Yep, you know it. The game that started it all, Final Fantasy 1. I just started playing this game recently and it's terrific. I can't seem to find 2 and 3 for the NES even though I know they were out in Japan. Anyway this is one major RPG with only a few things wrong with it that can't be expected to be different considering when the game came out.

This game isn't like today's big RPGs with the characters that are given to you. You choose a party of four at the very beginning. You can have a fighter, thief, black belt, black mage, red mage, and white mage. You can pick any four you want and use any one more than once. The fighters are the best at winning fights and can kill an enemy with one attack usually, so get one or two. The black belt is an ok fighter, but he is really more powerful later in the game when he really gets some mad karate skills. The thief stink I wouldn't use them, but they are kind of fun. I don't think you can actually steal stuff, but I've never tried. The red mage is good at both black and white magic and he is moderately good at fighting. Use one if you only took one fighter and no black belts. The black and white mages are excellent at their respective magics, but can't fight for anything. But that doesn't mean they are worthless in a fight. A white mage can use his lvl1 HARM spell to kill an entire party of perfect health undead creatures in one round! White magic usually involves healing and defense, except harm. Black magic I think is 100% offensive. A black mage often uses lvl1 magics of Fire and Lightning in place of weapons.

After you choose a party you go to the nearest town. The towns are typical RPG towns. Next to some towns are castles. In the castle there usually lives a king or a prince of some sort. The castles and towns are where you find out what you have to do next. If you have nothing to do go exploring until you find a new town. Don't worry there is always something to do next. That's another good thing about this game is the fact that you aren't spoon fed the story. When you finish one part of it you aren't told about the next part. The only problem with this is that you might run into someone who tells you something that you aren't supposed to be told yet. All you have to do is keep from going anywhere that you weren't told about unless there is noplace else to go.

The system of buying selling an equipping is the game's only weak spot. Even if you want to give something to one of your characters you probably can't equip it to them. After you get the mystic key you are allowed to open a million doors that were locked before. Inside them are all kinds of fancy swords. Only a fighter can use these swords. You end up giving four or five nasty swords all to one character unless you have four fighters. You can only equip one at a time too. Not only that, but you can' equip any armor you want either. I couldn't equip a certain helmet to my black and white mages. What's the matter? They don't know how to put a helmet on? I understand a cleric not using sharp objects, but this is ridiculous. I think they did the weapon thing because they would have to animate each type of character with every weapon in the game. That wont fit on an old school NES cartridge. The armor requires no animation, so that is really a joke. Anyway after you scrounge up equipment your party can use the fights are ok. I think they are a little too frequent, but sometimes you can walk pretty far without getting in trouble. The best part is you can have some of your guys run while others stay and fight. That helps a lot if you really don't want to fight, but will get killed if you can't run. You can have your fighters and mages blast the monsters while your ninja runs for it. If he doesn't make it you still got your hits for the round.

Ok, that just about raps it up for that game. The only minor complaint I have is that you have to get to a town to revive people from death and that throws the experience points off. Now I probably made the game sound bad, but it isn't it's awesome! I just told you about the few bad parts. Everything else is great. It's really fun and really addictive. After you beat it I'll doubt you'll play it more that two more times through again, but guarantee at least once to make sure you did everything right and didn't leave treasures behind. Of course the other final fantasy games are better than this one, but in other ways this one really wups 'em. My favortie FF games is Final Fantasy Legend 3 for the game boy. The talon ship really makes it unique, but it's fighting system doesn't allow some to fight and some to run. So as long as Xagor can't keep his mouth's shut...

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