I have a few fixed guidelines I follow when I play video games:
If I get stuck in an encounter, I put the game away and play something else. There are thousands of titles across dozens of libraries that scream for my attention, and life is too short.
It is next to impossible to complete Final Fantasy without a guide. Even with all the stunning quality of life changes that Tose implemented here—increased progression, faster movement speed, and the ability to disable random encounters (blasphemy, I’m sure, for many Japanese role-playing game purists)—there are still moments in this ancient relic that provide zero guidance on where to go next.
The 1987 Famicom release came with a guide that solved these riddles. The 2023 Pixel Remaster does not. Fortunately for those of us living in the future, there is the Internet.
So, yes: I looked up the solution to obtaining the airship, despite having found it organically years ago when I beat this game in its original form on the PS Vita. Back then, the playthrough took more than twenty hours of mostly grinding random encounters. This is how any Final Fantasy gets the battle music indelibly burned into their brains. The Pixel Remaster run took eight hours and secured me all but three annoying Xbox achievements. As someone who prizes a player’s time above all other engagement metrics, I’d call that a marked improvement in design.
2025.05.06 – 2025.05.10