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Don't Let the Primitive Technology Fool You...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: June 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Whether you've never played an 8 bit game before or you consider yourself an expert on the subject, it's very easy to underestimate the original Final Fantasy. Sure, the music, graphics, game design and battle interface were all cutting edge at the time, but the first thirty minutes of this game may not win you over right away.

I clearly recall beginning the game and finding it amusing, but somewhat dated and unimpressive. I started out on my mission, fighting enemies, building experience, purchasing better weapons, magic, and equipment, following suggestions from local villagers and, eventually, I got to Garland: the first big boss. After an impressive battle, he was defeated, and I smiled smugly, satisfied that I had overcome a major obstacle and gotten pretty far into this primitive adventure so quickly.

Then I crossed the bridge, and the opening credits rolled.

That experience defined FF1 for me. Every time you think you understand the structure, parameters, and limits of the game, from modes of travel to impassable land masses and dead end oceans, the rules change in the most fun ways possible. Canoes, ships, airships, undersea and above land levels, an ever expanding world map, robots and future technology (from the past), a gypsy market in the desert, a waterfall guarding a hidden entrance, a circle of wise men in a hidden clearing, and additional problems and challenges that pop up after you think you've done EVERYTHING you were supposed to do keep the game fresh and exciting throughout.

Finally, to those that have criticized FF1 for being too difficult, I must disagree. I have very little console RPG experience, yet my party never died, and I never spent time just trying to build experience before moving on to the next challenge. I beat the game while at Level 29 without a problem. Sometimes, it just takes a little strategy -- when to use heal spells versus heal potions, when to cure all hit points or just some, and when to let one character die so that the others may continue to live. I actually respect that the game requires you to plan like that. It makes the final victory more rewarding. My only advice would be to consult an online walk-through tutorial at certain points as there are a few confusing moments where you'll have no idea where to go next without a helpful clue. Also, stock up on those heal potions!

FF1 is an amazingly innovative game. It combines great design with an adventure that slowly and purposely unfolds in the most fun and exciting of ways. When you finally slap in that cartridge and give this old dinosaur a try, don't judge too quickly. You can be sure that it won't be long before the game starts shaking things up!

The start of it all

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Final Fantasy is a true classic among RPG's. It is simplistic enough for anyone to pick up and enjoy, yet challenging enough to keep you coming back for multiple play-throughs.

The story for Final Fantasy is pretty run of the mill 4 warriors appear out of nowhere and are given the task of saving the world. That is about it. There are many non-playable characters to converse with throughout the and visiting towns is enjoyable.

The gameplay mechanics are a bit archaic but this adds to the challenge. For instance if two of your party memebers are swinging at the same enemy and the first player kills that enemy, the second player will swing at the blank space where the enemy was. This forces the player to really map out their moves.

You have many characters to choose from to fill up your party of four heroes, the combinations are practically limitless, make for some great replay value.

This is a great game that i would recommend to anyone who enjoys old school RPG's

Grandfather of RPGs

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 20, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game. Ah where to begin. Way back in the early 90s, this was a great game. Still is. Simple, compelling story line, strategy, and intricate tasks must be performed to succeed. Paying attention to what people say and remembering certain bits of information are essential to completing the game. The forefather to all RPGs, and spawning the world-renowned Final Fantasy Series, this game began it all. Strategy, skill and a certain amount of luck all come into play. I've played and beaten this game many many times, and I still love playing it. I know pretty much everything there is to know about it. Probably the only draw-back is the extremely limited amount of armour you can carry at any given time. What I wouldn't give to have a couple more spaces. Just a bit of advice, don't buy the Nintendo Power Strat guide for this game. It is so wrong about so many things. For old school gaming, it doesn't really get better than this. Maybe if you play it enough you can be like me and get the best swords/armour and magic before you even beat the 2nd Fiend.

TOO HARD!!!!!!!!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 17
Date: March 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is way too hard to be fun. Of all the final fantasy games this one is the worst. The PS1 version is a lot better and not has hard as finding this one. Which is long out of print.

