thanks to the Pixel Remaster showing up on consoles, i've been going through each game in that collection one at a time in sequence, alongside my roommate, as a sorta... weird book club. i'd never beaten a lot of the initial six -- i've only tucked away IV when it came out on the Playstation as a part of the anthology collections, and VI I managed to complete when it released on the SNES Classic -- and some of them, I barely touched, like II and III.
so, as a game design enthusiast, i figure i'd jot down my findings from these games... specifically, what i feel works, what doesn't, and what the series owes to them.
this post is just gonna be about the very first game
i decided to approach Final Fantasy I in a more "classic" way: i took notes. i drew a map. i jotted down objectives and scuttlebutt as i found them in towns, and discovered something pretty surprising:
Final Fantasy I is really good. well, at least from a general quest and world design perspective.
granted, it's a bit sparse. while there's a surprising amount of towns and NPCs for the mid- to late-80's NES/Famicom, the game can be completed in about a dozen hours, especially with boosts. it's not a lot of content, and a majority of it will be spent in dungeons, which can range from the absurdly simple to the needlessly broad with plenty of "gotcha" moments from the devs having a laugh about leading you into a dead end.
the dungeons of the first FF aren't incredible; Marsh Cave is essentially just a bunch of rooms set to a grid with a little toying with the space here and there, and even features one big room filled with 16 smaller rooms -- half of which are completely empty -- and four of them you can't even crack open right away, just a couple of levels below the entrance. it's a bit of a nuisance.
yet, I can see the sense: have the player get lost in the dungeons and provide them plenty of opportunities to grind and drain their resources. the NES titles in particular seem keen on making sure you stock yourself up and stretch yourself as thin as possible, whereas the next batch (IV-V-VI) are a bit more on rails and give you a few handouts along the way in favor of telling a story. moving on to the more powerful SNES/Super Famicom hardware clearly gave them a chance to stretch their legs narratively, but the 8-bit era had much more to do with providing a gameplay experience that let you take control of characters and run some very tabletop-inspired campaigns, linear though they may be.
what most got me about FFI, however, is how the game tells you... everything. but only if you ask. with careful attention to NPCs, you can literally find everything the game has to offer, including a secret weapon foreshadowed within a few hours of starting. only the most basic elements of the story are brought to you on the critical path, and the rest really does boil down to "pay fucking attention." any time someone says something eerily specific, you can guarantee your diligence in making any kind of note of it will pay off. it's exceptionally nice, and, with the more recent translations, makes the game feel economical and tight without too much compromise since the dialog no longer deals in more archaic translation/localization efforts.
coming out of it, I definitely wanted more narrative substance and control over my characters, and better dungeon designs, and, well, for the most part, I do get that in its sequel... but it also hammers down on some of the more bizarre conclusions I've ever seen for a sequel, even when compared to Zelda II.
but we'll get to FFII later.