I've just gotta talk about Final Fantasy for a moment

[Chronicler]

Little silly to admit, but I was thinking about if somebody asked what my favourite Final Fantasy was, and I decided to start writing out my thoughts, and then it kind of turned into a whole thing even though nobody had asked. Decided to post it.

Okay, this is gonna sound pretentious as all hell, but the Game Boy Advanced remake of Final Fantasy 1, with Jeff Ludwig’s mod of Balance.

Now, Final Fantasy 1 is already just *chef’s kiss*. I’m not gonna say it’s definitively the best Final Fantasy, they refined the process a lot as they went along, but it’s the success that launched the franchise. Final Fantasy 1 wasn’t capitalizing on any beloved brand. It was just a very fun game. The later games got to capitalize on the love that it created. It’s much simpler than the later Final Fantasy games but there’s beauty in that simplicity. “All Killer No Filler” is what they say on the radio stations. It’s much lighter on the story than the later Final Fantasies but that makes it all the better to pick up and play again and again without scrolling through long drawn out story scenes you’ve read before.

Now Jeff Ludwig’s mod of balance, it just takes everything that’s great about the game and enhances it. It polishes it. Refines it. The changes are far reaching, great and small, effecting pretty much every part of the game, but at no point do I think it fundamentally alters what’s fun about the game.

Changes I’m particularly fond of. They make it so that the monsters all drop less gold, but more gear. So you spend less time trying to grind up that gold to stock up at the store and more time trying to find the individual monsters that have the items that will help you.

In the base game, accuracy and attacks per round are linked. For every certain number of accuracy points you get another attack per round. Jeff Ludwig separated these stats, so you can have a character with a lot of inaccurate attacks per round or a character with few very accurate attacks per round. Mostly important for the ranger class, which despite not boasting an especially robust attack speed is very good at hitting dodgy opponents.

In the base game, you have 6 classes to choose from, and then partway through the game you can upgrade them into a better version of that class. Except sometimes I like the first class better. Jeff Ludwig splits them into 12 classes, each complete in its own right. So for example, in the base game you can choose a thief, and then partway through the class you become a ninja. Except I like the thief better than the ninja, and they’re both honestly just kind of worse versions of the fighter. Like in theory they deal more attacks per round but the fighter still deals better damage with his higher attack and better weapon selection, while also surviving longer with his armour and stamina and through most of the campaign hitpoints. Jeff Ludwig turns the thief into its own class, he calls the Rogue. It’s a formidable combattant in its own right but a notable strength it has over other classes is that it has a high luck stat, granting it both a high crit rate and a high defense against spells. The Ninja on the other hand is much more damaging but much squishier.

In the base game, HP caps out a 999. This means that while through a good portion of the game the different classes have different strengths in terms of how much HP they get, towards the tail end of the campaign your fighter, your monk, your squishy wizard, it's all the same in the HP department. Jeff Ludwig raises the max HP to 9999, and of course rebalances things where necessary to match your new HP growth. So the different classes continue to feel unique in the late game.

Some mods, I'd say you need to play the original first before you chop and screw it, but honestly I'd feel pretty comfortable telling anybody that Jeff Ludwig's modded game could be your only experience of Final Fantasy 1 without a problem at all.

Honestly writing this all out I'm filled with a desire to pick it up and play it again right now.

 

[Chronicler]

And thus, the story of the Light Warriors begins anew. Never actually done the ninja before.

 

[Chronicler]

The monks in the base game have a thing where as they level up, their power unarmed and unarmoured raises.

It's a fun thing to discover for the first time, because you play your monk, and early on your finding nun-chucks and stuff for him to use, but then there's just this daught of equipment for him. Going so far and finding nothing. At some point he's been the weakest member of your party for ages, and you're just grasping at straws, and you take off all his equipment and you just watch all the stats go through the roof. You send him out there in to battle and he just starts murdering everything. In addition to everything else he's the only class that can effectively "dual wield", getting twice as many attacks per round when unarmed, as if getting a full round's worth of attacks out of each fist.

Anyway, the ninja has some version of the unarmoured portion of it in Jeff Ludwig's version of the game, but I'm not entirely clear on how it works. The readme describes it as

The Ninja has been granted the Monk's unarmored bonus. It will operate differently for the Ninja than the Monk though, since the Ninja's stats are much more disparate than the Monks.

