Sunday 17 Sep 2006

First off, despite the unfortunately misleading subtitle, this is not a Nintendo DS game, its a Gameboy Advance game. Secondly, the GBA cart contains ports of the two original entries in one of the best selling, highly regarded, longest running video game series in videogamedom.

And, considering all of video gaming is made up of long-running series, that shows you something. I think it shows that these games were quality games in their day. The question is whether they’re any good in today’s day of monster tv screens, 3-D graphics and whiz-bang eye candy.

I may not be the one to judge that. Gosh, I still love board games, and those are as low-tech as you can get, and usually very simple in relation to video games. I do enjoy some good artwork though, and Final Fantasy has always had breathtaking art style. In this case we have been treated to an upgrade of the hand-drawn 2D graphics from its original NES/Famicom days and it looks great on the GBA. It seems, in the process of porting the games over, that some extra areas were added (new optional dungeons and bosses), the graphics were updated and the translations were redone. Also, as far as I’m aware, Final Fantasy II on this cart is the real Final Fantasy II, not the Final Fantasy II that was published in English back in the day. That Final Fantasy II was actually Final Fantasy IV in Japan, not Final Fantasy II, whereas this one is, then, actually, Final Fantasy II. They (Square) have since published this Final Fantasy II (as Final Fantasy II, not IV) on Playstation, so this is a port of that.

Since Final Fantasy I is one of the granddaddy’s of all Japanese RPG’s, a lot of the cliches of Japanese RPG’s can be found in action here. You have a party of characters, they’re all about 18 years old, they start at level one in ability and they must save the world (or at least the empire/country). There are towns to rest in, which serve as a place for you to wander around and talk to everyone you see, buy weapons, buy magic spells and generally equip yourselves for the great outdoors, which are obviously extremely dangerous. When you go outside, it all looks calm and peaceful so you wander around looking for the nearest dungeon (what else is there outside towns?), and an enemy pops out from nowhere to fight you. The battles are a very chivalrous affair, with each character in the battle getting one chance to perform an action before a new round of battle begins. The order these actions take place in is a little bit random though, so it’s not like ladies go first or anything. Each character can attack, defend, run or cast a spell. Once you kill the enemy you get experience, and after enough experience you go up a level, meaning your character instantaneously becomes stronger, more healthy, faster more intelligent, wiser, able to hold a different weapon and so forth. You fight your way through the dungeon that you find, with battles every two and half steps, until you find the boss. After a brief discussion with the boss you must fight and kill him/her/it. Then you get an item of some sort which you need to get to the next town.