Final Fantasy

The review of this product is based on a re-released version of the game. Because of this change of medium and the passage of time, it is possible that there are slight factual differences between the original retail product and the version reviewed. The following review should be used as a reference for how well the game stood up over time rather than an evaluation of how it would have scored based on its original release date.

You've no doubt heard the story before. Squaresoft was on its last legs in the '80s, edging close to bankruptcy and the collapse of the entire company -- mere months away from going under. Unwilling to go down without a fight, though, the developers at Square put all of their remaining effort into one last product. One single, epic role-playing adventure. It if succeeded, the company would survive. If it didn't, Square would be no more.

They called their final game Final Fantasy. But, as it turned out, it wasn't their final game after all.

Final Fantasy exploded onto the scene in the late '80s in Japan, offering a deeper, more thorough and more challenging RPG experience than 8-bit Nintendo players had ever seen before -- besting even Enix's first Dragon Quest in many respects, and selling tons of copies, just like DQ did. And a few years later, its localized release for the NES in America also brought in millions for the ailing studio. Final Fantasy was such a hit that Squaresoft was brought back to life, and this single project -- intended as nothing more than a swan song -- became, instead, the flagship installment in one of the industry's most beloved and longest-running franchises ever.
Now the original NES edition of Final Fantasy, the version that first shipped to the States almost 20 years ago in 1990, has been re-released in Virtual Console form on the Wii. And it's easy to remember, within just the first few minutes of playing it again, just why it caught on so quickly two decades ago.

Final Fantasy puts you in command of the Light Warriors, a group of four heroes prophesized to one day appear and save the world. You'll go on a quest that takes you and your band of adventurers through castles and dungeons, forests and caves, meeting up with pirates, witches, elves and evil Elemental Fiends along the way. You'll travel by foot, by boat, by airship and even by canoe on your way to achieving your destiny, and ultimately come face to face with Chaos itself in a final showdown to determine the fate of the planet. Epic stuff.

One of the fresh features this first Final Fantasy offered that set it apart from other 8-bit RPGs was its character selection -- you get to pick and choose the configuration of your Light Warrior party, building the group from a selection of six different classes. There's the weapon-wielding Fighter, commonly chosen as the party leader. The martial artist Black Belt, skilled in bare-knuckle brawling. The rogue class Thief, able to ultimately master the skills of a ninja. And then three different colors of Mage -- White Mage, the healer; Black Mage, the attacker; and Red Mage, something of a mix of the other two.

Most players put together a balanced party, picking a couple of the warrior types and a couple of the magic users. Some players, though, add to the challenge of the game by choosing all of one kind -- a party of four White Mages, for example. If it's your first time diving into this first Final Fantasy, though, I'd advise against such an unbalanced approach. Because this game doesn't need any extra challenge boost, at all.

Final Fantasy is beastly tough. This is old-school, level-grinding, pull-your-hair-out RPG gaming at its most frustrating -- you have to be dedicated and determined to spend the time investing in growing your party's experience through tons of random battles in order to be able to get through most of this quest. If you're impatient, or stray too far too quickly, you'll just get murdered.

This is the original Final Fantasy, remember. No alterations made. This game's proven so popular over the years that it's received tons of remakes and re-releases -- on the original PlayStation, the Game Boy Advance, the PlayStation Portable and more. Many of those remakes have rebalanced the challenge, making it a more accessible experience. That rebalancing isn't here, though. This one's just plain tough.
And other, more subtle improvements made in subsequent sequels and remakes are sorely missed here, too -- like simple battle commands. Final Fantasy's battles are iconic, with your party of characters lining up on one side of the screen and an array on unanimated enemies appearing on the other. You issues orders to your men using menus and a big pointing finger cursor, telling your heroes when to attack, when to cast magic, when to run.

But there are lots of little annoyances -- like missed attacks. Say you're facing two Imps. You make two of your heroes target the first Imp with their attacks. Your first hero strikes, and does enough damage to kill the Imp himself. All right! But then your second hero attacks, and instead of automatically shifting his attack to the second, still-alive Imp, he just attacks the empty space where the first Imp used to be. Miss. Sorry. Waste of a turn.

Then there are weapons and armor that don't equip themselves, so won't function if you don't remember to do it by hand. And a lack of an interface in shops to tell you who can equip what, and what kind of stats boost any given item will offer. And the inability to revive fallen comrades without trekking all the way back to a town to visit a Clinic. And so on, and so on.

What I'm getting at is that this first Final Fantasy is unaltered, unedited and unforgiving -- if you go into it thinking you'll be able to breeze through thanks to your vast amount of experience playing other, more modern RPGs, you may be in for a rude awakening. This is raw role-playing still trying to find its stride as a genre, offered as-is, without any added comforts.

by Lucas M. Thomas