Final Fantasy One was supposed to be hard, from what I’ve constantly heard hyped. Since it was the only FF I hadn’t played, I thought I’d give it a try.
I found the dificulty actually on the easy side, even with what I’ve been told should be a sub-optimal party (Thief/Ninja, Blackbelt/Master, White Mage/White Wizard, Black Mage/Black Wizard).
Am I doing something wrong, is the world just wrong about the game’s difficulty, or do you guys thinking punching the final boss to death in a few rounds is “difficult”. If I’d overleveled, I bet I coulda punched him to death in one go.
Which version are you playing? I’ve heard that the remakes adjusted things so it’s not as hard. On the other hand, I never found it difficult, but it was frustrating on occaision. Things like buying potions one at a time, and since they only heal 30hp each you’d have to go through like a dozen at a time per character mid-to-late game. Then there’s limited to no way to revive characters outside a clinic.
Most of the trouble comes between the marsh cave (where almost every enemy can poison you without much trouble) and continues until you beat the Ice Caves (where you start to have access to better healing spells like Life and Soft and enemies lose the ability to either cripple or kill your characters with poison and petrify status on all of their attacks). After this point the game doesn’t reach the level of difficulty anymore and you’ll drift on through the water temple and into the Lefa Tower before you’ll feel any kind of burn.
Even by end game your characters will most likely be able to handle the problems thrown at you. It’s natural for your physical characters to be able to deal insane amounts of damage and I’m betting that you’ve probably given Masamune to one of your Wizards giving you a third fighter with magical abilities and your fourth character can spam the usable item attacks thus you can go at it much longer than before although the biggest weakness of your team is the lack of a second healer but the Protect Rings will make a lack of a healer a rare occurrence.
With version other than the NES characters will usually have better spell casting abilities (they’ll either increase the amount of MPs in each level or they’ll have only one pool of MP to draw from instead of using the D&D inspired magic levels so that you’ll be able to cast Cures 1, 2 and Pure i.e. antidote more often than before) and by end game your characters will have enough MP to cast the highest level spells without the need to really conserve for the boss fights. They also increased the level cap from 50 to 99 and lowered the amount of EXP required for each level as well and in some versions have better equipment than before but it’s the MP limit that’s made the most broken.
I’m playing the NES version, and Masamune didn’t really enter in to the final equation. It was over in three hits. Ninja cast fast, Master punched, White Wizard did some buff, Black Wizard hit with sword. Next round, Master punched and it was all over. Chaos is a real pussy.
Thanks to having a ton of leftover money for not having to buy fighter stuff, I just bought a ton of antidotes.
Stabity stab.
Did you fight Warmech?
Yeah. He didn’t last a round of combat.
What level are you?
I was 41 or 42 when I finished.
Well, that kind of explains things. Whenever I played I got to the end of the game around level 30 or so. So being massively overlevelled does make things easier.
I didn’t think I was overlevelled. I never tried to level. That’s just what I got to travelling from quest to quest.
I never ran from a battle and I never ended higher than 31 or 32… in fact I had to level up just to use level 8 magic.
Something doesn’t add up here >.>
I found it a decent challenge. I just abused the heal equipment though. Final dungeon saw just my Knight “Scar” attacking while everyone else used their heal equipment to keep my HP up. Hardly needed Heal potions at all, really 
I only really let loose for Chaos, and fought “properly” Still was lots of fun though.
Nope, the bottom line is Arac is just awesome at RPGs. It’s a matter of skill that most normal folks just don’t have. :thud:
“Awesome” isn’t determined by how over-leveled you are. In fact I’d say the lower-leveled person that accomplishes just as much is the better one.
I guess I forgot the /sarcasm tag
If you want to play a difficult and awesome RPG from the same time-frame I highly recommend the first Phantasy Star. It has FF1 beat in all aspects, and it can be extremely tough the first couple of times through. Actual characters and character development, 3D dungeons, plenty of nonlinear gameplay, and it came out in 1988. What FF7 did to revolutionize RPGs in the 90s this game did when they were first getting started (outside of D&D). It really is one of the best RPGs ever made.
I wouldn’t call it anywhere NEAR one of the best RPGs ever made. Revolutionary, yes. Good, no. Definitely not by today’s standards. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think FF1 is one of the best games ever made either. Neither of them stand up to the test of time. As opposed to something like e.g. Chrono Trigger, which even 13 years later is still eminently playable.
That and I personally hate dungeon crawlers, but that’s just me. -_-
Welcome, Motavia.
It makes sense that it’d be easy if I was way overleveled, but now I wanna know how I got ten levels on you guys just from Random encounters. For what it it worth, I had no idea where the hell I was going. Did you guys, like, get a map to follow or something? Because I had to just wonder around until I figured out where elfland or whatever was. Maybe that was it?
Cid: I had to force myself through Chrono Trigger the one time I even finished it. The only part of it that I could even get interested in was the character was a quasi-racist characicature, and that wasn’t exactly the “good” kind of interested. Although, if Phantasy Star is a lot like FFI, I don’t really think I’ll care too much for it, either.
Cid: I would venture to say that “standing the test of time” would come down to personal preference. I’ve been going through PS1 at least once a year since it came out. On the other hand, I’ve played through Chrono Trigger twice and still can’t see what all the fuss is about. I guess it just comes down to whatever floats your boat. Phantasy Star 1 was my first RPG, it’s what got me hooked in the first place (and PSII solidified it), so I suppose it can be said I am more than a little biased to the PS universe (with the exception of PS4 and the online games). But it’s all good.
And thank you, Rigmarole. It’s good to be here.