I've been playing through a lot of the Final Fantasy games recently. And with all the attention reader reviews have been getting, I've decided to review the Final Fantasy games in the main series. I've beaten the first ten games and I will post the rest of the reviews whenever I type them up. And I'll review XII and XIII whenever I beat them but until then, here's number one.
Final Fantasy (NES)/Grade: B-
Upon startup of the game you are greeted with a blue screenthat gradually fills with a wall of text that gives you some story information.Basically, the four elements are going crazy. The seas are wild, the earth isrotting, the air is out of control, and fire is a bit more “fiery” than usual.This is all thanks to four “elemental fiends” that are upsetting the balance ofthe world. After the story introduction, you get to create a team of fourcharacters. You have a choice between six character classes: Fighter, who is astrong attacker and can wield knives and swords. The black belt is a martialartist who attacks with nunchucks and his bare fists. The black mage is a weakattacker but he has the ability to cast powerful attack magic. The white mageis also a poor fighter but has the ability to heal and protect the party. Thered mage can wield swords and cast both black and white magic spells but can’tuse some of the higher level spells that white and black mages have access to.The thief is the sixth character class and is a nimble character who has theability to steal items from enemies. Battles are random. When you walk aroundthe world map or a dungeon, you will randomly be thrown into battle and takento a battle screen. The combat is turn based. At the beginning of each round,you choose actions for your characters to perform and then when their turnscome up, they will do whatever you told them to do. After the battle you areawarded with gold and experience points used to level up (assuming you didn’tdie, of course). The overworld graphics aren’t exactly the best that the NEShas seen but the character sprites during battle are a bit more detailed. Someof the character sprites look down-right awesome. The bosses, Lich and Chaosare particularly snazzy.
My main gripe with the game is that leveling up tends totake up a lot of time and I usually ended up having to grind levels every timeI was about to go to a new area. Another annoyance that regrettably appears inlater Final Fantasy games is the environmental hazards. They are long stretches offloor that you have to run across that cause damage to your entire party. Buttaking the good and the bad, it’s really a great start to one of my alltime favorite game series and it is loads of fun.