Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition

"Final Fantasy Anniversary, celebrating the beginning"

Though Final Fantasy has been released on multiple platforms, its the PSP version that feels like its the best version so far. With minor game play changes and a fully-updated presentation, Final Fantasy Anniversary seems to celebrate the origins of the genre.

Gameplay

Sadly, the game plays just like it did when it was first released, albeit, scaled down in difficultly, at least at first. The game starts you out with four, bland warriors of light which you give a name and a job class. Selecting the right job combination is essential to a balanced game experience, and some classes just don't feel like they work well. While the mage-classes seem balanced enough, the melee classes seem to range from essential to useless. Warriors seem the pinnacle of melee capabilities, while monk and thief start out weak and don't catch up till much later in the game. This is mostly because the gear selection in the game. Along your journey, you'll collect gear to power-up your allies. The problem is, almost all the gear seems to be geared (no pun intended) toward the warriors or the redmages. Warriors can absorb copious amounts of damage while being able to cause some destruction of their own, while monks and thieves can't take it or give it. Its not till towards the end of the game that these classes catch up in terms of damage, but they never develop the defense.

The game surrounds itself mostly with grinding out levels, money and whatever else the player needs to do to overcome the next obstacle, but it feels like less of a grind than the past, mostly because the game starts you off on the easy mode, first presented in the Origins version of the game released on the Playstation. Battles start with each of the four characters selecting a option of action. The traditional attack, magic, items, run, etc. are present, and the game doesn't break away from that too much. The way the game selections the order of action seems random, so you'll have the actions you've selected and the actions the enemy selected playing out during a turn, then you're back to selecting actions for the team for the next turn. It works fairly well for each battle situation, making the player think carefully in anticipation of the enemy's next attack.

The magic system has been updated to a standard MP system, which doesn't change the pacing of the game too much, other than ethers are now present. However, for this version, Square Enix has put a level requirement on spells, which always seem to be a few levels too high. I often found myself traversing to a new town, only to realize that my mages' levels were always too low for the latest spells, by about 1-3 levels, leaving me to pick them up after I went through the dungeons to follow. Since the new spells never seemed essential to beating a dungeon, it was only a minor inconvenience.

In terms of exploration, the world map isn't too varied. Dungeons usually have their own theme going for them in conjunction with the story. There's the ice level, the fire level, the sky level, etc. They all play out the same, run in, find all the treasure, beat the boss at the end. Bosses this time around actually feel harder, or at least take longer to beat in this version. Before it was a quick shoot out of damage and getting lucky, but now it feels like the player's skill is a huge factor in the outcome, a definite welcome change. The encounter rate feels scaled back too. The first few versions of the game felt like there was an enemy on every square of the dungeon, but now walking around feels comfortable. On a minor note of annoyance: NPCs throughout the game will impede your movement in some areas, while not moving very fast themselves. This causes some loathsome moments and can kill the game's pacing, though its mostly on the more restricted town walkways.

Story

Story is reflective of the video game era with which it was written in, simple and thin. The four warriors of light show up to defeat the darkness and evil, the bare basics of the basic. Most of the story is actually delivered through the scrolling text in the opening scene and the scrolling text in the final scene, which both seem to make the most out of nothing. Your characters have no emotions or lines throughout the game, just vessels for which you move around the world. The supporting cast is no different, no real personality and most just serve to point you in a vague direction of where to go next. Overall, the immersion is less than enthralling by today's standards.

Graphics/Sound

With the PSP version, the game has received an upgrade with graphics and sound. Every sprite and background look fantastic. While there are limited animations, what is there is polished and clean looking. The sound also benefits from the upgrade with each effect and musical number sound crisp and clear. Even though the game is still in 2D, it displays nicely on the PSP. The game also will feature a few CG scenes, which always look great with the Square Enix team behind them.

Replayability

The game doesn't boast a lot of replay value. There are harder modes to tackle, but that's about it. This version shares the same optional dungeons that Dawn of Souls had from the GBA. Unfortunately, these optional dungeons aren't well-designed. You wander through a randomized order of scripted rooms, collecting randomized treasure chests and eventually finding a room full of bosses. It doesn't sound bad, but you can only face one boss per dungeon-entry. Meaning, if you want to fight all the bosses in the final rooms, you have to go through the dungeons over and over again for no real reason. Its a shame because the bosses are definitely tributes to later Final Fantasy games, which is perfect for fans of the series. Some of the rooms themselves have questionable goals. To cite an example: one room has walking NPCs on pre-determined paths that you have to navigate through in order to avoid encounter squares to advance to the next floor. Basically, the creators put in two of the game's more annoying features and made a room about it. There's little ingenuity about it all, which is inexcusable since this is relatively new content.

The Labyrinth of Time is also a questionable addition to the game. Though the puzzles can be interesting in concept, the execution misses the mark. The dungeon often takes too much time for too little reward. There are no save points and rooms are on a timer. Before going through each puzzle room you're asked to sacrifice a part of game play; attack command, the ability to dash and such. The whole Labyrinth seems like a waste of time and patience.

The game's extras do feature some nice content as well, especially the tributes to the later games in the series beyond optional bosses. Example: there's updated versions of songs found on Final Fantasy V. This really fleshes out the concept of it being an anniversary game serving to celebrate the series, I just wish they would have included more content like this.

Conclusion

If you haven't already played Final Fantasy and are curious to see where the series started out, this would be the best version to pick up. Just keep in mind, there's nothing the game has to offer that will seem outstanding or overwhelming. This game serves as a showing of the derivative of almost every RPG now released, cutting away most of the advances games have made over the years, and for that, it works.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 07/23/09

Game Release: Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition (US, 06/26/07)