Much like Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy V has been an entry that I have somehow evaded entirely. Going into this title, I knew less than nothing about it. Nothing about the battle system, the characters, anything that makes this entry uniqiue, nothing. And I don’t think I’m alone in that. In fact, the first time I really noticed Final Fantasy V being mentioned was when I was looking up tips for Final Fantasy III, to which most comments said “skip FF3, play FF5. The Job system is much better in that game”
Narrative Recap
Final Fantasy V starts with the nomadic Bartz, riding his steed Chocobo named Boko. A meteor crashes into the Earth, and upon inspecting the damage, he encounters a young noble girl, Lenna, and an amnesic old man named Galuf. The wind has stopped, and Lenna is on her way to the Wind Crystal shrine to investigate. Galuf knows he should accompany her, as he doesn’t remember anything, but he feels in his heart of heart that he should go to the Wind Crystal as well. Bartz, being the hero that he is, says “Good Luck!” and peaces out. Or at least he tries to, when Boko pecks him for abandoning people in obvious need and sends him back to help.
The party tries to commandeer a nearby pirate ship, but quickly get thrown in the brig. Faris, the captain, notices Lenna is wearing a pendant that is the twin to the one they are wearing, and chooses to join them. When the party arrives at the shrine where the crystal of wind sit, it shatters, fragments spraying everywhere. Bartz, Lenna, Galuf, and Faris are deemed the 4 warriors of light, and the shards of the crystal imbue them with a series of jobs to augment their abilities.
From there on, the party goes on an adventure, seeking out the other 3 crystals, all of which shatter and bestow more jobs upon the party. Faris is revealed to be Lenna’s long-lost sister, but spurns the role of princess, more meteors crash into the Earth, and Galuf is revealed to be from another world, transported by the meteors. He came back to Bartz’s world check the seal on the Villain, Exdeath, which has been weakening, perhaps because Cid has invented a machine to utilize the power of the crystal to make the lives of everyone more comfortable and convenient. When the last crystal shatters, Exdeath is released from his seal, defeats the party, and returns to his homeworld.
Galuf’s granddaughter, Krile, arrives via meteor, and Galuf’s memory is completely restored. He and Krile return to their own world to continue chasing down Exdeath, and with little hesitation, the rest of the party follow to Galuf’s world. They are tricked in defeating the guardians of the crystal in Galuf’s world, and Galuf sacrifices himself to defeat Exdeath and save his friends and granddaughter. Krile inherited Galuf’s abilities, and the party chases down Exdeath, defeating him and merging the two worlds. Exdeath, however, returns, and takes control of the Void, destroying whole towns with his new power.
The party finds four tablets, which unlock the 12 legendary weapons. Armed with the weapons of lore, they travel into the Void, defeat all of Exdeath’s minions, then slay Exdeath at the end, once and for all.
Story and Gameplay
Final Fantasy V’s story is full of twists and turns. The game moves from set-piece to set-piece, using cutscenes to deliver the narrative. There is a current of light-hearted humor running through this game, and the sprites are dynamic and excitied, creating a fairly funny game. That said, some of the scenes are heavy, like when Faris’s hydra, Syldra, dies. Faris tries to follow her into the ocean, but Lenna pulls her back, or a flashback revealing that Lenna almost cut out the tongue out of a wind drake to save her mother from illness, but doing so would have doomed the entire species. Final Fantasy V excels at delivering both heavy, emotional moments, and light-hearted laughs.
While the playable party is set almost right from the beginning, Square Enix obviously took a lot of lessons from the past few games in developing this tale. Each of the main characters have their own motivations, their own flaws, their own priorities. Unlike in Final Fantasy IV where a large cast of characters filtered in and out of your party at almost a break neck pace, Final Fantasy V sits you with the same characters almost from start to finish (with the exception of Galuf getting swapped out for Krile). Where FF4′s characters were pre-established in their skills and equipment, FF5 returns the freedom to the player to kit out their party with whatever jobs, skills, and gear they want to use. With over 20 jobs to choose from, You’re given wide options almost right away.
One of my frustrations with Final Fantasy III was the fact that you didn’t unlock a second set of jobs until almost 12 hours into your adventure. Final Fantasy V wastes no time in giving you the first 6 jobs. Then, just when you’ve had a chance to test each one out, more jobs get heaped upon you. The Job system is very remincient of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (which I’m sure I’ll touch on at some point on my Final Fantasy journey), whereas you gain ability points in specific jobs, you ‘learn’ skills. Once skills are learned, you can mix and match them with other jobs. It’s quite nice to see the system that inspired one of my favourite video games of all time.
