So before I start, the versions of FF1 and FF2 were the Dawn of Souls editions on GBA and FF3 was the DS Remake. There’s a lot of mechanics in the Dawn of Souls remakes that weren’t added to the DS remake like the ability to save anywhere or purchase phoenix downs. It made Dawn of Souls much more enjoyable to me so my thoughts on each game can’t be 100% accurate to the core experience.
1
The first Final Fantasy is probably my favorite because of its simplicity. The classes you pick at the beginning of the game can’t really be swapped and I kinda like that there’s a lot of permanence right at the beginning. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a more simple experience in an RPG, even if you’re basically screwed if you don’t pick a healer. The game is fairly easy and it’s a pretty fun difficulty curve which I was surprised by. If you do play it though, definitely consult a map in each dungeon, I think it makes them a lot better and even if you’re doing it there’s still a lot of risks to be taken in figuring out what treasure chests to open or not and where to actually go.
The story is basically non-existent and you kinda just go between set pieces and villages to get the crystals or do whatever you need to do. I like that they kinda just throw a lot of high fantasy stuff at you at every point, you go to like a dwarf city and a gnome city and an elf city. It gives me a wizard of oz type vibe where you’re constantly going to silly places and it’s 100% accepted in the narrative. Not as ridiculous of course though but I still have a big soft spot for it. God I need to play Stranger of Paradise. I also really liked the concept of the ending and it feels very powerful. It’s kinda just told in a big paragraph though so I wished it was more fleshed out.
Overall I’d say the main thing Final Fantasy has over something like the first Dragon Quest is that it’s got fairly good difficulty balancing and is just really fun. There’s definitely some grinding but not as much as you might expect. I like it a lot and reccomend it but only if you’re familiar with the Final Fantasy mechanics or have beaten a few RPG’s before.
2
Final Fantasy II is the infamous one, mostly because of its levelling system. You level up your attack by dealing damage, and your health by taking damage. I don’t mind it too much even if it’s less intuitive, it’s not too hard to get used to the idea of attacking making you stronger (even if you need to punch yourself to grind sometimes). The real problem is in the magic because you need to use each spell a lot and level them up individually which is confusing, and makes it not fun at all to get new spells in the late game because they’re going to be useless. You alsoincrease your MP by using spells with low MP and… obviously I don’t do that very often so it’s very hard go get more MP. Attacking in general feels very inconsistent because enemies seem to have very high agility and they’ll dodge any attacks very frequently. Really it’s one of my least favorite turn based RPG combat systems.
Despite that, I’m actually pretty glad that the combat can be very broken in some other ways. There’s some really stupid stuff in here. For example, there’s a spell called swap which swaps your health and MP with an opponent and one that has a chance of teleporting enemies away (a fairly high chance mind you). These did work on some bosses for me. These are absolutely fun to use because of how wacky they are and alleviate the experience slightly.
This was the first Final Fantasy with a more in-depth story and premade characters who aren’t just jobs. Of course it’s the classic story of an evil empire, actually a lot of story elements here would be re-used in Final Fantasy IV. Story’s alright but it’s clunky and often times you’ll not be able to progress because you haven’t talked to the right NPC or asked the right specific thing. There’s also tons of backtracking since you’ll need to go back to the main rebel hideout a lot and the layout of the world makes it a chore to do so.
There’s some stuff I like in the game, once you get used to it it’s possible to have fun with it but yeah not the best game.
3
Final Fantasy III goes back to having no premade characters (well the DS version changed that but whatever) but this time the jobs are switchable, and that’s really the basis of combat here, I’ve got mixed feelings towards it to be honest. There are a ton of options and I find them fun, you even get some more as you progress which makes you more motivated to progress. Some jobs are effectively upgrades of others too which also motivates you to actually change them, and there’s lots of challenges that basically force you to change jobs sometimes. Eventually that gets frustrating and it feels like it removes a lot of agency from the player though, and some jobs eventually don’t feel very viable at all. At least they’re designs are all adorable, that’s good.
Besides that, dungeons go on WAY too long compared to the other games, especially the final dungeon where they get stupid and make you fight four bosses with 99,999 health before the real final boss. There’s a huge difficulty spike too at the end where your recommended level jumps from 30 up to about 42 and you kinda just have to grind all of that which is absolutely horrible balancing. Not even FF2 had something like this, jesus christ. I got the game used and there was a save file that had everyone to level 99 so I switched to that right before the final boss because there’s no way I’m risking going through all of the final dungeon again, complete with a ten minute unskippable cutscene right before the final boss.
The story’s also more in-depth than the first Final Fantasy but is essentially an upgraded version of it. There’s less of that sense of whimsy as you go to a bunch of different weird settings (although the dwarf city is still there!) which can make e setting feel more grounded so it’s honestly up to personal interpretation which you prefer more, I think the two different approaches work for their own games personally.
So my ranking is probably 1>3>2 but then again, not really 100% consistent. I’m excited to move onto the SNES trilogy because then this little project of mine changes from discovering the origins of the series to playing some actual classics. And Mystic Quest. I want to play it because I’m curious and there’s clearly not enough garbage in the SNES games if I don’t.
