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Harman Necroskowitz's Final Fantasy (PSP)
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| [February 21, 2008 02:31:40 AM]
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GAMEPLAY
If you have ever played a Japanese RPG the combat in Final Fantasy won’t surprise you. Everyone lines up, taking turns assaulting each other with weapons or magic. A particularly annoying part about combat in Final Fantasy is that you choose everyone’s actions at once, regardless of when they’ll attack. So if I have Lao and Shiv attack the same wolf and Lao defeats the wolf before Shiv’s turn, then Shiv will proceed to swing his rapier vainly at the air where the wolf once stood rather than focus his efforts on another, living enemy. Oh, and for veterans of the Final Fantasy series, yes, even in the original do your characters dance every time they defeat a batch of enemies.
Upon reaching the ruined castle where Garland made his base I proceeded to loot the place of everything that wasn’t nailed down. After stowing away the loot (a cap, a potion, and a… cabin?) I finally came face to face with princess thief. He greeted me by asserting that this was in actuality his princess and that I was grossly mistaken in my liberation attempts. He then informed me that his only recourse was to initiate my collapse. I then refuted his argument with violence. As his wretched form lay twisted on the ground he could only accept that mine was the sounder argument. After speaking with the king he gave me a lute and sent me on my way. After all of this the opening credits began to roll… Oy.
DESIGN
All right, I realize that I have been bashing what is perhaps the single most important RPG released in the past two decades that doesn’t have “Dragon” in the title, but cut me some slack. The game set the stage on some level for virtually every electronic RPG released in the past twenty years. Without Final Fantasy we might never have some of the most memorable scenes in video gaming history (most of which were NOT in the original Final Fantasy). I understand that the game was a milestone and superb for its time, but the end all be all RPG? No, not by a long shot.
In my three hours of play time, I had yet to encounter a single character that had, at any given time, more than two or three sentences of dialogue. Sometimes, that is ALL the dialogue they had. I didn’t encounter anyone I could say I would identify with/love/hate/etc. and the only memorable characters (Garland and a pirate captain named Bikke) stayed in my mind because of their absurdity. They were, quite literally, jokes (and in Final Fantasy’s defense, pretty funny ones).
Although I must cut the game some slack, it kept me entertained, if only because I’m a fan of the RPG genre, for the nostalgia value, and *ahem* historical context. If you like RPGs, you’ll like Final Fantasy, you’ll have played better and you won’t hold it in any high regard, but you’ll like it. The game distinguished itself in the late eighties and early nineties because concepts which are now at worse cliché and at best standardized were new and innovative at that time. I am thankful that such a thing as the original Final Fantasy existed, but I would not afford it anymore praise than that.
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| [February 21, 2008 01:51:51 AM]
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SUMMARY
Final Fantasy is an NES RPG by Square Soft (now Square Enix) created in 1987 and released stateside in 1990. The game’s protagonists are four heroes who each have different abilities and are chosen by the player at the beginning of the game. The game has an in depth story that spans several hours of play time. Gaining levels and money is done through random encounters and boss battles.
GAMEPLAY
You read that right, I’m playing Final Fantasy. Not Final Fantasy VII, or X or XI or XII, no, I’m playing the original game that started the series long ago when Reagan was president and MC Hammer was an up and coming celebrity with the world ahead of him. Now I should clarify that I am not playing the re-released or reedited version of the game with CG cut scenes and shiny graphics. I am playing the old NES version, so you can’t fault me for giving it a decent shot. Knowing this, I’ll have to ask you to bear with me when I say that it shows its age.
After being shown the storyline involving light and orbs or something (easy, these are the jokes!) I am presented with the ability to customize my party of four rag-tag heroes eager to prove themselves in the ring of honor or some such thing. Anyway, I went with a party of Lao the wandering martial artist (fine, Black Belt!) and his compatriots, Shiv the Thief, Izix the Black Mage, and Eevi the White Mage. At which point Lao suddenly appeared in a field just south of a castle town. I wasn’t given any pretense of what to do, so I decided to move in the direction of civilization.
Cornelia, the town, is your usual fantasy genre shopping mall. You’ve got your weapon shop, armor shop, Inn, item shop (where they sell things that are not weapons or armor), and your (black and white) spell shops. The inhabitants just had one thing to say and were happy to repeat it as many times as I liked. As it turns out, Cornelia’s King was in the market for Light Warriors, lucky me that I had four on me. So after a quick jaunt to the castle I found my way to the king who, like everyone I had met thus far, only had one thing to say. Lo and behold, he lost his daughter, the princess (obviously), to some ex-knight named Garland and needed me to rectify the situation.
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Harman Necroskowitz's Final Fantasy (PSP)
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Current Status: Stopped playing - Something better came along
GameLog started on: Thursday 21 February, 2008
GameLog closed on: Thursday 21 February, 2008 |
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