Final Fantasy Adventure Part 1: It's a Final Fantasy...or is it?

 This is a series of posts covering Final Fantasy Adventure that were originally posted to Talking Time. I copied them over so they would be better preserved. Without any further ado...

Our journey begins on the Gameboy, where it's still called a Final Fantasy and not a Mana game.

This is not to say that Mana isn't involved; in fact, the intro itself spends a lot of time talking about the Tree of Mana, how powerful it is, and how an evil emperor is behind it for its power. Said emperor is named, I kid you not, "Dark Lord". How very subtle.

Two naming screens later, the game throws us right into the action. Of course, this is a pretty simple battle, the huge jackal there spends most of its time dancing rather than actively chasing the protagonist, whom I named Revi after myself. Revi can thrust and swing a sword, but not do much else.

The game wastes no time directing the protagonist either; after that fight, he's immediately told by his dying friend about how Mana is in danger and how he must go inform Bogard about it. One quick arena match later, he escapes, and is set free.

In a manner of speaking, that is. The evil imperial castle is atop a huge cliff, he can't quite get anywhere actually.

So he chooses to eavesdrop on the evil emperor and his aide, Julius. They talk about how they're stymied by a tall waterfall, and how some girl shall let them through.

His cover is blown quite quickly afterwards, and the Dark Lord sends him hurtling down the cliff!

Fortunately, since this is a video game, Revi survives the fall, and in pretty good condition, even. The game would be quite short otherwise.

NOW he's free. Kind of. He's heavily limited by water bodies, can't scale cliffs, and can't cross any solid natural obstacles, but at least he isn't confined to the evil cliff of evil castle anymore. In other words, this is where the intro ends and the "real" game begins.

I must now mention that the game does have two really handy features - it can be saved anywhere, and it has a map marking Revi's current position and the location of towns. Since every space is exactly the same length and breadth, this makes it so that the map can be easily read, and there's little room for confusion.

Revi fights through some unremarkable monsters, passes through some unremarkable screens, and ends up at our first town, Topple. Which is itself also unremarkable, as the townsfolk mostly just prattle on about how the evil emperor is evil, how he plans to use a girl to get to the Mana tree, and how the tree protects them from evil, somehow.

Except for this lady. She bluntly mocks Bogard for not being a gallant Mana knight anymore, and it's bizarre enough and abrupt enough to be funny.

The town, of course, also has all of the traditional RPG amenities, as in, an item shop that sells various cures, an armory that sells equipment too pricey for Revi currently, and an inn that bizarrely heals him to full with a good night's rest. All of these are served by dancing turbaned men, who will later be collectively given the name of Mr. Moti in future games.

No, I don't know why he dances or wears a turban, nor why he has many clones of himself. It's one of those weird RPG cliches that the game chooses to make a spin on, and it adds a little more flavor to what would otherwise be very drab and typical activities.

Soon, Revi runs into more plot; a girl shrieking for help and spinning in place! He easily defeats the enemies around, and then checks on her and the boy lying next to her.

He is immediately "rewarded" by being saddled with escorting her to Wendel, and making her meet Bogard. Hey, at least the two were heading to the same place anyway, so he won't have to make any diversions. She introduces herself as Luna, the second name I had entered on the naming screens. This is clearly setting her up to be very important, despite her unassuming appearance here.

Luna doesn't fight, and has very rudimentary pathfinding, but every time Revi "ASK"s her, she heals him for free. Weird romantic implications aside, this makes the rest of the surrounding regions quite a bit easier, especially since the enemies don't really improve much. Two additional enemy types show up, and they fly and bounce instead of simply walking around. This doesn't help them enough, they still die too quickly to be a threat.

Sometime during all of this, Revi levels up. Level ups let me pick which of the four stats to boost. As far as I can tell, Power is tied to attack power, Wisdom to MP, Stamina to HP, and Will to some mysterious thing I don't know about. It's fairly simplistic, but it's nice to see it exist, I always like having options in my RPGs. For this playthrough I think I'll do a "balanced" build, but feel free to offer suggestions on building him.

After running into a blocked cave, Revi and Luna head westwards and finally visit the man near the waterfalls, Former Sir Bogard. This will be enough for today, while this is still "early" in the game I think I've given a decent glimpse of it in this post alone.

Next time, we talk to a non gallant Bogard and get a cave unsealed, maybe.

Next: Part 2: Axes and Spooks