Game

Keeping with the Final Fantasy energy lately, I did The Final Fantasy Legend! Well, it KINDA fits, at least. The Final Fantasy Legend was known in Japan was Makai Toushi Sa・Ga, and is the first game in the SaGa series, which is its own distintive series that is not actually connected to Final Fantasy at all, except that a lot of the ideas in it are built off of Final Fantasy 2. But when it was translated for Western audiences, RPGs didn’t sell super well, so to try and boost sales, they connected it to Final Fantasy. This was a thing Square did a lot. Final Fantasy was at least KNOWN to some people here, so let’s just make this game a FF game even though it has little to do with it. At least this has more to do with Final Fantasy than Mystic Quest does.

This game is the first ever RPG for the Gameboy, released December 1989. As such, it’s pretty simple, but honestly it’s shockingly complex for that era, and for the Gameboy. Compare this to like… Mario Land. This shit looks like it at LEAST came out a few years later, if you compare them. The plot is simple: There’s a tower, and it’s said that the top of the tower holds a paradise. This tower connects many different worlds, and your characters are just one of countless adventurers who are tackling the tower. Simple, and actually quite commonly spoofed these days, ESPECIALLY the ending, which I WILL spoil, you’ve been warned.

Game

Like in Final Fantasy, you build your units out of different classes. There are three classes, and also two of which can be gendered, which is neat. You’ve got humans, mutants/espers, and monsters. Yes, monsters in this game can be friendly, and even fight alongside you! Humans don’t level up traditionally, instead they level up by using stat up items you can only buy in town. Mutants level up by fighting, getting random stat ups as they fight. And monsters level up by eating other monsters. As monsters are defeated, they can drop meat, which can be eaten to transform your monster. It’s fascinating. The humans are totally the best, though, if you’re okay with a bit of grinding.

The game is split into a few chapters, basically. You have the Continent World, then after you do all the stuff there and get The Orb that unlocks the tower, you climb 1/4th of the tower to reach the next world. Do the quests there, get the next orb, climb five floors, get to the next level. Repeat until you get all four orbs and reach the top to fight ASHURA. After defeating her, you need to climb the tower, AGAIN, and find God at the top, who’s like “Yeah this is just a game. You’re just my toys, I wanted to see if y’all could defeat real evil”, and your characters, disgusted at this behavior, KILL GOD. It’s sick as fuck.

The story is simple, but the little stories you encounter in the different worlds can get really interesting. They’re pretty impressive for a 1989 gameboy RPG! I recommend the game almost for these stories alone, but the gameplay is fun too.

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I had to play the game as a solo run, actually. Which SOUNDS hard but like, it’s not, at all. If you pick Human Female, you get a really good item, which you immediately sell for a money boost, spending it on power ups to be able to handle the early areas easier. And the first floor’s whole thing if you’re collecting King Equipment, which makes you essentially invincible. You then just farm. I farmed for about 40 minutes before getting enough money to get my stats up to 140-ish each, and I was good. I just cruised through the game, occasionally upgrading my stats further. Your stats can go to 255 before overflowing back to zero, but it only shows to 99, which CAN be annoying.

Anyways, this is a really good game that I’d have loved back in the day. I can see why it’s beloved, and I’m glad I finally got to it!

Also one more fun thing, from Wikipedia: “Square’s concept for the game was a title that could be completed in six to eight hours, based on the duration of an airplane flight between Narita, Japan and Honolulu, Hawaii.” Thats cute.