forth Light Warriors!
on an epic, Final quest -
er, "Final"...not so
Additional Comments:
Where do I even begin with Final Fantasy. Hmm, having a mixed relationship over the years of turn-based RPG's, or hell, RPG's in general, it's hard to say. As I've stated ad nauseum, RPG's were never my thing as a kid. For me, it was all about side-scrolling, platforming action; crude road and track arcade-style racers and brain-busting puzzlers. I distinctly recall my first encounter with a turn-based RPG: Final Fantasy IV, or as those of us in the States have always known it: Final Fantasy II. A friend of mine and I had swapped systems for a week - he took on my SNES while I got to bask in the glory of the Genesis. I remember he rented FFIV...er, FFII during that time and he wanted to show the game off to me. While I guess I could say it was mildly intriguing, I was grossly turned off by the battle system. Now, outside of early text-based computer adventure games - the likes of Zork - I was damn near oblivious to RPG's at the time and unfortunately Final Fantasy IV...er, II left a sour taste in my mouth. Unfortunate being a key word here because the game didn't only disparage my view of the "great" Final Fantasy franchise, but of RPG's as a whole and I don't remember picking up any kind of RPG again until the late 90s/early 2000s when I began to mull over a number of recommended SNES titles. Otherwise, it was back to text-based MUDs like Medievia or the then-new MMORPG world of Ultima Online. I also recall watching footage of what I believe was Final Fantasy VIII at a friend's house. I was genuinely curious to see what had become of the franchise since my last encounter so many years before. Bleaggh!!! Final Fantasy, let it be known that you and I just don't get along.
And again, like so many other games, that was then and this is now. Truth be known, during a period in the early 2000s when I started collecting a number of NES cartridges, I picked up a copy of Final Fantasy, more so out of respect for those titles that could be tipped as classics of the 8-bit era. And while I had little to no desire to play the game, I popped it into my NES and lo and behold, I was hooked. After sitting on hot coals for so many years, a fury burning over turned-based fighting, I was loving this game, so much so that I couldn't stop playing - even with the amount of mind-numbing grinding that I had to put in. I remember long nights going on for a few weeks hacking away at nothing but Trolls, Giants and Pedes, desperately trying to achieve a comfortable enough level to once and for all tackle the ills of Gurgu Volcano. Ugh, the pains of point-based RPG's. For as long as VG-based RPG's have existed, I can only assume it's a natural side effect that everyone has just come to accept no matter how many complaints the system registers. Even I, for as much as I've cursed the incredibly ridiculous concept, I've accepted that it is what it is. Besides, there's something gratifying about watching your characters' numbers slowly climb as you whack the same enemies to pieces hour after hour, day after day. Sad when you think about it, isn't it? Meh... And that's how it works - we shrug our shoulders and carry on, hoping that today is the day that we'll finally make it through the necessary dungeon, kill the boss, and retrieve the required treasure, or in this case, restore the Orbs. And if it isn't our day, back to the killing fields to slaughter some mindless spawn so that our level can increase by a solitary point. Wait, why exactly is this game fun again?
I certainly don't want to harp on the grinding process since it's such a go-to target, but it's only natural to whine. What's interesting is that while this was my third playthrough, albeit my first to completion, Gurgu Volcano still threw up its same impenetrable defenses. Every time, I'd always hit a wall when it came to character level versus dungeon level at this point in the game. With the exception of my latest playthrough, I'd have to drone on and on around the waters of Crescent Lake before I could dare the fiery inferno. The only reason I didn't suffer quite the same damnable process this time around is that I decided to take a different approach to the game. Instead of grinding all of my characters (by the way, I've always used a Fighter/Red Mage/White Mage/Black Mage setup - the Thief and Ninja, well they're just pointless to me) to a respectable level, I instead opted to kill off all my mages and plunge through as much of the game as I could using only my lone Fighter. My plan: to boost his level, and thus his Attack and Hit Points, at an exponential rate because let's face it, that guy's an unstoppable fortress of power once he starts utilizing 3x/4x attacks. And seriously, there's practically nothing other than a few rare breeds of monsters that can even manage more than a single point of damage against him. After Earth Cave, I brought my mages back on full time and managed to tackle Gurgu Volcano with so much more ease, though it still put up an arduous battle. I suppose in a way I was still grinding, but it didn't feel like grinding this time around which helped increase the overall fun factor this time through.
But what's even more interesting than Gurgu Volcano consistently giving me the bird is that the game got progressively easier thereafter. What? Well sure, after spending time building up my character(
But yea, my point remains. Sea Shrine, Mirage Tower and so forth all felt like a cakewalk compared to the first half of the game. Even while trekking through the final dungeon, other than its incredible length and boss gauntlet, with the items and abilities in hand by this point, there's not much to fear. It's more of an annoyance than anything if you have to leave for any reason (low health?), and that's only because of how many floors you have to consistently revisit. And again, I can thank my items and abilities. Granted, heroes should become powerful entities as an RPG pushes on, but the ease that I could handle the worst of the worst made me question the integrity of the end game. With unlimited heals in the form of a Heal Staff and Heal Helmet, you never have to waste potions or spells, and heck, since nearly everything seems to have certain invulnerability to damn near every spell by the end of the game, I never found spell exhaustion to ever prove problematic. My Red Wizard and Black Wizard were melee fighters for the greater part of the game, and that just makes no sense - even my White Wizard when he wasn't busy using the Heal Staff. Couple the above with Exit and an airship that can literally land you on Coneria's Inn's front lawn for the cheapest lodging rates known and the amount of immediate threat is reduced to mere rubble. None of this is meant to be a complaint by any means, and certainly I embrace the notion of raw power flowing through my heroes as they're continually decked out with the strongest of weapons, magic and armor, but it is slightly discouraging that the difficulty of the game began to give way which has yet to seem the case in any of the other Final Fantasy's that I've attempted.
Of course, I could go on whining about this or that, but I think I've already at least hinted at most of my petty issues with the game. But the thing is, outside of grinding, which as I said, is pretty much inevitable in any RPG, especially turn-based RPG's, the game is fantastic. Ok, so the game is blatantly broken with some of its spells or weapons, but so what - this is the game that finally gave me faith in the RPG genre as a whole and revealed the Final Fantasy franchise as what it really is...or perhaps I should say was. Sure, I came about it a bit late in the running, but still, I'm glad I (eventually) bought this game and put forth a solid effort. I've enjoyed this game every time I've popped it in - so much so that this is easily one of my favorite NES games of all time.
And lest we forget the music? Obviously, music has always been a delight in the Final Fantasy franchise, but it's always a joy to hear how some of those songs originated, namely Prelude or Battle. But the tunes that I've always enjoyed would have to be Overworld and Sailing or perhaps even Matoya's Cave for honorable mention. Unfortunately, as great as the music is in this game, it becomes rather grating after hours of gameplay, especially the battle theme (it's funny how refreshing the overworld theme sounds after the victory march). But then, that's the limitations of the hardware we're dealing with - only so much can fit in a cartridge. Continuous gameplay will certainly sour the tunes, but take a break and come back, and classics like Sailing will never grow old.
Nano-Win, er...wait:
Is it just me or is the White Wizard giving the recently deceased the bird after every victory? What a disrespectful asshole!!
Rating: 4.5 Farmers out of 5
No comments:
Post a Comment