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A tear rolls down his face and Mark stares off into the distance to ponder whether he should continue… …Okay so this joke has been done before so onto the obligatory pop song intro that only shares a tenuous link via a word in the title:

“(But it’s just a) sweet, sweet fantasy, baby”

“When I close my eyes”

“You come and you take me”

“(On and on and on)”

“So deep in my daydreams”

“But it’s just a sweet, sweet fantasy, baby”

However, is it a sweet fantasy? We certainly know with hindsight being what it is that it is most definitely not the final one.

Experience

Final Fantasy (FF) titles have become so synonymous with the Japanese Role Playing Game (JRPG) genre that they have practically defined how they are positioned. In fact, the clichés of these types of games; endless beautiful cut-scenes, random battles, androgynous, if slightly feminine looking male protagonist, and even more feminine looking male antagonist (for other examples see Jamie’s review of FFXIII). However, this is the first in what became the series that saved the company from bankruptcy and made developers/publishers Square Enix the powerhouse company that they are today. It is also the game that made Hironobu Sakaguchi the lauded name he is amongst gamers with hit titles under his belt such as FF I to X, Chrono Trigger, Kingdom Hearts, Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey and ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat to name but a few.

The iPhone OS FFI is a port of the PlayStation Portable (PSP) conversion of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) original released back in 1987 in Japan, which contains the added bonus dungeons that were contained in later versions of the game; the Soul of Chaos and the Labyrinth of Time. Despite it’s age, does it still hold up and work with the iPhone OS touch-screen interface? The simple answer is, yes on both counts.

The plot concerns a group of characters known as the Warriors of Light (not L’cie, Fal’cie or whatever is going on in FFXIII) who are on a quest to restore the four elemental orbs back to their former power. They accomplish this by traversing a rather large top-down map, dungeon creeping and battling bosses to retrieve magical items. In other words, the mechanics of most RPGs if not JRPGS. What sets FFI apart is that it was one of the first to do this on a home video game system, and now it’s available on one of the most ubiquitous mobile platforms out there, the iPhone OS.

I started out my adventure naming my characters as Baron (Warrior), Wedge (Thief/Rogue), Sara (White Mage/Healer) and Kokkol (Black Mage/Warlock) and despite a couple of failed attempts to take out the first boss, I eventually got into the swing of things. The mechanics of the game are very old school RPG, in so far as the battle system is a much pared-down, but nonetheless effective conversion of the old turn-based paper, pen and oddly shaped dice system so favoured in Dungeons and Dragons. This allows the game to rip along at a good pace which unfortunately later entries seem to have lost with the reliance on overlong and mainly uninteresting cutscenes. The story may be clichéd within the frame of a Joseph Campbell-esque hero’s journey in a fantasy land, but it is what you would expect of such a game, and it does it very well.

The mission structure may be very limiting without the more open-ended nature of the later games, but on the mobile platform this fits rather well. The controls are quite intuitive and very responsive, however not being a fan of the virtual joystick/controller scheme I did at times find it fiddly. This is a minor criticism though, and is more a reflection of my dissatisfaction with games like GTA: Chinatown Wars where it’s unplayably twitchy.

The graphics may just be fairly simplistic sprites compared to the output of more recent titles, but they are all colourful and distinguishable from one another. The little cutscenes add a nice visual flair and break up the gameplay, but do not overstay their welcome.

The sound design is as polished as you’d expect from a Square Enix game, and although there is no audible dialogue due to the title’s reliance on textual pop-ups the music present is charming enough to compensate.

Verdict

Having never played the title on any previous platforms, I came into this game with only the memory of later entries in the series such as FFVII (loved it), FFVIII (hated it) and FFXIII (think I like it, but still too early to tell – 3 hours in and only just got into the world?) so was a bit wary of being hugely disappointed since it is held in such high regard by the majority of gamers. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised, this game is most definitely a buy.

Tags: final fantasy, iPhone, jrpg, square enix

Categories: iPhone

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