‘Someday, surely, you will lead the ship that is sinking in darkness into the light.’

By the turn of the 1990s, Squaresoft was working on several projects at once; in addition to Seiken Densetsu: The Emergence of Excalibur, the company planned to release two Final Fantasy games in 1991: Final Fantasy IV would be the last title for the Famicom, while Final Fantasy V would introduce the franchise to the Super Famicom. These numerous projects were cancelled while still in pre-production. Seiken Densetsu was nipped in the bud – the title was given to Gemma Knights, which became Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden (1991), explaining the rather unexpected gameplay. As for Final Fantasy IV, little work had been done on it, and its cancellation was not an issue: Final Fantasy V took the title of Final Fantasy IV and combined all the efforts. After Final Fantasy III (1990), which was criticised by fans for its high difficulty and its two particularly treacherous final dungeons, Hironobu Sakaguchi's team decided to adopt a less old-fashioned approach, focusing on the new capabilities of the Super Famicom to embrace the franchise's cinematic ambitions. The gamble seemed to pay off, as the game was an exceptional critical success upon its release.

     The opening cutscene: narrative ambitions around key characters

The player assumes the role of Cecil, commander of Baron's Red Wings, as he prepares to launch a raid on Mysidia to seize its Crystal. He is acting on the orders of the King of Baron, who is determined to collect the four Crystals divided between the different kingdoms: the violence of the raids weighs heavily on the shoulders of the Dark Knight, who begins to doubt his mission – a fact that does not go unnoticed by the Seneschal. Cecil is then stripped of his duties and sent to the village of Mist to kill a monster in the company of Kain, his best friend, much to Rosa's dismay. Although Final Fantasy IV retains the franchise's in medias res approach, it is also characterised by a more meticulous direction. The long introductory cutscene, interspersed with scripted battles, is accompanied by 'Red Wings', a fierce and percussive military march, as innocent people are slaughtered by Cecil and his soldiers. The triplets follow each other with force, giving the melody a sinister quality derived from Cecil's theme. The melodic motif is extremely dissonant, but finds small tonal resolutions here and there, foreshadowing the ethical doubts of the Dark Knight. This musical track should be contrasted with the discussion between Cecil and Rosa, which features the famous 'Theme of Love'.

This exemplary composition has become a classic representative of the series for its ability to evoke a plaintive and lovelorn nostalgia. This certainly explains why the second version, rearranged for the DS port, was included in the 2008 Kyoiku geijutsu sha recorder textbook for schoolchildren. The track follows the IVmaj⁷ – V⁷ – iii⁷ – vi progression favoured in Japanese compositions, yet begins with an ii⁷ chord, which not only allows for a cyclical progression, but also gives it a unique melancholic quality. This musical piece can be interpreted in many ways. With its very soft and soothing timbre, it is a perfect candidate to be Rosa's theme, heralding a long tradition for the series. The mournful motifs and lyrics of the two sung versions – Hikari no naka e (1994) and Tsuki no akari (2007) – position it rather within Kain's sorrows. Either way, this song immediately articulates the pain brewing in the love triangle of Baron's three characters, who are unable to express their deepest feelings. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the title's most poignant moments are always silent, with all communication taking place through sprite animation or music. Thus, from the very first minutes, Final Fantasy IV sets its stakes by emphasising the importance of the characters and their personalities, bringing it closer to Final Fantasy II (1988).

     The melodramatic nature of the scenario

The idea of rebellion against an established order is present in Cecil's departure from Baron and his search for identity as he attempts to atone for the sins he committed with the Dark Knight's bloody sword. Final Fantasy IV depicts this introspection through a class change, but also through the cycle of tragedy that befalls the Overworld: the game repeatedly features ruins and a world destroyed by the ravages of war. This idea was also used in The Legend of Zelda (1986), with humanity forced to retreat into caves and tombs to survive monster attacks. However, Final Fantasy IV places the burden of responsibility on Cecil, the unsuspecting bearer of the fires of desolation. Baron, Mist, Damcyan and many other cities in the game lie in ruins throughout the adventure, an illustration of human cruelty – but also a sign of their resilience. Unlike Link in his first game, who single-handedly carries all of Hyrule's hopes, Cecil is written as a somewhat apprehensive and insecure character, forcing the rest of the cast to push him forward. Despite the pain he more or less directly inflicts on his companions, they are always there to help him make the right decisions and live up to his new code of ethics.

To compensate for the highly melodramatic nature of the script, Final Fantasy IV is more willing than previous titles to use good-natured humour, which helps to ease the tension. While Golbez, Rydia and Kain are constant reminders of Cecil's sins, characters such as Cid, Polom, Porom and Edge give the title some breathing room thanks to their sharper personalities, whose clichéd writing still manages to charm. The duo of Polom and Porom crystallise the hope for a better world, between childish arrogance and a strong sense of responsibility. Even if it does not achieve full narrative coherence, the world of Final Fantasy IV is teeming with life, both in its joys and its sorrows. The game is particularly effective at showing the characters' helplessness in the face of the reality of existence: this is often staged through scripted battles that function as pseudo-cutscenes in which interaction is possible, whether or not actions have real consequences. The sequence with Edge's parents is exemplary in this regard, managing to evoke the appropriate degree of dread and sadness and allowing the player to choose their actions: the ability to attack desperately or refuse to raise their weapons is a meaningful option.

     Underused characters and a world lacking depth

Nevertheless, it is unfortunate that some narrative threads are resolved too hastily or lack subtlety. The first half of the game unfolds very quickly, leaving no time for dramatic tension to build. While Kain's troubled emotions are well portrayed through his silence and ever-downcast eyes, Rosa does not manage to conjure up the same complexity of character, something that writer Takashi Tokita actually laments. [1] She borrows all the traditional symbolism of Japanese beauty – the well-known triptych of moon, snow and flowers (setsu gekka) – in her design and way of expressing herself, but there are hints of agency thrown in here and there: at the beginning of the game, she admonishes Cecil with the famous 'Cecil is not a coward, not the Cecil I love', which puts her in the role of judge and upholder of an ethical code. She does come across as a little forceful – presumably due to the difficulty of communicating subtle emotions with the technical limitations of the time – when she asks Rydia to use Fire. Throughout the game, Rosa embodies the gentleness of the moon, providing a counterpoint to the Red Moon that hangs mysteriously and ominously in the night sky – a sort of representation of Cecil's spilt blood. Final Fantasy IV further develops the opposition between worlds that seem irreconcilable, but must learn to cooperate in order to find balance. The Dark Crystals return from Final Fantasy III to contrast with the Light Crystals, but there are also parallels between the races of the Blue Planet and the Lunarians; the inhabitants of the Overworld and Underworld; the humanoid races and the mythical Eidolons.

