Final Fantasy (video game)
is a 1987 role-playing video game developed and published by Square for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the first game in Square's Final Fantasy series, created by Hironobu Sakaguchi. The story follows four youths called the Warriors of Light, who each carry one of their world's four elemental crystals which have been darkened by the four Elemental Fiends. Together, they quest to defeat these evil forces, restore light to the crystals, and save their world.
Final Fantasy was originally conceived under the working title Fighting Fantasy, but trademark issues and dire circumstances surrounding Square as well as Sakaguchi himself prompted the name to be changed. The game was a great commercial success, received generally positive reviews, and spawned many successful sequels and supplementary titles in the form of the Final Fantasy series.
Final Fantasy is now regarded as one of the most influential and successful role-playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, playing a major role in popularizing the genre. Critical praise focused on the game's graphics, while criticism targeted the time spent wandering in search of random battle encounters to raise the player's experience level. By March 2003, all versions of Final Fantasy had sold a combined two million copies worldwide.
Gameplay
Final Fantasy has four basic game modes: an overworld map, town and dungeon maps, a battle screen, and a menu screen. The overworld map is a scaled-down version of the game's fictional world, which the player uses to direct characters to various locations. The primary means of travel across the overworld is by foot; a ship, a canoe, and an airship become available as the player progresses. With the exception of some battles in preset locations or with bosses, enemies are randomly encountered on field maps and on the overworld map when traveling by foot, canoe, or ship, and must either be fought or fled from.The game's plot develops as the player progresses through towns and dungeons. Some town citizens offer helpful information, while others own shops that sell items or equipment. Dungeons appear in areas that include forests, caves, mountains, swamps, underwater caverns, and buildings. Dungeons often have treasure chests containing rare items that are not available in most stores. The game's menu screen allows the player to keep track of their experience points and levels, to choose which equipment their characters wield, and to use items and magic. A character's most basic attribute is their level, which can range from one to fifty, and is determined by the character's amount of experience. Gaining a level increases the character's attributes, such as their maximum hit points, which represents a character's remaining health; a character dies when they reach zero HP. Characters gain experience points by winning battles.
Combat in Final Fantasy is menu-based: the player selects an action from a list of options such as Attack, Magic, and Item. Battles are turn-based and continue until either side flees or is defeated. If the player's party wins, each character will gain not only experience but also money, which is known as Gil in the Final Fantasy universe; if it flees, it will be returned to the map screen; and if every character in the party dies, the game will be over and all unsaved progress will be lost. Final Fantasy was the first game to show the player's characters on the right side of the screen and the enemies on the left side of the screen, as opposed to a first-person view.
The player begins the game by choosing four characters to form a party and is locked into that choice for the duration of the game. Each character has an "occupation", or character class, with different attributes and abilities that are either innate or can be acquired. There are six classes: Fighter, Thief, Black Belt, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. Later in the game, the player has the option to have each character undergo a "class upgrade"; whereby their sprite portraits mature, and some classes gain the ability to use weapons and magic that they previously could not use. The game contains a variety of weapons, armor, and items that can be bought or found to make the characters more powerful in combat. Each character has eight inventory slots, with four to hold weapons and four to hold armor. Each character class has restrictions on what weapons and armor it may use. Some weapons and armor are magical; if used during combat, they will cast spells. Other magical artifacts provide protection, such as from certain spells. At shops, the characters can buy items to help themselves recover while they are traveling. Items available include potions, which heal the characters or remove ailments like poison or petrification; Tents and Cabins, which can be used on the world map to heal the player and optionally save the game; and Houses, which also recover the party's magic after saving. Special items may be gained by doing quests.
Magic is a common ability in the game, and several character classes use it. Spells are divided into two groups: White, which is defensive and healing, and Black, which is debilitating and destructive. Magic can be bought from White and Black magic shops and assigned to characters whose occupation allows them to use it. Spells are classified by a level between one and eight, with four White and four Black spells per level. Each character may learn only three spells per level. White and Black Mages can potentially learn any of their respective spells, while Red Mages, the Ninja, and the Knight cannot use most high-level magic.
