 While Dragon (Warrior) Quest was my first RPG, it was Final Fantasy that really made me a fan of the genre. The two games obviously had some similarities, but Final Fantasy allowed me to build a party. I spent so many evenings creating new parties named after my friends. And over the years, I came back to that original FF game many times. Even after having played most of the mainline games - and many spinoffs - I still consider the original game to be in that top tier for me. Admittedly, much of this has to do with how special it was to me as a kid. The last time I played it was around 2012 or so via the PSP port. And I beat it... finally. I don't know why I had never gotten around to doing so before. Perhaps because I was always so keen on restarting the game with a different party. I'm not sure. But I do know that last time I went with a pretty traditional composition of warrior, thief, white mage, and black mage. Anyway, I was itching to give the game another go so I picked up the GBA version which is (unfortunately) compiled along with Final Fantasy II. I payed a bit more than I wanted to, but hey, got the manual along with the second game. Which I hate. But whatever. I'm just glad to fire this one up again. I really didn't have time to get started last night, but I'm rolling with a warrior, and red/white/black mages this time around. Made a bit of FF1 progress over the weekend. Obviously it's a bit easier to do so on an RPG like this one that I've played so many times before. And so I started up by just grinding for a while until everyone was up to around level 5. And honestly, an old JRPG like this is so perfect for playing on GBA. It makes for the kind of grinding I can handle: listening to the TV in spare 20 minute chunks. The Garland battle was over before it started; the bridge was built; the four warriors of light went on their way. Went on to the next town, picked up some new gear and spells, and then grinded to level 10 before taking out the pirates in town. Hopped on the boat and headed south. Did you know about the hidden boat puzzle game? Somehow I didn't until now. It's one of those old tile-sliding puzzles and I'm not good at them. Apparently completing it can net you a bunch of gil. Maybe I'll see if my wife can do it for me - she's way better at these kinds of puzzles than I am. Anyway, on to the elf village where we paid respect to Link's grave. Did some more grinding around there to get even newer gear and some level 4 spells. My white mage has Cure, Cura, and Heal along with um... Dias I think? The one that inflicts damage on all undead enemies. The black mage is rocking Thunder, Fire, Thundera, Fira, and Blizzard. I can't even remember what I bought for the red mage - a couple spells, but honestly, she's been mostly played like a second warrior class. We then headed west to a cave in search of some treasure to wake up the comatose elf prince. A bit more progress last night... went off to explore the cave that netted me the elf crown. And then brought it to that evil elf king dude and wrecked him. He opened with a one-hit kill on my red mage, but a couple rounds later he was gone without a sweat. Took his crystal to that witch who lost her eye and she gave me a potion to wake up the elf prince. He in turn gave me the key to the kingdom so I went around looting and found a bunch of good equipment. I was swimming in gil at this point so bought some extra spells and then took a boat ride to that town that's been burned to the ground. Unfortunately my mages aren't leveled up enough to handle level 5 spells, so I couldn't do much in that town yet. I tell ya, Final Fantasy is like riding a bike for me. And it's so perfectly suited for playing in short spurts on GBA between bottle feeds and so on. I had minimal time to make progress before bed last night. Mostly, I just walked around to grind a bit until I got up to level 19 so that my mages could utilize the lvl5 spells. Grabbed some useful ones - namely, Life for my white mage. Walked over to the cave in the south-west ("Terra...something," I'm bad with names) and STARTED to do some exploring but I took a path where every step resulted in a 'random' encounter, and that started to get tedious and I was just too exhausted for the night. Alright so I beat Lich and then went off exploring trying to remember where to go next. After 20 mins or so... my GBA battery died. What!? So yeah. I was pretty furious. My gaming time is valuable right now, so lost progress is just super discouraging. This might cause me to take a break from Final Fantasy for now. Maybe play something a little lighter. Ugh.
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