I Played The Original Final Fantasy In 2023

I don't normally play single player games. As a result, Final Fantasy XIV was the first Final Fantasy game I had ever played. Four years later I completed Endwalker and was deep into the post-expansion patches. Over the course of playing through the main story quests I had heard of so many references to previous games in the series. With Dawntrail beginning a new story arc in FFXIV, I decided I should play at least one other game in the series to maybe pick up some of the fan service in the next expansion. Where else would I begin my journey but with the original game in the series?

The version I played was the Pixel Remaster version published by Square Enix in 2021. As such many things are different or altered from the original version published in Japan back in 1987 and released in the West in 1990. Mods do exist for this version to bring back some of the original features. For my playthrough I just went with the game as downloaded from Steam.

My play though

I thought I should post my time and party for my playthrough. Howlongtobeat.com lists the original Final Fantasy as taking around 16.5 hours to complete. I spent almost twice that, basically by getting lost a few times and grinding gil to purchase all my spells before moving on from an area. I didn't earn all the available Steam achievements but I did get 20 out or 24. The only achievements I missed were playing the 15 puzzle game, looting every chest in the game, killing every monster type, and achieving the other 23 achievements.

Before digging deeper into the game, I want to discuss the difficulty level of Final Fantasy briefly. I never suffered a full party wipe while running through the game. However, on the second main boss, I wasn't fully prepared and only survived the encounter with two of my four party members standing. I ran from the location to the nearest town where I could revive my two fallen party members. After my near death experience, I may have played extra-cautiously and out-leveled the rest of the content.

Story: The story is pretty basic, but solid. The player's party first need to prove they are the legendary Warriors of Light in order to gain aid in travelling north and doing important stuff. The task involved travelling to the Chaos Shrine and rescuing a princess from Garland, the greatest knight in the land. After defeating Garland, the party engages in several tasks that reveal the true objective for the party, the defeat of Chaos.

The crystals feed into a central location

To defeat Chaos, the Warriors of Light must obtain the crystals representing the four elements: fire, earth, water and wind. After defeating the four bosses and obtaining the crystals, the party performs a ceremony that sends them back 2000 years to face Chaos, who we first defeated as Garland at the beginning of the game. The party then fights the four bosses again before facing off with Chaos one last time. By defeating Chaos, the time loop is broken and the party enters legend.

No one remembers ... sounds familiar

I do want to mention how faster modes of travel are woven into the story. Not fast travel like teleporting halfway around the world in the blink of an eye. The only teleportation capabilities are found in dungeons moving the party from one level to another or completely out of the dungeon. No, I'm referring to moving the party around.

The first barrier involves crossing a river. When I first started playing, I thought Garland was an easy boss set up as a kind of tutorial. I found out I was wrong later, but defeating the current day Garland allowed me to cross the first river. 

Doing a good deed and beating up some pirates in Pravoca results in getting the pirates' boat which is needed to travel the inner sea. Helping the dwarves in Mt. Duergar obtain TNT powder winds up creating a passage from the inner sea to the world ocean, which speeds up travel a lot. But the boat is too big to sail down the rivers. Talking to a group of sages in Cresent Hill solves the problem as they give you a canoe. But the northern landmasses, unlike the southern one, has no place to dock the boat. No problem after obtaining an airship in the Lykion Desert. Airships can't land everywhere, but they do speed matters along.

Combat: I really like the combat system although by the end the fights became the same. First is the group composition. The group is four characters with 1 tank, 1 healer, and 2 damage dealers. I played fighter/white mage/black mage/thief. The combat is turn-based with an initiative system, meaning the fighter and thief often took their actions before the white mage and black mage. 

Fighting the final boss

Each character's actions are determined by the player. No AI to blame for a wipe in FF1. Some of the items are magic and have abilities like healing or casting area of effect spells. Those types of items come in handy to save more powerful spells for when really needed. The system also allows for potion use during combat as well in case the player goes into a battle ill-prepared.

A couple of other details about the combat system reminded me of my paper and pencil Dungeon & Dragons days. The first is that spells only become available after resting or taking an aether potion. The game keeps characters from wasting spells by not casting spells after all opponents are down. The other is that players don't know how much health enemies have left in the middle of a fight. The lack of information made some of the fights rather interesting. 

Customizing the party: As I expected from a game first developed in the 1980s, the customization options are not extensive. I did get to enter my own names, but from a look and feel standpoint that was the extent of my choices. 

