Final Fantasy Adventure

Overview

Final Fantasy Adventure (titled Mystic Quest in Europe and Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan) was released by Squaresoft for the Game Boy in 1991. It is the first game of Square's Mana series, and is a spinoff from the Final Fantasy series. This game was remade as Sword of Mana in 2003 for the Game Boy Advance.

Final Fantasy Adventure is an action RPG similar in style to the original Legend of Zelda game. In this adventure, the hero - named Sumo is the Japanese version - must stop the evil Dark Lord and wizard Julius attaining immortality by touching the Tree of Mana. Several Final Fantasy themes and characters appear in this game, such as Chocobos, which are not present in the rest of the Mana series.

Story

The player plays the role of a male gladiator, forced to fight daily for the pleasure of the Dark Lord of the Glaive Empire. On his deathbed, the hero's friend Willy beseeches the hero to contact the Gemma Knight Bogard to protect Mana from the Dark Lord. With this quest, the hero proceeds to break out of the castle, only to run into the Dark Lord consulting with the mysterious wizard Julius. Julius reveals that a (player-named in the US, Fuji in Japan) girl is the key for traveling up the waterfalls to the temple of the Mana Tree. When Julius leaves, the hero is discovered by the Dark Lord, who chases the hero to a cliff and knocks the hero off a waterfall, presumably to his death.

Upon recovering from his fall, the hero awakens on the outskirts of the town Topple. While adventuring, the hero will run into a fallen warrior, Hasim, being tended to by a girl. Hasim will ask the hero to take the girl to Wendel and to find Bogard. After this, Hasim passes away, and the girl decides to accompany the hero. From the townspeople of Topple, the hero learns that there is a weird old man (Bogard) who lives by the Waterfalls.

With the girl in tow, the hero then goes to the old man, who reveals that he is indeed Bogard, the Gemma Knight. He reveals that he fought to protect the Mana Tree from the Vandole Empire that sought to use the power of Mana previously to take over the world. He gives the hero a Mattock, and directs him to go through the a cave to the town of Wendel to see Cibba.

Passing through the swamp on the other side of the cave, the hero and the girl will arrive at Kett's House. The butler invites the hero and the girl to spend the night, but that he can't use the door behind him as it is reserved for Mr. Lee. During the night spent in the house, the girl will teach the hero the Cure spell. However, in the morning the girl will have disappeared, and the butler claims that he has not seen her. A fellow visitor at Kett's House will advise the hero that the Mystic Mirror, hidden in the Marsh cave reveals people's true colors. To gain entrance into the Marsh cave, the hero must first kill the lizardmen that protect the Bronze key.

After acquiring the Bronze key, the hero can enter the Marsh Cave. Upon entering, he meets a man who tells the hero that many women have gone missing from Kett's House, and that they must be kept in the caskets in the basement of the House. The man will accompany the hero while he explores the cave, ending in a battle with a two-headed dragon in a lake. Upon defeating the Hydra, the hero receives the Mirror as well as Fire magic. The Man will then disappear.

Upon returning to Kett's and showing the mirror to the butler, the butler will transform into a wolf man. After defeating the butler, the hero can enter the door that he was guarding, revealing another dungeon to traverse. At the end, the hero will find the Chain Flail, which is necessary to cross small gaps, and rescue the girl. When he returns to the entrance, he runs into Mr. Lee, who is a vampire. Upon defeating Mr. Lee, the hero will learn Sleep magic. Then the hero and the girl are free to head to Wendel.

In Wendel, the hero and the girl will run into the Man who helped in the Marsh Cave. When they arrive at the Wendel Temple, the hero and the girl will finally meet Cibba. Cibba will instruct the girl to step forward onto the symbol, and suddenly the girl's mother will appear. Cibba will tell the player that the girl's mother was the one who helped Bogard and Cibba during the war with Vandole. The girl's mother will reveal to the girl that her family is the Mana Family, and they are the seeds of the Mana Tree (literally). The mother will then ask the girl to protect the Mana Tree, and to protect her pendant, which sealed the waterfalls that lead to the Mana Temple. Right then, the man from the Marsh Cave will rush in to say that Wendel is under attack, and takes the girl presumably to safety. The hero goes to follow, but finds the man to actually be Julius in disguise. Julius reveals that he only helped the hero because he wasn't sure that the girl was actually a member of he Mana family. Julius will then knock out the hero.

