Final Fantasy

Of the Final Fantasy series, the first title isn’t really one of my favourites. That’s not to say I don’t like it, but it doesn’t come anywhere close to some of the later games in the series if you ask me.
My play through of Final Fantasy this past few days, my first in many years, truly hammered this home.

Final Fantasy has not aged well. This is a game that came out in 1987 and has undergone many face-lifts since then, but even with a new coat of paint and a refined combat engine, this is a game that is honestly very hard to recommend.

But let’s take a trip back to 1987, where a small game developer named Square is in the midst of a financial crisis. After a string of unsuccessful titles for the Nintendo Entertainment system, the company was looking bankruptcy square in the face, their director of planning, a man named Hironobu Sakaguchi, decided to put all the company’s money into the development of one last game- the game he always wanted to create, and since he thought it would be his final work in the industry, he named it Final Fantasy. Oh, the irony.

As I’ve said before, Final Fantasy is a game I always held very close to my heart. It was the game that introduced me to the genre so many years ago, and I had nothing but fond memories of this, the first game in a long and very enjoyable franchise.

Ah, how suddenly things can change.

I always suspected this would realise this, as is the way with ‘nostalgia goggles’, but this week I realised that Final Fantasy, in my humble opinion, is garbage. This isn’t because I’ve been comparing it to later games in the series, and this isn’t because I’m a pussy and can’t handle a challenging game- it’s because this game simply isn’t fun to play, and when one of the classics of the genre and in fact, the entire medium isn’t fun to play, well sir, you have a problem.

Enough about this though, let’s get into the game, shall we?

The Characters

Unlike almost every other entry in the series, Final Fantasy doesn’t have a set cast of player characters. Rather, you get four party members and you have to choose a class for each one.

The Warrior

The warrior is your basic melee-tank fighter. This guy can equip most of the equipment in the game and he can dish out damage like nobody’s business. Lucky for you, he can take it as well and later on he can even use White Magic. This guy is amazing, pretty much. You’re boned if you don’t have at least one in your party.

The Black Mage

The Black Mage is always hiding under his cloak, never allowing his (probably very ugly) face to be shown. As such, he’s become one of the many mascots of the franchise due to his memorable face (or lack thereof). The Black Mage specialises in nuking enemies with elemental spells and status effects, and casting Haste and Saber on the rest of the team. Curious that those two spells became White Magic and then Green Magic in later installments…

The White Mage

Is it a man or a woman? Not many people know for sure, and even fewer give a damn. The White Mage is an invaluable unit to have as she(!) can cast the invaluable Cure and Heal spells on the rest of your team, who will no doubt need it due to all the ass-kicking they’ll be doing.

The Red Mage

The jack of all trades: he can use swords, cast black magic, white magic, and he wears a fucking pimp hat. Hells yes. He can do everything, but he isn’t particularly good at any of it. If nothing else, he has the best dress sense of any of the Light Warriors.

The Thief

Sort of like the warrior, except he sucks. He can’t equip swords or armour, he has less health, he does less damage and he wears a bandana. Hmm. That said, later in the game he can equip most equipment a warrior can and can cast Black Magic. Eh.

The Monk

He can punch stuff and he can punch stuff rather hard. They do a fair bit of damage but can’t use any magic and can’t use heavy armour. Go with a warrior instead.

So that’s what you’ve got to play with. For this playthrough, I didn’t go with a regular party, but opted for three Warriors and a Red Mage because I’m fucking hardcore and that’s how I roll.

Behold, the Warriors of Light!

The Warriors were so named due to the fact that I always imagined the Warrior to be really thick. Red Mage is named so because of his hat. I IS CREATIV

The game opens with a quick scene, stating that the world has been plunged into darkness, the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire have been knocked out of order, and that a prophecy states that when such events occur, four Warriors of Light will appear to save the day. That’s what happens.

