Final Fantasy Retrospective – Final Fantasy

When I originally thought about expanding my Kingdom Hearts Retrospective series to talk about more of Square-Enix’s games, I figured that I would talk about the games in release order, since I knew that Dragon Quest eventually slowed down and paced itself like a marathon runner, whereas Final Fantasy sprinted out the gate and kept sprinting until it got so winded that numbered games now take more than a decade to release. I had, however, made an assumption about the early release schedule of Final Fantasy, thinking that the first game came shortly after the first Dragon Quest, with Dragon Quest II being released in response to Final Fantasy, and so on.

If you actually look at the Japanese release schedule of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, the assumption that the games came out in response to each other is shown to be just that, an assumption. It turns out that Final Fantasy was released after both Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II, with the third Dragon Quest being released before the second Final Fantasy, and the fourth Dragon Quest being released before the third Final Fantasy. The two franchises didn’t start running side by side until the SNES era, and they only run side by side for a very brief time before the one series leaves the other in its dust. This means I really should be talking about Dragon Quest II first, but I don’t care. I still want to push the false narrative that the two series developed in response to each other, at least for the first few weeks of this project.

That said, Final Fantasy has never been one for rivalries. Case in point, Final Fantasy XIV is currently considered one of, if not the most popular MMOs on the market. It is also one of the few MMOs that did not market itself as a World of Warcraft killer. In fact, none of the games that promised they would kill it ever actually did so. World of Warcraft was so big and popular that the only reason it’s lost a ton of market share is because it tripped and fell on its own sword. Several times. Final Fantasy XIV just happened to be there to give so called “WoW refugees” somewhere they could go.

I should probably talk about how I’m choosing to play through each of the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games for this retrospective. I mentioned briefly last week that I wouldn’t necessarily be playing the best versions of each game I’ll be writing about. Instead, I’ll be playing the versions I prefer playing. This week I chose to play through the Game Boy Advance version of Final Fantasy since it has an in game clock and it also feels like a much faster version to play than the original. This version also comes with some balance changes including a revamped magic system, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

 

Prelude to Adventure

If one were to look at a game like the Final Fantasy VII remake, it can be hard to imagine that video games used to require a team of less than a dozen creative people to finish a project in a reasonable amount of time. Final Fantasy is a mammoth brand name and watching the end credits of any one of the games, it’s amazing how many people pour their hearts into making them.

Compared to the complex stories the series is currently capable of, and some might argue they fail more often than they succeed these days, the very first Final Fantasy may seem like a relic of a time gone by. By now, everyone’s well aware of the history of Final Fantasy and how the company had truly thought it would be their final game, but it was successful enough to spawn sequels and then a franchise was born. The game’s been ported to various consoles since its debut on the NES, including a PlayStation version as part of Final Fantasy Origins, and a Game Boy Advance version as part of Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls. Enough changes have been made to the game over time that it’s relatively easy to pick up one of the recent ports and finish it in a day or two.

I think it’s very possible in today’s world of 3-D graphics and real time battle systems and fully orchestrated battle themes with lyrics, to still gain an appreciation for how a game like the original Final Fantasy was put together, and to analyze the ways the game has been tamed for newer audiences.

Upon booting up Final Fantasy for the first time on either the Famicom or the NES, a tune begins playing that any fan of the series will recognize in a heartbeat. As the game’s introductory text fills the screen, Nobuo Uematsu’s famous Prelude rises and falls in a never ending wave of sound.

When composing the Prelude, Nobuo Uematsu could’ve created another tune out of whole cloth like he did the battle theme, the town theme, or even the designated opening theme that plays after the player crosses the bridge north of Cornelia for the first time. Instead, he chose to begin the game with a simple arpeggio, yet one that has become indelibly linked to the series.

An arpeggio is a tool many musicians use in a number of ways. Electronic artists like Solarstone use it to enhance their compositions, and if you were wondering if there’s a name for what the piano was doing in “Clocks” by Coldplay, now you know. It probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is a tool that has been in use for centuries. Many classical pieces written for the piano make use of arpeggios; Claude Debussy uses an arpeggio to introduce his first Arabesque, and that’s just one example. It is this function that Nobuo Uematsu’s Prelude serves, as an introduction to what could’ve been one of his last major video game soundtracks. It’s hard not to think of the soundtrack to something like Final Fantasy as your only shot at a magnum opus if the future of the company you work for is in financial jeopardy. Even the name “Prelude” conjures the idea of a composition of many movements, of which the title screen’s arpeggio is the first.

