FFI: Love it or Hate it?

I have to rank FFI as my all-time favourite game. It was like what, 1990, 1991 . . . when I first saw it in action at a friend's place and from that moment I needed to have it. For the life of me, I don't know why the hell I ever got rid of that pristine game-box with the maps, manual, monster-guide . . . ugh.

After Dragon Warrior this was the second RPG I ever finished on the NES and the ending fueled my imagination and continues to do so. Say what you will about the "story" or "characters" but back in those days, kids had the creativity to fill in all the blanks, hell, we had to.

Nothing but great memories and I still play through this game once a year.
 
Very, very nostalgia-based game, but a good game nonetheless. I beat it on Gameboy Advance whenever it came out in the Dawn of Souls pack. It's a bit hard to get into, but once you do get into it, you can't stop playing till you beat it. I maxed out all my characters and did all of the extra dungeons.

I love it.

I think it's unfair to compare this game to ANY of the others, due to the fact that it was the first. For the time, it was great. A more accurate comparison is to compare it to Dragon Quest or Legend of Zelda for NES.
 
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Spite being the absolute first, and shortest of the FF games, i love this game to death. The story may have been alittle quick, but being the first of the franchise, i wasn't expecting anything big.
As stated before me, Once you get into the game, you get hooked so easily and never want to stop.

The most memoriable aspect of this game for me would have to be getting the upgrades of the classes i was using, then going into garlands dungeon and grinding to 99.

Spite being max HP around L55-60, it's still fun obliterating all that obscures your path :busta:
 
What to say more? I love this game.

I started with FF1GBA for I hated grinding, and had no patience to it. Frtunately thanks to Dragon Quest, I learned to tolerate it and played the riginal also :)

The graphics maybe aren't so good, but collorful and have their own look so no complain here. The music is very good [ seriously, the NES music has something that the SNES and PS music don't have ;) ].

As for the stroy it is good. Maybe there's no plot, none character development, but the story alone, the idea is interesting. The whole crystal thing is quite epic, the time loop very smart and the fact, Square presented it with dialoges with only one speech - box long is worthy of respect.

The first time, I played, I gave up on Crescent Lake, thinking one spell is worth 620000 money ;)
Fortunately the price turned out to be 20000.
 
I give this game a ton of credit for starting this amazing series but I could not force myself to play it again. The storyline was incredibly slow and there was little to no character development. Dungeons were tedious and confusing. There were so many random encounters that I found myself wanting to bash my head against a wall trying to get anywhere. Ultimately, this game deserves the credit it gets for being the first Final Fantasy but other games (even FFII) completely annihilated this game in basically every category (storyline, gameplay, etc...).

caleb3636 said:
the story does suck pretty bad but your not supposed to play the game for the story
Click to expand...

The Final Fantasy series starting with FFII, was primarily known for its epic storylines. That's what keeps so many people coming back to the series. FFI started the franchise but it was the other games that made it what it is. If Square put out another game like FFI, I'm pretty sure that it would get torn to pieces because of weak character development and storyline. FFI gets the title of first FF, but the others are what keep this franchise moving.
 
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I enjoyed the first installment of Final Fantasy. It wasn't like this at the beginning. When I first played it, I was a kid and it seemed really hard at the time. It wasn't until I went back to it as an adult and played it. It actually turned into a great game. I underestimated it in my younger years and when I went back to it, I noticed that the story was not bad for an NES RPG. Twists, development and unique gameplay has this game as one of my favorites.
 
When playing old games, I try to put myself in the mindset of the time in which they were new. With FFI, that's pretty difficult, because I was one year old in 1987. But... I play some NES Castlevania, some Dragon Warrior, and then I can pretend alright, at least as far as video games go. :)

Overall, I feel kind of meh about FFI. I played the GBA and PS1 remakes and liked them alright. The game isn't deep in terms of play OR story, but it didn't exactly have to be.

But... the original is near unplayable for me. It has a certain old school charm, but the charm wears off waaay before the game ends. Most of the problem is the battles. They take forever, even the random encounters with imps that should be really simple. Every action by your characters and your enemies has the slow damage readout at the bottom that you can't make go any faster by mashing buttons. The animation for spells hitting multiple enemies go one enemy at a time, and when you can have nine enemies on screen that can get really tedious. The victory sequence takes forever as well, especially when you level up. The battle music and the victory music, while initially awesome, get really irritating after a while.

I love most of the rest of the FF series, so I'm really grateful this game was made. The music is awesome and playing it is like going back in time. I know its place in the history of video games in general and RPGs in particular. This game made a lot of firsts.

