Okay, okay, I know that reviewing Final Fantasy has been done to death and that there really isn’t any point to adding to the heap or treading old ground. “What else can possibly be said about this game?” I hear you ask. And I totally agree! That’s why I wanted to take a different approach to this game when writing this article. I want to not only analyze the key components of the game and the roles that they play (get it?) in the design as a whole, but also whether or not those components were executed well enough at their time of implementation(1986 – 1987) that they still function well enough to make the game accessible and playable today. I can literally feel your eyes rolling as you read that introduction. You’re probably thinking one of two things; “Final Fantasy is an undeniable classic, it’s a masterpiece of course it holds up!!!!” or “Dude…that games interface, translation, and combat system is total shit…of course it doesn’t hold up!!!” and to some extent I think both of these thought processes are correct. Obviously those are the two polar extremes when it comes to the subject of Final Fantasy’s ability to withstand the test of time. One, influenced by nostalgia and a great affinity for a classic title that is indeed in one way or another worthy of praise and the other, a somewhat jaded look at a game from a time when games like this tended to lack the polish and forgiving leveling systems that many games have either grown accustomed to over time or never experienced because they weren’t around for when RPGs such as this were just finally coming into their own on consoles. But to be honest I think the answer lies somewhere in the grey area between the two, perhaps both sides are right…to a degree. So let’s step out of the black and white and straight into the grey as we look for the answers we seek. Pick your class, count your gold, grab some gear, and get ready for the longest experience grind you have ever been a part of, THIS IS FINAL FANTASY!!!

Root 1: The Translation

One of the most important aspects of any RPG past, present or future is the ability to understand what the NPCs are communicating to the player in order to understand the location of items, dungeons, and any other magical Magoffin that exist in the game world. So this seems like a good place to start. The unfortunate thing though is that I’m in no way a major in Japanese nor am I able to even if I was, transcribe the entire original script, analyze it, and compare it to the English translation within a week and make my deadline for you, my dear readers. So we’re going to have to rely on outside sources here. There is at least one ROM hack of the game’s dialogue and script that supposedly translates the game as closely to the original intended wording and phrasing as possible and I think it would be best to take the creator’s word for it seeing as I’m left with very few other options that are viable within my time constraints and they obviously cared enough about this to put in the work of not only translating the script but also programming it into the hack. The one that seems to get a lot of praise despite its age and the inactivity of its creator for over a decade is called “Final Fantasy Bronze” by a gentlemen going by the handle “Frioniel”(Check out his site, http://frioniel.4t.com/enter.htm) In a small description of what the hack contains he has this to say on the subject;

“This ROM hack is for those of you who already own Final Fantasy I and found that it wasn’t as polished as it could have been. I have taken the liberty of “improving” upon this marvelous game, correcting as many of Nintendo’s stylistic errors, graphical censorships, and mistranslations as possible. However, truth be told, Nintendo did a very good job translating FF1”

Well, that would make it seem as if despite some censorship changes (which Nintendo of America was infamous for) Nintendo did an extremely good job with the translation. Now this could imply that he means they did a good job for the time, or it could mean that they simply did a good job in general but I imagine at the very least it would imply that the dialogue is not Simon’s Quest worthy. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on the subject than me can weigh in at some point but for now that’s really the best I can do to offer evidence that the dialogue is in and of itself pretty damn close to the original text. Now while I can speak from experience that some of the dialogue is a little disjointed and awkward it never seemed to make no sense at all or lend me no aid in figuring out the next place to go. Keep in mind also that back then they didn’t have the same idea of the average level of intelligence of the gaming public that current developers have; which is to say that most current developers think that we’re all dribbling idiots who can’t figure things out for ourselves and need to have NPCs tell us EXACTLY WHERE TO GO. But this was not always so.

