Final Fantasy I

Author: Ben <benk@tilde.team>

Mon Sep 20 12:17:00 AM +0430 2021

As promised, I'm going to go ahead and write a little review of Final Fantasy I since I finished it for the first time a week or so ago. I'm sure many reviews have been written about it, so I am not going to make it too long.

I tried playing this game several times over the years, first as a curious teenager using an NES emulator way back in the day, and then many years later trying to pick up the series again. I think it was 2019 or 2020 where I tried playing the GBA ROM, thinking it was the best version available. At the time it probably was, and the pixel remasters are not terribly unlike the GBA versions of these games.

I'm not going to compare versions or talk about the virtues of the pixel remaster series. I did write about that previously on my gemlog. Yes, they are great (but easy) versions of the games one can play through without too much trouble.

Now that I've played the whole game and can look back on it in its entirety, I can say more confidently that this game does deserve to be played, even if you play no other Final Fantasy game in the series. As far as JRPG's go--if you don't like the genre, that's another story--the game holds up well in spite of its age. The remakes help with that and smooth out the experience as well as bring the game more to life than the NES hardware was able to do.

So really, the game is a timeless classic, and the story is really surprisingly sophisticated. You go into it expecting much less, and I think even in this first installment you see this characteristic of the series, that the games are designed to exceed your expectations somehow. (No spoilers here.)

That being said, I'm not sure how else to describe the game. It's not too long, and even though the pixel remaster is easy and "doesn't require grinding", I had to level my characters for some time before I could beat the final boss. Keeping that as a challenge was a good idea, but the other bosses throughout the game were pitifully easy. There is some minor replay value since you can play the game again with different party configurations. I went with the default, but the thief was kind of useless and if I cuold go back I'd swap that one out for a red mage. The magic mechanic is probably one of the more interesting aspects of the game, and becomes more important later on.

Since finishing Final Fantasy I, I started on Final Fantasy II and am maybe halfway (or more?) through it. It's really not as good, and I have played III before on the Nintendo DS with the 3D remake, so I can say fairly confidently that the first one is the best of the early games in the series. I might change my mind later, but of course I'll let you know if I do. So really, it doesn't seem like audiences outside of Japan missed much by skipping II and III.