The Heroes of Final Fantasy Week 1 [Game Overview]

One of the first major features on this blog was a Villains of Final Fantasy series that ran for 13 weeks covering the main enemies of every numbered Final Fantasy game from I to XII including X-2. With Final Fantasy XIII launching in the states in just over a month, I figured it’s high time to give some recognition to the teams who are actually responsible for bringing those villains to justice and saving the world. I bring you the Heroes of Final Fantasy.

Not to kill the momentum of this first iteration of the series, but the first Final Fantasy was too traditional RPG to actually have any characters. Instead you just pick classes and name your four characters and that’s that. I’ll do something a little different (how can it be different when it’s the first time?) this week and just show all of the classes that comprise the Four Warriors of Light.

Warrior

The original Warrior
He looks so cute, but he's also scowling. Mixed messages there.

A generic, beefy tank class who relies on expensive equipment to be effective. The Warrior is not exciting, but it’s not his job to be. Surprisingly enough, this boring dude was selected as the representative for Dissidia. My guess: they had an unused 3D model of him floating around and decided to finally put it to use.

Monk

Final Fantasy I Monk
Kind of reminds me of Ryu

Known as Black Belt in the original translation to avoid religious connotations, the monk fights with his fists and wears light to no armor.

Thief

Final Fantasy I Thief
Really reminds me of Link. It's almost theft.

Surprisingly unable to steal anything in this first iteration of the series, the Thief’s main skill is being able to run away easily and reliably. He also has high agility.

Black Mage

Final Fantasy I Black Mage
The most famous of the bunch. I bet it's because he has no face.

With an iconic design that has held from Final Fantasy I all the way to throwbacks in modern iterations, the Black Mage casts black magic, AKA offensive spells.

White Mage

Final Fantasy I White Mage
Typically portrayed as a woman.

Another design that has remained relatively unchanged, the White Mage and his/her iconic white robe casts white magic, which is mostly curative, but also holy.

Red Mage

Final Fantasy I Red Mage
Looks more like a rogue-ish character than a mage.

A jack-of-all-mages class that can cast white and black magic spells, but specializes in neither. The top level spells are unavailable to him, but he is versatile.

Coolness:

Lame. These guys are all ciphers. No personality, no motivation, and no story. My pet rock has more personality.

1/10

Hero Quotient:

Saving the world is kind of the status quo for these heroic parties, so they won’t be getting bonus points for that. Eliminating the guardians of all the elements and deciphering the nonsensical plot centered around a time paradox does earn them some bonus points in their score.

3/10

As a bonus, you can check out Brian Clevinger’s webcomic, 8-Bit Theater, to see the personalities that he feels these heroes should have.

Comments

5 responses to “The Heroes of Final Fantasy Week 1 [Game Overview]”

  1. Eric Mesa Avatar

    I liked in FF9 how they took the fact that you can’t see the black mage’s face and made it into a plot point. Then again, FF9 was mostly an homage game.

    Interesting to me how the related posts plugin works that it links to the Villians of FF weeks 2,3,5,6, and 9. I know it has to have some logic behind it (because computers aren’t fully random), but it’s still odd. Also, I forgot if the plugin generates that dynamically. If it does, this half of my comment will become weird as time goes on.

    1. Dan Avatar

      I think it would be really cool to see someone make 16-bit sprites of all the modern Final Fantasy characters to see how they’d look alongside the cast from 1-6.

  2. Eric Mesa Avatar

    I bet someone somewhere on the net has already done this.

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