Final Fantasy I Pixel Remaster is a high quality polished and upgraded version of the original Final Fantasy that came out for the NES. The game has been ported over to PC with new graphics, sound, and quality of life enhancements. You can pick it up on Steam for the semi-reasonable price of $10.
I picked this game up for two reasons:
- I had never owned a Final Fantasy game before
- I have a soft spot for retro games
I figured it looks good, and is selling for a decent price, so I would give the original Final Fantasy a try.
Being the first game in what would come to be a long and ongoing series, the plot is fairly simple and heavily inspired by Western fantasy. You play as four "Warriors of Light", who have arrived to fulfill a prophecy that you would come to save a land shrouded in darkness. You go from town to town, and are given fairly simple quests to either fetch and item, or kill an enemy. Now I will talk about a couple different aspects of the game.
Gameplay: The game is a turn-based RPG. The way it works is pretty intuitive. One quality of life enhancement that was added was the ability to auto-run through battles, which really helps to get you through some of the grind of random encounters. The way it works is the animations are sped up, and your characters continually repeat their last action. Another part I liked about the game is that for a turn-based RPG, there was little to no grind. As long as I went out of my way to get the extra treasure in dungeons, I just about never found myself having to grind random encounters. The encounters from getting the treasure was enough that I could pretty continually progress.
There is also a new addition of a map of whatever area you're in. You can choose not to use this if you wish. It shows you the locations of treasure and generally where to go. This can get rid of some of the challenge as some of the dungeons are built like mazes, so this would have been a bit more difficult in the original NES version.
I did have to look up a guide. The game didn't always give me the most clear direction, and there were a few times where I found myself wandering around the map because I didn't spot a location. I won't really fault the game for this, however. I mean, the game came out in the 80's.
Other than that, fairly simple, enjoyable, and intuitive turn-based gameplay.
Sound: Sound was good. The original OST was completely redone, so rather than the retro sound that the NES would have, you get beautiful orchestral renditions of the OST. Good stuff.
Graphics: The graphics have been completely redone. Some people complained and said things like "The PSP graphics were better!". But the PSP graphics had a completely different art style. The style here was supposed to capture the true intent of the graphics of the NES. So what you see, is supposed to be like things SHOULD'VE looked back then, but the capability just wasn't there.
However, people did have one good complaint. The font in the vanilla game doesn't fit the aesthetic, and just generally sucks. However, there are simple mods that replace the font with something better.
Overall: I'll give the game a 8/10. I'd recommend it if you're in to the type of game that it is. The price is decent and you're getting a high quality remaster. Maybe I'll pick up the FFVI remaster sometime.
P.S. if you're looking for something free on NG that has a similar style and gameplay to this, I'll link you to a good old RPG down below. Have fun!