Unfortunately, all of these themes, although apparent during the adventure, are generally not explored. Rosa too often remains a damsel in distress, acting as a catalyst for the development of Cecil and Kain, while the Lunarians' background is left aside, except for a few mentions at the end of the game. Admittedly, some scenes remain compelling, such as Cecil's return to Mysidia and his interactions with the inhabitants, but they are in the minority. The game focuses mainly on the relationships between the main characters and less on the world around them, with the exception of the ruins' aesthetics. The emphasis on pseudo-erotic scenes with all the dancers, in the spirit of Dragon Quest, is also a puzzling and unwelcome touch. Final Fantasy IV does not manage to completely imbue its universe with a coherent poetic aura, often leaving it to the soundtrack to fill in the gaps in the script. Edward's sequences, in particular, are carried by the superb 'Castle Damcyan', whose pathetic and tired tone serves to underline the prince's difficult grief. Similarly, the sense of adventure is mostly underlined by the sweeping arpeggios and modal mixtures of the 'Overworld Theme', which borrows heavily from the 'Prelude'.

     The ATB system and the new dynamics of combat

The narrative ambitions are largely based on a new gameplay system that alters the structure of the story. In a sort of evolution of the Final Fantasy III concept, up to five characters can form a team, and Final Fantasy IV does not hesitate to add or remove team members in order to vary gameplay styles and prepare its narrative twists. While this feature is functional, it can also be a bit contrived, as the player can lose equipment when a character leaves the team. Nevertheless, the game has good mechanical variety and the idea of having fixed archetypes, as opposed to the job system, works well. The ATB system provides the necessary amount of flexibility and tension in combat without ever being too punishing. The player is encouraged to truly master the tools of all characters, rather than spamming the same option just to move on to the next character. This philosophy can put the player in a corner, as Final Fantasy IV has a large number of enemies – even common ones – that can counter attacks under certain conditions: using Black Magic on a particular enemy can be fatal, as it would trigger a powerful counter-attack that takes precedence over the ATB initiative order.

The player has to memorise the actions of most enemies and pay attention to the effects they can produce. The approach is very effective on bosses, where the task is to identify the lethal gimmick as quickly as possible, but poses more problems on standard enemies. Every fight can be an uphill battle, quickly draining the player's mental resources. Some of the dungeons feel particularly sluggish and make for cruel challenges, just to get to the boss. The last dungeon is theoretically less extensive than its Final Fantasy III counterpart, but some of the standard enemies, formerly bosses, can easily erode the player's patience. Although Save Points are available and make progression more convenient, it is a challenge that may put off less dedicated players, for whom grinding may seem a more pleasant option.

     Questionable ergonomics and asymmetric progression

While Final Fantasy IV has many more tools to build interesting battles, the game is undermined by its poor inventory system. The title's emphasis on elemental resistances, buffs and debuffs encourages the player to stock up on as many consumables as possible in order to be flexible in different situations. However, the inventory is limited to 48 slots. It is therefore impossible to have a transversal arsenal, especially as some slots have to be saved for the equipment of characters who leave and return to the party. Should one save a caster's robe for Rydia, who will be returning to the party, or would one rather have an extra slot? Questions like these break up the pace of progression: until the very end of the game, it is impossible to call the Fat Chocobo outside of a few fixed locations to transfer items to the reserve. Final Fantasy IV thus reinforces the stigma of not using consumables, which are often vulgarly abandoned. The peculiarity of Lodestone Cavern, forcing the use of certain types of equipment, makes this even worse.

Similarly, the constant switching of characters brings up the issue of experience grinding: even though Final Fantasy IV is relatively forgiving until the final hours, there are sections that are more difficult as a result of a more fragile team composition dominated by mages. These moments are conducive to grinding, but they only apply to the characters currently on the team. Although not dramatic, a certain asymmetry can arise and, in the GBA and later versions, certain characters are relegated to the bench, as it is possible to modify the party for the final section of the game. Yang and Rydia seem to be the most flexible powerhouses, while Edward, Kain and Cid struggle to dramatically increase their damage output compared to other characters.

Also worth noting is the presence of side content, which is unlocked after the Tower of Babil. Players can explore the world and undertake a range of quests and battles to increase the party's power. These sequences are a welcome respite from the hectic pace of the story, but they remain relatively minor, though important for their rewards. The optional dungeons in the GBA version are generally mediocre: the Cave of Trials is a series of forgettable floors that allow the player to face five bosses with the characters available after the Tower of Babil. The Lunar Ruins introduces a long dungeon with randomised floors, enabling access to the Trials of the characters present in the party during the final boss fight. These scenarios vary in quality – Kain is certainly the most interesting and Edge the most frustrating – and provide the most powerful equipment in the game. The problem comes mainly from the floors in between, which are hardly appealing to explore, usually lacklustre puzzles or the rooms from previous dungeons, especially as it takes several runs to complete all the challenges. The highlight is undoubtedly the battle against the superboss, which is far easier to digest than the floor exploration. Special mention should be made of the Pink Tail and Rydia's summons, which involve a gruelling grinding experience representative of the worst JRPGs have to offer, due to their abysmal drop rate.

The transition to the Super Famicom allowed Final Fantasy IV to develop greater ambitions and acquire the technical tools necessary to better present its story and combat. This first attempt is productive and full of brilliant compositional strokes, but the title lacks coherence and fails to establish an effective rhythm over the course of its adventure. The multiplication of environments, even though it is a characteristic of the genre, forces certain narrative concessions and relegates certain characters to the background. Nevertheless, Final Fantasy IV in its own way embodies the peculiar magic of old-school Final Fantasy. Its antagonists are memorable, and it is commendable that they were only minimally altered for their inclusion in Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (2021). Final Fantasy IV may lack subtle poetry, but ten years after I first discovered it, the title retains its charm, despite the mediocre and plain graphical assets of the PSP version.

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[1] ‘FINAL FANTASY IV 30th Anniversary Special Interview!’, in Final Fantasy Portal Site, 16th June 2021, consulted on 11th April 2023.

This is B tier Final Fantasy title. While revolutionary at the time with its attempts at a larger narrative, that narrative ends up feeling a bit shallow and the characters especially fall short of those I grew to love in VI, VII, IX, and even XV. The gameplay itself is as standard as a standard JRPG could be, there are no fancy elements such as the job system, magicites, or materia in sight. I should get to the point, Final Fantasy IV is a good game, potentially mind-blowing for those who first played it but the series has been much stronger since. If you are new to the series, I suggest starting here as this is the most "Final Fantasy" a Final Fantasy title can be.

Yeah, uh, this game is miserable.

I will say upfront I played the original Japanese version of the game, so on higher difficulty, and I played on the highest possible speed yadda yadda.

Let's begin with the gameplay.