And that’s that. The game starts. But wait, who are these Light Warriors? Where did they come from? Why are they here? I realise this is a game from a time when videogame stories were things like “The princess has been kidnapped and you need to rescue her” and “Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?” But still, it would be nice to give these characters some sort of backstory or explanation other than “they’re here because the prophecy said so.” It just doesn’t cut it these days, and while that may be a little unfair to say, it’s completely true. The fact that Square-Enix didn’t bother to try and add any kind of backstory in the remake of Final Fantasy when they added so much other stuff shows that they’re either happy with its lack of story or simply don’t care. I’m leaning towards the latter.

It’s interesting, but not unexpected, that the more I played Final Fantasy this week the more I realised just how far the series has strayed from its roots. Compare the original game to the modern Final Fantasy XII or god-forbid one of the many spin-offs like Crystal Chronicles that now carry its name and you’ll find that they almost have no common features. It’s one of those changes that happened so gradually that it was hard to notice. How did the series go from one game about four youths saving the world from evil to another about… well, four youths saving the world. Okay, so that still hasn’t changed. The difference with the characters in Final Fantasy is that none of them have ridiculous spiky hair, ridiculously large breasts, personality disorders, or a penchant for wearing too many belts. These were simpler times- times I have recently found to be rather dull, and although many wouldn’t agree with me about that, I think we can all agree that the gradual change the series went through was one that simply had to happen, lest Square find themselves in a financial situation not unlike the one they were in back in the 80′s (and later in 2000, but more on that another time).

Don’t get me wrong, Final Fantasy does have a story- it’s just that it’s so lacking that it may as well not be there at all. Oh well, let’s start up the game and see what the first quest for the Light Warriors is…

Oh fuck you.

So I need to rescue the princess huh? Fine. I’ll just go kill Garland and bring her back.

The only notable thing Garland has going for him these days is he can brag that he was the first ever boss in a Final Fantasy game. I guess that must be a pretty decent conversation starter for Garland, because let’s face it, he hasn’t got much else going for him. He isn’t a deep or interesting character by any means, he just says some generic garbage before you cave his skull in to save the princess. He doesn’t have the charm or memorable quotes of a villain like Kefka or Kuja, and he was even made obsolete in Final Fantasy IX by an even better villain with the same name.

Final Fantasy, like many RPGs features turn-based combat. Each of your characters can make a move each turn, as can each enemy. A move could be attacking with their weapon, casting a spell, using an item, whatever. You likely already know this anyway, I’m just explaining for those who’ve never played. Basically, Final Fantasy is not an action game, and fights are supposed to require (at least a little) strategy with this system.

Of course my party is made up of tanks, so fuck that. I just hammer the X button until I’ve won the fight.

I bet I can think of something.

Too easy! This game is too easy. I bet I’ll have the whole thing knocked over by this afternoon! It’s starting to come back to me by this time- I’m beginning to remember everything I once knew about this game.

And that’s when things started to go bad.

I remembered the lack of a story, the need to grind to beat bosses, the fetch quests, the looooong treks through the many caves and ruins in the world. The backtracking. The limited inventory. The broken spells. Everything. Oh God, what have I done? I remembered why I have come to love the Final Fantasy series, and why this game doesn’t fit.

Anyway, the basic plot is that the Light Warriors have to visit the four shrines of the crystals, kill the Elemental Fiends that hang around them and then the world will be saved. That’s it. There isn’t any other story, there’s no character development, there are no cutscenes. The characters are there, but they are shells. They have no personality, not even any spoken lines. If you’re looking for characters like Terra, Cloud, Squall or Zidane then you’re fresh out of luck- none of the characters in this game come even close to displaying any kind of depth that would make them comparable to the half-breed, basket case, emo git, or alien clone protagonists you’ll find later in the series. The Light Warriors don’t even have default names for Pete’s sake- so from now on I’m making Chunk canon in the Final Fantasy universe. Just sayin’.

So it’s a Final Fantasy game with minimal story- so what do you spend the game doing? Well, apart from running around the world going on fetch-quests for everybody, you have to visit the four temples and kill the Elemental Fiend of each one. Seeing as the Four Fiends is a recurring feature of the series, let’s meet them, shall we?

