Not bad for the first handheld RPG ever

User Rating: 5.5 | Makai Toushi SaGa GB
As far as I know, The Final Fantasy Legend is the first RPG designed for a portable game system and it's history is somewhat irritating to me. This is not really a Final Fantasy title; this is actually the first game in the SaGa series. That really bothers me. This is a translated version of Makai Toushi SaGa, which has nothing to do with the Final Fantasy universe at all. It was renamed for its U.S. release for marketing reasons, which may have been a good idea in 1990, but looking back it really just causes unnecessary confusion.

TFFL seems like a standard RPG with four people in your party walking around and running into constant random enemy encounters. This is true, but from there the game really wanders off the beaten path, creating its own rules and methods, like weapons that have a limited number of uses (which I despise). I won't get in to all of the details; just trust me when I say it does not play like Final Fantasy. A lot of the gameplay elements were actually very innovative at the time. The option to use monsters and mutants in your party are a good example of this.

The graphics are very primitive and it has a poor story, however, the music and sound was all done by Nobuo Uematsu and is pretty good.

I would not recommend this game to anyone but the most devoted Square fan. This is the first in a long running series and should be experienced to see its RPG roots; just ignore the 'Final Fantasy' in the name and consider it "SaGa 1".

See you again!