The first video game I ever loved was Final Fantasy II (now properly IV). I couldn’t really afford many new video games as a kid, so I mostly rented games from Blockbuster and prayed that no one else would delete my save before I could rent it again, a couple weeks later. They were popular-ish in America, but not really huge hits.
And then Final Fantasy VII happened.
Final Fantasy VII was a cultural event, the first JRPG to become such in America. The grittier, sci-fi influenced aesthetic, the 3D graphics, the elaborate cutscenes — these all made the older, pixelated Final Fantasy games seem a bit dated. Honestly, Square seemed embarrassed by them. From then on, the series dedicated itself to 3D. Even re-releases of the old games often included (terrible) updated 3D art and new (unnecessarily bloated) cutscenes, to make them fit more with the modern aesthetic of the franchise.
Thankfully, SquareEnix has finally made the first six Final Fantasies readily available in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remasters, currently out on PC. So I thought: Why not go back and play all of these JRPG classics? How do they hold up? Is there anything modern game design can learn from them?
Welcome to Fantasies Revisited.
“The King’s lapdogs. Do you have any idea who you are messing with?”
Later Final Fantasy games would be more worried about crafting memorable characters; Final Fantasy I is not. At the start of the game, you choose which four faceless character classes will populate your party, and that’s it. Where did your heroes come from? No one knows. What do they want? No one cares.
All that matters is that they arrive bearing four crystals that correspond to four magical forces that have been corrupted in this fallen land. Your four heroes are asked to kill the fiends corrupting the world’s four elemental poles. Once that’s done, learn what awakened these dark forces and put an end to it.
This is more complex than it looks. The world of Final Fantasy is one beset by Chaos. Formerly loyal soldiers turn on their masters. Pirates run roughshod over coastal towns. Powerful demons corrupt ancient temples. But there’s no sign of the mastermind who set everything in motion. Who has made the world this way?
“You think you have what it takes to cross swords with me?”
The influence of tabletop RPGs on Final Fantasy I is undeniable. Later games in the series would use ‘MP’ to cast spells, a pool of magic you could use to cast any spell you want. Here, however, it’s more in the tradition of Dungeons & Dragons. First you purchase a spell, so that a character can study and learn it. Every spell corresponds to a ‘level’, and each level has a set number of times the mage can cast spells of that level. For instance, they may be able to cast ten 1st level spells and five 2nd levels spells. On the upside, that may let them use more spells overall. But on the downside, you get much less use out of your stronger and more useful late-game spells.
Also reminiscent of a lot of early tabletop roleplaying games are the non-player characters. The towns and villages are vital to the game’s adventure narrative. Because these early games don’t have a quest log, players learn what to do by exploring a town. Who is in the town? What problems do they have? The answers can be surprisingly varied. One port town has a pirate problem they need you to solve. Another has an Elvish prince cursed with unnatural sleep. The towns are simple but flavorful, full of NPCs and worldbuilding details. Shallow? Maybe. But weirder and more inventive than necessary.
Admittedly, some of progress-gating and quest markers are… pretty obtuse. They aren’t as bad as the original Phantasy Star, but the quest design still leaves a lot to be desired. To unlock the game’s airship, for example, you must complete a dungeon, find an item, travel to a completely unconnected desert, and then use that item there. There are probably a few dialogue hints, but at times it felt like playing under a Dungeon Master who expected me to get the single arbitrary hint he dropped a few hours ago.
“Very well.”
And yet, Final Fantasy I saved SquareSoft (now Square Enix). It launched one of the most popular and enduring franchises in gaming history. How did it do this? And, for modern players, is there any value to going back to the original Final Fantasy game?
First off: While I love the more modern, character-focused, narrative-dense roleplaying games that populate both tabletop and video game spaces, there’s still something deeply satisfying about a good dungeon crawl. This is part of the appeal of smash hit tabeltop game Gloomhaven, for example, or recent addictive minimalist RPG Dungeon Encounters.
And dungeon crawling was rough in early RPGs. In Dragon Quest (1986), players needed to purchase and light torches to see in dungeons. Treasure was minimal and navigation was confusing but had little reward. In Phantasy Star (1987), confusing dungeons were navigated with a first-person perspective popular at the time, and were filled with punishing traps and hazards. Both presented players with extreme limitations in how much information they were allowed to see. Final Fantasy (1987) on the other hand, minimized the punishing aspects of dungeons. Exploration was generally rewarded with more treasure rather than unexpected death. The variety of dungeons increased, changing style to fit the quest’s theme. The dungeons went from a slog to being a core attraction.
Perhaps this is why I found Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster so satisfying. In video game writing, we often talk about a ‘core loop’. At a basic level, a core loop is the cyclical actions the player will take during the course of a game. In Final Fantasy I, that core loop is simple. Find a new town. Talk to its inhabitants. Discover a problem. Find a nearby dungeon. Explore that dungeon. Kill the boss. Solve the problem. Progress.
Compare this with, say, Dragon Quest I. The loop is similar, but the guideposts are all off. Where do you go next? Often to the opposite side of the world map, which the game rarely signposts. The whole game world is accessible right away, which means players can easily find themselves in areas they can’t handle without any idea what went wrong. This makes finding and talking to villagers less pleasurable. Exploring dungeons is similar; DQ uses a torch mechanic that limits your light and generally places fewer treasure chests in dungeons. This means they’re harder to explore and offer less reward.
Final Fantasy‘s formula isn’t better than Dragon Quest‘s — but it is more satisfying. It’s an evolution from the earlier game. Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster adds plenty of player-friendly modern additions, but at its core, Final Fantasy just… had a really incredibly satisfying core gameplay loop. And, I’ll be honest: It still does.
“I, Garland, will knock you all down!”
I never played the original Final Fantasy when it came out. As I mentioned, Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy VI were my entry points into the series. So the nostalgic power this game held surprised me. Part of that is the pixel remaster format, which is largely very well executed. The game’s previous remake involved an upgrade to 3D graphics that simply don’t look right to me. The Pixel Remaster doesn’t look like the original game; it looks like how those old games felt. It recaptures an era while updating it for modern sensibilities.
That’s not easy to accomplish!
But beyond that, Final Fantasy I makes a strong case for the definitive JRPG franchise, straight out the gate. All the things we see here that differentiate Final Fantasy from Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star are present here. There are growing pains, certainly. But overall, Final Fantasy‘s first outing still charms and delights.
Beyond that, the game demonstrates something modern game design still struggles with. Recently, some Western developers were frustrated and confused by the lack of quest markers in Elden Ring. Games like Assassin’s Creed and Horizon: Zero Dawn litter the map with symbols. The intention is to make navigating the worlds a smooth, effortless process. In execution, however, I find that these quest markers make me ignore the world. It mechanizes things. Go here, accomplish this, update quest log, move on.
You can’t ignore the world in Final Fantasy. And while this first game still has things to learn about gating progress and making exploration approachable, it set the stage for some key elements of game design for decades to come.