Final Fantasy 1 The Ultimate Pixel Remastered
By Fraser Fleming
The original Final Fantasy 1 game was released back in 1987 on the Nintendo Entertainment System. This was way back in time when we still listened to music on cassettes and the Big Screen Tv was at maximum 20 inches in size and took up one full corner of your living room with a 480i display. This was when home gaming was in its infancy, and this was one of those games that come around every so often that change the gaming world.
Final Fantasy was a Japanese turn based RPG that used the limited capabilities of the NES and pushed what you could do on it. Now it has been remastered for modern times. The remaster has a lot to live up to and I must say that it does, it does very well.
The remaster has taken the original game and adapted it for modern devices. The game is only available on Steam for the PC and the App Store and Play Store for mobile devices. I would love this to be released on the consoles but nothing yet. The idea of the game is you are one of four warriors of light that have been charged with saving the world. To do this you must explore the large world and dungeons some of which are hidden. You must battle against mighty bosses and collect items to help you on your journey. You must form new friendships and you must return the world to the light. This is done by levelling up your characters while exploring the world or dungeons. During these great expeditions you encounter enemies that you must battle in a turn base fight to the death. This puts a lot of strategies into the battles as you must sometimes think for or five moves ahead in order to win. At the end of these battles you get Experience Points and Gill so you can level up your characters and buy new items.
The exploration areas of the game can be controlled by touching where you want your character to go or what you want them to interact with. It is in the battle areas where it gets very interesting. Here the battles are turn base and you get to select what you want your characters to do from a menu on the screen and what enemy you want them to hit. You will then have to wait for you characters and the enemy to take their turn before you can select again. This can potentially mean that one wrong selection could doom your quest. However, you have all the time you need to decide.
I would recommend this game for gamers with some vision as it is not compatible with screen readers that I have tried it on. However, I have been playing it on an iPad Pro 2021 and it handles screen enhancements very well. You can use the invert colour or greyscale to adjust the screen for comfort and you can use the Zoom feature to help with the navigation of the menus or speech boxes. I found this particularly useful on the battle menus, as you have unlimited time between your turns. I have also tried this on the Steam Version for the PC and it is the same with the screen enhancements.
I loved revisiting my childhood while replaying this game and the fact that you can make it more accessible for low vision gamers is great. I would love to of see other accessibility features such as Voiceover Compatibility and Audio Clues for no vision gamers added in the future. I would give this 4 out of 5 TopTechTicks.
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