Folks reading my backloggery lately may have noticed me lately playing the original Final Fantasy (or rather a remake of said original) on PSP. Having tried it a bit before, I went ahead and decided to pick this version up as a.) it was a very nicely done (ie nice looking and sounding) port, and b.) would have the most bonus content out of any FF1 versions available.
So I played it a fair bit, fought the Earth fiend, and put it down only to recently pick it back up for a game to play during breaks + lunch. I've come to terms that as far as I'm concerned, Final Fantasy isn't really what i'd call the best in game design.
The beginning of the game is good for the most part. You're told to go defeat Garland, and told the general direction to head in. After this is when you're pretty much told "go and restore the crystals", and when the game heads downhill imo. Pretty much from that point on, you get few (if any at all) directions or even hints where to go. Instead, you as a player only really know there are four crystals (and you figure out there are four fiends after defeating the first one), and that's it.
The result of this, is that you the player are forced to either a.) go straight to a guide, b.) spend countless hours trying every explorable corner of the world randomly in hopes you might find what you're supposed to get next, or c.) some combination of the two. This wouldn't possibly be so bad if the game didn't have "random" encounters as often as it did. Every 2-5 steps (3 being the most common occurance) results in another random battle. One could possibly make this case for RPGs as a whole, but I'd personally have to disagree. Most RPGs I've typically played (FF6, 7, 8, and 9 for examples) tend to have what i'd consider a reasonable, or even good amount of random encounters. FF1 just ends up going overboard with the "random" encounter rate. Add to this how dungeons are designed to make you take wrong turns. The majority of rooms are much bigger than the screen's visibility, thus causing the player to explore a nice long ways before realizing they went into a dead end, only to turn around and backtrack through yet more random encounters.
I will first and foremost say that I don't like my games to be easy. (Harder series like Mega Man, Devil May Cry, and Shin Megami Tensei tend to be my favorites in gaming.) I typically perfer harder games, but not in the style of "difficulty" that Final Fantasy presents. Final Fantasy (the remakes anyway) are not hard. They are time burners. The battles are not hard by any means. Even in the rare event of a hard battle, the amount of money gained from the average random encounter is more than enough to cover any lost HP / MP in-battle. There's no real challenge to this game. The only thing keeping a user from beating the game is simply having no effing clue where to go, because the game does not say a damn thing for the most part.
I say for the most part, because I have experienced two or so instances of the game hinting at what to do. The first was an old submarine, which is made clear runs out of oxygen. You then receive an item later that lets you breathe underwater. Kind of obvious. You are also told of a town (with people) that you can't understand without a Rosetta Stone, then run right into the Rosetta Stone in a dungeon immediately afterwards. While a bit too easy on the hints imo, they're still far better than nothing. The problem then comes back in when for each moment like these, there's numerous moments without a single hint or direction.
After defeating the Fire fiend, i was left with no idea where to go next. After randomly exploring a cave (that was not mentioned at all by any NPCs) I found a "Levistone", with no real item description. Then, upon entering a random desert, an airship is found by use of this levistone. The only reason I knew this was due to a guide, as the last thing for ideas on my mind was "randomly wander every desert until I find one that interacts with this levistone". Another example is a "Warp Cube" that i found in another random dungeon. (At least this cave was hinted at by an NPC) What does it do? No effing clue. Where do i use it? No idea. I have an item, with no real description, that will get triggered by something I have no idea about. I'm about ready to cross out "Final Fantasy" on the case and use a sharpie to write "The Warriors of Light in : A series of Unfortunate Events". (Coincidentally, Xenosaga 1 was close to getting this treatment too)
I can't stress enough how much this style of game design bugs the hell out of me. While I don't want the game given to me on a golden platter, I am disgusted by a design that artificially adds hours to the game because the player has no effing idea where to go or what to do. I have a feeling that if the game actually gave me rough directions to go, I'd have finished a long time ago.
Now, I fully understand that this game was something very different back when it came out, and few games (if any) could even be compared to the depth. That said however, it still feels like a very lazy move on the designer's parts to artificially increase how long the game will take to beat. It seems like they could have added at least a few more hints or directions, so that players weren't quite literally spending hours scouring a world because there was no other way to figure out where to go.
Now, all that game design hate aside, I really like this PSP port for the most part. The graphics are very crisp and look nice, along with great re-done music and sound. From what I understand, there are four bonus dungeons packed with extra bosses that are all homeages to the later Final Fantasy games. This really makes me happy. (I'm such a sucker for bonus end-game content) I will also point out that when I do know where to go or at least have an idea, I'm enjoying the game for the most part. It's just sometimes hard to remember these good moments, when they feel far outweighed by moments with nothing to go off of.
