Tobal No. 1

"Decent effort I guess"

I remember buying Tobal on the day it came out just for the Final Fantasy 7 demo. I'm that big of a Final Fantasy and Square fan. I picked up the phone and called my best friend at the time and he came right over.

The game hasn't aged all that well over time. The funny thing is I recently played the sequel and it's pretty much the exact same fighting mode with snazzy graphics.

With that being said the game still looks pretty good. Better on my PS2 than on my PS3 which had problems playing the game (just an FYI really). The game is kind of blocky and pointy like many other early PS1 titles but it still looks pretty good.

The backgrounds are really limited, a lot of blank areas and the levels themselves are kind of boring except maybe Gren's Windmill level (which was locking my PS3 up.)

The games fighting engine is very much that of a boxing game. A little stiff at first but once you get the hang of it you'll be able to break out of the grapples which can deal a lot of damage so be careful of those.

It's funny but even the roster is the same in this and the sequel when it comes to who you fight. I find it funny that Nork is this big fat thing that does a ton of damage but then he isn't the last boss, in reality it's a bunny like guy who falls quickly.

The game also has a VS mode which for whatever reason if you accidentally select it and only have one controller you can't get out of it for some reason. At least I wasn't able to.

The Quest mode is rather bare and it's funny but I constantly confuse this games quest mode with that in Ehrgeiz. Nothing really similar at all and it's a bit bland in this game. You just go down hallways and fight enemies and avoid traps. What's nice is that the controls are written on the walls in the training level so now I know how to pick up items, which is weird (hold R1 and hit square.)

Quest mode is really the meat of the game but it's so stiff due to no camera control and you always walking in an odd path. What I mean is you pretty much walk forward and slide left and right so it's hard to turn around.

Enemies are in specific spots and have small load times which are annoying. The traps in the levels are also annoying. They range from rolling boulders to darts to giant holes to jump and none of them are easy to avoid. Maybe if the controls weren't so stiff in this mode it would be a lot more fun. Most of these problems are fixed in the sequel.

I can't fully recommend Tobal No. 1. It's a fine enough game but only die hard Square fans will really want it. There's many better fighting games on the PS1 and this one is pretty basic on all fronts except the quest mode but even that is a bit meh really.

Story - 1/10
Graphics - 7/10
Sound - 7/10
Control - 5/10
Game Play - 6/10
Replay Value - 5/10

Final Score - 6/10

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/09/09

Game Release: Tobal No. 1 (US, 09/30/96)