jammi567

Final Fantasy, also known as The Original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy I in collections and common languages, is a role-playing game developed and published by Square Co., Ltd. for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was released in 1987, and it is the inaugural game in Square's flagship Final Fantasy series.


Final Fantasy has subsequently been remade for several different video game consoles and handheld systems, including the MSX2 computers (converted and released by Microcabin) and the Bandai WonderSwan Color. It has also seen versions produced for two Japanese mobile phone service providers: the NTT DoCoMo FOMA 900i series (as Final Fantasy i) and the CDMA 1X WIN-compatible W21x series of mobile phones from au/KDDI (as Final Fantasy EZ) and has also been made available with the American mobile company, Sprint and the Canadian mobile company, Rogers. The game has frequently been packaged with the next game in the series, Final Fantasy II. Compilations of the two games have been released for the Family Computer, the PlayStation, and the Game Boy Advance. The most recent port of the game is available in the iTunes App Store for the Apple iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad. Final Fantasy was Nobuo Uematsu's sixteenth work of video game music composition.


(Thank you Final Fantasy Wiki for doing something that would have taken me hours to do otherwise. Your services are very much appreciated.)


Before we start, I should say that I will be using TheWorldOfVortex's playthrough of Final Fantasy I on the GBA for the purpose of this blog. However, all the comments and such like are my own. Thank you in advance for not calling me lazy, even though I undoubtedly am in this particular case at least.


Anyways, with all the thanks out of the way, let's begin!
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Before starting the game proper, you are given the all important option of naming your characters and deciding what job classes they will all be. There are six different options - Warrior, Thief, Monk, Red Mage, Black Mage and White Mage. There is no correct party - although some combinations will obviously be harder to play with than others. In general, however, a good party should always include a White Mage for healing purposes and a Monk to deal good damage for nothing.


However, Vortex has chosen to keep the Thief rather than replace it with a Monk; whilst keeping the Warrior, Black Mage and White Mage. His loss, I suppose.


Anyways, once the choice has been made, the screen switches to a damn good quality image of a dark and omninous sky, with flashes of lightning thrown in for good measure. After a while, a omninous text god (OTG) appears on screen and says that "the world lies shrouded in darkness". Well, duh. When have you ever seen a Final Fantasy story without the world being in imminant danger from the outset?


Next we see a desert that's in the middle of a sandstorm, with a tower poking out of it. Suddenly, said sandstorm stops, and we're told that the wind has died. Not that we couldn't have seen that for ourselves, of course, but there you go.


We get more doom and gloom that you can shake an RPG character at, such as the sea's rage and the earth's decay before fading into a black screen and the OTG reciting what appears to be a prophesy. "When darkness viels the world, four Warriors of Light shall come." Simoltaniously? One at a time? Not that I particuarly want to know the details about that kind of thing. Ohh, you mean arriving at the first city of the game. My mistake. In conclusion to this little intro sequence, we're told that the warriors are carrying crystal shards.


Wait, what? How the hell is that possible? I'll come back to this later when we have more info, but we're already at our first plot hole or lazy writing/character incompency alert. And we haven't even started the game properly yet. Jesus Christ, game.


We arrive outside the first town/city of the game, Cornelia. Comes from the Latin "cornu", "horn". Might also be from "Cornelius", which means "strong" or "wise". None of which particuarly make sense, but there you go. Being the type of game that this is, I'm sure that there's some fan-fiction out there somewhere that "helpfully" fill in the history of this city and why it managed to get that name.


We could enter the town and stock up on all the supplies that a steriotypical RPG party needs to complete their quest, or we could enter the castle that looms above the town to find out what the hell our quest is in the first place. If it involves rescuing princesses, then I'm shutting this off right now.


Speaking to the first guard that we meet, we find out that the nameless king is looking for us. A damn useless job that he did too, as the warriors had to trudge to the city themselves. And at least one of them has already fought Garland before, if you believe Dissidia's crappy story. Oppps, totally did a non-spoiler there, my mistake. He's shocked at the fact that we have crystal shards. Very unsurprising, considering what you find out later.


Heading upstairs, we find that the throne room is very inconvientiantly blocked, not only for me and my progress through the game, but for any of the royal family who want to enter and exit the room. He says and reacts in exactly the same way as the guard did downstairs, but this time causes the screen to fade and fade back in with the Warriors of Light (WoL, not to be confused with the character from Dissidia) facing the Kind and the Chancellor (who shockingly isn't evil in this game). The King asks us whether we carry crystals or not. Dude, you seriously need to keep up with the story. It isn't that hard to understand.


With a non-answer from us, the King sees that we do indeed carry crystal with us at all times. Putting it away in their secret places, the King repeats the prophesy from the beggining of the game. The Chancellor may not be evil, but it doesn't stop him from being a jerk, as he insists that the WoL may not, in fact, be the WoL. Rightly so, the king calls him out on it and asks us to do a job for him.


Rescue the Princess. God damn, this game. Although I can't really blame it for jumping on the bandwagon in this reguard, as rescuing princesses was the vogue thing to do during the mid to late 1980's in videogames. Reguardless, a job's a job, and the sooner we can get it over and done with, the better.


The Chancellor sprouts out some exposition about Garland, who most likely managed to kidnapp Sarah by merely getting near the standard female grab area, knowing this game. He was a knight in the King's service. That's it. That's all the background detail we get for this nerferious villian. Thank you Square for giving us a copious amount of reasoning for wanting to fight this guy. Although I suppose they're saving it for later games in the series.


Continuing on, Mr C tells us that Garland has made his hidout in the Chaos Shrine. Well, I have to say, that sounds extreamly omninous for a first dungeon. I'm sure it'll be a complex labyranth of mazes, fake doors and dead ends to make me want to kick a puppy in frustration by the end of it.


Mr C continues by saying that the army did try to rescue her, but they failed misurably as Garland's "the strongest swordsman in the kingdom". His attempt to save the face of a nation at an end, the King takes over talking duties. Having somehow magically heard, despite the fact that the WoL are all mute, that they want to travel to the north, he promises that a bridge is to be built especially for them. Wait, why couldn't he start building it whilst the WoL are on the job? It must take at least a few days to get up to the Shrine and back, and if this was real life, the government would still be arguing whether it's economically veriviable.


I hate this game sometimes.


The King says that the bridge was lost long ago. Of couse, this doesn't give them the ability to build it in a shorter amount of time, but we're long past the point of getting a realistic notion on this issue. At last, the King and Chancellor stop talking and actually let us get on with the WoL job, but not before the King subtly threatens us to not fail in this all important mission.


Leaving the room, the most obvious thing should be that the guard that was previously guarding the room isn't there any more. So, what, the King doesn't need any more protection from any potential threats? Admittedly, there is the (very minor) threat of Wolfs attacking, but that's very unlikely at best.


The NPCs in the area merely repeat the same stuff that we've already heard before, although one of them does mention that Garland did the whole evil thing because he was corrupted, rather than for the lols.


Rather than go and save the Princess, like any respectfull Mario and Link would, our heros take a "secret passage" that leads them to the back of the castle. Wait, that sounded somewhat wrong. Anyway, they find a number of locked rooms, which need a mystic key to unlock, according to the old dude randomly standing nearby. Great, one bloody fetch quest after another. That's all I need at the moment. As that's not for a while yet, I can safely forget about it for the moment.


And that's the end of this post (and the end of the video, but I'm ignoring that). As I mentioned before, I won't have a set schedual for writing and posting these posts, so don't expect anything necessarily soon.