The game that started it all. Welcome to the mother of all RPGs: Final Fantasy!
When comparing Final Fantasy to other games like Dragon Warrior and Zelda, it really puts good use to the words Role Playing. You are thrown into the world having selected various characters (Classes) to form your elite party. Your selection consists of Fighter, Thief, Monk, Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage. Later on, your characters evolve into Knight, Ninja and so on. Your party in comprised of 4 of these characters and you may if you wish select duplicates to fill up your 4 party members. IE: Fighter, Fighter, Black Mage and White Mage. So choose wisely as each one has his or her weaknesses.
Spell Casters must purchase their spells for each new level earned, which eventually get's pretty expensive, but they are low cost when it comes to armor and weapons. The Red Mage can cast both White and Black magic, but only up to a certain point, leaving this character a little less then adequate in the final stages of the game. Fighters are expensive to equip, as can be Thieves, but they take a good punch before they go down and make great additions to parties. All this provides a good balance for gameplay and re-playability, offering you more then enough combinations to start new games and so on.
The music is quite memorable for MIDI quality. I'll admit it isn't ochestral symphonies like in FFVII and so on, but for the mother that has spawned it's "sequels" (they are not actual sequels), it raised the bar in it's time for sound quality. Sound effects in battles and animations provided a more visual experience then Dragon Warrior to say the least, and having to choose your actions before each round of a battle was a revolutionary feature in it's time. The only flaw in battles that comes to mind is if you targeted the same enemy with Character A and Character B, and Character A killed him first, Character B would then "miss" it's target. This was corrected in later installments by making Character B automatically target another available enemy.
There is a VAST range of weapons and armors, each providing different stats and features. Even the famous "ribbons", the ones you never thought would do anything, offer protection against many negatives statuses and deseases. You also must travel from location to location, first by boat and then by airship. You gotta hand it to them for putting as much thought into this game as you've come to expect from a Final Fantasy. It really is a game that raised the bar.
Graphics were on par for that generation; Overhead view a-la dragon warrior, detailed monsters and PCs in battles. Even now, you still get a lump in your throat when you see your first monster that takes up 4 enemy slots, or when you battle two ogres at once.
The game didn't necessarily have puzzles per-say, rather a go here-fetch me this-and I will show you the way or your next step-sorta system, which was common for a game of this depth back then.
All in all, great character balance, storyline a little on the cliche side and no particular character side-quests, great graphics, great depth and arsenal of items and inventory and spells, great music ...
Lastly, it must be said, that flaws and qualities, overall, Final Fantasy has to be single handedly credited for the RPGs we know today.