First Impressions

[Sephex]

No matter when you first came across this game, what were your first impressions like?

As someone who grew up with a NES, Final Fantasy was my first one, but not my first RPG. Aside from a couple of bare bones PC RPGs (with the Dungeons and Dragons licence), Dragon Warrior was played heavily in my household.

I have told this story a couple of times before, so I'll keep it brief. Basically a cousin and I came across the game in a local rental store. Instead of renting it, my Aunt was nice enough to straight up buy the game for my cousin.

Long story short, I remember a time when the original Final Fantasy was very advanced compared to other RPGs that were available to me. The fact that you can choose a party of four alone made me want to run home that evening (slept over at said cousin's house that fateful night) and pester my mom to buy the game for me (which eventually did happen).

Like most players, my cousin got his ass handed to him in the Marsh Caves and ended up having a mini break down when he realized that he was so screwed, that he felt he had to start the whole game over (in retrospect it's not like a lot of time was wasted, but as a kid long games were uncommon so the situation was very distressing).

Anyway, what about yourself?

[Pumpkin]

I played it after playing the later ones and I found it much more difficult. I did enjoy it, though, and it was neat seeing where the series started

[Ayen]

I loved it. I started with the Origins version on PS One, the opening with the dragon blew me away and I enjoyed choosing the classes and names of my entire party before beginning. While I grew up with a NES, for one reason or another my brother never had this game. Or if he did I never got to play it, so I didn't get to it until the PS One. As such the return to 8 bits didn't bother me.

[Rez09]

I remember seeing the box art and instantly wanting the game, and falling in love with it. I believe it was my first RPG, and it's fun to look back now and remember the sense of wonder the game instilled in me at the time, especially with how primitive it seems now; every dungeon was an epic quest, and my characters were the ultimate heroes!

It's also notable that I had no idea what was going on in the game, so I'm pretty sure I dreamt up my own story, and I explicitly recall not knowing what a soft potion was/did and thinking my petrified characters were gone forever, so I wonder now how I rationalized that at the time; it must have been quite interesting. :/

[black orb]

>>> I had the impression I was playing the most incredible game in the universe.. I was not wrong..

[metagloria]

My brother bought this for his daughters when they were young and I was 4. They weren't into it, so my parents bought it from him for me. I remember poring over the manual, world map, dungeon maps, spell charts, weapon and armor charts, and bestiary endlessly. (If you've never seen the materials the original NES game came with, you're missing out. The manual is an 80-page strategy guide for the first half of the game, up to the airship, and you also get two giant fold-out posters of the stuff I listed.) I wrote a (terrible, and kind of hilarious) novelization of the story when I was 5. Basically, I've been in love with this game since I could hold a controller.

[Wolf Kanno]

I finally got a copy of it just before I had a chance to play FFVII, I really liked it to be honest but my game was bugged and since the copy I own never came with the manual I got screwed over by things like not knowing how to equip my equipment or what spells did. This was a few years before I discovered Gamefaqs so yeah. When I lost my first second attempt at playing through it I put the game to rest. Later I played the Origins version which I found to be quite fun and more recently, thanks to WiiWare, I was able to finally play the NES version which I found to be a very enjoyable experience, much more than Origins. I don't know, I just seem to like playing some games in their original form, I don't know why.