Leger vs. Final Fantasy (Playstation Portable)

Not that I browsed through the Swedish Nintendo Magasinet looking at pictures of Japanese Role-Playing Games dreaming of what these games had to offer me.

Instead I drooled over the fact that I knew exactly what they represented and what they had to offer me.

I had been spending time with one of the first JRPGs imported to the west, Miracle Warriors: Seal of the Dark Lord, aswell as the more action oriented Ys: The Vanished Omen and the visually and technically stunning Phantasy Star.

All on the Sega Master System.

The western alternatives on computer such as Ultima, The Bard's Tale, Wizardry and whatnot AD&D in the hands of SSI always seemed to be standing with one foot in the land of pen and paper RPG and the human imagination to fill in all the blanks.

Many of these western experiences I found extremely hard to get into and with a distinct lack of direction in ways that made the often more story oriented and semi linear Japanese variants to seem like a less rough way to familiarise with the genre.

Unsure of what Final Fantasy actually came to symbolise more than being one of those games we over and over again were told that we missed out on.

Something of a more complex entity than The Legend of Zelda, Star Tropics and other more adventurous titles which actually had little to do with the JRPGs other than on the surface. Not going further than some few bits and pieces included, of a bigger puzzle, which over time came to act as the foundation of the genre.

They felt serious, rather heavy, the games in the Final Fantasy series and the competition found in the Dragon Quest dito.

But, unfortunately, most of all they made me feel that the Swedish distributor Bergsala really was not a friend of mine by not pushing titles from the genre to be released here. Rather, it felt like they made an error in their judgement of the market in Sega's favour. Too much English, too much to read and too hard to play.

This feeling, no matter how true to reality, no matter Nintendo of Europe, Square, Enix or any other of the Japanese forces to be reckoned with within the genre, bothered me to no end. Especially since one of the reasons for me learning English as early as I did was because I wanted to understand the games I was playing, I wanted to understand the clues they were giving me to get further into the experience.

Furthermore it felt like a way to make it written in stone that video games were something for kids, no matter seeing people of all ages all around me playing.

My first hours spent with Final Fantasy probably had something to do with Nesticle, an early NES emulator, later experimenting with ZSNES to reach the parts of the 16 bit era Sweden never really got to know.

At the time other commercial alternatives felt alien, and this probably due to me lacking money to spend on importing games and video game consoles. This was a free alternative leaving me with money to spend on what was actually commercially on offer over here.

In truth, however, I do not really remember exactly how, when and what in the context of me getting to know Final Fantasy as a series and playing the games. The more I try to make a mental map over my experiences the harder it seems to get things right.

There is a reason for me looking back like this and that reason is that when I got to play Final Fantasy for the first time I had already got to experience the genre and much of the progress it already had made.

It made Final Fantasy feel archaic, annoying to play, when hitting enemies in battles could result in hitting air if someone in the party had managed to kill the enemy beforehand. It made battles slow and tedious and the whole experience grind to a halt.

Revisiting the game again, for the first time in ages, through Nintendo's Virtual Console on the Wii did nothing to change my point of view.

A good thing, then, that Final Fantasy has been rereleased, updated, remastered and remodeled many times since its arrival on the market.

This particular version on Playstation Portable is a logical evolution of the earlier Game Boy Advance updates of the first two games, where a beastiary and bonus caves could be found, now with impressively updated high definition graphics.

No longer one is at risk of attacking nothing in battles and the gameplay feels ridicilously fast compared to Final Fantasy on the NES.

Besides some early grinding to have a chance of actually making some progress of worth in the beginning of the game the party almost feels unstoppable all the way to the very end. There is not really much need to grind since exploring the environments and not escaping from the random battles gives more than needed to stay ahead of the challenge.

In no time the party have access to loads of money and all that stands in the way of buying everything is the levels of the characters, their class and wether they have evolved from a lower class to a higher one.

The only true challenge seems to be a couple of bosses and knowing where to go and what to do next. Caves, castles and other places to explore never get frustratingly huge and by having a healer along for the ride potions to restore health are seldom needed.

If lack of challenge equals unattractiveness chosing diffent classes than those in the proposed party can make or break the difficulty of the game completely. However, bringing along two warriors and two red mages, alternatively one white mage and one black mage to get access to the strongest magic, one can be sure of being up for the task at hand.

A problem with this kind of party, not taking into consideration of being able to put most effort into what the game does best (the adventuring, the exploring), is that the battles quickly gets repetitive and pointless.

