As much as I love playing Final Fantasy 14, I’ve never actually played any of the other Final Fantasy’s. Final Fantasy 7 in particular is one of those games I’ve never played but everyone I talk to has much like Zelda games. So Now that I have the means to play every Final Fantasy in one way or another I’ve decided I’d like to see what all the fuss is about. So naturally, instead of just starting with Final Fantasy 7, I started at the original Final Fantasy. I bought the Final Fantasy Origins edition for the PS one which comes with Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy 2 which upgrades both games graphics and audio but not much else.
So here’s the story of Final Fantasy. You have a group of legendary warriors and you have to go find the 4 crystals and save the world. It’s pretty simple, there’s not much too it but the thing that surprised me is that the first 10 or so hours didn’t have me searching fro crystals. Instead I was saving princesses, waking up elf kings, fighting vampires, and exploring castles. It’s rewarding to complete a task and a little bit more of the world or the story is revealed to you. Nothing is all that complex, combat is simple turn based combat without any gimmicky mechanics or timers. Just Monster and Man lining up and politely taking turns wailing on each other. There’s no complex crafting or stats everything is straight forward.
But simple doesn’t mean it’s not fun or stressful. There’s nothing like the stress of trying to get back to town to heal or out of a dungeon before your entire party is wiped out. At one point when I was in the Terra Cave I had just gotten the earth crystal after beating the boss. I had to walk back up the 5 floors of the dungeon to get outside to save in my tent. I had gone in with 100 potions and by the time I was done with the boss I had about 30 left. I began my accent to the surface slowly burning through my potions. I had to escape most of the battles, my team was being picked off one by one. I was on the last floor, only my warrior was left with 40 health to spare, most enemies hit for 1 or 2 points on him so I figured I was safe. It had been a grueling hour and a half from my last save. My heart was pounding, I was just 3 steps away from the exit. That’s when I the battle screen started and I was faced with 3 heavy hitting enemies. I tried to escape only to be hit with a devastating 20 point hit which left me poisoned and with 10 health left. At the beginning of my turn the poison took me out. The game over screen appeared and I was thrown back to the title screen, back to my save from an hour and a half ago.
I’ve died lost in forests circling around and around looking for town as my party is picked off. I’ve walked into castles and had every party member petrified on the first turn also leading to a game over. I’v had pary members one shotted during boss battles and die of poison when I ran out of antidotes. It’s not a friendly game at all and while these deaths don’t happen often when they do it’s when you haven’t saved in a while and think everything is going pretty well.
I’m 18 hours in and about halfway through. I have gotten the Earth Crystal and Fire Crystal and have two more to go. I got my hands on a map from the NES version and realized I skipped entire areas and am currently back tracking to the ice cave where I’m hoping the Ice crystal lives. The map is so incredibly helpful I wish I had it at the beginning.
Many Welps 