SaGa

The Final Fantasy Legend Review: A flawed yet fun legend

Brighton Nelson

Nov 17, 2025 • 14 min read

The Final Fantasy Legend is, as almost every RPG nerd knows, not truly a Final Fantasy game, but instead, the first entry in the SaGa series. The game introduces a lot of new, innovative ideas in this brief, entertaining RPG experience. This game is a really unique start to a franchise, and certainly a landmark experience that every gamer should play. I, Brighton Nelson of RPG Ranked, will expose the good, the bad, and the Casey Jones in today's review: The Final Fantasy Legend Review: The flawed yet fun legend.

Battle System - 7

Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa) II – Game Boy | Video Game Underworld

While the battle system in The Final Fantasy Legend is simple and quite uninteresting in this day and age, it has more to offer than what it looks like on paper. With the constant cycling of Esper abilities and Monsters switching out on the fly all the time, the combat renews and retains its interestingness far longer than such a simple concept should. While the boss fights aren't too special outside of the rather difficult final boss, the enemy design is pretty impeccable. The great weapon durability system adds an extra layer of welcome differentiation from other games, which I never really thought I'd say about a durability system, but I truly enjoy it in this title and its sequels. While the combat is incredibly simple in this game, I still had a whole lot of fun with the battles up until the very end.

Story - 4

The story in this game is incredibly simple, but the tower's mysterious presence builds a fair amount of intrigue, especially for an RPG incredibly limited by Game Boy hardware. I really enjoyed the nature of mystery and frightening emptiness of the world. The dialogue and all was completely uninteresting outside of the final boss monologue and a couple random NPCs, but the random floors in trouble that were full of un-helpable NPCs was dreadfully intriguing. While the story of this game is not too special, the buildup of its mystery and its brief, unfluffed length made it a standout of the time and a decent-enough story even today.

Characters - 1

Only the final boss is anything more than a completely uninteresting character here. This game's lack of named protagonists and side characters was highly detrimental to a game that would've perfectly benefited from a quirky, Undertale-like charm to it.

Art & Graphics - 6.5

Collection Of Saga Final Fantasy Legend - Digital | SQUARE ENIX Store

I love Game Boy Color graphics (I played the remake), but this was certainly not the best-looking game on the system by a long shot. But, the graphics were still quite charming! And the sprites for the monsters in the bestiary and beyond were pretty fantastic and beautiful. If the game took a little more of that style, I feel that the game would stand out a lot more artistically.

Sidequests - 2

Outside of getting a couple optional weapons and tracking down every monster, this game was devoid of sidequests, unfortunately, setting itself up for an inevitably low score. There's really not much to say here... there's really just nothing else to say. It's just full of nothing sidequest-wise.

Music - 7.5

The Final Fantasy Legend Original Soundtrack - Album by Nobuo Uematsu | Spotify

The limited runtime of this soundtrack is the most apparent contributing factor for this less-than perfect score. While the music is pretty spectacular at times, setting the tone for the majestic, fun, slightly creepy adventure that is The Final Fantasy Legend, with how few tracks there are in the end, it gets quite repetitive, as much as I love it. There's some great standouts, but it isn't enough to elevate this score any higher than it already is.

Customization System - 8

Collection of SaGa: The Final Fantasy Legend Review | GameGrin

My favorite part about The Final Fantasy Legend is most certainly the game's form of customization. There are three types of characters: Humans, Mutants (or Espers, in the version I played, the GBC version), and Monsters. Humans level up by purchasing stat boosts available at shops across the worlds, and they have eight equipment slots in which they can equip a multitude of weapons and armor. Mutants level up by using weapons and skills related to the stat they are attempting to raise, just like Final Fantasy II. Mutants have four skill slots for weapons and armor, but also have four slots predefined by a rotating set of skills, making them akin to a Mage class. However, due to the nature of the Mutant, they can get much higher stats all-around because no state is capped by item purchases, unlike for the Human class, or by the choice of monster for the Monster class.

By far the most fun (albeit the weakest) class in the game has to be the Monster class. This class allows you to switch your character between every monster in the game just by eating meat that enemies drop after battle. This mechanic keeps the game super fresh because your party is ever-changing and the player needs to strategically switch their monster to refresh health and ability charges mid-dungeon, so hoarding your favorite monster is not really a feasible option in most cases. My favorite team would have to be 1 Human, 1 Esper, and 2 Monsters (for the most fun experience) or 1 Human and 3 Espers (for the most optimal experience). Overall, it's a really fun system, having three character types that function fundamentally different.

Locations - 7.5

The Final Fantasy Legend World 1 Map Map for Game Boy by RedIsPoetic - GameFAQs

While there are only five environments in this game—Overworld, Ocean, Sky, City, and Tower—they are quite fantastic, and each of the first four are their own medium-sized world maps connected by the really tall Tower. All five major areas are very fun to explore, and boast pretty different objectives. The Overworld has an objective to kill all the bosses and collect an equipment set, the Ocean has the player discovering a secret through riddles, the Sky is about liberating a people, and the City is a post-apocalyptic, futuristic world to survive. I would absolutely love to see more fun, extensive world maps like this in RPGs! These are some really charming and mysterious places to explore, but they aren't quite as good as many other RPGs that I've played.

Quality of Life - 8

Collection of SaGa Final Fantasy Legend (Part 1) Review - RPGamer

There aren't many problems I have with this game, but there's a couple. First off, if you want to fill out the bestiary, you have to be very careful, because, if you get to too high of a level with your monster, they'll no longer be able to devolve and you'll have to replay the game entirely to complete your bestiary. That annoyed me quite a bit, as I had to consult a guide to fill it out. Also, a couple really important, powerful items are missable, which really sucks. Objectively, the biggest problem is probably the obscene difficulty spike at the very end. I didn't mind it, personally, but it was definitely not the best design choice for the game. It's a pretty stupid section of the game if you decided to rock a team with multiple monsters or are new to RPGs since it's just such a huge shift from the not-so-hard rest of the game. The only other thing of note is the difficulty of the city area, which is only difficult due to the cryptic nature of the enemy that constantly attacks you in the overworld. Luckily, not a problem if you have a weapon that insta-kills, though. Overall, this game has a few little bumps it could smooth out, but nothing major.

The Verdict

Fun Factor: 7.5
Overall Score: 60%
Letter Rating: C

The Final Fantasy Legend is a really enjoyable and brief experience, even if the game is pretty shallow outside of its monster mechanics. The exploration and combat carry the game to be just above-average in terms of RPGs, yet still not quite an extraordinary experience. I'd absolutely recommend the game as a breezy experience to get through in a weekend when your family is out of town or when when you've just got a good amount of spare free time. It won't blow you away, but it'll bring you a smile.