Final Fantasy 1-3: A Retrospective
So, I'm going to lump these together. They are short games, they don't have a TON of meat to them, and I want to get them out of the way. I played the Pixel Remasters of all of the first 6 games, so keep that in mind.
Final Fantasy 1
This game is by no means bad it's just not exceptional in any way. This is maybe the 3rd time I've played it. It's short, and it sets up a lot of the Final Fantasy mainstays, of course. You create a party and choose their jobs/classes/whatever you want to call them. I believe my starting party was Fighter/Black Mage/White Mage/Thief? But don't hold me to that. There is a very basic "stop the big bad evil guy" plot. The magic system is simple, but works. It's incredibly short. I think I beat it in like 2 days.
The Good
The Combat: It's the standard jrpg formula, but you have to give them some credit for being pioneers in a lot of this. Each job has abilities that they can do that no one else can, and it's fun enough.
Magic: Because you buy new spells for each magic level, there is a good feeling of progression there.
In the end, this is basically D&D: And that's not bad. You go in with a party of 4 classes, you advance those classes, upgrade them at a certain point, beat the BBEG and save the world.
It's Short: It may not be the best RPG out there, but it's not going to take a lot of your time, and if you want to know where the series started, there are worse ways to spend a few hours.
The Bad
There's nothing really remarkable: This isn't BAD per se, it's just that playing this in retrospective means that you are left saying "why am I not playing a game that does this better?" This certainly wasn't the case when it was released. Then, it was really novel, but now, in 2026, looking at it as an option to play now, there are just better things to spend your time doing.
Final Fantasy 2
This is not a good game. I think a lot of people would grade this the worst of the bunch, it is certainly one of the weirdest. It's not a terrible game. It's not as bad as I feared going into this (at the time, I had never played this game to completion), but i was Square experimenting with a new formula (which they would eventually change and adopt for the SaGa system). As you use your stats, they level up. There's no exp, there's no levels, you just hit things, and your strength goes up. You get hit, your HP goes up, you block things, your evasion goes up. The story is... frankly forgettable, as in I don't remember anything about it at all, and it's only been a year. But this game wasn't exactly a struggle to get through, and like the first game, it's short.
The Good
It's Short: Even more so than the first game, this is an advantage. The story is not super engaging, the system is not super fun to play with, so the fact that you don't have to do so for very long means it ends before the novelty wears off too much.
It IS something new: This was only their second outing in this series, and they tried something completely different for it. They are far from the only ones to do this in the 80s (looking at you, Zelda), and it is worth giving credit for the kind of gutsy development decisions that we just don't see from AAA publishers anymore. The system isn't even THAT bad. It's intuitive enough, it's just not the most fun to play with, and it's SO different from the first game that it's kind of jarring.
The Bad
The Story: Honest to god, I do not remember one single plot element to this game. I can't remember the bad guy, I can barely remember the good guys. FF1's story isn't exactly the most memorable either, but this one really feels like it wasn't top of mind when making the game.
It's possible for the system to create some feelbads: As is the case with ALL "use it and get better at it" systems, if you decide to change course later, you are kind of stuck, and it's POSSIBLE, although not likely without trying, that you can get yourself in a really bad spot. For example, if you manage to get some REALLY good equipment early on and build up your evasion, you'll never build up your HP, so when something DOES hit you, it's going to hurt. That makes for a very steep correction that you need to go work on.
Final Fantasy 3
Probably the best of the lot. It's their first attempt at REALLY playing with the job system, unlocking new jobs as you go, playing around with various party compositions, and being able to change things up. It's a pretty fun time. They don't REALLY nail this concept for a few more games, but it takes what they did in FF1 and adds complexity, rather than just change for the sake of change. I actually had fun with this one, and I think it's the first time I get to REALLY say that in the series.
The Good
The Job System: We're getting somewhere now. We're seeing a preview of what will be a pretty standard series staple going forward (even if not always as obvious as it is here). Customization is something that I, personally, really enjoy out of my RPGs, and while FF2 sort of tried and failed at creating a customizable character experience, FF3 seems to be heading in the right direction but putting on SOME rails, but allowing you to choose the train.
Character Advancement: I mean this tags onto the job system, but I want to say that this is the first time where I felt like my characters were notably different and more powerful as I leveled them up, and I actually bothered to get them to max level before beating the game (I often do this. But I didn't bother in FF1, and that wasn't possible in FF2).
The Bad
It's still pretty stripped down: There's not as much meat here as in later games. This is to be expected, but again, looking at this as an option for a game to play right NOW, there are better choices out there.
It's Short: This time, this feels like a bad thing. The game was pretty fun, the job system has some meat to it, it would have been nice to gave a longer game to play around with that in.
The Story: It's still not super memorable. The JOB system is memorable, but the story not so much.






