The First of Many to Come!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: January 17, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Not many people probably remember or have even played this one, but it was the 1st of a fabulous series to come. The graphics and music were pretty basic, but the gameplay was pretty fun and it was cool that the characters changed their look after you returned the crystal to the dragon king. It was a slow game to start with, but as you played more, it got more interesting. They possibly could've made it a bit better, but all in all it was a good game.

Stunning, here's why:

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: December 16, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Final Fantasy has over the years becomed a legend.
And here's where it started, I will rate this game:

Story 3.5/5.0
The worlds been shrouded in darkness, all life has been reduced the winds has stopped and the sea's gone and all fauna has faded into darkness. But the legends tells of four warrior legends that will arise to save the world from perish.
Great story, don't ya' think so ? simple but fantastic.

Music 4.5/5.0
Some of the best of all of the early games, it's unique and memorable each and everything has gotten a theme (at least in the PSX version). As I said it's fantastic and memorable, the music has also becomed one of the Final Fantasy trademarks.
Remember the legendary score from Final Fantasy VII? outstanding, no game series has caught my attention as the Final Fantasy series have, bless the composer.

Graphics 3.0/5.0
It's not fair to review the graphics as they're obviously dated, But there has been added some beautiful affects in PSX version, such as the spells and the characters has also been improved by far, good graphics and stunning affects.
But don't dissmiss this game by it's graphics, give it a try.
Remember it's classic and a very rare gem.

Gameplay 5.0/5.0
The best part, you get to choose who you want to make it through with, your choice is: Black Mage, White Mage, Red Mage, Warrior, Monk and Thief. Here's a list of the best combination you could possibly choose, here I go:
Knight/Knight/Black Mage/White Mage.

Strong defense and strong offense, the wariors are strong and has alot of HP and high Evasion rade and when classes changes it evolves into a Knight which can learn low White magic spells. Such as Cure2. And the White Mage stands for the healing and the black male stands for the highly effective black magis spells, make sure to get these: Flare, Haste, Ice3. I also recommend this party: Warrior/ Warrior/ Monk/ Red Mage. This is perhaps the best team you can get.Highly effective.

Final Score 16/20
That's all for now.

one of the best rpgs ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 4
Date: December 12, 2003
Author: Amazon User

i had the pleasure of playing this game since it first came out. yes, me and my father were at toys-r-us in line in 1990 to buy this game fresh out the box. it was the best
it has good character classes (fighter, thief, black belt, black mage, white mage-which i thought was a girl and later found out its actually a guy-, and red mage-this class should be in more ff games-) the story is very simple(as all good things in life are). collect the orbs. save the world. cant ask for anything better then that. it introduced the best fighting system in rpgs in my opinion, the multi character turn-based battle system.(action rpgs are ok but i wish more games had this system now a days). you must play this classic. it is so choice. if you have the means, i highly recomend it!

A classic, perhaps, but not as good as it's descendents...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 8
Date: December 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Back in ancient times, when gameplay was more important than graphics, Final Fantasy set the RPG standard and went on to become one of the largest franchises in gaming history. It all started here, though now it seems hard to understand exactly why.

The storyline is simple: pick four characters and save the world from the four Fiends. That's it. No intricate backstories for each of the characters; no interaction; no side quests. You have very little control as to how the story progresses. In this category Final Fantasy is no more impressive than The Legend Of Zelda.

Graphics and sound are barely worth commenting on in this day and age, though the music is very good. It's all standard 8-bit Nintendo. You know what to expect, and it works just fine.

Gameplay is generally good, but there are a few flaws. In battle, for example, when you choose which enemy to attack, that character is committed to do so, even if the enemy has died or run away. One could argue this adds a level of strategy to the game, which is true. However, it can also be annoying. Another major drawback, though not in battle, is the merchant system. For many of the dungeons you practically have to fill up on Heal potions. The bad news is that you can only buy one at a time, which means that to buy one hundred Heals, you have to go through the sequence as many times. That comes to almost three hundred button pushes(297, to be exact) to fill up from zero. I can't imagine it would've been very difficult to add an extra menu to give the option of purchasing five or even ten of the same item in one sequence.

