Final Fantasy Adventure: A Retrospective

And another one gone and another one gone...

Final Fantasy Adventure isn't a bad game, I want to make that perfectly clear. It's not bad, but it's just so not good that it tends to pass into that awful realm of meh.

The story is interesting but non-Japanese gamers will have to deal with horrible localization that makes it tough to care about what's going on. You start off as a gladiator, forced to fight the same idiotic monster again and again until you die of boredom. One day, your friend realizes that the monster comes through a giant door that just stays open after the monster dies and that door leads to the outside! Not exactly Shawshank Redemption quality stuff here but, hey, it gets you outside so stop complaining.

Before you make your daring escape through the unguarded door, your dying friend, who was apparently too dumb to figure out the monster's impressive strategy of walking back and forth, tells you to go and find the Gemma Knights and work with them. Conveniently, after you escape, you find a girl who's friend just died and they were going to find the Gemma Knights too! 

WILLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

Off you and the girl go on a grand adventure of "Let's all kidnap this helpless little girl". Honestly, the plot is rather ridiculous but it gets you from point A to point B (sometimes via point C and D  but that's another issue). The gameplay is really where the game succeeds. Yes, it's a Zelda-clone. That means you walk around and jab at enemies with your sword in real-time, trying to make sure they don't run into you or spit projectiles at you. Fortunately, the game doesn't just call that good.

Instead, you level up your character with monster kills and you get to decide how your character stats progress. You have four options: Power, Wisdom, Will and Stamina. Wisdom = magic power and Will = how fast your super bar charges. The stats seem to kind of be setup in a circle system. Power and Wisdom are opposites and Stamina/Will are opposites. The stat you pick gets 2 points up while the two side stats get 1 point each. The opposite skill gets nothing. For example, picking Power will give you 2 points in Power and 1 for each Will and Stamina.

Just in case I'm not being clear here

You also get weapons, armor and items like in a Final Fantasy game. Weapons are set to your A button, armor is obviously passive defense and items/magic can be set to the B button. New weapons also can do new things both to attack enemies and to help you progress through the game. The axe makes a swinging motion and can chop down trees while the chain acts like a whip and can help you move across gaps by hitting poles. It all makes sense and is quite clear, although you'll be going through menus way more frequently than in a Zelda game. Still, it works.

I'm going with the Devil guy on this one

But that's the problem with Final Fantasy Adventure. It just works. It doesn't really feel like it has any soul or artistry. The girl character in the game is the epitome of damsel-in-distress which just feels boring and overdone. Final Fantasy games in particular are known for their sexism but this feels like an extreme even for them. Unlike Zelda which gave players a wonderful sense of exploration in its open world, Final Fantasy Adventure feels linear and there are never any alternate paths worth traveling down. Dungeons all feel generic, like maps just programmed out and then distributed throughout the game without any thought to what goes where.

This airship I entered is apparently made out of stone

The game did a lot of things right and it was a lot of fun to play when I only had my Game Boy available, back in the 90's. Over 20 years later, though, this game is a relic that just isn't worth spending the time on. Pick up Zelda on the NES, Link to the Past on the SNES or Secret of Mana on SNES instead.

Game on!

Rankings:

Final Fantasy II < Final Fantasy Adventure < Final Fantasy < Final Fantasy III < Final Fantasy IV