In Final Fantasy, players must choose between white magic (CURE and HARM) and black magic (FIRE and LIT). White magic is the specialty of White Mages, but lower-level White Magic is also useful. The most obvious and useful white magic spells are the cure and heal families, which and the Life spells will probably be used more than all other spells combined.
The best spells for white magic users include Fast, Cure1-4, Fire2-3, Ice2-3, Lit2-3, Life, and mute. Every other spell isn’t really needed as long as you get these. For black magic users, consider FOG, ALIT, LAMP, and AFIR.
In Final Fantasy, players can choose from eight different levels of each type, each with four spells. There are four level 1 Black Magic spells and four level 2 White Magic spells. A monster identification chart is available to help players identify monsters, weapons, armor, and spells.
There are two types of magic: White magic and Black magic. Learning magic involves buying magic from white or black magic shops in towns. Each level of spells has four different spells to choose from, but players can only choose three spells/level. Red Mages can choose between Black and White magic, but are limited to choosing one type.
A comprehensive listing of the white and black magic spells available in Final Fantasy can be divided into three parts. The first part lists how many times a spell is taken by a party member, which can vary from 0 to 3. The best spells for white magic users include CURE, FOG, RUSE, FOG, ALIT, LAMP, and AFIR.
📹 #FinalFantasy Final Fantasy NES – ULTIMATE GUIDE – ALL Treasures, MAPS, ENEMY DATA, and MORE!
Episode 59 Final Fantasy is one of the biggest video game franchises of all time, featuring dozens of games, spinoffs, and even …
📹 Final Fantasy NES – In-depth Class Analysis & Tier List
Understanding bugs: 0:20 Class analysis: 3:22 Tier List: 9:58 Suggested Parties: 13:52 In this video I will do an in-depth analysis …
Ever wonder why some NES games asked you to hold RESET while powering OFF? It was to keep the CPU from writing bad code to your save game corrupting it. It could sometimes happen because the circuitry that prevents it was left out due to cost saving measures and the NES wasn’t designed from the start for saving games.
When I was a kid I found the Nintendo Power strategy guide for Final Fantasy at a thrift store. I didn’t even know what FF was, but still bought it and was fascinated. I read through that thing over and over, until I had to have the actual game. I loved it, and was a diehard FF for many years after. Still have that guide to this day.
I think it’s worth mentioning that when you are leveling up at the secret level up zone at the finger, when you save the game with a tent, if you turn the game off rather than press reset, it resets the encounter RNG so your first fight will always be zombulls/trolls. Same with water fights, your first fight will always be kyzokus. Probably the best farming tip I figured out when playing this game as a kid.
About those weapons which are supposed to be effective against particular enemy types like the dragon sword and the were sword; these items are bugged in the NES version and don’t do any bonus damage. Some other versions of the game, like the Wonder Swan Color, don’t suffer this bug. Like so many Square games, FF has a plethora of bugs.
Interesting party choice. I always swore on Fighter-Monk-RM-WM until I kept getting great armor with no one to use it. A secondary Fighter solves that problem, plus you can give one of them the Excalibur and the other the Masamune, which the Monk doesn’t really need and is kind of pointless in the hands of a mage. This frees up your casters to heal, buff, or use offensive spells, and Fade is a respectable white magic equivalent to Nuke. A Zeus gauntlet and Heal staff keeps your white mage relevant, and the Thor hammer makes them a decent melee fighter. But I might give your party a try to see if it’s any different. Also? SWORD CHUCKS YO! Someone had to say it.
What if I told you I LOVE the first 10 to 15 minutes of these articles. The intro and history and education of the games is what I find great about these articles. I usually don’t have time to watch the whole thing but damn do I love the first 20 minutes. Can we have gaming history? The way you present it is phenomenal.
For a game that came with a map of all the dungeons, a list of all weapons, armor, items, and spells, a bestiary and an instruction booklet that outlined how to get through the first half of the game, this game was MEGA tough to get through as a kid. I remember getting the class change and feeling like a could rule the world. Beating the game was something I did later after the Super Nintendo had come out. Cheers to you man for even playing this long ass game let alone breaking it down in such a wonderful fashion. Love it!
2:51:33 Earth cave, treasure hunting… you purposely trigger the guarded battle against the Sphinx, and also show us how to navigate around to avoid that battle, but you didn’t open the treasure chest the SPHINX was guarding lol!!! Hope you can somehow edit/add that in for part 2 for next week (Or make it part of the blooper reel 😆)
The beauty of the first Final Fantasy game, is that as much of a mess of a game as it is, it still gives the player so much choice in how they play and customize their run. You can legit beat this game with any party dynamic. I did a random-party playthrough, where I rolled 2 Red Mages and 2 Black belts. Very interesting to see what parts were more difficult and which parts were less difficult
I love how they named the random pirates “kyzoku” in the English translation. It’s the Japanese word for pirate (well, kaizoku is) but their name in Japanese was just the English “pirates” written in kana. The pirates you fought in Pravoka were called “kaizoku” in Japanese instead. Basically they just flipped them around. That’s some good localisation right there… and to think Tom Slattery and Koji Fox weren’t at the company yet.
Chapter 2: on original NES, if you do hard reset after saving and then head straight into ocean you can always get Pirates who give TONS of money — something to consider if you end up buying silver swords in chapter 3 EDIT: see why you didn’t, almost forgot about that place (being vague to avoid spoilers) That’s a MUCH better idea then the one I had so long as your team can handle (your’s probably can.)
