Final Fantasy Origins (PS)

Well worth your hard earnt.

Final Fantasy is a small joy, as you choose a party of four heroes and set off to save the world from destruction. You may choose a differnt class for each of your charceters, and you are given a choice between six classes for each:Fighter(power),Theif(speed),monk(defense and power),Black mage(damage spells), White Mage(healing spells) and Red mage (weaker damage and magic spells). Once you have chosen yout team you cannot change charcter class, so make sure you choose carefully.

Battles are enjoyable, but there is a lack of real turn order, with slower charcters sometimes acting before faster ones. Accuracy at the early stages is annoyingly low, with 1/2 of your hits missing the target until slightly later stages in the game, but fortunately enemies seem to have the same problem. Usualyy though, enemies are too easy,and damage is unbalanced as most enemies will deal very little damage to fighter classes (maybe about 2 or 3 early on) but will deal hefty damage to other classes (as i 80 or 90 at timess) this gets very boring, and causes problems in HP healing.

You have eight levels of magic, for each level you have a different ammount of MP, each spell takes 1 Mp from its relative level, this means that veen in later stages in the game there is shortage in healing magic, making you resort to items to heal yourselves, which becomes quite ridiculous.

Dungeon exploration is a little boring and long- winded as in the early stages of the game you need to walk all the down then all the way back up when wondering through a dungeon.

Although sometimes enjoyable, FF1 is generally too slow and tedious to hold your attention for more than 1 or 2 hours at a time, but is fairly enjoyable none the less.

FF2 is the better of the two games in the package, and is worth the full price of the product on its own.

You play as a group of youths who have escaped the town of Fynn as the evil empire conquers it. You proceed to join the rebel forces who fight against the empire, in order to help defeat the empire and find your lost friend Felix. The story is enjoyable and gives your charcters good motives, although there are times when you may be unsure of what to do, this very rarely happens.

Your team will often consist of 3 charcetrs, Firion, Maria and Gus. Sometimes you will have the help of a guets character, but they generally do not stay in your team for very long in the story.

Charcters in ff2 do not have levels, instead your stats go up as certain events occur in battle. If you are dealt alot of damage in battle, your HP raises your str goes up as you attack with weapons and so on. Magic and weaponry are purchased in towens for use in battle. As you use magic in battle, it gains expierence and will eventually level up, becoming more powerful. Weapons become more powerful in a similair way, as you use wepaons your charcter's level with that weapon increases, allowing them to get more hits with that weapon when they attack.
The system works effieciently, but certain loop-holes (which I do not wish to mention) make it too easy to level up spells, weapons, and most of your stats in the game. These problems were present in the original version, and it is a shame to see that they are still here, as they really do spoil the growth sytem of the game.

This aside FF2 is a wonderful game, and is better than most of the thrashy games availble today.

If you want to know where it started, this is an essential purchase, if you want a challenge. A worhty purchase, but it shouldn't be top of every ones list.