Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
402A playthrough of Square's 1991 action-RPG for the Nintendo Game Boy, Final Fantasy Adventure.
Final Fantasy Adventure was a one-of-a-kind title when it was first released on the Nintendo Game Boy back in 1991. There were a few traditional JRPGs on the system already when it was released (Final Fantasy Legend and Sword of Hope), but there wasn't much yet to be found in the way of action RPGs/action-adventure games on the system.
The first Zelda game for the Game Boy was still a good few years away, so what was a player to do? Luckily, Square was starting to reimagine themselves as a player in RPGs around this time with the establishment of several of the company's key franchises. Final Fantasy saw its first game on the NES ('87 in Japan, '90 in NA), Final Fantasy Legend ('89 in Japan, '90 in NA) was the first game to be released in the SaGa series, and in 1991, rounding out Square's holy trifecta of RPG IPs, was Final Fantasy Adventure, the first game in the Seiken Densetsu series.
Final Fantasy Adventure was released as Mystic Quest in Europe and Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden (聖剣伝説ファイナルファンタジー外伝 ) in Japan, and received an official sequel in the form of Secret of Mana (Seiken Densetsu 2) a couple of years later on the SNES. It later saw a 'reimagining' on the Game Boy Advance as Sword of Mana in 2003, which fleshed out the plot a great deal while altering a great many aspects of the original, and Adventures of Mana, a faithful 3D recreation of the Game Boy title, in 2015.
Despite its name, Final Fantasy Adventure was quite a different beast than its more traditional JRPG peers. It is a top-down action RPG with gameplay resembling that found in The Legend of Zelda. However, rather than providing a mere clone of Nintendo's classic, it provided a great deal more depth with a focus on plot, dialogue, and its inclusion of RPG-style statistics to drive character growth.
The story, cowritten by Koichi Ishii and Yoshinori Kitase is not going to win any literary achievement awards, but it was refreshingly well-developed for a non-computer RPG, strikingly dark and sad, and was much more engaging than even many console game's stories from the era.
You travel across a huge 256-screen overworld (it's a 16x16 square) dotted with NPCs, shops, towns, and dungeons, and you get access to new areas as you develop your abilities and find new equipment. There are several classes of weapons in the game, with many of them serving as tools within the environments. Can't get across a huge chasm? Your chain whip might latch onto an anchor point to help you reach the other side. Boulders? Not a problem if you're wielding a morning star!
More similar to FF is the way your character gains experience and levels up by fighting monsters. There are no heart containers - rather, every time you accrue enough experience, you get to chose which of your attributes you wish to increase. This allows you, to some extent, to shape your character to match your personal play style, which is an interesting and effective touch. In this video I tried to keep my hero somewhat well balanced, but you can go all-out on magic or physical power if you prefer.
The dungeon design is solid - it's less focused than you find in Zelda, but it does make you think. The general flow of the game is smooth, and the NPCs provide a lot of flavor and backstory, making the whole thing seem more alive than many older games did. You might find yourself stuck at a few points because you are too weak, but even the grinding requirements aren't usually too bad. (Side note: there is one spot in this video where I edited out a grinding to keep things moving - you'll see my stats jump at that spot).
The graphics are very good for an early Game Boy title. The large, clear sprites don't smear much on the LCD screen, and the enemies are all quite creatively done. The backgrounds all feature quite a high level of detail, and thankfully the font used is large and sharp - there is a lot of reading to do in this game. The soundtrack is also a high point - composed by Kenji Ito (who also did Romancing SaGa, Tobal, FFMQ, and the later Mana games), the music here all sounds phenomenal on the Game Boy hardware. It's endlessly catchy and hummable - don't say I didn't warn you.
Even 26 years after its original release, Final Fantasy Adventure is still very much a worthwhile experience. Even if it hadn't been the first game in the legendary Mana series, it still deserves the praise it's received over the years as one of the best original Game Boy games ever made.
Recorded with Retroarch's DMG shader.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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