I loved Final Fantasy as a kid (and still do). It was the second RPG I played, the third game that I have ever played, and my favorite NES game. I remember back when I was 5 years old getting lost after crossing the bridge next to Castle Coneria and never getting past that, because the battery inside the cartridge was dead so my progress would always get wiped when I shut off my brother’s NES. It took me until 2004 when Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls came out to revisit the game and finally beat Final Fantasy with a Knight, White Wizard, Ninja and Black Wizard. Good times.
What if I told you I just started playing this a couple of weeks ago on my classic? And what if I told you that this guide will be very helpful in guiding my play through? I’m just about to watch your episode but I’m assuming it will be pretty helpful since most of the spells are broken and there are a few bugs in the NES release and you will provide a pretty intuitive guide for completion of this game as you have provided in all the other titles you have covered in the past. Your articles are most entertaining while also being informative. You manage to balance surface level entertainment of a “Let’s Play” with gameplay strategies of a walkthrough, creating a hybrid model of content that provides an entertaining and informative experience that is enjoyable. P.S. your production quality is on par with legacy content creators.
I’ve been waiting for this one, I remember beating this almost 30 years ago (with the book of course) and I still remember most of the tricks. My favorite group is pretty expensive, I use the Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage and Black Mage team for maximum everything. Lots of grinding for G with that team.
I’m more a fan of a “Magi with Body Guard” build. Namely Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. But honestly, you’re right about WMs having diminishing returns. I think I did a run with two BMs, and stuck my RM on healing duty, but I can’t remember if I finished it. I’ll probably try it again on the Pixel Remaster.
Great work! I figured you’d get around to Final Fantasy at some point, and I was looking forward to the same type of humor from your Dragon Warrior article. I liked your following of the chapters from back in the day; it does make this feel more like a story. As always, thanks for all your work and effort in your articles. Looking forward to Part 2!
I always thought the experience for the monsters was a misprint in the Nintendo Power strategy guide because the experience listed was never what you got after battle (e.g. 3 Zombulls = 3150). It wasn’t until your article when you mentioned the awarded experience is PER CHARACTER that it finally clicked (3150 / 4 = 787)! Wow! Mind blown! And it only took me 32 years to figure that out! 🤣 I just assumed it was something else in the game that was bugged.
I made it a personal quest to beat every mainline FF game. This one went pretty good until I ran into the infamous 9 Gheists battle formation, unless you attack first or bust out your highest level magic pretty good chance of them stunlocking and murdering the whole party. Much Rage Ensued. So mad I went back to the Peninsula of Power and Ground waaay too much, because fuck you game haha.
My first real article game love. I adored this game, and had the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide before ever knowing about the game, buying it at Roses department store with my allowance because it looked cool. It wasn’t until 6 months later when I actually rented the game, and my life was changed forever. Literally. I spent so much fucking time on this game that I can’t begin to fathom.
My favorite possible teams are: – Fighter, Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage – Fighter, Red Mage, Red Mage, White Mage – Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, White Mage Most optimal team for victory is one of: – Fighter, Fighter, Fighter, White Mage – Fighter, Fighter, Fighter, Red Mage – Fighter, Fighter, Fighter, Fighter Black Belt/Master and Thief/Ninja are just not as good at the tanking OR secondary attacker roles as Fighters, and the game is full of Fighter/Knight equipment. Further, there are many inventory items that cast the most relevant and useful Black Magic spells for free (except FAST).
If you’re playing this game using a NES ROM I’ll assume you’ve obtained legally, I very much recommend looking up the Final Fantasy 1 Randomizer for the website’s ability to enable JUST “improved” vanilla patches to your ROM. Bugged spells work. Weapons that are strong against particular monsters actually work that way. All four characters can run. The thief isn’t a loser. Characters will tell you if they can learn spells or use equipment in the shops. You can buy quantities of items. And you can see weapon stats before buying them. Stuff you can do in later games basically.
My meta was; Fighter, Fighter, Thief, Red Mage. Once you’re adults, having Ninja and Red Mage both cast fast on the fighters in the first turn of any boss battle is a guaranteed win. You won’t regret Red Mage’s limited cure abilities because you won’t get time to use them. Fighters can learn a bit of heal magic, saves on potions, good reason to be a secondary damage dealer. Ninja sucks but he runs good and gets a cool sword and Red Mage is two guys in one how could you say no? Nightly Warmech hunts to lv99 – good times.
If what I’ve heard is correct, those special swords are even less useful than they seem; due to one of the game’s many programming bugs, they don’t actually deal extra damage against enemy types, or deal elemental damage. On the positive side, the monsters in this game are some of the best artwork I’ve ever seen in a game; even the future Final Fantasy games’s monster art doesn’t have the wild, grotesque look that these do, and seem a lot less detailed.
