Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls

aka: Final Fantasy I & II Advance
Moby ID: 15750
Game Boy Advance Specs
Buy on Game Boy Advance
$34.82 used, $129.97 new on eBay
Note: We may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made via eBay or Amazon links (prices updated 3/21 7:55 PM )

Description official descriptions

Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls is a re-release of the two remakes of the original Famicom (NES) games with additional extras. This release also reduces the difficulty level of both games and has a few other gameplay modifications (for example, stats can no longer decrease in Final Fantasy II).

Final Fantasy I features four "Soul of Chaos" dungeons, unlocked during the course of the plot. These elemental dungeons are for high-level players, and contain a collection of bosses taken from later Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy II includes an extra storyline known as the "Soul of Rebirth." This mode is unlocked after completing the game and acts as an epilogue, featuring characters killed off in the main story. Both games gain a bestiary that tracks all the monsters the player has fought and their stats and weaknesses.

Spellings

  • ファイナルファンタジーI・IIアドバンス - Japanese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Game Boy Advance version)

78 People (72 developers, 6 thanks) · View all

Programmer
Character Designer
Scenario Writer
Original Development
  • Square 'A-Team'
Executive Producer
Programmer
Scenario Writer
Character Designer
Original Development
Producer
Director
Remake Planners
Dialogue Assistant
Music Supervisor
Character Illustration
Coordinator
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 72% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.8 out of 5 (based on 46 ratings with 2 reviews)

Fundamentals of Monster-Mashing

The Good
First of all, it's absolutely great to see the cardinal Final Fantasy series come back to Nintendo, and great to see Square working on GBA and DS versions in future too. We've missed these things.

The re-glitterification process has benefited the game a lot. I know some might grumble about the difficulty level getting dropped from "masochistic" to "balanced", and combat system actually working in a sane way ("I just want the monsters dead, not dead-dead - quit hitting them!"), but I think these things have actually been for the better. A long way from NES to a lot of obscure and weird platforms like WonderSwan Color and Playstation has given a lot of new stuff to this thing - and the final additions to the game really make it worthwhile.

I also like the fact that while the games remain quite "old-fashioned", I haven't so far got really, really stuck ("Can't find the entrance to the last labyrinth hidden in one of the 65536 map squares? Call our hot line!") - that is, I'm on a long train trip, grab my DS to pass some time, and a few minutes into play I'm completely stuck in some god-forsaken monster-filled hellhole with no idea how to proceed, and I curse myself for not printing out the walkthrough before I left. Not so in these games! Maybe it's in the old-fashioned style of the games, but these things are really linear and there's plenty of hints on what to do next - and even if there isn't, I can always go wandering around and drop a few trains on the wandering monsters until it all makes sense.

Speaking of which, I don't usually like the "wandering monsters" in JRPGs - always seemed to me that in the long-gone hazy mists of time, some crazy Japanese guy read a badly translated D&D rule book and got some weird ideas from it - but monster-mashing really is pretty fun in this game. I don't know why. Maybe it's just because unlike FF6, the monsters aren't ugly and annoying, and unlike FF7, there isn't hell of a lot of camera zooming and "cool" effects. The combat is simple, effective, and non-annoying. I can do this for hours before getting bored.

And the collection also has FF2, which is a completely new game to me - again, the only European release was for some weird backwards platform no one had, I can't remember which. Why oh why they didn't utilize all of these ideas on other FF games? As an Ultima fan, I have always ridiculed JRPGs for not having proper dialogue trees, but they almost used them here! The skill system is pretty cool too. And there's an actual story this time. Whee.

And I can save everywhere. That freaking rules. I have probably said this before often, but I hate save points.

The Bad
Okay, these are re-re-re-re-repolishings of old NES games, which means, they aren't really that complex. However, all this polishing manages to hide this stuff pretty well. Just don't expect gigantic thrills from storytelling or game structure.

The Bottom Line
Once upon a time, Square had a desperate idea to publish a CRPG that might very well be their last. They read a worn D&D rule book and made a rather working mishmash from those ideas. For some obscure reason, it sold like ice cream on a hot day. However, If you play the NES game now, you'll probably note that it isn't great deal of fun. I was definitely suspicious of how they might remake a game that wasn't fun at all.

But it turns out that after a lot of polishing and tweaking and shining, two of the most ancient parts of the series turn into rather likable games. There's a lot of monster-mashing and such. Simple plots along the lines of "kill the bad guys". These are definitely games that work really well as portable games and are great for passing time. And since these are just monster-mashing, you can do this for short periods of time and long periods of time and save when you're out of time.

They aren't really complex like most of the modern CRPGs. You need to appreciate their simplicity to really get these games. I'm a fan of complex games, but these things still got my heart. No hint of religio-socio-political backstabbing of Ultima VII or zillion-layered drama of Final Fantasy VI, but hey, sometimes, it's just fun to kill some monsters and monsters and... really big monsters to the tune of "Random Uematsu Melody".

Highly recommended!

Game Boy Advance · by WWWWolf (444) · 2005

Nothing ground-breaking, but a decent remake

The Good
Final Fantasy 1&2 Dawn of Souls is a GBA remake of the first two Final Fantasy games, originally on NES. Those games have already been remade for the Playstation and Wonder Swan Color, and I heard this is a pretty much a 1:1 port of those later version to the GBA, although I've never played the PS version, and the Wonder Swan Color doesn't even exist outside of Japan. I have played (and reviewed) both NES games tough.

