Nearly a week has passed since I completed the very first Final Fantasy game and still I can’t find anything worth talking about in a round up article like this. I have explored some vast, beautiful worlds in Final Fantasy games, but I’ve never explored one as empty and dull as the one in the original game. I mentioned feeling lost more than often than not in my September update article, but after a 13 hour adventure came to close in another confusing set of corridors the baffling backtracking required was probably one of the most worthwhile things in Final Fantasy.

The PSP version that I completed featured an updated combat system, replacing the original’s magic system with the now series standard MP system. There’s probably other things, but I’d say this is the biggest reason that I made it from start to finish without losing or running from a single battle. At most one of my four heroes was knocked out and required a quick phoenix down. Perhaps the game knew I had named my team after 4 of the series’ best characters, Auron, Squall, Vivi and Yuna activated the crystals and saved the world effortlessly.

My characters were way overpowered at this point. Seriously Level 45 is overpowered for the end game of Final Fantasy.

I’m probably being way too harsh on a game that’s literally 27 years old. The basics are done well here, enemies are nice and diverse and having a choice of 4 ‘jobs’ at the start adds some replay-ability and is sure to add some much needed difficulty if you picked 4 white mages for instance. That said, I felt myself ‘having’ to play it, I wasn’t really enjoying mashing X over and over again for endless random enemies. Having to fight every boss in the game again in the final dungeon again wasn’t that great either.

It’s hard not to be down on a game that was so influential, but just doesn’t hold up to today’s standards. I’m glad I got it out of the way before moving on to some of the more exciting games, I’ve decided to save Final Fantay VI for last, the game that has remained on top of my pile of shame for nearly a decade.

The second game in the series is next on the agenda, which I’ll be playing on my Vita once again. The best thing about these ports is just how fast everything is. Battles start instantly and you are out of them again just as fast, something that the PS1 versions were massively lacking. The end is in sight, I have just 3 more games to conquer.

Favourite Music Track: Opening Theme

Call this a cop out, but given that this is the game that first introduced two of the most iconic musical motifs in gaming history I couldn’t pick anything else than the Opening Theme or Prelude. Since Opening Theme is more of a complete track I’ve used that here.

Favourite Boss Fight: Chaos

Given that this was the only boss of the entire game that presented much challenge, I had to pick FF‘s final boss here.