58:55 to 1:11:50. Great to see the “Peninsula of Power” discussed. Not many guides, outside of speedrunning guides, cover this area. Both FIR2 & LIT2 are helpful, but FIR2 tends to get a lot more mileage in this area here due to Trolls, ZomBulls, & Frost Wolves being so prominent here. (The Red Mage needs to be PC level 6 to access Level 3 magic, however, unlike the Black Mage which only needs to hit PC level 5.) Giants do show up from time to time in this area here as well. They’re kind of a pain at first, but as the party levels, they do get a bit easier. ICE2 helps against them (@ PC Level 8 for Black Mage; @ PC Level 10 for Red Mage), but not much moreso than FIR2 & LIT2. Silver Swords do get a lot of mileage here though from martial characters (Fighters & Red Mages mainly), especially when using a Level 4 FAST on them. Tyro’s do rarely show up, and at first they’re a death sentence; but around PC level 10 to 12, from what I’ve found, they can occasionally be beaten. (Tyro’s can be beaten at PC party Level 8 or 9, with a few lucky critical hits, and a lucky success on a Level 3 Hold spell. But this is very rare to happen; often, beating them at this stage of the game comes with lots of luck and a Level 4 FAST spell casted on the strongest martial PC.) Thankfully, T-Rex’s and Wyverns don’t usually show up in this area, much less in the Lefein continent area to the north, across the water. (Not that I have seen at least.) Wyverns are much more likely to show up there than T-Rex’s, but even then (as the article shows), their encounter rate isn’t very high at all.
I love your voice, man. You are the sound of rain when I’m ready to sleep and the background while I wash dishes and fold laundry. It’s always a great nostalgic comfort to hear the history and then the play through. What if I told you that that you can listen to and watch the world’s most patient retro gamer teach you about all of the lesser known details of the games you strived to master as a child? What if I told you that you can relive your childhood months in under a couple of hours (usually less)?
I was surprised to see you make the red mage the primary healer. I usually make them my black mage and bring a white mage along instead – by the time the anti-undead spells phase out of use, you’ve got the items that cast spells for free, and your white mage suddenly becomes a DPS. They’re also the only class with AOE heals stronger than the healing staff/helm (because as you mentioned, healing is a bit crap in this game but AOE heals are worth having) plus they get better HP than a black mage. Often they get better HP than a red mage too 😛 Black and white mages spend most of the game melee attacking for single digit damage to save MP, and the spell items make most learned spells obsolete, so I just prefer having a white mage.
I love the way you do your episode; it reminds me the time Back in the 80’s where I would team up with one of my friend to complete those RPG. Even though those games were single player adventures, I’ve always preferred going through them with a friend. It was kinda coach co-op gameplay in that matter. Keep up the great work! A quick question: are you ever planning on beating SNES games? I would love to relive the SNES Final Fantasy games on your website!
Actually, the DARK status is bugged and does nothing to your HIT% even thought it’s intended to, making it even less effective. Likewise all the “specific monster type slayer” swords are bugged and don’t do their bonus damage. I believe they’re all weaker than Silver Swords anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
I went to a friend’s house not to long ago and he was playing this game, pretty cool I thought, kinda threw back some old times, then I noticed the Nintendo, it had the game sticking out of the Nes about a good 6 inches and it was 4 Game Genies deep. I said to my friend, “Really dude!” he said, “Hell yeah, 12 Game Genie codes are better than 3. I told him, “Three codes I can understand but 12 is kinda overdoing it, don’t you think.” he said, “I’m just trying to beat the game before the wife gets home, I’m supposed to be cleaning the garage.” I’ll get to the point, His wife got home early and I got sent home. It wasn’t good on his part. Bahahahahaha🤣🤣.
The thief is a great character. He lets you pick and choose which battles you want to fight so you can spend more time fighting the lucrative ones while avoiding the less lucrative ones. You can actually level up faster by running. Also, the Luck stat is not bugged on the thief as long as he is in the first or second row.
It is good to see someone else who agrees there is no need for a white mage. I swapped out the black mage for a thief though: I think they have a reverse growth curve. Black Wizard is amazing in the beginning and less useful in the end game and Ninja is more useful as you progress. Also as an 80s kid, I was legally obliged to include a ninja in my party.
The format for this playthrough is awesome. My fiancee and I were planning on playing the pixel remaster version like this with the enemy’s stats on the side like you did. The only difference is the remake has enemy drops, like the ice shield from the frost wolves. If I remember correctly the area above the chaos shrine had bunch of enemies that appeared in the shrine and over the bridge. I used that spot to get to level 5 before beating Garland. Then the ocean to level 10, then the peninsula of power to level 40 and bought equipment and spells. Your way is more cautious and a bit less grind heavy. I just like to be over leveled in RPGS. I learned that the hard way in FF4 my first play through. Now I like to be at least 5 levels above the next area, especially the marsh cave.
You missed a lot of important things. Namely the bugs. The thief is actually no better at running than any other character due to bugs in how the game checks to see if the party can run. Any character in the second slot, has a higher chance of running than usual as long as the 4th character’s health is high or maxed. The theif was also supposed to do higher crit damage, but again due to bugs, it doesn’t. Magic is also bugged. Long story short, magic doesn’t scale with the INT stat at all. Because of that, a level 1 Red Mage casting Fire does the same damage as a max level Black Wizard casting Fire. Because of that, the Black Mage/Wizard is illogical compared to simply having a second Red Mage. The only advantage is the Black Wizard can learn Nuke, which is only helpful in the last act of the game. But for 99% of the game, another Red Mage/Wiz would have been better. There are also several spells that simply do not work or actually hurt you rather than help. TMPR and SABR do nothing. Lok and Lok2 always misses, and makes the enemy more evasive respectively. Finally the Black Belt sucks. While it is true that he does more damage unequipped, his frailty makes him much worse than a fighter. Also he gains absolutely nothing from the class change, and actually becomes slightly worse, as his stat progression is mitigated.
