Wasn't it supposed to be the final one?

Gotta love pessimism. If I recall correctly, Squaresoft was on the verge of going out of business in the mid to late 1980's, so they assumed that the RPG they were working on was going to be their last. As a result, they cleverly named it Final Fantasy. And wouldn't you know it? The game sold better than hotcakes. Maybe it was the catchy title? I certainly can attest that any pessimism so far on my part has not resulted in my having made millions of dollars.

Oh well, at least I got to play this great classic. In fact, I seem to replay this classic on a regular basis for some odd reason. I have probably played through the original Final Fantasy game 5-10 times, the playstation remake once, and now I've just started the Gameboy Advance remake entitled Dawn of Souls. That means by the time I finish Dawn of Souls, I'll have finished this game anywhere from 7-12 times. Seeing as I didn't own a Nintendo (or any other console that this game was made for) until the age of 10 and as I am 24 at the time of this writing, that's a 14 year window that I've been playing and replaying this game in. On average, I've played this game anywhere between once every year to once every two years. That's pretty scary.

Admittedly, it's not that long of a game, but the graphics are far from spectacular, ditto for the music, plus with the mindless level ups required as per the unwritten rules of console RPG-making seemingly state, I don't logically understand the appeal. Yet I might be on my 12th time through.

At least I have an excuse this time. A friend of mine is playing this for the first time, so I figured I play as well (that whole peer pressure thing works wonders I tell you). Also, there have been some really neat changes from the previous versions to this version. One of the most important changes is the magic system. For those who may be unaware, you used to have a maximum of 8 spell points for each of the 8 levels of magic. Every spell cost a spell point from its own level, and points could not be converted from one level to another. Now you have MP and each spell costs a different amount of MP. There are still 8 levels of spells, but magic levels are now unlocked at specific experience levels. Another huge change is that there are new dungeons to explore and new items to find. In my opinion, it's worth playing again. It's like the time I played Link's Awakening on Gameboy, only to replay its reincarnation Link's Awakening DX not too long after just because it had a new dungeon.

I guess another big reason I play this game again and again is to try out different parties. Between fighter (now warrior), thief, black belt (now monk), red mage, white mage, and black mage, there are plenty of combinations to try.

This time, I decided to try a party of four white mages. I'm starting to regret that decision. I never thought a game could be this tedious. After I got the boat, I found the natural offense and defense of the white mage was just awful. At least with every other class, the fights were over quickly. Admittedly, I can cast ruse (now blink) on my characters a few times to make them all but invincible to physical attacks, but actually beating the enemies was like breaking down a brick wall with a chisel. The Astos fight was ridiculous. He couldn't hurt me at all, while I couldn't do more than 10 damage per round or so to him with each character (though I usually did 1 damage). And he's got over 400 HP...

And by the way, I also hear they made the thief significantly better so I guess I'll be playing through yet another time...