So before I get too far into this, I’d like to state something for the record.
I think very highly of this game.
Final Fantasy I was always a game I held in high regard. When I was younger, I played it at a friends house an awful lot and I fell in love with it. As the years went by, I moved on to other titles in the series and enjoyed them as well. When I became aware of the existence of PC-based NES emulators, Final Fantasy was one of the first games I played. I would have been about 12 or 13 at this time, and it was tough as nails, but I saw the game through to the end and it felt damn good. I have no idea how I managed to do that. I bring this up because I get the feeling that after playing it again after so many years, my view of it is going to be much, much different.
For the purpose of writing this piece, I was fully intending to play through the NES version of Final Fantasy all over again. But it occurred to me- with all the remakes of it out there, why don’t I try one of those instead? After all, Final Fantasy has been ported and remade more times than I care to count, so why should I have to bother with the horrid NES version all over again? It’s not much of a retrospective if I’m not playing the originals right?
Well yeah, that’s right. But there’s no real reason why I shouldn’t play one of the remakes instead. After all, the story is the same. The characters and the dialogue and the gameplay are all the same- all that’s really been updated is the graphics, the music and the user interface. Sure, the enemies have been tweaked to be not quite so difficult, but I hardly think the difficulty was what made Final Fantasy the defining game of it’s genre back in 1987. For all intents and purposes, the contents of this piece would be more or less the same whether I was playing the NES version from 1987 or the PSP version from 2007.
You want to hear what I have to say about graphics? The graphics don’t phase me, not even a little. If the NES version played as smoothly and as easily as the PSP version did but still looked like the NES version, I wouldn’t give a shit. It’s the same game. The graphics in the NES version may look atrocious in comparison to the gorgeous sprites you’ll see in the PSP version, but it doesn’t matter. I could swing either way. The graphics are just a means to an end anyway, that end being accomplishing the quest the game sets out for you- a quest that has not changed in twenty years and countless remakes.
And that’s why I’m going to be playing the PSP versions of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II. Sue me.
“The characters and the dialogue and the gameplay are all the same- all that’s really been updated is the graphics, the music and the user interface.”
Before I say anything, let me make this clear — I’m not going to tsk-tsk you for being SANE.
Just keep in mind that the “Dawn of Souls” remakes of I and II changed the game mechanics of both in very significantly, for two main reasons.
The first was that the originals were coded like shit. FFI in particular was so screwed up that it’s amazing that it ended up being fully playable, though at the expense that magic and stat-ups (most notably) didn’t work like they were intended to.
The second was to update the games for a new millennium by rebalancing characters, readjusting difficulty, etc. This was necessary anyway if only due to bad programming, but Square went several steps further and (in my opinion) made both games considerably easier.
One example: in FFI, in the … class-change castle, you were originally assaulted by random battles in which enemies would ruthlessly wear down your entire party with brutal castings of LIT2. In the remake, it’s just piddly single-target Lightning spells thrown at you that barely do any damage.
So (and now we’re out of the facts and well into the realms of “My Humble Opinion”) what you’re playing are less faithful “re-colourings” (as you might expect), and more _completely different games_ made from the same character and world design blueprints.
Again: I can’t hold your not being a masochist against you! Just wanted to make the suggestion that, considering the departure from the originals, maybe it would be better to focus less on the mechanics and more on the themes and your own memories when you write about the game. ;D