When the hero awakes, Cibba will tell the hero that Julius took the girl west in his airship. The hero pledges to rescue her, and Cibba teaches him Heal magic. The hero will discover that he will need to cross through the Gaia cave, but the cave spits him out, and informs him that he should not walk in its mouth. Upon talking with some local dwarves, the hero disovers that the Gaia cave likes the taste of silver, so the hero heads out to find silver. He heads to an old silver Mine, where he meets the dwarf Watts, who accompanies him in the dungeon. The dungeon concludes with a battle with the Megapede, which upon defeat will yield the hero silver. Watts takes the silver and forges armor and a sword of silver, which the hero must buy to continue.

Gaia will now let the hero pass, and after passing through Gaia, Bogard will appear and join the hero. Bogard will inform the hero that Julius' airship is refueling at a lake up north. Together they board the airship, and just as the airship takes off, they find the girl in a locked room. Bogard stays to guard the girl while the hero travels around to the side of the airship to rescue her through a window. The girl gives the hero her pendant, but Julius uses fire magic to knock the hero off the airship.

The hero crash-lands in a house below, and is knocked unconscious. Fortunately, the hero crashes into the house of a former gladiator named Amanda, who was present at the beginning of his adventure. Unfortunately, Amanda takes the pendant and disappears. When the hero reawakens, he discovers that he is in the town of Menos. The townspeople inform him that there are Chocobos in the forest up north, and that Amanda has a brother named Lester, who plays the harp in the town of Jadd, also to the north.

First the hero heads for the forest, where he finds a Chocobo egg, which hatches. The newborn Chocobo will become the new party member, allowing the hero to ride him around. With the Chocobo in tow, the hero heads to Jadd.

Jadd is in bad shape, and is run by a man named Davias. Davias is the sun of Medusa, and has the ability to change people into animals. Upon questioning Davias about Amanda, he informs the hero that she is off to the Cave of Oasis, to get a tear from Medusa. The tear will break Davias' curse. By trading a bag of Fang with a boy in town, the hero learns the way into the Cave of Oasis: "Palm trees... and 8. Got it?" (the hero must walk a figure 8 around two palm trees to reveal the entrance).

Once inside the cave, the hero meets up with Amanda, who tells the hero that she took the hero's pendant to give to Davias in exchange for her brother. Instead, Davias cursed her brother and turned him into a bird. Together they explore the Cave of Oasis, where the hero learns Ice magic, and find Medusa's lair. After defeating Medusa, she laughs, yielding no tears. However, during the course of the battle, Medusa bit Amanda, which curses her to turn into Medusa. As she starts the transformation, she begs the hero to take her tears and cure Lester, and kill her. The hero does, and returns to Jadd, rescuing Lester. Lester asks the hero to help him avenge his sister's death by killing Davias. Together they take out Davias, but Davias reveals that the Pendant is already en route to Glaive.

To repay the hero, Lester clears out the poison gas blocking the way with his harp and teaches the hero Mute magic. With his Chocobo in tow, the hero heads north to Mt. Rocks cave, where he must battle the Metal Crab boss. After the cave, the hero must traverse Mt. Rocks, where he does battle with a Cyclops boss and the Golem boss. Upon defeating the Golem, the hero learns Lit (Lightning) magic. After that the hero finds himself where he started, outside Glaive castle.

In the Glaive castle, the hero battles a Chimera. After defeating the Chimera, the hero finds the girl in a prison cell and releases her. With the girl in tow, traverses the castle to reach the top, where the Dark Lord is waiting. The hero defeats the Dark Lord alone. Meanwhile Julius hypnotizes the girl, and the hero witnesses her reversing the waterfall so that Julius can go to the Mana Temple. Julius reveals that he is the last man of the Vandole Empire, and desires the power of Mana. To stop the hero from pursuing, Julius knocks him off the waterfall, again.

This time, the hero lands in a crystalline desert, where his Chocobo rescues him. Unfortunately the Chocobo is injured in the process. However, upon waking up, the player finds an injured Bogard, who was thrown from Julius' airship. The hero discovers that he is in the town of Ish, a city built near the ruins of the Vandole Empire. Bogard is gravely injured, and the hero is claimed to be the last chance for the world. The hero finds his Chocobo being treated by Dr. Bowow, who mechanizes its legs, turning it into Chocobot. With Chocobot, the hero can now traverse water. When the hero goes back to talk to Bogard, he learns that Julius already has the power of Mana, and that the only way to defeat him is with the sword Excalibur. Bogard tells the hero to go find Cibba, who knows where the sword is hidden.