The skills are separated into innate abilites, and actions. While a character is equipped with a job, all the innate abilities for that job will be active. They have one job action that is preset, and one open slot where they can enter in any skill they’ve learned so far, should it be an innate ability from a different job, or another action ability. I had one character designated as the mage for the party, swapping back and forth from white to black mages, making basically a red mage, but with access to the top tier magic of both types. Another character was a time mage/summoner. Perhaps more interestingly, one character was a knight, who can use the ability two-handed to hold a single sword in both hands for more power. He brought that Knight ability to the Mystic Knight class, who can imbue swords with magics for even more power. This character didn’t hit often, but when he did, and there was a elemental weakness to exploit, he did some massive damage.
This freedom was exciting, as was discovering which jobs worked really well together. In kind of the opposite example from the mystic knight, one character specialized as a ranger, earning the ability Multi-hit, which delivers a blow at 50% the characters normal power, but does so 4 times. Then they swapped into a Ninja, who had double hand. While welding a sword in both hands, that multi-hit was doing 50% damage, 8 times. There were a few bosses that fell after only two rounds of my heavy damage dealers really unleashing upon then.
The job system culminates with the Freelancer position, which is the basic class you have at the start of the game. This job can equip any weapon or gear, and has 2 open ability slots, but what really makes the freelancer the end-game job, is that they inherit all the passive abilities from every job you’ve mastered, plus some associated stat buffs, leaving those two slots available for any two action abilities. There’s also the Mime job, which is similar, but has 3 actions slots, and a lot more restrictions on what they can equip. In general, I found that magic-forward characters benefit from the Mime, while physical characters go freelancer.
It took a long time for anyone to master a job, as for the first 75% of the game, battles only give you one or two AP each. In the final dungeons, however, the AP is boosted to 5 per battle, and in the Phoenix Tower, you encounter a magic jar enemy that you can throw elixirs at, and receive 100 AP from, massively assisting you in mastering any job. Before getting to the Phoenix tower at the very end of the game, however, each character had mastered naught but a single job. The progress felt slow during the game, I wondered how the heck I would ever make a freelancer work, but by the time I had my final encounter with Exdeath, I was quite satisfied with how my party had come together.
Conclusion
While Final Fantasy IV has long been firm in my heart as my favourite Final Fantasy game, with its focus on Cecil’s redemption story and half a dozen well crafted characters that drove a serious narrative, Final Fantasy V captivated me in a completely different way. Through experimentation, customization, and the joy of mechanical discovery. The story, while more playful and looser than its predecessor, still managed to land its emotional beats when it really counted. The real star of Final Fantasy V is the Job system. It’s the kind of game that invites you to poke at its edges, get intreagues, then dive in deep and watch in delight as some ridiculous combo absolutely demolishes a boss just two rounds. I went into this experience knowing absolutely nothing, and came out with a feeling that Final Fantasy V deserves a spot at the table, when discussing the best that Final Fantasy has to offer.
In many ways, Final Fantasy V feels like a celebration of freedom. It takes the ideas crafted in III and hands you the tools right at the start. That spirit of freedom and personalization so prevelent in the first 3 games, mixed with some now experienced story-tellers, makes FInal Fantasy V the most purely fun entrie I’ve played so far.
As I close the book on Final Fantasy V, I’m struck by how well all of these early games are holding up. Not just as historical artifacts, but as compelling, thoughtful experiences in their own right. With Final Fantasy VI next on the horizon, a game that is constantly at the very tip top of “Best Final Fantasy Games” and “Best JRPGs Ever” lists, I’m feeling trepadacious. I’m excited to re-experience FInal Fantasy 6 with the context of all the games that came before it. And it’s been at least a decade since I played it for the first time, anyways. I’m very curious to see what twists they introduce to really differentiate it from FF4 and FF5.
Whenever the topic “What’s your favourite Final Fantasy?” comes up, I’ve always had a single answer. Final Fantasy IV. On the SNES as a kid, it was my first JRPG, and I just remember the music, the story, and the characters really speaking to me. It inspired me to seek out dozens of JRPGs over the years until that genre became a part of my identity.
I’ve replayed portions of Final Fantasy IV over the years. I’d usually get to the part where Cecil becomes a paladin, or even as far as Palom and Porom turning to stone, but generally I’d be playing on an emulator on my phone or something else non-ideal, and I’d end up dropping the game before too long, so I was quite eager to reach this entry on my Final Fantasy playthrough.
