by Russell Cohrs

Created on: October 05, 2009

The first in a long series of games that spans multiple consoles and is still being produced. This game was also remade several times, for the Wonderswan, GBA, and PSX to name a few.

Story

You are four warriors of light, each carrying an elemental crystal that has been darkened by the evil force of Chaos and his minions. You must restore the light to the crystals in order to regain control of the elements from four nefarious fiends. Along the way you'll save a princess, visit lands of elves, dwarves, and dragons, travel over land, sea, air, and even through time itself.

Gameplay

This was a role playing game that really helped shape the future of the genre. It was possible to choose from six classes at the beginning of the game; three wizards, warrior, thief, and black belt. In addition, classes could be leveled up at a point in the game, allowing you to equip new weapons, armor, and magic. It was also possible to make an unbalanced party consisting of any combination of the six classes. Characters had no individuality, and the game instead focused on telling the story through NPCs.

The game had an overhead view in fields, towns, and dungeons, which changed to a side view when entering battle. During the overhead view, it was possible to travel, interact with items and characters, check your status menu, and change your party order. The leader of your party was displayed on screen. Enemies would tend to attack the leader and second character first, so it was important to place weaker characters in the rear of the party.

As you walked around fields and dungeons, random battles would suddenly happen depending on how far you walked and which terrain you were traveling through. In the side view of battles, you controlled your characters through a menu system. It was possible to select from attack, magic, items, or to flee. It was important to judge the damage you inflicted on enemies, as it was possible to attack a dead enemy if you had already selected to attack them during a melee. Battles were turn based, so it was more about strategy than just pressing buttons.

Enemies would leave behind experience and gold. Many areas of the game involved incessant leveling by killing a slew of enemies for experience points in order to raise stats such as hp, magic points, strength, and so forth. Gold was also necessary to buy weapons, armor, magic, and items, as well as to stay at inns or see a cleric to revive a dead character. Enemies in the game were also based on creatures

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