Famously, this game has zero customization. You cannot even choose the party that you want, at all, let alone something like jobs or espers or materia. There is literally no decision-making involved with the gameplay outside of buying 100 potions or hi-potions depending on how far you are in the game, going through dungeons and spamming heals after every fight (because enemies usually do hit hard enough that, if you want to conserve mp, you have to heal after every fight). So going through a dungeon usually just means, you fight twice, go into the menu, spam potions, fight twice, go into the menu, spam potions. The potions are cheap and it's never really an issue to get them.
The game has zero customization, but, on top of that, main characters Cecil and Kain only either choose attack or jump in every single battle. They have no other useful moves. The only one that has some complexity is Rosa because she has at least A COUPLE of useful moves. Berserk, haste, slow, the cure line, raise/arise. Unfortunately even for her all the other moves are completely useless since bosses are immune to status and there is no point to use them on mobs. With Rydia you just spam the strongest spell available over and over. Whether that's a summon or a spell doesn't matter much. Not much more here either.

ATB is absolutely miserable. There is like one gimmick that involves SOME strategy. For example, when you are trying to heal, and one party member is dead, it's better to wait right until the party member is revived, and then heal. Or a boss has a very strong attack that puts you on your knees, so you wait until he uses his strong attack and then quickly click heal AFTERWARDS to make sure you get healed. So there is some correct timing involved. But those are some very small benefits considering the downsides. One of the nice things about turn-based RPGs is that they are relaxing, you can do something else like watch TV or get a sandwhich or whatever, but here, the battle keeps going and it's just jarring to have to pause in a turn-based RPG. You could say that I should just get used to pausing, but when most of the time I'm just watching at menus I don't really feel like I am in an action context, what's on the screen does not convey the feeling that I have to pause here immedaitely, because I'm just choosing stuff from a menu. That is a minor nitpick. Another big problem is that it "rewards" you for clicking through the menus as quickly as possible, which in my opinion does not feel challenging or rewarding, just annoying. Occassionally i misclick trying to rush through the menus to get to the next character quickly, and this rush is sadly not at all exciting, it just makes me feel stupid I have to rush through the menu.

The game is also, outside of a few encounters, really easy. I beat every fiend on my first try except for the water one who has the gimmick where you need to stun him with thunder before he uses his big attack, which I didn't figure out in time the first time around. The final boss is "hard", but there is literally no strategy. All I did was spam attack and heal, and occassionally an elixier, and he died. I did nothing else. The entire final boss required me to use 3 different inputs. Nothing else was useful. Sometimes the boss gimmicks are pretty fun to figure out, but in the end they are just puzzles, none of the battles involve anything resembling a strategy. And I have some trouble explaining what I mean here, but the encounters are very "boss centric", because there is no customization, there is no testing whether you planned everything well and whether your plans are bearing fruit. The bosses require you to figure out what you have to do, then you do it, and you are done. In this sense they remind me of Zelda bosses.

The dungeons, like mentioned earlier, are alright, but they don't really offer a real challenge because you can just fill your bag with potions every time so any resource management goes out the window and it's really easy to just rush to the save point that exists in every dungeon by running away from everything and be "done" with it. So some of the dungeons being rather pretty in their designs is wasted due to this. Potions have to be more expensive, the numbers have to be trimmed down so that it really is about resource management and not just spamming potion after every fight.

Now comes the story. Initially it felt genuinley impressive. The sprites were moving in ways that felt genuinely dramatic (in the theatrical sense). Characters walk and stop to think about things, characters speed up and rush when they're angry or in a hurry, their sprites show little facial expressions. All of that stuff was super new in 1991 and genuinely interesting. The plot in general is very strong in the beginning, with Cecil being very conflicted and self-reflective and having an interesting personality. That all goes out of the window after his character arc ends with him becoming a paladin. After that, the game throws some rather uninteresting and pointless twists at you that once again drive home that Hironobu Sakaguchi probably watched Star Wars every weekend back in the day. Characters constantly "die", then get revived right away, the story's plot devolves into an uninteresting chase for the crystals and like mentioned, it's filled with twists that rather than make you go HOLY SHIT just make you roll your eyes. They are twists that are twists for the sake of being a twist. A proper twist makes you reconsider and recontextualize the entire plot that existed beforehand, in this game though, the twists are just pointless shock value. I don't see how Cecil being descendant of Lunarians matters at all, or how Goblez being his brother matters at all and so on. They feel like shallow references to classical theatre without truly understanding it. Aristotle defined that twists in theatre should be like an awakening, as if now you truly understand the world around you and feel like you were blind before. None of the twists the game throws at you feel like this, thus they fall flat.

Some Characters like the bard dude have like one scene and then disappear, Rosa doesn't change at all, Kain's is just... unconvincing throughout? He randomly flip-flops between joining your party and betraying you. I get what they were trying to do but the execution was lacking.

One big issue with the game however is that there is just zero player involvement. It just feels like sitting in a theatre and watching a mediocre play play out on the screen and all you have to do is move the characters to the next screen to see the next scene. I found it really hard to identify with any of the characters, including Cecil, because everything he and the group does is explicitly foretold by other characters and there is never a moment where you have to just sit and think around what you have to do, make some meaningful decisions on where to go, who to talk with, which character to bond with and so on. There is no sense of adventure like in many other JRPGs because progression is not tied to player input. In Dragon Quest games of the same era, if you want to advance, you have to go out of your way to talk with every NPC, explore and then put 2 and 2 together yourself and understand where to go and what to do. Even though they are simple games, just this small thing can make it feel like you, the player, are driving the story. You are making the decision to go out on the world map and check out this next city or more information and to talk to x amount to npcs. in FFIV, you're always EXACTLY told what to do and when and why, you never input your own thoughts on the matter in any way. However, this eventually becomes fine because by FF7 Squaresoft has managed to write genuinely fascinating and impressively constructed stories, with beautiful, rich worlds to explore and great characters where you WANT to be a spectator of it all, and, in later games, they added so many more options for player input and interaction that draws you in. Here though, there's barely any of that.

Final Fantasy IV thus is the beginning of the "squaresoft" vision for what an RPG should be like, and which poisoned the JRPG for a long time unfortunately, leading to the SNES era being domnated by very simple and very easy games with very little customization or player input, being railroaded into a single path. One can TELL that this is the beginning of the "JRPG as mainstream media". In many ways, FF4's structure is existant even in modern games, and possibly, more than ever before.

Give the players a series of scenes that they have to play out as spectators, boss/combat encounters are mostly puzzle-like, where they have a gimmick you have to figure out on a case-by-case basis to keep the player involved and occupied, and then throw the next scene at you. Then on top of that, said story invovles multiple characters, many of them with clear character arcs, developing over the course of the game. Many cinematic AAA games have exactly this structure, and I am no game historian, but I would assume in 1991, this "cinematic" structure of a video game was novel, fresh and something new. And who knows, maybe in the end modern AAA video games can be traced back to FFIV, which inspired FFVI, which inspired FFVII, which became a gigantic hit and made people in the west consider maybe putting more effort into the writing of video games.

(Played on the SNES release as Final Fantasy II, logging and reviewing here just bc it's like i guess more of a main release etc)

This was a pretty damn great introduction to the series, for now I plan to check out VI and VII as well and maybe some more if I like those the same.