The Story
Final Fantasy IV begins with The Dark Knight Cecil Harvey on an airship. Having just completed a raid on the village of Mysida and claimed its crystal at the behest of his king. He fulfilled his duty, but his internal monologue has doubts. Some of his men express doubts, but being the loyal leader that he is, he silences them quickly. Suddenly, monsters attack, although The Dark Knight dispatches them with ease.
Upon returning home to Baron and handing the crystal to the king, Cecil asks if the force is necessary. The king admonishes Cecil for questioning his rule and strips him of his rank as commander of the Red Wings as punishment. Cecils childhood friend, the dragoon Kain, stands by his friend’s side, and receives a similar admonishment. Cecil is then tasked to deliver a package to the nearby village of Mist, with Kain to accompany him.
In the moments that follow, you’re also introduced to Cid, the excitable engineer, and Rosa, Cecil’s love interest. She tries to comfort Cecil, but he’s emotionally closed off from her. The next morning, Cecil and Kain go to Mist, slaying the Mist Dragon guarding the pathway to Mist. Upon arriving in the village, the package is revealed to be a bomb ring, sending bomb monsters to raze the village. Cecil and Kain, horrified at the attack, rush to save a child, crying over the body of their mother. They quickly learn that the mother didn’t succumb to the bomb attack, but fell when her summon, the Mist Dragon, was slain. Cecil and Kain try to get the girl, Rydia, to safety, but she panics, and summons Titan, who causes an earthquake and landslide, cutting Cecil off from his path back to Baron.
When the dust settles, Kain is nowhere to be found, and Cecil is alone with Rydia. He carries her to a nearby inn, and vows to keep her safe. Even when Baron guards appear at the inn, dispatched to finish the job of slaying the summoners, Cecil fights back.
What follows is a tale of redemption. Party members come and go, from royalty of destitute castles, to magical prodigies, to old friends, characters come and go from Cecil’s quest, each one lending unique abilities to help him overcome his trials. Cecil himself travels to Mt. Ordeal to cast off The Dark Knight moniker and become a paladin instead. Cecil’s task of gathering the crystals is taken over by a fearsome foe named Golbez, who has some ability to control the minds of others, as he manipulates Kain to torment Cecil. Cecil, however, forges alliances with people all over the world to fight back against the forces of darkness.
The Generational Jump
The jump to the SNES was obviously significant for the Final Fantasy series. The expanded hardware gave the team more of everything to utilize. From sound, to colours, to just the number of pixels you could use to create a character, everything was expanded. While still restrained and limited in certain areas, like how most sprites are unable to physically interact, instead opting to just have characters stand next to each other, and perhaps raise an arm or two, or to just have a sprite spin in place to show excitement, Final FantasyIV manages to convey a surprising amount of emotions within these constraints, except for the one moment where Rose and Cecil embrace, which switches to a specific sprite for that moment. It was surprisingly powerful, especially when you’re used to emotional moments having fully animated cutscenes.
I find it quite fascinating that moving from Final Fantasy I, to II, then III, there has always been an emphasis of freedom in how you build out your party. You could always choose to have a very rounded team, or a brute force squad, or even make every party member a mage if you wanted to. Final Fantasy IV removes all of that freedom. For the entire game, your party is based on which characters are with you, and each character has a defined role, including specific abilities and equipment that cannot be swapped between characters. The most jarring part of this adventure for me was when the white and black mages Palom and Porom are in your party, and then you’re joined by the Sage, Tellah. Having such a magic forward party is generally not my preferred way to play, but in Final Fantasy IV, you have to work with what you get.
I can’t say that having teammates locked to certain equipment or skills is such a negative, however. If you’re new to JRPGs in general, it does give you an easy on-ramp to typical character archtypes and builds. The characters flowing in and out of the party works for the story too, as generally, a character leaves your party by sacrificing themselves, much in the vein of Final Fantasy II, although here, most of the characters miraculously survive, even when leaping from an airship holding a ticking bomb, which can undercut some of the dramatic moments. As always in media, if you don’t see the body, you can’t assume they actually died.
The difficulty in Final Fantasy IV is generally pretty easy, and I give partial credit to having the party built for you, and built for each specific dungeon. There were a few moments where my whole party got wiped out, particularly reaching the moon for the first time, or getting totally paralyzed by gold dragons. But I never felt like the difficulty spiked particularly badly. There’s also a much less emphasis on equipment here, with most characters only having 4 or 5 different weapons throughout the entire game. No longer are you buying a new sword in every town, you really just pick them up in the dungeons as you go along, and wouldn’t you know it, the chests in the dungeons contain loot specifically tailored for your party.
