Final Fantasy IV is easily my favorite thus far in my journey to play through all the main entries in the franchise.

It feels like such a massive step forward for the series in terms of plot, character writing, and even the battle system. It is certainly by no means a perfect game, but I found myself exploring more during this playthrough than I did in past entries. I actually wanted to engage with a bunch of the optional content, which I mostly skipped in FF I through III.

The game didn't make it easy for me though. I had no idea when I chose to play the DS remake of IV that I was choosing both the most difficult version of the game and also arguably one of the most difficult entries in the series (according to various online discussions I stumbled onto). I'm kind of proud I managed to pull through though, and if you've followed my previous status updates you know that I only discovered how to properly use the new augment system right before entering the final dungeon of the game, which of course only compounded the difficulty of everything up till then. I still feel a little stupid about that but now I can say I almost did a no-augment run of the entire game, which is neat.

When I fired it up for the first time and saw that this game marked the introduction of the ATB combat system into the series, I felt pretty let down. I'm a big fan of classic turn based combat, as someone who grew up as a massive Pokemon fan, so this felt like a downgrade. Initially I struggled a good deal with having to choose my attacks and abilities while my enemies assaulted my poor party freely. Where was the strategy that I've come to love with turn-based combat? It seemed to have been sucked out of the game in favor of increased tension and stress in every encounter.

But I think by the end the game managed to convert me. I now have a lot of appreciation for what this battle system adds. Abilities like Slow and Haste have much more depth when they actually increase the rate at which you can pull off attacks rather than just letting you move first. Attacks that drain hp make more sense when you can see the hp draining in real time. In a similar way moves like Ahriman's 'Doom' feel a lot scarier to contend with (in a good way!) when the countdown to your character's death isn't so predictable as "-1 per turn". I'm still a big fan of pure turn based combat but this system is a lot cooler than my initial impressions led me to believe.

The big highlight of this game for me was the story, for sure. While there's little here that is truly amazing, it feels like the first time in these early games that Final Fantasy managed to create a solid world and story which made me care about the characters. I'm sure this was helped along by the new voiced cutscenes in the 3D remake, but I think even without those, there's a lot to admire here. The game is very silly at times, but still manages to retain the tension in its plot well enough to deliver some narrative punches.

My big complaint is that a few of these "punches" were immediately walked back on. I felt like I was playing a Resident Evil game near the end with all of the fake-out death scenes. The ones for Yang and Cid felt particularly egregious since neither character really plays an important role in the plot going forward and the ways they "died" seem near impossible to survive, but oh well.

For a while in the early hours of my playthrough I was absolutely obsessed with how Cecil's character arc is reflected through his class/job. It's so brilliant because it makes the player really feel the difference once the transition takes place. If I ever make my own RPG I'm totally stealing this, it's just too cool and I think there's a lot of potential in the concept.

So this closes the chapter on the entries I will be playing through on the DS. I'm a bit sad about putting my favorite console back into its case for now. But I'll be playing V and VI on the Switch so I'll finally have a nice big screen after playing on the GBA for the first two games and then DS for III and IV. I think I'm now entering the "golden era" of the series (at least with VI, I'm less sure about V) so I'm excited for what's to come!

I have to start off by saying this is going to be partially a review and partially me whining about how I can't git gud. I know. Leave me alone.

FF4 is one of the best and most underrated in the series, which is saying something because everyone thinks their favorite Final Fantasy game is underrated. The story is engaging, the characters are actually people, there are lots of charming NPCs and variations in town design that really make it feel alive and not just "go to a palette swap of another dungeon and get another shiny rock". Even the voice acting in the DS version is decent (and my Critter heart is loving Liam O'Brien as Kain and Sam Riegel as Edward).

