I Beat Final Fantasy

I beat Final Fantasy 1 this morning, completing the first step of my pilgrimage through the entire franchise. For someone who believes that your gaming patience deteriorates as you grow older, I really hung in there, committing to the unbelievable tedium of level grinding. The original Final Fantasy is a very tough game to beat, and I'm proud, that at 26 years old, with a hyper 3 year old and another baby close to arriving, that I was able to still prepare properly for Chaos, even with the 45 minutes a day that I manage to play during nap time.

FF1 is so difficult because it is entirely possible to be unable to proceed in the game if you didn't prepare well enough. There are no phoenix downs in this game, and the only spell that revives a dead party member becomes available several hours in. The normal way to reverse a KO is at a church, which costs money. If 3 characters die in a tough fight, and you can't afford the revives because they are 800 gil each and you blew all your money on lvl 4 spells, then you're fucked. Reset, pick a new party. This happens because Final Fantasy 1 lets you choose your own configuration of party members before the game begins, and you decide wrong, then your quest to kill Chaos could very well be impossible. 

In addition to the custom configuration of team members, Final Fantasy has many more curveballs that keep the game unfair and difficult. You can't hold more than 99 potions, which only heal 20hp each, and becomes a very serious problem late in the game because the dungeons are long with no way to heal MP indoors. There are no MP restoring items in the game at all, aside from tents and cottages, which can only be used on the world map. Sailing on a boat does not spare you from random battles, the same goes for your canoe. There are also two separate dungeons in the quest that have the fun little gimmick of DRAINING YOUR HIT POINTS AS YOU WALK AROUND.

Something I never noticed until this play through: Bahamut sure has a lot of crucifixes in his cave

If you level your team properly, take the time to forge Excalibur and find the Masamune, then you have a reasonable shot at defeated Chaos. The final battle in the game is the hardest, (not typical of FF games at all) and this time around, Chaos did something that I had never seen him do before: he healed himself. I was on a steady path to victory, my tanks were absorbing hits, my white wizard was healing correctly, and I was spamming flare like a cheap bitch. Chaos then cast Cure4 on himself, something I had only read about him doing, and apparently an extremely rare occurrence. I still won however, because after he cured, he never threw tidal wave at me again, maybe the two are connected.

This is not a picture from my play through, the others are though!

 If you have never played the original Final Fantasy and are interested in doing so, I strongly urge you to experience it for the first time in it's original 8bit glory. I know that it looks like shit, and the remake for PSX adds some convenient stuff, but the only reason you want to play FF1 is because of it's historical significance right? Playing the original version of Final Fantasy is like reading the bible; you may not agree with most of the bullshit inside, and it might bore you to death sometimes, but you are literally experiencing  the most important piece of history that the medium has to offer. Role playing games as we know them today started right here.

God isn't real.