Should have made it sooner

Honestly after sinking 20+ hours In on this game I’ve really come to enjoy the touch to move feature and auto battle. I think the touchpad or a controller just takes too much time and sure it’s classic and you’d feel like you are playing an old school game but these features are great for someone with a bad attention span like myself who gets tired of turn based combat. I am on a journey to beat each Final Fantasy in order and I’m very glad to have played this pixel remastered edition. It’s not my first time playing FFI but it is my first time beating the game and I do believe it was those features that sold it for me. I’ll be back to write a review on FFII when I’ve beaten it!

Better than I expected

I usually play the original versions of Final Fantasy games (including FF1) so I can have the same experience I remember when I played the games back when they were new. I've avoided purchasing this version of FF1 for years mainly due to the negative reviews. I thought I would be disappointed in it. I finally bought FF1 while it was on sale and I am very happy that I did as the game is much better than the reviews make it sound. I appreciate the quality of life improvements a lot. A couple of big ones: In the original FF1 you have virtually no extra inventory space for weapons and armor and when you target an enemy and it dies your characters do not automatically target the next enemy, you simply lose your turn. These are both fixed in this version. I also appreciate the flexibility of having the option to use the touch screen to interact with menus and I like auto-battle (which just repeats the last command you gave each character). Auto-save and quick-save are also much appreciated for someone playing on their phone. Overall, this is a worthwhile improvement to FF1 and I am enjoying having the game in my pocket so I can slowly re-play it whenever I have a bit of time. Highly recommended.

Missing Some Key Items

I do like the tap to move feature and moving diagonally. Seeing your position on the map as you move about is handy, too. Being able to boost your exp or GP up to 4x from each battle is great as is making these increase by 0x if you so choose. Turning off random encounters completely is a nice option. It’s worth noting that the more rare monsters like Tyrannosaur, Basilisk, Ochre Jelly, Iron Golem, etc. seem to appear more frequently. Even Warmech has popped up faster in my play throughs. The tweaks in graphics are just fine, but I really the magic effects—those are a big deal. The music has improved, too. However, I truly enjoyed the bonus dungeons from the old version and am seriously disappointed they are missing from this release. Also, it seems you can’t move more than about 25 paces before a monster encounter. I remember going through an entire floor of a dungeon without an encounter and it feels this new version isn’t as random. I wonder how many random drops are left out as I have been unable to find the Deathbringer sword. Finally, there is no peninsula of power and no way of switching the magic to the mana system. This means you will never be able to cast more than 9 spells for each level. I find myself playing the old version more than this one.

Pure Magic

Thank you so much to everyone who made this game a reality. I love everything about Final Fantasy games, the stories, the music, the emotional feelings the games evoke… everything. I will play Final Fantasy for the rest of my life. Thank you so much for these games. As far as this version goes if I could change anything about the game it would be to make the status effects on enemies more obvious. Some effects are obvious like when an enemy is confused they will be backwards. However when an enemy is asleep or has dark there are no signifiers. I also believe the sleep status effect on enemies should last longer so that a Saboteur play style is more viable. Thank you again to everyone at Square Enix who works hard to make these games for all of us to enjoy ☺️

Not how to do a remake

This is my third time attempting to do a review for this game going into details about what’s wrong with it. And it keeps ending before I can finish. So I’m gonna enter it little bits at a time and hopefully I’ll get it all in. This proves to me the developers know they made a lazy job with this. So if it doesn’t feel complete check back later. I’ll be sure to explain the problems clearly and easily. Break down: I played the original game so I know it was meant to be VERY hard. The game did not hold your hand in anyway. You did not know which class could use which weapons or armor. Spells had status effects you had to pay attention to. Monsters also may have had status effects or symbols you had to learn. The best was the Black Belt. We’re a player would notice that he would never hit hard however he would hit a lot of times. Figuring out how to get the most punches out of him while also making them the most was part of the fun of this game.

Great Game!

Played and beat the first one. I notice someone else saying something like “if you knew the pc version had controller then you should have gotten that one instead of crying about the mobile one” . Well I will say this, ALL the articles and previews of the game stated controller support and did not differentiate which version. There are games on the App Store that have controller support but don’t state it so people take the chance and download it and then get screwed over, I really don’t think is is right and it is misleading. Other than that the mobile controls are definitely better than the mobile version before this and not bad at all to be honest and the game itself is fantastic. Just bring controller support at some point

STILL no controller support

This is a beautiful remastering of the series. I sat down to play for a bit, turned on and connected my controller (PS4), loaded the game and... STILL no controller support. I realize that Square Enix wasn't really maintaining all of the previous core FF games on iOS (as much effort was clearly put into them when they were first released). But once this "remastered" versions started coming out, I assumed that they would engineer them to be the best they could be. I love using a controller for iOS games where they make sense. It makes perfect sense in this game. I equally hate when a game that clearly needs controller support doesn't prove it. I've read through the SDK. It isn't that hard to add. I am not sure how Square Enix still sees it as acceptable to offer the Final Fantasy games without controller support, but it has really reduced my expectations for this new line of remastered games - to the point where I don't really want to purchase any more than this first one until controller support is added. Note: I own ALL of the previously released core iOS Final Fantasy games and planned to purchase all of these as well. Really disappointed, but still leaving this more than one star since the game itself is truly gorgeous.

Modern take to a classic

Having played the original Final Fantasy on my NES as a kid, I never found the other modern reincarnations to be satisfactory. This game is a fresh take on the classic, bringing a welcome modern twist to this sprite-filled classic. Most notable are the spell casting animations and cleaned up sprites/tiles, made for vibrant modern displays instead of CRTs. Spell names were modernized to be more like recent (post FFX) games. The controls aren’t terrible but they are clunky. I wouldn’t consider this a deal breaker, but it does detract from the feel of the game as it sometimes feels like you’re steering a boat. Overall I really enjoyed this game to fill the boredom of some summer flights. I recommend it.

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