The magic system has been overhauled as well. You’ll never need to buy spells from the towns, instead each character learns spells as they level up. It’s a fine system, but it, again, feels like it’s stealing freedom from its players. These characters will learn their skills at their pace, and you just have to accept it.
The real big change in Final Fantasy IV is the Active Time Battle system. instead of queueing all of your attacks at the top of a round, and them having them execute one after the other, then take an enemy beating, now each character has a timer. Faster characters will act more frequently, sometimes twice as often as the slowest enemies. It made the battles feel much more dynamic and exciting. Especially during the battles where I was desperately waiting for my healers bar to fill up so I could revive or heal someone else that was close to death.
Conclusion
Final Fantasy IV is the first time I’ve really felt like I’ve been playing a Final Fantasy game since I started this little adventure down memory road. Perhaps because characters and story have become such a mainstay of the series, that the first 3 games felt like empty shells rather than the full Final Fantasy experience I was expecting. Final Fantasy IV has its problems, namely the lack of freedom in building your party, railroading the characters in your party, the lack of side quests or optional dungeons to really test your mettle, but it’s still a great game. I think that Final Fantasy IV is the best place for someone to start if they wanted to experience Final Fantasy for the first time, or even JRPGs for the first time. It delivers an emotional story while taking away some of the nitty gritty details of party building and inventory management. Players won’t be looking up class guides to min/max their stats, and rarely will they even need to look up directions. I loved my time with Final Fantasy IV, I almost never felt frustrated or lost. I was happy to be back with old friends, re-experiencing a tale of redemption that has been buried in my psyche since I was a child. As of now, Final Fantasy IV remains my favourite Final Fantasy experience, but only time will tell if it’ll hold onto that honour.
Final Fantasy III didn’t make it over to the US the same way the other Famicom Final Fantasy games did. It didn’t get a Wonderswan remake, which means there was no basis for a PSP or GBA port. It wasn’t until 2006 that a 3D remake was released stateside on the Nintendo DS. I’ve never had access to this game before, so I was actually kind of excited to play it. I’ve at least tried almost every other mainline Final Fantasy game, even if I’ve dropped them after only a handful of hours. Embarking on a wholly new story was an exciting prospect for me.
I made it half-way through Final Fantasy III, about 15 hours in total. Then I suffered a total party KO against the Fire Dragon boss, and apparently the last time I saved my game was when I was barely 2 hours into the game. I’m sorry, Final Fantasy III, I’m not replaying 12 hours of a game I didn’t like to catch back up to my progress.
But let’s back up. I’m still playing on my Retroid Pocket 4, which is not an ideal Nintendo DS emulator, on the account of only having 1 screen, but it was serviceable. Final Fantasy III doesn’t really use the second screen very much anyway, so having one of the two screens much larger, and a button to swap screens is totally serviceable. The 3D models are laughably ugly, but I was able to smooth that out by upscaling the game 4X, which was a wonderful improvement.
Final Fantasy III brings back the class system from the first game, allowing you to specialize your partys abilities to suit the challenge of the moment. Unlike Final Fantasy II, where everyone was a jack of all trades, now if you want to use a sword, you’ll need to be a warrior. If you need magic, someone is going to need to change classes into a black, white, or red mage. As the game progresses, you unlock more classes, apparently 22 in all, but when my adventure ended 15 hours in, apparently I was on the cusp of unlocking the next set.
Unlike the 2D games, the number of enemies you can encounter has been reduced from 9, to 3. To offset this, the power of each enemy you face has been scaled up, including bosses, who also get to attack you twice per round. Should you fail and experience a total party KO, you’re kicked back to your last save file, whenever that was.
The games story begins with the main character, Luneth, as they plummet into a cave from above. You walk him out, then pick up your friend Arc from the nearby town. The next town over, you encounter Refia, who was hiding from her father because she didn’t want to be a blacksmith, but in doing so, narrowly avoided a curse that rendered the whole town as a ghost. A little further on, you pick up the knight Ingus, and thus, the party is formed. Each of these characters are orphans, who have been choses to be the 4 heroes of light. Throughout your adventure, you’ll pick up some guests who will follow behind you and aid you in battle every few rounds, which is delightful. Each guest also has 2 or 3 lines of dialogue that you can view to give their characters a little more flesh.
While bringing back the class system, Final Fantasy III, the magic system has also been changed from a pool of MP, to a spell charge system. Spells are broken into tiers, and each character can cast a certain number of spells per tier. I actually like this system a lot. Usually with MP systems, I reserve all of my MP until I get to a boss so I can unleash my wrath upon it, meaning for the majority of the encounters in a game, my black mages are just spinning their thumbs and bonking baddies with their staff for minimal damage. This spell charge system encouraged me to use the tier one spells throughout the dungeon, taking advantage of the mobs elemental weaknesses, while saving the tier 3 and 4 spells for the dungeon’s final encounter.
