Final Fantasy (NES)

Difficulty - ***1/2
Controls - ***1/2
Graphics - ****
Sound - ****
Overall - 15 out of a possible 20

Four young hero's come to Coneria with four orbs of light. Unfortunately, times are tough in the world and the orbs cease to glow. Because of this a great evil has arrived and only those four brave souls can restore order!

While Final Fantasy isn't the longest RPG on the NES it is a darn good one. And that is coming from a guy who doesn't play that many RPG's! The only difficult thing about the game is knowing when to go to the harder parts of each region (or level in a dungeon). If you stray into a territory you're unfamiliar with, chances are the enemies are much more powerful than you! And that could result in a total party kill (not fun).

The controls are really simplistic, the 'A' button handles any selections made and the 'B' button cancels them. 'Start' opens up the menu while 'Select' displays your party order. Easy.

For a game that came out in 1990, the graphics still look nice. All the character sprites look nice and vivid (gotta' love the ninja!). While the enemies suffer from a lot of 'colour swapping' its not that big of a deal. Hell, check out the big sprite for Chaos! The out of combat graphics are bright and straight to the point (the villages and castles look really good too.) A minor complaint being that only one of the four party members is shown travelling the land. Where exactly are the other guys anyways?

Final Fantasy sports some damn catchy music. Unless you head into a boss battle or one of the dungeons you'll be hearing the same tune for awhile (not saying that's bad or anything!). The sound effects for hitting, using magic and items could stand for some more variety. (why isn't there a different sound effect when an enemy misses you?)

Unless you absolutely hate RPG's there is no reason that any NES owner shouldn't have this gem. While the game isn't as long by today's standards you'll be wistfully smashing in wolf heads as you hum along to the catchy music. The controls while simplistic serve its purpose. Final Fantasy has some visually nice looking sprites, especially the bosses! Check this game out.