Final Fantasy 1 (part 002)

By Paige Francis Posted Monday Jan 20, 2025

Filed under: Epilogue, Paige Writes 13 comments

Day Two of Final Fantasy 1 Pixel Remaster. I spent a bit of time seeing if there was even a point in loading Roland MT-32 compatibility. However the Pixel Remasters are CD mixes, or at least CD-capable; so while any for any given piece of music there can be an honest argument about the best implementation, the PR versions are broadly the best version of every soundtrack for the first six games. I did, not too long ago, get MUNT working on my system for Sierra games. As those are some of the oldest, later games that used Roland emulation should work just fine. The secret is in the game’s startup, not the system. Once MUNT is installed correctly, I just have to have MUNT loaded. It’s the game itself that has to point to the right libraries for sound. But looping around to the beginning, there really isn’t a point to even trying, and so we move on with the next segment of our journey.

The guards recognize us as the Light Warriors, the mother and younger daughter both thank us for returning Evil Princess Sarah, and the person with the blonde ponytail adds some information about “the lute:”

Upon leaving the castle, the same person shows up at the bridge and commands it to be rebuilt:

After a few scenes of animation and building noises, the guards assemble in front of Ponytail Person:

If we revisit the various townsfolk, we will learn four new things, now: NORTH of town, which must be across the bridge because we have visited every square inch of Cornelia Kingdom, is the Cave of Matoya. Also, Matoya can’t see a thing without her crystal eye. That second bit is just a random bit of trivia dropped by one villager. You might talk to them before you talk to the person who knows Matoya lives in a Cave NORTH of town; and that’s a pretty weird thing to just say suddenly. It’s like they’re being paid to do it. Maybe they are, as this is clearly being said only for our benefit. The third thing you learn is actually something you might have heard before the battle in the Chaos Shrine: one person once lived to the EAST (again, this must be after crossing the bridge) in the HARBOR town of Pravoka. They left because the town was OVERRUN BY PIRATES. Before the fight with Garland, this seems like such a shame; but nothing that has to do with YOU. NOW one other person in town has something new to say, “If you’re having trouble GETTING A SHIP, you could always BORROW ONE FROM A PIRATE.”

Yes, we get the message. Cross the bridge, check the cave to the NORTH and see about Matoya, then travel EAST from there and find a new town where we can GET A SHIP.

Also, the Dancing Girl, supposedly a source of mysterious hints, asks us why we haven’t crossed the bridge yet. Assignment earned, we cross the bridge and get the original Final Fantasy 1 start screen, as well as a message:

BUT FIRST, despite needing to buy NOTHING NEW, we have been advised maybe we should be level six before crossing a few screen widths to reach Matoya’s cave, and much like before, we’ll reach level seven. I spend about 30 – 40 minutes dipping into the Chaos Shrine to add some XP. Having reached 7, we run straight NORTH more-or-less and dive into Matoya’s cave. There are no random encounters here; there aren’t even “officially” any quests. You are given a little show of Matoya bumping into things and complaining about someone taking her eye, after which you can loot three chests for two potions and an antidote. There’s also a small word-puzzle just for fun:

If you talk to one of the several brooms operating on their own in the cave (a Sorcerer’s Apprentice reference), the broom will say the above followed by Eno Ldna lecnaC. This is adapted from the original puzzle. Either one tells you the controller keys to load the World Map. This map will also “fill in” as you visit notable places. I can’t remember if the original manual identified the proper key-presses or not…the Pixel Remaster tells you when you first load the game. And obviously *now* you can just look it up online, for either version.

We have to make our way almost back to the bridge before going EAST. The trip EAST and SOUTH is the longest trip we’ve made so far, and by the time we reach Provaka the team has leveled again, to 8. The only people out and about complain about how pirates have taken over the town. In the NORTHWEST corner of the town is a “gang” of pirates standing outside a building. We have been warned to be ready before talking to them, as it will automatically trigger a battle. We still have just about all the items we had previously purchased, but we don’t have the few thousand Gil we need to both purchase all available weapon and armor upgrades *and* the next second level spells. So, we go grinding again. Adding a level to 9 gives me enough gold to purchase a new sword, gloves, and armor for Fighter; a new weapon and gloves for Thief, and new gloves for both the Mages. White Mage adds the Invisible spell to heighten a character’s evasion even more, even though I haven’t used that spell at all. However, I’ve noticed the Protect spell doesn’t really do that much against the more powerful enemies, so it might get some use. I also pick up the Silence spell, even though that will only work on casters, which I haven’t run into yet. But better to be prepared. For the Black Mage I only pick up Blizzard for now. It’s the only near-definite spell available. Hopefully the Sleep spell will start being effective soon, as we’re seeing more large groups now.

