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final fantasy 1&2

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: August 15, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Years ago in the late 80's, when perhaps the large bulk of American Final Fantasy fans were still yet to be born, Squaresoft released its RPG. Final Fantasy soon spread throughout the world like the plague and before we knew it there were Square fanboys everywhere. Unfortunately Squaresoft later sold out with its release of Final Fantasy VII, which made the jump to 3D. However eventually our noble yet despicable company heard the enraged cries of 2D fanboys alike and remade Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II on the Wonder Swan Color. But the Americans were thus given the cold shoulder as the Wonder Swan Color had not been released to our humble shores. Some imported, some emulated, and some waited, for a ray of hope shined through the cloudy skies: FF1 and 2 were ported to PlayStation. Thus the 2D lovers and fanboys rejoiced as they played their games of psychedelic nostalgia.

Final Fantasy: I hope random encounters are your God.

Eons ago a gaseous dark matter en-covered the world. The wind stop blowing, the sea begin a fit of rage, and the Earth slowly decayed into vile muck. Only one force could cease the sudden destruction of the world: the Light Warriors. The prophecy of four young warriors said they'd lead defeat the ultimate evil thus liberating the world from the gripe of death. The time of this prophecy is now as four young warriors with crystals in their hands have appeared. This is their story. Unfortunately there is absolutely no character development at all. In fact each character is devoid of any personality or speech. The actual plot itself is rather bland and dry like the sandy deserts of Death Valley. Maybe in an hour or two you'll learn something new about the ultimate evil, but it won't be much.

As you hit that happy good old friend the "New Game" selection, you'll have to think about what you'll want your party to be comprised of. In This FF you may have four party members composed of either: warrior, thief, monk, red mage, black mage, and white mage. Each part member has their own unique beneficial and negative abilities and attributes. The warrior is an amazing fighter as he'll dish out a whole plate of damage and will take little himself, but his equipment can be extremely costly. The thief can't utilize the same equipment as the warrior, but he's extremely quick allowing for quick escape. The monk is a strong ally like the warrior and he doesn't need costly equipment, but you'd better watch out for attacks as his defense is only average. The black mage employs attacking magic perfectly, but he's weak with physical attacks and defense. The white mage is the same as the black mage but this support mage such as cure. The red mage is a variation of the two as he is able to exploit some white and black magic, and he's a decent fighter. You'll want to form a nice balanced party out of these fighters, so choose wisely.

Feel the gnarly vibrations of no active time battle! It was until FFIV that the ATB bar was introduced, so this title employs the turn based method. Each character has the radical choice of four commands on the funky blue menus: attack, magic, item, and flee. These are all obvious and self explanatory, but I would have enjoyed the implementation of the later conceived groovy defense command. Luckily in this version blemishes on the game's armor have been polished out with some "super fly magical happy polish". Back in the old days of the NES some very square things would occur. For example if everyone targeted one enemy and say your fighter killed your foe, than the rest of the party would attack the remaining dead space. That was so not mellow and made me feel like a volcano ready to burst, but thankfully Square exploited the system of later games, in which the previous situation would result in your party members attacking one of the remaining enemies. However some extremely un-cool problems remain. For example accuracy is still at an all time low since almost every other hit will be a miss for most enemies and characters.

Status effects unfortunately rear their vile heads and seem to hit your characters hard every time. Luckily being the first Final Fantasy there are only six status effects present: sleep, darkness, mute, paralysis, stone, and poison. In addition their degenerating abilities are hindered compared to their newer counter parts. Only stone and poison last after a battle, darkness barely lowers your accuracy, and sleep and paralysis tend to ware off after one or two turns. Therefore stay funky, voodoo child! Status effects are no where near as bad as what they are today.

The magic system is quite different than what some cool cats may be familiar with. Rather that sporting a hefty bundle of MP for all your spells, you'll have a different amount of MP for each type of spell. Spells are broken into eight levels and each character has a different amount of MP for each level of magic. Actually learning spells isn't done through combat, but instead spells are bought in stores. Although there are four spells for each level, you may only choose three of the four. The frustration of deciding is like when a hip cat finds out he bought some bad weed. Overall I found the magic system in balance with the cosmic balance of things - it worked well.

When walking around the dungeons you'll notice that you encounter a plethora of random encounters. The sheer amount of encounters is insane in the membrane! I'd sometimes walk one or two steps before I'd come face to face with four gigantic minotaurs. In addition the dungeons are extremely bland like 80's music. They're mostly just straight identical paths that lead straight to the ravenous boss.

Now you have two ways of playing this groovy RPG: Easy and Normal. The normal difficulty is just and tiresome and boring as the original NES game. You'll need to do an abundance of random encounters to gain levels and acquire much needed gil (money). In addition your mages will have a pittance of MP. Easy on the other hand is just like Final Fantasy IV: you'll be ok if you simply fight most of the random encounters you come across. You'll gain levels quickly and your mages will have ludicrously enormous amounts of MP.

The graphics are exceedingly psychedelic and blow my mind. Large detailed sprites, tons of vivid colors, and exquisite animation flesh out this tale of fantasy. The remake's graphic are an incredible improvement over the original NES game, but these 2D sprites still lack the same awesomeness of some SNES games. This is mostly due to the Wonder Swan Colors lacking power.

