Normally I'd spend a sentence or two building up to what my idea could be, but c'mon, only one or two people actually read this blog, and it's in this post's title. So yeah, I've played through a few Final Fantasy games over the years, and have pretty much enjoyed them. For those wondering, I have finished X and X-2, and played through in various amounts IV, IX and XII. Now that I own a PSP, I have a good reason to be able to go back and play a few of the better Final Fantasy games that I have missed. Once I started to look at which games in the series I would like to play, the idea came to me to play through all of them, starting at the beginning. There are multiple reasons, though mostly come down to bragging rights. I mean honestly, who has beaten II, III and VIII? So here I sit, having just finished Final Fantasy on the PSP (the 20th Anniversary version) less than an hour ago.
Unlike most of my other posts, I'll try to keep this brief. I really don't have much to say about the game, though would like to at least mention what I liked and disliked about my experience. I hope to have a similar post for each game, gradually expanding in length as I can make comparisons against their predecessors.
To begin, the graphics are fantastic. I am by no means a "graphics whore", but these updated sprites and other graphics were really what made this game playable for me. It's one thing to enjoy 8-bit games (and trust me, I do), but the older Final Fantasy's are almost too blocky. Battle animations are smooth, but can still be played out quickly. I also give major props to RPG developers when the actual weapons the characters use noticeably change as equipment is changed - a nice touch.
The game was relatively simple, both the pace and the menu system, which I enjoyed. I like RPG's with functional and easy to understand menus, and a bonus map is included in this version of the game (thank you Square-Enix, that was much appreciated). With the inclusion of the world map, I rarely had to use the internet for guidance, and figured out most of the game on my own. Without it would have been a different story. Back to the battles- they started easy, and had a gradual increase in difficulty as the game progressed.
Which leads me to one of my two gripes with the game. The game was almost too easy. Each boss I ran into was a cakewalk, with no character falling below 100 HP. I had heard this version was easier than the NES original, and was not surprised upon hearing so. After the four main bosses, I decided to challenge myself by taking on the extra dungeons (from the Dawn of Souls GBA updated version) before fighting Chaos. They were enjoyable at first, but also much too easy...until I beat the first two. Then I hit the difficulty wall. The third had pathetically easy random battles, but the second-half bosses were quite difficult. I didn't even attempt the fourth dungeon.
Which leads me to my second gripe about the game. Random battles. Of course, with an old-school JRPG, random battles come aplenty. This was known well beforehand, and was not a concern. But it's when my party is over-leveled in some (okay, most) areas, that these battles become painful, because they honestly aren't worth the exp or gil, and therefore not worth my time. And these extra dungeons are LONG. The first is 5 floors. Except to fight each boss, one must go through it four times. The second, 10 floors (twice through). The third, 25 floors (again, twice through). And the fourth, an astounding 40 floors, and even though it's only once through, is a ton of wasted time on pointless random battles. I started the new PSP dungeon, but got bored with my wasted time (and found out online that I was actually under-leveled) and loaded a save file to get out.
I finished the game in just under 25 hours. That's quite a bit of time for the original Final Fantasy, although I could have attempted the last normal dungeon and Chaos around the 16 hour mark. It's a good thing I spent some time leveling up in those extra dungeons though, because Chaos turned out to be a very hard final boss (and screw you Square-Enix, you do not let a final boss with 20,000 HP use Curaja when they've lost an estimated 15,000 HP to recover 9999 HP). A good game overall, though definitely helped by the updated graphics. Now I start Final Fantasy II. If I can get through this, this new blog idea will have a long life.
