Backlog Game Reviews 18: Final Fantasy NES/Famicom

 Hey there and welcome to Backlog Game Reviews.

   Today let's take a look at Final Fantasy on the NES. Released on December 18th, 1987 in Japan, and hitting North American shores on July 1990, it sold incredibly well in both countries and received very high scores from reviewers at the time. Many consider it to be one of the best games on the NES. Let's take a look and see how well the first Final Fantasy holds up today.

I played the game on this two in one cart. It was only released in Japan and it had the first two Final Fantasy games on it.

    

  In the world of Final Fantasy the four elemental crystals have lost their power, and as a result the wind has stopped, the earth is decaying, the oceans are out of control, and volcanoes are running rampant. The world seems to be coming to an end and hope is beginning to fade, but there is a prophecy that says four warriors of light will appear and restore the elemental crystals to their former state and bring an end to the cataclysm plaguing the world. This prophecy is the only thing that’s preventing the people from falling into despair.

The events leading up to the start of the game are told to you through this text scroll when you turn on the game.

  At the start of the game, the story is pretty straight forward. It's a little cliché by today's standards, but during it’s release in 1987, this was a pretty original story. As the game progresses you learn more about the world and why the crystals lost their power. There's a lot of world-building and background story provided by NPCs, something rarely seen in an NES game.

Almost every NPC has something original to say.

   When you start a new game, you get to create your own party. You have four characters in your party and choose from among six classes. The Fighter has high HP and attack, but low intelligence. The Black Belt starts out weak, but at higher levels his attack power will surpass the Fighters. The Thief has high luck, which lets him escape from almost any battle, but unfortunately since the luck stat is bugged he has no advantage over any of the other classes. Lastly, there are the Black, White, and Red Mages. The Black Mage specializes in offensive magic, the White Mage can learn healing magic, and the Red Mage can learn a little bit of both and has decent attack strength.

The party creation screen.

   The game lets you pick any combination you want. If you want a team of four White Mages or four Fighters you can do that. The game is beatable with any combination, but depending on your team’s composition you may have a difficult time beating the game.

You're also allowed to name your characters.

   I like this party creation system, because it gives you an amount of freedom that's not usually available in an NES game. It also gives the game great replay value. Depending on the team you create no two playthroughs will be the same. It's a great system.

Battle with some Goblins.

   Moving beyond party creation, Final Fantasy is a pretty standard turn-based RPG. Excluding boss fights, all of the battles are random encounters. The encounter rate isn't very high so you can walk around without having to fight something every two seconds.

Exploring the overworld.

    

 The battle system is as straight forward as can be. You can do physical attacks, cast magic, use items, or run away. You lose the fight if all of your party members run out of HP. There's not much I can say about the battle system, it's simple but fun.

Gameover

   Magic is handled in a unique manner when compared to other games. Characters don't learn magic spells from leveling up, instead you have to buy a spell book, which will allow one of your characters to cast a new spell. I don't dislike this system, however, spell books can be too expensive. Weapons and armor can also become really expensive, but magic is still noticeably more expensive. By the time you make it to the third town, you'll be spending 1500 to 4000 Gil per spell.

Level 3 magic shop

Level 4 magic shop

   Furthermore, characters don’t use MP to cast spells. Every spell has a level assigned to it. For example, Fire is a level 1 spell and Ice is a level 3 spell. Each level of spell has a max number of times you can cast it. At level one a mage might only have one point for level 1 magic, so they can cast any level 1 spell one time. Leveling up will get you more points and will let you cast higher level spells.

My Black Mage currently has 3 points for level 1 magic so he can cast the two level 1 spells he knows 3 times.

    I'm pretty indifferent towards how magic works in this game. It's not bad, but it's far too exhausting for my tastes, mostly due to the fact that your magic can only be restored by sleeping at an inn. I wish there was an item that could recover magic, but no such item exists. So when exploring dungeons you'll have to ration your magic carefully. Personally, I only used magic during boss battles or when backed into a corner.

Sleeping at an inn will recover you HP, magic, and save the game.

   In regards to items, buying and managing them is a painfully tedious process. Because magic should be saved for bosses, you should always carry 99 potions with you to help keep your HP up. While this may not sound too bad, you can't buy anything in bulk, but must buy every, single item one at a time. This is obviously an incredibly annoying and time-consuming process.

You'll spend a lot of time in item shops.

   Another issue I had is with how many pieces of armor you're able to carry. The game gives you plenty of room for items and weapons, but each character can only hold four pieces of armor at a time. Since each character can equip a maximum of four armor pieces at once, and equipped armors count toward your armor inventory, you'll never have room for any armor found while dungeon crawling.

You get so much space for items you'll never run out.

   If you find a treasure chest and your inventory is full the game won’t tell you what’s inside the chest, it'll just say that you can’t carry anything else. Thus forcing you to decide whether or not to ignore the chest or to discard something and hope you find something better then what you had just threw away. Because of this I ended up ignoring a majority of the chests. If the game had provided two or three extra slots for armor this wouldn't have been a big problem.

Armor inventory screen.

   

 There are some road bumps here and there but I would say the gameplay is overall pretty solid. The battle system doesn't offer a great deal of complexity, but it strikes a good balance. There are enough options available to form your own strategies, but it’s not complicated enough to be overwhelming.

You can view a map of the overworld at any time by hitting select and B.

   Moving on to the presentation, the graphics look good and hold up pretty well today, and the music, while good, doesn't have many memorable tracks. The overworld theme is upbeat and gets you in the mood to go on an adventure, in my opinion its the best song in the game. The presentation as a whole isn't outstanding, but it's good.

The monster graphics are nice and detailed, but sometimes you get things like those purplish monsters in the front row. I have no idea what that is supposed to be.

   That's all I have to say about this game. It's a really fun retro JRPG. If you like retro games and JRPGs give Final Fantasy a try, you'll have a good time. Thank you for reading. Next time we'll talk about a game on the Gameboy Advance. I hope to see you again at Backlog Game Reviews.

Gameplay Video

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