Final Fantasy
The Four Warriors of Light

Reviewer Chi Phan	Story	2/10
	Characters	2/10
	Graphics	6/10
	Music	5/10
	Gameplay	5/10
	Extras	5/10
	Final Score	4.2/10

With the recent successes of both the Final Fantasy Anthology and Final Fantasy Chronicles collections, Square Enix decided to release a re-make of Final Fantasy I and the never before release of Final Fantasy II for North American gamers in a collection called Final Fantasy Origins. The re-release and re-make of Final Fantasy I gives new generation of rpg gamers a chance at playing the one rpg game that started the biggest franchise in today's rpg market. Let's examine the first game of Final Fantasy.

A Warrior Shall Come It's A Showdown! Okay. Where to begin? Well....the story starts off with four warriors of light showing up at Castle Cornelia. Here the King requested the four warriors rescue his daughter from a villain called Garland. Upon defeating the villain Garland, the King then asked the four warriors of light to save the world from monsters that have begun to appear throughout the world by liberating the four crystals. With the four crystals liberated, only then will monsters disappear from the world. With this quest at hand, the four warriors of light set off on their journey around the world to free the crystals. And that ladies and gentlemen is the whole story. Not only is it the plot of the story but it's the whole story. What is so disappointing is that there's really no story here. Nothing. You see, you go to a town and talk to the nameless sprites to get clues as to where to go next in terms of finding out the next dungeon to explore. Once you do, you defeat the boss and liberate a crystal or get an item that's needed to help you advance into the next dungeon. Then you move on to the next town or village and start the process over again. But there's no story sequence here. You don't even get 1 or 2 minutes of a story sequence at all between character sprites in the game as part of a storytelling sequence. There's just no story at all. By the time you finish the game, you have no idea what just happened. You defeated the game last boss but you have no idea why he's the last boss and what was his role in the story. It's like,"Surprised! I'm the last boss so defeat me and we'll end the game." You also have no idea what's so important about the crystal or anything about the world in which you spent that last 20 hours playing through. And up to this moment, I still have no idea what the story is about. I just know what my objective was in the game. And that's to liberate the four crystals and to defeat the last boss. The mere fact that there's no story sequence in the game should be enough evidence that there's no story here. Talking to everyone in this game is like talking to nameless characters in other rpg games where they would make random chatters whenever you approach them. Sometimes to give you hints on the location of this or that dungeon or town but that's it. There are no support characters in this story at all. Very disappointing.

A Town to Explore Well your basic four main characters are nameless sprites that you have to name them yourself at the beginning of the game. They don't talk at all so they have no personalities. Supporting cast? There are no supporting cast that really interacts with the game as part of the story. So what do you have in the end? Nothing. The entire game pretty much consists of nameless sprites or characters having no importance at all in effect to the storyline. This is the first time in any rpg game where characters don't really talk at all. From the main characters all the way down to the nameless sprites wondering around the villages. Characters reflect the goodness of the story and it's not surprising that this would get a very low score base on what the story has gotten for it's score. There's nothing really to say other than there's no characters in this game.

We Can Fly Now Graphic wise, it's the biggest improvement in the game. Square Enix made sure of that. Sure it's not Playstation 2 or Playstation 1 graphics but you have to keep in mind that this game originally came out on an 8 bit system called Nintendo Entertainment System. If Square Enix had done a straight conversion with 8 bit graphics for today's generation of gamers then this game will most likely not sell at all. In terms of 16 bit graphics, it's not the best 16 bit graphics around. To best describe it, it's early 16 bit graphics as compare to late 16 bit graphics from Final Fantasy VI. It's a 2-D world environment with 16 bit sprites characters. On a scale of 1-10 for 16 bit graphics, I would say it's a 5 since it's early 16 bit graphics. The one thing I find disappointing is the much hype added CG movies. Square Enix added in CG opening movie for this game. But in truth the CG opening movie is very poorly made. Little effort was put into it. Two reasons. One, is that the opening movie sequence itself is boring. And two, it's poor quality CG. The CG opening movie is quite blurry and too soft. It's not the kind of good quality CG movie sequence that you would see from current Playstation Final Fantasy games. I have to wonder why they even bother with putting in a CG opening movie if they don't plan on putting full effort into it. Improvement of the original 8 bit graphics? Yes but far short of the good quality 16 bit graphics.

I love my church. Easily the one of the best feature of the game. That's not saying much considering how the rest of the review parts are getting a poor score. Still the music is pretty decent for the first Final Fantasy game. There are a lot of towns and overworld themes in the mix as well as battle themes. And these musical scores are pretty decent. The only thing lacking are character themes and strong storyline presentation themes. That's not surprising since in order to have quality character and storyline musical themes, you have to have good quality character and story to begin with. Basically you have a good mixture of rpg music from traveling around the world map, to towns, to battle music with the exception of the character and storyline musical themes.

