#it's fun so far the battles are fun despite my hesitation with action based ff games

[aggressionbread]

I can finally play ff16!

[danbevanwriting]

The Ranking of Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy IV was the second officially English translated FF game to come to the West, renamed to Final Fantasy II so as 'not to confuse the market', leading to years of confusion ever since! The version that the Americans got was also heavily dumbed down to the point where abilities are stripped from certain characters to better suit the Western audience, who were considered to be a lot less capable of handling a more complex game by the Japanese developers. This has since been rectified in the remakes since then, with the version I played, the Nintendo DS remake (which I played on PC through Steam... which is a port of the mobile version... which is a port of the DS version...) being harder than any other version released. Honestly, I didn't have a great time with this version of the game. The 3D models look a bit tacky when blown up to 1080p, the battles run at 15fps which makes the bad menus unresponsive too, I wasn't a fan of the voiced cutscenes, and during gameplay the camera is zoomed way too far in meaning that most of the time in dungeons you spend having the map overlay on your screen. I would advise playing basically any other version: the PSP remake is incredible with beautiful sprite work, or failing that get a hold of the GBA version or if you have the means a translation patch of the SNES Japanese edition. Avoid the US Final Fantasy II release on SNES! With that all out of the way, let's review the actual game!

Gameplay in FFIV is so good, they used this battle system in Final Fantasy games for the next 5 in the series! The ATB battle system was revolutionary: it took the slow and static turn-based combat from the first 3 games and made it instantly more exciting by making time a key factor. Each character has a timer before their turn to take an action, which means faster characters can attack more often as their ATB gauge fills up faster. This makes even random encounters exciting as the goal is to get as many attacks in as you can while also navigating the menus as fast as you can to get spells out. The rushing aspect can be lessened somewhat by setting the game to wait while choosing a spell, but before you start choosing a spell the timers are still ticking, and the enemies won't hesitate if you don't choose anything. In some ways you can use this to your advantage, such as not choosing an action for the healer, switching to your other characters to do attacks, and only using the healer to quickly patch up your party. Spells are learned through levels now too rather than bought or found in the world like before, so as your characters grow stronger so too does their arsenal of spells and abilities. This has a lot to do with a new concept of character based progression in the series.

The job system from Final Fantasy III is gone here and instead each character has their own built in 'job' or role within the party. This ties in to the other major change with this game: each character is actually a character this time. The story is a lot more character focused, with each character having their own stake in the events that unfold. It's a shame then that the story falls so flat about a quarter to halfway in. The first quarter of this story is fantastic. Cecil, a dark knight in Baron's Red Wings military unit, starts questioning his leaders and his place in the world when he's sent on a mission to basically slaughter a defenceless village for their crystal. What unfolds is a tale of redemption for Cecil, culminating in him climbing Mount Ordeals to shed himself of the darkness and become a paladin of light! But this crescendo occurs a quarter of the way through the game, and now Cecil's character has no growth left. It's a real shame. The story in general gets really stupid after the halfway mark too, with characters heroically sacrificing themselves only for them to not actually die, even when they really should have. Cid exploding in to a ball of flame to stop people chasing you comes to mind, it's a great moment ruined by a cowardly reversal of the consequences. Or stupid sacrifices are made, like Yang staying in an exploding control room to... let the others escape? It doesn't really make sense. But even then Yang survives and comes back in to the story by the end. The story also has all sorts of people double crossing you, Kain most of all, with it all being down to mind control. Contrived doesn't cut it. Speaking of which, the ending is similar to Final Fantasy III in that the main villain, who was totally behind everything, is revealed close to the end of the game. It's not as bad as the Cloud of Darkness reveal, but the evil alien on the moon being behind everything was a bit dumb (although not a terrible concept if the story was better overall). I won't knock the story too much though, I'd argue that at least this time I actually have a story to criticise here which was certainly not the case in the previous games, and this was still more of a story than most games of the time were accomplishing.

Characterisations are certainly where FFIV separates itself form its predecessors. Cecil, Rosa, and Rydia are my favourites as they have good strong personalities; Cecil is a reflective person which ties in to his sub-plot, Rosa is caring which ties in to her being a white mage, and Rydia's empathy allows her to be a master summoner. These aren't amazingly fleshed out characters but, again, at least there's something to talk about here when previously there was almost none of this. I will say I absolutely hate Edge though, he has an extremely irritating personality which means he brags in an annoying manner (as he's a prince) but also falls instantly in love with Rydia, which would be fine if it wasn't done in such an annoying fashion. Luckily Rydia doesn't really respond and it's mostly played for laughs, but I just found it irritating to be honest...

The music in this is legendary at least, the game kicks off with one of its best tracks (The Red Wings) and stays consistently good for the whole game. The overworld theme (Main These of Final Fantasy IV) is truly iconic, as is the battle and boss themes. Even the prelude, a series staple at this point, got a beautiful new melody which makes the track even better. With the power of Spotify you can now even listen to these tracks to hear for yourself, other highlights I would recommend listening to include 'Theme of Love', 'Into The Darkness', 'Battle with the Four Fiends', and 'The Final Battle'. All the tracks fit the context or the environment very well and is a memorable OST in general.

The gameplay which is supported by the music is equally excellent. Dungeon design is great, with most dead end diversions resulting in a decent reward, a concept that is used to great effect in the final dungeon. The final dungeon is surprisingly short, but with all the diversions which lead to optional bosses guarding the most powerful equipment it's worth exploring every nook and cranny. The new battle system also leads to more interesting boss fights too as some have their own unique mechanics. The ATB system means that bosses can go in to retaliation phases that you can wait out by not doing actions, or other bosses like Bahamut turning the fight in to a damage race to defeat him before he casts Mega Flare. It's all very fun and is a positive change from the turn based system.

I touched on the graphics briefly above, but I figure it's worth reiterating how gosh-darn ugly the 3D models are in the remake of the game. The sprites from the SNES or PSP version are practically timeless which ooze personality despite their relative simplicity. Bosses look great in the SNES version where they look a bit dorky in 3D, the final boss being a good example of this. The environments in the 3D version are nice though, but like I said before the camera is so zoomed in it's hard at times to appreciate that. The SNES version takes full advantage of the hardware leap from the original NES to make the graphics far and away better looking than what came before, truly demonstrating the capabilities of the SNES and cementing Square as the top dog in RPG graphics (and this will only get better in time during this console generation).

So, in conclusion, this game is regarded as a true classic, and I think that's with a good reason. The story is engaging despite how stupid it gets and how it falls short in places. The gameplay is great even today, with history demonstrating just how good the ATB battle system is due to it being in a further five Final Fantasy titles, and the fact that so much of this battle system was done so right the first time around really demonstrates how successful Final Fantasy IV is. I would definitely advise people to play this game if they can, even if it's just for curiosity's sake to see where the series has come from. I would be much quicker to recommend this game over the older titles too as it certainly has aged better than any of the NES titles.

Current Rankings:

Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy III

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II