Quite a while back I mentioned the discovery of the original Final Fantasy being available for the iPhone, admittedly with some reservations about the interface and having to play it on a 3” screen. Well, nearly six months later I guess I must’ve gotten bored with all of the zombies and other adorable aliens because I’ve now been playing this one for about a week and I think I’m coming around on it now…
I still vouch that the touch interface can be a bit clunky at times – sometimes it takes me a couple of attempts at clicking on a monster in combat for my attack to actually take, but so far the size of the screen hasn’t really been too straining as long as I play in shorter increments. This isn’t as big of a deal as I would’ve thought because they’ve waived the saving requirements to allow you to save basically anywhere, as opposed to only on the world map as in previous versions … an obvious, but unexpected necessity for playing a game on one’s phone that makes playing a couple of quick combats actually possible.
So far I’ve managed to get just past where I would’ve 20 years ago when I was renting the NES cartridge from the grocery store for a weekend of gaming – getting ready to explore the Earth Cave to hunt down the vampire for his ruby, then take out Lich to save the first orb of light. All in all I’ve put just under 5 hours into the game, and as long as I can remember to keep my battery charged (it does go through them a lot quicker than something like Words with Friends does!), despite my previous concerns I think I’ll probably keep it up and continue playing all the way through!
It’s kind of funny because earlier this week, I was actually thinking about picking up one of the more recent Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy games to play on my wife’s DS because she hasn’t really been using it lately, but for what it’s worth if I can get the same enjoyment out of the device that I already carry with me everywhere I go, I guess I should be good for a while! 🙂