And it doesn't seem to go into more detail than that...

I'm pretty immediately noticing that there doesn't seem to be any good armor for my ninja. He come equipped with a simple robe, like you would put on one of the casters, and can't put anything else in that slot yet. I found a pair of leather gloves, but when I go to equip them his defence lowers, rather than raises, seeming to indicate he's being penalized for wearing armour. But when I take off his robe that seems to hurt him rather than help him. Maybe as I continue levelling him and the bonuses/penalties become more pronounced it will become more clear what the rules are.

Dude stabs with the best of them though. Surprised his weapon options actually seem to be more limited than the rogues, who already kind of makes up for poor weapon selection with great base stats, but it doesn't seem to be hurting him none.

 

[Chronicler]

Well, I made it to Elfeim, the elf kingdom. I seem to recall that the adventure takes a sort of weird stutter stop here. Your new spells are pretty expensive, and you haven't started making that much money yet, and the game doesn't give you any way of acquiring new magics other than buying them from the store, so you're pretty much left to hang out for a while fundraising. And then the next dungeon is a pretty big difficulty spike, with powerful enemies with tricky statuses you're not all that well equipped for yet, so that kind of slows you down a bit too.

There are a couple of these early on before you kind of start hitting your stride in your adventure, having grown in power to a point where you can kind of take new challenges as they come.

 

[Antimatter]

I missed a ton of old games. Thanks to threads like this, I can at least get acquainted with them and the stories they told. Awesome! Looking forward to your new posts!

 

[Chronicler]

These enemies I find interesting. In the original NES version of the game, they were called "Wizards" but they don't actually cast any spells. Never thought much of it.

In the GBA remake, with its more advanced translations, they're called "Piscodemons", and when you look at them, it kind of makes sense. They're clearly some kind of Cthulu-esque tentacle monster.

Final Fantasy 1 had a lot of Dungeons and Dragons inspiration, so in point of fact I would bet dollars to donuts that these are meant to be Mind Flayers, but they can't call them mindflayers, because that's IP Protected.

Despite the interesting backstory and influence there's not actually much to these guys. They just kind of whack you with their staff. They protect an important chest with an item you need for story progression, and they're stronger than most of the surrounding enemies, hitting harder and taking more hits before they go down, but they have no special gimmick.

 

[Chronicler]

Later Final Fantasy games would have system where you could put your units in the back row or the front row. Units in the back row take half damage, but also deal half damage, though they can still deal full damage with magic and ranged weapons. This allows you to protect your squishier units.

Final Fantasy 1 hadn't coined that yet, so what you have is just the ordering of the units in your party. Enemies are most likely to attack the unit in the top slot, then less likely going down until you hit the unit in the back slot. I don't think that's explained anywhere. It's just something you notice as you play.

Anyway, what I'm rapidly realizing is that my ninja is far squishier than I'd anticipated. Bit of a glass cannon. So I'm moving him back the line.

In point of fact either the rogue or the ranger would be a decent candidate for the top slot. I've done both. The rogue is tougher generally speaking but the ranger can combine armor and spell protections, so in longer/tougher battles where it's worth spending the time and magic to wind up he comes out on top. That being said, the top slot is what you look like walking around in the overworld and I like the rogue artwork.

 

[Chronicler]

Just about done with Elfeim. Quicker than I remembered. Astos, King of the Dark Elves, has a bit of a weird truncated story, since back in the NES days they couldn't fit much text in it.

In a nearby cave you find a crown. In this castle there's a dude sitting on a throne. When you bring the crown to him, he reveals that he was actually Astos, King of the Dark Elves. With the power of the crown you've brought him combined with the crystal eye he already has, he'll be unstoppable!

The power of the crown or how it combines with the eye is never really elaborated on that I can recall, but you met a witch who had her eye stolen a while ago, and she's the only one who can free the Elf Prince from his magically induced slumber, so I guess that all works out pretty neatly.

