YMMV / The Final Fantasy Legend

• Alternative Character Interpretation: This video points out that the stilted writing makes the main characters seem more like grizzled mercenaries than proper heroes.
• Complete Monster: The Creator is the true power behind Ashura, the Four Fiends and all the woes they've inflicted on the world. Creating a tower separated into numerous worlds, the Creator made a "game" where adventurers would climb the tower believing Paradise to lie at its Apex. To create his game, the Creator deliberately made the worlds miserable, which included setting up a war in the World of Continent between three kings, having Byak-Ko establish a cruel dictatorship in the World of Clouds and having Su-Zaku turn the World of Ruin into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. When confronted by the party the Creator callously claims that because he created everything he can do anything he wants with the worlds and the people within, revealing himself to be a cruel and narcissistic god.
• Fan Nickname: The mysterious man is commonly known as "Silk Hat" among Japanese players.
• Good Bad Bugs: Several; one of the more famous ones is the saw weapon. It's supposed to inflict instant death on a target whose defense is lower than the user's strength, but thanks to one teensy little programming mistake, it kills enemies whose defense is higher than the user's strength instead. Meaning it works on the final boss. Meaning you can One-Hit Kill God with a chainsaw.
  • Also worth noting is that the insanely powerful Glass Sword was supposed to break after only one use, and does in the original Japanese version of the game. It's not entirely clear whether this change was deliberate or a mistake, but the Glass Sword instead has the standard 50 uses in the North American release.
  • Character stats appear to be capped at 99, but can actually be increased up to 255. (If you increase them any more, they wrap around back to 0.) The hit point maximum can also be increased beyond its displayed cap of 999.
• Memetic Mutation: God is a tiny Amish man on the Game Boy screen.^note This is derived from comedian Jackie Kashian's skit about video games.
  • And you can cut him up with a chainsaw.
  • Ascended Meme: Square-Enix apparently was so amused by this glitch that there was even a reference to it in Final Fantasy XIII, in the form of Orphan having been made susceptible to Vanille's Death skill.
    • It comes full circle as it was referenced in the Romacing Sa Ga Re Universe event "Black and White Towers" when Aishe attempts to kill the Creator with her chainsaw. He survives, but his life flashes before his eyes, complete with death by chainsaw. Similarly, the Human Male's Chainsaw skill deals critical hits on "God" enemies, though it doesn't insta-kill them.
• Mis-blamed: "Colt" was not changed to "Pistol" due to censorship, it was actually changed due to "Colt" being the name of a manufacturing company
• Obvious Beta: The game engine had a lot of rough edges. One of the most annoying was that it didn't bother to notify you if your mutant gained or changed powers at the end of a battle, or if they gained max hit points or stats. Save Scumming becomes something of a requirement, especially in the late game, as each victory in battle runs you the risk of losing your fancy kill-beam attack. Fortunately, this is one of the many issues that were ironed out in the sequel.
  • The Wonderswan remake fixed these problems as well, for all the good this did non-Japanese speaking players.
• Quicksand Box: If you don't know what you're doing, the first area can quickly be this for you. You're supposed to recruit other members in the guild for your party and look for three parts for a statue, but if you don't talk to everyone, you can end up lost and easily killed.
• The Scrappy: Millie/Milelle is hated by a lot of Japanese players for betraying the party for Byakko out of fear and blamed for her sister's death. Sure, her Tears of Remorse repair one of the broken Orbs, but it doesn't redeem her in their eyes.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Mutants learn and forget skills at random, which can result in forgetting powerful skills in exchange for weaker ones. This in itself wouldn't be a horrible mechanic, just one that would encourage only fighting battles you need. What makes it awful is that the game does not tell you when a Mutant learns a new skill, meaning that unless you check their moveset after every battle, you risk coming into a fight unprepared through no fault of your own.
• Signature Scene: Final bosses tend to be the most memorable part of any game, but cutting God Himself in half with a chainsaw? Such a scene can only happen in Final Fantasy Legend.

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