Final Fantasy Legends 1-3

Hey everyone! Guess who's back?

I know, it's been an obscenely long time since my last post and, to be totally honest, it's because I haven't really done anything worth posting about. That's right, I haven't really played any Final Fantasy since my last post back almost a year ago. A lot has happened including: I got married, moved into an apartment, bought a house, moved into the house, multiple family members passed away... It's been pretty crazy lately.

Still, I have found time to game and decided I wanted to take a break from Final Fantasy to play through a series that I've always intended to do but never got around to, the Infinity engine games. namely: Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 1+2. I modded both heavily with quality of life mods just to improve things like resolution, UI, text size, etc. but otherwise left the games as they were originally released. I loved all of them. Every second of venturing through the Sword Coast was a pleasure and while I wasn't a fan of the Planescape setting and it took me a while to get used to D&D rules (I've never played before), Torment was still one of the best games I've ever played. I also spent some time with Icewind Dale 1+2 and Neverwinter Nights although I didn't finish any of them. After that, I got a little RPG'd out and decided to play through Dark Forces. I'd played Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy but never played the first game in the series so I played the DarkXL mod which remakes the game in a more modern engine. I had a great time with that.

So it's been an eventful year but, you know what? I'm ready to get back to my pilgrimage. I've been having some trouble with Final Fantasy Tactics and the untimely death of my PS2 has caused some hiccups for me but I decided that while I figure out a workaround, I'd jump into one of my first Final Fantasy titles I got to spend real time with, Final Fantasy VIII.

You may be wondering, after that super long introduction, why I titled this Final Fantasy Legends 1-3 then. Well, I am getting started (again) on FFVIII but I haven't really done anything yet so I wouldn't have much to say about that. So instead, I'm gonna talk about three games I didn't play on this pilgrimage, the Final Fantasy Legends games for the original Game Boy. I played all three of these games back in the day and they were actually the first Final Fantasy games I owned, personally, and finished. Since all I had as a kid was a Sega Genesis and a Game Boy, these were the only ones I could play on my own. Well, these and Adventure but I already went into that one. So I'm not playing them now but I'll give you guys the brief rundown on each.

The Final Fantasy Legend

So, you may remember from my post about choosing to skip these games that the Final Fantasy Legends games aren't technically Final Fantasy games at all. In fact, they're from a series known in Japan (and the US much later) as SaGa. The games were a hit in Japan but Squaresoft was still hesitant about throwing its weight behind a localization effort since JRPGs just weren't huge sellers in the US normally. Final Fantasy was a big hit though so they decided to just call them Final Fantasy games here and assumed we were too stupid to figure out the difference.

Players of the first game seriously noticed though that this wasn't quite the same as the others. Similar to the first few Final Fantasy games, The Final Fantasy Legend game didn't have named characters but unlike those, you don't even have a consistent party. You start off by picking characters of whichever classes you want but if one dies you just go to a shop and pick up new characters. Yeah, you likely won't finish the game with any of the people you started with. It's a lot more like D&D or other western RPGs in this sense.

The game sounds a lot like the more modern RPGs, Resonance of Fate or Sword Art Online. Your characters are living in a giant tower with the promise of wishes if anyone reaches the top of the tower but no one who has tried has ever returned. You gather up your party and up you go.

Honestly, this is easily the worst of the Legends games. The gameplay is absurdly difficult and harkens back to the first Final Fantasy in the worst of ways. If you do manage to reach the top, you'll get a storyline reminisce of something out Xenogears where you fight God himself. Otherwise, there is very little story to speak of in the game and no real attachment to the characters since they're just nameless, replaceable peons. At the time, it was great as a Game Boy RPG but after the next two came out, it just became meaningless.

Final Fantasy Legend 2

Known as Sa Ga2 in Japan, Final Fantasy Legend 2 feels more like a JRPG and is much better for it. The story follows a kid who's Dad leaves to discover the secret of the MAGI, a substance thought to be from the gods. Daddy never comes home though so it's up to you to collect all 77 MAGI and find out what's going on.

This game has a lot more to it and feels more fleshed out instead of the dungeon crawl that the first Legends game turned out to be. It doesn't break new ground, especially to players today, but it was great for its time. Honestly, not much more to say about it other than if you want an RPG on the original Game Boy, this was up there as one of the good ones.

Final Fantasy Legend 3

This was the best of the bunch, in my opinion, and it actually had an influence of the later game, Chrono Trigger, with its use of time travel as both a plot and gameplay gimmick. Basically, a large beast is destroying the world in the future, past and present simultaneously. Your group of adventures has to take down the monster by assembling a time traveling vessel called the Talon.

One of the cool things about this game was the class system. Basically, classes were constantly being changed for each character by using items received from monsters on them, somewhat similarly to how Golden Sun worked by equipping djinn on characters to change their abilities. Since this was in 1991, it was a reasonable evolution of Final Fantasy III's job system and, if SaGa had caught on more in the west, could have seriously changed the way we play JRPGs even today, considering how much of an influence III/V had.

So that's a little bit of an overview of the Legends games. If you are desperately craving some RPGs to play, they're worth a look although their age shows through painfully. If you do read Japanese, all the games have been remade, Legend for the Wonderswan Color and 2/3 for the DS, but unfortunately for us English speakers, the Game Boy titles are all we're likely to see for a while yet.

If you are into the SaGa games, a new title has been announced for the PS Vita to be released this year. No news about a localization has been released but if you all cry loud enough, a digital localization isn't out of the question. Hell, look at Final Fantasy Type-0.

Game on!