Keep It or Delete It?: Pushmo (3DS eShop)
Keep It or Delete It?: Quasar Quinn: Escape from Zargnon (Android)
Keep It or Delete It?: Mutant Mudds (3DS eShop)
Final Cut: Hetalia: World Series (Season 3) (DVD)
Keep It or Delete It?: Paper Monsters (iPad)
The first airship. Made by an ancient engineer named Cid.
In 1987, Square was on the ropes and needed to hit it big or they might have to close up shop. Hironobu Sakaguchi and his assistants hit the drawing board and came up with one of the games that defined the Japanese RPG genre. At the time, Sakaguchi called it Final Fantasy because if the game didn’t sell, it would be Square’s final title. Clearly, with Final Fantasy XIII nearing release in North America, Square and the Final Fantasy series lived to see another day. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the original title, Square Enix released a PSP remake with updated graphics and additional dungeons. Being three years old already, I thought I’d pick it up on discount when I saw it. How well did the original stand the test of time?
Final Fantasy centers around your party, the four Light Warriors, though storytelling is not the game’s strong point. You select your party from a set of classes including fighter, thief, and black mage, and give each of them a name. Then, without any back story, your party is dropped just outside the castle and town of Cornelia. After saving the princess from being kidnapped, the king agrees to rebuild the bridge off the island and your real adventure begins. The Light Warriors are charged with the task of restoring the four crystals, each representing a major element: earth, fire, water and wind. The game doesn’t always give you a big flashing sign showing you where to go, but if you talk to the townsfolk, you can piece together your next goal. At times, this can be frustrating, but it’s a little more realistic than having someone always rush in and tell you exactly where you need to be next. As the game progresses, you learn that a powerful evil is behind the weakening of the elements, and must be destroyed or else the all your work would be for nothing.
As you travel the world in search of these crystals, you will discover that random encounters in this game occur far too often. There were point in the game where I was literally walking 5 steps between battles, which becomes tiresome very quickly, but as a result, you will be quite familiar with the battle system by the end of the game. The battle system is still almost exactly like the original release on the Nintendo Entertainment System with one major difference. In the original NES release, your mages had 8 levels of spells and each level had a set number of spells you can cast. For example, you could cast 9 level one spells, but only 5 level 6 spells and 3 level 8 spells. In the PSP remake, you have a pool of magic points that all your spells draw from, much like the later incarnations in the series. This makes battles much easier than the original version because you can cast your upper level spells many more times. Other than this, the battle system functions the same. Battles occur in rounds, and at the start of each round, you select whether to fight, cast spells, use items with each of your characters, and then the round plays out. Wash, rinse, repeat until the end of battle. For most of the game, the battles are laughable, your physical fighters can kill most enemies in one hit if you keep up with the equipment. The boss monsters you face will give you more challenge, but with decent planning, you can beat them without too much trouble. The final boss, and the bosses of the extra dungeons are far stronger than anything you find elsewhere in the game. I was able to defeat the boss you fight to retrieve the wind crystal in only a handful of turns and take almost no damage. After getting through the final dungeon to the final boss, I was able to win with only one person left alive on a coin flip, if he went first, I was dead, and if I went first, I won. Lucky for me, I went first. It would be nice if the game would have prepared you a bit more for the final boss, but it is still manageable if you’re smart with your choices.
You'll be seeing this screen a lot.
As you defeat each of the bosses that are protecting one of the crystals, you can gain access to a bonus dungeon, a sidequest known as the Soul of Chaos. Each of the dungeons is somewhat randomized in the order and types of floors you will face, but at the end of each is a major boss to defeat. As a reward for going through these areas, you will get plenty of experience, treasures and equipment as well as fight monsters that are only found in these dungeons, helping you complete your bestiary. There is one additional bonus dungeon known as the Labyrinth of Time, available only right before the final dungeon that is filled with puzzles that must be solved in a timely manner. If you don’t solve the puzzle on each floor fast enough, your party begins taking damage every second until you escape or die. For me, these dungeons felt like they existed only to extend the time it takes to beat the game, as the annoyance of going through them wasn’t worth the reward. One other bonus the game offers is that after completing the game, you gain access to an art gallery. Many of the pictures require completion of certain floors of the Labyrinth of Time, while others require multiple playthroughs to unlock.
The graphics have been thoroughly updated from their NES sprite days. They are about on par with a PS1 game, which is plenty sufficient for the PSP screen. Some of the pictures in the art gallery are quite nice, but certainly do not make or break the game. The quality of the music has also been greatly improved, but none of the songs were replaced; so, all the familiar themes are still there, but much easier to listen to. Even though the fidelity has been improved, with all the time spent on the world map and in battle, those two tunes will get tiresome by the end of the game.
It’s sad to admit that the original Final Fantasy hasn’t weathered the past two decades that well, but it is an important piece of RPG history. If you enjoy Japanese RPGs and want to get back to your roots, it wouldn’t hurt to take a look at this one, but if you aren’t already a fan, you’re not going to enjoy it.
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