The cast in this one is quite lovely aside from some poorly done romance, and as a whole they really elevate this one. I was pretty engaged with the story itself as well. The ATB system is...a little odd, but I don't necessarily dislike it.

What I did dislike is the difficulty spike around the last quarter of the game, it's far from unmanageable but quite got on my nerves. One thing I should definitely note by that point is to grab some ethers and life potions whenever you can, especially before the final three dungeons as you can't actually use Exit in two of them for some reason. If you keep some good items on you and have your crew at about level 50 by the endgame you should be good to go, although it does take some grinding sometimes to get there.

Some dinkiness towards the end aside though yeah I was very pleased with this one, was engaged all throughout and as a whole had a pretty damn good time

Golbez is #7 on the “ Final Fantasy in least to most order of how lame their major antagonists are” list:

Final Fantasy IV is by no means the worst FF as a whole (that would be II), nor is Golbez the lamest-looking antagonist in the series (that would be Kuja). But FFIV has, by a mile, the most poorly-written story out of them all. In a sumptuously-built fantasy world with steampunk flying ships and high-tech labs married to medieval knights and wizards and gruesome monsters, comes a story where not a single event of its entire narrative matters. As the first FF entry to grace the Super Famicom, it came with a state-of-the-art microchip that apparently wrote the script as the game itself went along. Like so:

The main character’s entire redemption arc notoriously happens within the first fifteen minutes of the game, and oh yeah, lest anyone get any ideas about him, he has a hot girlfriend whose job it is to keep getting kidnapped and rescued. Another character, who has an aversion to casting the fire spell due to her family being killed by a wildfire spell, is more or less just clowned on by the rest of the party and shamed into using fire so the quest can continue, just completely farting all over the potential character development that could have happened. She later learns to overcome her fears and find the inner strength to master her abilities as a summoner... entirely offscreen. Yet another character is mind-controlled into switching allegiances with the frequency of how often I turn on and off my bedroom light switch on a given day, and not to mention with all the care and deep inner conflict that it takes me to do the same.

Those three characters, by the way, are the closest we have here to anything of substance. Chances are good that if you’re in this story and you’re not one of them, or if you’re not fucking one of them, you’re probably going to needlessly sacrifice yourself. Two wizards, scions of might and magic who can achieve impossible superhuman feats limited only by their imagination, decide the ONLY way they can save the party from a room with walls closing in is to turn themselves into stone (the story wants you to think they’re dead, even though other enemies can do the same to you and it is easily treatable with a potion). Others still throw themselves into enemy airship fire or run back into exploding laboratories without a single thought of how they could maybe just maybe advance the plot maybe WITHOUT dying, and in a moment that rings absolutely false they all show up in the penultimate climax to help out your main party because They Were Never Really Dead After All! I enjoy imagining the cast of Final Fantasy IV all having a meal at a fancy restaurant, and when they have trouble figuring out how to split the bill, a handful of them decide to lay down their lives so that it will be easier to calculate everyone’s share by that much.

Which then brings us to Golbez. He looks pretty cool, as I said before, like a Renaissance-era black knight, a little more decked-out Garland perhaps, but that coolness is all for naught, in service to a story where nothing matters, and so not even him. Here’s a bad guy in black armor who wants the crystals. He has the four fiends working for him (including one who runs an illicit genetics laboratory, and once we leave that lab we never hear from it again, let alone why one of the primal elemental forces of evil... runs a genetics laboratory). He is a powerful sorcerer, but he can’t handle an even more powerful spell, which weakens his mind control powers over one of your friends, until it doesn’t anymore. Then there are eight other crystals, and he needs those, to resurrect an ancient baddie on the moon. Then it turns out he’s he main character’s brother, and they’re both from the moon. Then it turns out he’s ALSO been mind-controlled, by the moon baddie, who we don’t see until the last ten minutes of the game. And then it turns out the moon baddie sucks too.

I really don’t know what else to say. It’s mostly just lazy writing, but it’s also obviously a ripoff of Darth Vader as well, a dour villain in black armor who can wield magic but had a heart of gold all along and was only being manipulated by a scowling black-robed Nosferatu-ass-looking dark lord. That’s it, that’s all it is. Of the many crimes George Lucas has perpetrated on the human race, I also count this franchise and many others and their complete inability to get the fuck over Star Wars.

This game reminds me my childhood cartoons a lot. That's not a bad thing for me, as long as it's filled with lovable characters, I am okay with super simple "let's stop the bad guy before he destroys the world" kind of story.

I mean I can't say if any of the cartoons I had watched starts with burning an entire village but anyway yeah. This game's story is fun with lots of lovable dorks. Only thing I wish about the story to do is Rosa and Cecil's relationship to get more fleshed out... and maybe those two annoying kids didn't existed... But other than that. Yeah everyone is lovely. Rydia's heartbreaking struggle to get better, Edward's story of slowly getting more mature etc. Oh and of course our main character Cecil and his story of redemption story(cue: ff4 Prelude theme). He is the type of character that if I had played this game before I would paste his posters all over my room. His previous regrets and slowly overcoming to get better is a type of story that makes you motivate and hype you. Simple but effective.

Gameplay starts fun too

You get new magic, new type of attacks, weapons in every progress. I can't say it's strategic that much(but of course strategy gets really important when it comes to boss fights) but time based battle system rather than a turn based makes the game much more energetic and challenging. While one character prepares a magic, other character charges their attack, another one puts a barrier, last one tries it's best to summon a monster etc. But unfortunate thing is, you don't have much freedom for classes. Character classes are premade because story reasons but I wish they gave us options to select our own skills ourselves so we can do our own subclasses. I mean you get new skills when you level up also sometimes new classes because of the story but skills are automatic things, you can't choose your new skill to be more offensive or defensive or supportive etc. This small change would make grinding to more interesting

Grind
Yeah there is grind. But not much in the most of the story, just going around for a hour is enough to take down that area's boss... But it suddenly goes 5 times up in the last area because of lots of minibosses. Because it's required or something in a jrpg? I don't know but at that part I kind of lost my motivation to continue. Also I was playing on the damn ps1 and didn't know they had long loading times before beginning this game so... yeah it was a bit frustrating... I played this before ff5 but now comparing them together, ff5 had a hard last area as well but I said in there that they made grind fun with giving you the ability to diversify your classes so... yeah in this one it's not fun that much. So, I wouldn't say no to anyone for playing this game on easy for that last area sake.

So yeah, fun story, fun but near the end gets grindy gameplay. Lovely characters also. If you still have your childhood soul in it yourself, then I recommend this game wholeheartedly. You will have fun with it hopefully

Final Fantasy II on Famicom was a.... divisive game to say the least. Its stat progression system, while novel and unique, was a pain to deal with, and the admittedly impressive story for its time couldn't make up for it. Why am I saying this in a Final Fantasy IV review? Because Final Fantasy IV feels like the team built upon the groundwork Final Fantasy II built and improved it to such a degree that it created a whole new standard for JRPGs as a whole going forward.

