Quote (BlitzSage @ 3rd November 2009 03:23) Quote (Atma Weapon @ 1st November 2009 22:05) Maybe, just maybe, Final Fantasy the first isn't the game that the rest of the series promises? It's sort of stupid 1) It did not have the strong company behind it that the others. It was a fledgling company on its last project that got lucky. The other ones have have strong financial backing. 2) The technology wasn't there. It's like comparing the Legend of Zelda NES version, to Ocarina of Time. There's got to be some perspective. 3) The games that followed had the games that came before it to look at and refine. So, it's not stupid. It is not as good, but it started it all.
Everything you said is true, but I think 'point' 3 is what's most interesting about this situation. Would you care to instead talk about the game itself rather than its production? Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III were made by similar teams on similar hardware, but they are rather quite different apart from each other.
Final Fantasy One lacks a story even though it's very heavily plotted in a medieval dungeons and dragons-esque setting. I'd brag about having beaten it, but I haven't on the original NES- that game is brutally hard, if you're playing that version, it's certainly what a lot of people would call un-fun. Now I do play, and often enough, Super Mario Bros., and successfully beat it, even though the third in the series is like, one of the best games ever made. And it has everything to do with content and intent than rather just with money and technology. (Although I guess one could make a point about Nintendo's memory mappers becoming more sophisticated over the years)
I don't want to try to make it sound like FF1 is a failure by any means, but without overindulging my imagination, something like party chat implemented through-out the game, more representation of change in the fictional world as you complete objectives (in the game text at least if not elsewhere), would give technically the same experience but aesthetically a lot closer to what you get with the later FFs. And Sakaguchi was obviously thinking very heavily of these issues because FFII is already like a latter FF game- characters have names, relationships, the party is split up, the arrival of the party at the destination frequently results in a turn of events not previously foreseen, un-interactive battles for the purpose of plot, etc.
The best reason to play FF the first is to a play a long adventure, having picked your and named your party from scratch, and imagine that quite simply, you have been the righter of the world's entire wrongs. Holy shit getting the airship is still, almost always worth the effort, no matter the series or the trial.
Also, BlitzSage: it's not fair to cut someone's sentence in half when replying in your deliberate point/counterpoint style. I shouldn't have to tell you why that's a bad idea. |
Ahhh the good ol days