This is my first topical study of FF gameplay. It is by no means comprehensive. The focus is on rooting out critical aspects that I believe are interesting and experientially important as a player. I try to be as charitable as possible to the game designers, who are talented and who I am sure have surmounted countless technical challenges in bringing the existing product to market. This is in no way meant to detract from their hard work. That final product is art, and any serious art should be able to be subject to serious criticism. Games are artistic systems, and in light of that I try to be system-thoughtful in my criticisms.
Player Character
PC lacks any real identity. Generic heroes in a world full of interchangeable generic characters. Even as a mere avatars, the lack of customizability makes them hard to identify with. The simplicity of it is not without its charm and the PC classes are iconic, but the characters in the game, PCs include, are all one dimensional and lock any depth.
Enemy Models and Bestial Ecosystem
The enemy models are well-designed, varied, and surprisingly detailed (at least relative to PC models). The bestiary is deep and diverse. There are some aspects that confound intuition, however. For instance, there seems to be little relationship between an enemy model’s size and its effective physical attack power. This is contrary to my intuitive physics and actual physical laws: force = MASS x acceleration. And the distribution of enemies is not based on their relative combat effectiveness. In an actual natural ecosystem of beasts, one would expect the tendency for there to be higher concentrations of more powerful beasts at the same scale because they would be more effective at survival, territorial control, and reproduction in that competitive environment. To get somewhat theoretical, essentially all that an enemy object in a classic RPG comprises is a descending counter going from some arbitrary n to 0 as it takes damage from the player and responding in turn with random or periodic anti-player behavior such as hit point attacks or adverse status effects. But some thought can go into designing the concentration of enemy types and tokens to fit together into a coherent ecosystem, as well as appearing in groupings that are complementary with respect to supplying the player with an appropriate challenge.
Random Battles
It is hard to imagine random battles being a preferred design choice for anyone. There is a mathematical engine behind any game of non-trivial complexity, and the probabilistic aspect of the encounter system brings that to the fore in an interesting way. However, the frequency of encounters is so high as to make the experience of dungeon crawling or walking in the open world lacerating. As a global subjective probability, I’d say the encounter rate is around .10 (for the expectation of an encounter once every 10 steps). However, this is not uniformly distributed and there are some places, such as a corridor in the Earth Crystal cave, where the encounter rate is 1.00 (a 100% chance of an encounter each step or in other words a certainty). The game is unbalanced in some parts because the frequency of battles causes the player character team to level up so much that the boss battle becomes trivially easy. Were I to design an RPG, I might make the encounter rate contingent upon player input. For instance, in an open world forest or veldt I might make beast encounters more likely if the PC stops for longer than a certain time interval, as if the player is being stalked and the fact they stopped to rest gave the beasts a chance to ambush them. There is no evidence of any such consideration in the game. Also, because of the rapid level gain, eventually the encounters become trivial in terms of challenge and reward. There should be a experience and gil reward premium or even multiplier for winning a battle with certain conditions, such as when ambushed. This would give some further motivation for tolerating the onslaught of seemingly endless, pointless random battles. Later RPGs like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound handled the encounter system much better. As a way of addressing it, if one were to design a game with a classical JRPG encounter system, one might consider every area having a finite number of each enemy type. This would give the completionist player yet another internal challenge to satisfy their cravings. Perhaps in the beast ecosystem the enemies could spawn at some reproduction rate, and a committed player could camp in a area long enough to defeat enemies at a rate greater than their replacement rate.
Maps
The maps seem uninspired and unmotivated. They feel as though they have no real reference in reality, either the natural world or the build environment. The most interesting and satisfyingly symmetrical map is the Sky Castle at the end of the game. In my opinion, maps based on natural world features such as caves should have their layouts be based on the the actual properties of such features, at least enough to be plausible. Landscapes should make sense (e.g. rivers flowing from mountains and draining into seas via tributary systems) and be subject to believability constraints (e.g. no lush green deciduous forests adjacent to deserts). Fantasy environments should have their own internal logic and be aesthetically appealing based on properties like symmetry.
Nominal Hit Point System
Something bothers me about the nominal hit point system in battle. Obviously, this isn’t a criticism specific to this game. I think I would find it more satisfying if attacks told me the percentage of total nominal hits points that were lost when I attack an enemy object, rather than a nominal positive integer value which is meaningless to me if I don’t know how much HP an enemy has. Later games have spells like DEMI which basically use a fractional system for nominal hit point reduction. But a percentage-based system just seems like it would give a more satisfying effect of enemy completion as they are fought and eventually conquered. Just a design theory I hope to someday test.
Music and Sound Effects
The SFX are rather rudimentary and uninspired. The music, in contrast, is a delight. The musical score is rhapsodic and appropriately thematic. From the opening theme to the triumphal sonorous post-battle victory theme, there music helps create atmosphere and a sense of transitions. I suppose this culminates in the operatic FFVI, where major characters have their own petite leitmotifs. But the basic aural groundwork is laid in this seminal FF. It is astounding that a musical scheme as low complexity as an 8-bit MIDI can have such a profound psychological impact. It really reflects well on the game design and presentation as an artisanal endeavor.