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Friday 25 January, 2008
Gamelog Entry #2
Gameplay
I have to admit that playing this second session was kind of boring, I did defeat some monster-lady that made my town pretty happy, and then I went to the next town and saved them from pirates. Getting a pirate ship seemed awesome at first, but there really wasn't anything that great about it because I still had no idea where to go. The story had progressed, but it was still kind of uninvolving and wasn't clear on how I had progressed through the game.(I'm sure my reaction to the story has a lot to do with my predisposed experiece with newer RPGS.) The game wasn't really that fun to play anymore, it got repetitive as I would go and get into 4-5 battles, then go back to town and pay for the inn to heal my guys, and repeat. Definitely no more flow, and not all that interesting. Though I admit that I did get a kick out of fighting a shark. The reason for this somewhat negative experience were the design issues in the game, which are understandable. This was one of the first RPGS and it was really great, but still needed a lot of fine tuning. (Apparently, there were improvments made upon the game in further versions of Final Fantasy.)
Design
There are a lot of cool innovative elements of this game. Controlling a party rather than having a central character is one of them, and being able to name each member of your party is very cool. Also the class system was another neat aspect, you have the freedom and the power to have a team of nothing but fighters, nothing but black belts, or even (if you're a moron) nothing but white mages, if you wish. Having the freedom to roam from town to town makes it a little less linear, which is cool. Another innovation is the randomness of the battles. In Zelda, you got to a level and you see all the monsters and you kill them. In Final Fantasy, you see your destination and you move there but you don't know if you'll fight one battle or three, and you don't know if you'll be fighting tough ogres or weaker imps.
The biggest complaint I had about this game was that there is no instruction, hints, advice, or definitions whatsoever. The reason I had such difficulty at the start of the game was because I was fighting all the monsters with no weapons, armor, potions or magic. When I got weapons, (And it was a gamble to see which character could use which weapon,) my warriors started killing them in one shot. When you go to buy weapons, armor, or magic, there is no indication of who could use what, Or even what the spell or armor does. You assume that the more expensive armor is better, but it turns out your Black Belt can only wear Wood armor and your Fighter is the only one who can wear Chain. I have learned over 8 spells for my white and black mage, but I still have no idea what some of them do. The names of each spell is limited to 4 letters (the names of almost everything in the game is limited to 4 letters,) So I've got things like "FIRE" and "CURE" which make sense. Fire does damage to one enemy, cure heals one ally. But then I've got things like "LOCK" and "HARM," and every time I have ever used these spells, they say "ineffective." There is never any explanation anywhere for what these spells actually do. I've tried the spells in different contexts in battle and still I've got nothing. "Ineffective" is a vague term for not doing anything.
Which brings me to another irritating part of the Battle system: If one of your warriors kills an enemy, and You've already set another warrior to attack that enemy, the turn is spent and you get "Ineffective," rather than that warrior going to the next enemy. Since you can't see the health bars of the enemy, its pretty much up to chance of how much damage your guys do so focusing attacks on single enemies is not always the best idea, because you could kill him on the first shot and the rest of your team's attacks are wasted. Another irritating part of the battle system is that for your Mages, they are allowed to do 2 spells of every level before you have to go to the inn. This makes the regular attackers much more effective. Apparently in later versions of this game they implemented Mana or Magic Points.
Lastly, another thing that was irritating is something that most people get used to in RPGs, and thats the "waiting" kind of effect in battle after you've chosen which each of your characters will do. After each enemy or each warrior does something, there is three seconds of text that you can press A to bypass, but you still have to wait three seconds nonetheless. This gets irritating when there are 5 enemies and 4 of your own guys, and the only thing you're doing is pressing A A A A A A A A A A A to have each of your guys perform a regular attack. I didn't see this change significantly in the Final Fantasy series until Final Fantasy X, where your fighters did things instantly, and while the animation was happening you could select actions for your next fighter.
Space was an odd thing in this game. You had a whole island to walk around on, but it didn't help you or reveal anything new. Even when I got the pirate ship and could basically sail forever to the left of the screen if I went around islands, it just didn't make sense. There was no map, and you really have no idea where to go in this game. If you talk to the townspeople they don't even tell you where to go.
I don't recall any cutscenes in my sessions with this game. When you do get in a battle you cut to the battle, but there is nothing in between. If I was making an RPG, I would want to make sure that I explain what every item does, and I'd want to have a minimap and clear indication of how to progress through the game.
So Final Fantasy was really a great step in the right direction for RPGS, but not that enjoyable to play nowadays, unfortunately.
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