Final Fantasy I: Definitely Fantasy, Not Final

Final Fantasy has become one of my favorite franchises in the past year or two. However, when I committed to playing the full mainline series in order after falling in love with VII and VII Remake, I heard from a few different friends that I would hate the original run up until “modern” Final Fantasy (Starting at IV, VI, VII, or X depending on who you ask), that I wouldn’t even make it through the first game. Clearly that did not end up being the case, as I am writing this review now. I’ll let you in on a secret, I made it through all of classic Final Fantasy and am currently up to IX on my ordered playthrough. However, that did not come easily with a few of these games. I would have to say that this is probably my least favorite Final Fantasy game, including some of the more obscure entries such as Mythic Quest and Stranger of Paradise. However, as I will discuss in the future, I found it less frustrating to play compared to II and III due to its length. My first Final Fantasy I playthrough took me in the little-league ballpark of 12 hours, quite short compared to other JRPGs in and out of this franchise. I played it entirely while working alone in a small pet food store, where I would have to occasionally close my laptop during a particularly intense boss fight to check out a woman and her poodle’s new chew toys. I was not a particularly good employee, but I made up for it with exceptional customer service. Little did they know that as soon as they left, I was struggling through quite the dated experience. However, I did enjoy my time overall.

I won’t bore you with the story we’ve all heard a million times before about how the game came to be, why it’s called “Final” Fantasy, all that history that you can find in any other article. A bit about my experience with JRPGs though, since this is such a landmark game in the genre. I have at this point played most of the Final Fantasy series (I-IX, XIV-XVI, and some side games), as well as a smattering of others, including Dragon Quest XI, Like a Dragon 7 and 8, Persona games, and a few others. This is easily the oldest and most dated JRPG that I have played, to the point that I found it closer to Dungeons and Dragons than a JRPG. This is most obvious with the magic system: instead of spells having an MP cost, you have spell slots for different levels of magic. A lot of what makes Final Fantasy feel like Final Fantasy is missing here. Classic creatures like Chocobos and Cactaur, memorable characters and locations, and dramatic story twists are all absent here. Something that I love about the series is how different each of the entries can feel, compare XIV and XVI, just two entries apart and they couldn’t be more different. On the other hand, Uncharted and Uncharted 4 play extremely similarly (Nothing wrong with that, I am fond of those games as well). However, there is absolutely something intangible that makes the series feel connected. Perhaps it’s the sense of a grand adventure, which is present even here. Or the music, which will certainly improve as the series goes on but already has that iconic whimsical style.

The story is certainly basic, but I was surprised to see how much ends up being carried over to future entries. “The Warriors of Light must restore light to the four elemental crystals by traveling across the land” will be used in several future entries, even though the concept is at its most basic by far in this game. There is a surprising twist in the story however, where the party needs to go back in time to stop Garland/Chaos, who has created a time loop to live forever. I’m not entirely sure why Chaos is evil, but such depth might have been a bit much for such an early game. Old consoles like the NES where FFI released could only hold a certain amount of text characters, and I’m sure that limited the amount of story they were able to tell, on top of the fact that Japanese has far fewer characters than English, so I would hazard to guess that the translation I played has the story further reduced. As a result, there are few iconic moments like I expect to see in the franchise, although I wonder if the time-travel twist was exciting for players back when the game was released.

Other than that, I don’t have a ton to say about this game. I probably wouldn’t have been able to finish it without a walkthrough, as sometimes the location of your next objective can be confusing, but that’s to be expected of older games. I certainly was never miserable while playing, just a bit tired of random encounters. It is worth noting that I played the Pixel Remaster, so there are some QoL changes such as an XP boost and auto-battler. I will admit I am surprised that this game spawned one of the most important game franchises of all time, but it is my understanding that it was quite ambitious for the time, so perhaps that explains its popularity. I will be forever grateful for that popularity, as it spawned a franchise that I’m more than a little fond of.

What I Learned:

• Becoming Iconic takes time; let your ideas evolve and change

• Other properties (Dungeons & Dragons in this case) can be the basis of your design if you can take them and evolve them further. Use what inspires you to create something unique