2025 Special - Final Fantasy Adventure

Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden is about what you'd expect given the title. It's the humble beginnings of a franchise that would develop its world and characters over several installments. What started as essentially a spin-off of Square's most popular brand would eventually become a brand all its own, the Brand... of Mana. I've been a Secret of Mana fan since forever ago, so it was a real treat seeing all of the little references that would be expanded upon in future installments. Not to mention, there are a ton of enemies & bosses in Adventures of Mana that would be revisited in glorious 256 x 224 Super Nintendo resolution. If all these names weren't confusing enough, an entry titled Sword of Mana was released on the Game Boy Advance. From the jump, it's a modernized - by 2003 standards - take on the Game Boy original. I'm sure I'll get to it someday.

Didn't I fight this guy in the beginning of Secret of Mana?

For now, let's try to get on track for what is a surprisingly solid take on the Zelda formula. The hero, who like always, goes by the name of Larx, escapes the carnage of the arena but takes a nasty tumble down a waterfall. With sword in hand and courage in heart, he must take on scores of fell beasts, explore a multitude of dungeons, while utilizing both weapons and spells to solve puzzles. It's a remarkable adventure that doesn't wear out its welcome. The pacing is smooth and efficient, with a consistent rate of new areas and monsters to overcome. In fact, I'm pretty sure there isn't any backtracking. The game has aged a fair bit though. Not excessively, but noticeably. 

Noticeably aging isn't the worst thing to happen to a video game, but it can affect the player's enjoyment. The combat is fine. Not as refined as it could be, but serviceable 98% of the time. In those rare cases where it felt like your weapon didn't connect when you felt that it should, the consequences of that are nonexistent. More to the point, unless you're trying to speedrun, you'll never once face the possibility of death. The protagonist starts off meager, but upon level up, you can decide to push the bulk of your stat-gains into stamina. Before long, your hero becomes a brick shithouse, a shitting bricks house, a brick that shits houses, whatever. Point is, unless you do something wild like get turned into a moogle or run into lava repeatedly, Larx's HP will never reach a critical point. Healing spells are cheap, you can save anywhere, there's nothing to worry about on that front.

You'll obtain weapons for breaking rocks, cutting down trees, and crossing gaps.

The dungeons are the one aspect that has aged the most. The overworld is mostly linear, so you'll rarely struggle with the point A to point B navigating. The dungeons are a bit more complicated, and not in the fun way. First off, you'll want to stock up on mattocks & keys. You don't want to end up in a situation where you run out of either. The game tries to throw you a bone by having certain monsters drop these necessary items, but you might end up having to leave to restock. The problems here are twofold. Leaving a dungeon resets the in-game map. Worse, leaving the room resets any unlocked doors or holes you've bashed in the walls. I hate to make direct comparisons, but when you unlock a door or blow up a wall in The Legend of Zelda, it stays that way forever. The same convenience couldn't be extended to Final Fantasy Adventure. A shame, but I suppose that's just the nature of game development. Again, if you've got enough stock, then it's not too big an issue. 

Knowing which walls are of the breakable kind is another story I'm afraid. To its credit, the game provides subtle hints for most of them... most of them. Checking the map can also help, though most dungeons are typically too straightforward for players to develop suspicions that something is being hidden from them. Necessary traversal weapons are acquired between dungeons, so the only real incentive to explore is for the very slight possibility of a hidden piece of equipment. I'm fairly sure that these specials occasions happen less than five times throughout an entire play-through. A few end-game enemies drop rare armor, and that's rad. Altogether though, you're probably better off keeping a guide within arm's reach just so you don't find yourself running in circles. 

Still, aside from a couple potentially annoying instances, this is exactly the sort of breezy adventure you want after a stressful workday. Dealing with adversaries is no sweat, though they can cause any number of status effects. I mentioned that there's no threat of death and that remains the case, but there's fun in trying to avoid getting poisoned, moogled, turned to stone, etc. The near-constant supply of level-ups and armament upgrades are more than enough for your daily dopamine intake. Also, I can't think of anyone who'd turn down save-anywhere functionality.

It's a fine weekend game. All I need to say, really.

Before I forget, the reason the game looks so colorful here is because this is the Final Fantasy Adventure DX romhack. There's another hack called Legend of the Mana Sword that looks really good. Maybe one day I'll give that one a try.