Lich

The elemental fiend of earth, you’ll find him at the bottom of the imaginatively-titled Earth Cave. Lich is responsible for the decay of the earth, and the near destruction of the nearby agricultural town of Melmond. While Garland may be the first boss of the series, this guy is the first major boss, but is still pretty forgettable. Don’t take him lightly though, he can completely rape an under-leveled party.

Marilith

Marilith is the fiend of fire, found in the Gurgu Volcano. Her deal is pretty much that she wants to see the world burn, and oddly enough you’d think she’d be weak against ice spells, but for me fire damage seemed to work better. My sources tell me that her name and design are based off a Dungeons and Dragons monster. The more you know!

Kraken

The fiend of water, he kinda reminds me of somebody.

Bootstrap Bill, you're a liar and you will spend an eternity on this ship!

Tiamat

The final fiend you face is Tiamat, the master of wind. Look out for her again in Final Fantasy II, VIII, IX and XII. She’s a bitch.

Once you’ve wasted hours of your life killing the four fiends (many more hours if you’re playing the NES version), you’re ready for the final part of the game. Fantastic! Let’s head back to the Chaos Shrine and finish this game off. Upon entering, you discover a strange portal in the room where you first fought Garland, leading to 2000 years in the past. Why is it here? You don’t know? Why do the heroes venture through it? Just because.

It’s here that they learn that the four fiends sent Garland 2000 years into the past, so that he could send the fiends 2000 years into the future to wreak havoc- creating a confusing time-loop.

Snake? Snaaaaake!

Garland explains this all to you, before turning into a hellish demon named Chaos. I think I feel a final boss coming on!

Chaos was the first boss in the game that I had to *shudder* grind to beat. This fucker is hard.  When he isn’t pounding on your party one by one with brutal physical attacks, he’s wearing the whole team down with special elemental attacks that damage your entire party. The amount of times Pimp Hat died before I managed to bring this fucker down was crazy. But if you keep at it, slowly chipping away at Chaos’ HP, you’ll eventually come out on top.

Man, I hope the ending sequence clears up all the lose ends of the story! All that crazy time travel shit really needs clarifying! I’m sure it will all be made cle-

Fuck you, game.

As I briefly mentioned before, I think what is most interesting to note about Final Fantasy in retrospect is just how little it has in common to the series as it exists today. So much of what makes Final Fantasy, well, Final Fantasy, isn’t here. If you’re looking for a game with Buster Swords, giant summoned monsters, moogles, chocobos, bombs, tonberries, and all of the other things that define Final Fantasy, well son- you’d best look some place else. None of that can be found here- and why would it be? After all, Final Fantasy was never meant to be a hit, and its development didn’t require the creation of a bunch of quirky side characters and innovative gameplay features. This game was only intended to ever be one thing: a cash-in, a Dragon Quest clone to help Square get back on its feet.

And that’s exactly what it did.

Final Fantasy was never meant to be a runaway hit, and yet despite all of Squares expectations, that’s exactly what it turned out to be. Sure it was a clone of a rival companies game, but it became a rare exception of a clone done correctly. Final Fantasy was a better game than Enix’s Dragon Quest in almost every way- a bigger world, more characters, more spells, a more interesting combat system- it was all there. It’s funny to think it was coded and designed in less than a year by a team of about seven people. In contrast, the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII has been in development for almost six years and its development crew is into the hundreds. Consider that for a moment.

So what do I think of this game now I’ve played through it again after so long? I hate it. Seriously, despite the fact I was playing an easier, more forgiving version of the game I initially loved, I still had very little fun with Final Fantasy. It’s tiring, it’s annoying, it’s boring, it’s tedious- but it’s done. In all honesty, I can’t see myself playing through this game ever again.

Hey, I kinda feel like I’ve said that about another game before… but I just can’t remember what it was…

Oh.