Oh, Square-Enix, you and your addiction to remaking your games over and over and over again~
Yes, yes, while Square has remade most of their pre-PlayStation games at least 2 times, Final Fantasy IV has gotten the most rehashes of any Final Fantasy game; it wouldn't surprise me if it was, in fact, the most remade game to date. The original version of the game for the SNES was a legendary role-playing game for its time, and it still is now. Later on the PlayStation, Square released Final Fantasy Chronicles, which bundled a rather barebones port of Final Fantasy IV alongside a laggy Chrono Trigger port. After Square was once again developing titles for Nintendo, they released Final Fantasy IV Advance, which had a few new features but a very buggy (almost broken) battle system.
So it took 17
years for Square to make a good remake of the game. Yes, that's
what we'll be talking about today, it's Final Fantasy IV DS. Some
long-time Final Fantasy IV fans have deemed this a bad remake, presumably
because it doesn't give them the nostalgic feeling they get when they play
the good old SNES version. Well, let's take a look at the game from an
unbiased point of view: Mine!
STORY - 9.2/10
Let me explain to you a little bit of the antics of the Blue Planet, known to us existent people as "Earth". Four powerful Crystals are held in the major kingdoms of the land: the desert kingdom of Damcyan, the foreign country known as Fabul, the high-class land of Troia, and the magical town of Mysidia. The extremely powerful kingdom of Baron, however, has no Crystals. The king of Baron never minded, but all of a sudden he wants the Crystals. He's been acting pretty strange in general as of late. To get the Crystal of Mysidia, he sends a fleet of airships called the Red Wings to take the Crystal and destroy all who get in the way. The Red Wings are led by the Dark Knight known as Cecil. After Cecil and his crew do what they were told they are overcome with a tremendous feeling of guilt, having invaded a town that has done nothing wrong. When Cecil gets back to Baron, he talks to a high-ranking soldier called Baigan about the king's violent orders. Baigan, still completely loyal to the king, tells him of Cecil's doubts. The king decides he can't trust a man who doesn't even trust him, so he relieves poor old Cecil of his position as leader of the Red Wings. Instead, he is given a Carnelian Signet to deliver to the town of Mist.
Alongside his best friend Kain - leader of the Baron Dragoons - Cecil heads to Mist. After traveling through a cavern and slaying a formidable Mist Dragon, Cecil and Kain finally arrive at their destination. To their surprise, the Carnelian Signet had been holding bombs within itself, which are set free upon the village of Mist. As they watch the village burn to ash before their very eyes, the two hear a little girl sobbing. Following the noise, they see that the bombs unleashed from the Carnelian Signet had burnt the little girl's mother to death, leaving the child as an orphan.
Cecil just couldn't take the guilt of all this; first the incident at Mysidia, and now this. The noble, kind king of Baron he once knew is now a cold-hearted tyrant, and Cecil refuses to serve him any longer. Kain, not wishing to soil the name of the Dragoons by doing these murderous deeds, joins Cecil in his rebellion. Of course, a Dark Knight and a Dragoon can't overthrow the largest military force in the world. If anything, they'd need allies to assist them in their fight. And what of the Crystals? Should the king of Baron attack the other regions of the Blue Planet and seize their Crystals, countless innocent lives would be lost. Cecil intends to see to it that the other countries know what they may be in for.
Now, this story
contains two common plot devices of the FInal Fantasy series: the concept
of collecting and/or defending a set of powerful Crystals, and rebelling
against a corrupt society. The Crystal thing is a little worn out, but
it's simple and charming enough, and there are plenty of sub-stories for
each area in the game. It's a highly engaging story, and even when things
looks very bad, Cecil and his friends never give up. It's one of
the most engrossing tales in the series.
GAMEPLAY - 8.8/10
Aside from its high quality, Final Fantasy IV was a pretty normal RPG of its time. I don't assume all of you are Final Fantasy followers, are you? Well, allow me to give you the gist of what Final Fantasy IV was like on the SNES, and how it still is on the DS. Well, IV is really one of the most defining games in the RPG genre. That said, it plays similarly to most RPGs or Final Fantasy games. Yet, at the same time, it was one of the more innovative games in the series, seeing that it introduced the active-time battle system. It works a lot like normal turn-based fighting, just with a more fast-paced undercurrent to it. You see, in battle, each character in your party has an ATB gauge that gradually fills up. Once it's full, the character is free to choose their attack. But it's not like you can just sit there for an hour and your enemy will just twiddle his thumbs while you decide on your attack. Enemies have ATB gauges as well and can attack you over and over again if you stand still, so you'll have to think faster than normal if you want to gain the advantage in battle. At first, I was pretty indifferent to this whole system. I didn't think the game was any better due to the new battle system, but I didn't think it was any worse, either. It took me a while to realize that the active-time battle system made battles more exciting than normal. This especially goes for the boss battles, where you'll just blaze through the menus, trying to get as many attacks in before your opponent's ATB gauge fills up.
