The Final Fantasy Legend - Reception

Reception

The Final Fantasy Legend is Square's first game to sell over a million copies; the Game Boy version alone shipped 1.37 million copies worldwide (1.15 million in Japan) as of March 31, 2003. Square quickly released two sequels for the Game Boy, and marketed subsequent SaGa games on other video game consoles. The one-eyed monster featured on the Japanese box art later became the series' mascot, appearing in the sequel as a character named "Mr. S". Game Freak founder Satoshi Tajiri cited the game's influence behind the Game Boy Pokémon series, stating it gave him the idea that the system could handle more than action games.

The game garnered mixed reception and an aggregate review score of 50.63% on GameRankings. IGN called The Final Fantasy Legend a "compelling RPG with a complex gameplay system and a solid soundtrack", but complained about the game's difficulty and "dated" graphics. German gaming magazine Power Play gave the game a score of 78%, and praised it for showing potential for the Game Boy as the first role-playing game on the platform. Allgame praised the title on its merits as a role-playing game, but criticized its high difficulty and lack of a sense of direction. The Chicago Tribune called the game "a little slow in spots, but, like Final Fantasy, worth your patience", and a "good quest". 1UP.com's Retronauts described its gameplay as a successor to Final Fantasy II's, though added that the systems involved were not properly refined until its sequel; they further stated that the randomness of the mutant and monster character classes made the game very difficult.

Other publications reacted to The Final Fantasy Legend more favorably. Author Jeff Rovin heavily praised the title in the book How to Win at Game Boy Games, citing the thorough manual and considering the game a "masterful achievement for the Game Boy unit, and a superlative game of kind", though not as complex as The Legend of Zelda. Spencer Yip of Siliconera named it as a game he was thankful for playing, citing it as opening his mind to story-based games moreso than titles like Dragon Quest, and in part led to the creation of the website. In May 1991, Nintendo Power named the game the third all-around best Game Boy game of the previous year, and in September 1997 they ranked it 70th on their list of the "Top 100" games to appear on a Nintendo system, stating that it had "stayed true to the Square Soft tradition". 1UP.com's Jeremy Parish called it one of the "essential" games for the Game Boy as well as one of the best of 1989, noting its introduction of new ideas that contrasted the Final Fantasy series and calling it "a pretty decent portable RPG in its own right". GameDaily named it a definite game for Game Boy alongside the related Final Fantasy titles, describing it as providing "hours of role-playing excitement, whether you were waiting in a dentist's office or on the way to Grandma's house." Andrew Vanden Bossche described the game as "unusual" amongst Japanese roleplaying games, describing its narrative as "loosely connected experiences rather than the sort of epic narrative the RPG genre is commonly thought of". As a result the off-screen deaths of non-player characters felt more "poignant" and an example of memento mori. However, he also felt the monster class system as counter-intuitive, as frequently said classes emphasized the point of enemies as "designed to pose challenges, not overcome them". Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, Pocket Games, and GameSpot shared this sentiment; the latter three named it one of the top fifty games for the Game Boy.

The difficulty and significance of the game's final boss, the Creator, has elicited several mentions. GamePro named him one of the "47 Most Diabolical Video-Game Villains of All Time", placing him 37th on the list and adding "You gotta wonder... how many hit points did the developers give God?" 1UP.com described the battle as "epic", considering it part of a recurring theme of Japanese role-playing games in which characters band together to kill God. Comedian Jackie Kashian referenced the Creator on Comedy Central Presents, describing the game's final battle as "the worst premise ever of any video game", and recalling how she still tried for eight months to defeat the boss. Despite the final boss' difficulty, it can be killed easily by the instant-death "chainsaw" weapon. In 2009, Square Enix battle planner Nobuyuki Matsuoka paid homage to the fact in the game Final Fantasy XIII, by deliberately giving the title's final boss a similar vulnerability.