TOKYO – Final Fantasy Legends looks, sounds and plays like a role-playing game from the golden 16-bit years, back when tiny sprites raising their arms in victory was as much emotion as videogames required.
Released on September 6 for Japanese iMode cell phones, Final Fantasy Legends: The Warriors of Light and Dark will be released episodically. At Tokyo Game Show this past weekend, Square Enix showed the game's prologue, which can be downloaded for free.
Final Fantasy Legends seemed to get very little attention at the show. Ironic, since a classic RPG with pixel graphics seems like something that old-school Final Fantasy fans have been wanting for a while now. It could be due to the lukewarm reviews for Square Enix's first retro revival attempt Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. The difference is that it was a sequel to a 15-year old game while Legends is a completely new chapter in the Final Fantasy canon.
The three Final Fantasy games released in the first half of the 1990's are considered by many fans to be the series' golden years. These are the sorts of people who got excited about After Years. When it was ported from Japanese cell phones to WiiWare, English-speaking fans finally got a chance at the game... and they were underwhelmed, to say the least.
As the game had been designed mainly for use on cell phones during short commutes, it felt like a grind-fest with a bunch of recycled maps when played for long periods of time. Still, fans enjoyed the trip back in time, which had most likely been Square's design from the start: Turn nostalgia into profit.
Legends, just like After Years, will be released in chapter form for about $3-5 each. I downloaded the free prologue onto my iMode phone – which I bought years ago so I could play After Years – and gave this new installment of one of my favorite game series a try.
In the beginning, I was presented with a prologue screen with a blue background and scrolling white text, a staple of classic Final Fantasy games. Soon, the game began, and I was introduced to Sol, the main character, and his swordsmanship peer Glaive.
Sol is plucky, but not annoying, reminiscent of characters like Bartz and Locke from the classics. After some dialogue, the heroine Diana was introduced – younger sister to Aigis, hero of the Rux kingdom and Sol's master. Over the course of the 90-minute prologue, these four characters and one more go through a couple of dungeons and introduce the story. The pixel graphics and monster designs are beautiful, and people who grew up on the classic games like me will be really happy to see what the game has to offer.
The only thing that bugged me was the music. Though it sounds like it's trying to emulate the sounds of the classics, it can't quite overcome the differences between the Super Nintendo's sound chip and the ones that are in mobile phones these days. I'm the kind of person who can listen to the soundtracks of the Super Nintendo games all day long, so the feeling of "they really tried, but something's just not right" was hard to shake.
The battles in Final Fantasy Legends are just how any seasoned player would expect them to be. The job system is present in this game, although the prologue doesn't go far enough to introduce it. But characters still have their own specialties even when in the basic "Freelancer" class. Sol counterattacks from time to time, Diana can use basic white magic, Glaive can charge up his strike, and Aigis can use white and black magic.
The game is fairly generous with items and money drops.Players would be wise to keep their eyes glued to the battles, because things can get out of hand quickly, especially if the battle style is set to "active" and the battle speed is at its max. Killer bees will quickly poison characters, and there are even enemies in the first underground dungeon who use Quake, which can do serious damage if it's used in rapid succession. All the equipment in the first town can be bought easily, though, so as long as players don't rush things, the game shouldn't prove too difficult.
The story proceeds as follows: Aigis is called to the castle after returning from the expedition, where after a bit of spying, Sol and co. learn that there has been a disturbance at the crystal shrine in the mountains. Aigis is sent with his pupils to go inspect it, and a journey through a cave dungeon and then the monster-ridden shrine itself. Halfway through, they meet up with the mysterious man Ergo, who claims to have heard the wails of the crystal himself – rounding out the max number of party members in battle to five, just like Final Fantasy IV.
Aside from that, Legends seems to take its cues most prominently from the fifth entry in the series. From what I've seen in screenshots of the later chapters, the Job system starts out basically the same. Additionally, the world of this game seems to be ruled by the power of the enshrined crystals that I assume are going to break at some point and bestow my characters with mystical powers. Ergo starts out as a red mage, and the Summoner class will be accessible at some point.
Even though I had yet to access the Job system, I still found myself using strategies on the prologue's two bosses, measuring the attributes each of my five party members possessed. The first boss seemed more difficult to me than the later one, and I ended up restarting once so that I could finish the battle with all my party members still alive. If these are any indication on how the game will proceed, then players will really have to utilize each party member to his or her best potential in order to survive.
The prologue ended with a hooded villain attempting to destroy the crystal, while Sol and company ran in to save the day. At this point, the story branched off to show clips of other, previously unseen characters, including a certain woman named Matoya, a reference to the first game. It finished with four other villains breaking into the shrine and confronting Sol's team.
I enjoyed the prologue, and really have nothing to complain about, except maybe the fact that I have to play this on my cell phone. Even after playing through Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on this phone, I still can't get used to the weird resolution and how mashed together the sprites are.
It's really a shame that Square Enix is so adamant about putting this out on cell phones instead of utilizing Nintendo's DSi download service, or even just releasing it on some other platform. But I guess the way for it to pull in the most cash is by first releasing it on the inferior system, and then making fans buy it all over again when an upgraded version is released.
In any case, I'm fairly certain Square Enix will bring this out to English-speaking countries eventually, we'll just have to play the waiting game.
Images courtesy Square Enix
