So I'm tackling the Sisyphean task of going through every mainline Final Fantasy game starting with the very beginning. I recently finished Final Fantasy I and I had some thoughts I wanted to get down before I continue onto the next entry:

Version & Details

• PSP remake on the PPSSPP emulator
• Turbo speed through fights
• Cheats used:
  • End of game, exp. modifier (9999 exp per fight) to quickly level (went from 52 to 60)
  • Last fight (inf. hp) to see the credits
• Total game in-game clear time: 14hr 9min

Thoughts on My Playthrough

For party composition I chose Warrior, Monk, Thief, and Black Mage. I was able to easily get through most random encounters via just basic attacks; for harder groups or mobs (like physical resistant flans) I had the Black Mage use group-wide attacks like Fira, Thundara, etc. Overall the combat was extremely basic but still held up pretty well, even considering that the version I played was a light remake. When boiled down to the fundamentals as the most basic mainline Final Fantasy game, the combat is still fun albeit less engaging. I used my emulator to "auto-battle" by activating turbo speed, and auto-fire to speed through random encounters by holding a button. For a game whose original came out in 1987 and largely had its combat untouched in the remake, I'd say it's impressive that it maintains its appeal with a few modern quality-of-life hacks applied on top.

**Warning, spoilers follow below**

My main issue with the game was the last area and boss fight, where I got heavily penalized for my party composition. The last area has you do a boss rush without knowing when you'll face each of the game's four main bosses again, only this time empowered. That part wasn't terribly difficult for my party, but the last boss had me bang my head against a cosmic wall for the better part of two hours as I tried a variety of different strategies, spells, items, etc. After discussing the fight with a friend where he reviewed my gameplay footage, we concluded that the lack of in-battle healing makes that fight extremely difficult; and not having a White Mage in my party exacerbated the issue.

<Begin rant about the last fight>

I was able to progress through the entire game without a White Mage/dedicated healer by purchasing healing items with the copious amounts of Gil the game throws at you. I would turbo my way through fights and take care of restoring the health pool of each of my characters via potions and hi-potions. Eventually my Warrior became a Knight and got access to lower level white magic spells, but hi-potions easily out performed those so I didn't think much of it. Boss battles could be tricky but I managed to scrape by most of the time by just glass cannon'ing my way through them and getting the boss down before they had an opportunity to reveal the healing weakness my party suffered... that is until Chaos came along and shattered my glass cannon into speckled crystal dust.

Before I go into detail, I want to make clear the point of this rant is that I just wanted the game to provide an option for one of the other party members to provide sufficient healing in lieu of a White Mage. Every strategy I tried on Chaos to provide healing via one of my party members ultimately failed, and would have been an order of magnitude easier had one of my party members been a White Mage. Here's a list of strategies I tried before I finally gave up:

• Dedicate two out of the four party members to using hi-potions
  • Couldn't keep up with party-wide damage between 100-300 on element casts from Chaos
• Use healing items on characters with higher Intelligence
  • The Healing Staff & Healing Helm provided 50-60 HP depending on if the Knight or Black Mage used it. An absolute slap in the face.
• Apply damage buffs to three out of the four party members and try to out DPS chaos
  • The 20k wall of health that Chaos has said no
• Attempt to use debuff spells (silence, slow, blind, etc.)
  • It's the final boss, no way that's happening unless it's designed for it (which it wasn't)

The only way that I could see myself overcoming that fight without the use of cheats is to use items that are extremely hard to come by. Mega-elixirs are a party-wide full HP/MP restore and I could've easily dedicated one of my party members to use them (AKA, provide the healing capabilities of a White Mage) while providing consistent damage on the other three. Hell, even just x-potions (full single target heal) would've been enough. After consulting multiple guides, walkthroughs, shop lists, etc., I discovered the ONLYway to get these items is to luck into them as rewards for encounters, or find them while exploring, with no way to purchase them at shops. I understand these items weren't present in the original NES release, but as a remake adding these items to a shop would've been appreciated for people (read: idiots like me) that don't have a White Mage in their party so we can provide sufficient in-battle healing. The only legitimate alternatives I have for my current save file are: A.) grind my characters to an absurdly high level to try and out DPS Chaos while soaking damage, or B.) farm enough of those new healing items via encounters. Not great options for one battle that sticks out like a sore thumb against the rest of the game.

</end rant about the last fight>

So yeah that's pretty much it. I liked the return to the roots and basic JRPG gameplay. The story is the most generic thing up until the last section of the game, and then it gets incomprehensible on top generic. But you don't come to FF1 expecting a grand story, or at least you shouldn't. The reason why you play FF1 is for nostalgia, to say you've beaten it (me), or as academic research. I think after my foray into the other FF games I may return to this one WITH A WHITE MAGE and attempt to complete the game without the use of assists; but more out of spite than anything else.

Anyway, I hear FF2 is a really well-designed video game...

FF2 is better than people think but only if you approach it in a specific way that it makes no effort to really communicate to you which means it's still kind of a bad game. Heavy armor is fake and a trap and don't ever equip it to any character in that game. They'd be better off naked.

@hybrid_aries: ive done the "all final fantasy" games before and when playing both 1 and 2 you have engage those games on their rules. You could have probably subbed in a red mage instead of a white mage and probably escaped the need for a white mage, but a dedicated healer is required for a casual playthrough.

Also both 1 and 2 were designed as grind-a-thons to pad out the game. While its been a long time since i last played 1, i vaguely remembering having to do a 10 lvl increase after each dungeon to prep for the next one.

Good luck with 2. For each improvement it made (better story, dialogue "options") it took away in combat. Its certainly ambitious, but requires you to do dumb stuff to level up before dungeons.

@imunbeatable80: Honestly you don't really need to do a lot of the dumb shit in FF2 that people make fun of all the time. You do not need to spend time having your party members punch one another for HP, for example. Mostly just make sure that everyone uses a lot of magic all the time, and never touch a single piece of heavy armor.

That said it's still an annoying grind in its own different way, you will almost certainly never finish a dungeon in one trip.

@efesell: i only played through 2 once, and i did engage in some dumb activites, but i honestly didnt hate it.

I only really hated trying to level up spells that werent "cure", but that was more self inflicted punishment.

I beat the NES version a few years back without any white mages. The trick there without grinding too much was that the RUSE/INVS/INV2 spells increase evasion, and stack. RUSE/INVS can be cast by knights, and INV2 can be cast by using the white shirt. So, spend the first few turns casting RUSE with one character and having another wave the white shirt around like a madman, and eventually non-critical-hit physical attacks will be guaranteed to miss. This gave me enough of a break that I was able to keep up with healing, apply damage buffs before Chaos' first full heal, and do enough damage before his second full heal to get it done.

Although the above might just be a bug fixed in the PSP version. Plus I had a red mage with some healing magic (but no group healing other than the heal helm/staff IIRC). Also in NES version Chaos only has 2k HP so there's a lot less to endure. So maybe this wouldn't apply in your scenario.