Heh, well, this is a tad embarrassing. I can usually ramble on and on about a game's mechanics, but there isn't too much to talk about here since Final Fantasy IV is a pretty basic RPG. I didn't think I'd be doing it this early, but I'll just go right ahead to the new features. First of all, Square-Enix did quite a favor for us by easing up the enemy encounter rate. When I played Final Fantasy IV Advance, I liked the game, but I got a bad first impression after finding so many monsters. Gosh, when Cecil said "So many monsters as of late..." in the intro, he really meant it. But, while I do wish that Square would abandon the random encounter system all together, it was nice of them to lower the encounter rate in this re-release. Just don't expect that it's perfect; when you backtrack to areas with weak opponents that aren't even worth dealing with, frustration may ensue from there on.
Even better than
that, Square took the time to add an entirely new mechanic to the gameplay,
but you aren't forced to use it. In your quest with Cecil and his
friends, you'll stumble across items called augments, which can be given
to any character in your party. Once given, the character can then use
that ability in battle if they choose. The one downside is that you can
only have so many abilities on one character, so you might have to replace
some of your current moves to squeeze some of the augment-obtained abilities
in. It would've been better had we gotten more room for augments - otherwise
it's a nice little feature, and I can quite easily see it being applied
to other Final Fantasy games.
GRAPHICS - 9.8/10
Good call, Square~ You really dumped your hearts and souls into the visuals, I can see that. Final Fantasy IV DS is unlike most remakes in the fact that it takes the old, 2D version of the game - and warps it into a gorgeous, three-dimensional world. Yes, I know that the graphics aren't the most important part of a game, but giving the game a complete graphical overhaul was really a labor of love from Square, and it makes the game feel more refreshing than the previous ports of the game. It really is great to have a system that harbors both 2D and 3D graphics, isn't it?
As if giving the
game a 3D makeover wasn't enough, Square also managed to establish one
of the absolute finest-looking games on the system. Just look at the intro
for the game; I had no idea the DS could manage such beautiful graphics.
The actual game doesn't look as nice as the intro, but they're still quite
a sight. Plus, every so often you'll come across a cutscene; the graphics
they have are pretty similar to the actual game (though the colors and
shading are slightly improved), but they offer more unique camera angles
to make more of an impact on the player.
MUSIC & SOUND - 8.8/10
Let me first clarify that Final Fantasy IV had one of the best soundtracks of its time, as did a great deal of Final Fantasy games. When rehashing the music for the DS remake, Square seems to have tried to give the music more of an atmospheric feel. That, they succeeded in. But in overall music quality, the soundtrack has been, for the most part, dumbed down. Let's get to the two best examples of this; first, the epic tune called "The Giant's Dungeon". It sounds like they made this theme orchestrated or something, but it sounds a lot worse than it once did. At least Giant's Dungeon didn't suffer as much as the final boss theme did. My gosh, the final boss theme in FInal Fantasy IV DS... It sounds like Square just made this with an old midi composer. What's worse is that the final boss music was once such an incredible piece of music, and to see it stoop to such levels...
That's not to say all the music is worse than it once was, though. Some of the tracks have been noticeably improved. Tears of Sorrow sounds much better, and... well, that's all I can think of. The boss theme - which, by the way, is my favorite song in any videogame at the moment - sounds quite different, yet still just as great as it always was. Some songs, though, haven't changed much; the Tower of Babil and the theme of the Red Wings don't sound too different, save for a few new instruments.
Oh, and the cutscenes
I mentioned earlier, they've got voice acting as well. The voiceovers range
from great to hilariously bad, the latter of which can sometimes be quite
amusing. Either way, it's always cool to hear the voices of Cecil and his
crew, especially if you're like me, usually playing games that have very
little voice acting in them.
