YES! This is officially
the 25th game I am reviewing for my blog! This calls for
celebration! Let's party! ...Oh, right, I partied a week ago. And
really enough for a while. Eh, whatever. This is a special occasion,
I'm one fourth through to having reviewed 100 games! ...Okay, that's
not much, but still...
Name one of the most
famous video game series of all time? ...Aside from the Nintendo
ones? ...Yep, Final Fantasy. The game that saved Square Enix, so much
that now we can't tell when the Hell is it gonna be the true final
game. In fact, many reviewers out there have some hatred towards a number of the later titles. Among them Spoony, from The Spoony Experiment. Some of the recent additions to the series were...
um... lacking in quality, and that's to say the least. Regardless of this, any
video game legacy had to begin in a way or another. And for Final
Fantasy, it was a very regular game that proved to be a lot of fun. A
game called... Final Fantasy.
Oh, but don't worry. You
know me. When I'm negative, it's because the game really got me
angry. It takes a lot to drive me mad. So, I won't be too harsh on
this milestone of gaming, the one that began a gigantic series, the
one that helped define a genre along with the first Dragon Quest game. Everyone says it's good, so how could I be harsh on it? Let's jump into Final Fantasy and see why people love it so much.
So, you create a save
file, and then you get to the character selection screen. Huh, it's
fun, you can select the classes of the four characters in your team.
You get to choose between six classes: Fighter, Black Belt, Thief,
Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage. You have only
four characters, which means you have to choose wisely. On the other
hand, you can pick each class more than once, so you can make a team
with four Fighters, four Black Wizards or four Black Belts...In other words, you have a LOT of different team combinations possible. Uh...
The quests for those four
characters begins... with having to save a princess. Real creative.
From an evil wizard. Oh, very creative again. So, the four appear
near the little medieval village of Coneria...
No, that's Corneria. And
that's a friggin' planet, not a village. Also, Coneria has only one R.
After visiting
Coneria, the four heroes head to the nearby Temple of Fiends, where
the evil knight Garland is holding the princess captive. Luckily,
Garland is defeated pretty easily... which is weird... and so the
heroes save the princess.
Well, that was quick. The
princess is returned to the castle, and she offers a gift to the
team: A lute. That old music instrument that reminds of a guitar,
right? What will that be for? Oh well. So, the heroes must travel to
the nearer continent, by using the bridge that the King built for
them. You'll quickly notice that there's a lot of water surrounding
the islands, and clearly at some point those bodies of water will
have to be crossed for the adventure to continue. Therefore, the
heroes need a boat. To get it, the heroes must first pass by Matoya's
cave. Matoya is a witch who uses living brooms around her cave to
keep everything tidy. (I just hope she's better at controlling them
than Mickey.)
As it turns out, Matoya
is blind without her crystal ball, so you need to find it. The group
heads to the nearest village, Pravoka, which is being invaded by
pirates. Not only that, but by speaking to Captain Bikke, he'll launch
his entire crew at you; in other words, he'll Pravoka battle with the
heroes. Once his crew is defeated, captain Bikke hands over his ship
to the team. Hey, thanks!
On the way, you meet... Mad ponies! My Little Pony jokes, you better not appear! |
So, the Light Warriors
start navigating the nameless seas of this world, until they reach
the Elvish Kingdom. I always wondered if elves were very good at
music. Maybe they could make sense of this Lute... Hey, maybe there's
an expert in guitars somewhere at the Elvish Kingdom, maybe an Elvish
Presley... When the Warriors visit the castle, they
learn that the Prince has been put to sleep by a curse, and only a
special herb can wake him up. Mayota has the herb. But she wants her
crystal ball. Ugh, this is complicated. After a bit of leveling, the
heroes head west to reach a little castle, with the very
(un-)creative name of Northwest Castle, where a guy will offer his
help to cure the Elf Prince, but only if the heroes bring him a
crown. Damn!
Continuing west, the
heroes finally reach the Marsh Cave, and progress through the cave
(which is, by the way, filled with pretty darn powerful enemies),
until they reach the lowest floor. They find the treasure chest
hiding the crown, but it is protected by a group of evil wizards! And
damn, those are dangerous! Seriously, when I played this game for the
first time, I had to try again three or four times! It doesn't help
that the number of wizards is randomly set, from 2 to 4... A damned
hard fight.
