The original is now regarded as one of the most influential and successful role-playing games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, playing a major role in popularizing the genre.

The game's menu screen allows the player to keep track of their experience points and levels, to choose which equipment their characters wield, and to use items and magic.

[16] Combat in Final Fantasy is menu-based: the player selects an action from a list of options such as Attack, Magic, and Item.

The world of Final Fantasy is inhabited by numerous races, including humans, elves, dwarves, mermaids, dragons, and robots.

Two hundred years later, violent storms sank a massive shrine that served as the center of an ocean-based civilization, and the Water crystal went dark.

After Garland is defeated at the Chaos Shrine, Sarah rewards the Warriors of Light with her lute, and the Cornelia Bridge is rebuilt to allow them to pass east.

The Prince rewards the Warriors of Light with the Mystic Key, which enables them to retrieve Nitro Powder from a locked room in Castle Cornelia.

They immediately take the Nitro Powder to be detonated at Mount Duergar, allowing the dwarves to clear a path out of the Aldean Sea.

They fly to the Cardian Islands to meet the Dragon King, Bahamut, who tasks them with braving the Citadel of Trials and retrieving a Rat's Tail as proof of success.

The newly empowered warriors rescue a bottled fairy from a caravan in the northwestern desert and are rewarded with an Oxyale, which allows them to breathe underwater.

The warriors search for the Wind Crystal in Lufenia but cannot understand the local language until they take the Rosetta Stone to Dr. Unne in Melmond.

After passing the Waterfall Cavern and obtaining the Chime in Lufenia, the warriors climb the Mirage Tower and warp to the Lufenians' flying fortress.

Garland transforms into Chaos and is defeated for good, breaking the time loop and sending the Warriors of Light back to the present.

Hironobu Sakaguchi had intended to make a role-playing game (RPG) for a long time, but his employer Square refused to give him permission as it expected low sales of such a product.

Kawazu was mainly responsible for the battle system and sequences, which he based heavily on the tabletop game Dungeons & Dragons and the RPG Wizardry.

[23] Among the other developers were graphic designer Kazuko Shibuya, programmers Kiyoshi Yoshii and Ken Narita, as well as debugger Hiroyuki Ito.

[32][33] The original working title for Sakaguchi's RPG concept was Fighting Fantasy, but was changed to avoid issues with a gamebook series of the same name that had already been released.

[17] While all of these remakes retain the same story and battle mechanics, various changes have been made in different areas, including graphics, sound, and specific game elements.

This version was similar to the WonderSwan Color remake[42] and featured several changes such as more detailed graphics, a remixed soundtrack, added full motion video sequences, art galleries of Yoshitaka Amano's illustrations, and a memo save function.

Square Enix released the original NES version of the game on the Wii's Virtual Console service in Japan on May 26, 2009,[55] in North America on October 5[56] and in the PAL region as an import on May 7, 2010.

[57] Square Enix released the iOS version of Final Fantasy on February 25, 2010, based on the PSP port with touch controls, worldwide.

[59][60] Square Enix released Android port on July 27, 2012, largely based on the iOS version though lacking the new dungeons of the 20th-anniversary edition.

Final Fantasy has been well received by critics and commercially successful; the original Famicom (NES) version shipped 520,000 copies in Japan,[29] grossing more than ¥3 billion or $21,000,000 (equivalent to $56,000,000 in 2023) at retail.

[88] Final Fantasy was one of the most influential early console role-playing games and played a major role in legitimizing and popularizing the genre.

Peer Schneider of IGN enjoyed the WonderSwan Color version, praising its graphical improvements, especially the environments, characters, and monsters.

[70] Final Fantasy Origins was generally well-received; GamePro said the music was "fantastic", and that the graphics had a suitably retro cuteness to them.

[93] Reviews for Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls were generally positive, with Jeremy Dunham of IGN giving particular praise to the improved English translation, saying it was better than any previous version of the game.

[94] The PlayStation Portable version was not as critically successful as the previous releases; GameSpot's Kevin VanOrd cited the visuals as its strongest enhancement but stated that the additional random enemy encounters and updated graphics did not add much value.

Warrior of Light, based on Yoshitaka Amano's design of the lead character, and Garland are the respective hero and villain representing Final Fantasy.

Chaos and the Amano Warrior of Light make appearances as bosses in the Stormblood and Shadowbringers expansions of Final Fantasy XIV, respectively.