O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
How many times have I tried to play the original Final Fantasy… I’ve tried the original NES game, the Final Fantasy Origins version on PS1, Dawn of Souls on GBA… But I’ve never actually finished it until the Pixel Remaster release. It’s strange to finally play the very first game in such a huge and influential franchise to completion. And it’s especially strange to realize that despite being so quaint by modern standards, even with so many improvements Pixel Remaster version brings, there’s still a place for a title like this.
I’m sure that you’re familiar with Final Fantasy games in general, even if you haven’t played any of them yourself. And if I were to ask what usually defines a Final Fantasy game, and jRPGs of this type in general, I suppose, something that’s common across all of the narratively disconnected entries in the series, most people will say that it’s the focus on the story. Because that is something that people really love about Final Fantasy games – memorable characters, crazy storylines accompanied by beautiful music and stunning looking cutscenes. That’s not exactly how the series started, though. The beautiful music was there from the start, mind you, as were some rather bizarre and unexpected narrative twists. But the story in Final Fantasy 1 is extremely simple.
You create a party of 4 out of 6 available classes, name the characters whatever you want and appear in the world that has been recently devastated by supernatural cataclysms. And it turns out that your 4 characters, who have no say or personality, all own 4 magic Crystals (and we’re never told where they got them from) which makes them heroes of a prophecy, the Warriors of Light. So go kick evil’s butt, restore the magic Crystals that control the 4 elements ruling the world and save the day. And that’s what you do for the next 10+ hours – go from dungeon to dungeon, from town to town, fighting enemies, restoring all that is good in the world and save the world in the end. The world that is full of classic fantasy tropes straight out of the D&D. There’s a bit of the weirdness and the staple of the series – an airship, – shows up. But it’s not as wild and varied as the series will dare to be in later entries.
There’s nothing particularly exciting about the gameplay, by modern standards at least. And yet, there’s something nice in this simplicity too. Exploring a new dungeon with its ridiculously primitive layout and chests containing odd numbers of gil (money in Final Fantasy games) is still exciting. And so is unlocking a new mode of transportation and seeing the next town with its new equipment and magic spells on sale. Oh right, the original Final Fantasy didn’t have “mana points”, you had to buy the spells and they had a limited amount of use per magic level, that you could restore by resting (also just like D&D). And there are more spells than slots your mage can fit per level too, so you must choose which spells to have. But anyway, despite the simplicity of the concepts and the gameplay – it’s a genuinely fun simple adventure to save the world.
Especially with the changes in Pixel Remaster. The visual aspect is the most obvious one, but it’s genuinely wonderful how the look and feel of the original games have been preserved despite moving to a much higher colour palette and on top of that seamlessly adding visual effects and elements that wouldn’t have been possible at the time of the game release. I’m extremely happy to finally see an approach that keeps the look of the original pixelated visuals while making it scalable for much higher resolutions. And hope to see more games having similar treatment. The music has been completely re-orchestrated as well, although it is a bit of a shame that the original soundtrack wasn’t included as a toggleable option.
But it’s the gameplay that feels much improved. Countless little things have been tweaked to feel more like a modern game would, without completely overhauling the mechanics. There’s plenty of quality of life improvements, like the ability to speed up the battles (while your party repeats the actions you’ve given them in the previous turn) and the removal of “ineffective hits” (when your party would attack a slot where the enemy was previously but is now empty). Or how you get a map and a minimap of each area that helps greatly, it even lists the amount of treasure chests per area from the world map in case you wish to find them all. One aspect that isn’t plain better, though, is that most of the game balance is based on the “easy mode” that was introduced in the Origins port. As someone who’s not super into difficult jRPGs, I personally find this change acceptable, but some might dislike this.
Overall, I find this version of the original Final Fantasy the best one to play, hence why I finally went through it, and gladly. It has the purity of the original release, discarding a lot of the additional elements and dungeons that some ports introduced, but keeps the best elements from those subtly enhancing the original. It plays really well and is a fun simple adventure that started a huge franchise. It’s not as essential to play as some of the best entries in the series, but it’s nonetheless really fun in this Pixel Remaster.