Final Fantasy 1 – Rude Awakening

I’m hoping to have comics back next week. For the past couple months work has been busy. We’re trying to release a new version of our software that we’ve been working on for well over a year. In the meantime I decided to share my thoughts on Final Fantasy.

When I was younger and the Final Fantasy games came out for NES and SNES I thought they were pretty stupid. “You mean I just pick Fight from a menu? I don’t actually fight?” is what I would say. When Final Fantasy 7 came out for the PS1 there was a big marketing campaign with commercials showing the amazing cutscenes. I got FF7 that Christmas and started playing it. Now that I was older I liked the strategy aspect of picking the right items to go into battle. I didn’t understand Materia and probably didn’t even have it equipped right, but I liked the game. Even though I never finished it but I did buy Chrono Cross a few years later and played all the way through it. I absolutely loved Chrono Cross. The battle system, the story, the large cast of characters, it was awesome at everything. Some more years passed, I tried Final Fantasy X but Blitzball was so stupid I abandoned it pretty quickly. I picked up Final Fantasy XII last year and really like it.

The reason I say all this is because I am not a hardcore Final Fantasy fan. I’ve played a few here and there but I am not an expert in any way. When SquareEnix released FF1 and FF2 for iPhone I thought I would try these RPGs from the school of old. My friends Brad and Cassadi still play these games so they must have some lasting appeal. However, the result of my initial playing was a hilarious fail of epic proportions.

I start a new game of Final Fantasy and it asks me to pick 4 classes and give them names. Following the same method I use for Oregon Trail I named my party after my friends. RC the Warrior, Ashley the White Mage, Brad the Monk and Cassadi the Black Mage. I knew the Warrior would be my fighter, White Mage would heal and Black Mage would do magic attacks but I have no idea what a Monk does. I only picked him because I thought it would be more useful than a Thief. In other games I’ve found that monsters who live in the woods don’t carry a lot of cash on them to steal. Now that I have my party I make my way to the castle. Oh no the King’s daughter or something has been kidnapped and is being held to the north of here. In exchange for her return the King will build a bridge for me, which is something I wasn’t even aware I wanted. My party heads out of town and makes a beeline for the north. Whoooosh, it’s our first random battle. Wait a second, none of my party members have any abilities. I thought everyone started with something. Despite not having abilities my team still defeats enemies easily and makes it to the bad guy’s castle. Once inside the castle I make the mistake of exploring instead of simply going forward into the main room with the chick I need to rescue. This was a big mistake because the dudes inside the castle kick my ass throughly. RC goes down first and I have no items at all to revive him. RETREAT! I make it out of the castle and start heading back to town. Brad goes down next. I’m almost back to town. Then Cassadi is knocked out. Ashley has to run away from the last two battles but makes it back to town. “well that was a colossal failure” I said aloud to no one. First things first, let’s go to the inn and revive everyone. I spend the night, but wait a second, everyone but Ashley is still dead. K-Dog was online so I asked him how to bring people back to life. He said I have to find some priest dude in town. I find him in the one unmarked building and he brings my party back to the living. It’s at this point I decide to buy some spells, equipment and potions. It’s funny how many things I take for granted in new RPGs that weren’t there back then. I saved the chick, went to the next town and beat up a pirate, then took his ship to Elfland. I’m not sure if this is where I’m supposed to go next but all the random battles really discourage exploration. I’ll keep playing the game because it’s easy to do in small doses. Although I still don’t know what a Monk does.