Final Fantasy (NES, 1990)

In addition to the Zelda runthrough, Clare and I are also doing a Final Fantasy runthrough, probably at a much slower pace.  This one I'm a bit hesitant about - there's plenty of duds on this list, and I'm wondering if I'm glorifying the Playstation-era titles in my memory.  But there's plenty of games that I'm extremely curious and probably wouldn't play otherwise, so here goes.  They're also a lot more fun with a partner - in fact, all JRPGs are, which is the main reason I lament the genre's switch to handhelds.

So, Final Fantasy 1.  Well, I don't have much experience with 8-bit RPGs, but I can tell you that I liked this game much better than Dragon Warrior, which I didn't finish, but whose obnoxious world map theme still haunts me to this day.  It's well known that Squaresoft before Final Fantasy was known only for making clones of other developer's games.  This might be a Dragon Warrior clone, but it's one that makes its predecessor look pretty shabby.  Final Fantasy has a huge number of towns, whose citizens all dye their hair in a town-consistent color scheme.  It's got talking dragons that live in holes in the ground.  It's even got a cave of fun-loving dwarfs that greet you by saying "Hooray!"  What's not to like?

Well, okay, there's not really much else to recommend this game.  The characters (picked from a choice of classes) don't speak.  The plot, which is mostly saved up for the end, is about an errant knight who gets sent back in time in order to release a slew of elemental demons and cause an unending time-loop...somehow.  It manages to be both confusing and almost non-existent at the same time, and it doesn't have the saving grace of decent characters.  The battle system is serviceable, but there are far too many palette-swapped enemies, and I envied Clare her ability to knit while I grinded.  But there are certainly worse games out there.

I'd played a bit of the Playstation remake a couple years ago, and it feels like a completely different game.  The translation is overhauled, and they turn it into a quite pretty 2D RPG.  But this only serves to make the game more boring in my opinion.  One plays a game like Final Fantasy in order to marvel at its idiosyncracies.