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July 18, 2006
Finished: Final Fantasy
Last month at Circuit City's $8.96 clearance sale I picked up Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls for my Gameboy. I've already played a bit of Final Fantasy on my PSOne and was bored with it, but they say that the GBA version of Final Fantasy 2 is the best version available. For $9, why not give it a try?
Since I'm a stickler for doing things in order, I restarted Final Fantasy about 3 weeks ago. On Sunday I finished it with a total time of about 15 hours. I used the FAQ as a guide through the last 2 dungeons because I was really ready to get through the game. By the time I hit the last boss all my characters were around level 51 or 52, and he really wasn't too much of a challenge. Like the rest of the game, it was a matter of battle-heal-battle endurance. The ending was typical late-80s.
Overall it's been interesting to see the origin of the series. Although it was a pretty obvious ripoff of Dragon Quest (which itself was a rip of Ultima), they did add a decent battle system. Unfortunately it was too late-80s in the style of giving you few clues and little direction. Late-80s PC RPGs were the same way, but the world was big enough and had enough variety that you could eventually figure out what to do. The console was far more limited.
I can also see why it's a good thing that Square started experimenting with the game system to add variety. Altogether, 15 hours of nonfocused gameplay with way too many random battles was about all I could stand. It wasn't a bad game, but we can be thankful for the improvements of the last 10 years.
Permalink | Posted by Joe at July 18, 2006 01:50 PM