Final Fantasy Origins

"A translation, of a port, of a handheld remake, of an NES game, two of them."

These games were long overdue. Maybe now, FFVII fanboys will stop referring to FFIV as FFII. Anyway, where to begin. Let's start with some general history.

The phrase RPG, to the best of my knowledge was coined by Dungeons and Dragons, sometime back in the late 70s. At about the time of DnD's release some high school kid started programming Apple games based on DnD. I think it was the like the 28th game he programmed which got published sometime back in 1978. Ultima was born. Anyway, there were 8 years between Ultima and Dragon Quest, where undoubtedly plenty of RPGs that you've never heard of were made. There were about 5 Ultima games released during this time period as well. I haven't really gotten into the Ultima series, but from what I've seen it's sort of a combination of Zelda and Dragon Quest, and follows the DnD rules very closely. Anyway, most of you probably don't care much about old school RPGs, so let's fast-forward to 1986. You've got Zelda, which is Ultima with most of the numbers stripped out of it. You've got Dragon Quest, which is Ultima with most of the action and movement stripped out of it. Honestly, though, the two are better off than Ultima was, so no huge lost.

Anyway, fast forward to 1987. Dragon Quest was fun. You had one character, you fought one enemy at a time. You fought enemies and got gold so you could buy cool cool items and fight more enemies. You also trudged your way through dungeons in hopes of finding chests which might give you a cool cool item which you could then use to fight more monsters and find more cool cool items. It was short, simple, and addictive. It wasn't necessary to have multiple characters and enemies moving every turn in Zelda-like fashion as in DnD. Every once in a while you got to attack an enemy and hack it in the face. Anyway, a small company named Squaresoft is about to go out of business. But, before that happens they decide to release their final game, appropriately named Final Fantasy. However, Final Fantasy was a big hit(probably because Dragon Quest II sucked) and the rest as they say is history.

Anyway, Final Fantasy makes some ''improvements'' over Dragon Quest. You call them improvements, I call it work in progress. Instead of one character, you can have four characters! Instead of one enemy you get up to nine enemies! Unfortunately, instead of giving you nine times the fun, it usually gives you nine times the boredom. Now you have to wait for 9 enemies to attack you. It's particularly bad when the enemies get first strike--which happens WAY too often. Not to mention the fact that enemies can paralyze your entire party. With 9 enemies, a single first strike can ruin your day and make you have to start all over again. Anyway, Final Fantasy does really add some unique ideas. You can now buy spells from stores, and you get to choose a party out of six different classes(Okay so they didn't add any unique ideas, they re-added DnD stuff into Dragon Quest, but hey, somebody had to do it). All in all, though, Final Fantasy was sort of a fun game, although I'd take Dragon Quest, Phantasy Star I, and Phantasy Star II over Final Fantasy as my choice of 80s RPGs any day.

So what does the remake do? Well it let's you reduce the difficulty from nearly impossible to ridiculous, which is a welcome addition, trust me. It also makes some nice modernizations to interface. Your characters won't attack dead air anymore, they will do like they did in Final Fantasy III and attack another enemy if their target dies. This is another welcome addition. Damage is now recorded like it was in Final Fantasy III as well. No more waiting 5 minutes to find out how much damage fire2 did to a group of nine zombies. Your characters can dash as well. Pretty much everything flows better and adds some much needed momentum to this boring classic.

Otherwise, everything remains the same. It still takes an eternity and a half to level and the enemies can still annihilate you with a lucky first strike. To say it's extremely difficult might not be the exact term to use. The game is tedious, but if you level up enough you shouldn't encounter too much resistance. However, this ain't Final Fantasy VII where you can go straight through a dungeon and expect to be powerful enough to beat the boss. The plot still sucks, let's not kid ourselves, here, lol. Still the superb translation does breathe some new life into it. FF1's FMV is pretty lame though, but this isn't really about FMV now, is it? The sound and music is great. Finally we get CD quality music while playing the original Final Fantasy, what more could you ask for? Another welcome change from the Wonderswan version is the ability to put the damn thing in ePSXe and save wherever the hell you want, whenever the hell you want. You can also smooth out those damn blocky sprites.

All in all, the Final Fantasy remake is a decent dungeon crawler, although it's far from the best. I give it about a 6 or a 7. Now let's get to the real reason you bought Origins, the 15-year-overdue Final Fantasy II.

First off, this isn't the lame Dragon Quest rip-off released on the SNES back in 1991, specifically, this isn't FFIV easytype. This is the real deal. This is the remake of the 1989 NES classic with it's ''revolutionary'' leveling system. Final Fantasy II could have been a great game if not for a few glaring problems. The remake, luckily, is a great game.

You gotta give Squaresoft credit, making a good remake of Final Fantasy II was no easy task. They could have just tossed in some new graphics and left us with the same stuff, but no, they really went all out on this remake. Final Fantasy II featured a leveling system which was based on a mathematical algorithm developed by a drunk monk some time back in the dark ages. Nobody, not even Squaresoft knew how it worked. Basically, you level up based on how you play. Getting hurt a lot? Your HP and def will go up. Attacking a lot? Your strength will go up. Using a lot of spells? Your magic and MP will go up. Like to hide in the back row? Your agility will go up faster. You can also hold a shield or a second weapon, and your stats change to reflect this style of playing. The nice thing about the remake is that everything happens in a timely matter. You won't reach the first boss only to find your attacks do ZERO damage. It also doesn't convert your strength to magic or vice versa anymore. You won't end up with zero strength just because you're trying to level your spells.

