The original 2 games are showing it's age but there's plenty of value for Hardcore Role Playing Fans to experience......
Platform: Gameboy Advance
Developer: Square Enix
Publisher: Nintendo
Genre: Fantasy Role Playing Game
Age Rating: 3+ PEGI
Release Date: December 3rd 2004
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Game Score: 7.0/10
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Summery:
The orginal 2 games are showing it's age but there's plenty of value for Hardcore Role Playing Fans to experince the classic combined package.
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After their remakes on both the Wonder-swan Color in Japan and recently on the PlayStation 1, The 2 Final Fantasy games find themselves on Nintendo's Handheld into a single game cartridge for Hardcore RPG Fans that can take their Fantasies on the go under it's subtitle Dawn of Souls. The original 2 games are showing it's age but there's plenty of value for Hardcore Role Playing Fans to experience the classic combined package.
On the menu you've got the option of playing either the 2 Final Fantasy games and also you can view a Bestiary where you can look at the monsters you have beaten throughout the 2 games. In Final Fantasy I you have 4 Warriors in which you can choose from 6 different basic classes to start the game of with. The plot is basic "World has fallen into chaos and it's up to you to save it" sort of stuff. To be fare this was epic for it's time but there's no story or any character development to be found here. Final Fantasy II on the other-hand has more of a story driven plot then it's predecessor. The Story of Final Fantasy II follows 3 heroes in their struggle against an Empire and to find their lost 4th friend. There's plenty of memorable moments to be had with it's storyline as well as it's characters. Final Fantasy II spices the storyline up with Dialogue progression which is where you'll find find certain keywords that you can memorize for later conversions, to learn about further details or to use a Key-item found during your travels. Although this is never in newer games but for it's time it was impressive for the plot to open up more.
The 2 Final Fantasy games follow the classic unchanged format as they did many years ago. When you start either game you'll listen to a bit of the story, stop in a friendly town to rest up, shop for items and better gear and then unfold into the World map where you wonder around till you'll find a Dungeon to explore, find hidden items and also fight monsters in the games random encounters and to fight a powerful boss at the end of the dungeon. Dawn of Souls on GBA includes new Dungeons for Final Fantasy I for when you've battled against the 4 fiends and completing Final Fantasy II unlocks a mode called Souls of Rebirth where you'll play as characters who originally died during the main story. Dawn of Souls also re-balances the difficulty of the 2 games to make the grinding easier and the boss challenges much easier then the other versions, this helps so that Newcomers can easily pick up and play before a few moments into either the 2 games where the difficulty will start to gain the upper hand. One problem you'll have with exploring to keep in mind is that sometimes it's Easy to get lost and find it difficult to figure out where you'll need to be going next later on within the game. You'll sometimes spend about 30 minutes wondering around aimlessly till you'll either look on the Map to try and find the destination you're going to or go online for a Walk-through or a Strategy guide to tell you where to go. It doesn't help that NPC's don't give you much hints to your next objective. Luckily you can now Save anywhere even if you're in a Dungeon which is really helpful if you're going to face any difficult bosses later on since in the games there's no Save Point what-so-ever so back then if you did make it to the boss and died you'd have to start again. It's also useful if you're out on the go and need to put it down or if your GBA SP system needs to be recharged if it's low on battery. In all the 2 games will take roughly around 30 to 40 hours each to complete so you'll get a worthwhile look for your money unless you've played Origins on PSOne.
The Final Fantasy games ultilises it's simple turn based combat from 1987 where you'll take 4 different characters into battle against either a single monster or a whole group nearly up to 9 Monsters as each side takes turns in attacking each other and each character class in Final Fantasy I has their own Abilities to use to turn the tides against the monsters. Black Mages are able to cast powerful magic to defeat enemies while White Mages Heal and support the party. Thief's are quick, Monks deal massive damage unarmed, Warriors are expert weapon specialists and Red Mages are able to use both White and Black magic which can be bought in a magic shop. Your Mages can only hold up to 3 different spells per Level which will force you to choose carefully on which spells you've think is the most useful for later on but however all spells used take up HP instead of charges from the other versions.
Final Fantasy II uses a developing Leveling system where it's more different from it's predecessor, instead of Leveling up by EXP you had different attributes which can be Leveled up indrliedily. Taking plenty of damage during battles raises your HP, using Magic raises your ability to use different spells and it's effectiveness as well as MP, using normal attacks and equipping different Weapons Level up it's effectiveness against enemies and increases your Strength. Problem is that aside from occasionally gaining HP from fighting a few battles it takes a long while to boost up your Magic Spells but each characters can carry up to 16 different spells unlike it's predecessor.
The biggest issue with battles is that they are very frequent, it takes only a few steps to trigger a battle and just when you've won a battle and get a chance to move on, you move 5 more steps before bumping into another encounter which gets really annoying. When in battles it mostly takes only a few seconds to wipe out all the monsters that appear in the Battlefield, as for boss battles they prove to be challenging as they can do decent amount of damage and many boss encounters take around a few minutes to take down. Like other Final Fantasy games you always got to some grinding in order to advance through the games. The games battle system is simple enough for every Role Playing Fan to enjoy but it's not as impressive as the newer Final Fantasy games.
The graphics used on the Japanese Wonderswan Color have indeed aged quite well and it still looks good for GBA standards. The details from it's earlier ports including environments, character sprites, monsters including their color swapping counterparts and spell effects look clean and somewhat distinct. The sound effects are decent and you'll be humming to some of your Favorite Soundtracks that you remember from playing since Origins as the famous musical score of the 2 game are still impressive after all these years.
Out of the 2 games which hold up the most the original most certainly holds up just about, the second one has a tiresome Leveling system that's inferior compared to a similar game called Grandia. Unless If you've played Final Fantasy Origins on the PSOne recently then there's no much reason that you'd want to pick up this package unless it's something you can take on the go. The 2 games are beginning to show it's age, but to any RPG fan that's looking for old school Role Playing experience to take on the go then this for the Hardcore unless you've got something else worth getting if you've got Origins on the PSOne.
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The Pros:
1. 2 Final Fantasy games in a single cartiedge is an impressive deal
2. Extra Dungeons, new modes and rebalanced difficulty to add extras value
3.The Ability to Save anywhere helps for Easy travel, Low battery and any Difficult battles later on
The Bads:
1. High enemy encounter ratings which can be annoying
2. Final Fantasy II's Leveling System gets really tiresome
3. It's sometime Easy to get lost and difficult to figure out where to go later on
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