The battles turn into a matter of holding down a button to go Attack until all the enemies are killed. There is seldom a need to use magic or an item. It feels so easy to plow through it all that the biggest risk is reaching the end severly underpowered running into a wall which needs some serious grinding to break.

Because suddenly the need of strategical use of magic is a thing, using items effectively during battle, being able to revive fallen characters and keeping the health of the entire party constantly high since a single attack by a strong foe can wipe out everyone in an instant.

Having the best, or really good, equipment makes a huge difference at this point aswell as knowing how to deal with poison, darkness and petrify.

Using Haste, Temper, Protect.

The nullifying magics to reduce the damage dealt by fire, wind, death and so on.

Maybe some items to temporary boost some stats of the characters during a tough fight.

And at the very end it suddenly because painfully obvious that the lack of a really strong fighter can create a situation comparable to hell.

Final Fantasy is an extremely unbalanced experience, with the early and late hours being where most of the challenge resides with all the hours in between acting as a void to breeze through.

Though, it never reaches any kind of extreme in either direction and the time needed to grind the party up to par with the challenge never went past the hour.

Of the eighteen hours it took to beat the game one hour of grind in the beginning and one in the end was all that was needed. Compared to the grind needed in Final Fantasy 3, Dragon Quest and Phantasy Star 2 this is nothing, hardly worth mentioning.

Visually Final Fantasy on the Playstation Portable looks really nice.

Going iOS and the iPad, which this version later did, made the graphics look way worse. Not only did the perfectly smooth scrolling of the PSP version get thrown out of the window, also the graphics went blurry and the aesthetics of the menues did not seem to match the one of the game.

Here everything looks crisp, colourful and unified. Something Square Enix would prove themselves to have huge problems with in many of their later productions.

While it is sometimes hard to see the game behind the graphics (which surpasses anything seen during the 16-bit era) in many ways still keeping true to the 8-bit original, it is obvious that no matter what quality of life updates this remake offers the game still feels quite... old.

Not that strange of a feeling considering it is way past its 35th birthday and alongside Dragon Quest truly kickstarted the genre no matter previous attempts.

Such is the naivity of the story aswell, in ways of feeling old. Four heroes of the prophecy, destinied to save the world with the help of four crystals. But it does not matter, because it is never within the story or the delivery of that very thing that the point of the experience resides.

It could be much thanks to the simplicity of it all, that so much still seems to fall into place. Unbalanced or not, the intense journey on foot, by boat or soaring high up in the sky riding an airship... all while eploring generic yet cosy environments... is charming and the sense of freedom lacking the linearity of many later jrpgs paves way for a more personal experience.

Not that Final Fantasy is truly open from the start, and not that it with rather simple design decisions creates logical limits which the player are allowed to explore within... but it does so in an impressively seamless fashion. Looking at a post V part in the series showcases a world of difference in attitude for all the good and bad that comes along for the ride.

But, yeah.

All kind of different cities, caves and castles spending their time in water, cold, fire and air.

Fantasy, in sharp contrast to sci-fi.

Musically presented the way you would expect.

Mainstays in the series, such a strong and unique expression to already be found, shaping a familiar feeling although the context at this time had not become well established.

What is hardest to look past is the grinding, the constant battles. No matter how unintrusive it may seem at first, it just seem pointless at times and close to frustrating when having to backtrack through places with low level monsters.

Today one would expect such pointless time consuming aspects of games to be offered to be skipped entirely by paying a hefty sum of real money, like instead of having to wait 10 hours to get access to a phat armour pay $10 to instantly be able to put it on.

If talking mobile gaming, that is.

Boring and time consuming aspects of gaming are not more motivated just because you can not buy yourself past them, or because they were a part of the genre at the time.

Which is why I think it seems locigal to include a beastiary, to create a motivation to engage in battles. It is just percentage rising, while adding more and more enemies and their data to the list, but trying to fill it up completely will most certainly have whomever to want to smash the head into the wall possibly having to deal with some blood pouring out of a wound.

But, well... uhm... just plowing through the fights by holding down a button seems an okay activity, anyways, especially if sitting there in the sofa watching some shit on Netflix.

Cookie clicker, kind of.

Most certainly.

And just thinking of playing the regular bonus caves some four times, at least, just to beat all the bosses residing within (four caves with four bosses each, I think) is so tiresome I could not bother.

The bonus caves are horrendous in their design and the final bonus dungeon exploring the concept of working against a time limit while shutting down the use of some gameplay elements (not being able to flee, not being able to do x or y) had me turning my back towards expanding my playtime beyong simply beating the game.

Which felt all fine and dandy, just simply beating the game.

Too bad.