It’s likely that Uematsu would’ve continued to compose for video games if Squaresoft were to fold since it was only the game’s director, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had declared an intention to quit the video game industry if the game hadn’t sold well. Up to that point, Uematsu had composed exclusively for Squaresoft and with the success of Final Fantasy and the subsequent success of Squaresoft in the gaming industry, Uematsu continued to compose exclusively for the company for many years until he voluntarily left in 2004, upon which he accepted work for the company in a freelance capacity. Knowing how history unfolded for Uematsu and knowing the quality of what was to come, there’s no denying how important this first Final Fantasy soundtrack was for his career.

 

In The Beginning…

The plot of the game is very simple and isn’t driven by the developers funneling players down a linear path or through several hours of cinematics. Much like Dragon Quest a year and a half prior, the game’s world was largely left up to the player to explore, even though neither Final Fantasy nor Dragon Quest let players truly wander freely. Whereas Dragon Quest used the various bridges players cross to control where a player would go next – if the first encounter in a new area kicked the player’s ass, that wasn’t where players were supposed to go yet – Final Fantasy used subtle tricks of geography to contain a player in specific parts of the world map.

In this modern age of gaming, players likely want more than a simple quest to defeat four elemental fiends and their big boss, but when this game was released in 1987, it was revolutionary.

Another way in which Final Fantasy differs from Dragon Quest is in the general abundance of gil. Dragon Quest wanted players to sit there and earn their gear upgrades, but Final Fantasy tried to balance itself better so that players would have the money required to upgrade by the time they made it to the next town. This didn’t always happen, there were a couple spots where I got ahead of myself and needed to sit there and grind for a bit of gil, but for the most part, the game set itself up to have a near perfect balance so that players wouldn’t have to put their quest on pause for the sake of equipment. It also helps that players start the game with a much more generous stipend than the one Enix gave players in Dragon Quest: 400 gil in the original version, 500 gil in the version I played, and this is more than enough to outfit players with the best equipment available in Cornelia.

The version I played is also easier in that it doesn’t have the same targeting bug that the original game had. Whereas on the NES, you have to be very careful which enemies you choose to attack, it doesn’t matter in later versions. This is the biggest reason why I chose the Game Boy Advance version.

The second reason is that this is the version that scrapped the original magic charge system that was inspired by Dungeons and Dragons and incorporated the more familiar MP system that the rest of the series uses. Not only that, but the experience curve is much more shallow in the version I played. I feel like the game is a lot easier as a result of these changes.

That said, I found myself needing to babysit my Black Mage a lot more than I expected, despite having gained several levels within the first few minutes. He died no less than twice before my fight with Garland and then a third time right before reaching Pravoka when a large pack of wolves scored an Ambush against us and then deliberately targeted him with attack after attack until he was down. They seriously wanted him dead and didn’t care about anyone else in my party.

Throughout the game, the Black Mage was constantly receiving far less HP than everyone else, and this was a big problem early on. It made it harder for him to survive. He really needed a White Mage along to heal him. It’s a good thing the White Mage was occupied with keeping him alive, since casting spells was the only thing that she was good for. A lack of accuracy on her part made physical attacks moot, and her low damage weapons certainly didn’t help.

This is a problem the series in general has with healer characters. They’re supposed to be there for the benefit of the party’s health but if no damage (or very little damage) is being dealt to the party, what is the White Mage supposed to do? Attacking the enemy and killing them faster would be ideal, but you can’t really do that if your attacks miss a significant portion of the time.

The developers anticipated this and gave the White Mage a way to contribute early on that compensated for her low attack and accuracy. In the Earth Cave, many groups of enemies who are weak to the Dia spell will attack the party. Dia is a level one White spell and is available to purchase right from the start. As a level one spell, it can be cast several times before the White Mage runs out of charges in the NES version and it was given a cost of 5MP in Dawn of Souls. A spell that cheap puts less pressure on the Black Mage to carry a group through to the Lich boss and makes the White Mage super useful for more than just healing.

In fact, giving the mages a quantity of MP instead of a limited number of charges definitely changes the dynamic of the game. It allows for them to participate more in battle and in their preferred method of combat. It’s interesting that the Black Mage’s attack and accuracy didn’t receive a nerf to compensate for this.

