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A lot of the fun of Final Fantasy comes from picking your character classes. The designers were very clever in creating six classes, but only four characters to a party. Thus it is impossible to try all of the classes in a single play through, and the possible combinations are enormous. In addition, each class will receive an upgrade about 3/4 of the way through the game. This upgrade will change the abilities of that character, to varying degrees of significance. It is very helpful to be aware of these upgrades when choosing your initial class, so that you don't end up stuck in the mud after dumping 20 hours into a game. This happened to me recently- a result of making a hasty and uninformed decision when designing my party.
Be warned, you only get to choose your character classes once - at the beginning of the game. Similar to the first phase of Settlers of Catan; your choices during this phase will have a strong impact on how your playing experience will roll out. Also similar to Catan; you will likely be well into the game when hindsight kicks in and you realize which choices you would have made differently. You may then be confronted with the urge to start over again from the beginning. On my recent play through of Final Fantasy, I decided to experiment and go with an unorthodox: Fighter, Black Belt, Red Mage, Red Mage line.
My party set-up was fine for the first 9/10 of the game or so. I have very strong physical attacks, which allowed me to blaze through most of the dungeons in the early part of the game. In addition, being full of physical attackers means I don't have to think very strategically; I don't have to conserve spells, I only have to try and spread my attacks out among the groups of enemies. (This is because Final Fantasy has the obnoxious programming quirk of allowing players to attack enemies who were destroyed earlier in the round, and thus result in an 'ineffective' wasted attack.)
I first began to wonder if I had made a mistake when designing my party when I began to find my Red Mages simply can't learn certain spells. I had the idea that I would make one mage lean toward white magic and one mage lean toward black magic. It worked out pretty well until I found that I didn't know what most of the spells do, and their 4-letter names were not very good descriptors. In addition, a super-essential Level 5 spell - LIFE was not available to Red Mages. This was a problem. The Life spell is the only way in the game to bring a slain party member back while out in the field. Without that spell, I have to beat a given dungeon and boss without letting anyone die. This is extremely tough, but I got good at it by grinding out lots of levels and over-powering myself for each dungeon.
The wave of regret hit me much stronger in the later half of the game, when I upgraded my Red Mages to Red Wizards. As it turns out, Red Wizards can learn the LIFE spell, but by that time, I had maxed out my spell slots for that level for both Wizards! Fuck fuck, shit fuck fuck fuck.
But, you can't go back, only forward. My party hardily bashed its way through the water temple and the air temple, and now I've gotten to the final temple, but I just can't hang. I'm at level 28, which should be plenty to beat the dungeon, but I always sap my supply of healing spells, and I start to lose party members. I haven't even made it to the boss. I'm sure if I boosted my levels up to 32 or so, I could make it through, but I'm just tired of it by now.
So, I probably won't beat Final Fantasy this play through. And I'm too disgusted to start over again. And, really, I don't know what I would do differently. I liked this party, and I would be interested to try it again, just remembering to consult a walk-through beforehand. But I'm also tempted to try a new party combination, but I'm not sure what. If you're still interested, I'm going to walk through each character class and describe their advantages/disadvantages and contributions to the whole.
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The Fighter is a Final Fantasy Icon. I also think he looks a little bit like a rooster. He's got the highest defense, hit points and can equip the strongest gear. He is the strongest attacker for the first half of the game, but he is eclipsed by the Black Belt/Master in attack power, and finishes up second. The hardiness and consistency of the Fighter makes him hard to leave out of any party. However, he's also a bit of a money-sink, since he requires all the top-notch gear. The upgrade to the Knight doesn't really do much, it adds white magic up to level 3, but by the time you get the upgrade, spells from those levels don't have much effect.
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