The hero travels back to Wendel, only to find that Cibba has left town to help with the town of Lorim, which is under attack by monsters. The hero travels to Lorim, only to find that everyone but the King in town has been frozen by the monster Kary, and Cibba is trapped in a room blocked by ice. The hero heads off to the Snowfields Cave, and takes on Kary. After defeating Kary, the hero heads back to Lorim to talk to Cibba. Cibba tells the hero that the legendary sword is hidden in the cave in the Floatrocks, and gives him the key. In the cave, the hero will fight the Kraken. After defeating the Kraken, the hero explores the Undersea Volcano, where he defeats the Iflyte for a rusty sword. Upon presenting the rusty sword to Cibba, he informs the player that they need to resurface the Dime tower, a tower from the Vandole empire, using the rusty sword.

The hero goes to talk to Dr. Bowow, who reveals that Nuke magic is needed. The hero travels to the Palmy Desert Cave, where he battles the Lich for the Nuke magic. Now equipped with the Nuke magic, Dr. Bowow will reveal the location of the Cave of Ruins. Using the Nuke magic to blow the entrance open, the hero traverses the cave of ruin and fights the Mantis Ant. On a pedestal in the Cave of Ruins surrounded by waterfalls, the hero releases the power of the rusty sword, which rises the Dime tower from where it sank into the desert.

Dime tower is the hero's next destination, where he meets Marcie, a robot designed by Dr. Bowow 50 years ago. With Marcie, the hero will climb Dime tower, where the hero will learn that Julius is the last hope of the Vandole Empire, and that he is the last chance to stop Julius. At the top of the tower, the hero fights Garuda, whose defeat destabilizes the tower. To escape, Marcie throws the hero to safety, sinking with the tower back into the sand.

Now the hero is ready to return to Glaive castle, and take the reversed waterfall to the temple of Mana. The Mana Temple challenges the hero with three boss fights: the Dragon, the Red Dragon, and the Dragon Zombie (the zombified two-headed dragon from the Marsh cave). After defeating the Dragon Zombie, the hero will run into the girl's mother, who will congratulate the hero on becoming a great Gemma Knight and will bestow the hero with Excalibur.

The hero now faces Julius, who is empowered by the Power of Mana, and reveals his plans to create a Neo-Vandole Empire. After fighting Julius three times, the hero finally grasps defeat, only to find that the Tree of Mana is dying. The girl's mother reappears, and reveals to the hero and the girl that she was the Tree, and only the girl can become the new tree. The girl is left with the decision on whether she wants to become the next Tree of Mana, and she agrees. The hero agrees to be the Tree's protector, to remain close to the girl.

Gameplay

This game retains the top-down camera-view and active battle system of the original Legend of Zelda. The hero attacks with a variety of weapons (such as swords sickles and axes), and a strong attack is possible if the gauge at the bottom of the screen is filled by waiting between attacks. Enemies In addition, the hero can learn a predetermined set of spells (8 in all) to assist him in his journey. Occasionally, he will have a supporting character accompany him, who is not under the direct control of the player.

Keeping with its RPG heritage, the hero must level up to become stronger by allocating stat points to allocated to one of four types: Wisdom (more Mana), Stamina (more Health), Power (more damage), and Will (faster bar refill).

Non-playable Companions

During the course of the adventure, several non-playable characters will accompany the hero temporarily. The hero can use the "Ask" command to have them perform a unique function for the hero.

Development

In 1989, Square trademarked the name Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur for a five-floppy disk adventure game developed by Kazuhiko Aoki for the Famicom. The game was never developed because Square was approaching bankruptcy at the time.

In 1991, Square officially started development on Final Fantasy Adventure under the codename "Gemma Knights." Square used its previous trademark, and released Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan. The game was written by Yoshinori Kitase, with input from Koichi Ishi, who designed all the characters for the game.

The game was first re-released, along with the Final Fantasy Legend series, for the Gameboy Color by Sunsoft in 1998. Sword of Mana, a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure more in line with the Mana series, was released in 2003. A more conservative revision of Final Fantasy Adventure was released on mobile phones in Japan in 2006, with only small changes to the games graphics and sound.