Kicking off this mini-marathon of “RPGs I’ve played recently” is one of the pioneers of the genre: Final Fantasy I. It’s a game I’ve always wanted to play through and tried several times but the old school grind without a story to motivate me led to me dropping it. Fast Forward to today (or, well, a while ago) and I finally brought the Pixel Remaster bundle of FF I – VI knowing that you can put an XP multiplier on in order to speed up a lot of the grind without necessarily “cheating” the game and wouldn’t you know it? I finally completed it. Now, I won’t go around saying I completed it legit, but it was pretty close, so what was it like as an experience in the mid 2020s?
Background:
Hands up who knew the Jolly Green Giant made his start as a Final Fantasy enemy? I guess getting defeated chilled him out.
Final Fantasy was released for the Famicom in Japan on December 18th 1987, hoping to compete with the monster that was Dragon Quest. It came to North American NES consoles in July 1990, and never released here in Europe, so… oh well. It was then ported to the MSX, WonderSwan Colour, PS1, GBA, PSP, phones, PC and the 3DS all in various forms of rejigging and graphics fiddling.
The Pixel Remaster version first came to PCs and phones worldwide on July 28th 2021 before being ported (with better font options and other bonuses) to the PS4 and Switch on April 19th 2023 and then finally the XBOX Series on September 26th 2024.
Gameplay:
Nine wolves against four humans? That hardly seems fair…
Goes without saying, but the gameplay in Final Fantasy I is quite basic! You begin the game by choosing a class for each of the four nameless party members, with each class limited in what equipment they can use and what spells, if any, they can learn, along with variations in stats and growth potential in them. The classes are Fighter (strong melee weapons and defence), Monk (strong hand-to-hand, decent defence), Thief (weak in both attack and defence but its evolved class of ninja is pretty good!), Black Mage (offensive magic), White Mage (healing magic) and Red Mage (can do both types of magic, but not as well as either of the specialists), with each one having a second class to upgrade to later. Combat is then turn-based with only Attack, Magic and Items as options, as well as Fleeing the battle, and then you take turns battling until either your enemy/enemies or your team are wiped out. Your party have Health bars to keep track of the damage but the enemies do not, with no visual indication of when they’re near death either, which doesn’t bother me but may be annoying to some. As you travel the overworld and the various dungeons you get into random encounters, with healing spells and curative items the only way to regain health/remove poison and other status ailments other than resting at inns, and if you die you can only reload your previous manual save! … well, at least that’s how it was, the Pixel Remaster thankfully autosaves quite frequently, so. Phew!
That’s right, travelling across the world map on an airship was still a thing right here at the beginning!
The magic is about the only thing that works a bit differently than most RPGs. Instead of a magic bar or MP meter each spell can be cast only a certain amount of times until you rest at an inn, with the amount of times dependant on the spell’s level. Took me by surprise a bit, but it didn’t take long to get used to. Equipment is still a thing even back here as well, with you being able to find or buy new weapons and armour to increase your attack and defence respectively, but that’s about it. You travel the overworld, find villages to get clues (some of which are rather obscure, so I did have to look up a couple of things to find out where to go next…) and then conquer dungeons until you have the required amount of key items to fight the final boss. Side quests aren’t really a thing either, though you could go through the game without getting the class upgrade from Bahamut, which would be a challenge alright.
Really feels like there should be more to talk about here, given its an RPG and they normally end up my longest reviews by far, but nope! I will say that maybe due to its simplicity I did find it a really chilled game to relax to, though the fact that I could do an hour’s worth of stat grinding in a few minutes definitely helped the relaxed pace…
Graphics and Sound:
“Oooooohh… bollocks. Defeated by someone called “Yubert”? I’ll never live this down.”
The graphics of the pixel remaster are comprised of great chunky sprites that evoke the feel of the sprites from the NES but look closer to SNES era or above, with some nice backgrounds and such, all in 16:9. I wouldn’t of hated the original 8-bit sprites and aspect ratio obviously but I am thankful there’s less black backgrounds with white borders during battle, that’s a bit of retro style I don’t mind seeing updated.
Sound-wise? No complaints at all. Sound effects are still nice and old school but the background music can be switched to a modern remake of the soundtrack by its original composer Nobuo Uematsu as well as kept to the original 8-bit versions. Best of both worlds, but the new arrangements have to take the win here for me in the end. I guess not having nostalgia for the original helps (though I’ve heard the original soundtrack what feels like a thousand times over my gaming life, so it was very familiar anyway…)
Story:
Bahamut makes his debut right at the start too, though as a non-combatant ally. Summons are still a ways off!
You won’t be shocked to find out there isn’t a great deal to talk about here. Four “Warriors of Light” appear in the Kingdom of Coneria and are tasked with saving the Princess from the turncoat knight Garland, and… they do! Quite easily, as it turns out, but the adventure isn’t over there as each warrior holds a crystal that has been darkened by evil magic and to restore the crystals they need to travel to four different locations and defeat four Fiends. During their travels they meet Dwarfs, Fairies and Sages and travel using canoes (okay maybe that’s a little less obvious…), pirate ships and eventually an airship until they finish their quest and restore the crystals.
*Spoilers, I guess?*
At the Temple of Chaos they find out that Garland wasn’t defeated but instead send back in time 2,000 years to become the demon Chaos, and in response the four Fiends were sent forward in time by the same amount of years by Chaos himself, creating something of a timeloop which he claims will give him immortality. The Warriors of Light head back in time via a portal though and defeat Chaos in the distant past, ending the timeloop and saving everyone, so… not sure what kind of plan that was, Mr. Chaos but it certainly didn’t involve immortality, that’s for sure! The Warriors return as heroes and their deeds become legends.
*Spoilers end, I also guess?*
So yeah, it’s not going to win any awards for complexity or deep character development, but it wasn’t trying to, this was the earliest days of console RPGs so the novelty was in the gameplay itself.
Thoughts Now:
… Does he have a face in his crotch or is he just happy to see me?
I was tempted to put a “Then” category here as well, but I didn’t give it a fair shake back then and didn’t even score it back in my ancient review book/excel file thingy I use for that section, so no real point. Now in the mid-2020s via Pixel Remaster the game is good fun, actually. Remove the old school grinding in between sections and it plays like a simple but addictive little game with good sprite work and a great soundtrack. Can’t give it a perfect, but it is pretty damn fun.
Obviously if you’re a purist you’re probably grinding your teeth in suppressed rage reading this review but hey, what can I say? I’m 41 with a full-time job and a family to help look after, the hour or so a workday / few hours at the weekend I have for gaming is precious, I don’t want to spend so much of that fighting the same random encounters to get XP and levels like my old school days/early 20s, so I’m thankful for the modern convenience on offer here. Happy to say I didn’t turn random encounters off or anything at least though!
Hogan Reviews 