And so his journey begins...
Background: The first Final Fantasy game was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi of Square in 1987, and released in the U.S. in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It has since been repackaged and sold in a combination cartrige with Final Fantasy II on the Gameboy Advance, which is the platform I will be using.
So, I decided to jump right in last night as my task is daunting and there is no time to be spared if I hope to hit my deadline. I found a save file of lvl 32 characters on my Gameboy and deleted it, when did I play that...? Anyway, I started a new game and was presented with my choice of character classes and names for my party. Ahh, the nostalgia, the foundation of the series, the game at it's basics, the starting classes: Fighter, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage... It never dawned on me before that these are the EXACT same starting classes in FFXI. Since I usually played Fighter, Fighter, Black Mage, White Mage in the past because of my cousin, I decided to change things up. I created a Thief named Ikorid, a Monk named Yorik, a Red Mage named Nick, and a White Mage named Lokeir. I named them as a tribute to the people I'll probably be playing with most in XIV, in the classes they have or are going to play. Of course, Lokeir is the White Mage, my character job and name from XI.
After playing a bit, I realized that my party is very heavy melee and that I'll never have the super heavy magic hitting ability. I also realized that none of them could really wear heavy armor or use shields. I started to think this might be a problem, having 3 light armored characters and my WHM. I still don't know who to put out front, but for the time, it's the THF, he has the highest health and evasion. He gets hit hard but so what, my WHM has to have something to do. =)
What I also realized is that they were going to fuck some serious shit up, unless faced with a melee resistant mob. I played through a bit of the game, my warriors of light on their quest to obtain the 4 orbs of power: earth, water, fire and air. This is the basis for all Final Fantasy games to follow, as each universe is different, the only real underlying theme is that there are always crystals of power.
So, I ventured out into the world, leveled up a bit, kicked the shit out of Garland, Astos, the Vampire, the Eye, the Stone Dragons, and even beat down Lich, the Earth fiend earning me the first of four orbs needed. I got my ship, my canoe, my airship, and even got to the class change; now I have a Ninja, Master, Red Wizard and White Wizard. In short, I kicked some ass last night, getting most of my party to lvl 34 before calling it for the night.
It looks like the game is a lot shorter than I remember, unless there's a lot left that I don't remember, but having the Airship drastically reduces down time from fighting low level mobs that yeild no exp or gold. The mages have the ability to learn 8 levels of magic and they both are already at level 7. The Red Wizard is pretty much tapped out as he can only learn 1 white and 1 black spell at 7, and none at 8 from either side. And the White Wizard just needs Life 2 and he'll be set for the game. Hopefully tonight I can down two more of the fiends, maybe finish this game out before I head out to Vegas for the weekend. Stupid real life getting in the way of my journey!
I've bolted out of the gate but I know that each installment gets more involved and longer. As such, and perhaps to the dismay of any true RPG fan, I AM using walkthroughs from time to time. The goal is to experience the games (most of which I already have), and to complete them, see the story, the characters build, etc. The goal is NOT to run around lost or waste time walking to the end of some dungeon to just find another Tent or Potion I didn't need.
Anywho until tomorrow, peace.
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