Forums > Submission Feedback > honestgamer's Final Fantasy review

Well that's ... I don't disagree with anything. Said in the review.

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Thanks. It's one of my oldest reviews, last touched up in 2007, so it's good to know people are still reading it and (it sounds like) agreeing with it. :-)

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

Hello, since i agree with this review. How do the two final fantasy sequels for the famicom compare to this game in your opinion?

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I still haven't gotten around to Final Fantasy III, though I have the DS and PSP ports in my collection and plan to maybe change that eventually. I haven't played FF2 in years, and it didn't grab me at the time the way the first one did. But those impressions are far from fresh and I might like it more by now. I'll know if I ever return to it, I suppose!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

I personally think think FF3 gets unfairly treated, especially in the west (where we will probably never get an official release of the original game). The class system is used more like a puzzle, where you need to use classes a specific way to overcome challenges (example: using only dragoons to avoid a boss's 1-hit kill attack), which is very different from the class system in FF5 and later entries. The world is also very interesting, as are many of the set pieces. I've played it about half a dozen times.

The DS remakes rebalances many classes, but I personally find the 3d style very bland. I would have liked to have seen new content in the remake like was done with the FF4-6 remakes.

FF2 also gets maligned, but in some ways it's deserved. I think it comes off as a better game if you think of it as SaGa 0 or something like that. It has more in common with SaGa than it does with FF anyway.

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I would've liked to see FFIII in the style of FF1 and II Origins.

I can avoid death by not having a life.

For my two cents:

FF II: Didn't like it at all. It was a bit more tolerable when re-released with the first game on the GBA, but I still found it to be blah. Like Dagoss said, it was done in a style that would be refined a bit for the SaGa games and, originally, that formula still needed some work.

FF III: I thought it was the best of the 8-bit games. The job class system was a precursor to ones that came later and this was just a fun, hard-hitting game where you had to go all out against a lot of bosses. I still remember fighting the final boss and that battle coming down to whether I could simply outlast its high-damage output. Main flaw that I recall is that there were 2-3 different areas in the game where you'd auto-die if you hadn't done the right thing (or in one case, I guess you'd fight an immortal water beast, so the death wouldn't quite be automatic).

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

I've just finished this and thought it had aged very well. So well it makes me think I've overrated Square games on SNES and PS1 (for example I couldn't believe the main glorious FF theme music was in this first game). I really enjoyed pace of the adventure, the difficulty level and the sense of exploration. Rarely did I have to look at walkthroughs despite the game not handholding you too much. I also didn't grind at any point and simply ran away from any encounters with poor XP or gold.

There could have been more variety in combat, in part due to such a limited number of spells slots available and later items having reusable spells. The only thing I disliked was essentially inescapable boss fights appearing at certain spots like treasure chests, some of which were huge, game ending difficulty spikes. If they'd at least had a monster icon to show these fixed encounters (and the risk of approaching certain chests) it would have been a lot less frustrating and resulting in less game over screens.

Overall, I'd give this a 8/10 and I feel sorry for my younger self that this wasn't apparently released in Europe until 2003? Being a PAL gamer absolutely stank. I'm pretty sure if I'd been able to play this at the same time as Japanese or US gamers it would be one of my all time favourites.

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Square is so very risk-averse. Final Fantasy wouldn't have happened in the US except Nintendo of America localized it. And now, we see a lot of games not coming to Nintendo hardware except that Nintendo helps with publishing and distribution again. And Square decides not to release nearly enough copies of the recent compilation on cartridge because it doesn't have confidence in selling them. Meanwhile, the company goes in big on NFTs? I wish we had Square of the SNES days back... Anyway, thanks for reading the review, and I'm glad you got the opportunity to discover that you enjoy the original FF!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2