Had the terrible misfortune of locking my game into an unwinnable state in the PS1 version, left the ice cavern with only my black mage alive, with no spell slots, and couldn’t walk back to civilization without dying. So my new current party is fighter, redmage, white mage, black mage. It’s taking longer to afford their gear and spells but the peninsula trick is really helpful. Thanks for the info
I dig your content man. It’s good stuff. Ever since I stumbled across your website, I’ve been waiting eagerly to see if you ever did this game. It’s my favorite NES game..and while I’ve beaten it a million times; just something awesoem and soothing about your articles. Keep up the good work brother, and give that pup some scratches for me!
Just wanted to give a shout out. You really do put a lot of time, effort, and research into making these articles. Its quite impressive the work you do and can easily see why you have 67.2 k subscribers and counting. When you run out of article game titles to make guides for what are you planning to do next? I’m also curious, the game play footage that you share is that all yourself playing the games, or are you using someone else’s game footage? ( Total respect regardless which way it is. ) I owned a NES as a kid and haven’t played half of the games you’ve posted about let alone beaten the games. And yes, the first turtles game is excruciatingly difficult, nor had I known anyone who’d beaten the game before. Bravo!
Always look forward to your uploads each week! Nice job on this great game that I enjoyed as a kid. I think i recall perhaps “accidentally” breaking a controller on the marsh cave for some reason, lol. Btw, does the poison “alert” while walking sound anything like “the most annoying noise in the world” from Dumb and Dumber?
On the original NES, when you start a saved game from Corneria, and you have the ship, sail straight south, you will run into 2-5 kyzoku garunteed. You can then sail back to corneria, save, shut the power off, restart and do again. You can garuntee a Kyzoku battle everytime. Not sure why. And reset won’t work. Must shut power off. How I used to farm money before I knew about the secret area north of Pravoka.
When I was a kid, I’d go the article store to rent most of my games. Buying the cartridge was reserved for Christmas or my birthday. I was cautious because I didn’t want to get stuck with a bad game, so I would often preview a game via rental. We had a article store in town that had a lot of selection and they were often getting the latest games as they came out. I rented Final Fantasy and absolutely hated it. I never rented it again and didn’t give it a second thought. Some kids at school said that it was great, but I didn’t understand why. The opening minutes of this article show the problem of trying to play some games without a manual. I realize now, over 30 years later, that I never equipped any items. The item is listed next to the character, which I thought was enough. Being killed repeatedly in the early going caused me to assume that I missed an item, so I would start over, buy something else, go out into the world again and die. I never even reached the title screen. I missed out on a big game and a big franchise, all because I didn’t understand the user interface. I think I might now have to pick it up so that I can play it again for the first time.
This game defined my childhood. I played it so much. If anyone wants to undertake the original FF in its NES form and wants to enjoy all its challenges in its pristine form, and wants a recommendation on a starter party, you can’t go wrong with a fighter, white mage, and black mage to form the basis of your party. For the 4th character it can be just about anything, but with a F/WM/BM you already have a strong, well rounded party with access to all the spells in the game, the majority of the which will help you early and and very much throughout the game. I’ve seen articles and have had discussions with others that the black belt is stronger than the fighter but from my understanding you’ll only reach that level of power when you max out at level 50. For the most part you can beat the game by the time you’re lvl 32. Personally i rarely used a red mage because not having access to all the spells and having a smaller MP pool and learning higher lvl spells slower was a big turn off. He’s much more useful early to mid-game, but i found him not that great late game.
I rented this game, and an NES one night back in 87ish, early 88, and never heard of it, new nothing about it, but the name got me, and I had no clue what I was doing, but, I knew I liked this game, and this started my obsession and new I was going to get it, and did. I still have the maps and monster guides. I’m only 30 minutes into your vid, but I love it. I spent HOURS grinding away building up HP. This makes me want to dust of the old thing.
Hi! Great article! I myself am a long time veteren of Final Fantasy for the NES. The only thing I do differently when starting out with the Black Belt is that I actuially DO equip him with a set of Nunchucks, but then drop them when my hit power gets high enough when un equiping them. I tried starting out with him using only bare fists, but he just wasn’t doin enough damage. Back in the 90s, I got him so powerful using only his punches, that I took out Chaos with one hit!
I believe you can make money real early real quick in the game by doing a boat trick that involves saving and getting the first encounter on the boat. It works only with the NES version, but if you save, hop on the boat, the first encounter will always be the Kyzoku which are big money mobs. Easiest to do it at Corneria since its cheap. It might require a restart, but its a means to manipulate the spawn. Try it sometime.
I’m so glad that after this game they gave mages the ability to have magic points instead of having to buy individual spells to attack with you used them very nicely much more efficient than the way I did it. What if I told you that you could have been one of the Nintendo specialist that u called for help at 3 dollars a hour lol
Love the article, thank you! I’m wondering if you head directly to the Castle of Ordeals after getting the canoe… can’t wait to see! Btw: Crystalis is my favourite NES game…. I’ve been playing it for about 30 years and I STILL learned from your article on it…same thing with Faxanadu. Amazing work all around!
I don’t think you mentioned it, haven’t seen it in any comments yet, but only one guy programmed the game, and he didn’t speak japanese, it was a hell of a time communicating between the square team and the programmer, its also why so many things are bugged. I think the darkness effect is bugged too? And the programmer made the slide/match tile game on his own one day because he was bored, but didn’t know how much gold to give because he didn’t have much context and just made it 100 gold and never changed it.
I actually just finished the Pixel Remaster of this game last night. It was a fantastic experience all around. Perhaps a bit too easy after all the remakes that this title has seen, but this is still the gem that started the franchise. With all of its ups and downs, Final Fantasy is still one of my favorite franchises in gaming and deserves its spot in gaming history. Thanks for the article! I love your format of talking about the history of the game and its developers before deep diving into the game itself.