No, instead you might talk to an old man in a town and he’d tell you that his town to the west was in trouble and to please help them. While only a short while ago in a town back where you just came from you were told not only about the town you’re currently occupying but also of a cave to the north. So should you go to the cave to the north or to the town the old man is talking about? Who knows?! That’s part of the fun, making decisions and exploring the map. Modern gamers don’t seem to like the mechanic of exploring and discovering like this anymore. At least it feels that way, but that’s another topic for another time. The point being that I think too many gamers get frustrated by this and hence blame the translation for not simply being able to talk to a person in town and know exactly where to go for an item to access the next part of the game. This is not a design flaw in my opinion; it’s simply a remnant of a time when designers didn’t belittle our intelligence.

Also, as an aside, I am aware that the game came packaged with a map and an adventurer’s handbook that described a lot of this stuff upon initial release but for the most part nowadays your average retro gamer is going to either emulate the game or buy a loose cart. Diehard fans will no doubt buy a boxed copy but even then would they dare to open it when they could simply look a map or where to go next up on google and get the same information? Of course not and honestly a lot of this game’s (and many other classic games) faults can be much more easily avoided these days thanks to the vast amount of shared information on the internet. Once again this information is available in the handbook but I am more interested in whether or not the game can stand on its own without outside resources. I know a lot of times with games like this back in the day this was just how things worked, you would look it up in the accompanying handbook but once again, we’re trying to see how the game stands up on its own accord if bought as a loose cart or played on an emulator.

Root 2: The Combat

Now we’re about to get into some serious shit here. Are you ready? Good! Because the combat in this game is the crux of many a gamers’ decision as to whether or not this game holds up still to this day. At the very least a lot of what I’ve read and talked about with other retro gamers always seems to center around this topic when it comes to how this game has aged. Unfortunately there is always going to be folks who can’t get past some of the flaws that the combat system had in this game and so to them the combat suffers and is unsatisfying and too difficult. For others they are only minor blemishes that can be looked past or simply adapted into the way that you should approach and play the game when it comes time to clash steel and spell against monster faces. I think the most glaring and most important thing to discuss up front is the fact that if you have a monster targeted by more than one party member and the first party member to attack the monster kills it, everyone else in the party will attack the empty space that the monster once occupied resulting in a message of “Ineffective” at the bottom of the screen where combat data flows into the game field. Now while I will agree that the first time I played this game after coming from a long line of other FF titles in which it would randomly assign new targets for the remaining attacks of your remaining party members I too was pretty pissed off about it. “What the fuck kind of sense does that make?” I thought aloud to myself, “Why would you do that? It feels so counterintuitive!” But let me say that now having gone back and played it for this review/retrospective that I actually kind of like it. Now, how in the world can this be? How could I hate it one play attempt and enjoy it another? I had to think about it myself to be honest and the best answer that I could come up with is that the only reason it felt counterintuitive was the fact that I had been conditioned by years and years of more advanced FF titles in which this wasn’t an issue. And upon realizing that I was able to clear a sort of mental hurdle as it were. I was able to approach the game with a sense of acceptance of this design choice by adapting to the perimeters of the games rules of combat.

It actually began to feel like it was adding a level of strategy and depth to the gameplay that I hadn’t been able to see before. You see, when you get into a combat in any other FF title that you’ve played you’ve probably been able to recognize enemy types that you knew your party could wipe the floor with and so you would simply hold down the attack button and let the game sort it out for you. Convenient, yes but doesn’t it also sort of get a little boring? I can say for me personally, it does. And with FF1 the fact that I had to be involved even at the most basic level with the combat due to having to pick targets for each party member as to make sure not to waste attacks kept my attention and even made me feel much more involved with even the most meaningless of skirmishes. I mean after all, if you didn’t want to be involved with the game then why would you play it in the first place right? Now I know that I may be in the minority on this one, and that’s fine I expected as much and I don’t blame anyone by any means for not liking this little quirk about the combat but I just think people should approach it with more of an open mind before condemning it like has often been to it in the past.