Later on in the game, things got a little better for the White Mage. At the point where the classes get an upgrade, the newly minted White Wizard had 65 Accuracy. She had stopped whiffing on enemies as much, but in comparison, the Thief became a Ninja with 255 Accuracy, turning every one of his turns into a guaranteed hit. Even the Black Wizard had twice the accuracy as the White Wizard, and yet with so much magic at his disposal and such a large pool of MP to draw from, Accuracy was almost completely useless for him since players didn’t have incentive to conserve his magic. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been the one with low accuracy, but then in the original version of the game, he was still likely trying to take it easy and not run out of magic too quickly.

So since even the Black Wizard is gifted with a high accuracy stat, if this isn’t an indication that healers in Final Fantasy aren’t supposed to attack enemies, I don’t know what is.

 

Dizzy Spells

So let’s talk about the magic in the game. This is, as far as I can tell, the only game in the series where players have to make hard decisions in the magic shop. Which spells do they take with them and which spells do they leave behind? Considering that future games let players learn everything regardless of whether or not a system of spell levels exists, the original Final Fantasy is unique in that players must decide which spells they can live without, unless they double up on some of the classes. Given the optional class change halfway through the game, if you play with a balanced party of one healer, one battle mage and two physical attackers, you will have to leave one spell behind in each of the higher tiers of magic starting with level 5. It is possible in Dawn of Souls to unlearn a spell and buy another, but that can be seen as a waste of money.

Not that money is even all that useful after ten or so hours. I’ve never finished this game without having the maximum amount of gil possible.

Unlike Dragon Quest, which made each spell useful for a significant portion of the game, some tiers of magic in Final Fantasy are a lot better than others. Starting with Black Magic, and from Level 1 (and note that I’m approaching this list with Dawn of Souls in mind):

Fire, Thunder, Focus and Sleep are the first spells you can buy, available in Cornelia. Of those four, Focus seems the most useless. It “lowers one foe’s evasion” according to the spell description, but outside of maybe helping a White Mage hit her enemy, players typically won’t find themselves unable to hit things. Sleep is an area of effect spell and is useful early on to put certain enemies to sleep that would otherwise turn you to stone but once players get their tier two attack magic, Sleep is rather useless. So Fire and Thunder are the spells that are worth carrying the most, and Sleep is likely a good enough spell to carry along unless you’re okay with keeping that third slot empty.

Level two Black Magic consists of Dark (causes Blindness), Blizzard, Slow (reduces enemies’ hit rate) and Temper (increases your own ally’s attack). Temper is pretty much required for bosses, since this game buffs them against physical attacks, making melee characters almost useless against Chaos at the end of the game. Blind and Slow being status effects, they’re weak against enemies that are immune to them. It seems useless to give players magic that affects an enemy’s status and then make most enemies immune to them. Throughout the Final Fantasy series, the only game where I’ve regularly cast debuffs was Final Fantasy XIII, a game which actually made them useful for once. You can add debuff effects to weapons in Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy VIII as well, and in those games it’s a lot easier to blind an enemy with your attack rather than using up a turn to cast Blind on them. However, for the most part, debuffs are useless in the series. At this level, Blizzard and Temper are the only really useful spells.

Level three brings Fira and Thundara, the first upgrade to your fire and thunder elemental spells. Not only are they more powerful, they can now hit all enemies. With these in your arsenal, Fire and Thunder are now technically useless unless you’re fighting just a single enemy and you want to save MP. The other level three spells are Hold, which inflicts Paralysis, and Focara, which lowers the evasion of all enemies. Players who don’t take Focus likely won’t take Focara either, and players who don’t take Blind will likely not find a use for Hold either. Admittedly, not all enemies are immune to status effects, but enough of them are and I’ve not found it to be very useful information to memorize which ones you can use them on. Status effects also deliver a binary result. They either hit or they don’t, and the turn used trying to cast one could’ve been used just killing the enemy.

Level four brings Confuse (another status effect, but one that causes enemies to attack each other rather than you… could be useful but again, why confuse when you can just kill?) and Sleepra (Sleep on one enemy with apparently a very high chance of success), Blizzara and Haste. Blizzara is, of course, the next tier ice spell and Haste doubles how many attacks a character can make against an enemy. Just like Temper, Haste is required for bosses. Sleepra would be useful against bosses if it hits, but in most of my playthroughs of the Game Boy Advance version, bosses are usually dead within two or three turns anyway so I don’t even get the chance to use such a spell against them. It might prove more useful in older versions of the game, though. In my most recent playthrough, I took Confuse and never used it anyway. I just took it for the sake of spending gil.

