Final Fantasy Chronicles

Something has to be said about Squaresoft's ability to take their old games, repackage them, and sell them out to a market and still make a killing. Like Nintendo, Squaresoft takes old, famous games, puts them on a handheld or more powerful system, and adds some mediocre abilities- they basically repackage the games. From Final Fantasy 1 (Which has been on the NES, the PS1, the GBA, the Wonderswan Color, and more) to Final Fantasy 7 (Which has gotten sequels that are even on cell phones), Squaresoft sure as hell knows how to repackage a license.

So, here we are with an older package, Final Fantasy Chronicles. See, when Squaresoft began hitting the accelerator on the PS1 in the late 90s, they realized that, DUH, you could port older games to the PS1 and not have any major graphics issues. So, they went through the logical progression:

TOP 2D SQUARESOFT GAMES:
Final Fantasy IV
Chrono Trigger
Final Fantasy VI
The Secret of Mana

So, what did they do? They took two similarly-paced games (FFIV and CT) and put them together in the Final Fantasy Chronicles package.



Okay, first to clean up some assumptions made. First of all, yes, these are 100% direct ports from the systems. Actually, for those of you keeping count, it's the Japanese Directly Translated version of FFIV and the English Translated version of Chrono Trigger.

(Note for those of you who aren't super geeks: The version of FFIV for the SNES was heavily edited due to bars in the game, a porno mag item, and swearing. It's all here on the PS1 version. However, they did not actually re-translate Chrono Trigger, which means half the lines are still gone from the Japanese version. Thanks to Paul (SparkElectro) for the info on that one).


So, I feel like this package needs to be generally lumped together, because I really don't feel like individually reviewing each game. I'll just give an overview of what's new.

Final Fantasy IV is exactly as it was in Japan, and it makes it leagues better. Being the first SNES Final Fantasy, it barely uses the graphics we saw in FFIV, but it still is impressive for those of us remembering the NES days. However, don't be fooled- this game is as hard as ever, and will require a lot of your time. Unfortunately, one of the major problems with this port is loading times- and they do exist. So, if you're used to the SNES version, you'll probably consider this a "Slow" port, and if you're used to this, the SNES one seems fast. It irritates the s*** out of me, personally. Oh, and for the record, the added FMVs to this game have been rated the worst Final Fantasy FMVs ever by many websites. They. Are. Horrible.



Chrono Trigger is as great as usual, plays like the original, and just exudes those times when I rented it from the local video store for like three months. The game is as amazing as usual, and now toting some totally kick ass awesome Anime CG FMVs that break up the story nicely, and fit the Akira Toriyama style. Again, the only problem with the CT port is that the game itself has long load times. Hell, expect a 10 second load just to access the menu. You get used to it after a while, but it's ANNOYING at first, especially if you're used to the SNES speed.

Final Fantasy Chronicles is a great package for any PS1 owner. However, I could not just offhandedly ignore the horrific load times. It was just too long. It's obvious Squaresoft planted the games on an emulator, and the emulator ran slow, they should have done SOMETHING. These load times are inexcusable. Regardless, if you're willing to put up with it, these are great games, even now when we have the PS3 and 360 coming up. Just... have patience.

4 star(s) out of 5

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