Final Fantasy III wants you to swap the classes on your party. Some dungeons have gimmicks, like requiring you to cast Mini on your party, rendering physical attacks nearly useless. The game is pushing you to have a party of mages at this point. From what I’ve read, a few other bosses later in the game also encourage you to build out your party in a specific way. One downside of this class system, however, is that all of your classes start at level 1. So swapping into a class that your character hasn’t touched yet, means grinding up the job level so they can be used effectively. It’s an ambitious system with fun ideas, and having different party combinations make each dungeon feel quite a bit different, but the penalties for switching made it more frustrating than freeing.
While I’m glad the characters have names, and little snippets of dialogue, the interactions between them are still fairly flat. Arc’s only character trait is that they’re a little cowardly. In the first 15 hours, none of the characters really grew beyond what you learn when you first encounter them. Even with names and small bits of dialogue, Luneth and friends never really grow or interact in meaningful ways, Which kind of leads me into the retrospective part of this journey.
Final Fantasy I, II, and III were all released on the NES between 1987 and 1990. The first game had a staff size of 5, the second had 8 people working on it, and III had 18 professional credits listed. For a small team to pump out 3 games in 4 years is a feat in itself, but each one of these games feels unique and distinct. Each one an adventure with turn based battles, but each game features wholly district systems and features that wildly shake up the experience. It’s fascinating seeing the lessons they took from each game and how they applied it onto the next one, making each one feel unique, and not just the same game with a new coat of paint.
While Final Fantasy is an epic tale, telling a grand story of a world about to fall into ruin and the heroes who save it, I’m left disappointed by the story in each of these games. The main characters are all nameless, faceless protagonists, save for a few lines of dialogue each. None of these characters experience growth or are fleshed out in any meaningful way. The villains, are much more interesting, from Garland being thrown back in time to become Chaos, who sends the four fiends forward in time, creating a time loop paradox, to The Emperor, who when defeated by the heroes, conquers hell itself and comes back with a vengeance.
I recognize and realize that I’ve been playing remasters and ports, and not the original games. I know there were significant limitations on these games that aren’t apparent when playing a remake, and that I have the benefit of 35 years of hindsight here. But if I were talking to a new JRPG or Final Fantasy fan in 2025, I wouldn’t suggest anyone start their Final Fantasy journey at the beginning. These are games I’m glad to have played, not ones I’d readily recommend, and that difference has defined this early part of the Final Fantasy journey.
Young’uns might not inherently know this, but back in the day, video games came with instruction manuals. These manuals included a ton of information that are not found on the cartridge themselves, as well as including concept art. It’s fascinating to see the inspirational artwork for a video game, compared to the pixels it gets translated into. This goes doubly so for Final Fantasy, as the concept art is beautiful, high fantasy art, evoking feelings of melancholy and terrifying battles against monsters of epic scale. But when you encounter the situation in the video game itself, it’s just another little beast for you to smack your sword against.
I wonder if I’m playing these games wrong. I wonder if the real charm of Final Fantasy I and II come from the imagination, and sitting with a game for longer than a week at a time. Again, back in the day, there were much fewer video games, so when you managed to get your hands on a game, it ended up being the only game you played for months. Then you’d swap cartridges with your friends, and talk about the adventures you both experienced. When you sit with a game for a long period of time, you start to impart weight and importance on specific moments of the game. Like walking across the bridge to challenge Timat. As a kid, that moment would have had my heart in my throat, after the weeks of working towards the battle, the set-backs of more than one total party KOs forcing me to reset to my last save to try again and again. On my modern device, I have save states and 2x speed to smooth out and rough edge, as my time is more valuable than replaying a dungeon just because I forgot to save before getting jumped by a mob of cockatrices and my whole party succumbed to stone.
Another aspect I’m left wondering if I’m missing out on, is the imagination. Like going to a dungeon and seeing the grey tiles, and imagining metal walls. Seeing the black background with blue specks and the NPCs talk about seeing stars or the earth below, and really imagining the situation. I’m reminded of playing Pokemon on by Game Boy when I was 10, and drawing some of the most exciting battles as they happened in my head during class, talking with my friends on the playground about the secrets we found, and piecing together where to go next from all of our collective knowledge. Having that time and space between play sessions for my imagination to fill in the gaps of the story are important, and something that is really missing from my life right now, which makes me think that my Final Fantasy experience isn’t as magical as it should have been. Just something to keep in mind while playing old games with a modern mindset.