So, the Light Warriors
must make their way back to the Northwest Castle. They talk again to
the benevolent person, who's then revealed to be... the evil one who
cursed the Elf Prince! It's none other than the King of the Dark
Elves, Astos! And he's real hard to defeat. Luckily, once the fight
is over, he leaves behind Matoya's crystal ball. The ball is brought
back to Matoya, she hands the cure (magic herbs), the team heads back
to Elfland to cure the Elf Prince... Phew. Grateful, the Elf Prince
then gives the party a key. This magic key and open any locked door,
awesome! Let's loot the castles!
Also, while we're at it,
I should mention that you can buy spells for your characters in the
villages. There's a very large selection, and as such you can really
give your characters a lot of spells to work with. The spells are
ranked on eight different levels of power, and the stronger they are, the more
Magic Points they cost, but the more useful they become in
battle. There's also special spells such as Exit, to leave dungeons
and the like. You can also buy all kinds of weapons and protection
items for your characters. There's a problem, though; many spells
have bugs in their programming, which means they won't work. It's
kinda crappy, especially because many of those spells would be very
useful. Same goes for special weapons that have additional effects;
the effects won't be there. It sucks, but hey, if that's the main
complaint so far, we have no reason to complain, right?
Its appearance in the later versions. More badass than all Cullen! |
So, back to the Earth
Cave, and now the group goes even further, eventually reaching the
final room of the dungeon, where an Elemental fiend is waiting for
them. The Earth Fiend, the Lich!
No, not that one! Though
it would be pretty freaking awesome, I'll give you that. Especially
if it was the final boss.
After the Lich is beaten,
the group gets the Earth Orb to shine, which means that one fourth of
their task is done! Now the team sails to Crescent Lake,
located pretty darn far from where they are. Wow, they'll really go
everywhere in this game. Anyway, this little town has a circle of
sages who explain what the Hell those orbs are. There are four
elemental fiends, each of which is guarding an elemental orb. The
only way to bring back the peace is to defeat the four fiends and restore all four orbs. After
this little meeting with the circle, there are three ways to go; an
Ice Cave, the Gurgu Mountain (a volcano where the fire fiend is
hidden), or a Cave of Ordeals. No, not the one from The Legend of
Zelda: Twilight Princess. By the way, the team gets a Canoe so they
can go in small rivers where their ship cannot go.
Yes, it's a six-armed serpent-woman. The mermaids' evil step-sisters. |
The group heads to Onrac,
and then to a waterfall where a dungeon is hidden. You have to go
through this place to recover the Cube, which is necessary to reach
the fourth fiend. Then they sail the air to reach a desert where a
Caravan is located. They get hints as to where the third fiend might
be. And back to Onrac we go! The party finds an underwater shrine,
which they venture far and deep into until they reach the third
fiend... the Kraken!
No, not that... Okay,
kinda like that one.
The team also finds a
Slab by that point. An expert in one of the previously-visited
villages can translate it, which will reveal the location of the
final fiend. What's the next stop? Another desert wasteland, except
one with the Mirage Tower in its center. It is a very short dungeon
compared to others, but it barely serves as a stairway to Hell; and
by Hell, I mean the next dungeon, the Floating Castle, which could
not be reached unless the team used the Cube found behind the
waterfall.
Okay, I should mention
right now that there is one infamous thing to know about this
dungeon. Warmech. Every player who encountered this powerful robot on
the way to the fourth fiend knows how much of a pain in the ass it
can be. Yes, I just swore. It's THAT powerful. Everyone who knows the
history of Final Fantasy knows about the goddamn Warmech. It's a
memetically hard boss. You have very little chance to meet it, but if
you do, you can just start praying. Even worse about this thing: Warmech is met near
the end of the dungeon, therefore way far from the entrance...
Now that this inevitable
subject has been covered, let's continue. The party moves ahead and
meets the final fiend, a multi-headed dragon named Tiamat.
After he's defeated, the
four Orbs have been restored! If you need information, know that
those four fiends are still around because... because... why,
exactly? Uh... It's kind of hard to tell, because of the ...Anyway, after this long adventure, the team heads back to Coneria.
There's only one way to end this: The Temple of Fiends! Why weren't
the fiends in it? ...Regardless, the party heads inside, puts the Orbs
around a dark crystal, uses the lute (ah, it finally has an use!)... and all four get transported two millenniums
back in time, when the Temple of Fiends was an immense place housing
the four elemental fiends and their leader, Chaos.
