Thoughts on Final Fantasy I through III

I've been finally getting into the Final Fantasy games recently. I had never played any of the games before but I've always wanted to try them. During the most recent Steam summer sale I bought the pixel remaster bundle of the first six games and said "you know what, it's time to finally get into this franchise". 

So I did. And I've now played through the first three games (and am currently working my way through the fourth). Since these three are relatively short compared to the rest of the series, I figured I'd give my thoughts on all three of them in one go. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as I can just in case someone reads this that still needs to play them. Let's get started!

Final Fantasy I 

I have to start off by saying that you can definitely tell that this was the very first game in the series. And for me personally it's probably the weakest one out of the first three. I know a lot of people would disagree there but we'll get to that later. 

When first starting the game and picking out a party I named all my characters after different Joes, because why not. I kept the classes pretty simple though. The combat immediately struck me as quite simple and barebones. I found myself using the auto battle feature quite a lot. I found the story a bit thin and the game was not good at letting you know where to go, so I often found myself having to read a guide to move forward. 

I realize that all of this sounds very negative but I did still enjoy my time playing this game. It does help that it's relatively short though. Any longer and I probably would have gotten bored with it.

Final Fantasy II

From the discourse that I've seen about this game I take it that the general consensus is that this is the weak link of the series. However, I personally disagree. In fact, I think I like this one the best out of these first three games.

The main issue with this game for people seems to be the levelling system. I know it's a bit of an unusual system but I personally quite liked it. Having it so you level magic points by using magic, you level sword attacks by using sword attacks, you level spells by... Okay you get the idea... In any case, this leveling system actually encouraged me to try out things that I normally never would have done. And I have to appreciate this game for that. 

The keyword system was certainly unique and I had a fun time asking all the NPCs about different terms to try and gather up all the information that I could. Story wise this caused me to be a lot more invested than I was with the first game.

I will say the dungeon layouts can be a bit annoying in this game, but you get a map in the pixel remaster which makes them a lot easier to navigate. From my understanding the pixel remaster, especially with this game, has improved on a lot of malarkey like that.

All in all I've found myself really enjoying Final Fantasy II. Yes the game is very experimental, especially for its time. But honestly, that just made it all the more charming to me.

Final Fantasy III

After the last game I felt very excited to go into the third game. And I enjoyed it a lot as well. Though not quite as much as I enjoyed the second game.

This game has a lot of freedom in terms of the job system. You can basically just freely give each character whatever job you want at any time. I personally didn't experiment with this too much unless it seemed absolutely necessary, but I appreciate having that option still.

The story still felt a bit thin, though not as much as it did in the first game. It did keep me invested enough throughout my playthrough though. 

One thing that did frustrate me a little bit was that there were often very long stretches where there weren't any good opportunities to heal or restock. This got a bit annoying at times and is largely why I rank this game below FF2. The dungeons also often felt a bit long winded to me which heightened this issue.

Overall I still enjoyed my time with the game though. For me it sits right in between the first two in terms of how much I enjoyed it.

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on these three games. I think it's safe to say that my introduction to this series has been pretty good so far. And from what I've heard it seems like it's only going to get better from here. I'm already playing through Final Fantasy IV and I have a lot of thoughts on it already. Though I will save those for another time.

With that I'm going to call it a post. I can't wait to get further into this franchise!

Bring 'em to the pit!