Character abilities gave more room for customization. White and black mages have 8 levels of spells, with 4 available at each level. Players can only purchase three of the spells per level although they do not need to purchase three. Jobs do evolve at a certain point giving players more options. For example, the non-magic using fighters and thieves evolve into knights and ninjas with limited magic capabilities.

Players can also supplement their characters' abilities with magic items. As mentioned earlier, magic items can make some spells unnecessary to learn, such as some of the healing spells for white mages or damage spells for black mages.

Graphics and music: I really didn't expect much graphically from the 2D pixel remaster. The game does have an old-school look I remember from video arcade rooms. I have to admit, though, that the graphics for the area-of-effect spells was rather satisfying to cast, particularly the higher level spells.

The music, of course, is good. I recognized three of the tracks from Final Fantasy XIV. The first was Prelude, the music played in A Realm Reborn when the Warrior of Light first encounters the mother crystal. The second was the Opening Theme, which is played in the final scene of Endwalker as the spaceship carries the Scions and the Warrior of Light back to Old Sharlayan. The last track was Victory, which is played from everything from the end of dungeons to chocobo racing.

References found in FFXIV: My only previous Final Fantasy experience before playing this game is Final Fantasy XIV. I think I found several references I will associate with future Final Fantasy games I play.

The first is that 35 years later, FFXIV is still basing combat on 4 character groups made up of a tank, a healer, and two DPS jobs. Also, a character's initial job still evolves into a higher level job. In FFXIV players go to a role trainer. In Final Fantasy, the promotion was performed by Bahamut, the King of Dragons.

Did I mention Bahamut? Yes. In FFXIV, Bahamut is a dragon-shaped primal involved in the destruction of the original Final Fantasy XIV 1.0. While still powerful, Bahamut went from a dragon that aids the player to a primal who tries to destroy the world.

Another familiar name was Matoya. Matoya is a magic user in both Final Fantasy and FFXIV who lives in a cave filled with magic brooms. The difference between the two is that Matoya needed a crystal to see normally while in FFXIV Matoya's crystal can see long distances.

Matoya's cave, complete with brooms

While looking for Matoya's crystal, players are directed into the Marsh Cave. I had to use a lot of potions and spells to cure poison. I might have found the origin of the FFXIV dungeon The Aurum Vale.

Earlier I discussed getting a canoe to navigate shallow waters. The canoe was required to reach Mt. Gulg. That's right. The volcano and dungeon lifted into the sky in Shadowbringers had a corresponding volcano in Final Fantasy, although the one in FF remained safely on the ground. 

Then we come to the matter of breathing underwater and submarines. In Stormbringer, the Warrior of Light is gifted the ability of underwater breathing. In addition, free companies can build submarines for missions to fund the player groups. Both are present in Final Fantasy to access the Sunken Shroud and fight the fiend of water, Kraken. The Kraken is also the final boss in the A Realm Reborn dungeon Hullbreaker Isle.

The fiend of air, Tiamat, found in FF's Flying Fortress also is found within FFXIV. in the MMO, Tiamat is the sister of Bahamut and is imprisoned in Azys Lla. Perhaps not surprisingly, Azys Lla was raised high into the air by the Allegans.

While discussing flying, Cid, a staple of the Final Fantasy series, did not make an appearance in the original Final Fantasy game. But he was referred to as the creator of airships. While not creating airships in FFXIV, Cid is probably the preeminent expert in Eorzea.

Preparing to go back in time

Finally, I want to point out the time travel aspect of both games. In Final Fantasy, players return to the first dungeon where they faced off against Garland, the NPC who became Chaos in the distant past. The characters focus their crystals onto the Black Crystal and go back 2000 years. In FFXIV, the time travel story in Endwalker relies on visiting the Crystal Tower, the setting of a raid series in the first expansion, A Realm Reborn. 

Replayability: I have to say I might go back and play the game again. I would like to at least play with the Red Mage and see what capabilities that character possesses. I'm interested in a party of fighter/white mage/red mage/black mage. Also, now that I know the mechanics, I wonder how much faster I could complete the story. I also didn't face off against a couple of monsters and missed a few chests. If I can find the time, I can see myself playing another 2-3 times.

I wrote this post sporadically over the past two months as real life allowed. As I mentioned at the beginning, single-player video games are not something I usually play, much less write about. But I had to go back to the beginning of the Final Fantasy series to look at the origins of one of my favorite video games. 

I'm glad I did. I liked the game play and game systems, although my slow progress probably led to some combat fatigue. The music and graphics grabbed my attention and added to the experience. The fan service FFXIV provided to fans of the service helped add to my enjoyment of my first playthrough of Final Fantasy.