Deep Listens: Back to Basics with Final Fantasy I: Part 1

Deep Listens is a gaming podcast series I'm recording with a few of my friends. Every two weeks we pick and play a new game and then discuss it from a literary, philosophical, and game design perspective. Its kind of like a book club for video games. We try to dig as deep as we can on an individual game every episode so check it out!

In this episode Gino, Chris "@zombiepie" -REDACTED-, and special guest Jeff Rud (@jeffrud) get together to discuss Final Fantasy I. It's back to basics for us! We start the show by ranking FFX-2 Last Mission in our pantheon of FF games (spoilers: it's not a good game!). We then discuss the historical context of FFI and the games that came out around it. We finish up by diving deep on the first few hours of FFI.

Back to Basics with Final Fantasy I: Part 1

Did you discuss the bullshit before the last boss?

I'd beaten Tiamat, then saved, then went on to fight Chaos. Then I realized I was a bit under leveled for Chaos so said I'd go back and grind out a few levels and get some supplies. Then I walked back through the single tile wide corridor with Tiamat in it - because you have to - only to get to fight Tiamat again, who in my current condition I couldn't beat.

So now I have a save on my Vita that will never get loaded up again because fuck that bullshit.

@jesus_phish: We are not up to the final boss yet. We just got out of the first section of the game, the part before the earth crystal. That certainly sounds like a terrible situation to be stuck in though.

@thatpinguino: It's a good game and lucky for me that wasn't my first time through. I've finished it before. But yeah, keep an eye out for that shit. Backup saves!

If you have the Exit spell you can get out of there safely. Any dungeon including the final one (which you cannot exit without it in fact).

I've been listening to the episode and just wanted to make a clarification. One of the hosts was complaining about the NES version of the game moving at a crawl, but that speed is entirely adjustable. Before you start playing there is an option to adjust the respond rate at the bottom of the screen - that setting defaults to 1 and is incredibly slow. Jack that thing up to 8 and it'll play at the pace of a normal video game. It's a weird thing but it's true.

Also I think it's in the cavern of earth or fire but there is a spot in one of the sublevels where every step you take is a random encounter with a giant or ogre. This is an incredibly great place to grind out some early game experience if you are willing to trudge through it and have a shit ton of tents or access to an airship to get you back to town quickly.

@zirilius: I tried to walk through that area of the earth dungeon when I was exploring. I figured there was some awesome reward at the end of the string of random battles. Nope. Turns out that hallway is a U bend that sends you back to the start of the dungeon. Fuck the dungeon design in FFI.

Man the only thing I remember about FF1 at this point is the music in Matoya's Cave and "Tceles Nottub B". I don't know how I forced myself through this and FF2 in my teens, the experience seems to have completely vanished from memory.

@thatpinguino: Oh definitely hate the dungeon design in that game and that stupid U bend. I remember beating this as a kid (with the help of Nintendo Power) and I've played it at least twice as an adult (once for PS1 and the other on PSP or Vita). I think it holds up better than FFII's overly complex leveling system but good god does that last dungeon suck. Especially if you have a shitty party.

@zirilius: We shall see how I fare. My party is pretty conventional with a knight, a monk, a white mage, and a black mage. I've been cruising since the earth cave, but I'm sure another piece of archaic design is coming.

@thatpinguino: That's a pretty solid party. I always liked to do Fighter, Thief, White Mage, Red Mage. Red Mage prior to class advancement is pretty strong but struggles at end game compared to Black Mage.

I don't think you can miss it but Class promotion makes the game so much better.

@zirilius: Thief? Really? That class seems downright terrible. It has some nice quality of life features, like easy escapes and reduced back-attacks, but it is so underpowered when compared to the damage other classes can output.

@thatpinguino: Thief is absolutely garbage but Ninja is amazing. Ninja can use every weapon but Xcalibur and Black Wizard staff and can use almost every piece of armor but a couple. They also get the ability to cast up to level 4 Black Magic spells which means an extra Haste. It's just putting up with 1/4 of your party being absolute shit until promotions.

@zirilius: Well I just got to promotions and things have stabilized a bit from the early slog. My characters can now do a number of things and don't die to a strong breeze. I'm still in mortal jeopardy every time I get preemptively attacked, but that just seems to be how FFI works.

@thatpinguino: Yep basically! That game really tried to make every encounter feel threatening but getting the promotion really goes a long way to making that game actually fun.

