Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

"While perhaps not being the best RPG's on the GBA, Dawn of Souls still manages to provide two solid quests wrapped up in a big slice of history"

Nearly 20 years ago, back in 1987, it begun. A small company was struggling for funding and threw all their weight behind one last project. Their Final Fantasy. Released to critical acclaim and big sales, Square had the daring to try something a bit different for their next game. Final Fantasy II crashed and burned, leaving (a bit like Adventure of Link) a bit of an ugly smudge on an otherwise sparkling clean series. So much of a smudge Square opted not to release the next Final Fantasy in America, and it turned out to be one of the best games in the Famicom era. Ouch.

Fast forward to 2003 and the release of Final Fantasy Origins. Although the first two games were readily available in 1987 (well, FFII didn't have such a big release and many gamers had to resort to nefarious means to acquire it, but it was still available), unfortunately a large proportion of rpg fans (myself included) weren't even born when Final Fantasy I was released, and if you were to try and chase it up nowadays you must either have a very deep pocket or a bank robbery planned. FF Origins finally allowed your average Joe RPG to play the first two games, featuring upgraded graphics, flashy FMV's (albeit very few) and a few other, minor extras. Come forward another year to 2004 and we now have Final Fantasy: Dawn Of Souls, the third recent reincarnation of the two old carts (the other two being the afformentioned Origins and the remake for the Wonderswan). Out of the three, this is easily the best. Although it doesn't carry over the FMV of the Playstation version, it does do away with load times, add some extra features and become able to carry around in your pocket.

So what's new in Dawn Of Souls? Well, the biggest gameplay differences are the addition of the Soul of Chaos and Soul of Rebirth modes which i'll explain about later in the review. Apart from that it's just minor technical things really (spell effects look a little worse, no load times etc). If we're talking from the originals, the most obvious is the graphics. Somewhere between a 16-bit game and a PSX 2d game, they're clean and nice enough - basically they just do the job so you can get through the game. There are a bunch of minor changes, such as FFI now having an MP system instead of the magic levels system in the originals and the difficulty being pretty heavily reduced (although at some stages it kicks back again, it's not an easy ride the whole way through but definitely not like the originals in that sense).

Going onto the games themselves, they'll seem quite primitive and basic to many gamers, and in some ways they are. The stories have hardly been changed and is still very basic for both games. FFI is the good ol' gather four crystals from bad guys and then defeat the mysterious final boss. FFII is slightly more complex and ultimately more satisfying, but fans of later games in the series certainly have reason to be a bit surprised in this department. It was 18 years ago, cut them some slack. In other ways though, this game was alot more impressive than a large amount of Famicom games, and even many modern GBA rpg's. The fighting systems were both quite impressive, and although the simple job system employed in FFI was nothing new, it adds a slight amount of player input and non-linearity missing in later Final Fantasy games. The class upgrading system was quite good as well, it was a nice way of switching up the classes to stop players becoming bored at the characters they'd been using for the last several hours. It's implemented at quite a good point as well, and you'll welcome the change. The magic level system is well done, and the levels certain mages and classes are allowed upto for their specific magic is very good. For example, just because you have a Red Wizard at level 99 with full hp/mp and the highest stats attainable doesn't mean that you'll have access to level 9 black or white spells. It also works at the polar opposite, with Knight owners perhaps being surprised that level 1-3 white magic spells are now available to them after upgrade. Things like this keep classes obviously seperate, unlike later incarnations such as FFX, in which characters were only seperated by their overdrives after being beefed up. Final Fantasy II has a...different battle system. Not particulary bad but nothing really enjoyable either. Basically you level up your stats by using them, for example attacking will raise your strength, being hit will raise your HP and so on. It sounds good as a concept, and it is, it's just executed very poorly. You can attack yourselves to gain big HP bonuses, then continually use cure magic to raise MP and cure levels. There are plenty of cheap tricks like this, and the problem is if you choose not to implement one of the tricks or spend a large amount of time training, your HP and defense in particular will make it hard to advance too far in the game. Shame really.

I've already basically been over the visuals, but just to quickly touch on them, they're nice enough but outshined by many other games made exclusively for the GBA. If you compare it with something like Golden Sun: The Lost Age you'll immediately see the difference. Even comparing it to a game like Advance Wars 2 shows it isn't as bouncy and GBA optimised as these games. The visuals, to look at their good points, are at least clean, bright and always functionable. The landscapes are quite nice and there's an overworld and oppurtunities to fly airships and such. The spell and battle effects are good enough but nothing that'll make you look twice. The sound effects are good, but the game really shines in the musical department.

A few years before the original was made, 1981 to be exact, a young Japanese composer named Nobuo Uematsu was gearing up his musical career, playing keyboard for multiple groups before finding that his passion lay in composing music. Of course it wasn't easy getting out of the amateur music scene, he composed music for a few small bands and some porno movies before in 1985 his friend who worked at a videogame company called Squaresoft asked Nobuo if he'd be interested to write some music for one of their video games. To be horribly cliched for a moment, the rest is history. Nobuo's tunes are simply some of the nicest midi stuff you'll ever hear composed, even comparing to some of the modern midi opuses some people are making, it rises above easily. The classic FF tunes all have their roots in these two games and while you perhaps may not notice them, they set the atmosphere nicely, from happy and vibrant farm tunes to deep and foreboding confrontation music.

The games are pretty good in terms of length. Although me and my cousin managed to both go through both sections of Dawn Of Souls in a matter of a week and a bit, we were both playing quite a bit (my cousin maxed out his characters, he has this thing in which he mentally cannot defeat the final boss until his characters are as good as they can be, strange chap that one) but there's definitely 12-18 hours gameplay in each one. Most of the time, you'll be enjoying yourself which is the important thing. After you complete the game there's the Soul of Chaos for FFI which allows you to fight newer FF bosses and enemies, just for a bit of fun. Soul of Rebirth is a fun little quest which involves some of the characters who die during the course of FFII. It's a good bit of extra story and a nice chance to play as characters you wouldn't be able to under normal circumstances.

Really, any half-decent Final Fantasy fan with a GBA should've picked this up by now. It's nothing mind bending but it's a good solid quest wrapped up in a great soundtrack and a big slice of history. It still retains the FF charm and is a traditional rpg unlike FF Tactics Advance, the other FF game available for GBA. If you want something to keep you entertained for a long trip or a few long car/plane rides then this will definitely do the trick for rpg fans. Sure, it can grind at times and the stories can become straight cliched at points, but it's still got enough Square charm and rpg goodness to tide you through until you at least reach the end. Recommended for all console rpg fans in need of a spot of history.

Visual: 7.6/10
Aural: 8.9/10
Gameplay: 8.1/10
Longevity: 8.7/10

Overall: 8.3/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 02/22/05, Updated 02/24/05