Final Fantasy Adventure

Often overlooked as one of the red-headed stepchildren of the Final Fantasy series, FFA plays more like the early Zelda games than the incarnations of Final Fantasy that we are used to. That aside, the game is amazing, with an amazingly deep plot for the time period and plenty of options to customize your weapons and armor, four character traits that you can level up, and eight spells you pick up automatically through the game. While it can't compete with the depth or graphics of its successors, FFA is definitely an oft-overlooked classic from the original Game Boy era.Buy Final Fantasy Adventure!

Final Fantasy Legend

This was first Final fantasy game, and my first role playing game ever. Well, my first for the 100$ Gameboy (back when it game with a free game - Tetris). This game pretty much set the standard for me in turns of music, story and depth, in fact - the industry!. While our characters were our own creation, they were still an integral part of the story. And I loved the story!. Now, I've found Final Fantasy VII and a new standard. This series has had it's up and downs, & it's telling that players in the 21st Century judge this game harshly without realizing that games back in the 80/90's most of time games were just fun & often/sometimes required thought. Not the eye-candy, 3D-fest, kill everything in site, war-this/war-that that plagues us now. Graphics NEVER made a game back then, playability was what mattered. And this game was playable, in fact I played it twice, wait many times and I'm still playing FF7! Games like this are hard to come by, and with "The World Ends With You" Square *finally* went back to what they do best: strong characters, engaging plot! 3D is great, but what's the point if all you are is great to look at?Buy Final Fantasy Legend!

Final Fight: Streetwise

What idiot thought this was okay to do? This is what happens when American developers take over Japanese franchises! WORTHLESS!Buy Final Fight: Streetwise!

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales

First, let me explain why I bought this game. A long time ago, I played Chocobo Racing and really enjoyed the short story mode. I'd only wished it had been longer. So, I bought Chocobo's Dungeon 2, thinking it would have a better developed story and be a true RPG. Wrong! It was a hideously boring dungeon crawler that had even less story in it than the racing game. So, when I heard that Chocobo Tales was coming out, I hoped that this would be a true RPG with an excellent story revolving around the cute protagonist, Chocobo. Well, I was half right, it gets the cute (if overly simple) story down, but the gameplay just isn't up to par. Sigh, maybe someday Squeenix will get it just right...

Graphics (score 10/10): The graphics look very nice. Characters and backgrounds are bright and crisp. Plus, the characters are fully 3-D and still look good.

Music (score 8/10): Most of the music is remixed chocobo themes from the final fantasy games. They all sound quite catchy and upbeat, but there's only so much of it you can stand to listen to before you hit that volume button on your DS. Overall, however, music was handled very well and is pleasant enough.

Characters (score 8/10): Given the type of game this is, I didn't expect much character depth. Even so, the characters are handled pretty well given the simplicity of the story. Your main character, Choco, never says anything (the stereotypical silent protagonist, I suppose). However, everyone else is imbued with sufficient personality to make them likeable and even humorous despite their somewhat one-dimensional personalities. Normally, character personalities that are this simplistic (for example, Chubby chocobo likes food--end of character development) would merit a bad score from me, but given the overall simple, light-hearted feel of the game, it seems appropriate.

Story (score 8/10): Like the rest of this game, the storyline is pretty simple. An evil entity called Bebuzzu has been trapped in a book. After he is unintentionally released, he starts trying to take over the world, and Chocobo must stop him. Pretty simple stuff. Even so, this story is still better than the non-existent crap found in Chocobo's Dungeon 2, so I'm pleased. The story gets the job done, and even adds in a few small twists to keep things interesting, so I'm satisfied with it.

Battle System (score 6/10): I really wish there had been regular combat. Instead, the player is forced to take part in "card battles" with opponents. This wouldn't be so bad if the games weren't based largely on luck. You basically have a deck of cards, which you use in battle. You choose what cards go into the deck, but that's where control ends. When in battle, three cards randomly pop up from your deck, and you must choose one of the three to put into play. There's four sides on a card, and each one has either a sword, shield or empty icon on it. The sides on your card matches up with the opponent's , and if you have a sword icon matched to their nothing icon, then you do full damage. If the sword is against another sword, then you do half damage, if it's against a shield, you do no damage. This also works the other way around with the opponent's sword icons up against your shield, sword, etc. Anyway, my main complaint is that it's random which three cards goes into your hand, so it removes a great deal of strategy. It would've been better if you could choose which card to use and when to use it. In fact, I would've preferred regular turn-based combat with an attack, defend, item, etc. commands. I find the card games much more tedious than regular combat, and I'd really wish they hadn't used that system.

Gameplay (score 5/10): This is a bit of a catch-all category for me. Well, remember those card battles? The way you get cards is by winning numerous mini-games all over this game. If I didn't know any better, I would say this game's story was a flimsy excuse to release a game composed entirely of minigames. The vast majority of your time is spent playing mini-games that range from fun to irritating. I'm the sort of person who feels mini-games are better taking a back seat to the action (hence the name "mini" which implies that it should be a smaller part of the game). Unfortunately, 80% of Chocobo Tales is mini-games, which really gets old after awhile. I really wished they'd fleshed out the story with regular RPG conventions like dungeons, battles, leveling-up, etc. instead of mini-game after mini-game. Of course, the way the story is set up, you really can't get away from these mini-games as they are integral to the story. I guess what I'm trying to say is that playing endless mini-games gets really annoying after awhile. Other than that issue, the controls are very nicely done. You can move either with the stylus or D-pad, and the mini-games all controlled nicely. Good thing too, since you'll be playing alot of them (did I say that already?).

Overall (score 6/10): NOTE this score is not an average; it's my subjective overall score. This game really is very cute, and can be enjoyable on the first play-through. The major drawback, though, is that you may never make it through a second play-through since the game becomes rather boring after the first time. Trust me, I tried and just lost interest half-way through. Too bad, I was hoping this would be an awesome RPG starring my favorite Chocobo, but I guess I'll have to keep waiting for that (maybe Squeenix will release a good Chocobo RPG someday!). Anyway, if you can find this game for a good price (less than $20, I'd say), then it might be worth your time since it really is quite enjoyable on the first play-through. Just don't expect any replay value out of this one.Buy Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales!

Final Fantasy Legend 3

This was the greatest RPG ever made for the gameboy (yes even better than any lame Gameboy color RPG except Dragon warrior 3 was good but not better). It was good for it's time. Sometimes some of the lines the characters say can be cheesy but it was a classic. If you are big on old school hndhelds please get this game. you'll be happy you did.Buy Final Fantasy Legend 3!

Final Fantasy 1 & Final Fantasy 2 Bundle

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!