Final Fantasy (PSP) - A Charming Start to a Legend
Final Fantasy (PSP)
A Charming Start to a Legend
(Final Fantasy PSP - Title Screen)
Intro
When it comes down to RPGs, one of the big boys in the space is undoubtedly the Final Fantasy franchise. With 16 mainline games, one released this year, two massive MMORPGs with Final Fantasy XI and XIV, and the many... and I mean... many side games that have been released under the Final Fantasy name.
(Comp Image from COGConnected Final Fantasy Article)
It's hard to think of RPGs without thinking about Final Fantasy, it's like thinking about Mario without Luigi, or Xbox without Halo. Recently, I've made it a point of playing through every Final Fantasy mainline game, due to the release of Final Fantasy XVI, and also because it's been a little overdue for games I need to play. The first game took me a little over a month to beat, with an in-game time of 24 hours and 57 minutes, in this review I'll talk about the game's history, story, presentation, and gameplay. For this post, I'll be playing the game on its PSP version, which gives the game a new look, and more content. It also keeps it a little close to the original NES/Famicom game while giving it some minor tweaks, I recommend checking out AustinSV's video on Final Fantasy and its many different versions if you are interested in how they differ from each other.
(Final Fantasy PSP - Clear Screen)
History
The original Final Fantasy was released in Japan on December 18, 1987, for the Family Computer (Famicom for short). Three years later, it would release in America for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES for short) in 1990. The game was created by Square Co., Ltd., and while this game was a massive success for the company, this hasn't always been the case for Square back then. Many of their games were not that successful, who here remembers, The Death Trap? Or Alpha? Or King's Knight? Besides that one ProJared video.
(Box Arts for Death Trap, Alpha, and King's Knight)
The point is, Square wasn't doing so hot. So close to the end, Square's president, Hironobu Sakaguchi, declared that his next game would be a Fantasy RPG. Him wanting it to be abbreviated to FF for short, and thus, Final Fantasy was born. The title is almost poetic, with how this story has gone so far, but, that isn't why they called it that. Originally, they were going to call it Fighting Fantasy, but the name was already taken, so they used the next best F word that would work with Fantasy. After succeeding sales-wise alongside Dragon Quest, Nintendo of America would localize the game for the American market.
Story
(Final Fantasy PSP - Character Name Screen)
The story of this game starts with you naming your party and choosing their class, ranging from Warrior, Thief, White Mage, Black Mage, Black Belt/Monk, and Red Mage. Each class has its own attributes to differentiate them in how they play and how to use them in different party makeups. I went with the default characters, and while I typically like to RPG characters their canon names, FFI doesn't really have canon names. So I looked up suggested names online and went with that. So join our heroes Setro the Warrior, Zauver the Thief, Flora the White Mage, and Teol the Black Mage.
After creating our party, we learn that this world lies in darkness, the winds die, the seas rage and the earth decays this is because four crystals of the elements, Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water, have begun to deteriorate, due to dark forces. However, a prophecy is foretold, that four young travelers (us), will appear, carrying their own crystals to restore the world. Our journey starts in Cornelia, where we meet the king and show him that we are the Four Warriors of Light. With this, he tasks us with a mission to save his daughter Sarah after being abducted by Garland, a knight who was once loyal to the king.
This gives us our first task, save the princess. Basic, but it gets us going into the main adventure. And as I discuss later this simple structure of little problems leading into the bigger problem, will continue story-wise for the game. After doing some grinding, we head to the Chaos Shrine, to confront Garland. He spouts something about knocking us all down, but I can't really hear him after recking his butt at level 5. Doing this will save Sarah and the king will or a bridge to be built for our journey to continue, and cross the continent into a more expansive world. Leading to one of the most iconic moments, of Final Fantasy.
(Final Fantasy PSP - Across the Bridge, Video From LordCloudStrife)
This opening is grand, it gives a perfect start for the journey you're about to set out on, yeah you saved the princess, but your journey to save the world has only just begun. It also introduces the song known as the "Theme of Final Fantasy." This theme will be heard in most, mainline Final Fantasy games.
Presentation
Let's take a break from the story and talk about how the game looks. Quiet simply, this version of the game looks fantastic, the sprites for the characters and environments look so good, and add a lot of character. They almost look like even higher-quality SNES sprites, like we jumped from 16bit, skipped 32bit, and went straight to 64bit.
(Final Fantasy PSP - World and Battle Screen, Screenshot from LordCloudStrife)
Spell effects are nice and flashy, and the animations for our character's weapon and their attacks are nice and fast. the sprites in battles are mostly static except for when they attack and cast magic. It's still rather simple in its movement, I think it works here because this is still technically an NES game. The music is also good, although a lot of what I've heard was the same battle theme and a couple of different boss themes.
Gameplay
Despite this being an NES game though, I'd say the gameplay is great. Being an RPG, as we're going to other parts of the world, we run into random battles. An encounter in the overworld and a dungeon brings your party into a battle with monsters. When battling you have serval options, physical attacks with the Attack option, magic with the Magic option, and Defending and using Items. You can also Equip different items (which I never used) and Flee from a battle if needed. While deciding your first move, you'll hear the game's battle theme.