In fact, the pirates are ludicrously easy at this point, largely because the sleep spell takes most of them out. Most of them? Yes. Even though the main “pirate,” Bikke; is only flanked by “two” pirates, the actual fight that kicks off is NINE. The Sleep spell goes off first or second, I don’t remember which, but it hits Seven of Nine (drink). Another two rounds and there is only one pirate left, and only two ever got an attack in. It’s almost comical when we return to the overworld town screen and Bikke finds himself alone.

He then offers his ship to us. Free. Also, there are suddenly many people wandering around town. We learn:

  1. Elves live ACROSS THE SEA, but the ELF PRINCE has fallen asleep and cannot be awakened. Awoken. Awaked?
  2. But they must not be TO THE NORTH because there are NO HARBORS IN THE NORTH. Don’cha know.
  3. There are MANY MONSTERS in the Aldean Sea. Presumably the one we’re going to be in, and not some other see somewhere else.
  4. One person came FROM THE CITY OF MELMOND, one of the cities we were told about in the Legends of Old. It is FAR TO THE WEST. The earth there is ROTTEN, and MONSTERS ATTACK IN THE NIGHT.

That’s FOUR THINGS! Again! I didn’t even notice that before now. As we have purchased everything we need, as far as we tell at the moment, we are ready to move on. However, I have been informed in the metaverse that we should probably be level 15-ish before we move on. We are currently only level 10 or 11, or close to 11. The best I can remember, anyway. I got *very* lucky with random encounters on the way here, and only leveled as much as needed for the story. Unfortunately, it seems the next area is a big jump, although the sea itself offers a new challenge. So, the next step is to level up a bit via grinding, which I will do OFF SCREEN.

I tried very hard to like the Belsavis planetary armor (which is also available under several other names, to be fair); but all I can see in most screens is a Cyanide & Happiness face. It ruins it for me.

That’s it for now, see you next week!

 


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13 thoughts on “Final Fantasy 1 (part 002)

  1. RubberBandMan says:

    Interesting, are you thinking of doing more games in the series, or just the ones on pixel remaster?

    I’ve been following someone who’s reviewing all the mainline FF games and has gotten pretty far. Their first final fantasy was FF14, and they’ve done/seen most of the FF7 stuff that wasn’t the actual game, which means there’s quite a lot of recognition where some term or name or basic plot is taken from an older FF game and either fleshed out, pivoted into a new direction, or just flat out lifted and redone.

    It’s a pretty interesting way to see someone’s perspective, where they broadly know a little about most FFs due to people just talking and seeing the same basic plots in the MMO, but not having actually experienced the games. It’s like being a huge star wars fan but never seeing the movies.

    1. I intend to do all of them, but I have moderate familiarity with many of the games. I’ve played 1, 4 as 2 on the SNES, and 6 as 3 on the SNES; which is my favorite. I’ve played the early parts of the “real” 2 and 5…I don’t think I finished 5 but I played pretty far in. Same with 7. I’ve played to the second or third disc and know the story (it’s hard to miss at this point). Quite possibly I’ll only play the remake of 7 instead of the original, and I don’t plan on doing any of the spin-offs. I know 8 well despite never having played it. 9 I know a bit; and haven’t played it. I’ve played 10 and 10-2, didn’t beat 10-2. Never really enjoyed the ABS *or* job systems. Neither of the MMO’s. I’ve watched all of 12, but never played it. 13 I know almost nothing about. I’ve watched 15 but haven’t played it, and know nothing about 16.

      1. djw says:

        FF14 expansions have the best story of any MMO that I have played. Better than most non-mmo rpg’s as well.

        1. Still on my list to try! Other options keep getting in the way.

          1. RubberBandMan says:

            A solid spread. I’m only aware of 1-5 through secondary sources (lets plays/retrospectives mostly), and I played 6-13 fully partly as they came out and partly as me going back for historical reasons (same reason I played chrono trigger).

            FF14 is very much a final fantasy game, but I admit that ‘it gets better after 100 hours’ is true. The story improves and the run-around bullshit decreases steadily over the expansions, but if you’re not into MMOs I can’t argue that it’s a useful way to interact with a story.

