Final Fantasy I: A Final Word
Posted by Mike Blitz on November 30th, 2006
(written on September 11, 2006)
I don’t know what happened to all the guys dancing in the woods, but let’s face it: they couldn’t have been all that concerned with the plight of the world in the first place if their response to worldly peril is to go dance in the woods all day long. I can just see it now.
Townsfolk: Evil monsters are attacking our world!
Heroes: Oh.
Townsfolk: What should we do?
Heroes: Um, let’s go stand in a circle in the woods and dance.
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Eventually some real heroes will show up and we can tell them what to do.
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Someone get the repetitive Japanese game soundtrack and let’s go!
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to dance we go!
I’ll just assume that they are still out there, dancing in the woods.
The game took me a little over 46 hours to finish. I’m guessing that about 10 of those were spent Cluelessly Lost, which isn’t bad for me.
My characters reached Level 87. I cheated three times.
Overall, I liked the game quite a bit. The random encounters were gentle enough, the puzzles were decent, if not easy, and the variety of fighting and locales was good. There is a lot of exploring to do in the game, and it’s all quite fun.
Having said that, there are some playbalance issues with the game. Since I’ve finished the game, I’ve read a bit about it, and apparently the four dungeons that are unlocked after you get each of the four crystals are actually bonus dungeons that were not included in the original game. While these four dungeons were entertaining enough, the experience gained and weapons earned in them make the core game ridiculously easy. The final battle was over in a matter of seconds, which is a shame considering how tough of a fight the boss was in the third optional dungeon. Also, most of the random combatants in the back half of the game could barely touch my party, and we had enough cash to buy a small planet by the mid-point in the game. All these factors added up to make the game easy on the whole. The tricky part was figuring out where to go and what to do.
Overall, though, considering the age of the game, I’ll give this remake of the game a 75%. Enjoyable, but not great. I wish there was an option to turn off the bonus dungeons, or a better way to tell the player that the dungeons are optional.
Up next…
Final Fantasy II