Just like the graphics the NES sound pales in comparison to the new soundtrack and sound effects. The music is beautifully done with flute-like instruments and acoustic guitars. Most of the music is slow and soft, but FF can still be loud. The random encounter music is thunderous and puts you in the fighting mood. Also I must praise Square for making boss music. It was so frustrating to be greeted with the same fight music in the original, but now there is boss music, music for the four fiends, and even final boss music. The sound effects are clear, loud, and leave the presence of some hard hitting.

Overall Final Fantasy is a great RPG with a solid battle system. However the sheer amount of random encounters is annoying and bothersome, and the dungeons are quite boring. In addition the game is pretty short for a RPG with only about 12 hours of gameplay. Square does try to add an aspect of replay with the different classes, but after I was finished I didn't feel like playing this one again.

Final Fantasy II: Gandalf wouldn`t last 3 seconds in this world.

WAR! This one word sums up the not so hippie attitude of Final Fantasy II. The "cleverly" named empire called "The Empire" has recently taken over the rebellious kingdom of Fynn. As the three youths Firion, Maria, and Gus your hearts will be broken seeing your home taken over but the devious man called "The Emperor". Unlike the first FF, this plot actually has some surprising plot twists, and overall I find the content of the plot to be much funkier. However these cats you'll be playing as aren't all that social. I believe Firion and Gus have about two lines in the entire game, but Maria has quite a lot. In addition there is still no character development at all. Everything you know about these three hippies in the beginning is what you'll know at the end.

Although there are no classes in this installment of FF, this game has a much more intricate style of gameplay. Your characters are fully customizable as there are no experience points or "leveling up". Instead you cool cats can let those stats grow by performing certain actions amidst battle. For example attacking physically will increase your strength and accuracy or taking damage will increase your HP. This is a pretty interesting way of development. If I wanted to, my party could be all brutes with swords and axes or feeble mages with the power to conjure the elements. However this is where the downside comes into play as the latter is quite difficult to achieve. The magic system in this title is absolutely awful. Your spells start out extremely weak and will do about 20 damage. At this time you'll probably be doing over 100 damage with physical attacks. To make your spells more powerful you'll have to constantly use them so they can level up. At this time the damage will only slightly increase and the MP consumption will increase by one. By the time it took me to power up my Fire once spell with Maria, Firion was now doing 500 damage with physical attacks. Therefore it is quite cumbersome and annoying to utilize magic in this game. I feel there really isn't any reason to exploit this skill because there are only about a couple bosses that will be hurt by magic more than physical attacks. Perhaps had Square just re-used the same magic system from the original FF I would have conjured my magical powers more often.

Unfortunately even more status effects join the fray including the newly made mini, frog, and curse. A mini character loses almost all their strength and accuracy and the same goes for a frog except they also lose their spell casting abilities. A cursed is reduced of their success rates of their actions in battle. However stay mellow my child! Like a performance by Jimi Hendrix today you want be seeing these status effects anytime soon. For some reason the rate of actually becoming afflicted with one of these vile illnesses is exceedingly low. But this does come at a price - it is nearly impossible to flee from battle in this game.

To progress with the game you'll need to master the radical "Ask System". Certain characters can be asked questions to learn information. Every so often an important word or phrase will appear in red and you'll need to learn it with the memorize command. This way you're able to ask about the newly acquired word or phrase. I hated this system because sometimes it just didn't make any sense. For example at one point my party was looking for a secret passage in a wall. I hit the x button while I was near a section of the wall and the message "Nothing was found" appeared, and I had the option to ask it a question. I proceeded to ask the wall about the door and my party found out the wall was a secret door. I don't know about you but I tend to reframe from asking walls questions when I'm sober. Apparently Firion is one messed up cat.

Luckily the rate of random encounters has been toned down and I thank Square for doing this. No longer do I need to rip my hair out in frustration because I walked two steps and was forced to fight another throng of foes. In addition the dungeons are much more complex and interesting with multiple paths leading to dead ends and fortune. But one problem present in the original FF is still in this title: length. Final Fantasy II is only about 17 to 18 hours long, which is ridiculously short in this day and age.

The graphics are barely improved over FF. The animation is pretty much of the same quality as it's predecessor, but the sprites for the enemies are more menacing and threatening. The colors are still psychedelic as ever, but don't expect any purple haze now.

The pieces of music are beautifully done and amazing to listen to - the first time. Tracks repeat way too often and thus ruin them for the gamer. It's quite odd because this wasn't a problem in FF, but for some reason the same tunes play over and over again in this title. In addition I absolutely loathe Square for changing the boss music. The boss music in the NES version of FF2 was quite possibly the best boss theme in the entire series, but now it has been replaced with some weird "Brave Fencer Musashi/Arabian-esque" theme. However the groovy boss theme I like is now the final boss music, but I would have much rather hear a better theme throughout the entire game rather than for the last five or ten minutes of gameplay.

Overall Final Fantasy II is a solid RPG with its excellent plot, customizable characters, and intriguing battle system. However it has its faults such as the less than stellar magic system making this Grateful Dead into a Bob Dylan.

The Whole Package

Are these two games worth buying? Let's see: two solid RPGs for only $30 American. You may complain that these RPGs are too short, but you're actually wrong. Together they're about 30 hours long, the average time for an RPG today, and unlike these new RPGs such as Xenosaga or Final Fantasy X, FF Origins is all gameplay. The scenes are quick and to the point giving you more time for fighting. $30 for 30 hours of RPG enjoyment. Why not pick it up?

Where The Fantasy Began

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 12, 2008
Author: Amazon User

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.

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