A change of classes. We got a crystal! Game Information    Genre: Traditional Rpg    Publisher: Square Enix    Disc: 1 CD Disc    Memory: 1 Memory Block    Players: 1 Player Mode    Vibration: Yes    Dual Analog: No    Digital Control: No    Rating: Teen    Release: April 2003 And now for the gameplay. The horror! The horror! I tell you. There are two modes that gamers can choose from before playing this game. Easy mode and Normal mode. Normal mode is a straight conversion of the game from the original NES game. Easy mode was added on in this remake. I can understand why Square Enix added in the Easy mode. There's no difference in terms of effect on the story or gameplay between the two modes other than to make it easier than normal mode. The review of this gameplay is base on Normal mode. Normal mode is not a fun game to play. The overall gameplay is a basic traditional rpg gameplay using different classes, however some of the features in Normal mode made the game difficult to play. Let's start with the basic. At the beginning of the game, you are required to name your four fighters and to choose their fighting class. There are six basic fighting classes. Warrior, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage, and Thief. You can upgrade your fighter to a higher class level later on in the game. Each class has their own unique abilities. This is not a straight forward story driven rpg game where you know where to go next. For the most part of the game, you have to gather clues on where your next destination is. This is not an easy task. Once you are able to locate the dungeon that you need to explore next, you can then make your way there by walking, canoeing, sailing, or flying. The exploration part of dungeon is your basic stuff. Just try to find your way to the last floor of the dungeon to fight the boss there. Now I need to point out that this game is base on random encounters. The rate of random encounters is horrendous. I'm talking about getting into fights ranging from every 5 steps to 1 steps. It's just very bad and hurt the flow of the game. I don't mind random encounters if it's done on a good even flow. But the fact that as soon as you finish fighting a battle and taking not more than one step before getting into another battle drove me mad. There were times where I would be screaming, "Enough already. Stop it with these excessive random encounters!" That's how bad it is. Next is money problem. Money makes the world go round but in this game, money is everything. You need money to buy equipment, items, sleep at INNs, revive your members at church, and to buy magic. So what's the problem? Well the problem is that either you don't get enough money from battles or that everything is overprice in shops. Trying to get enough money to buy magic for your mages is going to be a problem early on to later on in the game. Heck, trying to make sure all your members have the latest equipment is going to be a problem too. Then you have the problem where the fighting class are too out of balance. The Warrior/Knight class is the only fighting classes that I found useful in the game. All the other classes are too weak overall in term of defense and offense. No matter what level they are on. They die too easy or get too low on HP easily. So why not revive them or heal them with magic? I'll get to that right now. The Magic System is base on what magic you can afford to buy and what level the magic is at. There are ten levels of magic and each magic level have a set number of magic you can buy. You can only equip up to 3 types of magic for each level so you need to choose wisely. It cost 1 MP to cast any magic but you don't get that many MP to begin with. On average depending on where you are in the game and what level your mages are at, you're probably going to get an average max of 5 MP from mid level magic to low level magic with maybe 1 or 2 MP for the higher level magic. So looking at that, you're not going to be able to cast a lot of magic if your maximum MP is around 5 for the mid range level to lower level magic. This means that you can't really afford to use magic at all except for bosses. Not even for healing. So for the most part, your mages are reduce to using physical attacks for nearly the entire game except for boss fights. That's not going to be very helpful at all. And it get's worst in terms of magic. Each magic when cast doesn't really give 100% effect all the time. It's a random rate on how much effect it will give. For example: Level 1 Fire may do damage between 20-80HP. Level 2 Fire may do damage between 80-180HP. Level 3 Fire may do damage between 180HP-300HP. This isn't what you want. You want magic to do 100% damage not a random rate. Nothing worst than having used your only 1 chance of casting a high level spell like Fire 3 and only doing 180 damage. It would be like a waste of magic and you can't afford to be wasting magic to begin with. For the most part, it's very rare that you will do a lot of 100% damage effect when casting magic. Battles are pretty simple. It's your basic use of attack, magic, item and flee. So there's not point in going over that. The overall game is basic traditional stuff. Drawback is that you're probably have a hard time finding out where to go next, not enough money, your fighting members are pretty useless unless it's the warrior/knight, too many random encounters, and not enough MP for magic which in turns make your mages obsolete. I did not enjoy this gameplay at all. Due to the drawbacks, the gameplay is too hard. They should rename the Normal mode as hard. Best advice is to play in Easy mode. I spend more time being annoyed than having fun. End of story.

Score: 5/10

Major Boss Fight Ahead! Hmmm, being the first Final Fantasy game ever, I don't think they had sidequests and extras in mind when they made this game. Truth be told, sidequests and extras didn't become a key part in the rpg making until during the Playstation age. So if you're looking for sidequest or extras during the game, you're not going to get it. That's not to say that Square Enix didn't try to add extra stuff in this remake. After all, in this day and age, I don't think an rpg game can be called an rpg game without some sort of extras and replay value put into it. So Square Enix added in the option called Collection in your Menu Option. So what is this Collection Option? It's a place where you can unravel artworks and CG photo pictures. You can do that by finding all the treasure chests in the game and finding and defeating all the monsters in the game. Even if you manage to find all the treasure chests and monsters, you still won't be able to unravel all of the CG photo pictures. This is where replay comes in. You need to play both the Easy and Normal Modes in order to unravel all of the CG photo pictures. Personally I didn't find the artworks or CG photos as a great incentive for extras. And for replaying the game again? I don't think I would be doing that anytime soon since I didn't enjoy this game that much.

Okay in perspective, this isn't exactly the greatest rpg game ever judging by the score that we've given this rpg game. But to be fair and accurate, this is probably one of the first rpg game ever made. It clearly shows the differences in today's rpg games and the rpg games that was made over a decade ago. Things have change in how rpgs are made these days and how much it's improved over the years as more and more rpg games are introduced and made. I wouldn't say not to get this game but if you're going to get this rpg game, keep in mind that this is a really an underdeveloped rpg game compare to today's rpg game. But during it's time period, it's really a cutting edge video game that introduce gamers to a genre called role playing. And at that time, role playing is something people have no idea about. And if it weren't for Final Fantasy I, there would be no Final Fantasy games for today's gamers. Final Score: 4.2/10 Time to complete: About 20 hours Difficulty: Easy to Normal(Hard) Favorite character: No one Best fighter: Warrior/Knight Most useful character: Warrior/Knight Best music theme: None Coolest feature: None Best advice: Play Easy Mode Also try: Final Fantasy II Up next: Final Fantasy II