by  Jon24hours
from Baron, , World of FFIV | Jul 2, 2007 |
Final Fantasy I has been remade several times since its first release. From the MSX2 to the Wonderswan Color, to the Playstation, to the GBA, to the Cell Phones, and now it has hit the Playstation Portable. This game boasts the CG Cutscenes from the Playstation 1 remake and the Secret Dungeons from GBA version, and a new Time Labyrinth that really pushes your skills to the limit. All packed in with remixed music and enhanced graphics.
The story starts out as four Warriors appear in Cornelia, each holding on to a Elemental Crystal. When you're summoned to the King of Cornelia to rescue his daughter, Princess Sarah from the hands of Garland, a traitor to the Cornelian army, you set off to Chaos Shrine. Once you defeat Garland, you now set off on the real adventure, to relight the crystals of Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind, the elements that make up the planet.
Through out the game you fight the Four Fiends, Lich, Marilith, Kraken, and Tiamat. Each of them feeds off the power of the Elemental Crystals to get stronger and bring chaos to the land and give power to their leader. As you defeat them, you will find yourself back at Chaos Shrine to take on Chaos, the final boss.
Review:
The game itself is very entertaining, however, there are some things that make this game very irritating. The monster encounter is very high and can get annoying when every other step results in a battle. Along with that, some times you find yourself battling 9 enemies at once or an extremely strong monster, and if you try to run, a majority of them will still get their hits in before you successfully escape.
Chests often have a different monster that wouldn't be found normally guarding them that reappeared every time you leave the tile, even when it's nothing worth while and monsters aren't even found in the area. This can get annoying when you are just wandering around and happen to accidentally step on the tile, being thrust into an unwanted battle.
Along with the high encounter rates, things such as spikes and lava replace floor tiles, draining even more of your HP. The final kicker is that the dungeons are giant rat mazes. Once you turn a corner you are hit with about five divergent paths, all but a few leading to anything at all. These three elements will most likely waste your time, HP, MP, and supplies, making you nearly completely helpless against the Fiend at the end.
You have little to none direction, and often have to guess where in the world your next destination is, sometimes resulting in an hour and a half of searching for the right person to talk to or the right thing to do.
Magic is set in levels in this game. While you still have MP instead of a set number of spells you can cast like Final Fantasy III, you ARE limited to how many you can have in each level. In this case, you may have three spells per level. However, there are four spells available for each level at magic shops, forcing you to leave one out. White Mages and Black Mages (or their upgraded job White/Black Wizard) can learn all of the spells from their respected shop, however, a Red Mage can only learn one or two from each, and must choose between both sets of magic, ruling out which ones are least useful. But Red Mages also have decent fighting skills, and may be more useful then a Black Mage, since they only specialize in magic, and the Red Mage can learn all spells that makes a Black Mage worth while. Although they can only get up to level 7 spells.
A useful thing you can do to help through all this is to upgrade your jobs, which you can do right after you beat The Lich. Upgraded jobs allows you to equip better armor and weapons onto some, and or allow them to cast spells to a certain level or cast better ones if they already can. Such a turning a Red Mage into a Red Wizard. A Red Wizard can equip swords and armor and cats spells that a Red Mage cannot. An upgraded Warrior (a Knight) allows you to use up to level 3 White Magic, and a upgraded Thief (a Ninja) allows you to use up to level 4 Black Magic.
Secrets and Unlockables
As you beat each the Four Fiends, you'll notice that dungeons unlock as you do. These optional dungeons are challenging and you will most likely get beaten the first time you unlock them. The last one unlocked, Whisperwind Cove, is 40 levels long. As you go through these dungeons, you are occasionally met by blue flames.
These are the bosses of the dungeons, and are very powerful. These bosses are actually taken from (now) previous Final Fantasy games. Which include the final four bosses before the Final Boss in Final Fantasy III (in Earthgift Shrine), the Elemental Lords from Final Fantasy IV (in Hellfire Chasm), four monsters from Final Fantasy V including Gilgamesh, Atomos, Omega, and Shinryu (in Lifespring Grotto), and Typhon (Chupon), Orthros, Phantom Train, and Death Gaze (in Whisperwind Cove).
All of the bosses have remixed boss music from their respected games, Gilgamesh even having a remix of Battle on the Big Bridge. Most of these bosses have a high rate instant death attack, and have over 4000 HP, Death Gaze reaching 30,000. Omega and Shinryu are just as hard as their Final Fantasy V counter parts, and seem nearly impossible to beat.
This game also includes an exclusive dungeon called the Time Labyrinth, in which you must sacrifice a random amount of abilities in order to enter a timed maze filled with enemies. For a Modern Maze, you must sacrifice Item Usage, the Flee Command, or the Magic Command. As you proceed through the Labyrinth, the amount of abilities you must sacrifice will increase, making you choose up to 8 abilities to sacrifice such as White Magic Usage, Black Magic Usage, the ability to Dash and so on.
Although I recommended this game, you will need a bit of patiences in order to beat it. |
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