Final Fantasy (2021)

What a perfectly fine way to spend some time! More and more I find myself thinking this with media that has little to say, but feels nice moment to moment. However, the lack of a strong hook keeps me from recommending this to anyone except for those curious of the origins of Final Fantasy. These game systems have been so iterated upon that I feel confident saying there are better ways to spend your time.

Oh, but the bones are so good! The classes are far too simplistic compared to modern fare, yet they are quite charming. It's easy to see why many of us have remained fans of the black mage, red mage, monk, etc. Battle feels snappy, though too much time is spent watching my party get blasted by nine separate, too long area of effect attacks that barely harm them. As such, much of the game will be spent with auto battle on fast forward. Meanwhile, I do enjoy the D&D based spell slot system and almost prefer it to a pool of MP. It's really too bad that the only challenge

Finally, there is the Pixel Remaster aspect, which I can only address as someone who has never played the original. This looks, feels, and plays like a middle era SNES RPG save for a few special effects. It's well done and I appreciated being able to turn off random encounters while trying to figure out where to go next. The remastered OST is wonderful.

That's it! Really, most should skip this. There are so many good games coming out every day, yet I enjoyed my time with this revamped relic.

Eleventh game finished in 2026: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster

I've played a bunch of later Final Fantasies but never the early 2D ones. They put this one (and seem to be adding the rest of the pixel remasters over time as well) on Game Pass so I went through it to check it out and get perspective on the series' beginning.

I thought it was well done and it definitely set the tone for the rest of the series, introducing pretty much all of the baseline things that we recognize as being "Final Fantasy", like crystals, airships, and a real hodge-podge of seemingly random enemy types that you might not expect in a fantasy game (I thought the late-game dinosaurs were a pretty funny addition).

It's definitely a more simplistic game than later ones in the series, as you would expect for a game originally on the NES, especially with regards to the story, which was overall pretty thin. I think in comparison to something like Mother/Earthbound Zero, which I thought was absolutely astounding in its complexity and really blew my mind that it was accomplished as an NES game, Final Fantasy wasn't quite to that level of sophistication.

But the delta in commercial results between the two series definitely speaks for itself; apparently being just sophisticated enough to be interesting is plenty enough.

Article: Final Fantasy’s legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu doesn’t have the ‘strength’ to score a full video game again

While this is an old article, I found this part very amusing.

During last year’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival, Sakaguchi revealed that he originally rejected Uematsu’s soundtrack for the first Final Fantasy in an attempt to get the composer to make the songs “improved”, saying they went “in the left ear, out the right ear”. When Uematsu submitted a revised playlist a week later, Sakaguchi expressed his delight at the “wonderful” score - only for Uematsu to reveal he had changed the order of the songs, but not the actual music. Either way, it apparently didn’t deter Uematsu, who went on to bookend his work composing for Sakaguchi across almost 40 years.

There is a legendary myth that has been shared around the playground (at least since I was a kid) that Final Fantasy is named thus because it was going to be the "final" game Squaresoft could publish before its bankruptcy, and the game sold so well, it saved the company from shutting its doors.

This is not true.

The origin of the name Final Fantasy began with the letters FF (pronounced EFF-OO EFF-OO in Japanese). The abbreviation, and how cool it sounded, were realized before deciding on its meaning. First the team decided on Fighting Fantasy but then reconsidered due to trademark concerns with another RPG. Sakaguchi said that due to this title being possibly his last in the gaming industry, they decided on the name Final Fantasy.

I apologize for ruining the fun but I needed to myth bust some of the reviews on here hahaha.