Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls for Game Boy Adv Reviews & Ratings by IGN

In the off chance you missed last year's excellent PlayStation One compilation Final Fantasy Origins, Square Enix's latest reinterpretation of its 8-bit dynasty could be one of the most surprisingly enjoyable pick-ups of the season. Though it's not as complex or attractive as the more recent GBA RPGs like Golden Sun and the Mega Man Battle Network series, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls still maintains the most important element needed towards becoming an awesome videogame: it's fun plain and simple.

Now I'll be the first to admit that this two-game anthology isn't exactly something we haven't played before. The original version of the game was released in 1987 after all and the chances that someone in your gaming circle has played in it in the meantime are pretty great. Nonetheless, Dawn of Souls still manages to include a few new extras that make owning it a little more enticing. Of course, the most appealing aspect of them all is the fact that we're getting a portable version of Final Fantasy I & II in first place. Before this, they were previously only available for the rarely seen import handheld system WonderSwan before being ported over to the console market for the aforementioned Final Fantasy Origins.

Players expecting to play a rehashed version of Origins may be in for a bit of a surprise. Though it has incorporated the same dash button and bestiary feature that the PSOne game had, most of the others extras have been removed. Art galleries and cinematic FMV sequences would have taken up far too much cartridge space, for example, so those have been scrapped in favor of brand new in-game cutscenes, a better translation, and more important gameplay-oriented fixes. The translation work in particular is extremely well done and offers the best English interpretation of the storyline of any previous version. Loose plot threads that were only hinted at in the NES and PlayStation games are now given more obvious conclusions, and in some cases have been added completely from scratch. It's a nice touch.

More importantly, though, Square Enix has gone back and tweaked the mechanics for both Final Fantasy I and II so that they fit better in the handheld market. Instead of needing a tent or cabin to save outside of a town, for instance, players can now save at any time much like Final Fantasy IV. Additionally, the structure of Final Fantasy I has been dramatically modified so that it's a little more familiar to modern players. Instead of using the original game's level-based magic system, for example, Dawn of Souls now utilizes the familiar MP setup for a more intuitive casting of spells. The level cap has been upped past 50 to 99 as well (much like Easy Mode in Origins) and completely new items, weapons, and armor make their way into the lineup as well. Unfortunately for fans of the original's hefty difficulty level, Dawn of Souls is much easier than it was before, but given its new position as a handheld game, it's a totally acceptable evil.

Final Fantasy II isn't quite as modified as the first game, but it does have a few new additions worth mentioning. The most significant of which is the fact that leveling up is a lot more forgiving than it was before (FF2 works on a proficiency system that upgrades your abilities the more you use them) and you won't have to resort to attacking your own teammates as much just to level up your hit points. There's even an all-new storyline that takes place after the original ending that adds almost 20% more time to the experience (cool!). Honestly, though, most players probably won't even notice this change as this is only the second time in history that FF2 has ever been released in the United States (the game we knew as Final Fantasy II on the Super NES was actually Final Fantasy IV).

Both Final Fantasies in the collection also boast several new dungeons and nearly 70 new enemies taken from the latter NES and Super NES sequels and as expected, are more difficult to fight through than the other sections of the games. Still, they offer up some really cool battles that add a lot to the experience and you can even fight such classic enemies as Gilgamesh, Atomos, and the Revenant. Also nice is the addition of quick naming for your characters at the outset (look for several familiar names) and Super NES-quality graphics and sound that give both titles a much sharper presentation compared to their NES counterparts.

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