I will continue on my quest to play all the mainline Final Fantasy games, they are entertaining at the very least. The next entry, Final Fantasy IV, I’ve long held in my heart as my favourite Final Fantasy game. It’s the first game that was developed for the more powerful SNES, and by this point in Square’s life, Final Fantasy had become a crown jewel franchise, meaning more and more resources were poured into each game. I’m quite excited to see how well this entry holds up.
Following up on Final Fantasy I, I chose to move right into Final Fantasy II to see how much changed from game to game. Released just a year after it’s predecesor in 1988 (still before I was born), Final Fantasy II at its core retains very little from the first game. The leveling mechanics, the party construction, the magic system, everything was tweaked and changed.
First, that fun bit of trivia, Canonically Final Fantasy II was the second Final Fantasy game. However, neither Final Fantasy II nor Final Fantasy III were originally released outside Japan, so when Final Fantasy IV came to North America, it was packaged and released as Final Fantasy II. I do think it’s worth mentioning that I played the GBA remake, not the original Famicom edition of the game. There are some gameplay differences, but the big improvement for me is the pixel art, which takes its art direction more from the SNES titles, which is much more to my preference.
Final Fantasy II is quite different from its predecessor. First things first, there’s actually a somewhat coherent story to follow. Your party consists of 3 main characters, Firion, Maria, and Guy. Maria’s brother, Lyon starts the game in your party, but in the very first battle you’re subject to a total party KO, and Lyon is immediately separated. What follows is a tale of rebellion, as the party assists the Princess Hilda in her efforts to reclaim her throne from the clutches of the evil Emperor. Filling out that 4th chracter slot, however, is a rotating series of characters who will join and leave the party as they progress through the story.
These characters often adhere to specific archtypes, like Minwu, the white mage, or Josef, the Monk, or Ricard, the lance wielding Dragoon. These characters will join your party for a dungeon or two, then more often than not, sacrifice themselves, so the main party can escape and continue on their quest to take down the empire. There are some surprisingly emotional moments, especailly as you encounter their loved ones after their sacrifice. It gives the story weight and consequence, a much needed improvement over the first game.
Speaking of archtypes, Final Fantasy II completely abandons the job/class system from the first game. Now, every character can equip any piece of equipment, and learn any spell. There are no official or specific levels to each character, but now the more you use a specific equipment or spell, the more proficient that character becomes. You will find your characters naturally falling into roles, like the character who casts Cure the most raises their spirit, which improves their healing potency, but there’s absolutely nothing stopping you from teaching your brawler some spells, and then grinding up their skill to a point where they’re viable.
This level system isn’t bad, by any stretch, but I did find it quite jarring, especially with my background knowledge of how the Final Fantasy series embraces classes and jobs in some of the later entries. On one hand, I really appreciate the flexibility. I liked teaching Life to all my characters so they could help out in a pinch, while having one character as the designated ‘healer’. On the other hand, it made each of the characters feel less distinct. Guy, whose art is depicted with huge muscles can take the daggers and be a speedy little guy, and you can give Maria dual axes, and she’ll stop everyone who crosses her path. This system created a little bit of dissonance for me.
I found Final Fantasy II to be much more difficult than its predecessor. From what I understand, there is a cap on your equipment levels, as they grow depending on the level of monster you’re attacking, somewhat limiting your ability to grind. I did run into one difficulty spike where my normal attacks were doing nearly 0 damage due to the monster’s high defense, so I relied on my magic to get me through the normal fights, but I couldn’t make my way through the whole dungeon. I ended up sailing around looking for late game towns, bought much better equipment, then flew through the rest of the game with my MP stat now over-leveled.
The dungeon layout this time around was a bit more frustrating. The sprawling labyrinths are still here, but now they’ve added a dozen empty rooms to each one. When you go through a door and end up in these empty rooms, it only takes 3 steps to get out, but these rooms have their monster spawn rate cranked way the hell up, resulting in at least one, sometimes two battle encounters per empty room.
The world map is also more of a problem, especially compared to the first game. While Final Fanasy gated your progress so you could only explore certian areas until you got the next mode of transportation, Final Fantasy II lets you wander into zones that are way beyond your level. This is especially egregious as you’re told to walk around a lake outside of the starting area, and going just a bit too far west can result in a near instant total party KO. Go ahead, ask me how I know.