After all when you’re not in a situation in which you are simply steamrolling the enemy party it can actually make for an extremely satisfying and thought provoking strategic element. You can’t just throw caution to the wind and think along the lines of “well if the first ogre dies to the warrior than the thief will just attack that other ogre and everything will be okay” you have to think more along the lines of “okay, now the warrior should have 2x attacks right now and the ogre has roughly 100-some odd HP, so if I hit him with the warrior his damage should be enough to kill him so I’ll have the thief attack the next ogre in the pack” and to me that’s pretty satisfying on a cerebral level. It kind of makes me feel more tactical about my approach to the combat and tactics are always satisfying and good especially when we’re talking Final Fantasy Tactics…sorry that was a bad joke but I’ll make it up to you with a review of that game one day I promise! (It can’t just be 8-bit titles forever folks!)

The other major complaints are simply that the enemies are too tough and the miss rate of attacks from your party members is too high. And I would say you’re right about that but only until about level 5 or 6. It’s certainly true that one of the toughest parts of this game is simply getting started and beginning the quest but While I wish I could say that I feel the same way about the high rate of missed attacks generated by the party in the early stages of the game as I do about the “Ineffective” attacks from attacking a dead monster’s now vacant space, I just don’t. The high miss rate early game did in fact aggravate me to no end when I started playing the game. Because the monsters are pretty tough and it can be annoying to have to keep trekking back and forth between the open world map and town just to stay at the Inn over and over because you missed every melee attack you tried to land for the first two rounds of combat and got your nipples torn off by angry Imps or a pack of wolves. Those baddies out there are not fucking around and it would be a big enough challenge to defeat them even if you were landing every blow. This just feels like a bit of a deal breaker and like I said a second ago I just can’t really approach it with the same eye for understanding that I could with the “Ineffective” message. Luckily though, as stated above, it only lasts the first few levels and then the hit/miss ratio seems pretty fair, still higher than most of the other FF titles but still fair.

Another gripe I hear from combat is that there are far too many enemies with status affects attached to their basic attacks, things like poison, paralyze, blindness, and all the rest. And while I’m willing to admit it can get somewhat annoying in this game, my background in tabletop gaming gives me some insight into what I think they were trying to do. As anyone who has ever played Dungeons and Dragons back in the day I am familiar with the fact that there were so very, very, many enemies in the world of D&D that had these types of status affects attached to their basic attacks when they would land a blow on a hero who didn’t make a constitution or will save. Seeing as all RPGs stem from the basic mold set by D&D I think they were attempting to essentially make a video game experience that was as similar to D&D as possible while at the same time simplifying it to make it more accessible to non-diehard RPG gamers. I guess what I’m trying to say is that they were building off of what they had seen come before and what they knew in order to construct the flow of combat and the interactions with monsters in this game.

Root 3: Interface/Descriptions and Item Upgrades.

Now we’re ready to move on to the item shop/magic shop interfaces, after all it shouldn’t take too long since it doesn’t exist…yeah this is probably the ONE major flaw that I can’t look past in this game. Now once again all of this is available in the handbook that came with the game but blah, blah, blah, standing on its own, no outside resources, blah, blah, blah. The point being that in the game itself there are no descriptions of what spells do, whether or not gear is better for your character or not, or even which heroes can equip what gear and weapons. You either have to already know from experience or simply guess what gear and weapons can be used by what heroes. Now as a seasoned Final Fantasy veteran this might be easier for you to do than a novice for sure but there comes times when it isn’t exactly clear simply by looking at the name of the piece of equipment who can use it in your party.

This also becomes a problem with spells for the same reasons. There are no descriptions of the spells and with a limited character count for the names of spells many of them are abbreviated which would be confusing enough but on top of that some of the names of the spells don’t really give you an idea as to what they do. When I first saw LAMP up for sale in the white magic shop I thought it could do one of two things, either emit light for some dark cave or dungeon in the near future, or, it would possibly cure darkness…but that didn’t make much sense to me so I bought it only to find out that yes, it does in fact cure blindness. Now some of you might think, “well duh, that should have been obvious” well fair enough but what would a spell called INVIS make you think its affect is? You would probably think it makes your character invisible and un-targetable for a few rounds but no kind sir, it increases your ability to dodge. I think it makes sense in retrospect sure, but I think a spell called NMBL, as in nimble, would have made more sense and immediately made me associate it with a higher chance to dodge. What about FOG? What does fog make you think its affect would be? Would you guess that it raises the ARMOR of the affected unit? NO? ME EITHER!