A good thing is that they remade completely graphics and sound to more modern standards. This game doesn't make the cut to the graphical level of other GBA-native games, but it looks good enough. The sound is remade completely and usually sounds pretty good, but some tracks were lacking the mood of their NES original, sounding too much "techno like". Just like their NES counterparts, the battle musics get really annoying after a while. They introduced brand new boss themes (there weren't any in the NES versions (except the last boss of FF2)) so this is a good thing.

Most of the gameplay is intact and the games are overall truthful to their respecive originals. The battle systems haven't changed except that when an enemy dies, characters automatically attacks the next enemy instead of hitting the air. Decent cutscenes have been added (there weren't any in the NES originals), in an attempt to make the games more accessible. In FF2 they tried to make the story more appealing and the characters more developed, giving them detailed portraits and default names. You can also carry infinite items, which is nice (I hated the limited inventory of the originals).

Other new features is that you can save anywhere, which is practical since the game is portable, and there is a bestiary, and a music player.

The Bad
There is a few issues I have with this remake. The first is that the unique cuteness of the NES sprites (especially the black mages) is completely gone. Character lost their unique "old Final Fantasy" looking, which is the worst flaw of the remake.

Other than that the difficulty has been drastically lowered. This isn't completely a bad thing because the originals were too hard, but there they really lowered it too much, I do only remember loosing once in FF2 and not at all in FF1 ! Exception of the last bosses which are both very hard. I really don't like easy games with incredibly hard last bosses.

One more bad thing is that, while drastically improved, the horrible battle system of FF2 remains there, and horrible memories of the NES version came to me while playing it. In case you didn't know, FF2 has a system that get rids of EXP and levels, and that increase your stats depending on the actions you do. They implemented it horribly in the original FF2, making it very easy to have a unbalanced party that doesn't progress at all no matter how much you fight, and to get your ass badly kicked as soon as you met an enemy of a higher level.

Magic is still less powerful than plain attack, but by a smaller amount. You can level up magic much faster (only about 10 casts per level instead of 100!), but it also consumes more MP as you level it up (which is a stupid system). It is still very rare to see your MP increased no matter how much you waste them, but other than that the horrible battle system of FF2 has been really improved and works pretty well. Your stats don't decrease any more, and you gain regularly HP even if you didn't get hurt very badly, which makes all the difference.

One more annoyance is how frequent battles are (especially in FF1). I know this was already the case on the NES, but in some places you get attacked literally each 3 steps and this is very annoying (even if the monsters are really easy).

The Bottom Line
This is a nice remake, but definitely the average gamer will find it incredibly soulless and boring because the simple NES stories and battle systems remains, and the cute sprites have been make more realistic (not really a good thing). It is quite easy so it's not really a challenge either. It still kill time if you are bored, and if you want to say you beat all Final Fantasies out there, you definitely want to play this instead of the NES version (at least for FF2) because they are easier. Count about 10 hours for FF1, and 20 hours for FF2, about 30 hours in total, which isn't much for Final Fantasy games. Also keep in mind you'll spend that time mostly pressing the A button again and again without thinking, because in both games, typical non-healing magic is weak, wasteful and pointless.

So for short if you're a hardcore FF fan, check this out, else you'd want to pass this game and play another RPG with a better story/battle system. Also, the FF1 original is definitely better than this because of the challenge and nostalgia, but this is much, much better than the original FF2.

Game Boy Advance · by Bregalad (937) · 2009

Trivia

References

In the original version of Final Fantasy on the NES, the tomb in Elfein read "Here lies Erdrick" - a reference to a prominent character in the Dragon Warrior series. In the Playstation re-release in Final Fantasy Origins, the tomb read "May Link Rest In Peace" - a reference to the protagonist in Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series.

Strangely enough, this text was not altered when the game was released for the Gameboy Advance - a Nintendo-made system!

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2004 – #7 GBA Game of the Year

Analytics

MobyPro Early Access

Upgrade to MobyPro to view research rankings!

Related Games

Final Fantasy II
Released 2021 on Windows, iPhone, 2023 on PlayStation 4...
Final Fantasy II
Released 2007 on PSP, 2010 on iPhone, 2012 on Android
Final Fantasy V Advance
Released 2006 on Game Boy Advance, 2013 on iPhone, 2015 on Windows...
Final Fantasy Origins
Released 2002 on PlayStation, 2012 on PSP, PlayStation 3
Final Fantasy II
Released 1991 on SNES, PlayStation, Game Boy Advance...
Final Fantasy II
Released 2001 on WonderSwan Color, PlayStation, PSP...
Final Fantasy
Released 2021 on Windows, iPhone, iPad...
Final Fantasy
Released 1987 on NES, 1989 on MSX, 2010 on BREW...
Final Fantasy III
Released 1999 on PlayStation, 2006 on Game Boy Advance, 2015 on Windows...

Related Sites +

  • FF-Fan
    A fansite that offers all kinds of information on the entire Final Fantasy franchise, including walkthroughs, game media, discussion boards and fan art.
  • Nintendo's official Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls site
    Has information about the game, pictures, and downloadable content such as wallpapers, AIM icons, and more.

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 15750
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

Contribute

Are you familiar with this game? Help document and preserve this entry in video game history! If your contribution is approved, you will earn points and be credited as a contributor.

Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Kartanym.

Wii U added by Michael Cassidy.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, JRK, WWWWolf, Steve Thompson, —-, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 4, 2004. Last modified June 17, 2023.