I have some fond memories of this boss that I don't recall very clearly. In the unmodified game, there's a challenge run based around the class upgrade. When you upgrade your class, everybody except the red mage gets a new stat, which continues to grow as you level up. It's only a minor benefit, but there is some utility in upgrading your class at the lowest possible level. There are two ways you can do this. Either you bring a red mage along, have your entire party except the red mage die at level 1, and then have him solo until you get to the class upgrade. Or you can run from every batttle except the mandatory ones until you get to the class upgrade, which will have you upgrade if I recall around level 11.

I seem to recall that fighting this guy at the minimum level was a very gratuitous challenge. I don't remember exactly what the trick was but I remember having a pretty good time.

That being said, this particular attempt ended with him immediately murdering my crew with high level magic, so I think I'm gonna have to regroup before trying to fight him again in earnest. Not quite done with Elfeim just yet.

 

[Chronicler]

The mystic key is fun. Up until this point, as you've been exploring, periodically you come across a door that is locked by powerful magics. They're all over the place, in different castles and caves and dungeons.

When you awaken the elf prince, he gives you the mystic key, and you get to backtrack to all those locations and find all the tantalizing treasures locked behind those doors. And of course in one of them is the quest item you need to progress to the next area. Forget what it is.

 

[Chronicler]

Got frustrated having nobody who could wear heavy armor or use advanced black magics, so I started over with a more well rounded party, trading out the ninja and ranger for a paladin and archmage.

Caught up to where I was and into the Cavern of Earth.

The story of the game is basically that the world is dying. The earth lies fallow, the air stands still, the fire is cooling, and the water is like shitty or something. I'm fucking up the details. Also there's monsters everywhere now. That's a part of it for some reason. They periodically reference that there didn't used to just be monsters all over the place.

But it's prophesied that when all this happens, the four Light Warriors will show up. You'll know them because they'll have four elemental crystals in hand. All they need to do is take their little crystals to the corresponding big crystal and make them glow again, which will awaken each of the elements, allowing the world to live for another cycle.

We show up in town with our crystals and they just set us to work. The Cavern of Earth is where you find the Earth Crystal, as you might expect. While there have been dungeons of a sort it's the first "Proper" dungeon in the game, allowing you to check off the first of your four big objectives. As such I recall it's much larger in scope than the previous dungeons, with stronger enemies. You're reaching a point where you have more tools in your toolbox to deal with their tricks but you still kind of end up hanging out here for a while.

There's a hall right at the entrance where you encounter enemies with every step you take, which is handy if you wanna grind out some levels quickly. It doesn't lead anywhere. It just kind of circles back in on itself. So it doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than that except maybe as a trap, since it's possible to fight your way in too deep into the hall and find you're too hurt to fight your way back out.

 

[Chronicler]

This guy is the most forgettable dude in existence. There's not really much even indicating you should talk to him. He isn't positioned anywhere special, just kind of meandering aimlessly with the townspeople. But like 7000 game hours late you'll have a problem only Doctor Unne can solve and you need to remember that he's here.

 

[Chronicler]

Got my first Plus! Fun thing they do in this game is that there are these items that permanently boost your stats. There's the Stat Plus Items, and then there's the Golden/Silver apples and Soma Drops that boost your HP and MP. In theory you could farm them until you had maxed all your stats but it would be incredibly time intensive and only a pretty small niche crowd would care when you bragged about it.

 

[Chronicler]

Went back to my first party. Some of the folks on this subreddit might remember the Ankheg from Baldur's Gate. Googling "Ankheg" only pulls up results for Dungeons and Dragons, so the might be more of that DnD influence I was talking about, but I wouldn't swear by it. Since they were able to use the name I have to imagine it wasn't a Wizards of the Coast original or anything.

 

[Chronicler]

This is one of the weirder runarounds the game gives you. You beat what seems to be the boss of this dungeon. This vampire who has an overworld sprite and gives a monologue about how you puny heroes will never stop him which is usually a pretty sure sign of a boss, since the hardware of the era means they don't toss those sorts of game assets out like skittles.

But when you beat him, nothing happens. In his layer you find a Star Ruby, and behind his layer there's a stone slab, blocking further progress.

