Final Fantasy 4 kuporeview: Remastered Edition
So around a yeaer ago I wrote a review for Final Fantasy 4 on the SNES but never posted it. I now decided that I'd do a review and comparison of all versions released in the west. Additionally, this review is available at any resolution as long as you have the hardware to support, if that marginal bump in clarity makes a difference to you.
As Dark Knight Cecil, commander of the Red Wings, you start off killing innocents, robbing them of their crystal. When speaking to King Baron about it, you're stripped of your command and sent on a menial task along with High Dragoon Kain. Shortly after Cecil will be regarded as a traitor and attempt to protect the other kingdoms of their crystals, shedding his dark suit of armor to become a Paladin in order to defeat the darkness behind the kingdom of Baron.
While there are a few games in the Final Fantasy series that play like your traditional RPG, Final Fantasy 4 is based off the traditional RPG mold. You have set characters that have specific skills and spells, and level up or reach certain points in the game, they'll acquire additional abilities. Final Fantasy 4 is also the first game in the series that's introduced the ATB (Active Time Battle) system. On the SNES version and PSX versions of the game, while you were never able to see the bar, it was always running in the background.
Most people don't use the support spells in Final Fantasy 4 or a lot of RPGs in general thinking they're like other early RPGs where they either rarely work or didn't add or do anything significant to help the party win the battle. Support spells and some instant death spells in Final Fantasy 4 are extremely useful and most times are much more useful than casting a spell like Holy, Flare, or Meteo, or summoning Bahamut, even on the most powerful of enemies. As long as the spell works on an enemy, it'll either always work or almost always. It's rare that the support spells miss, and if they do, they may just not work on that enemy. Rydia needs more magic? Cast Psyche/Osmose on an enemy with MP but low magic defense. Cast Slow with Rosa to halve the speed of any opponent in the game. Trap Doors are only in one section of the game, but that doesn't mean they're not one of the most annoying, they'll usually kill atleast one party member if you try to brute force them to death, but cast Stop and you'll have no problem walking through them. Stop works on a decent amount of enemies for either a long or infinite period of time. Toad and Break work on a decent amount of enemies. Behemoth's counter every attack with a melee attack or magic with Tornado, and while you can use Image or Blink to deal with them, you could always use Pin, Hold, or MindFlayer to paralyze them.
Final Fantasy 4 is a difficult game at times, but other than a difficulty spike of doing one side quest earlier rather than later, and your first landing on the moon, the game is never too hard. The game has a decent length, great dungeon design with a decent amount of sidequests.
Depending on what version you play the game will be a little bit different. If you've played the SNES version released in the US, it's not the "easy type" that a lot of people tend to believe, but it is somewhat based off easy type, both of which were released around the same time. While the US version has slightly reduced HP of enemy bosses, Heal/remedy potions replace every single recovery item, and most of the attack based items replaced with ethers, both games are easier than the original, while easy type has even more changes making it easier than the version we got. The amount of HP reduced is maybe one or two attacks worth of damage compared to the original, so other than the heal potions and ethers, the difficulty really isn't that much of a difference.
When Final Fantasy 4 was released for the PSX, it's the first time the western audience got the original game. Everything remained intact, and the translation was redone to be closer to the Japanese release. Ted Woolsey has a certain charm with a lot of the dialogue that will be missed, but atleast the localization team kept "you spoony bard" on this and every other version of the game localized in the future.
One thing you'll hear a lot of a misconception from people who get Final Fantasy 4 mixed up with other Playstation ports, is that the game has slow load times. Final Fantasy 5, Final Fantasy 6, and Chrono Trigger have longer loading times than their original versions. Final Fantasy 4 actually has shorter load times than the SNES version. Though there's one bug in the game for anyone who wants to nitpick. Whenever getting in a random battle after loading, sometimes there will be around a one second delay from when the music should start and when it actually does.
On Final Fantasy 4 you had characters at set points in the storyline, ending the game with a party of five characters. So like Final Fantasy titles in the future, Final Fantasy 4 Advance allowed you to change party members to most of the characters you've received throughout the course of the game once you got to the last dungeon. There was also a new dungeon with additional bosses that you could get these characters end game equipment, like the ultimate weapons you get on Final Fantasy 4, and additionally there's the Lunar Ruins, a 50 floor dungeon that includes even more powerful equipment to acquire and upgrades for your characters to obtain. Final Fantasy 4 Advance has two versions. You either have the original release in English or Japanese, or you have the PAL version.
With the US/JP versions, there are several bugs and lots of lag. Whenever you cast a spell when more than one enemy is on screen, the game would slowdown to around 20% its normal speed until the spell completed casting. When choosing an action, sometimes it'd allow that same character to immediately choose an action again for an extra turn without waiting for the ATB to move and sometimes the ATB would reset even though this one was more rare. Edge's boomerangs are back row weapons, but when placing Edge in the back row, these weapons would take off half damage instead of full damage from the back row like they should.
