Final Fantasy IV, The series fleshes out

This game is... pretty damned good.

Background: Final Fantasy IV was developed by Hironobu Sakiguchi and Takashi Tokita of Square in 1991 for the Super Famicom system (JP name for SNES). Unfortunately, once more the new title was only released in Japan. It was later released on the Sony Playstation and about a year and a half ago it was remade for the Nintendo DS. But when it was released later in the states, it was released as FFII and I believe VI was released as III, much to the confusion of North America when VII came out. Just like FFIII on the DS, this is in full 3d; and honestly a beautiful, great game for the DS. Here are some comparison shots.



I'm quite impressed and satisfied with this title. The plot writers at Square really started to take interest in their characters and story lines at this point and it is very evident.

Right off the bat, I was introduced to the regular FF staples: crystal involved story line, character classes (I start as a Dark Knight, and am quickly joined by a Dragoon), and the character Cid. I was also introduced to many new game mechanics, some of which would become the foundations of all other FF games for years to come. One such mechanic is the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which if you don't already know is a bar which counts down dependent on your characters speed and once the counter reaches zero, the character can act out an action. All character and enemy ATBs are going on simultaneously and it gives the game a shade of an action RPG feel. While it's still obviously turn based, the enemies WILL continuously attack while you're figuring out what to do, makes things a little more intense.

At the start of the game I only had my Dark Knight Cecil (the first time my class has been hard set in an FF game, also something the series would continue to do going forward), and upon trying to rename my character, the banga/vierra hybrid (w/e it is) says, oops, guess you can't change your name. I wonder if that is because this version of the game has voice acting in the cut scenes... The plot line drove my character, a top general in an empire, to question his king's latest decisions and finally rebel. But we quickly find out that the king was just a puppet to the real menace Golbez, who is trying to collect the four elemental crystals to wreak havoc on the world. Golbez then seeks to hunt down and destroy Cecil, which should be an easy task, as my Dark Knight is pretty useless against minions of the Dark, being one himself. So my character then seeks out to become a Paladin.

Along the way my party drastically changes, much more so than FFII and FFIII. While those games gave you your party of 3 or 4 and added an extra party member for a short time, this game continues to add several party members at a time, then remove some or all of them and replace them with others (if any). So my party is constantly fluctuating between 1 and 5 members of varying set in stone jobs such as Dragoon, Summoner, White Mage, Bard (love the bard), Black Mage, different White Mage, Sage, and Monk. So far... This is fun and I like it, but sometimes it can get annoying when a character all the sudden bails on my party with all this awesome gear. I've had to reload my game a couple times to go strip them before a cut scene; that stuff's expensive! This however also drastically emphasizes the story of the singular main character, something that's never been done before. All prior games had a party focus, all members being equally important. Even FFIII which started off with just one character, never really focused the story on them, and they were alone all of 10 minutes in the game.

So, I played the game through all these character last night. I got a dune buggy to drive around for a while, rode on a ship, got attacked by Leviathan (first appearance by a traditional summon), got to play a little mini game to buff a custom summon on Rydia (the SMN) which was interesting, I got through a whole mess of plot line and my Dark Knight was getting pretty pimped out, swinging a sword that cast death when it hit someone, almost level 30. And then I became a Paladin... lame. Would have much rather stayed Dark Knight with my soul eater like ability to consume health for double damage attacks. Not only that but when he switched classes, I was level ONE! again! >< And for some reason he got a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover...



I'm personally of the opinion that I'd rather play a girl than a guy who looks like a girl, but w/e, game is still great. Some other mechanics of interest that were introduced:

Mapping: Not only is the mapping in this game great as you can watch the map fill in on the bottom screen while you walk around on the top screen, but it shows off screen chests sometimes and if you completely fill out the map, you get a bonus like potions, remedies, ethers and Phoenix downs.

Autobattle: At first I was pretty stoked on this, you could just hit X and your characters would auto attack and finish the battle for you. While this worked well when I just had some melee guys, it's not so great for casters, but I imagine it will come in useful later if I have to do any grinding.

Twincast: I got two characters and when you both cast the same thing, they work together to cast one big high damage spell, pretty cool.

Augments: Now this is interesting. From time to time I find a new Augment, a key item ability that I can put permanently on one character. An example is the latest one I got, counter. I can also manipulate my battle screen, so I added Counter to Cecil's ability set and now if anyone attacks him, I get a counter attack. This function to allow you to set abilities is really nice, I took out Attack on my mages and instead I put in Item>Rod in that slot, so for example my BLM Parom will use his Item Flame Rod which casts Fire for free on an enemy and my WHM Palom uses her Healing Staff to cast a light all Cure on the party.

Now that Cecil has switched to Paladin, it's time to become all powerful, defeat Golbez and rescue his sweetheart Rosa (little FF princess Leah).