Retro Reviews from Memory
Welcome to a new segment where I review my favorite childhood games from memory, go back and play the game. Then revise my opinion because, let’s face it, some of those games from the 80’s and 90’s just don’t hold up. The Score above is provisional. I’ll be back (probably, maybe, like… solid 25% chance)* after I play the game again and write a new review and link it to this post.
Enough of the preamble… on with the review!
I actually enjoyed this game. It was more like a light version of final fantasy 2 or 3. Maybe there is some lore about it being a port or maybe it was an original offering with the difficulty scaled way down and the scope narrowed from other SNES jrpg installations. Whatever the case, it was a fun game. Very much on rails and not difficult to master at all. From memory I think I beat it in a day or 2. Certainly not more than a weekend.
Sadly, it was one of the few games I bought brand new with my own money and I didn’t really get my money’s worth; considering the other final fantasy games took me weeks to complete, if not months. That doesn’t really diminish the game as a whole, but I did expect there to be a lot more to a game with the Final Fantasy moniker tied to it. So… not quite a dud but also it didn’t measure up to my expectations. I think I ended up selling it to another kid in my class for about $10 less than the new price. Probably should have saved my money and just rented it.
Disclaimer(s)
*We should probably keep in mind that, when I was a kid, we didn’t have much money for games. Where others may have experienced the “rent before you buy” phenomena… that wasn’t really a thing in our house. I saved up babysitting money for an entire summer to buy the SNES. If we were doing well, I might get a single game for Christmas or my birthday, but they were almost always used from the swap meet or new from the discount bin. We didn’t have gamestop or many used game store options at the time. In any case, a LOT of my historical game memories are based on a rental window period that had to align with money, time (I had school, sports, occasionally a girlfriend, and a few part time jobs to juggle with my gaming habit), and whether my save file still existed when i rented the game a second time (assuming it was even available). Some games I didn’t play in their entirety until I got to college and had a tiny bit more money and a teensy bit fewer obligations. Which is to say, these reviews are patchwork at best. But let me know in the comments if you want me to replay any of these games and do a revised opinion review!
