Final Fantasy Adventure: Conclusions

Jo, the Baby Tree of Mana!

I just beat the final boss of Final Fantasy Adventure who was sadly a bit of a joke. I don't know if it was my stat build or if I'd just figured out how to be awesome but basically I just had to stand around and mash attack in order to win. Here are my final thoughts on the game...


Keys are a real problem in the game. In two different dungeons near the end of the game I ran out of keys and was stuck with a locked door between me and the boss. Early game a lot of enemies dropped keys which got me into the habit of ignoring my key count. I even vendored some keys at one point because I was looting too many from the mobs. But dungeons went from being filled with guys who dropped keys to having maybe one enemy who might drop keys.

I certainly could have solved this problem by just going to a town and buying a lot of keys. I had limited inventory space but I ended the game with my bags full of elixirs that I didn't need to use so I could have afforded the space for a few more keys. I'd advise anyone playing this game to carry around 5 or so stacks of keys at all times. If I play again I know I will.


The puzzles were interesting the first couple times around but it felt like they ran out of ideas and just recycled the same tricks over and over. Needing to bust down a wall to make a secret passage is fine and all, but having to poke every wall of every dungeon in case it's the way I need to go got tiring. I eventually resorted to a description of the last couple dungeons on gamefaqs instead of bothering poking walls. Needing to turn enemies into snowmen to use as weights on pressure plates is the same thing. Really neat the first time. Interesting when it comes up a couple more times as they keep you on your toes. But it felt overdone by the end. I eventually put a few points into wisdom in order to have more mp to cast ice spells for these puzzles.


The blood sword is stupid. It lets you heal when you do damage with sword swings but it seemed like the numbers were off. The big scary dragons at the end of the game would hit me for 1 with their fire and maybe 6 with their claws. I had 503 health. Each time I attacked I gained 13 health. So as long as I hit the dragon once for every 2 times he hit me I'd stay at full and he'd be dying. Follow the boss around mashing attack? Doesn't seem like a very deep strategy but it worked.


Some enemies were immune to physical attacks. Others were immune to magical attacks. So I was forced to constantly switch between my thunder spear and my morning star if I wanted to keep killing enemies. This required a lot of menu interactions which was annoying. Secret of Mana improved on this game greatly with the advent of the menu ring system. Hit one button to show a ring with all your weapons on it. Use the d-pad to rotate the ring so the weapon you want is on top. Hit one button. It also has item rings and magic rings which really worked.


The music was better than the music in the Final Fantasy Legend games I've played thus far but it was still a little tinny. I'm pretty sure the blame for this is with the Game Boy's primitive sound capabilities but that doesn't make my head hurt less. Having to keep the sound on so I could find the hidden walls was annoying and is part of what led to turning to gamefaqs for help.


The plot existed and made sense. There was an obvious villain that you grew to hate as the game progressed, you had a rough idea what he was trying to do, and the stories of the main characters wrapped up in the ending.


Overall this was a pretty good action-RPG game. You can tell it was made 20 years ago for old hardware but it was fun. I don't think it was better than any of the core games in the series thus far but it beats out the Legend games thus far for sure.

Final Fantasy Adventure: Traces of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy Legend games have pretty much nothing at all to do with the Final Fantasy franchise. They were originally released in Japan with another name and were rebranded when released in North America. They weren't designed with any features of Final Fantasy universes in mind and as a result don't really feel like Final Fantasy games. That doesn't make them bad by any stretch, don't get me wrong. It just means they are really Saga games.

Final Fantasy Adventure, on the other hand, was developed as a Final Fantasy game. An action-RPG game instead of a straight up RPG, to be fair. And one with its own very distinct world. But it was still created as a Final Fantasy game and there have been a few things I've noticed so far that make you really think you're playing a Final Fantasy game. Here's what I've noticed so far...

First and most importantly to me is the existence of chocobos in the world. One of the adventuring companions you can find in your travels is a chocobo. When you ask the chocobo for help you ride him around which lets you travel the overworld map at a fast speed while ignoring all enemies. It even plays chocobo riding music when you do!