But as far as actually playing it goes... If I want an old school grindfest, I'll play one of the Dragon Warrior games, where combat is a bit more fun and speedy.
 
As, I'm sure, it was said hundred times, in all NES FF's you can manipulate battle speed just like in Dragon Quest games.

The "respond rate" at the start menu is responsible for that. There you can choose 1-10 speed [ 5,6,7 are the best in my opinion ] and the battle informations will be lot faster.
Try it, for me the fast battles are quite addictive.
 
I really loved FFI, played via the Dawn of Souls re-release for the GBA. Not sure about people saying it was hard to get into:surprised:, it just seemed like a normal grinding level up system(which was easier to me than FFIII). But I love that the game captured the basics of an RPG , and the music is still some of the best throughout the FF years. The battle system went fast for me(3 hits and dead) but then again this isn't the original version, not sure how bad it was.

I just don't get the argument that the game didn't have any character development, was there even ANY character development back in 1987? Most games back then were simple. But I suppose we can't complain now, most FF nowadays have character development that span over 10 minutes of cut-scenes every 5 minutes.
 
The PSP version was enjoyable, to say the least. A big step up from the original game. The battle system and world map weren't "broken" anymore. haha

Not a very difficult, nor lengthy, game, and the story was just OK. Who cares, though? It was the first FF game. Couldn't expect much as far as developing on those aspects in the 80s.
 
Count me in as somebody who loves it. Sure, Final Fantasy I is as basic as they come (well compared to the later Final Fantasies and not the RPG's of the era), but it's still wonderful. I'm also a glutton for all the old-school NES games, so it has that working for it as well. The story isn't too glamorous and is your basic save the world, crush the evil overlord and restore the orbs, but hey, it worked. Now that I think about it, most RPG's just take that basic template, even today, so points to FFI for starting a trend.

I'm not too crazy about the whole aspect of your warriors attacking a dead baddie after the enemy has been killed, but that's nitpicking on my part. Oh, and I'll also complain about only being able to buy one item at a time at shops. I'll stop whining now, I assure you.

Final Fantasy I spawned the series and was the first Final Fantasy game I ever laid eyes on. It brings up awesome feelings of reminiscence within me, which is awesome. For that, it has my eternal love.
 
I like this game. First of all, it's a very difficult game. I like difficulty. Second, most people would complain that the characters are blank slates, but that's the beauty of it; You can make them whatever you want. Third, I have a nostalgia for buying spells and turn-based combat.
 
I love Final Fantasy 1.

Because,

Final Fantasy has incredible magic, class, and battle systems. They were the first to revolutionize combat in real-time with the Active Time Battle system. And the characters are always amazing, from the torn Cecil Harvey to the stylistic Cloud Strife.
 
I voted that I 'Love it!', though it's actually more of an in-between, but I liked it way more than hated it, I would say.

It's a nice dungeon game, first off. It reminds me of the days of playing Dragon Warrior, which came out around the same time by Enix, and I played Dragon Warrior as a child. I didn't play FFI until I got it on the PSP around er...three years ago? It was a relatively easy game, and you really couldn't grow to like any characters because, well...they're custom. However, if you think about the year it was made and how video games were back then, then it was definitely a very high tech game for its time. I can say, though, that Square/Square-Enix has definitely evolved since their starts in the late 80's, but who wouldn't have guessed that?
 
I definetly didn't hate final fantasy 1. It is actually a really good game. As far as some of you complaining about the repetitiveness you choose that option. I know with a class of at least Black, Red or White Mages you would think differently because of the different spells you have to carefully pick in battle. Collecting Orbs is fun, yes I know it sounds cheesy but I like gathering of treasures and such. Using Magic and finally being able to upgrade class which is awesome. I'm playing it on nintendo and even though the graphics are bad. I still love the game because of gameplay and everything else.
 
I don't hate it, but I would not understand if someone actually loved in, as in adored it. It's too basic, and the grinding level is ridiculous. It also has a lackluster story, and horrible battle system (in my opinion) anyway.

It's a nice retro trip, but other than that I strongly dislike it.
 
I feel pretty neutral about it... There's no story, but it was the first Final Fantasy and no one really tried to write one. The game does what its developers wanted it to do. However, it doesn't really do anything for me so I can't rate it highly. :/ The battle system is pretty standard, (again) there's no story and the world isn't as exciting as the worlds in FFVII to XIII. Mind you, I do like some of the music! :)
 
i love it because it was a good long game and they were on a budget but alot of people get lazy and dont have a good imagination so they dont like it as much. NOTE: IM NOT SAYING YOUR ALL LIKE THAT BUT IM JUST SAYING SOME IM SORRY I DONT MEAN TO OFFEND YOU.
 
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