The World is Square

    Ah, how we have come full circle.
    I remember playing the original Final Fantasy (FF1) back on the NES for hours and days and weeks. Even with its capacity to save only one game, it's goofy and cryptic translation from Japanese, and the grating battle music. FF1 was a hit, no two ways about it, but a bigger hit in Japan than stateside.
    Thus, we missed out on FF2 and 3. Well, most of us did - Some of us simply imported the cartridges from the Land of the Rising Sun and the rest of us just downloaded the ROM images and played through these games on our PC's with emulators.
    Final Fantasy is, in case you've been living under a rock as of late, Square's most famous and by far most successful RPG (RolePlaying Game) series. The Final Fantasy franchise took off in America when FF7 was released for the Playstation. FF7 was (is) a great game, too, but left a vast number of new RPGers wondering where the first six went.
    Well, FF4 and 6 were kinda-sorta released as "Final Fantasy 2" and "Final Fantasy 3" in America, but both games were rare and most players never laid eyes on them.
    The rest of the Final Fantasy series stayed in Japan and nobody except us fanatics saw any of it.
    Until now.
    Square's been re-releasing some of its SNES era hits for the Playstation. Final Fantasy 4 and Chrono Trigger were released as "Final Fantasy Chronicles" and Final Fantasy 5 (never before seen in the states) and 6 were released as "The Final Fantasy Anthology". Now the much anticipated Final Fantasy Origins is out - It's Final Fantasy 1 and 2 (2 also never being seen in the states) rolled into one disk and given a facelift for the Playstation, Super Mario All Stars style.
    So is it any good? Yes, yes it is.
    At heart both the Origins versions of FF1 and FF2 are their original games. Square has, thankfully, retained all or nearly all of the feel, mechanics, and style of the first two games. Unlike the previous FF re-releases, however, these are not straight translations of the original games. FF1 and 2 came out on the now quite antiquated Nintendo Entertainment System (an 8 bit console, for those of you too young to remember) and the audio and visuals of the original games wouldn't excite anyone in today's video game market. Thus these versions of Final Fantasy sport all new graphics and soundtracks, as well as new english translations for both games. The graphics are very SNES-like and remind me most of Final Fantasy 5 for the SNES. Nothing spectacular for sure, but light years ahead of those of the original games. Both of these games are 2d and tile based. There are pesudo-3d backgrounds in the battles and cutscenes, but the rest of these games are strictly 2d.
    There have been other changes to the games, but most of them are for the better. There is a "collections" section to each game which sports an item list (quite handy in actual gameplay, as a matter of fact, since it displays what treasures you have collected and missed in each dungeon), beastiary, and art collection. The beastiary is filled as you defeat monsters, Pokémon style, and the pieces of art are unlocked through a variety of means. The beastiary is also vaguely useful as it details the amount of HP, XP, and Gil (money) a given creature is worth as well as its elemental weaknesses and whatnot. The artwork is just pretty and serves no function except to fill the rest of the CD. Returning players will be happy to note, by the way, there there are no evident loading pauses in either of these games, unlike the previous Square rereleases.
    Mechanics for both games have also been changed in a few key places. All of these changes are fixes to prominent gameplay issues present in both of these primitive Final Fantasies. You can now view the stats of equipment in shops before you spend your hard earned cash (a major gripe in FF1) and your pary members are now smart enough to automatically target the next creature if they've been assigned to attack something that another party member has already killed. The battle windows have been cleaned up and resemble later Final Fantasy games now, instead of the old stack-of-fifty-windows system FF1 had.
    There is also the cryptic "memo" system, which allows you to save a game to temporary memory. These "memo" saves are lost when the system is powered down but allow you do make quick saves anywhere (except battles) in case you want to try something stupid (attacking a big strong monster or going for some hidden treasure) without risking the well-being of your memory card save. If you win, fine. If not, go back to the memo save.
    All of the key gameplay elements have been retained. The quests are the same, the maps are the same, and the stats of your equipment and the monsters are the same. The translations have been updated (for FF2, obviously, as it has never been released in english before), to great effect in Final Fantasy 1 now that you have some clue what you're supposed to be doing. Some new cutscenes have been added to clarify the plot a bit and the characters have more frames of animation and such. Nothing major, but a pleasant surprise for someone expecting an exact clone of the original games.
    When you get right down to it, though, FF1 and 2 are great games with or without the facelift. They may seem simple to the jaded gamers of today, but I think they're both solid enough games to warrant the attention of any open minded player. Final Fantasy 2, in particular, is a deceptively deep and detailed game both in the gameplay and its plot. It was one of if not the first console RPG to center on the characters rather than mindless demon killing. FF1 is an excellent game in its own right as well, but has a much more generic plot and setting.
    Anyone who has ever played a later Final Fantasy game needs to give Origins a whirl to see what the series is all about. Highly recommended.