Level five contains Scourge (instant death spell), Firaga (the next level of fire spell, more powerful and more expensive than Fira and hits all enemies), Slowra (presumably more powerful than Slow, but still hits only one enemy) and Teleport. Teleport can only be used by the upgraded Black Wizard and Red Wizard classes and only teleports you back one floor. It has very limited use but is good for saving a small bit of time backtracking. Scourge being an instant death spell, there’s always a chance of missing. According to wikis, that chance is actually pretty high, so like with status magic, why cast Scourge and merely try to kill everything when you can always cast Firaga and actually kill everything?

Level six contains Thundaga, Quake (rather than earth elemental like in later games, Quake here is another instant death spell, but many enemies are immune, especially if they float or fly), Death (an instant death spell on one enemy) and Stun (paralysis on one enemy). Thundaga seems like the only useful spell in this entire group, with Stun having limited applications depending on if you can get it to hit or not. Instant death spells being what they are, the only reason to even set foot in the level six magic shop is that Thundara gets its upgrade.

Level seven contains Blind (Darkness on one enemy), Break (turn one enemy to stone; only a Black Wizard can cast it), Blizzaga and Saber (only a Black Wizard can cast it and it raises the attack and accuracy of the Black Wizard only). At this point, Blizzaga seems the only useful spell, since by the time the rest of the party’s buffed up (two Tempers and two Hastes, one for each of your physical attackers), most bosses are dead so there won’t be a turn five to cast Saber and probably not even a turn six to cast another Haste. Temper stacks anyway, so it’s not like you have to stop casting it on your physical attackers.

Level eight contains the classic spell Flare, which is pretty much the most powerful Black Magic spell in the game, attacking all enemies with non-elemental magic. Stop inflicts Paralysis on all enemies… or tries to, anyway. Kill will try to kill one enemy. According to a wiki, it will always succeed if the enemy has less than three hundred HP and isn’t Death resistant. It will always fail of the enemy has more than 300 HP or is resistant. Warp is another variation on instantly killing all enemies, and according to the description, banishes them to another dimension. All level eight spells are cast by a Black Wizard only, and the only one that seems to always be useful is Flare. Kill requires 40 MP to cast and Flare requires 50, so you might as well spend 10 more MP to hit everyone and likely deal over 300 HP damage anyway.

It’s largely disappointing that a Black Mage is saddled with a lot of status magic and instant death spells. If you’re not casting attack magic, you’re pretty much rolling the dice. It’s like the developers didn’t quite know what to do with Black Magic so they designed several spells that did exactly the same thing with varying, usually low levels of success. Later games would make Black Magic a bit more useful and without having to design four spells per level, and also without having to come up with an equal amount of black and white magic, a lot of the fat could be trimmed. They also realized that they should’ve given Black Mages the ability to cast poison magic, too. While poison itself would have limited use due to being a status effect, games like Final Fantasy IV got a lot of mileage from the Bio spell being poison elemental rather than the poison status.

As opposed to Black Magic, the developers made White Magic a lot more useful and several levels forced me into some very tough decisions.

Level one White Magic consists of Cure, Protect, Dia and Blink. Protect is the classic defense spell, very useful against bosses, and Blink raises the evasion stat of the White Mage by quite a bit, which is useful in case an enemy tries to kill the healer first. In my experience, enemies usually don’t display quite that much awareness, not like when they all piled on my Black Mage early on. That said, every spell has its use, with Dia being a cheap spell that clears out whole groups of undead enemies early on, and which I have already sung the praises of. Dia even outclasses Fira at times; whereas Fira is more expensive and a bit more powerful, most undead enemies are weak to both Fire spells and Dia spells and during the early portions of the game, most undead enemies also don’t have a lot of HP, so Dia is typically a better choice to cast, thus saving a Black Mage’s MP to use on enemies that aren’t undead.