My only problem is uh...a big problem. The augment system. There are augments in the game that you can give to any character you want to teach them an ability, usually one from a different character. A handful of these you find out in the world or are given for story reasons so they're unmissable. These also happen to be some of the least useful ones. What you're actually supposed to do is hold on to them, give them to another character who is going to leave the party, and then get better augments after they leave depending on how many you gave them. You then repeat this a few times, constantly giving away better and better augments to characters you already know are probably temporary (it's not hard to figure out the predictable system), hoping to get better ones.

My issue isn't that the augment system exists. It's that it's so counter-intuitive and almost entirely optional, and yet almost 100% mandatory for the last dungeon. You have to give a certain number of them to a certain character to get a certain augment, that's how the system works. It's almost impossible to get every augment without a ton of trial and error and save-scumming unless you follow a guide. And some of the augments are literal game changers. There's one that allows you to cast two spells in one turn and one that casts single-target spells on the entire party. Put those on the same character and now you've got shell and haste on everyone in an instant instead of needing 5 turns to set up. There are HP and MP +50% augments, one that makes you cast twice as fast, one that completely avoids random encounters, and even one that just automatically resurrects the entire party if the person holding it dies.

The final boss is literally a superboss, and was overtuned intentionally to compensate for the use of augments. It casts a spell that will wipe your entire party if you're not at least in the high 60s, defending, and have shell. Even then it might kill a character or two if you're unlucky. Once it reaches ~30% HP it starts casting a spell -every turn- that does even more damage to your entire party than the other one. I had the best gear you can have, including a lot of optional pieces from side-quests and boss fights, and an average level of 73. I even set the battle to "wait" and to the lowest speed setting so I had time for optimal strategy.

I tried that fight 22 times. I never beat him.

If you look for videos of the fight on youtube, you can't find one without augments. Rosa with Omnicast, Dualcast and +50%MP, Cecil with Draw Attacks, ???'s Love, +50% HP, Darkness on Kain, Bless and Phoenix on Rydia all seem to be the standard. You know what augments I had? Bless (small mana restoration over time) on Rydia, Draw Attacks (make enemies hit that character instead of other people, useless against AoE abilities) on Cecil, and Upgrade (use an attack item to make a weapon attack more powerful) on Edge that I literally never used because throwing shuriken does more damage.

The entire final dungeon was a slow, careful slog because everything in that place can easily be deadly if you don't handle it correctly. Probably wouldn't have been if I had the augments the game wanted me to have. But the boss is definitely the worst offender. A fight that requires farming specific items across a sidequest that spans the entire game and is 90% optional otherwise you can't win, is a fight that is poorly designed.

Everything else about the game is great. Zeromus is bullshit.

I just never quite enjoyed my time with Final Fantasy 4.

Final Fantasy's Active Time Battle is probably my least favorite system in JRPGs -- and it was introduced here, without much in the way of bells and whistles. The early game was plagued with characters coming and going at a break neck pace, and every time the party felt somewhat functional, you'd lose your physical attackers for more mages. Without some sort of interesting progression system for the characters (e.g. jobs, magicite, etc.), the tedium of the later dungeons really got to me as well. The augment system the 3D remake tacks on provides a bit of customization, but with just about the worst possible implementation -- most of the augments are absurdly easy to miss without a guide, involving things like backtracking to dungeons you've already completed without any hints to do so.

The story, despite feeling rather video gamey, held up surprisingly well. There were quite a few moments that had me hyped up, surprisingly developed themes given the release date, and just some fun goofy plot points. Cecil is a surprisingly dynamic protagonist, showing more struggle and personal growth than most of his successors in the series.

The music is, of course, great. I still remember first hearing the game's boss music via Super Mario RPG close to 30 years ago and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. Still is.

It's a shame that I couldn't find something to latch onto in the gameplay -- it really is a classic in so many ways.

I decided to call it on this one about 2/3 of the way through, just after the Sealed Cave. I did want to see the story through, though, so I watched this very well done recap to finish out the story:

(n.b., I just wanted to hyperlink that, but it seems like youtube videos will embed regardless?)

