Thursday 21 February, 2008

GAMEPLAY
If you have ever played a Japanese RPG the combat in Final Fantasy won’t surprise you. Everyone lines up, taking turns assaulting each other with weapons or magic. A particularly annoying part about combat in Final Fantasy is that you choose everyone’s actions at once, regardless of when they’ll attack. So if I have Lao and Shiv attack the same wolf and Lao defeats the wolf before Shiv’s turn, then Shiv will proceed to swing his rapier vainly at the air where the wolf once stood rather than focus his efforts on another, living enemy. Oh, and for veterans of the Final Fantasy series, yes, even in the original do your characters dance every time they defeat a batch of enemies.

Upon reaching the ruined castle where Garland made his base I proceeded to loot the place of everything that wasn’t nailed down. After stowing away the loot (a cap, a potion, and a… cabin?) I finally came face to face with princess thief. He greeted me by asserting that this was in actuality his princess and that I was grossly mistaken in my liberation attempts. He then informed me that his only recourse was to initiate my collapse. I then refuted his argument with violence. As his wretched form lay twisted on the ground he could only accept that mine was the sounder argument. After speaking with the king he gave me a lute and sent me on my way. After all of this the opening credits began to roll… Oy.

DESIGN

All right, I realize that I have been bashing what is perhaps the single most important RPG released in the past two decades that doesn’t have “Dragon” in the title, but cut me some slack. The game set the stage on some level for virtually every electronic RPG released in the past twenty years. Without Final Fantasy we might never have some of the most memorable scenes in video gaming history (most of which were NOT in the original Final Fantasy). I understand that the game was a milestone and superb for its time, but the end all be all RPG? No, not by a long shot.

In my three hours of play time, I had yet to encounter a single character that had, at any given time, more than two or three sentences of dialogue. Sometimes, that is ALL the dialogue they had. I didn’t encounter anyone I could say I would identify with/love/hate/etc. and the only memorable characters (Garland and a pirate captain named Bikke) stayed in my mind because of their absurdity. They were, quite literally, jokes (and in Final Fantasy’s defense, pretty funny ones).

Although I must cut the game some slack, it kept me entertained, if only because I’m a fan of the RPG genre, for the nostalgia value, and *ahem* historical context. If you like RPGs, you’ll like Final Fantasy, you’ll have played better and you won’t hold it in any high regard, but you’ll like it. The game distinguished itself in the late eighties and early nineties because concepts which are now at worse cliché and at best standardized were new and innovative at that time. I am thankful that such a thing as the original Final Fantasy existed, but I would not afford it anymore praise than that.

There are some good arguments, but they are not articulated well. The Gameplay sections are too stream-of-conscience-esque, and the design section doesn't actual talk about the design of the game. Next time focus on how/why is the game is/isn't good or fun.


- David Seagal (Grader)