There’s also more back tracking. It felt like after every dungeon, you need to trek your party all the way back to the starting area to report back to the princess to get the next clue on where to go next. on that note, it was generally easier to know where to go in this game. Another quirk of Final Fantasy II is that occasionally, someone will speak a keyword, that you can ‘learn’, then ask your keywords to many of the game’s main NPCs. Between each dungeon, most of the local NPCs would almost explicitly where to go next, and only a few times did I need to look up which keyword I had to use on which NPC. I kind of like this system, I imagine it would have been much more impactful in 1988, making the NPCs feel more alive and living through the story instead of just delivering the same line throughout the entirety of the game.
Strangely, Final Fantasy II doesn’t feel like a Final Fantasy game. Sure, all the common hallmarks are there; Bombs and Malboros, Cure and Fire, Potions and Phoenix Downs. But so many of the systems feel removed from what Final Fantasy later established as their hallmark features. Now, I know every Final Fantasy is different in its own way, from Active Time Battle Systems to Gambits, to Materia, and so on. Each entry in the Final Fantasy series has aspects that make them unique, but I’d argue that from all the Final Fantasy games I’ve played, Final Fantasy II feels the least like a Final Fantasy game.
Trying to put myself in the mindset of 1988 without the literal decades of hindsight, I’d say that Final Fanasy II is a bold new direction for a sequel, but for all its ambition, it kind of loses some of the magic that made Final Fantasy an instant classic. Not to say that it’s a bad game, it’s a great JRPG, but as Final Fantasy game, this was just okay for me. I didn’t love it, but I’m glad I can finally say that I’ve played it.
Long before I knew what “grinding XP” meant or knew what a Phoenix Down was, I was already deep into the world of JRPGs. Back then, I didn’t have a massive library of games available to me, so anything promising dozens of hours of gameplay instantly drew my attention. One of my earliest forays into the JRPG genre was Final Fantasy II on the SNES (It’s actually called Final Fantasy IV, but that’s a rabbit hole for another day). That game kicked off a lifelong fondness for the Final Fantasy series, even if I haven’t actually finished most of the mainline entries.
Well, that changes now.
Armed with my trusty Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, I’ve embarked on a mission: to play through every mainline Final Fantasy game it can handle. And I’m starting right where it all began, albeit with the 2004 Game Boy Advance remake, Final Fantasy I, from the Dawn of Souls anthology.
First Impressions from a Nearly Blank Slate
Aside from a vague memory of beating Garland once years ago, this was essentially my first real experience with Final Fantasy I. And right off the bat, I made full use of modern conveniences: 2x speed and auto-mapping the A button to the trigger so I could turbo through the many, long, repetitive battles. Let’s be honest, those random encounters feel relentless, so anything to streamline them is a blessing.
Final Fantasy I has you playing as a customizable party, and sets your party as the four Warriors of Light, each carrying a darkened crystal, and you’re tasked with restoring balance to the world. Or something to that effect. Like many NES-era games, the real story is half-buried in the game manual and whispered through snippets of NPC dialogue scattered across towns. Don’t expect cutscenes or lore dumps, this is old-school storytelling where you’re expected to connect the dots yourself and let your imigination fill in the gaps.
Lost Without a Guide. And That’s Kind of the Point
I made it about a third of the way through the game before caving and pulling up both a walkthrough and a world map. Final Fantasy I offers little in the way of direction. Instead, it leans on cryptic clues from villagers and a whole lot of trial and error. It reminded me of being on the playground, swapping secrets with friends about how to wake the elven prince or where to find that random witch who needs a magic eye.
It’s charming in a way. When you stumble upon the specific place you need to me is exciting. But it also means a lot of wandering interrupted by constant random battles. Exploration is a chore when every five steps you get warped into another pointless encounter. I know the newest remakes (Pixel Remaster) has an option that lets you turn off the random encounters altogether, but that wasn’t an option here. If you’re not following a guide and don’t know where to go, you MIGHT eventually find the right place to go. And you’ll be massively over levelled when you get there.
Dungeon Design Done Right
That said, I really enjoyed the dungeon design. They’re sprawling, treasure-packed mazes that feel rewarding to explore. Unlike later entries in the series where dungeons sometimes devolve into glorified hallways, these had nooks and cranies to explore. Finding new, powerful loot and immediately smacking a boss with it? Always satisfying.
Thanks to my turbo-boosted gameplay, I ended up over leveled without even trying. I didn’t grind on purpose, I just got lost a lot. By the time I reached each of the four elemental Fiends, they went down in 3 or 4 rounds. The real challenge came from resource management: making it through a dungeon with enough HP and MP left to survive the trip back to the nearest town. More than once at the start of the game, I limped out of a dungeon with my party barely clinging to life. Eventually, even that tension faded as my levels climbed.