Final Fantasy IV came out a little over half a year after the Super Nintendo was released, and Final Fantasy IV took advantage of that to the fullest extent possible for a game released half a year into its console's life. The story was bigger, the graphics were more colourful, the characters were less flat and far more animated, just about everything was improved on since Final Fantasy II and III.

The story is in a way, another Final Fantasy II. You have a main cast of characters rebelling against an evil empire commanded by a horrible evil. The difference between the two, however, is that Final Fantasy IV actually has real story unlike the hardly-connected cutscenes in Final Fantasy II. The cutscenes are many, interspersed through out the game generously, and the characters within them are far more animated than either Final Fantasy II or III. Where as Firion, Maria, Guy, and Leon have hardly any personality to speak of, and the Onion Knights of III were hardly characters at all, Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Kain, Edward, and the others in IV all have their own personality. Cecil, for instance, is a former Dark Knight-turned-Paladin who is deeply remorseful for the atrocities committed by his own hand in the name of the kingdom of Baron; and Kain is a gullible dipshit easily manipulated by his unrequited love for another character, Rosa, though Kain isn't as bad as I make him out to be.

The battle system was completely overhauled since Final Fantasy III. The job system is gone, replaced with individual character specific commands that were unfortunately removed in the American version. But the biggest change, however, was the Active Time Battle system, used in all future Final Fantasy games until Final Fantasy X. Instead of a traditional turn-based system, each character has a bar that fills up at a pace in accordance with their Agility stat, and once that bar fills up they can execute a command. Of course, enemies have this same bar, so overall combat tends to be more frantic than prior.

Overall, I think Final Fantasy IV is one of my favourite Final Fantasy games out of the first five, if only for sentimental value. Of course V is the better game, but I do love IV dearly.

This is almost like a shell of a Final Fantasy game to me in many ways. That's not meant to be quite as harsh as it sounds, but it really does feel like more of a tribute to the series rather than a foundational installment in it. In so many ways it perfectly understands the basic things that make the series great. Good soundtrack, a lot of strong cinematic moments, great use of said music to elevate certain scenes, forward-thinking game design. Plenty of elements that Final Fantasy is renowned for are here, yet the game overall lacks that spark that makes entries stand out.

A lot of it comes down to the story to be honest. If I had been playing the games in order, I would be worried that they were already running ideas by the time they made this game lol. That really sucks for a series that is constantly pushing in interesting directions! FF4 has a fairly basic and inoffensive plot but makes it much more insufferable with a LOT of dumb story decisions. There are like 6 different fakeout deaths in that series, each one getting more and more meaningless than the one before. What was even the point of having these happen if you reverse them minutes later? Are these supposed to be emotionally impactful? Why even reverse them when they aren't going to have any meaningful impact on the story or gameplay going forward? I try not to let this stuff sink games for me but it undermines basically every "serious" story moment in the game. Even past that these dumb rug pulls extend to many other plot elements. Just when you think something is resolved, it gets brought back as another macguffin to chase around. It feels like a thin veil of padding placed on a story without much of a strong central focus. While FF2 was also a basic story, at least it was competent? FF4 is all over the place and it annoyed me to no end. I can see how people respect a lot of the semi-novel things this game did with the focus on characters and cinematic moments that the previous games didn't have. But it's all kind of moot to me when the story being told is something I'd write in like elementary school.

Despite all of that...the gameplay is a lot of fun! I definitely had some frustrations at points but it does a really great job of making dungeons actually fun, the perfect mix of linear paths with branches that don't punish you too much for exploring. I really enjoyed how rewarding the loot in each dungeon was as well, I wish more FF games outright gave you good weapons/armor in exchange for fighting bosses in the final dungeon because that was really neat. Overall just feels way more balanced and carefully designed than any of the NES games.

I don't think the gameplay was enough to make up for the insanely bad story but I would still say the game is fine overall. It's just like a textbook example of an incompetent story. It's not like it's repulsive or offensive or anything to me it just kind of fails on every level and is slightly redeemed by fun gameplay.

Game equivalent of this essay

At this point in time, the Final Fantasy series had created a pretty successful, albeit divisive at points, trilogy on the NES. These three games that would redefine the entirety of the RPG genre as we know it, garner many fans worldwide, and would cement the Final Fantasy series as Square/Square Enix’s flagship franchise from that point onwards. So naturally, after achieving a hat trick with those games, Square was ready to keep this gravy train rolling, with another installment in the series that would be the final entry for the NES, while preparing for what would come out for the SNES later. However, due to the fact that the SNES was about to be released, Square decided to shift gears and re-develop that NES game for this new system, and while they were at it, they were going to release it overseas as well… only, they would end up changing the name of the game to Final Fantasy II for us, because “lol, get fucked, America”. But anyway, just a few months after the SNES would come out for us in America, we would get this next chapter in the series, which we now truly know as Final Fantasy IV.

Before initially playing this game a good couple years ago, I had no clue about the reputation this game held, nor what it managed to do for the Final Fantasy series as a whole. I had just thought it was just gonna be another entry in the series, this time now being brought onto the next generation of consoles, with nothing else to really get too excited about. However, then I played through the game, and needless to say, I immediately fell in love with what I was presented with, as this game is, in my opinion, the best entry in the series that we had ever gotten at that point, and definitely my favorite of the series that I have played so far. Granted, it does have plenty of issues, ones that became abundantly more clear as the years would go by, but for what we have here, it is a massive leap in quality from the previous titles, and one that manages to take the series, and the genre as a whole, into new heights once again.

The story, for the time, was the most developed, character-focused, and engaging one not just in the series, but for video games as a whole, showing that video game stories didn’t have to be just one-note, and that they could show off plenty of emotions and dramatic moments when treated with care…………. even though, looking back, you can see that the story here is kind of a mess, but trust me, we will get into that later on. The graphics are pretty good, having plenty of great sprites for characters, enemies, and bosses, but when you look at it side by side with previous games, you can REALLY tell that it is just an NES game that was prettied up for the SNES, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is worth pointing out. The music is some of the best the series has ever had, with there being plenty of wonderful, iconic tunes that I love hearing even after having played it several years ago, such as with the boss theme, the common town theme, and, for my personal favorite track in the game, the Red Wings theme. And finally, as for the controls and gameplay, both of them work basically the exact same way that you would expect from a Final Fantasy game, but with notable changes that make the game so much more enjoyable by comparison.