At one point in the game your chocobo saves your life but gets seriously injured in the process. Fortunately for him you happen to be in a town with a mad scientist who uses machinery to upgrade your chocobo into a -- wait for it -- chocobot! Which lets your chocobo run across water! I guess since the Game Boy wasn't in colour they couldn't just have you find a blue chocobo like in later games...

The next thing that brings a Final Fantasy feel to the game is that some of the NPC sprites are essentially from the original Final Fantasy game. I've run into white mages and red mages thus far and there's really no mistaking them for anything else. One of your companions is even a red mage and he casts fireballs randomly in combat to help you out.

Finally the enemies can apply a wide variety of debuffs when they hit you. Most of these are standard RPG fare... Blind, poison, stun... But one of them, the most crippling of all, is to turn you into a moogle! This prevents you from attacking (though you can still move) and lowers your defense to nothing. I go from being able to take a couple hundred hits without dying to getting killed in 3 hits. It's brutal! I actually think this was the first game to have moogles in it (FFIII on the DS had moogles but I think they were added in with the port and weren't in the original game).

Pretty much all that's missing is a guy named Cid, an airship, summoned monsters, and maybe 4 elemental crystals!

Final Fantasy Adventure: Leveling System

When I think of the action-adventure genre I tend to think of the Zelda series of games. You wander around with a variety of weapons beating up a variety of monsters and solving some puzzles. Maybe you can get better by getting better gear or some extra health but that's about it. So I was a little surprised when, after killing a bunch of monsters, I leveled up.

I did some reading (on Wikipedia, mind) and it claims there's a different genre entirely called action-RPG. Which is basically the same thing as action-adventure with a leveling system. I guess in retrospect I shouldn't have been surprised at all. What is Dead Rising, after all? Or Devil May Cry, which I even mentioned a couple days ago!

At any rate when I leveled up in Final Fantasy Adventure I had a choice to make when I leveled up. There are apparently four stats in the game (stamina, power, wisdom, and will) and you get to choose a focus stat each time you level up. You gain 4 stats each level - always a fixed 2-1-1-0 split with the 2 and 0 determined by the stat you choose.

Stamina - 2 stamina, 1 power, 1 will, 0 wisdom
Power - 2 power, 1 stamina, 1 will, 0 wisdom
Wisdom - 2 wisdom, 1 stamina, 1 will, 0 power
Will - 2 will, 1 stamina, 1 will, 0 power

So you're guaranteed to gain stamina and will every level. You can only get one of power or wisdom each level. I found all this out with some trial and error in game, but the question then was what do these stats actually do? There didn't seem to be anything in game that would tell me, but I did my first 14 levels without looking things up. My best guesses for what the stats do:

Stamina - increases maximum health. I knew this for sure since my max health got bigger when I took a stamina level.
Power - increases physical damage done. I knew this was pretty likely since I could start killing mobs in 1 hit instead of 2 after leveling up. That could have been a function of just level but it seems more likely to be based on power.
Wisdom - I never took a level in wisdom and my maximum mana never went up. I'd guess the two are linked.
Will - I have no idea here. My guess would be it makes your spells more powerful.

I also definitely took less damage as I leveled up so some stat likely impacts damage taken. Which one? Stamina seems likely but I could see will doing it too. And maybe even power!

At any rate, after 10 power levels and 4 stamina levels I decided to turn to the internet and find out what the stats do. Power does exactly what I thought it did. Stamina too, except it also impacts damage taken. Wisdom increases maximum mana and the potency of spells. Will impacts how fast that silly little bar on the bottom of the screen fills up.

What does that bar do? I didn't really know before looking that up either. From Secret of Mana I remembered that you could charge up a weapon to do a special attack with it. This bar fills constantly and is depleted when you hit the attack button so it seemed likely to be powering up my attacks. Once I even threw my axe across the screen which came as a bit of a shock. (And meant I couldn't attack until it fell off the edge of the screen which sucked!) It turns out that's precisely what the bar does. Attacking with a weapon is different based on weapon type and how much charge you have. None of the abilities seemed terribly interesting and the axe one actually seemed detrimental! The sword one looked like it could have uses if only because the default sword attack is so abysmally bad. Part of me wants to experiment with the sword attacks but I actually vendored my starting sword already. (I hope this game isn't like the Manders RPG!)

