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I beat FF1, the GBA version! I’m adamant that the GBA releases of the 2D FF games are the superior ports, and constantly disappointed that FF3 was missed out – the pixel remaster is ok, and the new arrangements of the music from all six games is great, but I just think the GBA versions are so neat, so aesthetic (those battle backgrounds!), lovely font, nice and portable, still playable on my DS Lite, just a great experience all over. For FF1 I went with a warrior/warrior/red mage/monk party, which is probably a fairly standard choice, although if I were to play again I think I’d swap out the second warrior for another mage and then have one of the mages white and one black, just because I’d like to be able to use a bigger range of spells, and by the endgame my second warrior was mostly just throwing hi-potions anyway.
The storyline is minimal in this game – it’s basically “go to place, get item, go to place, get item” – but I couldn’t help constructing various headcanons about my party, none of whom are straight, two of whom are definitely himbos, etc., etc. It’s interesting and frustrating to experience some of the mechanics of early FF games – like curative spells just missing if the target gets KOd, instead of sensibly redirecting to someone else in the party – and I’m sure that’s even more the case for the NES version, as the amounts of HP, gil, etc. have been substantially adjusted for Dawn of Souls, presumably the result of many more years of experience on the part of the dev team. Regarding character levels, the walkthrough I was referring to says the following about the final boss:
The high 20s will make the game challenging but beatable, the low 30s will be fairly balanced, and the high 30s will near guarantee that you can succeed.
I’m guessing this is more geared towards the NES version, or that this was written by some Super Leet Gamer Bro, because firstly, by what sorcery would your characters be at such low levels – mine were in the sixties and I’d barely done any grinding, unless you count all the extra random encounters that resulted from getting lost on the overworld map several times – and secondly, even having them in the sixties didn’t exactly make it a walk in the park. Sure, the rehashed four fiends were pretty easy, but Garland himself was actually quite difficult and I had about seven game overs before I actually managed to win.
Anyway, it was fun! Looking forward to playing the second half of the cartridge, i.e. FF2. Playable characters with actual canonical names!!
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