While not the first JRPG, Final Fantasy was a pioneer of the genre, particularly in presentation. Final Fantasy follows in the footsteps of other JRPG trailblazers like Enix's popular Dragon Quest - featuring exploration, dungeon-crawling adventure, and experience-based advancement. Final Fantasy also tells a simple story - not much of a narrative by modern standards, but notable for 1987, when most game narratives were nothing more than a blurb in the accompanying guide book. Unfortunately, the story Final Fantasy tells is not particularly engaging and ultimately makes little sense. It is little more than a pretext for the player to travel from dungeon to dungeon. While later entries in the series are notable for their worldbuilding, storytelling, and tone, Final Fantasy is simply not there yet.

In Final Fantasy, the player creates and controls a party of four characters. Each character is assigned a class at the beginning of the game, which will dictate their abilities and available equipment. There are six classes to choose from: Fighter, Monk, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage, and Black Mage. You are free to select any combination, including duplicates - although some classes are simply better than others. The Thief is notably weak, lacking both offensive and defensive ability (and conspicuously missing any actual "thieving" skills). Outside of combat, your choice of classes has no impact on the game whatsoever.

Turn-based combat makes up the majority of the game experience. In combat, each character and enemy take turns executing actions. Characters may attack, defend (forgoing their action in exchange for reduced damage), run away, use an item, or cast spells. In the original 1987 game, attacks directed to an enemy would fail if that enemy died before the attacking character's turn. However, the Pixel Remaster adopts the more modern convention of directing the attack to another enemy. This is both a major quality of life improvement and a substantial reduction to the overall difficulty of the game.

Final Fantasy features several sprawling, multi-layered dungeons, each with a final boss at the end. The basic gameplay loop amounts to defeating enough enemies to level up so that you can gain sufficient power to survive the trip to the bottom of the next dungeon and defeat the boss there. Once this is complete, the game will provide a nugget of narrative to link you to the next dungeon, and the process repeats. Overall, a thorough playthrough will take around 10-15 hours.

As a remaster, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster is a glowing success. Originally released for the Japanese Famicom system in 1987, Final Fantasy has been ported to multiple other regions and systems over the years. With each of these ports, changes were made to the gameplay, translation, and presentation of the game. The Pixel Remaster is an attempt to produce a version of the game which runs well on modern devices, is updated for modern controls and UI standards, and which is graphically updated while also remaining faithful to the original aesthetic. Wherever possible, the original pixel art has been used, although updated with an enhanced color palette and modern rendering tricks. The result is a game which looks something like a late 16-bit era JRPG with a few subtle embellishments, such as shimmering water and glowing spell effects. While it is certainly not the original game, this remaster evokes an authentic-feeling aesthetic while also being accessible to a modern audience.

Overall, this can be a strange game to approach. Players may pick this up looking to experience a piece of gaming history, but that's not what this is. The Pixel Remaster's beautiful updates to the original graphics, UI, and gameplay make this a much more accessible game, but in doing so it becomes something other than the groundbreaking title from 1987. And judged by the standards of modern games, this is a simple JRPG with a frustratingly sparse story. Still, the Pixel Remaster is probably the best experience you can have if you do want to play Final Fantasy today.

Dear Esther is the title that first gave us the "walking simulator" genre. Originally a mod for Half Life 2, this game is essentially an audio-visual art project made in a game engine. I would not describe it as a game; there is no interactivity and no fail state. The only thing you can do in Dear Esther is wander slowly around the island along narrow paths, occasionally triggering a voice-over that describes disjointed and confused events. It's not even a piece of interactive art - at least, no more so than walking through an art gallery is.

I gave the original retail release of Dear Esther a cautious recommendation, as it is definitely a unique experience. I criticized it for being a bit obtuse and pretentious, and I stand by those criticisms. However, the main feature of this (pretentiously named) "Landmark Edition" is a developer commentary, and that I cannot recommend.

I love a good commentary, and it can be fascinating to take a peak behind the curtain and see why design and artistic decisions were made. Here, however, the developers spend *hours* praising their own work in grandiose terms. I'm fairly certain that Jessica (the composer) brought herself to orgasm several times simply by proclaiming the superlative and innovative nature of her contributions.

For those who are curious, I can save you two hours of your life:

* Dear Esther was originally a mod for Half Life 2
* The story is deliberately ambiguous
* The junk scattered around the island is randomized each time you play
* The art is intended to have an "impressionistic" style
* Anatomical imagery is deliberate (if never quite explained)
* The focus was much more on evoking emotions than telling a story
* They really like that cave

There just isn't much specific information beyond that. They belabor those few points ad nauseum, taking frequent breaks to heap praise on their own work.

I used to think Dear Esther was pretentious. Now I know it is.