LENGTH & DIFFICULTY - 9.1/10
All right, a nice challenge! Really, someone wouldn't have guessed the game would be this hard, judging by the ease of Final Fantasy IV Advance before it. I have that version of the game, and breezed through it in about 3 days, with only about 4 or 5 deaths. Not only did that make the game short-lived, but it also made a lot of the boss scenes very forgettable. But I certainly remember the grueling boss fights in the DS version - I almost died on the Mist Dragon! The first boss of the game! And then there was the Mom Bomb, the Dark Elf, the Lunasaur, Dr. Lugae, so I found myself having to focus my strategy a lot more. It's mostly the battles you'll be getting stuck on though, since the dungeons are really just about getting from point A to point B and require little to no intellect.
Of course, if
all else fails, you may have to resort to level grinding. These instances
aren't common, but there's an abrupt grind-fest before the game's final
dungeon. Really, if you don't grind before this monster hive, you're fated
to be torn apart by merciless Behemoths and Deathmasks. You won't be forced
to just walk around some random area and fight whatever monsters challenge
you, since there's a plethora of optional bosses to fight and some dungeons
you'll have to go through to get to them. This minimizes the tedium of
grinding, since you know you'll get more of a reward than just EXP.
REPLAY VALUE - 8.9/10
The majority of Final Fantasy IV's sidequests revolve around gaining new creatures for you to summon in battle. Eidolons, they're called. But Eidolons have a rule; for one to summon them, one must fight them. The result is a hodgepodge of optional boss fights for you. Even if you don't end up using your newly-obtained Eidolons too often, it's still nice to know that you have them.
There's... one
part of the game that I found to be strangely addicting. Lots of enemies
have a very slight chance - about a one-in-sixty-four chance, to be exact
- of dropping some rare, special item. An item that's infamous amongst
Final Fantasy IV enthusiasts is the Pink Tail, which is very rarely drop
by Flan Princesses. This tail can be traded for the Adamant Armor, which
makes your character's defense skyrocket and protects them from magical
attacks. Other rare items include the Onion Sword, Wyvern Lance, Glass
Mask, and more. Of course, you absolutely must have patience should
you try to get one of these items. It took me 380 Flan Princess kills for
me to finally get my hands on a Pink Tail.
FUN FACTOR! - 8.9/10
While Final Fantasy IV can sometimes be annoying to play due to the high encounter rate of the SNES version or the laggy battles of the GBA version, it's great fun on the DS thanks to flawlessly executed battle functions and a toned-down encounter rate. The battles are also a lot more exciting because of the increased difficulty; I don't like games that are too difficult, but I do like to have the daylights beaten out of me every now and then.
One thing that
impresses me about the game is that the game is still a lot of fun even
after you've beaten it. I mean, when I was playing Final Fantasy VI, I
was having an extremely good time with it, but then the postgame came,
and it just... lost so much of its appeal to me. I feared the same thing
might become of Final Fantasy IV, but even after your travels with Cecil
and his friends have ended, it's strangely addicting to just grind and
collect items and such. Don't ask me why, it just... is.
OVERALL - 93/100
This... This is the game that Final Fantasy IV should have been 17 years ago - its definitive version, if you will. The reason that is the best RPG game on the DS - and arguably the best game overall - isn't just because it's a remake of the most legendary of all RPGs. It's because it took that RPG and gave it a complete overhaul, improving most of the things that it originally did wrong. Most remakes are marketed just for companies to make a quick batch of money, but Final Fantasy IV DS proves that remakes can actually have a better cause.
A 93 out of 100 pretty much means "don't hesitate, get this game". But it's a bit hard for me to determine who to recommend it to. People who've already played Final Fantasy IV should like it... Final Fantasy fans who haven't played this one should have a great time with it; but what troubles me is the people who are new to the series in general. In some cases this could be the perfect introduction to the series, having all the gameplay mechanics and story elements of most Final Fantasy games. But while on Lemmy's Forum, Kooks - who is apparently a big fan of Final Fantasy IV - said it "isn't the version of the game you'd want to get first", or something among those lines. Aye, its high difficulty might not be too beginner-friendly. If you think you're up to the challenge, though, then by all means, go for it.
| If you would like to send some feedback
to the author of this submission, please complete this form.
What's your name?
What's your Email address?
How do you rate this submission?
Does this submission belong in Little
Lemmy's Land?
Would you like to see more from this author? Comments and suggestions:
|