You take the star ruby to the giant, who eats rocks, and he lets you pass through his cave. On the other side of the cave you find a sage, who gives you a stick that you can use to pry the slab open. The reveal that the baddy I fought wasn't the real baddy is cool but the I'm not sure why I needed to go so far out of my way for this stick. In the GBA Remake at least it's called the "Earth Rod" in your inventory, implying it has some special power, but we do still seem to just be using it as a pry bar.

 

[Chronicler]

Ogre Mage! Strong like an Ogre, Tricksy like a Mage! I don't know why I always just think that's a cool idea.

 

[Chronicler]

So the fact that I chose a crew that mostly boasts a diverse skill set is starting to hurt me a bit, as they lag behind where the specialists would be at this point in the campaign.

New town has Level 6 spells. I still don't have anybody capable of learning the Level 5 spells in the last town.

Though the flexibility that comes from redundancy, characters being able to switch roles moment by moment and fill in for eachother when incapacitated, is an asset of sorts.

I've never played without an archmage before and I really think the lack of high level black magics are just gonna become more problematic as I go on. The Ninja and the Ranger don't really seem to have the mana or the intelligence to be clearing crowds on a terribly regular basis, and that in turn just puts more strain on the healer, as they have to keep patching up all the hits you take while you murder these goons one by one. Maybe it would work better if I'd swapped the enchanter for a priest, so I could use white magic more freely.

 

[Chronicler]

That, by the way, is probably the one change I'm not fond of in Jeff Ludwig's mod of balance.

Despite the strong DnD influence, one of the major changes Final Fantasy makes is that none of the classes seem to be overtly religious in nature.

There's the Warrior, which becomes the Knight. Master of weapons that learns some healing magic after its upgrade. The Thief, which becomes the Ninja, speedy more fragile fighter that learns some attack magic after its upgrade. The Monk that becomes the Master, barefisted fighter that never learns any magic. Then there's the Black Mage that becomes the Black Wizard, master of attack magic. The White Mage that becomes the White Wizard, master of Healing/defence magic. And the Red Mage which becomes the Red Wizard, jack of all trades which can learn spells from both the white and black mage's spellbooks, but not the highest level ones, and is pretty serviceable with weapons and armour too.

No religion to be found here, though there are churches that will revive your knocked out party members, so the religion/healing connection isn't entirely removed from the setting. And I guess you could interpret the monk as a religious thing even though they seem to just be martial artists rather than like acolytes from a temple.

Jeff Ludwig turns the Knight into the Paladin, whose description places it as a holy warrior. The White Wizard into the Priest, more in keeping with the clerics we might be familiar with. I know it's just my own hangups, and there's nothing in the game acknowledging that your character is religious since he didn't change any of the quests or dialogue or anything, but I'm still not into it.

 

[Skatan]

the GBA version looks quite a lot different from the old NES version I played. I never finished FF1, but started it a couple of times. I only played it many years later and didn't have the nostalgia that some older games require for me to keep interest and energy up.

I'm not surprised you find your party struggling a bit since very old guides used to (on NES at least) propose something like F/F/WM/BM or even more fighters. At least this is what I read back in the day, but I had no idea mods even existed for these old games I prefered F/RM/WM/BM and I do think the red mage started my love for the "hybrid" character, like bards etc. I even had a version of the red mage as my avatar in the beamdog forums for quite a long time.

Great read! I hope your adventuring goes well.

 

[Chronicler]

Yeah, the red mage is very fun. When I first started playing I didn't really "get" it, but over time it grew on me. At some point I ended up doing the all red mage run that I think everybody tries out eventually and that was one of my more fun playthroughs.

And he looks so cool with his hat!

The three spells per spell level thing is one of the more interesting limits to put on all rounders too. It makes for some tough choices as you decide how to spec him out. In an all red mage group, your red mages can play pretty different from eachother depending on which spells you give each of them and what gear you equip them with.

 

[Chronicler]

So at this point in the game what I'm doing is killing these hydras that spawn in the river outside the fire dungeon. The bestiary says they drop a blade called the "Kotetsu" which sounds like it would be good for my ninja, who's using some pretty outdated gear right now, but no luck so far. Usually don't have much trouble getting anything in particular to drop but this kotetsu had evaded me long enough that I've levelled up pretty significantly, which should make the next dungeon easier at least.

The shop has a blade for my ninja I could go for but it's pretty expensive. So that's a fall back plan at least.