You can also level up your weapon skill in this game. Each category has it's own advantages and disadvantages. fighting naked will result in a nice and powerful monk character. In the original, 100 attacks made you gain a weapon level for a max of 16. In this game it's significantly less, but it won't let you progress past a certain level if you are in the wrong place. So after you max your weapon skill you can focus on your spells. In the original, you had to use a spell 100 times to make it gain a level, and your spell could reach a max level of 16. I can hear the math going off in your head right now. Hmmmm, 16 times 20 times 100 times 4 is almost one hundred thous..holy @#^& Herein lies what is probably the biggest problem with Final Fantasy II, spells take too long to level. You can pretty much ignore spells altogether and rely purely on your fighting abilities. I made it through the NES version alright using this tactic. Spells seem to level a little faster in this, but not by much. I couldn't tell you the exact stats.

So what is this game all about? Well it starts off with a super-cool FMV showing what Final Fantasy II is supposed to look like. They really need to do a PS2 remake of this game, and FFIII for that matter. The FMV shows the slaughter of Phin.(I may mess up town names occasionally, I'm not completely used to this new translation). The Paramekian Emperor has released hell spawn on the world in an attempt to unite all countries under his rule. Final Fantasy II begins with four teenagers running for their lives. These are Frioniel, Maria, Leonhart, and Guy. Only one name remains identical to what it really is, Maria. Squaresoft for all their talent, couldn't figure out how to make the names display more than six characters. And Guy, well that just sounds stupid in English. He's now called Gus. Anyway, these four are attacked by dark horsemen(Yes, people rode on horses in this game, not on chocobos, although chocobos do make their first ever appearance). Maria's brother, Leonhart was lost. Frioniel, Maria, and Gus were found lying in their own blood. All were taken back to Altea where the game begins as Frioniel regains consciousness. After recovering he meets up with Gus and Maria. You learn that all of their parents were killed in the attack. But not all is a lost, the princess Hilda has formed a resistance group, determined to fight back against the Paramekian Emperor. With their parents and town lost, our three heroes are left with only one choice...

One thing Final Fantasy II is not filled with, is fantasy clichés from the past 14 years. Final Fantasy II is dark story of war, death, and most importantly, revenge. More characters die in this game than in any other Final Fantasy and they don't magically come back to life like they did in Final Fantasy IV. And without spoiling too much, you may not want to get attached to a bunch of the towns. For most people familiar with the modern Final Fantasy plots, which to some degree all follow the plot of Final Fantasy III, Final Fantasy II should be a pretty big surprise. The translation is superb, if not lacking in a few things. It sounds much closer to modern dialogue than the original. Cutscene, and new character animations help to add new life to the plot. Cid has even been remodeled to look like FF7 Cid, how cool is that?

Okay, so I’ve covered the gameplay and plot, what's left. Oh, music. The music kicks ass. It's the original stuff, but this time it actually sounds good, and not like a bunch of beeping coming out of your NES/Wonderswan.

As you progress through the game your party will gain new members. Some may be very powerful, some will absolutely suck. The main three will always be in your party though. You can learn keywords from NPCs and say them back to specific NPCs to get different actions and progress through the game. Most of the game is spent going on missions for Princess Hilda. The front row/back row is introduced in this game. Enemies appear in groups of up to 8. You should kill the first four first and then focus on the last. Spells are learned from books, you should recognize most of the spells. Ultima(the spell, not the game) makes its first appearance. If you beat the game in normal difficulty, you can open up the original difficulty with all the crazy physics still intact. All in all, Final Fantasy II is a fun game, with one major glaring issue.

The dungeons in this game are simply too long. To put it simply, FFII is a 100-level dungeon game. No, there are no actual dungeons with 100 levels, but the dungeons are very long, they have many floors, and they have many random battles. As you slog through dungeons it will become less and less obvious that your characters are really gaining anything from all this fighting, which is where one of the major problems with the leveling system comes in. The excellent plot will only be revealed to you in between hundreds and hundreds of random battles. Of course, that's kind of to be expected from a 1989 game. For what it is, the Final Fantasy II is an excellent game, I give it a 9/10.

Conclusion: For any fan who started their RPG life with Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy Origins is REQUIRED playing. No excuses. And once you beat the games on their easy difficulty you better go back and beat them on the original difficulty. Those of you, like me, who have already beaten the entire series several times will find less in the remake. Still, the new translation, music, and fmvs make it worth playing one more time. Don't expect these games to be as good as V,VI,VII, and VIII because they're simply not, unless of course you were sick of modern RPGs and have never played anything like this. Also, don't expect a whole lot of stuff that is similar to other Final Fantasies. You got airships, you got chocobos, you got cid, that's where the similarities start to dwindle. You should be able to get tons of gameplay out of these two games--100-200 hours if you try.

Overall Rating 8/10:

FFII is great, FFI is the same old stuff. The graphics are hardly impressive but like I said, use ePSXe, it does wonders for 2-d playstation games. Both are kinda lacking in the plot deparment and rely almost entirely on random battles. This probably isn't as good, as say the upcoming re-release of Phantasy Star I and II, but this is a piece of history that one should not miss. Now, please do us all a favor, Squaresoft, and give us what we really want, remakes of Final Fantasy III and Seiken Densetsu III, and don't forget online play with SD3, please.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 04/16/03, Updated 04/16/03