I noticed when playing if you equip the BB with armour, then take it off and his absorb goes up for each level. Works even on level 1. For example, put on wood armour, and his absorb goes from 1 to 4, the. Take it off and his absorb will be 2 instead. So by level 4, if you follow this tactic, the BB absorb will be higher naked than with armour.
This game has a lot of nostalgia for me. I remember reading about it in Nintendo Power and was so excited for it. In the early game it is definitely a lot easier to get to level 2 or 3 before you fight Garland. I always tried to not run from fights if I could help it and getting a couple levels can prevent early wipes and also helps get gold for spell casters. I think the best starting out party for a first playthrough would be a White Mage in place of a Red one, just because Harm is so helpful and the late game White magic spells are great. The most grinding I usually did was for the marsh cave, very hard early on if not prepared with lots of potions.
Long time veteran player of this game, I actually think the thief is legit good. Running is very useful early game when in dire straights, and is almost mandatory for the ice cave level. When upgraded to ninja, he gives you another class with the “fast” spell, which is a huge deal at endgame. Lastly, his ability to usually attack earliest is nice when you give him “free” magic spell use items, particularly the healing ones. As a combatant he is more in line with red mage if slightly better, and in the early game thief and red mage aren’t too far behind fighter in damage. I think the utility and quality of life makes thief the best 4th option over black mage, a class that is a little redundant with red mage and noticeably declines late in the late game.
A fiend of mine came over to my place with this game when it was released. At first I thought it was the dumbest game I ever saw. 30 mins after perusal him play it I was hooked and have beaten it many times. It’s funny though just how many bugs the original NES version has. One of these days I’ll play one of the rom hacks that fixes them all. Also I loved seeing those Nintendo Power pictures from the guide book. I must’ve read that thing 1000x and remember them vividly.
I remember in my original nes playthrough, I sold the ribbon cuz I had no idea what it did. The lack of item descriptions in that version, ugh. Your article inspired me to try the Playstation version for the first time, it’s great an example of a remake rather than a re-release with nothing to offer but graphical upgrades.
Are you using some kind of updated game version? I don’t think the original NES console and game processes that quickly, especially when you level up at the end of combat. It takes forever! It’s so frustrating, so knowing would be a help to better enjoying the game. Keep up the great work, now I’ll never use the thief and try the black belt!
Great article! Only played the Playstation-version when it came out, but so much memories. I just grinded my way through this game leveling up much more. Interesting to see how you can do it cleverly. I chose a party of knight, thief, white and black mage back in the day. Maybe it became a little harder because of that. But still beat the game without any guidance.
So here’s another thing you missed. . When choosing characters, the thief is not as useless as you think. Each time you run, the character that you pick to have run has their speed / evade checked against the character 2 slots below them. So if your fighter runs, and below him you have black belt, then red mage, then black mage, it means your fighter’s stats are checked against the red mage’s stats to see if running will be successful. In this case, it usually won’t be. And because of the way you intuitively order your characters, it’s often the case that you won’t have a good chance of running. . Their has a major boost on these stats. If you’re deep in a dungeon, and you really need to get OUT, and you have theif and fighter in your party, you can put the thief as leader and your fighter 2 slots down, and you should be able to run from every battle. Of course you don’t really need to do this either, since thief’s run-chance stats are better than everyone else’s, he can help the party run no matter where you put him. . Now you might ask, what about the last 2 characters? There’s no one 2 slots below them, so what are they checked against? The game checks them against a RNG (random number generator). So if thief is in the last two slots, it’s not clear if he’ll be able to run since it’s random. But if there’s a slow poke 2 slots below him, you’ll run nearly every time. . Anyway that’s the real use of thief. You can go deep into dungeons, get tons of treasure, then get out by avoiding all the monsters.
You forgot, to mention that you can play Final Fantasy on the NES classic and finally you have a awesome start on probably the best 8 bit Nintendo game but Super Mario 3 and a few other NES game maybe a bit better. Keep up the beating nes games and me and my wife love seeing your Golden retriever playing. And how do you keep him from not tearing them up we have the games right beside them?
I had so much fun perusal the Dragon Quest 2 article guide, and I did watch all of it, that I decided to watch Final Fantasy as well. I’m about halfway through the articles. This time, I felt the urge to play the game as well. Final Fantasy isn’t as clunky as I thought it would be here in the future. I did enjoy it back in the day when it was new. I’m using the same party, but that’s because I endured using the thief back in 1990. I got a bit carried away at the peninsula of power, the level-up zone. I had a few sessions where I didn’t have time to do much other than level up, so I kept fighting those zombulls and their friends and then, before I knew it, I was at level 16 before the Marsh Cave. Oops. The Wizards there and Astos in the Northwest Castle probably wished they could run away. My party wiped them all out on the first turn, unsurprisingly. I think my fighter did three times Astos’ hit points in damage too. Good times. That’s where I left off for now. I think being over leveled is going to be fun for a while, and it wasn’t too bad grinding at the peninsula. I’m not a huge fan of RPG grinding, so it’s going well and I’m enjoying it.
I really came to see if you’d include the peninsula leveling “trick”. I remember finding this completely by accident since I was just exploring, and once I realized it wasn’t a glitch the early to mid game became pretty much smooth sailing. Though I will disagree on the thief…or rather, what the thief can become. The Ninja which gives you a fighter with high crit and the ability to use mid level Black magic.
