NES FF1 Tiers:
Top: Fighter
Second: Red Mage
Middle: Black Belt; Black Mage
Bottom: Thief; White Mage
Fighters are undisputedly the best class in the game. The general rule is: the more Fighters you have in your party, the better your party is. Being an offensive and defensive monster; Fighters can dish it out without having to constantly run away from battles like most other classes would force you to do (White/Black mages). And even better, they take an incredible amount of abuse, truly the only class that can even be considered a tank. The myth is that Fighters are expensive to maintain. This is absolutely false, and they are practically one of the cheapest characters to have in your party if you just realize 2 things: Silver Swords (4000 G) and Steel Armor (35k G) are ripoffs. Don’t buy those 2 things for your Fighters, and then you’ll realize all of their equipment is findable (i.e. FREE).
Red Mages get a bum rap when it is totally not deserved. It’s just, people fail to realize that physical power is so much more effective and important in this game than magic is. Magic has it’s uses for sure; but the way the magic system works, your pure magicians get far too little charges per magic level in comparision to the MANY MANY random battles you encounter. Thus a Red Mage, who has very competent attack power and defense (2nd best DEF behind the Fighter for most of the game), can actually contribute some worthwhile damage in battle where the pure mages are either defending or hitting back for 1 damage. Since a spell is cast the same regardless of the class casting it (their is no INT stat modifier that makes Black mages cast black magic better than Red mages; or White mages casting white magic better than Red mages); the RM has the best versatility of being able to cast all of the pure mages’ important spells, and still having the offensive and defensive capabilities to contribute something in battle.
Black Belts/Monks are overrated. Why? Well everyone loves their high damage and cheap affordability, but they all neglected on very important factor: those players who praise Black Belts probably overleveled a ton. Black Belts are like the FF1 equivalent of FF6 Locke. Overlevel unnecessarily to the point where you can plow through everything with any class; and the overleveled Masters will provide more damage than your Knights. But don’t forget all those levels beforehand where the Black Belt was being smacked around like a red-headed stepchild because his defense was mage-level shit, and his offense (even barehanded) wasn’t matching the Fighter’s swords.
Black Mage. You either get the players who just love BMs no matter what and rate them too high; or you get the ones who realized magic in general in FF1 isn’t as strong as it will be in future FF games, and thus rate the BM too low because they are disappointed with the display of offensive magic available. Truth is, yes, magic is not that powerful in this FF game as in others, but FF1 offensive magic > FF1 healing magic. The problem is mainly around the whole magic level charge system. You fight way too many random battles in this game in contrast to how many spell charges the game gives you. So what happens is, the pure mages end up having to save their charges for bosses, making their participation in the many, MANY random battles practically non-existent. How the BM gets a nod over the WM is again because offensive magic can actually do good damage; and healing magic is essentially unnecessary. But like WMs; the high level spells (level 7 and higher) are essentially worthless. They’re expensive; you get only 1-2 charges of it; and by the time you actually have 3+ charges of it, your characters are already gods (this is for all those praising “NUKE”)
Thief. What’s to say? A second-rate Fighter with much less (and very noticable) attack and less defense. After class change, the Ninja is still second-rate to the Knight in everyway except now he can use low level black magic (which had become obsolete hours ago anyway). Due to the fact “speed” isn’t factored in the NES version of FF1; you can’t even say the Thief has the best chance of running away since all characters have an equal chance of it. Truly bottom tier, do to everything a Thief can do, a Fighter does multiple times better.
White mage. Ah, probably THE most overrated class in the game. Why? Because years of playing many RPGs has conditioned people into believing that healing = essential; and thus any dedicated healing character must be useful. While generally true, it is very much the opposite in NES FF1. Magic in this game is simply too weak; and healing magic at that is especially unnessary do to the fact that most healing is done outside of battle through heal potions rather than Cure spells. The sad fact is, the White mage creates his own demand for healing. Put a white mage in your party, and I can pretty much gurantee you that he will be the one who needs the most healing. Harm is good against undead; but a BM’s fire spells do the same thing except it’s not undead specific; and it’s not competing with Cure spells for charge usage. I challenge anyone to take your favorite party that includes a WM (usually the typical Fi/BB/WM/BM party… which itself is funny because it’s usually recommended to beginners when in fact it’s one of the most difficult parties to play through with); replace the WM with a Fighter, and you’ll have SUCH an easier time with the game. I know people will disagree that a WM is still useful in FF1, but I think it’s because they’re just too conditioned in believing healers are always a benefit, without realizing that in this game, WMs are definitely a handicap to your party.