Final Fantasy I/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Non Sequitur Scene: The "Overworld" room in one of the bonus dungeons in the remake. It's the Overworld... except with treasure chests, NPCs, stairs to the next floor, and a lot of other weirdness. You can even find another airship there.
  • Demonic Spiders: Sorcerers and anyone with paralyzing powers. To a lesser extent, anything that could turn you into stone as well. The chance of working was rare, but the curative for the condition was both expensive and couldn't be used in battle.
    • The remakes with additional content add more enemies that can kill in one hit, and make Sorcerers (renamed Mindflayers) able to use the instant kill attack on the entire party at once.
    • And then there are the MANCATs, each of which had a high chance of casting FIR2. Being surprised by 8 of these could result in a Total Party Kill.
  • Evil Is Sexy: Marilith/Kay. She's also Creepy Sexy, since she's a giant snake woman.
  • Follow the Leader: This was intended to be a Dragon Quest killer. Although it didn't come close, as DQ is still more popular in Japan, the Final Fantasy Series is the world's most famous JRPG series.
  • Game Breaker: The Monk/Master class, especially if you stay two or three levels above the expected level. It's very possible that the nunchuks were added to the game in an attempt to stop players from realizing how unbalanced the class was. The Monk is always more powerful when using his hands, since he's the only character in the game who dual-wields.
    • It should also be noted that this is only when a Monk/Master is part of a balanced team. Without a magic user or two in the party, you're screwed, especially if you're going for an all-Monk run.
    • The Monk gets fairly ridiculous in the GBA remake. A Fighter won't out-damage the monk (or even come close to its damage output) until he gets the Infinity+1 Sword, and even with said equipment, it's not by much. Plus, all the armor Monks need are a ribbon since, thanks to how they work, going naked is equivalent of having the evasion of a ninja, and they still have decent defense. Magic defense and status effects are pretty much their only (and biggest) concern, both of which are covered by the ribbon.
  • Goddamned Bats: The Hellfire Chasm dungeon in the Dawn of Souls and Anniversary Edition remakes has a floor where multitudes of bats can block your way from finding the exit to the next floor. Did I mention that said floor is primarily composed of tiles that will continuously sap the party's HP as long as you're not in the few safe zones in that floor?
  • Good Bad Bugs: It's possible to land the airship directly on top of the caravan instead of fighting across the desert. The caravan was the only "unlandable" spot that could actually be landed on with the airship. However, we can't be sure this "bug" was intentional or not.
    • HEL2 (a 5th-level spell), has the exact same curative power as HEL3 (a 7th-level spell) when used in battle, and when you consider that the cheapest way to heal out of battle is potions, you're better off skipping the latter and saving yourself the 45,000 GP.
    • The "Peninsula of Power": A four square peninsula tip that is the closet point in the southern continent to the northern one. Due to a mapping mistake, those four squares had the enemy encounters of the continent to the north, allowing you access to much higher-level—but still kill-able if fought with full HP/MP—monsters long before you should be able to face them, allowing for some serious Level Grinding. Yet another bug that has not only been kept in virtually every remake but also gave us the Peninsula of Power Leveling trope.
    • In the GBA remake, Dawn of Souls, Poison is considered to be regular damage. A Fighter can block the poison running through his veins with a shield!
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Those complaining about the effeminate faces of the more recent protagonists would do well to remember that White Mage's gender was also ambiguous in the original. And even in the remake, if you make him male, he looks like a Bishounen.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: One of the biggest complaints about the GBA and PSP remakes. To clarify, the magic system was replaced with the traditional magic points, experience is gained faster, Phoenix Downs were added, saving is possible almost anywhere, and a characters' attacks now redirect to another enemy if the original target is killed by someone else the same turn.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Chaos, the literal self-made man.
  • Memetic Mutation: "I, Garland, will knock you all down!"
  • Nightmare Fuel: Lich.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Not infrequently heard from people who started with later-generation JRPGs: "Well, it's really cliche..."
  • Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The above-mentioned Fifteen Puzzle is really addicting in the remakes, for obvious reasons. The Anniversary edition also has almost as many side dungeons as main ones.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The Updated Rereleases. You'd think that rebalancing the game, making saving more convenient, and automatically redirecting hits originally intended at targets that just died would make fans happy.
  • That One Attack: Two—Astos's Rub will kill one party member instantly, and WarMECH's Nuclear attack deals huge damage.
    • Rub actually only has a 75% chance of hitting. It is entirely possible to get through the fight without a single party member dying. It is also entirely possible for Astos to rub out three of your party members before you can beat him if you aren't sufficiently leveled. It really becomes that one attack after you get past the area, because you can get equipment that makes you immune to rub after this fight.
    • And the Sorcerers'/Mindflayers' regular physical attack has a high chance of insta-KOing whomever it hits.
  • Viewer Gender Confusion: White Mage is actually intended to be male; this is noticable after being upgraded to the White Wizard. However, you could argue all of the characters are androgynous enough to be whatever gender you want.