Altogether, I'm not nearly as happy with this one as I am with #4 or #6. It just doesn't have the personality or heart of the later entries. Without this, the gameplay is pretty bland. If you're eager to see how one of the greatest series of games began I highly recommend Final Fantasy. To everyone else: be warned; it can get very tedious.

What started the most popular RPG series World Wide

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: July 06, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'm an old school gamer and actually had my first shot at playing this in the Final Fantasy Origins package. I was pleased with that but I thought it would be much better to play the old original on the NES. I couldn't help it so I set out to find it and surprisingly, someone was willing to let me play their copy.

Let me start off by saying no matter how you look at it whether its on Final Fantasy Origins or on the original NES that prologue is amazing! You start off by being asked to rescue a princess that's been captured by Garland. So you head off to the Temple of Fiends (Temple of Chaos on FFO) and battle Garland the first boss in Final Fantasy history. When you go back and return the princess the King will have the bridge rebuilt to the north. When you finally cross that bridge the words "Final Fantasy" appear on screen. That moment in my entire RPG career (well next to the opera scene in FFVI) will remain to be quite possibly my most memoriable. I've never seen an RPG do a prologue like that eversince. Not even FFIV's was that spectacular.

Now I'm sorry but if you're like some people my age you don't really care for this and you'd much rather have the eye candy and so you're sitting around playing Final Fantasy X (sorry but eye candy sickens me!). But I found it very nice to play the origin of the series and it shows me now why Final Fantasy X isn't the best one in the series.

Again, this is old-school and so the storyline doesn't get off to a great start. But I'd played Dragon Warrior and when I played Final Fantasy I was glad that it wasn't a save the princess deal (as most games on the NES I played were.). It was actually a story about saving the world. Something that in the 80's I never got from gaming. The story paces a little slow but in the 80's when I played Dragon Warrior, that paced slow too.

The storyline is actually one of my favorites in the series. You go around restoring the crystals that restore piece to the land. Then you go back 2000 years into the past and prevent any of the events from every happening. It was one of the greatest in the series. Plus, it was actually FANTASY!

My only gripe with the original NES version was what most people didn't like. The fact that if all your characters targeted an enemy and the enemy died before all the characters attacked it they'd attack an empty space. Luckily in the Final Fantasy Origins package this was remedied. Still, one of the best Final Fantasy games in the series. If you want an example of what the perfect RPG should be this is a great example.

The game that started the most popular RPG series ever.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: June 15, 2003
Author: Amazon User

It's 1987. Sells aren't going so well for a small company known as Squaresoft...what are they to do?! They decide to release one last game, calling it "Final Fantasy," thus being their final game if it doesn't sell good and appeal to fans. But, this definitiely wasn't the case, and thank goodness it wasn't.

"Final Fantasy" was the start of the most well-known RPG series in the world. It sold really well and was successful enough to span many sequels, spinoffs, and whatnot. Released in 1987 in Japan, it wasn't released in the U.S. until 1990. Fans all over the world loved it.

Well, first off, Final Fantasy is a very challenging game (at least the first time you play through it). You have to choose the classes for your characters at the beginning (Fighter, Thief, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, and Black Belt). These will be the classes you keep throughout the entire game, with the exception of a small upgrade about 3/4th's or so through it. Your characters never talk, so there isn't much character development. What is there, though, is a game that was just simple and downright fun to play. There was no game that could be mistaken for a movie like the newer FF's (although I like every FF in a way). Just a simplistic game. Go to a town, talk to the townspeople, buy equipment, find out your destination, and repeat. At the same time, you will go into random battles. You must constantly watch your HP and make sure not to use up too much of your magic or your items.

This is one of the most challenging FF's out there, but challenge is good. The story goes beyond the "save the world" theme, and was one of the first games to have a more complex story than your average RPG back then. It's really tough to find nowadays, so I would recommend going with "Final Fantasy Origins" for the PS One. You get FF I and II for 30 bucks, plus the graphics are upgraded to 16-bit quality, story makes more sense, there's more character interaction, and the music sounds better. Although some people will prefer the classic more.

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