I remember my first experience with the Final Fantasy franchise quite fondly. I have to travel back in time about 13 years. We were having the family Thanksgiving at my Grandparents’ house in Oklahoma. I remember being excited during the entire long drive on the way there from home in Nebraska because my aunt had promised me that if I brought my NES, she would bring her fifty some games for me to play. I had never heard of Final Fantasy, so I pretty much just set it aside until my uncle had me throw it in because he wanted to play it. If it weren’t for him, I probably never would have started playing what has turned into one of my favorite game series of all time.

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls lets us revisit the first two games in the legendary series, and these are not the games they used to be. Square-Enix took it upon them to overhaul the graphics and sound on both games to take them from NES, to SNES quality. They very much remind me of Final Fantasy IV or V. Nothing amazing, but a drastic improvement over what they once were. And besides, I have always liked the stunty characters and hand-drawn graphics of the older Final Fantasies more that the newer 3D varieties.


It's coming...

Some (if not all) will ask, “Didn’t Square release Final Fantasy I and II on the PS1 a couple years ago?” The answer to that is a definite yes. These remakes are indeed a couple years old, but they are not exactly the same. First off, you can’t carry a PS1 around with you in your pocket! Well I suppose you could, but it would require a rather large pair of pants with a rather large pocket and it would be rather uncomfortable. All joking aside, there aren’t that many differences between the two games. A couple of the most noticeable ones are the missing CGI cut scenes, and the implementation of a more normal magic point system in Final Fantasy I. If you ask me about the now nonexistent movies, I say good riddance. I feel like movies thrown into places they don’t belong ruin the flow of the game. I was furious with the other Final Fantasy ports on the PS1 for that very reason. I don’t miss them not being in Dawn of Souls for one second.

Even though this is a review of Dawn of Souls as a whole, since it is comprised of two individual games I feel the need to make a few comments about each game separately for a minute. Each game has its own distinct personality, and simply clumping the two together without giving each the respect it deserves wouldn’t be right.