A Final Fantasy Retrospective/Rant by Kazekawa - Part 1 of 4

Greetings my fellow g1's. I was recently talking about Final Fantasy in a few posts and had a neat conversation with my wife tonight about the series and so I decided to contribute my thoughts on the Final Fantasy Series. It would take hours to really express my thoughts and feelings on each individual game, which would not exactly be fun to read. Instead, I will write a few key notes per game and my take on them. Enjoy.

Part 2 - http://screwattack.com/node/9258

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Final Fantasy 1 (Original NES)

*General Game play and stories:

Wow, when FF1 hit the NES in 1990 I was only 5 years old but I was all over that crap. My original party (which you could choose) was a Fighter, White Mage, Black Mage and a Black Belt. After a little frustration... I'm sorry... insane frustration with the white mage, I restarted and swapped my mages for a Red Mage and a Thief. Towards the end of the game I found out the Red Mage could not buy any of the high level spells, I shook my fists at the heavens and restarted a third time.

This time around I used my original party and worked my way to the end of the game. I was one stair well away from the final boss "Chaos" and boom! The boss before the final boss kills my White Mage. I went into the final fight with 3 members only as there were no "life potions" or other ways to revive a character and there was no leaving the dungeon. I went full out damage and just before my Black Mage fell in battle, I won. Take that Chaos, owned by 3 guys and no heals.

The general feel of the game is of course classic, there was an over world map, dungeon maps, town maps and so on. An assortment of vehicles... well 3 helped you to traverse the world a bit faster and with the exception of the water based craft, avoided enemy encounters. The game used a traditional turn based combat system where you could select different commands from Fight to Run, good stuff and the system is still more or less used today.

The magic system was fairly limited as you had to buy your spells. There would be a selection of level 1 spells, but you could only learn 3. Each level of magic allowed a certain number of uses depending on your level so dungeon crawling was more along the lines of quickly get what you need and get the hell out.

*Gripes:

My god, the swamp cave South West of the Elven Kingdom. The cave was long, the enemies were resistant to a lot of your attacks and when you finally grab the chest with crown, 3 monsters jump at you that are extremely powerful. I remember running through this cave a good number of times until the remake.

The potions as well as just about anything else were extremely expensive. You had to buy every spell for the characters that could use magic and each character could only hold a certain number of weapons/armor. It was most certainly a hassle and I was sad every time I had to throw away my resistance armor.

So I get to the "Air Fiend" and I have my Fighter, at that point a Knight with what I believe was the "bane sword". I take a swing at the boss and killed him in one hit due to the effectiveness of the sword. The mini-boss patrolling the bridge before him was far more powerful and I felt like it was all a waste of time. All in all, it was a fairly good game with a decent story and most importantly, it brought the crystal plot into creation (at the time it was orbs until the remake).

All the new gamers get remade versions of Final Fantasy 1 with life potions and easier ways to save, prettier graphics and a very nicely remade sound track but if you are looking for a fun and still tough rpg, look no further than Final Fantasy 1 on the NES.

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Final Fantasy 2 (Remake)

*Game play:

Ok, so they really changed the combat system in this game. Now you can level up weapons by using them repeatidly and the same tired magic system with limited uses per magic level remained. Chocobos decided to pop up in this game as well as Cid, hurray. This game also brought about a password system similar to the Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior series... naturally this was scrapped after this game.

*Gripes:

So you start off with 4 kids but BOOM, you lose one. As a result, the 4th spot is replaced with a random quest person. This person is similar to the "red shirts" from Star Trek... in that they die constantly. They have a wife and kid? Nobody cares they are dead. Oh it's Cid? A classic and legendary airship builder? Too bad, he is dead and so on.

You go through the game and pow, hell itself opens up revealing pandemonium castle. Yea... hell. I was confused as it hadn't really been mentioned up to this point. In fact, the game centered around an evil empire and a resistance movement (aka FF6). Well ok so hell is about and now we have to break in and take care of business, that's fine and dandy right?

