Apple Arcade subscribers are in for a treat as RPG royalty, Final Fantasy, arrives to the service
Today is a good day for two reasons. First of all, the first Final Fantasy is coming to Apple Arcade for subscribers to have a field day with. Technically named Final Fantasy+. Secondly, this article is a flimsy pretext for me to discuss one of my all-time favourite series.
Final Fantasy is one of those franchises that you would have heard of even if you have only played Snake on a Nokia. Even the tale around its name is legendary. If you believe the story, it was to be Square's “final” attempt at avoiding bankruptcy. In reality, according to interviews with Hironobu Sakaguchi, father of the franchise, the title merely meant it was his final attempt to become a successful game developer.
Moving on from the history lesson, let’s take a look at the classic that launched a worldwide phenomenon. The Apple Arcade version of Final Fantasy is the pixel remaster version. That means it is prettier to look at, comes with the original and rearranged soundtrack option, and has boost options for EXP and Gold. It is a great game, but having grinded to level 99 on it for completion's sake trust me, you want the boosts.
This does come with one drawback, however; the pixel version does not include the extra goodies and tweaks that the Dawn of Souls version does. If you recall, that remaster came out on the Gameboy Advance back in the early 2000s, and allowed you to save anywhere and changed the magic system back to MP.
More importantly, Dawn of Souls also included four extra dungeons to play through. It is a shame in general that the pixel remasters ditched these, but I digress. The point is, if you are an Apple Arcade subscriber, you can play Final Fantasy+ now. And you should, fingers crossed this heralds the arrival of the rest of the remastered versions.