Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition (PlayStation Portable) Review
Bad as a Remake, OK as a Game
~by tankMage (December 2025)
Score: 75/100 (Decent)
Last year I played the Game Boy Advance version of this game and disliked it. Upon starting Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition up on the PSP, I really hoped the game would be completely different from its counterpart. At first I was very happy with how things were going. A lot of the bugs that plagued the NES version had been fixed, plus the music and graphics were beautiful. Then I saw the stupid bonus dungeons from the GBA remake and realized I was playing the same game, except with a graphical upgrade.
It’s probably a good idea to talk about Final Fantasy first. As classic RPGs go, it’s right up there with Dragon Warrior…err I mean Dragon Quest. In fact, I prefer Final Fantasy over Dragon Warrior for reasons I won’t go into here. Anyway, the premise is very simple, you pick a party of four heroes which can be any combination of the game’s six classes. Your party will explore dungeons, towns, and caves, getting stronger along the way. It’s a simple recipe, but the end result is a magical game that saved Square from bankruptcy.
As much as I love Final Fantasy, I have to admit it’s a bug riddled mess. Half the spells don’t work as intended…or at all for that matter. Some of the weapons are bugged, the intelligence and wisdom stats are bugged… heck even some of the classes are bugged. With this in mind, I’ve been searching for the ultimate version of Final Fantasy. And really, all that version needs is a good bug fix and maybe a bit of bonus content. Oh and it needs to respect the spirit of the original game.
My quest has brought me to the 20th Anniversary Edition version for PlayStation Portable after playing the PS1 remake as well as the Game Boy Advance release. Sadly, all of these remakes fail to meet my criteria. The PS1 version comes close, but it’s nearly as buggy as the NES version. The PSP and GBA versions are nearly identical; while they both fix many of the bugs, they completely trample the spirit of the game they are based on.
I know it sounds like I’m just nitpicking, but Final Fantasy was special because it was often unforgiving and did things few RPGs dare to attempt. Enemies could easily wipe the floor with unprepared players, the Vancian spell system forces players to be careful about how they use magic, and every one of the six classes brings something unique to the table, whether it’s the Fighter’s raw power or the Red Mage’s versatility.
This remake does a lot of stuff that makes Final Fantasy feel generic and soulless. The Vancian spell slots were removed in favor of a standard magic point system. The party levels up more quickly. Enemies drop items. And the level cap was raised to 99, which means that nearly every class will end up with similar stats since the devs did not raise attribute caps. Worse yet, the new dungeons are often random amalgamations of slop.
This is my second time playing this version of Final Fantasy, so I figured I would buckle down and complete the bonus content after being so disgusted with it the first time around. While I got further than I did last time, I only grew to resent these dungeons more. It’s like they took everything bad about FF1 and put it into these dungeons, then added a nice glaze of garbage on top of it for good measure. There are constant random battles with weak monsters. Some of the dungeon floors are cryptic and most are full of dead ends. Even worse, you can’t collect everything from a bonus dungeon in one go, because treasures are randomized and you can only fight one of the bosses even though the dungeons multiple bosses. To add insult to tedium, they recycle a lot of tiles and sprites from the rest of the game, which makes the extra content even more boring. The entire affair seems like it’s designed to waste time rather than give fans something new to experience.
As much as I find this iteration of FF1 disappointing, I have to say I love the graphics and sound. The monster spites look awesome and are full of detail, yet they retain the charm of the early days of the series. Character sprites look great too. Plus they gave all of the magic spells nice effects.
The sound track is also beautiful, but I have to point out it is identical to the one used in the PlayStation version of FF1. They also added some familiar themes from FF4 and FF5, so there’s a lot of great music in this game.
Final Thoughts
I know I’m going to catch a lot of flack for complaining about this game seeing as how people really seem to love remakes for some reason. That said, I’m not going to lie and pretend I enjoyed a game when I did not have much fun with it. I’ll also point out that 75 out of 100 is not a bad score, it’s just very average. If you’re looking for a more modernized version of Final Fantasy to play, you’re likely better off with the Pixel Remaster (which I have yet to play), the PS1 remake, or even a patched copy of the original NES game. Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition simply doesn’t do the game it’s based on justice in my opinion.
Thanks for reading my review of Final Fantasy 20th Anniversary Edition!