At any rate, now that I know what the stats do, I'm quite happy with my stat up choices. Will seems like it actively hurts the way I play so I don't want to pick it. Picking wisdom means I don't get power (and vice versa) so it feels like I should focus on one or the other but not both. I haven't seen a reason to cast a spell that wasn't cure and even then I'm selling off consumable healing items so I don't need more mana to cast more heals. So I mostly just want stamina to survive more and power to beat down harder!

Final Fantasy Adventure: First Thoughts

I've put a few hours into Final Fantasy Adventure so far and I'm enjoying the game to this point. It definitely feels like Secret of Mana. I've found a wide variety of weapons which are used to overcome different world obstacles. The axe chops down trees. The sickle cuts tall grass. There's a grappling hook style thing which can be used to fly across pits assuming you find a post to latch onto. There have also been AI controlled helpers. Not to nearly the extent as in SoM (where they were actually fully formed characters who could be controlled by other people) but they're still hanging around and helping out. The game even starts in a similar matter with a fall from the waterfall near the mana tree.

It's not all roses, however. You get to equip two items. One of your many weapons and a miscellaneous item of some kind. Candy to restore health. A rock chopping item to chop rocks. A key to open a locked door. Or you can equip a spell in that slot. In order to change which item you're using you have to open the main menu, select item, find the item you want in the list, and select it twice. Then if I want to use the item I need to hit another button in the main game. So if I want to heal myself with a candy I need to hit at least 5 buttons and some directional presses on the item menu. If I want to open a locked door I need to do the same thing. For keys in particular it feels like the game should just know I have keys in my inventory and automatically use one when I walk into a locked door.

Items don't stack and I only have 16 item slots in my inventory. Right now 6 of my 16 slots are holding cure potions that I will likely never use. In the last dungeon I had to discard probably a dozen things in order to open treasure chests filled with stuff I then threw away so I could open more chests.

Finally the game only allows character movement in a cardinal direction. The monsters can move diagonally but I cannot. I think this is mostly a problem because I've never really played adventure games with this movement restriction so I keep wanting to react in ways that can't happen. I noticed that same thing when I tried to play the original Zelda recently. It frustrates my mind a little to think I can do something and then fail to  do so due to the controls.

In all it feels like the interface for the game isn't up to snuff but that shouldn't actually be too surprising when dealing with a 20 year old hand held game. I'm pretty sure I can block the annoyances out and enjoy the game. But I must say... I now have a real craving to play Devil May Cry!

Final Fantasy Adventure

I was doing a little preliminary reading on this game (mostly to see where it fit in the timeline) and discovered something very interesting about this franchise. The Final Fantasy Legend franchise was actually first released in Japan as the Saga franchise and was rebranded when it was released over here but actually had nothing to do with Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy Adventure is the first game in the Mana franchise but was actually originally produced with the Final Fantasy name in Japan.

The first sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure? Secret of Mana. One of the best games of all time! Secret of Mana was a Zelda style adventure game with 3 characters. Normally the second two would be AI controlled (with very limited programming available from a menu) but you could actually use the Super Multitap to hook 3 controllers up to the SNES and have all 3 characters controlled by players. I can still remember my brother playing as the little red haired dude and wanting the axe. (You had one copy of each weapon type so only one person could use a given weapon.)


I had actually played a game in the Saga series: Romancing Saga. I only played it for a brief period of time before turning it off and not going back. I don't remember why I soured on it but I just couldn't get into it for some reason. Maybe that explains why I haven't been a huge fan of the FFL games. They just aren't my style of game? On the other hand I really loved Secret of Mana so I now have high hopes for Final Fantasy Adventure.

I must say I didn't know that Secret of Mana actually is descended from the original Final Fantasy. From the same company, sure, but not that it had such direct ties. Cool!