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Final Fantasy Adventure review

Game: Final Fantasy Adventure
Platform: Game Boy
Genre: Action RPG (Fantasy)
Developer: Square
AKA: Mystic Quest (EU), Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden (JP)

Staff review by Rob Hamilton

September 30, 2009

There's a certain simplistic charm to Final Fantasy Adventure. This was the first Seiken Densetsu game and, much like the next installment in the series (known to Americans as Secret of Mana), it benefited from being released before Square decided to make these games over-complicated to the point anything resembling enjoyment had vanished. Don't believe me? Then play this game and then the GBA remake (titled Sword of Mana). The original is enjoyable, despite being a bit rough around the edges.....the remake will tempt you to put cigarettes out on your skin. Successfully tempt, in my case.

Ha ha, I jest. Sword of Mana is bad, but not quite THAT putrid. With it, Square simply erred by adding a million unnecessary sidequests in order to pad the game's duration, while transforming a simple, yet poignant, plot into some overly-dramatic monstrosity where everyone seems to have a tragic past influencing their actions. Seriously, when a character is named "Dark Lord", do we need to know anything about him other than he's an evil dude? I think not.

You don't have that problem in the original version. The Game Boy didn't have enough memory to handle a War and Peace-sized script, so the game winds up flowing almost as smoothly as my writing. You control a gladiator enslaved by Dark Lord, but within moments, you escape.....and have the bad luck to immediately run into Dark Lord and his pal Julius while they're plotting nefarious deeds. They notice you and decide that tossing you off a cliff is a fitting punishment for eavesdropping. Fortunately, since you are the game's hero, you survive and embark on all sorts of heroic tasks -- in particular, attempting to protect a young woman from the dastardly forces of evil, as she seems to be essential to their plans.

Nice and simple, which is good, as a simplistic game shouldn't be burdened with 550 million plot twists. That sort of thing would cause the actual adventuring to be overwhelmed by the dialogue. As the hero, you can use one of a variety of weapons with one button and either use items or cast spells with the other. Most of the weapons you can pick up have uses outside of battle. Equipping an axe allows you to chop down trees impeding your progress, while the whip can be used to cross chasms (assuming there's something to affix it to on the other side). Also, you'll find out that many monsters in the game seem invulnerable to certain weapons, causing you to switch back-and-forth between your inventory to find the right tool for the job.

This is the biggest weakness of Final Fantasy Adventure. Not just because it gets tedious to regularly go to a sub-screen to equip a new weapon, but because the game isn't all that keen on illustrating whether you're actually causing damage with each hit. Occasionally, a monster will bounce back upon absorbing a good whack, but you can't count on that. Oftentimes, what I found myself doing was flailing wildly at a foe and if it was still alive after a number of swings, I'd assume I had an ineffective weapon and would switch. Sometimes I'd have to do this three or four times before finding the right one and taking care of whatever needed killing.....and then I'd usually find myself going right back to the sub-screen to equip something else.

The game's dungeons also were pretty bland. You'll get a bunch of caves, towers, castles, etc. that all are little more than a cluster of Zelda-esque square rooms connected by doors. There was one where I had to ride a mine cart and activate switches to progress, but most were the sort of place where I just wanted to jaunt through as quickly as possible, kill the boss and move on to my next destination. This was oftentimes easier said than done, as when going through a few dozen rooms on multiple floors that all look the same, it's not exactly difficult to wind up covering the same terrain a couple of times before figuring out I screwed up somewhere. The game does map dungeons for you, but it's minimally detailed and no help whatsoever if you're looking for little things like staircases or teleporters to, you know, assist in getting the hell out of the place.

With flaws like that, Final Fantasy Adventure comes out looking like one of those games that probably was awesome back in the day, but just hasn't aged all that well. You have a competent plot that doesn't dominate the fast-paced and simple gameplay and a number of useful weapons. There also is a tie-in to Final Fantasy, so you get to do things like ride a chocobo and wonder exactly why Kary (Fiend of Fire) is in the game's ice cavern. But there are also lame dungeons and the lack of a consistent enemy reaction to being damaged makes fighting a bit more tedious than it should be -- things that would be corrected in future Seiken Densetsu games. Still, this is a quality prototype for Secret of Mana.....and gave me far more entertainment than its remake could dream of providing.

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