I never played the original or any of the other games in the series and the only thing I knew was what a friend told me: Final Fantasy but it's Star Trek.

The only thing I can say is that I had a blast playing it and loved pretty much every single thing about it, so I'm definitely going back to play the remaster (not remake) of the first one on PS4, since it's sadly not avaiable here.

My only complaint is that I didn't like the overworld traveling mechanic because it doesn't allow you to manipulate the cameera, but it's a minor quibble. Everything else, and it's a lot of everything else, was awesome.

I particularly enjoyed how they tell the story in two halves, the first one focused on the low-tech pseudo-medieval world you'd expect from a fantasy JRPG, but the second part focuses on the more sci-fi elements, and you have the choice to play as either Claude or Rena, the first one being a human from Earth stranded on a strange planet and pretending he's a local due to a Prime Directive type deal, and the latter a local girl who meets him and befriends him and knows nothing about space and other planets, so each has their own unique p.o.v. regarding the story's events.

This is a fantastic game and a great remake of an old school PS1 JRPG. The gameplay is solid with lots of stats to tweak and battles are real-time action rather than turn-based. The game feels fast and fluid with plenty of mechanisms to avoid excessive grinding. There's plenty of content here and the story is told from 2 perspectives, as there are 2 main characters. You can only play as one per run, so to get the most out of the game you'll need to play through it twice. This isn't as repetitive as you might think, as there are more recruitable party members than you can fit in your roster, meaning you can have completely different parties across different playthroughs. This affects everything from your battles to the story, which is impressive given how old the game is.

There are some downsides. The voice acting, barring a few exceptions, is bad. There are various highly emotive scenes where the voice actors just fall flat, as if they're just reading lines without context. Characters might witness or talk about someone dying and instead of sounding devastated, they sound inconvenienced, like you just told them their favourite chocolate bar has been discontinued.

The story is also serviceable but not exceptional. For a game that originally came out in 1998 it's understandable, but it's very by-the-numbers with no real unexpected twists or turns. The story takes about 25-30 hours to complete, which might be on the short side by modern standards, but it's fun from start to finish.

A lot of love appears to have gone into this remake and it is the absolute best version for curious new players to try out. Many quality of life changes have been added and the new backgrounds look lovely.

I'd love to see an option for the original PS1 combat voices and the voice collection to make a return. I also find myself missing the old green dialogue boxes at times but I can understand them wanting to show off their new backgrounds as much as possible.

With any luck 1&3 will be given the same level of care in the future.