The game is a traditional RPG, where you primarily take control of Cecil Harvey, go through plenty of different locations not just on the world that you live on, but also the Underworld and even the fucking moon at some point (yeah, things get pretty ridiculous), talk to plenty of NPCs that you will encounter who will either give you helpful hints/advice, or they will aid you on your quest in some way, find plenty of items that you can use to either upgrade yourself, get better items with from shops or otherwise, or to help you progress along in the game, and of course, get into random battles, where you will slash away at your foes before you either using your main weapon, spells, or whatever else you have lying around in your pockets, and gain experience points to level up and increase your stats. For the most part, it is your standard RPG through and through, which, even on its own, would’ve been fine enough to play through, and I would have had a good time with it. However, with the changes that this game implements, it sky-rockets it upwards into being some of the best content that I have seen out of this series so far, making me eager to get to the other titles in the series sooner or later to see where we can go from here.

In terms of the gameplay, not much has really changed, except for one key difference when it comes to the main battles, which now introduces the Active Time Battle system. Rather than taking turns to fight your opponents like in the previous Final Fantasy games, here, the battle is constantly moving, with characters taking turns based on whatever their speed is, allowing them to use commands faster than opponents in optimal scenarios. That may make the game sound pretty easy, but then you remember, the enemies can use this too, which means that, in a battle, you always have to be quick on your toes to use commands before your opponent can, making battle much more fun and exciting as a result. I have never played any other RPG before this that used this type of battle system, so needless to say, it was somewhat odd seeing this play out for the first time for me, but soon after, I quickly fell in love with it, and adored every second of it, as it did make things feel a lot more active, a lot more reactionary, and a lot more strategic, which made me get invested even more. It’s a good thing too, because apparently, this style will be used for plenty of other FF games later down the road, which I am all here for.

That’s really all that got changed for the gameplay though, as again, for the most part, it all plays practically the same as every other game in the series so far. In terms of other aspects of the game though, such as the story, the characters, and what occurs in said story… well, really, what hasn’t been changed? For the first time in any Final Fantasy game, or most other video games at the time for that matter, we have a set of characters that are already defined, have definitive personalities, relationships with other characters, and moments seen throughout that further define them. Yeah, we saw a brief bit of this in FF II, but that was pretty limited in terms of what it managed to do, as this game takes those ideas and pushes them even further.

Not to mention, each character also has a predetermined job class that they work with. You can no longer change up what job a character has, which does kinda suck, but at the same time, not only do the jobs that the characters get fit them pretty well, but they also grow and develop them overtime, learning better skills and different tactics to use in battle. This especially helps out with the boss fights, which do have more strategy to them rather than just “kill this guy while not getting killed yourself”, requiring you to pay attention to what they are doing while you continue attacking, as performing the wrong move at the wrong time can change the heat of the battle very quickly. With that being said though, for what we do get in this game in terms of character traits, dramatic moments, and character chemistry, it is all pretty basic, with elements that we have seen plenty of times ever since, which can make going back to this game feel generic and underwhelming as a result, but for what it is, I was still able to enjoy the cast of characters and the story that we got here… despite how flawed it comes off as.

Which speaking of, in terms of the story, again, it needs to be asked, what DIDN’T get changed? Out of all the Final Fantasy games so far, this one has the most developed and thorough storyline of the bunch, with plenty of character moments, overarching plotlines, and development that we have seen. On the surface, it is all pretty basic, just being another game about collecting a bunch of elemental crystals to stop a big, bad evil person, which is all well and good, but we also have Cecil going from his dark, “evil” nature to becoming a Paladin, Cain being brainwashed and needing to have himself snapped out of it by our party, Rydia losing her village and needing to learn to overcome her trauma, and several other moments that I haven’t mentioned here. Again, a lot of this is pretty basic looking back, but around the time when most video game stories were “Go save your girl” or “Go kill this big evil thing”, this went a long way, influencing video game storytelling all the way up to this day.

However, this then leads perfectly into one of the biggest problems with the game: again, the story is kind of a mess. Yes, it is pretty generic all things considered, and some parts of it have definitely not aged well over time, but when you ignore all that, there’s also several other elements of the story that feel overused and are, to put it bluntly, fucking stupid. First of all, throughout the journey, you will lose a lot of party members, such as with Cid, Porum and Pallum, Yang, and so on and so forth, with you being led to believe that all of them sacrificed themselves for the sake of your quest. But then, as you keep going through the game, you then learn that everyone is ok, and almost nobody ended up dying whatsoever! So with that being said, I have to ask, what was the point of all those fake-out deaths? Sure, a fake-out death can be effective when used correctly, and for most part, they are all pretty well done, but the more times you end up doing this, it not only becomes more predictable and less effective, but it also becomes, again, fucking stupid.

And speaking of fucking stupid, there is also the means in which a lot of the plot elements in this game are carried out. For some reason, Cecil has the biggest case of Murphy's Law that I have ever seen, as whenever he and his crew go on to doing anything in this game, and I really do mean anything, SOMETHING will go wrong, and prolong the journey forward. It all usually involves them going to some place, finding out the problem in said place, taking care of said problem, only to then have the reward or goal snatched away from them in the last second because “Ha ha, FUCK YOU”. There is one part of the game that stands out heavily when it comes to this. It’s when Cecil and the gang defeat Golbez, one of the game’s villains, inside of this sanctuary that holds one of the crystals they need. While celebrating their defeat and discussing what they should do next, Golbez’s hand starts to crawl around the room and go towards the crystal. Cecil and the crew then proceed to watch this hand go up to the crystal, steal it away, and then leave, WHILE DOING NOTHING AT ALL TO STOP IT. Call this story good all you want, but moments like that you cannot defend, as it is just way too stupid to justify.

But don’t worry, my problems with the game don’t just go as far as the story, because oh no, I got some gripes with the game too, albeit very minor ones. Most of the gameplay works pretty well, and again, I would consider it to be the best in the entire series so far, but like with all of these games so far, there just seems to be one or two areas that’s entire purpose is to piss you off. One such place is the Sealed Cave, a location in the Underworld that has one of the crystals you need to get, but it is filled to the brim with these Trap Door enemies, who can all throw themselves into lava for all I care. They can do massive damage to you whenever you fight them, most of the time even one-shotting party members, and to top it all off, they can split into multiple enemies, which can also mean more damage can be dealt to you. But then again, these kinds of issues only apply to one or two areas throughout the entire game, and even then, if you are playing the original SNES version of the game (the US version, anyway), it is very easy, so there aren’t too many instances where you will have a lot of hard-as-hell situations to deal with.

Overall though, despite having one or two annoying areas to go through, as well as a story that is repetitive and flawed when looking back on it, FFIV is, without a doubt in my mind, the best game in the series so far, bringing the classic gameplay to the next generation of consoles in a brand new and exciting way, while further enhancing elements like the story and characters even further, influencing not just RPGs, but all of video games further as a result. I would absolutely recommend it not just for those who are big fans of FF and RPGs in general, but also for someone who wants to get into either FF or RPGs in general, because while it may not be one of the most approachable or beloved game of the series, it is one of the best places to start, and I cannot recommend it enough. Although, now that I think about it, this game sets a pretty high bar for the next game to top. I’m not sure how it will be able to do it. I dunno, maybe they will find a way………. or, you know, they might fumble the ball along the way.

