There's quite a few differences, but not a lot that really matters much. The major differences are:Originally Posted by Silver Fox
The "church" was changed into "clinic" for the US release, this was because of Nintendo's policy on religious material in games (which they hypocritically broke by releasing Zelda II with many instances of crucifixes). The sprites were also changed so that instead of a cross, the clinic would have a heart, and the man inside had his Bishop's hat removed.
Several enemies had different sprites. Some were changed because of the legality of directly ripping off D&D, and a few (actually it might have just been Kary, butI'm not sure) were nude in the original Japanese version, but this was censored in the American release for obvious reasons.
A lot of enemies had different names. Most noteably, Kary was originally called Marilith. There were really too many to list outright. Some had names that nintendo didn't like (Bloody Bone was changed to Red Bone), others were translated oddly, and others seem to have been changed arbitrarily.
Just about every item, weapon and piece of armor in the game was given a different name. One big one was that mithril equipment was changed to silver, probably because it's obviously borrowed from Tolkien and Nintendo didn't feel like taking that risk.
Spells had very different names. Some like Firaga were corrected later in the series, but in this early instance, Firaga is called FIR3. Others were censored (Death became RUB, Holy became FADE) and others were fairly arbitrary (Dia became Harm).
A lot of this stuff was changed back to the original for the PS1 release (Final Fantasy Origins), but other things weren't. For example, the enemy graphics that were changed have not been changed back for the most part.
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