Plot
Setting
Final Fantasy takes place in a fantasy world with three large continents. The elemental powers of this world are determined by the state of four crystals, each governing one of the four classical elements: earth, fire, water, and wind. The world of Final Fantasy is inhabited by numerous races, including humans, elves, dwarves, mermaids, dragons, and robots. Most non-human races have only one "town" in the game, although individuals are sometimes found in human towns or other areas as well. Four hundred years prior to the start of the game, the Lefeinish people, who used the Power of Wind to craft airships and a giant space station, watched their country decline as the Wind crystal went dark. Two hundred years later, violent storms sank a massive shrine that served as the center of an ocean-based civilization, and the Water crystal went dark. The Earth crystal and the Fire crystal followed, plaguing the earth with raging wildfires, and devastating the agricultural town of Melmond as the plains and vegetation decayed. Some time later, the sage Lukahn tells of a prophecy that four Light Warriors will come to save the world in a time of darkness.Story
The game begins with the appearance of the four youthful Warriors of Light, the heroes of the story, who each carry one of the darkened crystals. Initially, the Warriors of Light have access to the Kingdom of Coneria and the ruined Temple of Chaos. After the Warriors rescue Princess Sarah from the evil knight Garland, the King of Coneria builds a bridge that enables the Warriors of Light passage east to the town of Pravoka. There the Warriors of Light liberate the town from Bikke and his band of pirates and acquire the pirates' ship for their own use. The Warriors now embark on a chain of delivery quests on the shores of the Aldi Sea. First, they retrieve a stolen crown from the Marsh Cave for a king in a ruined castle, who turns out to be the dark elf Astos. Defeating him gains them the Crystal Eye, which they return to the blind witch Matoya in exchange for a herb needed to awaken the elf prince cursed by Astos. The elf prince gives the Warriors of Light the Mystic Key, which is capable of unlocking any door. The key unlocks a storage room in Coneria Castle which holds TNT. Nerrick, one of the dwarves of the Cave of Dwarf/Dwarf Village, destroys a small isthmus using the TNT, connecting the Aldi Sea to the outside world.After visiting the near-ruined town of Melmond, the Warriors of Light go to the Earth Cave to defeat a vampire and retrieve the Star Ruby, which gains passage to Sage Sarda's cave. With Sarda's Rod, the Warriors venture deeper into the Earth Cave and destroy the Earth Fiend, Lich. The Warriors of Light then obtain a canoe and enter Gurgu Volcano and defeat the Fire Fiend, Kary. The Levistone from the nearby Ice Cave allows them to raise an airship to reach the northern continents. A kind gesture is repaid by a fairy, receiving special liquid that produces oxygen, and the Warriors use it to help defeat the Water Fiend, Kraken, in the Sunken Shrine. They also recover a Slab, which allows a linguist named Dr. Unne to teach them the Lefeinish language. The Lefeinish give the Warriors of Light access to the Floating Castle that Tiamat, the Wind Fiend, has taken over. With the Four Fiends defeated and the crystals restored, the Warriors open a portal in the Temple of Chaos, which takes them 2000 years into the past, to confront the creator of the Fiends. There the Warriors discover that the Four Fiends sent Garland—now the archdemon Chaos—back in time and he sent the Fiends to the future to do so, creating a time loop by which he could live forever. The Warriors of Light defeat Chaos, thus ending the loop, and return to present, but their heroic deeds remain unknown outside of legend.
Development
Creation
had intended to make a role-playing game for a long time, but his employer Square refused to give him permission as it expected low sales of such a product. However, when the RPG Dragon Quest was released and proved to be a hit in Japan, the company reconsidered its stance on the genre and approved Sakaguchi's vision of an RPG inspired by Ultima and Wizardry. Only three of his colleagues volunteered to join this project headed by him because he was thought of as a "rough boss" in spite of his unsuccessful creations. Eventually, Final Fantasy was developed by a team of seven core staff members within Square referred to as the "A-Team". Sakaguchi convinced fellow game designers Koichi Ishii and Akitoshi Kawazu to join the project. Kawazu was mainly responsible for the battle system and sequences, which he based heavily on the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons and the RPG Wizardry. For example, enemies' weaknesses to elements such as fire and ice had not been included in Japanese RPGs up until that point. Kawazu had grown fond of such aspects of Western RPGs and decided to incorporate them into Final Fantasy. He also advocated the player's option to freely choose their own party member classes at the beginning of the game as he felt that the fun in an RPG began when the players created their character.The scenario was written by freelance writer Kenji Terada, based on a story by Sakaguchi. Ishii heavily influenced the game's setting with his idea of the crystals. He also suggested illustrator Yoshitaka Amano as character designer, but Sakaguchi declined at first as he had never heard the artist's name before. When Sakaguchi showed Ishii some drawings on magazine clippings and told him that this was the art style he was looking for, Ishii revealed to him that these were actually created by Amano, hence leading to his involvement in the game. The music for Final Fantasy was composed by Nobuo Uematsu and marked his 16th video game music composition. Iranian-American programmer Nasir Gebelli was hired to code the game. He initially tried to understand all aspects of the gameplay but was soon advised by Sakaguchi to just program the design concepts so he did not have to explain everything to Gebelli in detail. Gebelli was also responsible for creating what is considered to be the first RPG minigame, a sliding puzzle, which he added into the game despite it not being part of the original game design. Among the other developers were graphic designer Kazuko Shibuya, programmers Kiyoshi Yoshii and Ken Narita, as well as debugger Hiroyuki Ito. When the project started to show promise, designer Hiromichi Tanaka and his "B-Team" joined to aid development. The lack of faith in Sakaguchi's team, as well as its unpopularity within the company, motivated the staff members to give their best.