Being the Final Fantasy fan that I am, I never had the opportunity to go back and play the roots of Final Fantasy. That has changed since the Pixel Remasters, and now that I’ve played the first one that started it all, I am very glad that I can experience these gems of games any way that I want to.
The story is basically the tale of all stories. Darkness swallows the lands, the world is in disarray, and it's up to the four Warriors of Light to put an end to the darkness, and spread their light, and save the world. It all started here, and I think that’s very sweet. The crystals, the Warriors of Light, the quests, it’s all the traditional stuff as we know and love.
The game itself? It’s Final Fantasy all right! Random encounters, chip tunes, iconic classes. It’s fun! The classes in particular I was really amazed to see. Being able to choose any combination of the six classes really gives the player freedom on how they want to play the game. Go all in on DPS with 2 warriors and 2 monks, have a balance of damage and support with my team (warrior, monk, white mage, black mage), or go all in on heals with no damage output with 4 white mages. It feels ahead of its time, and I’m impressed for sure.
Another thing is how expansive the world is in the game. It’s honestly pretty massive, much bigger than I would expect from an NES game. It’s great to get more familiar with the world, and knowing where you can and can’t go based on your current transportation options. Things like this are what made Final Fantasy so influential to RPGs, and having my eyes open to the scale of the game, with its limitations too, made it a stand-out moment in my first playthrough.
Those were mainly the notable and unexpected impressions I had with the game itself, so now onto the Pixel Remaster specifics. I love the quality of life features they’ve added. Wide screen is beautiful, autosaves are super convenient, random encounters being toggleable really comes in clutch when low on resources, grinding can be either more difficult or nonexistent, and the new arrangements to the remasters sound great as always. If I had to add anything to these remasters that I wish were here, I do wish for more range in the difficulty. Difficulty is basically split among how much EXP and Gil you obtain. In my personal experience, I would gain too much experience and make bosses too easy. If I turned it down, it would then be too hard for me, since these are NES RPGs after all. Maybe that’s a me-problem problem, having trouble finding the right balance of difficulty, but I have two more NES Final Fantasy games after this, so I think I’ll find the right balance.
As I played through my first playthrough, a word kept popping into my head. That word is humble. If I had to describe the first Final Fantasy in one word, it would be humble. With 16 mainline games, and countless spinoffs and remakes, Final Fantasy has a wide range of stories and themes and gameplay loops and everything that makes it the series it is today. Here in the first game? You battle, gain experience, and level up to defeat the ultimate evil force. Impressive how many Final Fantasy’s still follow this rule the first game started to a T. And it all started here in this neat time capsule of what gaming was. Personally? While I do appreciate the game for what it is, I definitely am more spoiled to the more dense mechanics and intricacy of later games. This game is not bad, far from it, but I knew I wasn't going to have the same reaction as a kid from the 80s would at this game. I had the reaction of a museum goer. Just, “wow!”