            I’d advise seriously considering playing Final Fantasy Tactics as well. The advanced ones are a lot more ‘side story’ that don’t have a lot to do with the over all arc, but Final Fantasy Tactics is basically a numbered series in all but name, when it comes to influences on later titles. Plus I feel it has one of the better job systems, and doesn’t do ATB bullshit that drags down all the FF games that use it.

            1. djw says:

              Getting through the busy work quests that form a bridge from “A Realm Reborn” to Heavensward is a huge chore. There is no doubt about that. I almost quit lol.

              Heavensward is worth it though.

              1. RubberBandMan says:

                That’s actually where I dropped it entirely for half a year until I needed a mindless depression game to kill time with. Agonizingly, some interesting things did start happening a few quests after some of the worst tedious pointless bullshit in the game.

                The games other post-expansion sections run a lot better. Sometimes they rival the actual expansions stories. The fact that FF14 2.0 exists at all, and managed to get better is still a triumph that is impressive even if ARR is the worst of it, from what I hear.

  2. Syal says:

    I think I heard the pixel remasters doubled enemy stats, is that what’s happening? All these level recommendations are double what I heard for original/Origins (and those were fairly overkill already).

    (I remember Sleep being the only Black Mage spell worthwhile at this point, the direct damage spells are single-target and hardly better than the mage stick.)

    1. That I don’t know the answer to, The only bit I remember reading about difficulty is that the DS versions have double the HP of the originals, but double the XP reward and Gil reward as well. BUT…I don’t know if that was accurate. I only read it in one place, that I remember.

      I’m not sure I’m 100% on board with the recommended levels, as the battles have been easier than my impression has been. Sleep didn’t work very well the first few levels, so I stopped using it. However, it knocked out the pirates. I’ll probably experiment with it a bit on the current continent before moving on.

      I would not be surprised if there is a bit of imbalance going on. The kick-over point where the battles suddenly get easy does seem abrupt so far.

      1. Fizban says:

        I always take the plan of go into new area, see just how much my butt gets kicked, then grind there if I need to. Most modern games I find seem to be balanced assuming a simple one-trip-all-fights, or at least that seems sensible to me and I’ve got the base skills to make it work. But like back when I was a kid playing Dragon Warrior (Quest) 3 for the first time, definitely lots of walk across invisible boundary, get wrecked, then go a different way or grind the new fights one step from the older safer zone. I’ve never really liked guides telling you to be X level: it’s entirely prescriptive. RPG leveling systems let you automatically self-balance the difficulty, telling people they should be X defeats that entire mechanic. A guide saying they were level X, or level X should be good enough, etc, but ones that say you should grind to X, no. This even happens in Pokemon challenge runs: people are so used to nuzlocks where you must grind because it’s permadeath and not taking all allowed xp only hurts you, that even when they’re not doing permadeath they grind until the game is easy.

        Though there is an element of pulling back the veil. The last time I played Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, I decided to go for the pit of 100 trials as early as possible to get the strange sack (inventory expansion) so I could actually use it for most of the game. I don’t recall exactly how it went, but I’m pretty sure I was expecting to need to come back after another chapter to actually have a chance, and instead I blew all the way past floor 50 starting from minimum (not glitching) level. And I haven’t played it since, ’cause I don’t like self-censored challenge runs- and yeah there are hard mod hacks, which I expect will go too far the other direction. But then along came Bug Fables with a near perfectly balanced Hard Mode instead.

        1. You make a good point. I can just run around the cities and grind all day if I want. TBH, I wouldn’t be surprised if many people do just that. It does miss part of the game, though. While grinding, I was attacked yesterday by a type of enemy I hadn’t seen yet in the same area that I had crossed to get to Provaka. There’s a lot more to the game than doing the minimum to make it through.

  3. Sleeping Dragon says:

    I played the perfectly legal emulated version of the NES Final Fantasy back in the day and like 2 years ago I started playing through the pixel remasters. It’s kind of surprising just how minimalist the original game is for a series that is nowadays known for its grandiose spectacle and dramatic characters. FF2 characters already have some characterization and even some hints of personal arcs but in this game they basically appear out of thin air, never act as individuals and are entirely reduced to their function of Heroes of Light and crystal bearers.

    1. You can really see it going back. Especially if you look in context with what else was out, FF1 is definitely “of the type,” despite things they may have tried differently. Just watching through the history you can see that FF2 is a very different game, even if the still-painting looks the same.

      There were several multi-character games out by the time FF1 was released, although 1st person dungeon crawl was the mode commonly used. But 2 not only gave life to the specific characters used for the game, they created a fairly complex story around those specific characters.

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