FINAL FANTASY

I've never come across this series, but after trying to play on the nontendo switch, I bought all the parts of this franchise. The game was very addictive, despite the old-school graphics, excellent plot, lots of spells, and a huge map. Respect to the developers for such an excellent game, I definitely recommend it.

Recommend playing alongside the [url=https://www.nintendo.co.jp/clv/manuals/en/pdf/CLV-P-NABJE.pdf]official guide book[/url], unless you're using an AI companion like Grok alongside the game when you get stuck. This game offers minimal directions and while there's probably a single NPC in the world out there that can give you guidance on where to go it's not clear which NPC you'd need to talk to in order to get this information and your destination can and often will be on the opposite side of the continent. That said, the actual gameplay is pretty solid especially for a game of its time. I'm sure it's gone through a monstrous level of QOL to make it as enjoyable as it is, but the combat is fun, the leveling feels satisfying on the major level ups, there's a minimal amount of grind to max out gear/spells but it's never too difficult. Structure of the game is slightly like D&D, there's spell slots instead of MP where you can use each level of spell a certain number of times before you need to take a short/long rest. In the beginning you'll have to do all your long rests at an inn to fully recover but as you get to midgame/end of the manual you'll have practically unlimited long rests you can use any time in the overworld. Wild encounter pools in areas feel kinda bloated like there's a lot of different things you can encounter in different quantities, even so much as finding 9 enemies as your first encounter right outside of the city. It's not always clear where the dividing lines for monster encounter zones are and early on you might wander into scorpions which could completely devastate your team, especially with some oddities like poison not healing from resting at an inn but only with antidotes and the like. But even that is kind of part of the charm, feels like how old MMOs used to divide groups of monsters a bit. Music is fine, lots of it is repeated, not a ton of variety but you get access to both the original and arranged versions. It's not quite at the level you'd expect for a Final Fantasy to be at for music yet but it's servicable. Art is good, no complaints with how the pixel remaster looks. Monster designs are already really good and you learn to clearly identify what each thing is and what it does. Absolutely do not recommend turning the fake CRT mode on though. Despite the weirdness of design choices & the unclear paths to take it's still overall an enjoyable experience that I'd recommend. It's not quite the Final Fantasy most people would know yet but it's a fair-good 6.5/10 JRPG experience.

My friends have all been in a very strong FFXIV phase and have been trying to get me to play with them and I jokingly told them that I wouldn't understand the story because I haven't played the other 13 games, so I started playing them and 100% all of the old Final Fantasy games to mess with them.