Game #503

Final Fantasy 4 is like a giant breaking through a tiny door: its sheer size makes everyone realise they need to build doors bigger from now on, but that doesn’t make the huge splintery mess left behind not a mess.

This is Final Fantasy’s first and foremost sin: having an ambition too great for the medium in which it then existed. But we are all sinners here, and as far as sins go there are far worse to commit. War crimes, for instance.

I do not mention sin frivolously: it is a quintessential part of Final Fantasy 4’s voluminous themes, themes that strained at the seams of the Super Famicom like the coquettish vest of a French aristocrat after a regular 12 course lunch on the 14th of July 1789. And like that poor powdered wig (soon to be without a head), a revolution was coming.

Again, I do not mention the revolution frivolously, for to understand Final Fantasy 4, one must understand that the text is translated poorly. Localised badly into English from the original French. Yes, the body might be Japanese but the soul of Final Fantasy 4 was penned by a man known affectionately as Victor Motherfucking Hugo.

Les Miserables (The Miserable Ones in its native French) is a novel written by Victor Hugo. The hero of Les Miserables is Jean Valjean, a French commoner who is raised poor and in a brutal environment who, out of obligation to his younger nephews, steals food for them. For this he is sent to jail for seven years. When he attempts to escape, he is given another seven. When he is finally released, he finds his status as a former prisoner prevents him from being hired. He has been given a bad hand, but he worsens it by becoming a wild animal.

It is during this chaos time that our Jean meets the Bishop Myriel, a kindly Christian bishop in a regional town. Valjean is poor and starving and tired, Myriel gives him food and shelter. Valjean repays him by stealing the bishop's silverware. He is caught by the cops immediately, because this is a fictional tale and so cops actually catch thieves.

Valjean lies and says the bishop gave the silverware to him. The cops don't believe him- because he is a criminal and also because it is a very bad lie- but on arrival at the bishop’s doorstep, our dear Myriel not only corroborates Valjean’s story, but also tells him: "you forgot the candlesticks", the most precious part of the collection, which he then gives to Valjean.

This act changes Valjean’s life. Valjean is overcome with shame at his own actions- and this saves him, ennobles him, because it is the chance to do better, to free himself of the world that made him do only evil.

There is a lovely lyric in the musical that goes something like this:

But remember this, my brother
See in this some higher plan,
You must use this precious silver
To become an honest man.
By the witness of the martyrs,
By the passion and the blood,
God has raised you out of Darkness,
I have saved your soul for God!

The song that follows is one in which Valjean, horrified at what he has become, screams his anguish, but then whispers two lines quietly, full of fearful awe:

He told me that I have a soul
How does he know?
What spirit comes to move my life?
Is there another way to go?

Victor Hugo described himself religiously as a deist and freethinker variously, but in this passage he manages to convey, elegantly and movingly, one of the actual powers of faith and religion at their best- the ability to compel one person to see the best in a person who cannot see it in themselves and by making them aware of it, change their lives, transforming them into good people.
And in the Christian tradition (mostly), the act most associated with this is forgiveness- God forgives, Jesus forgives- and that's how Valjean is given his chance.

"I have saved your soul for God!"

But note that this isn't redemption exactly. “You must use this precious silver to become an honest man.”

A common religious tradition is that of the votive offering- an offering given to a divine entity in exchange for a boon. The Romans might sacrifice a calf to Jupiter for success in war. This was a prayer, but also as much a contract as anything, bound by divine law. Here, Myriel makes a votive offering, presenting the precious silverware to God to buy Valjean’s soul out of darkness.

It does not redeem Valjean, however; it does open the door for his redemption. In Myriel’s faith, you must believe in good, but also do good as well.

This is the first, idk, 10% of Les Miserables. It is one of the very earliest story beats. Valjean doesn't change very much after this, but instead the story is seeing how a man raised in darkness can be capable of the greatest light, but also see the man be tested because the world that made him hard and cold still exists.

Valjean's Soliloquy, ends like this:
"I am reaching, but I fall
And the night is closing in
And I stare into the void
To the whirlpool of my sin
I'll escape now from that world
From the world of Jean Valjean
Jean Valjean is nothing now
Another story must begin!"

He breaks from his old life, but that doesn't wipe the slate clean. Now his story is of doing good, and truly redeeming himself. Valjean’s new life is constantly threatened by his pursuer, Javert, who does not believe in human capacity for redemption. Javert’s hounding ruins Valjean’s peace time and time again, but when Valjean turns the tables and has power over Javert, he does not destroy him but instead forgives him. Valjean begins in the darkness, but ends his story in the bishop’s shoes.

Final Fantasy 4 (Final Fantasy 4 in its native French) is the story of hot anime sad boy Cecil Harvey. Cecil Harvey is secretly a fucking moon man- but is raised as an orphan by the king of the land of Baron himself. Through duty to his adoptive father and his adoptive country, becomes a fearsome Dark Knight.

And then he becomes captain of the Red Wings, the world’s most feared military force. That is, Cecil Harvey starts the game as a motherfucking war criminal. This is how we begin our tale. If Final Fantasy 4 isn’t listed in splendid gimmick-turned-kind-of-activist Twitter account “Can you Violate the Geneva Conventions” then it should be.

Our tale begins, specifically, in medias res, with Cecil’s dark sword in the medias of a resisting civilian in the peaceful town of Mysidia, where Cecil and the Red Wings, doing their best 1800s British Safari cosplay, have looted the town for its magic Crystal. On returning to Baron after committing his act, Cecil is overwhelmed with guilt and doubt. By nature he is not a cruel man, but the world he is in has made him do dark things. He may lack Valjean’s poverty and brutal upbringing, but regardless, his soul begins the game in darkness.

Cecil is not unloved. Rosa, his ever faithful and inhumanly pure-hearted white mage beloved, loves him unconditionally. She can see the good in Cecil, because she loves him. Cecil cannot see it because he does not love himself. The opposite, in fact. Rosa’s love is not what Cecil needs right then, although that is not her fault.

When Cecil voices his doubts to his father-king, said father-king does what all father-kings do when their son-war criminal-vassals question them: they trick them into doing a surprise genocide. Cecil is sent to deliver a parcel to the summoner village, where he proceeds to murder a summon (killing the summoner in the process), then unwittingly unleashes the parcel- a magic bomb- on the town, killing all except a young girl. Rydia, whose mother is the summoner Cecil murdered via magic feedback.

Cecil, desperate to do some good, takes Rydia under his wing. Rydia makes sure to wake him every morning by calling him a murderer who should burn in hell. Cecil agrees.