Black Wizard being able to nuke the shit out of everything makes some of the more trivial encounters on the way to bosses tolerable.

@zirilius: It is really amazing how impotent the mage classes feel during boss fights though. My boss fight strategy is basically to just buff my two physical attackers with haste, steel, invisibility, and shield. The bosses melt and I'm relatively safe. But if a single mage is disabled in a normal fight, I could get wiped with little recourse. FFI might have the harshest "difficulty" swings I've ever seen. I put difficulty in scare quotes because the changes in outcome are almost entirely governed by random circumstances beyond your control instead of any tactical decisions on the part of the player. I guess what I'm saying is that FFI is the Dark Souls of Final Fantasy games.

@thatpinguino: Especially considering that they can almost be one shot killed in most boss fights if you aren't prepared. Nothing worse than losing your WHM or BLM turn one or two and there was nothing you can do about it. I agree that the "difficulty" is less about the game being hard and more about chance. There are a couple of fights you can game to be in your favor by going into fights with 1 or 2 party members down and using a Raise to after said bullshit mechanic.

I don't necessarily think that it's the Dark Souls of Final Fantasies as I think that title can be reserved for later entries in the series. Maybe more Demon Souls though since it's the foundation for the rest of the series but not nearly as good as later entries.

@zirilius:I have acquired multiple Ribbons and now the game is a joke. My updated character classes are running through mobs like a hot knife through butter and enchanted weapons have broken the magic system. What a series of weird design choices.

@thatpinguino: You've pretty much crossed the threshold of any sense of difficulty then. The only part of the game at this point that might be even close to a challenge will be the Chaos Shrine.

Have you gotten Excalibur or any of the other ulimate weapons yet?

@zirilius: No. I'm in the floating castle. I should be grabbing the last ribbons I need and the materials to make Excalibur, then it's on to blowing up the final boss. I'm at level 25 and I haven't had any issues since I've gotten items enchanted with good spells. Now I can just cast heal and muddle as much as I want.

@thatpinguino: One more to go unless you're doing the 4 optional dungeons in Dawn of Souls or the 20th Anniversary (which I don't recommend by the way).

@thatpinguino: Really enjoyed hearing your crew's thoughts on FF1! As someone who played the game on launch day in the US back in the day it's also interesting to see how people perceive it coming to it far later. Not surprised you guys weren't as thrilled with it, and I think that's totally fair for a lot of reasons. I'm also really glad you guys brought on @jeffrud to give some context, because in this case as it was with a ton of formative games in gaming culture, Context of the game's release is everything to why this game was significant.

If you don't mind I'd like to share what it was like for me, back in 1990 and why I think FF1's success is the expected outcome once you take what gaming was like back then into account. Gaming and the world itself in the late 80's/early 90's was very different compared to now, even compared even to a scant 7 years later when FFvii hit stateside.

The most important factor to consider is that gamers, especially console gamers back then were predominantly children. As such opinions about games were heavily impacted the reality of the lives of the those kids such as myself. That meant we weren't making the purchases and were heavily impacted by advertising in how opinions were shaped.

There was also no readily available internet at that juncture, so information flow was completely different, often due to deliberately misleading marketing. As a result kids were generally much less informed than today's gamer. Very few adults had much knowledge of games so they weren't really a viable resource for most kids to consult and also didn't have the interest or knowledge to correct misguided notions we might have had. In fact I used to get the occasional free rental from a local video game store, because I'd give the owner ( a family friend) advice/opinions on what titles to stock when he asked. That meant a ton of our opinions were shaped heavily by advertising, and especially the incredibly influential Nintendo Power and whatever games probably paid to have the cover spot each month. And then distorted further by the inevitable game of telephone on school playgrounds where urban legends were perceived to practically be reality ( a phenomenon the MK team would wisely capitalize on a few short years later with some of their hidden characters). More unbiased outlets such as the then nascent GamePro etc would start to blow up a few years later and would help to start democratize information and dispel marketing spiel some. But at least around the release of FF1, my local pharmacy, newsstand and grocery didn't carry GamePro etc in their magazine section (and believe me as a comic book loving kid I would have noticed, there was all sorts of gaming cash grab in materials, overpriced strategy guides etc, packed into those 12 foot sections. I'd run to the sections every time I'd get taken on errands).

