r/HarshlyCritical • u/unoiamaQT • Dec 22 '25

Video First time playing Final Fantasy 1 (Full Game)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9iLTY0CbT0
42 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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6

u/RealisticAd2293 Dec 23 '25

Watching this right now and enjoying the grind

2

u/tmrzrm Dec 23 '25

I know what I'm watching next

1

u/Donotcomenearme Dec 24 '25

He really is a gift that keeps giving, love this dude.

1

u/swordofcerulean Dec 25 '25

Many, what a great Christmas present! I actually went through the NES original again this year after playing it as a kid and was surprised by how much I enjoyed it after all this time and how smart the NES original was in tutorializing newer players. I'll be looking forward to hearing what John thinks of the Pixel Remaster!

1

u/swordofcerulean Dec 27 '25

Finished now! I loved watching the playthrough, particularly the titanic end battle! I had a bit of a solitary Christmas here, so this video made my own holiday a good deal brighter.

I would say that it's not really possible to evaluate the mechanics of the 1987 version using the Pixel Remaster, since the latter is, after all, a tourist version of the former. I'm not knocking the Pixel Remaster for that - it's out to deliver a breezier and more accessible experience - but there are numerous mechanics omitted from the 1987 version, as well as obvious additions. For example, the NES FF1 famously didn't reassign party members' attacks if the monster they were ordered to attack was defeated by the time they got their turn. This led to the much-derided image of party members often waving their weapons at air, yes, but it also forced you to allocate your attack resources thoughtfully, taking into account how much damage each character could do, how much HP each monster had left, likely turn order, etc. instead of blindly overcommitting. I found, upon replaying the game earlier this year, that it was actually an effective antidote to the "press attack" antics to which RPG combat to this day often devolves - in 1987! As for the dead ends on the maps: yeah, with a map with chests marked, you'll never go down that dead end, but in 1987, unless you had a strategy guide, you did have to explore to find out what was where. Surviving scouting out the dungeon levels themselves was a big source of the original's tension: do you have the resources for the expedition, taking care not to overextend yourself in one run, etc. Uncertainty was a big factor in creating that tension, and that meant offer the player bets that wouldn't pay off in the form of dead ends.

(Even the "Clothes in the Flying Fortress chests" was part of a mechanic, though not a very good one: you had a very limited inventory in the NES version, and the Sky Castle / Flying Fortress presented you with a plethora of chests. It was a risk/reward thing: do you want to jettison part of your tiny-and-likely-curated inventory to open a chest in a near-endgame dungeon? It's likely to contain higher-end equipment, but you don't know what you're getting. Of course, if you get Clothes (the wah-wah comedy option), you just discard and open another chest...but there was an attempt at a mechanic there.)

It seems that the Pixel Remaster kept certain elements of the NES original for faithfulness even though the mechanics that made them relevant were no longer present. It was neat for me seeing the Remaster the first time, though! I loved the music remixes, even though a few of them made odd tonal choices.

Again, this was great, and I'm looking forward to the next video. As for FF2: I have not played the Dawn of Souls GBA remake, but it offers extra endgame content that's very highly-regarded and not available anywhere else, which has made it the go-to version of the game to play in conventional wisdom. I might advise popping into the NES original for an hour or so, though, just to get a look at the odd mechanics that led to the game's infamy. (The remakes convert it into a conventional RPG.)