I finally was able to finish the game that started it all. As Ive been playing so many of the games i have never gotten to play one game has always seem to allude me. that game would be Final Fantasy i recently came across a psp again at the swap meet and found the game along side it. The Final Fantasy series had crazy success and that would all be thanks to the very first game released in Japan on December 18 1987. Final Fantasy was released at a time where Square faced bankruptcy and had trouble finding its foothold in the gaming market. Due to the success of the Dragon Warrior series on the NES Square saw there was an opening for RPGs and gave the green light to Hironobu Sakaguchi to create his idea for a vast open world fantasy game.With the help of many other great Square employees including famed music composer Nobou Uematsu and the artist that would breathe life into the Final Fantasy series for years to come Yoshitaka Amano. Together they would go on to make decades worth of amazing games. 

 Final Fantasy begins with the prophecy that four warriors of light will one day restore balance to the now dark world that has been in place due to the four elemental crystals of earth, water, fire and wind they have become dark crystals and are slowly tearing the world apart. You start the game out with a fairy easy concept you take on missions on the quest to bring restore the crystals. Along the way you encounter various enemies from the un dead to dragons.The characters you choose from give you a wide array of strategy to use. Black mages,healers,fighters and thieves will make up the team and developing and gaining new magic works based on character level. The PSP version of Final Fantasy features upgraded character sprites and remixed music and also contains all the extra features from the Game boy Advance version of Dawn Of Souls. The game is great but one thing i would like to point out is the amount of grinding needed to be done to get new magic. I understand this is the very first game in the series but it still annoyed me that once you level up enough you must go back to a town that sells a particular magic you need and remember the other towns that sell the rest. This became a bit time consuming once you get level 7 and 8 magic spells as you gain levels a bit quickly towards the end. Random encounters are horrible and honestly take away from the experience from time to time.there were times i would take one step after a battle only to trigger another. There is a great variety of enemies to fight in the game with the beastiery listing around 200 to encounter this at least make the sometimes long winded and repetitive battles a little less boring. Besides all the bad things listed there is also a good list of good in the game. One thing is a good selection of armor and weapons with some giving you status effects and some that do more damage based on monster type.The simple story is great and doesnt become too complex time length for the game is around 20 hours which is not too long and not too short.

 If you have not ever played the original series you should pick up a copy as many of the original games 1-6 have ports on pretty much every platform including mobile devices like Apple and Android. Also the prices are very low for a physical copy so dont emulate! Im happy to finally play a game so deep rooted in legend and even though it may have some flaws without this game being released we would never have had the chance to play the amazing games to follow in the series. With a combined sales of 2 million copies worldwide it was very well done and planned for the time. 

Bonus Coins 7/10