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In 2024, I bought the newly released Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster bundle for Xbox Series X/S. It contains Final Fantasy I to VI, originally released on Nintendo's Family Computer ("Famicom") and Super Famicom in Japan, with some of them translated and released on the NES and SNES in North America.

I bought that collection because I don't think I had previously finished most of them. I remember finishing Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls on the Game Boy Advance. I played IV and VI on the SNES through rentals, so I never had the time to fully finish either from start to end in a single save file. I played most of the first half of VI on the iOS port, but as it was a 32-bit iOS app it was eventually de-listed from the store.

The Pixel Remaster series isn't reusing the enhanced graphics of those previous re-releases, nor does it have any of the "additional content" (in the form of optional dungeons and bosses near the end of the game) that previous re-releases added as an incentive to buy them. But then, the reworked graphics are better and still closely match the original designs, which, by the way, are bundled as extras. The remastered music is excellent, often recorded with live instruments, and while there is an option to revert to the original mixes, I really enjoyed the modern versions. The games also have "quality of life" enhancements that make those older games more accessible to modern players, like autosaves and speeding up battles.

So, I started playing each Final Fantasy game in that collection, in order. I thought that only those "2D retro" entries of Final Fantasy were widely released outside of PlayStation consoles, aside from a few that were released on PC, like the FF VII version I played a long time ago in 2014. I didn't notice that all the single-player "mainline" Final Fantasy games were eventually ported to Xbox One in one form or another between 2016 and 2019. Even XVI was only briefly exclusive to the PlayStation 5 and was then released on Xbox Series X/S last June.

Recently, there was a sale that heavily discounted all Final Fantasy games on Xbox, so I bought them all for less than what it would cost me to pre-order Grand Theft Auto VI.

I've just finished Final Fantasy V, but for this post I'll focus on the three games that were released on the Famicom.

Final Fantasy

• Original Release:
  • Family Computer: 1987 (Japan)
  • NES: 1990 (US)
• Version Played: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
  • Xbox Series X/S: 2024
• Time Played: 14 hours

The first game in the franchise, simply named Final Fantasy, is the closest to its original Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings roots. Like a D&D campaign, you have complete freedom to choose the character classes and names for your party members, but that also means that your characters don't participate much in the game's story. Speaking of which, the game's story is pretty thin, with most of it explained in "exposition dumps" near the end of the game, but it is unique (compared to Tolkien's work) and explains the game's title a little bit.

Its gameplay mechanics are the simplest in the series. By contrast, each entry tends to introduce its own unique "gimmick". Paradoxically, of the three that were translated and published by Nintendo in North America (this one, IV and VI, the latter two respectively renamed "II" and "III"), this is the most difficult one. This game was re-released dozens of times on multiple platforms, and this release, as part of the "Pixel Remaster", brings enough quality-of-life enhancements to make the difficulty acceptable to newcomers.

Even then, the game has a few annoyances. My biggest gripe is that, due to large distances to travel and unusually difficult random encounters, random exploration on the world map is almost discouraged. You can often feel stuck, not knowing where to go next or whether to dare explore around to figure it out. A rare NPC in a village can give you a vague hint as to where to go next, but in the early 1990s, I simply didn't have good enough English reading skills to read all that.

This game is still too early in the series to "feel" like a "proper" Final Fantasy game, at least with regard to the tropes you can expect from the series that separate it from simply mimicking D&D. Yet, it does introduce crystals and the main musical theme of the series, which plays during an incredible cold open that could have been the introduction to the entire franchise.

Final Fantasy II

• Original Release:
  • Family Computer: 1988 (Japan)
• Version Played: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
  • Xbox Series X/S: 2024
• Time Played: 22 hours

This game defined what makes a Final Fantasy game. Each entry in the series is a brand new story, while keeping some common themes from the previous games. This entry introduces a character named Cid and the Chocobo animals. Your playable characters are part of the story, with their own backstories and unique characteristics.

It is also the first game to introduce unique gameplay elements. When speaking with other characters, you can learn some special keywords that you can later mention to other characters to unlock new dialogue options. Some NPCs can accompany you, following you around like in Dragon Quest, though they don't yet participate in battles.

The biggest change is that it forgoes the character-wide experience-point ("XP") system, where gaining enough XP eventually raises a character’s level, permanently improving some of their statistics. Instead, each stat must be increased on its own, and even each type of equipment and magic spell must be individually leveled up. The internal values that keep track of each stat's progression are hidden. Magic spells are the exception, as they have a clear progression bar that increases each time you use them. Even the way each stat is increased is inconsistent: maximum hit points ("HP") and shields can be leveled up by being hit, maximum magic points ("MP") by using any kind of magic, agility by intentionally running away from battles, and so on. Many game guides recommend repeating those actions, including having party members hit each other, on the trust that some hidden progression number increases and will eventually increase your characters' statistics. I hated that gameplay mechanic. It was also used in Final Fantasy Legend II on the Game Boy, and it sucked there too. Luckily, that mechanic was never used again in the series, and some of the game rebalancing that was introduced in the various remakes of this game, including the Pixel Remaster, alleviates some of that unintuitive grind.

Final Fantasy III

• Original Release:
  • Family Computer: 1990 (Japan)
• Version Played: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster
  • Xbox Series X/S: 2024
• Time Played: 18 hours

This game introduces a job system that allows you to assign a job to each of your party's members and change it at will. Each job comes with its own unique abilities, and the job level impacts your stat progression when your character levels up. It has a strange mechanic where some jobs, beyond a certain job level, will have little to no impact on your character's stat progression when leveling up, forcing you to assign a different job to your character. While that might sound good "on paper", this mechanic is not well explained in-game, and if you're not careful, you could end up grinding levels with no change. Planning out job assignments and character progression using large tables and spreadsheets wasn't fun, to say the least.

It is also infamous for its lack of save points, especially near the end of the game. This isn't too much of a concern in Pixel Remaster, because it supports a "quick save" feature that lets you save at any location, but in the original Famicom game there is a section near the end of the game that lasts well over 5 hours without a save point, even in the best of conditions.

I just found the game too difficult, and its other elements, like the story, art and music, were just not good enough to compensate. It is the most difficult RPG I've played, mostly due to poor design decisions. Unless you're compelled to finish every Final Fantasy game, you can skip this one.

Published on August 1, 2026 at 13:55 EDT

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