Level two contains NulShock, which reduces damage from lightning by half, as well as Invis (increases an ally’s evasion, so basically Blink but for everyone else now), Blindna (cures Blind) and Silence (prevents enemies from casting spells). Blink is useful up until allies stop getting blinded, and in fact, I don’t think I even got blinded during my latest run through the game. There does come a point where characters just build up a natural immunity to the status anyway. Silence being a debuff, it brings with it the same downside that a Black Mage’s status magic does, but at least it hits all enemies, so the chance of at least silencing some is worth it. I always took the Nul spells with me even though they really didn’t have all that much use. When fighting large packs of enemies that were elemental-based, it usually made a lot more sense to have the Black Mage cast something to wipe them all out and then heal afterward. More often than not, either the Black Mage would take his turn relatively quickly or the entire enemy group would take their turns first and either way, casting a Nul spell would be a waste of time. The only use a Nul spell had was to reduce the damage an elemental fiend would do.

Level three contains NulBlaze, see NulShock but for fire. It also contains Cura, which is a more powerful version of Cure, as well as Heal, which is basically Cure for the entire party, and Diara, which is a more powerful version of Dia. There is a piece of gear that can be found in a treasure chest that can cast Diara, plus it’s a good idea to have both a more powerful cure spell and a cure spell that heals everyone, so the biggest choice here is whether you want Diara anyway and if you feel like you can live without NulBlaze.

Level four’s spells include NulFrost, which is the same as NulBlaze and NulShock but for ice instead. Vox cures Silence (which only works if you’re not silenced yourself, of course), Fear apparently causes enemies to flee battle but I never used it. I preferred to soak up all that lovely experience from killing them. Last but certainly not least, Poisona, which I got a lot of use out of. Of these, Vox has very limited use, considering most players will have maybe one other magic user in the group until the class change, so the biggest decision players have to make is whether they want to spend money on more than just curing poison or not.

Level five’s tough decision consists of figuring out which spell you can live without. Curaga is much more powerful than Cura and is great when enemies start hitting like trucks, especially bosses. Healara is great for when you need to heal the entire group at once, although it’s no more powerful than Cura. Diaga is great for undead enemies in the later stages of the game, and there are still plenty of undead to be found. The game does go to great lengths to make sure the Dia spells remain useful even into the last dungeons. Life, of course, resurrects a fallen ally and lets you save your precious Phoenix Down for if your White Mage gets killed instead. Of these, it might be worth it to leave Diaga behind since your Black Mage can usually afford to cast Fira or Firaga and typically has more MP than a White Mage in the late stages of the game. Diaga is slightly cheaper than Firaga but a bit more expensive than Fira.

Level six offers Exit, which teleports a party directly out of a dungeon, so it’s much more useful than the Black Magic version. Like the Black Magic version, Exit is only available to those who have undergone the class change. Protera is basically a Protect for the entire party at once, Invisira is like Invis but for the entire party at once and Stona cures Petrify. It’s another tough tier to judge, but by this stage in the game, many enemies will either miss anyway or a character will be able to use their shield and block all damage. Characters also eventually stop succumbing to petrification, so Stona eventually stops being useful. Still, this is another good tier of magic with not a single spell that won’t see some use.

Level seven brings with it NulDeath, which is like the other Nul spells but for instant death spells instead. Curaja, Healaga and Diaja are the next tiers of single target and multi-target healing as well as undead killing, and are all useful spells, of course. Diaja is just slightly more expensive than Firaga, so it might be worth just letting the Black Mage handle undead enemies at this point. Curaja and Diaja are also only available to the White Wizard.

Level eight’s spells are Holy, which is the classic all powerful White Magic spell. Whereas future games would throw out the Dia class of spells, Holy has endured, for it is a relatively expensive spell but it actually hits more than just undead enemies. Flare might be the more useful spell since Black Mages have more MP, but Holy is good for back-up nuking. Full Life is like Life but restores all HP and is therefore much more useful since enemies at late stages in the game will begin to use more abilities that target the entire party. There’s nothing like bringing someone back to life, only to see them die again. NulAll basically covers all the elements as well as Death, and Dispel removes positive status effects from an enemy. Again, all useful spells, but Dispel is possibly the one that could be left behind, since not a lot of enemies will buff themselves and live long enough to take advantage of their buffs. It might be useful against bosses but that’s about it. Also, like the eighth level of Black Magic is only available to Black Wizards, the eighth level of White Magic is only available to White Wizards.