I've fallen out from JRPG enthusiasm after the middle-school years. I actually don't know why, because Final Fantasy VII was what made my introduction to the whole genre. So, it is ironic that I've played through FFIV through VI on SNES emulator but neglected to do the same with VII on PC. But that is for another story...

My interest in old JRPG was rekindled again when I decided to play FFIV on Steam. The reasons were that I get to experience my childhood game in remake form and that I grasp the story anew. Now I step back into the dark knight boots of the main protagonist Cecil and lead him on his treacherous journey caught between good and evil. The friends and foes we come upon are diverse with certain backgrounds depicted along the story, making them distinguishable and some being memorable (there are monks, dwarves, airship troopers, even mini people).

The more modern remake on Steam gives the whole content a facelift on all aspects compared to the original product; including full 3D graphics, partial voice acting and gameplay feats. The neat addition to this remake is how the game rewards you with items for fully exploring every area. The Game+ mode adds to the replay value for those who'd like to dedicate themselves and even further pick up where you left out in exploration.

Another new addition I appreciate highly is the auto-save system, which would allow player to start in the same area where they last time lost the battle or pick up where they left the game at. Such forgiving feature saves players valuable time and therefore the appeal of the game itself. On the other hand, while the user interface during battle stages fulfill its function, I wished that it could have been designed as more intuitive. When I have to fight with special move, the menu selection is a scrollfest that makes me wish I didn't have to frantically go through the contents to make the planned move.

Don't expect the visuals to be on-par with the other mainline Final Fantasy products in 3D. Since this is a port from Nintendo DS, you're quick to notice that the 3D models are low-poly and will find the textures ugly close up. That's not important on my part but players being picky about the looks might consider about alternative FF games...

I can look back on this game and say for sure that it has rekindled my desire to play JRPG again at some point. Leading and watching the characters grow in strength and personal development yields a sense of progress in the face of adversity, as much as it could resonate with real-life progress. Not everything is a walk in the park but when you've grown after many tasks and work you take up on, it'll get easier.

While the 3D graphics aren't much to write home to by today's standards, they did a good job pushing the NDS hardware. Though, with some of the additions that the 3D version of this game offers, at times I have to wonder: just because you can, should you? The limited FMV in the game is extremely, extremely compressed, as is the voice work. It sounds like they have roughly 10kbps sound sampling for the cutscenes with voice acting.

Gameplay is solid classic Final Fantasy, though I never actually touched some of the NDS additions like Rydia's Wyte summon. Everything is self-explanatory enough to keep you going without getting completely stuck with no clue what to do. Fun stuff if you're an old fart classic RPGer.

Then there's the final dungeon. I played the US version of this game, waaaay back when it was "Final Fantasy II" on the SNES. This is not the same experience I had when I made it to the final boss over a long weekend, then sadly had to return my rented game & lost all progress.

I understand that the end of a game should be a challenge, but COME ON. Of the roughly 35hrs it took me to complete this game, a full 10-12 of those hours were spent trying to beat the final dungeon. Grind, claw your way partway down the dungeon, teleport out to heal & save... Repeat over and over and over, throwing in a couple deaths due to cheap overpowered enemies (you go to hell, Red Dragon guarding that treasure chest about a third of the way through the dungeon). By the time the credits finally rolled, I'd almost forgotten how much fun I had with the game up until the final dungeon completely soured my experience.

4.5 stars for the first 95% of the game. 1 star for the final 5% of the game (which took about 30% of my gameplay time).

Red Dragons are bad.

In my quest to play every Final Fantasy game, I found my myself with a weird gap; I’ve played Final Fantasy 3 and Final Fantasies 5 - 12. To remedy this, I picked up the Android version of Final Fantasy 4 which is based on the DS remake of the SNES game. While Square Enix has a questionable history with mobile ports, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this one worked out quite well for me.