It also meant there were tons of things we had no idea about, whether because our parents didn't want us to know, they didn't know themselves or because companies deliberately didn't share that info. This was an era where boxart (like the Metal Gear or Mega Man boxarts) was often quite effectively misleading, because sprites were blurry enough you could kinda see what you wanted to see in them. That would more or less stop working in the SNES era and be rendered 100% ineffective with the advent of voice acting in the Ps1/2 eras.

So with that information flow in mind consider this US release schedule.

Game

The way that came across a game US based player like myself is that DW1 was a revolutionary game,followed by a big leap of increased complexity in FF1, a comparative lateral move in DW2 and then a massive leap forward with the SNES game "FFII" (IV), followed by immediately seeming archaic NES releases of DW3 and DW4. I think US players quite rationally felt FF was a similar premier series on the order of a Mario, Castlevania, Zelda etc where the game made massive innovative strides with each release. The NES era was one of rapid change (perhaps no generation felt more different from beginning to end than the NES generation) and was notable for how many big name franchises had massive mechanically changes in sequels (mario 2, Zelda 2, castlevania 2 etc to name a few). There was an expectation that sort of change was a sign of quality. Where DW seemed to fall into the annualized MegaMan trap of releasing in volume like Call of Duty does today.

And given how much marketing back then focused on visual/graphical improvements (8 bit vs 16 bit, blast processing, Genesis does what Nintendon't etc) Dw's more subtle mechanical and narrative improvements were almost totally ignored by the showstopping look of FF and its bigger sprites. I didn't even recall seeing advertising for Dw 3 and 4. I may not have cared at that point as they were NES games.

It would be probably a good 5-6 years before any of us even knew FF II, III and V didn't ship stateside and perhaps even longer before people realize how much of a gap there was between japan and US releases of the DW games. FF Vii's release was very eye opening to many of my peers, some who empathetically insisted for more than a few years that IV, V and Vi were the ones we didn't get.

As for ZP's argument about Ultima, Games like Ultima weren't really viewed equal competition at least were I lived. PCs were often incredibly expensive back then by today's standards (not uncommon for entry-mid level PCs to be 3-4k in today's money, a NES maybe $500) and in most households I knew of were viewed as more of an educational/work tool for the whole family. It was hard to get access to them and a lot of homes didn't even have one. Parents were often more protective of the PC given the greater investment in it. I know in my house, I had to ask permission to use the PC. I didn't have to ask to use the NES as long as I only played for 30 minutes. Even worse Macintosh's were in their zenith around then and that was a notoriously game unfriendly platform. So a lot of the homes that even had computers, had ones where gaming options were limited.

I didn't know a single kid at my school who played Ultima. I doubt that was unusual. The NES and Master/Genesis systems had the bulk of the interest by far. Furthermore the PC gaming market didn't seem to advertise as heavily to kids, I saw Nintendo and Sega stuff on TV constantly in the old hugely important afternoon cartoon blocks. Can't Recall an Ultima or PC gaming ad on tv, but maybe they existed. I did see some in magazines I think, but they always felt like they were targeting an older more teenage demo and definitely didn't have the sheer volume of presence.

Now as for why FF dominated and not some Sega RPG series, that I can't say. I do think Nintendo won some important mindshare battles early by getting Mario and Zelda established much earlier than say Sonic. Parents immediately got the mascot Mickey Mouse-ish appeal of Mario and felt he was ok for kids ( a real fear back then as many parents felt threatened by games since they didn't understand them. As hokey as it sounds the whole "Nintendo Seal of Quality" was something my parents actually valued, despite it actually meaning something else than safety)Alex Kidd always felt like an also ran non-entity. By the time Sonic was trotted out there, Mario had a 5 year lead on him. So FF there too could have just lucked out by being on the right platform.

As for the game's quality itself, similar reasons apply as for why it was well regarded. Gamer expectations again were completely different because of the limited options available to kids and what we knew. Failure was the expected outcome of gaming back then. We were conditioned to expect to have to replay everything. Failing in a dungeon to redo it all didn't feel bad, it just felt normal.As a result I think a lot of gamers like myself, played FF cautiously and hoarded tons of items, because you didn't know when a random difficulty spike might hit, just like you wouldn't know in an Arcade game. Devs were just beginning to transition out of the quarter munching mindset of arcades and the implications of advent of saving on console cartridges were just starting to be realized in game design. The idea you could even start where you left off still was a pretty radical idea in 1987/1990. A lot of the design practices and balancing we take for granted today hadn't even been really formalized yet.