The final conclusion I’ve arrived at when looking at the list of spells available in the game is that White Magic is so useful that it’s no wonder White Mages got stuck with low physical accuracy. They needed some sort of detriment to compensate, and their ability to attack turned into their weakness. Black Mages were better at attack, so they got stuck with several useless spells to compensate for their relatively high spell power and decent capability for physical attack. It also felt like the developers struggled to come up with an equal amount of Black Magic spells as they did White Magic. In the future, they realized they didn’t have to make them equal in number, but it still took several years until they figured that out.

 

Chain of Events

So, after saving the princess, being armed with the best weapons, armour and magic from Cornelia and Pravoka, defeating the pirates and taking their ship, it was time to set out into the world! This was where players were supposed to wander around gathering clues about the chain of fetch quests that await them, but I made it to Elfheim after only an hour of play. Exactly one hour after the opening screen of the game, I was already ready to go to the Marsh Cave to set the chain of fetch quests in motion that would save the prince of their fair nation from a sleeping sickness. Knowing where to go from the start can help with that somewhat.

The next hour was spent wandering around the area surrounding Elfheim, grinding for levels because I arrived too soon. Knowing where to go from the start can really screw you up.

It turns out that players are supposed to sail around and explore after getting the pirate ship. They’re supposed to discover all the steps to the fetch quest gradually before they set out for the Marsh Cave, but once I was powerful enough to dive deep into the Cave, I grabbed the crown during hour three and made sure I had a Phoenix Down since I knew what was coming in the next boss fight. A lot of the surprise and exploration in the early stages of Final Fantasy are gone for players who know what’s coming, perhaps because players aren’t forced to go to specific areas and are given a general path with which to follow the story. This general path brings with it the expectation that it’s going to take a little bit of discovery to find out what comes next, and that during this discovery, players will earn several levels worth of experience points, enough to meet the next challenge.

It only took four hours for me to open up the canal that let me explore more of the world and start to make inroads against the four fiends, and by the time the clock ticked past 6 hours, the Vampire had been defeated and the Star Ruby obtained. The end of the seventh hour saw me arrive at Crescent Lake after having defeated the first fiend, the Lich. It took exactly one hour after that to defeat Marilith and exit Mt. Gulg.

After ten hours, I’d just managed to get the airship and upgraded my classes and had made it to Gaea. If getting the pirate ship was step one, creating a canal was step two, obtaining the canoe was step three and then getting the airship was step four in the quest to open up the world map. The world map is set up well to make sure these steps are followed in order, with the item required for the next step being locked behind obtaining the previous one.

After the class change in the original version of the game, classes like the Knight and the Ninja would have a set number of spell charges already available to them. In the Game Boy Advance version, the advanced classes don’t automatically gain a quantity of MP, they have to earn it through gaining levels just like the actual mage classes do, so it’s not worth buying spells for these classes right away. In fact, when playing on the Game Boy Advance, I usually just don’t bother.

With my upgraded classes, the third fiend died at exactly the eleven and a half hour mark. It’s interesting how many of these major game events happened for me at the hour or occasionally the half hour points and I wish I’d been recording a Let’s Play.

 

Balancing Act

In the course of the adventure, you’ll find that not all equipment that you get from treasure chests are upgrades. If you’re diligent with looting, then by the time you pick up the Vorpal Blade in the Mirage Tower, you already have better swords you can use. That said, some gear looted from chests have secondary uses, so it’s good to keep them around. The Gauntlets are good for a free Thundara, which clears out most water-based enemies in one go. The Healing Helm is good for a free Heal cast, which is basically a Cure spell cast on the entire party; Final Fantasy XIV players know the spell better as Medica rather than Heal. The Light Axe is good for clearing out undead enemies by casting Diara, a more powerful version of the Dia spell which most White Mages buy. In fact, with the free Diara being held in your inventory, it makes buying level three White Magic a little bit easier of a choice.

Unfortunately, the original version did not have a large inventory to speak of, and equipment had to be carried around on a very limited equipment screen. This meant that if a piece of gear wasn’t an obvious upgrade, it was usually thrown away as soon as it was picked up, regardless of whether there were secondary effects that were useful.

While players are exploring around and searching for treasure chests, they’re often interrupted by random battles. The game has a very high encounter rate, but since encounters last only a few seconds on the Game Boy Advance version, it’s more like a bunch of momentary annoyances rather than a frustrating experience. Players, if they don’t run from battle, will find themselves gaining several levels per hour. Case in point, it only took me about twelve hours to reach level 50 and by then, nothing in the Mirage Tower posed any sort of threat. I could basically check every nook and cranny for treasure chests and heal up when necessary, and still expect to have enough MP left to face Tiamat with.

