The Final Fantasy Legend (Game Boy) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
308A playthrough of Square's 1990 role playing game for the Nintendo Game Boy, The Final Fantasy Legend.
This video shows the entire game played through with a party of two humans, one mutant, and one monster. I wanted to keep the party well-rounded, even if it's not the fastest way to play the game.
I also avoided exploiting glitchy things, like using Saw on the last boss or endlessly abusing the glass sword.
As many long-time fans are already well aware, Final Fantasy Legend, originally released between second and third installments of the Famicom series, is not actually a Final Fantasy game. It was the first game in the long-running Saga series, and was merely named Final Fantasy when it was brought west in an attempt to capitalize on brand recognition.
The older games in the series do share some common traits: they're both JRPGs that feature top-down exploration segments, menu-driven random encounter battles, and a cast of non-player characters that provide story-related tasks to further the game. Once you get past the basics, however, things diverge pretty widely between the two.
I've always enjoyed the different experience Final Fantasy Legend provided to the standard JRPGs thanks to how much freedom the game gives you to develop your party in whichever ways you wish. If you don't want humans in your party, don't include them! If you want a crew of skeletons shambling across the fields, go for it! Not all of the options are necessarily viable ways of finishing the game, but the means this provides you to experiment with the game mechanics gives it a surprising amount of replayability.
As the first (at least in the US) formal turn-based JRPG released on the Game Boy, it looks and sounds great. Despite the lack of color, I personally think that FFL is a far better looking game than the first two FF NES games were, and hearing that soundtrack brings back an insane amount of memories from my childhood.
If you prefer an emphasis on an ever-evolving plot, Final Fantasy Legend II is probably your better bet. But for those of you that just want an incredibly nostalgic romp through a traditional yet quirky old-school portable RPG with rock solid mechanics, you be hard-pressed to find a better fit in a Game Boy game.
And just think, this was released in America a full eight years before Pokemon!
-Note: One edit has been made to this video - I used HP200 potions to ramp up my end-game party's stats. Each potion has to be bought individually, and can only be used one at a time. I cut out the menu shenanigans during this chunk, mainly because it was hideously boring to see my accessing a menu over and over again for forty-five minutes. I didn't think anyone would mind. All of the grinding, in addition to everything else, has been left intact in this video.-
* Recorded using Retroarch's DMG shader for that classic green dot-matrix look. *
_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!
Visit for the latest updates!
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NintendoComplete/540091756006560
https://twitter.com/nes_complete