Final Fantasy IV is an extremely strong JRPG that, unlike many of the earlier titles in its series, can stand shoulder-to-shoulder even with more modern genre contemporaries thanks to its fantastic implementation of the ATB system, as well as featuring a fifth party member slot, allowing for more options during combat. Likewise, its story impresses with strong writing for the main cast and likely the best presentation a game originally released on the DS could hope to feature. Story and Setting FFIV revolves around the story of Cecil Harvey, a Dark Knight in service of the King of Baron who is being sent on atrocious missions, massacring civilians in order to eliminate threats to Baron as well as to secure the Crystals of Light. Naturally, things do not stay this simple very long, as Cecil decides to abandon his service and instead try to uncover what corruption has seeped into Baron and which forces are after the Crystals. Of course, this is all very typical Final Fantasy, but FFIV features some pretty ambitious writing, especially when it comes to its characters. Apart from the sometimes a bit shaky main story, the game isn’t afraid to show remarkably gritty moments and have those thoroughly impact the characters as well. People do die or are injured beyond the ability to continue; each step Cecil takes feels fought-for and therefore also has significant emotional payoff. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3324022828 That being said, FFIV also isn’t perfect and occasionally chickens out of outright killing party members despite near impossible circumstances. This does remove some emotional weight a lot of scenes could have had. Towards the latter half of the story, the game can get a little thick with the typical prose that early Final Fantasy titles feature, being a bit too pretentious with its script that, coupled with the very mediocre voice-performance, can likewise harm immersion somewhat. Gameplay FFIV’s gameplay is remarkable strong for its age. While it does away with the free job selection of its predecessor and instead assigns each party member one single class instead, it also introduces both the Active Time Battle (ATB) system as well as the ability to field a fifth character in combat. To reiterate a little on each, the ATB system is a soft turn-order mechanic. It is represented by a gauge for each character, which fills up and then allows the player to choose that character’s action. Each action is then again assigned a “speed” with which it is executed. For example, a simple attack command will be executed almost immediately, while a spell will require further charging. This introduces an extra layer of strategy, wherein the player is incentivized to play around this timer to anticipate enemy actions. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3321574949 This works very well with FFIV’s boss design, wherein bosses usually have mechanics to play around, such as an enemy turning all damage into healing and vice versa. The fifth party member slot likewise introduces a lot more depth to such a combat system and allows FFIV to have some genuinely challenging boss encounters. I felt the balancing was also very strong, as no single party member on their own felt vastly stronger than another, and neither did I feel like the game required any excessive grinding to stay on curve with the difficulty. That being said, there is plenty of opportunity to get ahead of the difficulty by engaging in sidequests, which typically award abilities—passive and active actions—that can be allotted to any character and feel very rewarding to acquire—even more so as a reward for attentive exploration. One aspect that also plays a lot into the acquisition of abilities is that most sidequests are immediately linked to Cecil’s party members, who have a tendency to come and go according to the current events taking place in the story. While I think it is a good thing and works to make the characters feel like they have some genuine agency in the plot, it can also lead to some awkward times when characters you have relied on for the past few hours and invested skills, money, and gear into suddenly leave—sometimes for good. Dungeons are still fairly linear, and the encounter rate is a tad too high for my liking. This can make especially the very final dungeon of the game an absolute slog to play through. Similarly to FFIII, IV also very much likes to hide treasure chests behind invisible corridors, which is still as annoying here as it was there. Regrettably, this is still not the game to get dungeon-crawling totally right, and rather it is the story and fun boss encounters that kept me engaged throughout these sections. Finally, it is a little disappointing that, while no grinding is really necessary to finish the main story, that there is some content locked behind NG+, namely the game’s two superbosses. Similarly, the absolute best equipment of the game will require an insane amount of monotonous farming for rare item drops that I’ve only really seen rivaled by FFXII. Graphics and Sound Graphically, I was a bit surprised at how good FFIV can look at times. While, sure, the DS look definitely aged, the game still handles its presentation a lot better than, say, the 3D remake of FFIII. This is largely achieved both by the character models being fairly expressive and additionally featuring voice-over during select cutscenes, but also by opting for a more polygonal look, which sometimes felt evocative of games like FFVII. This is about as good-looking as a game of that era and console may get. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3323393402 Of course, music is also top-notch, as can be expected from a Final Fantasy title. It is probably the series’ most consistent quality, and FFIV is no exception. Standout tracks include The Dreadful Fight , as one of the most tense boss themes in this genre, Red Wings , or even more somber environmental tracks like Cry in Sorrow . Technical Issues and Performance While the game ran perfectly fine, with no crashes or conventional stutters, it does have a pretty jarring 15 FPS lock in combat, making it feel sluggish and unresponsive at times. As far as I have read, this used to be due to the DS' hardware limitations, but frankly, it has absolutely no reason to be in this port. Furthermore, there has been one minor issue I experienced with certain cutscenes in the game, wherein some voiced cutscenes would not be in sync with the subtitles or even overlap with the narration of the next few lines, as if the delivery was just too slow for the actual scene playing out. This may be isolated to the English voice-over, but since the game does not feature a language selection, it remained a pretty annoying issue. Final Thoughts Suffice it to say, I really liked my time with FFIV. And it’s a bit surprising to me that I did. I was expecting a very lukewarm plot akin to FFIII, and while FFIV’s story is far from perfect, what was so impressive was that both the writing and the gameplay were as consistently good as they were. Whereas usually, I have single major gripes with every other entry in the series, be that due to the often atrocious dungeon design, horribly monotonous villains, or an overreliance on grinding, FFIV simply managed to be a well-done, well-balanced, and frankly, well-executed JRPG experience from start to finish.
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