WRONG. So we go into the magical castle of death and dark and... darkness and guess what? There is NO SAVE POINTS ANYWHERE!!! You die and that's it son, back to the beginning you go. So the new player goes through the castle avoiding everything possible and says ooo a chest. You open it expecting perhaps a magical sword. WRONG! You get a large boss that wants to kick your ass and send you back to the beginning of the castle. That game... it will always remain in my mind and will forever haunt my dreams.

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Final Fantasy 3 (DS Version)

*Game play:

I recently played and beat this game in Japanese when it was released so I will tell you what little I can. FF3 introduced job classes to the series. This seems like a cool concept... like wow, I can pick whatever classes I want for any fight? Sweet. Well not quite kiddies but we will cover that part later. The game still uses a familiar magic system with the typical turn based combat of the time. Fun and repetitive, oh yea.

The DS version really made the game a lot better than the original in so many ways. It had a kind of 3D look to it, the maps and graphics were satisfying to look at and the game as a whole felt better. Classes that had been neglected in the Japanese original were improved to make them a bit more battle worthy and some overly used classes were reduced.

*Gripes:

So when you change classes, the next 10 battles or so you are fairly weaker as a result of the change. Some boss battles FORCE you to be a certain class to survive the encounter. One particular instance is when they first introduce the Dragoon class and armor. The boss fight you face after obtaining said armor and class forces your entire party to be dragoons or its good night for all. Oh and yea, when you switched classes, they are level 1 so you have to go and level up those classes needed for said forced fights.

The game itself is fairly long for a game of that time and there are moments where you ask yourself... am I done? Can I stop? Some of the bosses are ridiculously hard, where as others are extremely easy. The end of the game tries to throw in some last minute story plot stuff but at that point, I really didn't care anymore. I wanted the beast slain and done so I could move on to the next game though in FF3's defense, it was a fairly satisfying game over all.

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Final Fantasy 4 (Original SNES)

*Game play:

Finally we move out of the horrible magic system from the first 3 games and move onto our beloved "magic points/mp". We lose the ability to change jobs but with badass characters like Cecil, Kain, Edge, Rydia and Edward (syke, you suck Edward), who would need to change classes? This game had a ton of vehicles and more than one airship... in fact not counting the remodeling done to the ships you had 2 plus a ship that could travel to the moon... yea, the moon.

This was the first FF to really leave an impression on me when it came to character development, music and story sequencing. The story sucked you in and the music would not let you go. You traveled the light world, went underground, journeyed to the actual land of summoned monsters and ended your journey on the moon itself. A fairly epic adventure for the time and it became the base for what Final Fantasy would become.

*Gripes:

Ok, so some characters are a lot less cool than you would like. Edward (Gilbert if you played it in Japanese) is a whiny biatch who eventually gets too sick due to being thrown into the ocean to continue the quest. I honestly think he wanted to stay in Troyia due to the secret dancer/strip club in the Inn basement.

The game had a few dull moments where they smacked you again and again with sad parts followed by nothing to pick up the mood. It's like oh, you got owned and your friend died, ah well back to fighting monsters. It was kind of depressing as a kid.

The version that landed in America was considered to be a weakened copy and the Japanese kept a harder version for themselves. In the lifespan of Final Fantasy 4, 3 versions were released in the states. The original "easy mode", the playstation "normal mode" and the eventual DS remake which was the "harde mode" of the three.

*Side note:

This game featured what I like to call a "Final Fantasy Epic Moment". This game started the trend and it is repeated in all Final Fantasy games. What do I mean? At the end of the game when the giant of Babil decides to start destroying the world, the party gives up and lowers their heads in shame, but wait! A fleet of airships arrive with characters thought to be permanently out of the game and then a large force of tanks show up from the underground with even more characters you had thought to be down for the count. This moment brings everyone together to face certain destruction and is a recipe followed again and again by the series.

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This concludes part 1 of my Final Fantasy rant, I may try to spruce it up a bit more but I think I got my general experiences across to you.

Part 2 will include: Final Fantasy 5, 6, 7, 8
Part 3 will include: Final Fantasy 9, 10, 10-2, 11
Part 4 will include: Final Fantasy 12, FFMQ, Misc, Final

Remember, these are just my opinions on these games and if you really wanted details and specifics... it would be 1 blog per game, haha. I hope everyone could enjoy and please look forward to the next edition.