Final Boss, Final Thoughts
The only minor roadblock was the final boss, Chaos, whose brutal AoE spells finally gave my White Mage something to panic about. Even then, I managed to beat him on the first try. When the credits rolled, my in-game clock showed 13 hours, and my party was hovering around level 61.
So… how does Final Fantasy I hold up today?
It’s tricky. Evaluating a nearly 40-year-old game with modern eyes is unfair, but inevitable. The magic system feels thin, the stats often feel meaningless, and gear is mostly just a numbers game. Most of the spells go unused, equipment lacks flair, and your Black Mage is either useless or a glass cannon depending on how full their MP bar is.
And yet, Final Fantasy was a revelation in its time. It pioneered mechanics and tropes that became the foundation for the genre. Games I’ve loved over the decades owe their existence to this one.
Should You Play It?
If you’re looking for a polished, modern RPG experience, this isn’t it. But if you want to pay homage to where it all began, to the roots of a genre that shaped generations of gamers, then it’s worth your time. Especially with some emulator tweaks to make the ride a little smoother.
I’m glad I finally checked this one off my list. Even with its rough edges, Final Fantasy still manages to shine. It’s a monument to what came before, a stepping stone in the evolution of RPGs. I may not recommend it to everyone, but I absolutely respect the ground it broke.
Now, onward to Final Fantasy II (The real Final Fantasy II, not the US version which is actually Final Fantasy IV).
Somewhat recently, I made a slightly impulsive purchase that I’ve come to deeply appreciate. I picked up a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro on Facebook Marketplace. I didn’t have any plans for it, I was just thirsting for a new console, and when I saw the Switch 2’s launch price, I decided it was the perfect time to pivot away from Nintendo. For those unfamiliar with Retroid, it’s a slick little handheld device that runs on an Android OS, has a built in controller, and manages to emulate a staggering range of consoles. After firing it up, and following Retro Game Corps guide for suggestions how to configure it, and playing Tetrisphere, I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do. It’s the classic conundrum. With this device, literally thousands of games are at my fingertips, how do you choose what to play!?
The realization that this single device can play every mainline Final Fantasy game up to 12 was a revelation. I’ve always been a fan of Final Fantasy, and JRPGs in general, although my track record on finishing them is spotty at best. Thus begins my newest gaming project: a full Final Fantasy playthrough challenge, from the humble beginnings of Final Fantasy I on the NES, to the fully voiced drama of Final Fantasy XII on the PS2. No skips, no shortcuts, just a steady journey through one of gaming’s most iconic RPG series. I’ll be playing the best available versions I can run on the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro, which, in some cases, means GBA remakes, and in others, full console ports.
Why Do This?
Part nostalgia, part curiosity, and part unshakeable love for the genre. Final Fantasy has always been in the background of my gaming life, from playing Final Fantasy IV on the SNES as a kid and utterly mesmerized by the story, to playing dozens of other JRPGs by Square Enix over the past decades, and seeing the same themes and monsters make their annual appearances. But until now, I’ve never experienced the entire series in a cohesive, chronological way.
I’m curious to see how the series, and my tastes, evolve: mechanically, narratively, thematically. How the battle systems grow more complex. How the stories shift from high fantasy and simplicity to science fiction political intrigue. How the pixel art set pieces give way to pre-rendered cutscenes and voice acting. Final Fantasy has been around for over 35 years, I want to witness the full scope of what it became, one game at a time.
The Rules of the Challenge
Mainline single-player titles only: That’s Final Fantasy I through XII. I’m skipping XI because it’s an MMO and I hate MMOs. I’m sure I’ll throw in some spin-off games in there, like the Tactics series, or the first two Dissida games.
Best version available on Retroid: GBA remakes, PSP ports, and patched translations where needed.
No rushing: I’m not speedrunning, nor am I working towards 100%. I’m playing the games like I play every game. exploring where my curiousity gets peaked, and skipping optional sections when I hit a wall.
Written reflections: After finishing each game, I’ll post a review-style reflection, highlighting story beats, mechanical design, and my personal experience with each title.
What’s Next?
I’ve already wrapped up Final Fantasy I–V, and the posts are rolling out one by one. From the humble, D&D-inspired beginnings of FFI, to the mechanical joy that was FFV‘s Job system. In the first 5 games there has been a surprising amount of variety.
Next up? The legendary Final Fantasy VI. If the online consensus is to be believed, one of the best games in the series, if not one of the best games ever made.
I hope you join me on this pilgrimage. Whether you’re a longtime fan or just Final Fantasy-curious, I hope my journey through these iconic worlds sparks some nostalgia, or maybe even inspires you to start your own.
