FFIV is kind of The JRPG Ever. It’s not bad, I didn’t dislike it, but it hasn’t actually done particularly much to stand out and has some very old RPG elements to it that somewhat stick out.

The plot, for the first two thirds of the game, is a decent surface level appropriate for the game. It’s hardly revolutionary, and even plays into some very classic tropes, but it doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, yet there’s just enough kernels of information to dig a bit deeper into the story and truly enjoy the narrative. While Cecil is a very generic protagonist, some of the supporting characters are very fun – I was very fond of Cid, Tellah, and Porom. Here’s the problem though: they don’t stick around.

FFIV has a strongly rotating party. You’ll always have Cecil, but the rest of your group is constantly switching in and out – the only person other than Cecil to join and never leave again is Edge, even though some of the other characters’ reasons for joining and leaving are very contrived. I’m considering playing the GBA version at some point just so I can keep Cid in my party, who I think would make more narrative sense than some of the characters you do have in the original/pixel remaster. Of course, some of the characters are more justified in why they leave/return – I find Tellah has a very satisfying arc over the course of this game and I wouldn’t change that. On the other hand, Rydia shows up in the underworld, says “hey I’m an adult now” after spending time in the Feymarch, and no one ever mentions it again. What did that add, exactly? Yang is also kind of the anti-Tellah. He’s cool when he’s around, but him surviving is an absolute deus ex of bullshit that should not have happened after his heroic sacrifice.

You’ll notice I mentioned “the first two thirds of the game”. Everything surrounding the moon and the Lunarians is kind of just completely unhinged and just destroys the suspension of disbelief. I genuinely think this game would have been better if the writers committed to Golbez being actually just evil and the villain of the game, rather than it being some guy we meet in the last 10 minutes of the game and Golbez was actually Cecil’s brother the whole time. The moon and Lunarians are foreshadowed a bit, but not nearly enough to have any sort of payoff and it seems like escalating the stakes for the sake of it, rather than for good storytelling.

Gameplaywise, I’m not sure that the devs of FFIV knew what a difficulty curve was. There are parts of the game which progress smoothly, but also some difficulty curves out of nowhere, and some particularly easy zones as well. This observation holds for regular encounters, bosses, and dungeons as well. You gain access to the Land of Summons and Sylvan Cave at the same time and they are completely mismatched in difficulty (Land of Summons is very easy, Sylvan Cave has batshit difficult random encounters). Bosses like Rubicante exist that can form change making it hard to time ATB around. And for every well-designed dungeon, there’s something stupid like Magnetic Cave. The endgame is also an enormous difficulty spike with Zeromus being a very difficult final boss even if you’ve breezed through the rest of the dungeon.

The rotating cast of characters also remove part of what I consider to be the fun of Final Fantasy, building and customizing your team. You don’t really get to let your party grow outside of Cecil. No matter what you do, your endgame party will consist of a paladin, white mage, dragoon, summoner/black mage, and ninja. It’s balanced, but there are other characters in this game and they’re ripped from you due to the plot (even though most of them are okay at the end). If you like Yang the monk or Edward the bard, Too Bad, you can’t use or grow them. You also lose both your sages who get both black and white magic, making Rosa your only (reliable) source of magical healing, and Rydia your main black magic user (Edge can use black magic but it’s hardly his main tool).

Ultimately, it’s fine. I’m glad I played it, I probably will be curious enough to try the GBA version someday (I really wanted to bring Cid to endgame), but as far as games go it’s Literally Okay. I had a baseline fun time (which is good, video gaming is my hobby and I hope I’d enjoy that!), but I’m not really sure that FFIV will be a game I look back on and remember fondly as much as have the sentiment “yeah that is a game that I have played” about. The highs just aren’t high enough and the lows just aren’t low enough to bring this out of The Game Ever status.