45:04 I LOL’d very forcibly when you said this. Soon as you started talking about Lit, in my mind I thought of a young dude named Eric who kept saying everything was Lit. And now I’m gonna be like, we’ve been using “Lit” since the late 80s. But your line after that was awesome. Love your articles and great game to showcase!
If you want to level up quickly in the Pravoka area, you could just go to the east there and go to the penninsula of power. You’ll find OP enemies there worth a lot of experience. Yes, they’re hard, but you’ll level up fast. Edit: Okay, I noticed that you’d go there eventually, but I just noticed you didn’t go to Astos’ Castle before going to the Marsh Cave. It was Astos who directs you to the Marsh Cave. Without him, you wouldn’t even know to go there.
My brother and I played this back when it was new, but never beat the last dungeon. It was years later we realized that we had our black belt equipped with nunchucks or whatever it was the whole game, and kept waiting for an upgrade. We never knew his punch damage was ideal. So we essentially played the whole game with 3 characters. No wonder we never beat it!
Wow. Red Mage has been my favorite Job/Class since I first played this game as a kid in late 80s US, but I’ve never heard anyone ever refer to it as the “superior” choice when compared to other classes, especially a “pure” mage like the White Mage. Most people seem to regard it as a good support class at best and their standard “dump” class at worst. I knew I loved this website for a reason. 🙂 Also, my personal favorite team was always Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage (probably the most expensive team unfortunately), but for the past 1.5 decade, I’ve been naming the characters after myself and three of my closest (and oldest) friends whenever I replay FF, and I fit classes to “match” our personalities: Fighter, Thief, Red Mage, Black Mage. The Thief or Black Mage could be subbed out for the Black Belt, as that fits too.
Another way to reduce the Marsh Cave grinding is to manipulate the ocean encounters. The first encounter in the ocean will always be Kyzoku/Privateers after a hard reset. That’s what I do instead of the Peninsula of Power. Although I do the Peninsula of Power when I play the PS1 Origins version. I should do a watch along to this on my website haha
The left side screen info is why I come to this website over ones like Sakyomog, who play like Gods and never miss. It’s real, and it’s a way better way to gauge what you’ll ACTUALLY NEED here or there. Just because the guy I’m perusal can finish the game without ever using a Potion, doesn’t mean I can. So how many will I need? 🤷♂️Idk, ask the golden retriever..?
1st off, 2:58:07 I like the CHAOS pun there lol… Second, dude, This was FRIGGIN AWESOME!!! It honestly kinda felt like I was actually PLAYING, as you do almost exactly what I do, except I’m a glutton for punishment and I go Fighter, Black Belt, White and Black Mage’s… oh and i never friggin buy ALIT or stuff like that, rather leave it empty… and even though they give u less HP back, I DO like the HEAL (HEL) spells, since it’ll give some back to the entire party…but I don’t remember, the Red Mage CAN’T cast that, no? Been so long since I used a Red Mage but I think I may go with your party from now on, even though it’s the best and offers the easiest path to victory. And yes, the Thief and even Ninja, are friggin terrible… I cant believe I forgot about the level up strip, I remember using that on my 2ND run,,when I got the strategy guide, as I got FF the week it came out and went at it with just the map/booklet included, and my very 1st party was FIGHTER, RED, WHITE, BLACK— I guess thats why this game gave me fits initially, playing without any real tips and tricks, just wingin it, and NOT utilizing the Black Belt! Hell, I remember seeing screenshots and stuff in Nintendo Power, and ALL of them had a Fighter and BlackBelt, so I started using the BlackBelt, but I DIDNT know/realize he didn’t need weapons…so I’m playing and giving him the best weapons possible and I’m like “jesus,,he sucks, why do they highly recommend him??” And i gave the pics a 2nd look and noticed he was just punching and dropping 100s of HP Damage, and FIIIIINALLY, after maybe my 5th playthrough or so, I learned how awesome BlBelt/Master is 🤣.
You pointed out the “spiked” Image battle while at the Northwest Castle as one to avoid (which is very true.) However, you avoided and didn’t mention the “spiked” mummy battle tile in front of one of the other chests in the same room. That one can actually be a quick easy way to grind gold (and to a much lesser extent exp) in the mid to late game. Especially once you have the mage staff (casts Fir2 in battle) and/or the light axes (cast Hrm2 in battle.) It’s not as efficient as some of the other grindable “spiked” battles in the later game, but it’s much easier to get to, the battles go very quickly with little risk, and require little to no use of limited resources like spells once you have the aforementioned gear. Edit: Also, when in a dungeon that has moving sprites like the bats. If they block your path and you just hold down the d-pad toward them so that you’ll move as soon as they move out of the way, it continues to advance the counter that handles random battles at a decent pace. That’s why you often get a random battle as soon as they move and you enter the tile they were on. If you really want to cut down on unnecessary battles, just let off the d-pad and wait until they move to go. It’s not a huge difference but in some areas it might cut 3 or 4 battles out depending on the sprites’ movement patterns.
= another excellent tip involving the black belt is that you should pay attention to your BB’s level versus his ” absorb” total. Without any armor equiped..the absorb total is the same same as your level. So…you’ll often have to experiment to see if it makes more sense to keep all gear equiped…OR unequip any and all gear. Wooden armor + gloves ( just as a example ) makes around 5 absorb….but at level 6…UNLESS you already have better gear that would equal more than 6 armor…you’ll want to UNequip the wooden armor and gloves for the black belt
Veteran to this game with several playthroughs under my belt. I just started a playthrough with the “magic users” party from the manual consisting of fighter/red mage/black mage/white mage. I got to the Earth Cave before I decided that wasn’t enough magic and restarted with a red mage/red maget/black mage/white mage party. Swapping out a black mage for a red mage from the “heavy magic use” party also from the manual. So far l’m loving it. I’ve always done balanced parties like fighter/black belt/black mage/red mage or fighter/fighter/red mage/red mage.
