose one can have different combinations to suit their different playstyles.

Don't let it fool you, Final Fantasy is still a huge game and would take at least 20 hours to finish

Going through the world map and dungeons shaped in mazes and labyrinths, our four heroes venture forth through different elemental terrains to save the world. The only respite and safe areas are towns, where everywhere else has random encounters and oh how I hate thee, random encounters. Most RPGs back in the day had the norm for battles to be random, where I honestly had no opinion on the matter until I played other games where enemies are clearly on the field and you can easily avoid them when you don't want to fight and even some games allowed the player to engage the enemy from behind to gain the advantage in the turn order. Random encounters can get ridiculous to the point where immediately after finishing a battle, another one would start after it or the complete opposite can happen where you can finish a dungeon with only 2 battles done.

Like any other Turn based JRPG, players have a turn order where they perform actions to win against enemies in dungeons and gain experience to level up. When your characters level up, their stats increase automatically based on their respected class (Mages gaining intelligence and warriors gaining strength) and I recall being surprised at Final Fantasy for going out of the tradition of JRPGs giving designated spells for when characters level up to a specific level and instead of that, the player has to buy spells for their characters from towns. Each mage has a rank for their spells and can only learn up to 3 spells per rank. The higher the rank the more expensive they are. Of course, getting back to our battle screen, we have HP and MP and the Active time battle meter wasn't created in this game so the turn order was invisible between allies and enemies. Battles were mostly fun, some enemies were weak to certain elements of magic and others were weak to physical attacks so it was a nice touch of experimenting and trial and error. I don't recall battles were getting boring and thankfully that was because I was not grinding for experience.

Going back and forth between both PSP and GBA versions, I wasn't that big on how complex Final Fantasy looked graphically but I can easily say it looked beautiful in its own simple way. Environments were simple yet beautiful and the spell effects were a nice addition and I'd still laugh over the warrior animation of hitting an enemy by swinging his sword in place. It was the kind of quirky game animation that I'd appreciated it for what it is. The thing I recall the most was the really tough boss fights especially the four great fiends where I spent hours planning ahead and finding the right combinations and picking up the... right number of phoenix downs to avoid total annihilation. Another notable thing is the beautiful soundtrack that was later remastered for the PSP version. Catchy battle tunes and kickass boss themes kept me going for the most part, not to mention town themes and let's not forget the very memorable Matoya's Cave track.

It's still nice to see how compatible it is with different platforms

Looking back at the game on its own, this was a great start to a very engaging series but I have to be honest that it is not the most memorable experience for me especially after playing Final Fantasy VII. My expectations were too high when it came out in 2005 but it was still a high quality experience. I couldn't ask for a simpler journey to be honest. Ridding the world of the four fiends and fighting the greatest evil, chaos. Dungeons were full of secrets and pathways that lead to treasure and equipment not found in shops and the PSP version featured a bonus dungeon and a remastered soundtrack. It was a great game that I easily had my fill of in 2 playthroughs only as opposed to the other games in the series where I played a lot of. Check out Final fantasy on Steam and on iOS as well as google's Play Store where it was more recently released there. Final Fantasy is for every avid JRPG enthusiast whether you want to go down memory lane or want to experience it firsthand. A classic at its best.