Those were the inspirations for most early jrpgs. FF is hardly unique in that. Same applies to Dragon Quest and that came earlier.
The original Final Fantasy, released in Japan on the Famicom in 1987, is not part of the JRPG subgenre, which didn't even exist yet. In fact, it's based more directly on D&D/AD&D than nearly all Western-made CRPGs, evident not only from Amano's concept art but also from the classes (which are effectively the fighter, monk, thief, cleric, magic-user, and multi-classed fighter/cleric/mage), the spell system (a Vancian magic system only slightly modified from D&D/AD&D), the actual spells available (e.g. 3rd level black mage spells include
I was vaguely aware that Wizardry was the biggest inspiration for JRPGs because of the fact that Japan is the one still gradually making Wizardry branded games, but the feel of playing this (The pixel remaster at least) feels more Might and Magic to me just because of how smooth it is although that could be due to the pixel remaster, I haven't once felt like I needed to stop and grind but part of that could be because it's my first time playing so I'm crawling over everything to find towns and dungeons. Not that M&M influenced FF, that's just the closest comparison that comes to mind as I'm playing. Lacking JRPG cliches is also probably true, they're acting like your party is a bunch of kids or teenagers but since the story's so light that's a bit up in the air, and all the other cliches have been squarely in generic D&D-land.
The spell names are rejiggered in the pixel remaster some. The AOE fire and lightning spells are... uh... Something like "Firaga" and "Thundra", and the 4th level AOE cold spell is "Blizzara". They did have things like duergar mountain where the dwarves lives, too. The mind flayers might've been renamed in the pixel remaster too just to cover their asses since they're "Piscodemons" when they show up, though it does seem like they probably have special psionic damage since it appears they tend to do full damage to my fighter when they hit him. Also going to call that silver armlet I just put on my black mage bracers of armor.
Squaresoft/Nintendo had already altered the names of several monsters in the original 1990 English-language release of Final Fantasy, obviously in an attempt to avoid any lawsuits from TSR. Mind Flayers were called Sorcerers (the same graphic with different colors was used for Piscodemons which were renamed Wizards), Otyughs and Neo-Otyughs were renamed Ocho/Ochu and Naocho/Neochu, the Marilith was renamed Kary (possibly intended to be Kali, as in the Hindu deity), and the Beholder was not only renamed Evil Eye but even had a new graphic created for it:
Huh, the evil eye sprite's arguably better than the beholder. Beholder's more obviously D&D but evil eye's nicer as a creepy monster, probably because they've got such a goofy smile on the beholder. Not sure if the enemies are all renamed in the pixel remaster then if the piscodemons are different from mind flayers. I know in the concept art area it's still labeled mind flayer/marilith/etc but I haven't reached them yet.
Honestly the ease of it is a significant part of my enjoyment. The marsh cave ate into my resources a good deal but I did most everything in my first pass, only came back and cleared up the locked rooms and a few more treasure chests once I got the key. Hope you're exaggerating with plural dozens of trips back to town, a single dozen would likely break me. Reminds me a little of the Bard's Tale remasters where you level up roughly twice as fast as the original just to minimize scooting back and forth in dungeons to grind and I can't say I missed it. Bard's Tale remaster did let you play with most of the new quality of life/ease of play stuff disabled but it sounds like there are some rebalance mods for FF to do much the same. Running back to town's one thing, but good lord if you had to do it THAT much.
That's good to hear. I'm definitely squarely in the casual camp as far as these are concerned.
Did like that silly twist. For a game with essentially zero story it was a hoot to see the first dinky boss you smacked made a time loop to fuck everything up. Was also kind of funny how much of a jump in difficulty chaos was compared to everything else, at most I'd wipe once or twice on other bosses but chaos took me a solid number of tries to finally nail, though I had some weirdness like if I cast protection from fire or cold it would only apply to my fighter and "Miss" the rest of the party, but other party-wide buffs like invisibility or defense would apply properly. Never figured out what was up with that. Fun stuff though, FF2's on the agenda.
Well, technically the ending hints that a side-effect of the loop/paradox being broken is that Garland never becomes corrupted, never kidnaps the princess and waits for the Warriors of Light in the new timeline.
So even HE became a *friend along the way*.
Depends on your party makeup, but I don't see any reason you'd need to go through the dungeon multiple times. Maybe 2 or 3 if you run out of healing and spells and need to replenish. This is a problem with lots of dungeons in the game though. The main problem with Marsh Cave is the Wizard battle. You might just get 2 in which case it's easy, or you might get something like 5 (not sure what the max is) then it's hard because they hit pretty hard and can wipe your party easily. If you have black belts you probably want to level them to a point where they do more damage with their fists than nunchucks. Can't recall what level that is though.
Different wizards (Think they were called dark wizards) were a bit of a pain later on since they had a save or die spell in rotation and one that would even hit the entire party. I remember one fight against them where it took out 3 of 4 party members in one cast. Fortunately you get protection rings fairly late in the game which cover your ass against save or die shit. Also bit similar to the enemies with petrification attacks.
I think they brought over the GBA version where he has 20k hp since you had access to a number of bonus dungeons with high end loot, NES health was either 2k or 4k
Oh, he was absolutely 20k or more. My fighter alone was often hitting over 1k per attack after buffs (Jack himself up with giant's gloves and then BM casting haste on him) and it still took a significant amount of chopping to get him down. I guess that explains it though, if that particular version was balanced for higher level and better loot.
From what I remember, agility increases somewhat randomly but is affected by how often a character is attacked and his evasion. Wearing lighter armor will boost evasion, and swapping that character to the first position in the party will result in him being attacked more often.