I bought this at a Micro Play store. In box with booklet+ black sleeve too! I found it kinda hard at the start but after grinding to level up buy better weapons and armour it’s great. I like that they released it for GameBoy Advance along with all the sequel titles up to FFVI/6. FFIV (3 in US on SNES) was my favorite and in my opinion one of the greatest oldschool RPGs out there along with Dragon Warrior, Dragon WarriorIII, Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals and this FF. Even among modern RPG type games. Final FantasyVI is amazing too, didnt get to beat it but got pretty far.
Hello friends! This article really took off out of nowhere, and I’m loving all the comments, so let me start with a big thank you to everyone for perusal and commenting. It’s incredibly cool to me that such an old game is well-balanced enough to still have a diversity of opinions and configurations after all these years, and there are enough combinations to make your party actually feel like it belongs to you. Reading all of your party configurations really makes my day, so keep them coming! Just in case you’re interested, I also have a comprehensive walkthrough of Final Fantasy here on the website. You can check that out here: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrxyUnt-gRtEzV0u-xfym4P8PFlqM12hb
My one criticism of this is it’s a little endgame focused… you talk about how important the masamune is, but you have it for, what, two battles? Don’t get me wrong, it will help against Chaos, but it’s hardly worth building a party around. Similarly, I feel black mages are a little underrated for this same reason. Yeah, they greatly fall off in use in the later game, but in early game, the point where the game is generally at its hardest? The fire/ice/lit 2 spells are absolutely monstrous, absolutely destroying enemy groups. White mage is also to some extent, as the ability to resurrect a dead character is super valuable since even if kind of over leveled, virtually any character can due pretty easily in the later game and in places like the last dungeon, it’s a long slog with a ton of fights and a single character death will really hurt. Of course even with one, it’s quite often the white mage that dies. While the late game does have some challenges, once you reach the mid point you tend to coast through the rest. It’s places like the marsh and earth cave that really kill you, though, and anything that will make those long, resource draining dungeons a little easier is worth a lot.
A couple things: 1) The speedrun reduces the characters to 3 not just because it speeds up menuing, but because XP is actually divided between living party members. This means that a three or two member party actually gains more xp per character than a 4 member party. 2) One thing to think about with Black Belts is that, while promotion pretty much universally makes every other class better, the Master actually gets WORSE, specifically in the hidden Magic Defense stat, gaining 1 per level instead of 4. So you want your Black Belts to be fairly high level before promotion, because they’ll lag behind on defenses. But considering that BBs and Masters scale literally everything about them by level alone, you’ll probably do that anyways. A grind to 22 for your BB at the Peninsula of Power or the Northwest Castle trap tiles can pretty much carry you through the rest of the entire game.
I’d love to see a revamped tier list with the dawn of souls remake. Just the fixing of the bugged stats and spells would have been enough to shake things up and move people around, but they also changed the magic system away from the AD&D style, “you have 3 casts of level 3 magic” and moved towards a more forgiving “this spell costs 25 mana, you have 235 mana pool available to you”. Plus all of the rebalancing of the classes in light of the stat fixes and magic change. I will say this, fighter walked in S-tier, and he walks out S-tier in my book. Red mage/red wizard probably got nerfed the hardest. He falls behind pretty quickly.
My go-to for the NES version is fighter/fighter/black belt/red mage. The lack of spells is only a drawback at the very start of the game, and it’s extremely expensive to outfit your characters once you get to elfheim, but the sheer amount of physical damage you can put out from about level 10 and onwards just steamrolls the game. The biggest problem I always had with the white mage / black mage was that once they’re out of their limited selection of spells, they’re completely useless in melee. Late game equipment helps reduce this weakness with spellcasting items, but you have to put up with their extreme weakness all the way up to that point. And with the NES version, inventory space is extremely limited so having that blackbelt in your party makes it so that you can use all of the spellcasting items while still having ribbons equipped on most of your characters.
I’m partial to a four blackbelt party, because it’s fun to see a party go from underpowered to overpowered in the same game. I think the initial party they setup, Fighter, Blackbelt, Thief, Red Mage is the best though. It seemed pretty streamlined, with no major problem areas in the game and you can use a good chunk of the equipment. Can cast Fast twice, and no one has weak attacks.
For me personally no party is complete without a Red Mage. It’s my all time favorite class in ANY game to the point where the FF1 Red Mage is also my singular tattoo. I’ve always loved the idea of having the right tool for the job, always being useful even if you’re never the best at any one thing, being well-rounded has always resonated with me and as a serial hobby hopper in adulthood I understand why. It’s fun to dabble! It’s fun to learn new skills and trades even if you never end up mastering those things. So I’ll always take a Red Mage any time I play FF1, it’s just too much fun for me personally. <3
I enjoy having a fighter, black belt, black mage and white mage. People often skip the black belt because he gets no magic while overlooking the fact that he can rip your head off and shit down your neck in the blink of an eye. Black mages to group kill, white mages to heal and the knight to basically be an HP tank.
