In 1987 a company called Square was sitting on the brink of bankruptcy. Even though they had a couple of good action games, they weren't pulling anything in. Eventually the staffers at Square had resources left for one last game and put the fate of Square in the hands of Hironobu Sakaguchi. Feeling that he couldn't make an action game, he decided he wanted to make a fantasy game. Convinced it would be the last game Square would do he named it Final Fantasy. About one year later, Final Fantasy II hit. The first Final Fantasy hit the US shelves in 1990 but the second didn't come until 2003 with the release of Origins.
This package is very close to the two original released games. The only exception is the updated graphics and a new translation. Much everything else remains unchanged. They're both good games, although Final Fantasy II definitely suffers more than the original game.
Final Fantasy, the first one, is simple. You guide a party of four around to gather up the crystals needed to save the world. Unfortunately, Final Fantasy has no narrative to drive its story along and the characters are all generic. This was, if you didn't know, standard at the time of its release. However, you did get to pick what class your four warriors would be. Either a Warrior, Black Mage, White Mage, Red Mage, Thief or Monk. While core statistics are different and mages can cast spells, there's really not much difference between the warrior, monk, and thief.
Battling in Final Fantasy is also a bit different as the game pits you in several battles quite often. Since there's no ATB gauge, it's entirely turned based. You select your actions and then watch as your characters attack. Battles will eventually get repetitive and you'll be very frustrated with the encounter rate, especially because you won't succeed in running from battles, and you'll also find that you can be attacked by nine enemies at once. Not to mention that Final Fantasy didn't use MP, but rather gave you a certain number of times you could cast a level spell. Final Fantasy was, in the end, an incredible challenge. And yes, you'll have to spend several hours just level grinding to be ready for the next dungeon just to make things easier. Another big problem with Final Fantasy is that the pacing of the game is incredibly slow. The first half is incredibly boring, but the second is surprisingly absorbing and you'll just want to keep plowing away. The NES limitations may slow some people down, especially if you started with later games in the series.
While Final Fantasy is worthwhile to fans, Final Fantasy II is a definite hit or miss. The story is certainly much better and it paces much better. Not to mention you aren't given a clan of generic characters to deal with, but characters with actual names. In terms of story, Final Fantasy II is a huge step up from the first one. Unfortunately, everything else is something of a mess due almost entirely to the battle system.
In Final Fantasy II, there's no such thing as levels. There are only stats. And they increase based on a characters actions. If a character attacks a lot, his strength will go up. If he uses a lot of magic, his magic goes up. If he takes a lot of damage, his HP and defense goes up. Your weapons level up as well. The longer a character uses a weapon, the more proficient he becomes with it. Likewise, this is also how magic levels up. The more you use it, the more powerful you are. This sounds good until you realize that as some stats increase, others go down. If your strength increases, there's a chance your magic will go down. This makes it nearly impossible to have a balanced character. It is also of no help to Final Fantasy II that you'll have to spend an unusually long amount of time doing this because much of the battles are hard. This is especially true given that just taking a few steps off the beaten path on the world map can pit you in a battle against enemies far stronger than your characters. The biggest problem, however, is that you have no way of telling just how strong your characters need to be. In short, Final Fantasy II may have a better story and better pacing than Final Fantasy I, but the gameplay really hinders it.
Both games look better and sound better at least, but they both suffer from some very similar problems. The first being the random encounter rate in both is sky high and you won't always have the resources to keep going through many of the game's long dungeons. The second being that the games never really inform you of where to go next unless you talk to a ton of people which can be a problem as well. And even when you know where to go next, you don't know how to get there. It opens the door for exploring but in these two games, doing that will get you killed. Several times. The biggest problem with both, however, is that you can only save at inns or by using tents. There's a quicksave feature for the games but it only saves a temporary file and it gets erased once you turn the Playstation off. This is a huge problem considering how long dungeons are... especially the final dungeon of each game. A feature to save anywhere would've been nice.
If you're interested in how the Final Fantasy series began, this is a good game to pick up. However, you may want to just pick up the Dawn of Souls port on the GBA instead. It fixes some of Final Fantasy Origins bigger problems by making both games a bit more balanced as well as adding a save anywhere feature and new dungeons. Buy Final Fantasy 1 & Final Fantasy 2 Bundle!
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