But treasure chests were largely superfluous at this point as well. I’ve already mentioned that the gear in the Mirage Tower weren’t always upgrades. Well, outside of gear and the occasional item, most treasure chests in the game contained gil. Sometimes large amounts of it, sometimes only 10. but often some quantity of it and by this point in the game, your wallet is pretty thick. I’d go as far as saying that by the time you reach the Mirage Tower, you can pretty much afford to ignore chests and go straight for the boss. The last time you even needed to loot a chest was when you visited the mermaids and one of their chests contained the Rosetta Stone.

Er, their treasure chests, I mean.

The high encounter rate not only gives a character many, many levels per hour in the Game Boy Advance version, the gil piles up as well. I don’t think I’ve ever managed to finish the game without the maximum amount of gil possible, 999,999 of it. There comes a point when the amount of gil being spent drops off to zero because there aren’t any more spells to save up for, so I ended up going into the final dungeon with more than three quarters of my wallet already full, even after buying 91 Phoenix Down just as an excuse to spend something. The sheer amount of gil that gets thrown at players at the end is ridiculous, and this was before they started putting secret merchants in the final dungeons of their games. This game could’ve used one of those, selling the most high end of consumables, but then I would’ve only needed to buy maybe one or two Dry Ether in total for MP, maybe an X-Potion or three for HP, and a few Elixir for the final boss. I was powerful enough that I could kill him without needing to buy any of those, I could get by with the ones I got from treasure chests. I also didn’t use any of the Phoenix Down I bought.

On the Game Boy Advance, the experience curve is so shallow that I think it actually plateaus after a little while, which allows for my characters to soar in level. At level 56, which they earned as soon as they stepped into the Chaos Shrine, my Knight reached the maximum amount of HP possible (my Black Wizard was around 550 HP at that point). This is, as far as I can tell, the only numbered Final Fantasy where the maximum HP possible is 999. Characters also max out their HP faster than in any other game in the series. The only game I can think of where leveling up is even easier is Final Fantasy VIII, where the experience curve is non-existent.

Anyway, with exactly 13 hours in, the last of the four fiends was killed, and it took just a little over fourteen hours to reach Chaos and defeat him.

In making Final Fantasy more accessible to players, perhaps versions like Dawn of Souls were made a little too easy. Chaos at the very end of the game does pack quite a punch to characters who are around level 60, which is about how powerful I was when I faced him this time, so the game does correct its balance at the very end. That said, if gamers want a decent challenge without the biggest frustrations of the original version, the PlayStation release is probably the best version to play, with the Game Boy Advance and PSP releases being considered the easiest.

It would’ve been nice if the game had followed the popular writer’s advice of “Show, don’t tell” and instead of a text crawl, maybe it would’ve shown the Warriors of Light returning and finding that not only is Garland still around, he’s a good and noble knight of Cornelia now and no one remembers your quest to save the world. Maybe the pirates are back to being pirates, too. Maybe the Warriors of Light are then shown to be watching over the world, waiting for when next they’re needed to save it.

 

In Conclusion

Final Fantasy was a labour of love and a grand experiment, one the likes of which is unlikely to come from a triple A publisher and developer nowadays. Surely no game has captured the spirit of Japanese determination quite like Final Fantasy, born from a time before developers always saw dollar signs in their eyes, before expensive risks like this one would’ve been discouraged. Squaresoft was willing to go bankrupt making one last game for everyone to enjoy and their gamble paid off. No one outside of independent game developers would be willing to do something like that today.

I want to think that many of the flaws in the original game were only there because the team who worked on Final Fantasy were learning as they went, figuring out how to make an RPG. The text scroll at the end was the best way they could think of to end the game, they hadn’t yet figured out that it would be okay to take control away from the player for a few minutes to play out a scene like later games would do. They also hadn’t figured out how to deliver a fast and efficient battle system and instead delivered a clunky one where players had to be careful which enemies each character was trying to attack, or else attacks would strike empty air. They hadn’t fully developed a Black Mage’s repertoire of spells either, and several of them didn’t even work in their initial versions on the NES.

Although it was a flawed experiment, it was a successful one and eventually the world would see not only a sequel, but a franchise emerge from its humble and unlikely beginnings.

 

Next week: the growing pains begin for both companies…