The PAL version of Final Fantasy 4 fixes most of these issues. No more lag, Edge's weapons work properly again and back row weapons now take full damage, and while the extra turn bug is still there, it's extremely rare so you might only experience it a few times in the game. The PAL version is almost unplayable though. Sure it fixes the issues that the other version had, but at what a cost. The PAL version introduces a ridiculous amount of input lag while in battle. Sure you can suffer your way through it, but I'd rather suffer through the lag when casting a spell rather than a continuous input lag from beginning to end.
Additionally, both the GBA versions make some changes to enemy speeds. Enemies speeds are altered so that early in the game, the enemies don't attack as often, infact, you can get through most battles early game before the enemies get to act a single turn. These lower speeds are all the way up to your return to Mysidia when you make your way to Mount Ordeals. So yeah, during the beginning there's pretty much no difficulty whatsoever.
Aside from the RPG Maker like sprites and it having the same early game speed issues that the GBA versions do, Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection is the definitive version of Final Fantasy 4. Aside from the speed issues early on, the game is based on the original version, but it also includes everything the GBA versions did, so the extra dungeons, the changeable characters. The game includes the amazing remade music from the DS game and then finally there are the remade graphics.
The devs of Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection really went above and beyond when it came to the graphics. Each location looks like it was pulled straight from Final Fantasy 4 and replicated in a much higher quality image. There are a few minor changes in the sprite work, but every step that can be taken and sprite placement is identical to the original. As a fan of the series and the game in general, when comparing images of the enemy sprites on the SNES version to those on this title, my jaw would drop how much accuracy they put into getting most monster sprites identical in design although a much better looking image.
Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection includes additional content as well. You can use the remade DS music(which is much higher quality on FF4CC) while playing through the game or you can use the SNES music. There's a 45 minute interlude. 10 hours Square Enix? You fu**ing liars. Then there's The After Years which I'll go into detail before the end of this review, with all the same upgrades that Final Fantasy 4 received.
Final Fantasy DS was released before Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection, but unlike the remainder of the releases, Final Fantasy 4 DS is more than just a set of graphical changes and bonus content added to the game. Final Fantasy 4 DS is a true remake and with all the changes feels like you're playing through a completely different game albiet with the same world. If you were hoping for the extra content the GBA version had though, they've removed all of that.
In the world of Final Fantasy 4 DS, the size of one block on the SNES version, might have increased to around five to 10 times than size in area, while the character is still their same size. This is fine as they were trying to go for a much larger world, while the characters are smaller in size. There are a few problems outside of this though. The first one is a DS staple, where a lot of developers of these 3D games decide to zoom the camera all the way in so you can't see more than a few feet around the character. Because the camera is zoomed in on Cecil's nuts, using the bottom screen is a far easier because you can actually see where you're going. What gets me is there are certain sections where the camera is zoomed far out, like the world map, but in dungeons, in towns, etc, it's zoomed all the way in. Why can't you give the player the option to zoom in on Cecil's nuts or Rosa's ass when they want to instead of it forcing us to stay zoomed in the entire time? The second issue is the games encounter rate. Final Fantasy DS is harder than any of the other versions and the game has the exact same world but around five to 10 times the size, with the game also having a variable encounter rate that can at times be very high.
In combat, the enemies have much higher stats than they did in the other games. They'll have access to more attacks and spells than they normally did, revised enemy scripts, etc. This includes all the bosses as well. This is the best feature of Final Fantasy 4 DS as it makes the game more like an expert mode. Additionially, as you progress through the game, you'll receive augments that allow you to customize each characters battle skills. It doesn't tell you in game, but the augments also give you different stat gain bonus' as well. When setting up your battle commands, you can remove any of the commands if you want. Don't feel that you need the attack command with Rydia or the Pray command for Rosa? Get rid of them and replace them with others.
Final Fantasy 4 The After Years is an episodic game released on the Wii and then later packaged along with Final Fantasy 4 in Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection. The game consists of nine episodes, the first eight last about 30 minutes to an hour and 30 minutes with quality that seems like it could come from fan fiction both in story and game design. The first eight episodes aren't that great, but all is worth it in the end.
The final episode in The After Years is amazing. All the characters join together at the end in what's a 10+ hour final episode. Similar to the extra dungeons in past Final Fantasy remakes, you'll end up fighting bosses from every game in the series, except the dungeon isn't randomized. The dungeon is well designed and the further you go into the dungeon, the more powerful equipment you'll get, starting by fighting bosses you've fought previously in Final Fantasy 4 then fighting bosses throughout the rest of the series up to Final Fantasy 6, then continuing on to fight a few final bosses. The characters that you've played as throughout the remained of the episodes will be on whatever levels you left them as, and you can choose between them as your five party members, so you could always create a save data before the start of the final dungeon, adding replay value to the game by running through it with a different combination of characters.
Final Fantasy 4 (SFC/SNES/PSX,) Complete Collection, and Advance - 9/10
Final Fantasy 4 DS - 9/10
Final Fantasy The After Years - 7/10(and that's only thanks to the last episode.)
Final Fantasy The After Years Final Chapter - 9/10
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