(Final Fantasy PSP - Battle Theme)
When it comes down to battling, it can lead to rapidly pressing A/X to just attack. Sometimes you want to do that because, when grinding, you don't want to be picking from attacks to summoning magic or healing all the time, as it can slow down grinding a little bit. However, when you do run into a battle where you need to pay attention or else you'll die, that's when the battle system really shines. So for example, let's say we run into a group of enemies while in a forest, and let's say it's an ambush, meaning the enemy has the first turn. Going in, I'm confident that Setro can handle himself, with his strength stat, Zauver will probably be alright with his daggers, and Flora and Teol can keep up with their magic. Because it's a group, every enemy in the group attacks first, and by the end, Zauver isn't looking too good, so I have Setro attack one of the enemies, Zauver defends himself, while Flora heals him with a cure. To make up for Zauver not attacking, Teol will use a fire spell to get that missed attack on the group of enemies. I execute, watch the battle play out, and hope Zauver doesn't die as the actions don't go in party order, and enemies can possibly still attack while on your turn.
When you have to pay attention in a battle, it's generally great to see how the battles play out and to see what you have to do to win the battle. Especially with any bosses you fight to restore the crystals, if you aren't paying attention during a boss fight, they can kill you, or if your party isn't strong enough, you could get completely wrecked. It's a very simple battle system and I'm sure the NES version is even more simple, other than the fact that you can actually miss an attack if one of your allies kills an enemy that the other was targeting. That sounds like you would have to pay attention to battles more than this version. And while it can slow down grinding, because of how simple and straight to the point this system is, I think I would have just as much fun there as I did on the PSP.
And overall, the game itself is very simple, which I find very charming, you're just traveling the world, helping other towns with their problems, which then leads to your main quest of saving the world. It also helps that this game is really open in its design if you know what you're doing, and your level is high enough, once you cross the bridge, the world is open to you, and do some things out of order. And if you get the airship early, you can do tons of more stuff out of order. It feels like a simplified D&D campaign, you can name your characters, and travel the world at your own discretion. These characters you create really feel like your characters. This is especially when you power up your characters to their more powerful classes, you all traveled some much together, and you didn't just get levels or more powerful spells or weapons. They've grown, they look older, more experienced from their travels. And for characters that don't speak, it felt really good to get to that point in the game, because of how long it took, it felt like doing all of this together, and I think that's really cool.
If I had to criticize one part of the gameplay, it would be the open world. It's nice that it's open, but it's a little too open. To the point where after crossing the bridge and getting the ship, I realize, "Damn... I don't know where to go..." The game doesn't do a good job of telling you where to go, I figured going to towns would lead me in the right direction, but even after talking to multiple people, I still couldn't figure it out. Maybe I missed something when exploring, but if I'm being honest, it does sound like something an NES game would do. It's like making the game harder to make it harder to beat and make you rent it again so you can have another chance to beat it. I used a guide for most of the game, although I will say I tried my best when it came to trying to figure it out for myself. It was just two open for me to get through without a guide.
Ending
After helping the towns of the world, deafening the four fiends guarding the crystals, and going to a castle in the sky built by ancient sky people that had robots, magic world mirrors, and rare killer War Mechs (What?)
We see that all energies are being drawn to a center point of the world. It's the Chaos Shrine, back where it all started. Going back there and removing the black orb where Garland used to be, teleports ua, not to some secret area or dungeon, but instead 2,000 years into the past. Bet you weren't expecting time travel in your fantasy RPG! In the past, we go through the dungeon, fight the four friends one last time and then face our final opponent, Garland! Remember him? Seriously do you?
(Final Fantasy PSP - Final Garland Appearance, Screenshot from LordCloudStrife)
It turns out he was the one who caused all of this, he released the fiends that then plunged the world into darkness, with him then going into the past to create a time-loop. And to stop us, he turns into his final form, Chaos!
(Final Fantasy PSP - Chaos Fight, Screenshot from LordCloudStrife)
But, after many hours of playing and grinding, I was ready! With my max party, we battled for what felt like a good while until I finally beat, attacking, casting dark magic, healing my party, and dealing with all his, magic attacks that are inspired by the four elements. And when I learned he had a healing spell that gives him 9,999 HP, I really felt the intensity. But I persevered, and got him! When it's over, the heroes return to the present, with the world not knowing what they did due to them being in the past. And I guess this means the prophecy was self-fulfilling because we did everything in the past, and the heroes would be the only people who would know... Good to see Final Fantasy always had complicated plots I guess.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I had an incredible time with Final Fantasy, it definitely had its lows, mainly with it being too open to the point of needing a guide to get through. It's honestly to the point where I wouldn't recommend this as your first Final Fantasy, only if you wanted to see how the series started, like me, or if you have patience, also like me. While I played the PSP version of the game, I'd honestly recommend the Pixel Remaster of the game if you are interested. It doesn't have the extra content of the PSP game, but it has a reorchestrated soundtrack, and a more classic look, taking inspiration from the original NES sprites. It's also on the most modern systems, mobile, PC, Switch, and PlayStation, the only one it's not on is Xbox, which I think is a shame, I do hope it goes there at some point. But overall, I loved my time with Final Fantasy, and I can't wait to see what the rest of the series has in store.
I'm sure the next one will be just as good.
Comments
Post a Comment