Final Fantasy, these words instill a lot of emotion in your average console RPG player. Those 2 words coupled together bring together memories of epic battles, emotional scenes played out before your eyes better than any movie script written, hilarious moments, galavanting on chocobos and playing with moogles, and of course saving the world from destruction flash behind their eyes. This is where it all begins, and from looking at these 2 games, it's no wonder this is one of the biggest gaming franchises in history!
I've played the original Final Fantasy for the good ole' NES, and it was nice for a few hours of wistful nostalgia of the system i grew up on, but unfortunatly i've been pampered with all of these new fangled video game contraptions so i set it down and just picked up a copy of FF Origins. The first Final Fantasy is filled with many of the wonderful things that remain in FF games to this day. Most notably an epic quest ahead of you (though it's not very well explained why you're on this epic quest), magic casting, goblin thumping, and loads of GP (that's old skool gil for those of you newcomers to the series) and EXP to collect. of course back in the day they didn't think to add in things like save points or pheonix downs, or a bank of MP for you to cast spells, instead of a set amount of MP for each spell level. those are the main add ons in future games that make playing so much more fun. Final Fantasy 1 is a perfect jump off point, and that's about it. the story is thin, but twoards the end it actually gets pretty cool. Everything is based off of wandering around defeating monsters in loads of random battles and gaining levels. You have to buy your spells like in all of the early games (which is pretty lame if you ask me), and each one is assigned to a spell level slot which has a certain amount of MP for it to be cast. In the easy mode of the game most levels get up to 99 MP where the bottom ones get less, but in the original mode (which is pretty much a carbon copy of the NES game gameplaywise) you get up to 9 MP for each level.
a lot of things about FF1 are pretty cool though. The classes you choose for yourself at the beginning of the game (warrior, blackbelt, thief, red, white and black mage, ect.) upgrade themselves twoards the 3rd quarter of the game, the graphics in this update surpass anything ever seen on the Super NES (they're better than FF6's), the spell effects are pretty cool to watch, and the music is phenominal for trekking across the globe. The added gallary images are pretty neat to check out, but nothing really too spectacular unless you like yoshi-tako amano's art (which i don't). i wish they would have made more FMV's for the games and made those unlockable. The bestiary is helpful for repeat battles, but it only really becomes useful after you beat the game once for boss data. but by then you already know how to take out bosses anyways, right? The item collection log however is very helpful in dungeons if you didn't explore everywhere, or even if you did and missed a chest. it gives you the number of treasures found and the total to find for each area with a chest to open. however, all of this is pretty small to the lesson of videogame and RPG history you get. FF is pretty fun to play for those of you that wanna get to the tip of the roots of this game lineage, and even those that wanna spend 20 hours saving the world and the crystals (yep, this is where the crystal mythos of the final fantasy world all began, there's no chocobos or moogles though, but there is a CID).
Final Fantasy 2 however is a whole new ballgame. This game is such a perfect addition to this collection, and most aspects about it make it very difficult for me to belive that this was at first just a fmaicon game (famicon is the japanese NES for the game system history impared).
first of all, this game has an actual cast of characters, with an actual purpose, and actual personality. you care about these orphans that get wrapped up in a rebellion and end up saving the world from evil as we know it. second of all, there is no experience points, there is no having to buy fire, fire 2, fire 3, ect. everything is based off of the proficiency system. this system is frickin DEEP! i can understand why square never made another final fantasy with this system because EXP is so much easier, but the pay offs are HUGE!
the proficiency system levels up your characters stats by the way you act in battle. if your character gets hit a lot and loses a lot of HP, their HP and endurance rises so they can toughen up a bit (this doesn't matter who makes them lose HP, so you can knock around your own guys a bit to raise their HP, kinda cool, but also kinda silly). but at the same time it depends on what's making them lose HP, if it's magic attacks, your MagDefense goes up, if it's physical, your evasion/ agility raises. certain stats are also decreased by the increase of another. such as if your spirit rises from casting or recieving a lot of white magic, your strength goes down (hence why white mages are always such physical wussies). as your strength goes up, your intelligence goes down (kinda to say your a dumb musclehead, but it negates you being a sword slinging black mage), and so forth. it's a pretty complex system when you think this was designed for a nintendo! you also have to take into account weapon proficiency and magic proficiency. as you cast more spells, your spell strength goes up in levels, but so does your MP cost. so you can be casting ultima 1 for 1 mp, but it wont do much damage, but you can cast fire 8 for 8 mp, and you could wipe out a field of enemies. weapon proficiency aids in accuracy, number of hits you can get on an enemy with your equipped weapon type, and strength with certain weapons. you can make your characters master one weapon and only weild that or, be a weapons expert and train with all of them slowly, it's up to you. the proficiency system is perfectly balanced in the aspect you can get really good at doing a couple of things, but you'll hurt in others, or you can be completely average all around, but that's a delicate balance to keep. i think that's one of the best features in the game.
the fact that this game focuses more on story than droning battles is a godsend. the dialouge is actually really well written (i have no clue how the origianl japanese was, but this version is really cool.) for a nintendo game, and it gives you a glimpse into things to come for future final fantasy games when it comes to deep storylines and belivable dialouge in a fantasy setting. this also introduces you to the final fantasy mainstay of the chocobo! don't we all love chocobos?
final fantasy 2 also contains the item collection, art gallery, and bestiary of FF1, but here, it's really the game itself that shines through. the graphic and sound improvements are also there (with some of the coolest spell effects i've ever seen on the PSX, honestly), new included cutscenes that are slightly above 16 bit quality,a nd the opening CG is something i could watch over and over again, it's THAT COOL!
final fantasy 2 is really a rare hunk of diamond found in a coal mine, and is a perfect hold over till Final Fantasy X-2 and 11 come out. Where as FF1 is nice for the hardcore fan and might be nice for those taking a stroll down amnesia lane, FF2 is perfect for anybody.