My observations as I completed yet another quest to gather some magic crystals and defeat another dark lord:

• When going into a DS remake of a Super Nintendo game, fully-voiced cutscenes are not something I was expecting to encounter. Yet, this game makes fairly frequent use of them for major story moments and character introductions. Keeping the technical limitations of the original hardware in mind, I was impressed with how well-directed these scenes were. The voice acting was not quite as impressive, but still decent.

• Regarding the plot itself, I liked the love triangle and the hero’s quest for redemption. While all the traditional high-fantasy elements are also there (dragons, magical artifacts, etc), FF4’s inclusion of this extra layer of character development was probably pretty revolutionary storytelling for its time. The game handles themes of loss, jealousy, and forgiveness surprisingly well for a game of its age.

• Final Fantasy 4’s combat is a very simple turn-based system with minimal ability to customize your characters or party. This version of the game features an “Augment” system that allows the player to assign one extra skill to each character, but to me, this felt very much like an after-thought.

• The boss battles are where this game’s combat gets to shine. Many of the bosses have some sort of puzzle-like trick to exposing their weaknesses. I really appreciated that brute force alone was often not enough to get the job done. Sometimes the boss battles would feature dialog or brief cutscenes that would advance the story amidst the action. I’m thinking was probably a novel concept back in 1992.

• The game's plot causes your party composition to change abruptly throughout the adventure. Every time I got a well-balanced team together, something would happen that would cause me to lose my strong characters in exchange for weak ones. There is a particular focus on magic-users for much of the game that doesn't mesh well with the strategies I typically use in Final Fantasy games. On one hand, this kept me on my toes, on the other, it slowed down my ability to progress through the campaign.

• I know some old-school Final Fantasy fans turn their noses up at it, but I liked this remake’s use of polygonal graphics. The character models do a good job of merging the designs in Yoshitaka Amano’s original concept drawings with the 3D chibi style of DS RPGs. A side effect of this is that sometimes there would be childish-looking characters (especially NPCs) in skimpy outfits. I could have done without this, but if you're into scantily clad low polygon models, this is the game for you.

• Something I especially appreciated about the graphics in this version of FF4, was the battle animations for the bosses. Even when it's the player's turn, the enemies continue moving around and observing these animations can often provide hints about enemy weaknesses. Some of the boss character models are pretty goofy looking, however.

• While the boss battles, character designs, and cut scenes all received an overhaul in this remake, the dungeons are decidedly still old school. Most of the dungeons are quite long and have high random encounter rates. This tried my patience at times.

• The mobile port features some helpful quality of life (QoL) upgrades. One of these upgrades is that the menu screen shows your characters' inner thoughts; these thought bubbles provide useful hints and flavor text (this feature may have also existed in the DS verion). The other upgrade is an auto-checkpoint system that kept me from losing progress when a random enemy would get a lucky critical hit. Unfortunately, the quality of life upgrades are not universally applied as there are no checkpoints between consecutive bosses and pre-boss cutscenes have to be rewatched before each attempt.

• As far as Square Enix games go, this one has a fairly generic-sounding soundtrack. However, there are a few major themes that stand out. The vocal track at the end of the game was a nice addition as well.

• Overall, this was a surprisingly good mobile port and the QoL addtions (auto-checkpoint, cloud saves, etc) were welcome upgrades. Some of the concessions that had to be made to adapt the DS's interface to a mobile screen were a bit clunky (e.g. transparent overlays to display the DS's second screen info) but got the job done. The Android version ran very smoothly on my device though it would occasionally freeze when minimizing the game to switch to another app. However, the auto-checkpoint system kept me from suffering setbacks when this would happen.

I came away from Final Fantasy 4 with an appreciation for the fact that this is where the franchise found its footing. The characters, themes, systems, and melodrama that define Final Fantasy all coalesced together with this entry. As a player in 2018 who has already played most of the other installments in the series, this game's beats felt largely familiar and some of the remnants of the oldschool design whree a bit of a drag, but the game still regularly put on a smile on my face regardless. I would recommend this version of Final Fantasy 4 to newcomers of there series and long-time fans alike.