Dawn of Souls: Final Fantasy I (Game Boy Advance) Review

Unfortunately, the game's premise was and still is rather rudimentary in nature. Apparently the world is shrouded in darkness, with the winds dying down, the seas raging and the earth generally decaying all around. However, there is a wonderful prophecy that the people of this world believe in; that when a veil of gloom is cast over all life, four Warriors of Light will come to rectify the whole situation. Then lo and behold, along come a group of four random travellers each clutching a magical crystal in their hands and so they become the 'Chosen Ones' who must rejuvenate the world to what it once was, bringing peace and prosperity to all for ever more...

One thing that would strike you straight away if you had seen the game on the NES in its original format, or any of the titles from the Nintendo 8-bit era in fact, is how utterly atrocious they appear compared to today's wonderfully luscious graphics and flowing Full Motion Video sequences. Now, whilst this is obviously a ridiculous comparison, it is still a valid one as it is the prime factor why many will not touch certain retro games. Therefore, thankfully Square Enix has done us the gracious favour of sprucing everything up so that the appearance is far more palatable to those who cringe at the site of two-dimensions.

What will hit RPG aficionados is that although the level has been upped by a great degree, with lovely little animations for the characters, massive amounts of detail on the landscapes around you, elaborate enemy creatures and absolutely no slowdown, Final Fantasy I in Dawn of Souls does not quite manage to topple the King of Kings, Final Fantasy VI from the Super Nintendo. It is a fine attempt by Square Enix, but it just it fails to get close enough to claim that infamous cigar. Luckily, many will probably not notice too much difference thanks to the tiny resolution of the GBA.

Aurally, too much of the 'bippy' and 'boppy' era would either make you deaf or send you into a foaming Pac-Man-style craze and the same is true with the original Final Fantasy on the NES, which whilst not awful in terms of compositions, struggled to be anything more than average on the limited sound chip within Nintendo's first home console. Again, however, Square Enix's musical maestri have sent each and every tune through the 'Revamperator

Take the fighting theme, for instance. This is, just like the menu tune, one of those staple Squaresoft tunes that re-appears in every Final Fantasy outing, albeit in a slightly different mould. Yet here it is barely distinguishable, in a positive way, as is the victory ditty

At the very start you are given the chance to select what type of characters you would prefer to have in your line-up; Warrior (weapon-wielder), Thief (extremely fast), Monk (prevails in fisticuffs circumstances), Red Mage (uses both black and white magic), White Mage (protective magic user) or Black Mage (devastates with offensive spells. Once chosen, you are then placed in a story that is more rounded that its NES ancestor in terms of the story's translation quality and plot development, with several very well implemented in-game sequences that explain more than you would imagine. Square Enix might not have been able to squeeze the flair of the PSone Final Fantasy Origins release into a tiny GBA cartridge, but the lack of FMV has been more than compensated for by far more important update features, making this entry the best of the Final Fantasy I remakes, far ahead of the WonderSwan version and marginally above Sony's exclusive iteration.

One major complaint aimed at the entirety of the Final Fantasy series is that Squaresoft, and more recently the newly formed Square Enix, ramped-up the difficulty levels by throwing in some incredibly awkward boss fights that could only be defeated upon hours and hours of level-building prior to the encounter. Some have banded comments of 'cheap' around when discussing the attempts to lengthen certain FF experiences. Now, guess which of the series the finger gets pointed at the most? Yes, the very first one. Opposite to the norm in Japan, Final Fantasy was extremely difficult right from your very first footsteps. Now this is not quite the case here, as the boundaries for levelling your team up have been reduced and the strength of certain enemy encounters has been toned down a few notches.

If you think that you are going to be in for an easy ride because of this, then you are completely underestimating the information I just gave you. This is hard