Gaming companies around the time of FF realized that kids had figured out it was better to rent games short platformers like Mega Man than buy them outright, so they started leaning into the "value" aspect of longer RPGs as the central selling point. This was pretty important because games were incredibly expensive back then. Not many parents were crazy about dropping a 100 Us on a game their kid might crush in a 2 hours. By the end of the NES gen, a lot of gamers were getting significantly better at platformers and would plow through them.

At least in my home as previously mentioned gameplay sessions were limited to 30-60 minutes. Pretty much just enough for one FF dungeon run. So the prospect of failing was in a way a bonus because it extend the life of a game in an era where getting to get ~5 games in a year was a lot. So "long games" were the hot thing 89-90.

And issues of balancing like the ribbons were expensive secrets to uncover. Reliable answers back then cost decent money. Playground mates were very unreliable, kids often passed on completely unsubstantiated rumors or wildly embellished their own accomplishments. Calling a pricey 1-800 tiplines was not something my parents would ever let me do and strategy guides were somewhat pricey (and often contained their own unverified inaccuracies). Furthermore FF was a brand new series, so there wasn't series conventions and tropes as pre-existing knowledge for many of us to fall back on. Being kids, frankly a lot of us just didn't have the brain power to crack open wide the gameplay systems as it was anyway. I beat FF as it wasn't that hard, but I didn't destroy it like you can today knowing what you know.

But that's just explaining away the flaws. As for what the game did well, frankly for kids like myself who liked to read, this was one of the earlier games to have any real semblance of a story on consoles. And that alone felt really compelling. Throw in trying to figure out the various new seeming systems such experience, gaining levels, rock/paper/scissors type combat and there was a lot of fresh feeling things for a young gamer to explore. And then you throw in other cool wrinkles like the airship fast travel system, nods to other games (like Erdrick's tomb stone), the class change system etc, It really felt like a grand adventure in a way no game (that I knew of) had before it. Kids who played D&D might not have been impressed, but at least in my town D&D was viewed by some parents as being demonic by some of the more religious types or unhealthy by many more moderate families. I don't think many parents had any idea FF and other JPRGs shared commonalities with D&D. So for me at least it was also the first time I encountered any of those tropes and RPG staples that are so widespread today in any real depth (DW1 touched on some, but not to the degree FF did). Hard to think of them as being fresh ideas, but that's how it felt to me.

So yes, with the luxury of hindsight FF's success may seem strange. But I think if you can try to unsee what you've seen (as difficult as that it is for any of us to do) and put yourself into shoes of what a kid back then might have realistically been able to actually know, FF's success and appeal makes a lot sense in the US but not elsewhere (since critically Japan and Europe got the games in different orders).

It was a great game for the time. Is it today? Well, sounds like it isn't. But I hope I've shed a little bit of light onto why for myself and many of my peers why this game resonated as a deserved cult hit.

Looking forward to part 2, whenever you guys get around to it!

@slag: Wow, this is a really awesome and compelling bit of context. Thank you for putting this all together. Do you mind if I read some of this during the email section of our next FFI podcast and respond to it there?

@thatpinguino: Oh sure, feel free to paraphrase however you need to make it more suitable for audio consumption. If you need me to provide any clarifications or expound on anything, let me know. Happy you liked it and happy to be of service!

Pretty crazy to think some US based marketing dude for Square probably changed the face of videogames forever getting Squaresoft's FFIV to market so fast in the west and smartly renumbering it. I firmly believe Enix fumbled away their massive advantage in the US they had by taking so long to localize DW. We usually think of designers as the heroes of game creation, but in this case the business side of Square did a great thing and Enix's miscalculated badly. I don't know if someone ever wrote a book about this, but if someone haven't they really should. One of the more course altering decisions in gaming history.

p.s. Forgot to mention this and most kids probably weren't as nerdy about it as I was, but very one of my favorite rituals as a kid was to read the massive game manuals cover to cover the first night I got a game. FF1 had a really good one, even had a walkthrough for the complete first phase of the game in the backhalf. I also loved the maps they often included in the those early RPG manuals. (heck Illusion of Gaia later even included a T-shirt with the game, that was probably peak crazy pack-in). I'd also make copious notes about things about locations I visited, where treasure might be, tactics that work on bosses, things NPCs said etc. That sort of stuff was viewed by many of us as an attractive part of the experience, as opposed perceiving the game as not teaching us adequately how to play like you would in today's in-game tutorial world.