I have done so many runs in this game. Currently I am about halfway through a playthrough on the NES using a party of fighter, two red mages, and one white mage. I’m really enjoying this party setup, because the red mages are so versatile by being able to fight, use healing magic, and use attack magic. There is still a bit of a challenge, because red mages are definitely a step down and attack power from black belt and fighter, but they look so dang cool that I had to try the “doble rojo.”
I went with Fighter/Thief/ Red mage/ Black mage as my party when I played thru FF1. I also played the GBA version, and found this party gets use most of the cool stuff in that version with the extra dungeons. Red mages get the Lightbringer, which is a powerful sword that casts Holy freely. Black mages get a staff that cast flare freely allowing you roast all random encounters with impunity.
I realize the Black Mage is the most iconic FF1 character, but he’s far from a must have character. His attack magic is good, but in the NES version, they tend to kill the monsters your physical attackers are targeting. As a Black Wizard, none of the level 8 spells are useful and they’re grossly overpriced.
3 fighters and red mage is the strongest party. You can steamroll the game. Use the cheat where there’s that 2 space area early in the game to grind giants/etc near the second town. Unequip some purchased equipment for more challenge. Not necessarily the most fun party tho. Two fighters with a black belt and red mage is probably similar.
I loved this game so much and played through so many times that I had to find ways to make it harder. It started with a play through with a red mage and 3 white mages. Then I started a party with a fighter and 3 white mages which I immediately killed off so I solo leveled a fighter. That made for some really long battles but he leveled quickly because he got all the XP. I think I got him to level 99 and he absolutely dominated. Did a solo black belt too and a group of 4 white mages. Good times!
Overall a great article, so you know who I am with my opinion I am ShaneZell the current speedrun WR holder of 3/4 catagories in FF1 NES. I feel like mentioning that the black belt is very weak in the early game at similar levels of the thief. The class often takes a lot of grinding to be useful and doesn’t take off until level 10+.
I loved this game when I found it as a child. The class and party components hooked me from the beginning. Ended up playing the game through for the first time in college. Fighter, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage was the most fun for me when I beat it the first time. I welcomed the extra difficulty the thief brought. I didn’t bring a black belt because finding and equipping new gear to be fun and more important than being strictly powerful. I also didn’t bring a red mage because I wanted to see all the spells in the game.
Black Belt is an incredibly strong character. His problem is the existence of the Fighter, as you touched on. As far as best party goes, you have a little bit of flexibility. Basically, if you have a least 2 Fighters, at least 1 Red/Black mage, and you don’t use Thief, you’ll cruise through the game pretty well. If you don’t want any class more than once, Fi/BB/RM/WM is probably the way to go. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve been really tempted to do a run with 2 Fighters and 2 Thieves. There’s actually 2 Katanas in the game. So, having each of the 4 best swords at once would be fun
Fighter, Black Belt, Red Mage, Red Mage has always been my optimal go to. 2x Red Mages means 2 casters that can cast AoE spells if you get swarmed with stunners or instant kill mobs, you’ve got 2 casters that can cast Life in case one of the casters gets an unlucky RNG, you’ve got 2 casters of Fast, and unlike black mage or white mage they can actually deal some damage in the 95% of fights where you are saving your magic spells. At least 1 fighter is obvious, and for the final slot Black Belt deals high single target damage late game and helps mitigate the high Gil cost of the team for having 2 red mages. Early game putting the Black Belt in the back helps deal with his horrible early game, while keeping the 2nd Red Mage near the back and under equipped further helps with your Gil shortages.
Hey, found this article and being an FF1 speedrunner I figured I’d give my cents. It is very obvious for every playthrough that Fighters are far and away the best class and only viable melee class. Red Wizards are fairly effective with the right swords, but the most dangerous parts of the game involve melee attacks from enemies – thinking Wizards in Marsh or Earth Cave – taking out a key player. Red Wizards are the best mages – every spell you would want is Red Mage or Red Wizard learnable, and the high level magic is either not worth it or available by items like Bane Sword. For a casual party, 3 Fighters and a Red Mage is the easiest play. Even though there isn’t a good third sword, the third Fighter contributes the most for the same reasons the second Fighter is almost necessary unless you want the game to be harder. It would also be the preferred party for “safe” speedruns. Astos is possible with the right spells with a single level 6 Red Mage, and casually you will have FIR2 and enough ICE charges to win. Without FIR2 (necessary for some speedruns since you won’t be able to get it before Astos or have to use a route that returns to Elfland before Astos), the strategy is dicey but involves ALIT to allow extra rounds of the Fighters swinging Short Swords or Scimitars. While this cuts into an ICE charge, the extra rounds of damage from surviving LIT2 means you are far more likely to survive the battle. Alternatively, MUTE is a roughly 20% change to shut down Astos’ spells, and that wins the battle if you’re not in speedrun strats.
In spite of the Luck bug, the thief does in fact have an advantage with running, at least during the first half of the game before other characters luck catch up with his– as long as he’s in the first two rows. Also, besides the knight, the ninja is the only class that can use armor stronger than the Opal Bracer.
My Build: -Fighter -Black Belt -Red Mage -White mage/ black mage (It can be anyone depending on what the player wants, however I recommend the black mage since in the late stages of the game the white mage can become obsolete and if you have money you can replace the healing properties with items although another alternative is to take 2 red mage but I prefer different characters because I like them and that’s it xD)
You end up really missing heal 2/3. The paltry melee damage the red mage puts out there end game isn’t worth the huge decrease in survivability in the final dungeon where dragons and bosses are spamming high level spells that hit all party members. White mage is slow but you’re not going to wipe if you bring one along