The point is that there is some confusion caused by the lack of in-game descriptions can be frustrating and somewhat annoying at times and it’s certainly at its most obnoxious when you are simply trying to upgrade your gear and you have to spend a ton of time trying to figure out what gear is benefitting you or even what the benefit of using an axe over a sword is. It’s just one of those things that begs for a healthy amount of descriptive text or indicators of improved power/defense stats when using the new gear. But this is NOTHING compared to the item shop interface. HEY! Do you need to buy some health potions to keep the party up without burning your entire supply of cure and heal spells? What about some pures to cure that annoying poison status you keep getting from the snakes in the woods outside of town? Well if you want to buy a lot of them then get comfortable because you are going to be clicking the everliving shit out of the “A” button! There is no way to purchase more than one item at a time so in order to buy ten of them you have to go through the process of telling the shopkeeper that, yes, in fact I would like to purchase one of your fine potions, then he’ll present to you a menu of his fine drinkables, you select the one you want, and then he’ll inform you of the cost and ask you if you are sure you want to make this purchase. You reply that, yes, I would in fact love to buy your potion. Ta-Da! You’re done!! Well you’re done buying YOUR FIRST POTION… I mean they were kind enough to put healing potions at the top of the menu to accommodate spamming the button to keep purchasing them one at a time without having to continually navigate the menu, but it’s still quite an inconvenient annoyance that once again, I just can’t defend or enjoy.

Root 4: Final Thoughts (We’re evolving!)



So in closing can we look back at all of that text and say for certain whether or not Final Fantasy for the NES is still a viable and enjoyable game to play in this day in age, standing all on its own without outside assistance from guides, manuals, and the like? Well as much as we can discuss this back and forth and try to present evidence for both sides it really just comes down to personal preference. I for example have a few gripes with some of the aspects of this game but at the same time I find myself playing it for hours on end and enjoying the hell out of it. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, my love of the RPG genre, the classic NES score or the pixel art but there is just something magical about this game. And it’s fun! Now like I said, that’s just my opinion and nothing I say will persuade you to like this game if you hate it but that’s not what this series is about. It’s more about opening the floodgates of discussion for retro gamers to come together and mix it up a bit (in a respectful, enjoyable, manner) and maybe change a few ideas or stances towards certain titles. So yeah, kind of a cop-out probably for many of you who read this lengthy article expecting me to give a solid final analysis but unfortunately that’s not the way things work in the real world. This is the kind of thing that has to be discovered for yourself. Nobody can decide for you whether or not you think a game is great. I mean hell I wrote my first article about Castlevania 2: Simon’s Quest because I love that game and I feel like waaaay to many people think its shit. It wasn’t exactly to state that “THIS GAME IS GREAT AND YOU SHOULD STOP HATING IT NOW!!! RAWR!!!” It was just to attempt to maybe clarify and justify a few things to see if PERHAPS people were a little more educated about certain aspects of the game and games of the time in general that perhaps they would at least see it in a different light. And that’s what I’m trying to do here too. Final Fantasy has a lot of promise if you are willing to forgive a few flaws and at least be willing to look up spell affects and equipment stats online. Hell you can get the .pdf of the Adventurer’s Manuel from replacement docs.com right here http://www.replacementdocs.com/download.php?view.146. So don’t use the walkthrough part (unless you get stuck and want to cry you pansy!) but utilize the spell descriptions to your benefit and give it one more go. Who knows you might just find out that there is some life left in this classic RPG yet!