If you show me a picture
of something else than Final Fantasy 1's Chaos, I rip this review off
of Internet, I burn this blog to the ground and finally I shoot my
computer tower.
Ah, there you go.
So, as I was about to
say, the Light Warriors travel through the Temple of Fiends (boy,
something awful must have happened for it to be that way in the
game's present times... I'm betting on a Godzilla Stomp.) First comes
around a powerful enemy named the Phantom. Then we meet up with old
friends: The Lick, Kary, the Kraken and Tiamat. Welcome back, we
totally missed you! Luckily, they didn't change much, so... I guess
it makes them weaker than before.
This is it, the final
fight. The Warriors cross the doorway to the final room, and meet up
with... Garland? Wait, did he time travel too? When the Hell did he
do that? ...Eh, it doesn't matter. Seems like he learned his lesson
from last time, because instead of him fighting you, he summons the
Evil God Chaos. The last boss. Get ready for an epic showdown.
And... I'll have to
admit... For as epic as this game is, and for as epic as Chaos
looks... In the end, I actually thought he was kinda easy to defeat.
Don't get me wrong, he wasn't easy to beat per se, but he sure wasn't
as hard as a true final boss should be. Still, I believe that this is
a pretty good way to end the story. Defeating Chaos and the four
elemental fiends resulted in their influence on the present to have
never been, and therefore the world of Final Fantasy is at peace, as
it hasn't been bothered by demons since two thousand years.
The end.
EPIC.
Really, I totally see why
this game defined a genre. It's an excellent game. First off, like I
said earlier, the graphics are beautiful for the era and the music
isn't half bad (though it, too, was limited by the technology at the
time). As for the story, it has more depth than it first seems. The
world where all this happens is very complete, having plains,
deserts, seas and rivers, volcanoes and cold areas. There's a lot of
nice touches, such as having a whole Elf village, pirates raiding the
seas (until your party defeats them and gains their ship, anyway),
and a community of wizards located further. The world's depth is
shown when the heroes find stuff, learn about past events and get enough
information about them, but never get to see the events unfold by themselves. As a result, if you don't pay attention, you'll miss important bits of information. Think of the Warmech. Why does it exist? How
was it created? Why is there a chance to meet it on a bridge?
Beyond that, one could
make the reasonable argument that the story is too
simple on first sight. The heroes have to pick up four Orbs, each one representing
an element, and these Orbs must be retrieved from the four Elemental
Fiends. On the way, to even reach later areas of the game, the party
has to find lots of lesser key items that are often as hard to find
as the damned Orbs themselves. In the end, most of the story is “go
get that item, then go get that one; wait, to get this one you need
another one”, and so on. However, it's during this item search that
the world's history gets expanded, showing that there's more than
meets the eye. It's just a little sad that we get less explanation and we are stuck in this item chase... I'd dare say that there's a lot of exposition around this game's world, and though it is interesting to see beyond the current state of the world, it's still quite sad that we don't actually get to live or even see the so-called important events.
The selection of weapons,
armor and spells is extremely large, and as such it is pretty much
impossible to get everything in the game. There's lots of nice little
secrets to find here and there, too; only walkthroughs can tell you
where those secrets are. One example that comes to mind is the peninsula near Pravoka that houses ultra-powerful monsters near the start of the game. The only major complaint is the bugged
spells and items that do not work the way they should, but in the
end, it doesn't make the game unplayable. On the contrary, in a way
it adds a bit more challenge, even if it was unintentional. If you can't use some
spells because they're bugged, doesn't that mean that some enemies
become harder to defeat? Oh well.
Truly, a masterpiece of
its time. I definitely recommend it. Buy it, 500 Wii Points on the
Virtual Console, have some good times visiting this world. Money well-spent.
And next week, we
continue on our visit of fantasy worlds with the Legend of Zelda
series. Or, to be precise, the Top 12 tools from the series. By
“tools”, I mean those objects that you cannot complete a dungeon
without. That usually means you also have to use it to defeat a boss.
See you soon!
...
...Wait... GARLAND WAS CHAOS??? WHAT THE F-
...
...Wait... GARLAND WAS CHAOS??? WHAT THE F-
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