The Final Fantasy Legend

Nintendo Game Boy

Square

September 30, 1990

Don't let the name fool you, the Final Fantasy Legend game is a far stretch to be called a Final Fantasy game, and in Japan this title is part of the SaGa Frontier series lead by lead designer Akitoshi Kawazu and in more akin to the original Final Fantasy II that never saw a US release until the Final Fantasy Origins and Dawn of Souls collections on PlayStation and Game Boy Advance.

Gone is the traditional way of leveling up from most Final Fantasy games.  The way stats work in this varies upon character class that you choose. Your main character having an added stat boost from the get go.

I  used to own this game as a child and never had the insight or patience to give it a solid play through.  The one thing that stuck out the most for me was that amazing intro theme.  Especially if you had headphones plugged in, it would reverberate from one eye to the other.

My first Final Fantasy game was Final Fantasy II for the Super Nintendo, which technically was Final Fantasy IV in Japan.  I feel in love with everything about this game.  From it's gripping storyline of love, loss, and betrayal, to it's epic of soundtracks lead by Nobuo Uematsu.

So naturally when I has a chance to pick out a Game Boy game to play on my younger sister's Game Boy, this was one of the first ones I chose.

I found out the hard way, this was further away from a traditional Final Fantasy, and only as a more patient adult, I finally got to this game to the fullest.

The story is pretty simple and generic.  Explore a large centralized Tower created by none other than the "Creator."  You embark with your generic main hero and then recruit up to three more generic, name as you please, side kicks to embark on this journey with you.  Their classes range from Male and Female variants of Human and Mutant along with Monster.  The human is your average token class which can only level up it's stats by purchasing upgrades in certain shops up to certain levels.  The mutant is a class i still haven't yet fully grasped.  In my play through I picked two female Mutants and by the end of my game had vastly different stats.  Now the Monster class is interesting.  A lot of people say this class may have influenced the original Pokemon games.  Whether or not I can verify this has yet to be seen.  Enemies have a chance of dropping their meat after you defeat them, and by feeding this meat to your Monster class character you can either change to something great, or downgrade to something lousy.  I used a web gidget that helped me determine what monster I was changing too, since I didn't want to downgrade to a weaker monster.

The battle engine in this game is unique.  It's a perfect blend of the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games back on the Nintendo Entertainment System.  The difficulty isn't noticeable until the final leg of the Tower on your way to face the Creator.  It took me several attempts and a whole lot of Elixirs to make my way up that final stretch.  Occasionally getting wiped out completely in the dungeon by a completely unfair encounter.

Music wise, the entirety of this sound track is composed by legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu.  It has a total of sixteen tracks that add a unique, yet familiar and enjoy soundtrack to the game.  If anything alone makes this game memorable, it is it's soundtrack.  Bravo Mr. Uematsu.


Overall if you have any way or medium to play this game, I recommend going back and giving it a solid play through.  The game is roughly about eight hours in length, meant to be enjoy on a plane or train ride during a business trip.  The 36 year old in myself enjoys this game a whole lot more than the Nine or Ten year old self ever did.