Cecil meets other allies- Tellah, the bitter sage whose daughter dies to big bad Golbez; Edward, the milquetoast poet-prince of a kingdom that gets Red Winged into a crater before their very eyes; Yang, the brave Monk of Fabul. Every time, Cecil fails to help them. At every turn, Cecil is haunted by the person he may have failed the most- Kain, his adoptive brother. Kain is a Dragoon of Baron, but he is second to Cecil in every way- second in the King’s estimations and second in Rosa’s heart. Having failed to surpass Cecil at these things, Kain instead decides to surpass him at war crimes instead, and boy howdy is he going for gold.

All of this leads in an abortive defense of Fabul that ends with an abortive crossing of the ocean, in which the eidolon Leviathan strikes their ship with a whirlpool (OF THEIR SIN), dispersing the party. But Leviathan is not a wild animal, but a being of near divine power and authority. He saves Rydia by taking her to the Eidolon realm, and he saves Cecil by washing him up in the last place Cecil should be but the first place he absolutely has to be: Mysidia.

The people of Mysidia hate Cecil. Because he is a war criminal who recently went through their own like a British museum curator. Cecil passes through their hate and comes to the feet of the elder of Mysidia. Where Cecil expects hate, the elder offers him forgiveness.

But as always, there must be a votive. And the votive is a pilgrimage to the Mountain of Ordeals.

What follows is a symbolically rich journey in which Cecil climbs a holy mountain, literally named Ordeals, and comes face to face with his greatest enemy: himself.

He stares into a literal manifestation of his own darkness. Cecil, this young man who hates what he has become, who believes there is nothing in him worth saving, worth loving, has to stare into his self-hatred made manifest and make the heroic choice.

A True Paladin would sheath his sword.

What was Bishop Myriel’s power? "the ability to compel one person to see the best in a person who cannot see it in themselves and by making them aware of it, change their lives, transforming them into good people." Cecil has a chance to fight here. To attack and destroy an externalised part of his own self-loathing. But instead, he stays his hand. He is forced to acknowledge for the first time that there is something in him worth loving.

Cecil must find the way to love himself, but the man in darkness cannot remove himself from darkness; he must find a greater power. That power is forgiveness, an act of unfathomable love from Cecil’s victim to him that works its magic on his soul and brings it out of darkness.

The difference to Cecil is striking. He looks different, obviously, but his words and deeds, once creaking under the ponderous bulk of his remorse and self-loathing, are lighter. More confident. There is resolve there. Faith. This is who Cecil was always meant to be, but the yoke of self-loathing has been removed. And now he can finally help those around him. When Cecil washes up in Mysidia, it is the single lowest, most hopeless point in the story.

From that nadir- the greatest hope. And Cecil finally starts winning. He starts helping others, and the greatest change is in himself, enabled through the power of forgiveness. But this act of forgiveness is not Cecil’s redemption- that must come from the rest of the game, as he saves those who have fallen into darkness themselves.

This culminates in two salvations. The first is the salvation of Kain, his adoptive brother, who has betrayed him, coveted his wealth and status and love. Kain, a veritable Loki in dragonskin cosplay, has such rotten bona fides that the party is entirely justified in kicking him to the curb. Cecil forgives him. And in doing so, he rescues Kain from himself.

The second salvation is when he forgives his blood brother, Golbez, aka Theodore, at the very end of the story. Cecil’s story arc does not end at Ordeals. It ends at these salvations. He who once began in darkness ends the story in the elder of Mysidia’s shoes, proffering a radical message of forgiveness.
That is some powerful shit. It is a message of sheer awe, wrapped up in themes of war and jealousy and sin and death and murder. This is more than the fun anime pageantry of being a paladin knight- this is a story of redemption and forgiveness that feels uncannily evocative of Hugo’s own writings- and of the Catholic traditions before him.

That is not to say that Final Fantasy 4 is literally based on Hugo, or on any of this. The parallels are probably coincidental. But the themes within are so evocative of the same beats that it feels deliberate. Messages of power and love and faith, crammed uncomfortably into a 16 bit box that makes everything look and sound kind of cartoony, with the only way to convey emotion being a limited text box and limited sprites. Final Fantasy 4 was too big for its time, and thank God that it was!

There is a line from Hugo’s giant stupid tome of a book- a book that, at one of its great climaxes, takes the time to pause and spend a chapter waxing lyrical about the history of the Parisian sewer system, because Hugo could not be stopped- that comes to mind as I think about this hot anime knight and his journey out of darkness.

"The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves."

(This is a review I first published in 2021, elsewhere. Now it's here)

If you’re short on time or haven’t played it, here’s what I’ll say: 1991’s SquareSoft’s Final Fantasy IV is, in my opinion, best enjoyed by those who can appreciate a short, dense, no-frills, melodramatic JRPG. It’s an essential game in the genre and, for whatever my judgement is worth, good. If that sounds like your cup of tea and you don’t know anything else, then I’d recommend playing it and forming an opinion before reading (if you regret it, you can bug me later).

This is a retrospective of where I was when I first played Final Fantasy IV, and a rundown of where I'm at now. I'll try not to spoil too many other games in the process.

On Final Fantasy IV (Or — "Jumping the Lunar Shark”)

It was all Chrono Trigger’s fault. A series of coincidences had guided me toward that prolific blend of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, and I waltzed into 2019 wide-eyed and fascinated by a genre I'd once thought laughable. So now, having marveled at the results of their combined effort, it was time to pick a side for my next adventure. Yuji Horii beckoned to me from across the void, his latest Dragon Quest installment due on my game console that Fall, but Hironobu Sakaguchi leapt in with an ace up his sleeve. Not only would the ridiculously popular Final Fantasy VII release on Switch by March, but he’d recently converted a good friend of mine with its Steam version. So, in anticipation of that day, I began the new year with (let’s face it) the series’ foundation.

Dusk had settled over the city skyline, silhouettes of heavy coats retreated into apartments for blankets and coffee, and I was conjuring meteors to blow up an incarnation of living hatred. Final Fantasy IV had been my winter game, a boundless ongoing saga, and at last I’d arrived at the end. It should’ve been triumphant, the climactic conclusion to an epic quest spanning countries, realms, transcending even the planet itself. Finally I’d experienced a classic that meant so much to so many, that had contributed massively to the development of a genre and a generation of video game players. As Cecil and Rosa stood before their beloved crew of allies turned friends turned surrogate family members during their coronation, I felt a wave of relief as I realized it was finally…over with. I’d crossed Final Fantasy IV off of my bucket list.

But something about it lingered, and still does. I think back to Final Fantasy IV all the time. When ruminating in quiet moments, I sometimes rewind and play back the burning of Mist, the bombing of Damcyan and the death of Anna, the raid on Fabul and Rydia's return, and I can appreciate how pieces of the narrative seem to hold more layers than its charmingly chunky sprites let on. It’s hard not to notice specks of its influence in nearly every successive game in the genre, to say nothing of the groundwork it laid for the future of its own series. Though I can pinpoint the precise moment when my fascination clambered its way up and into a fat chocobo, there’s a lot to admire, even love about its dizzying ambition. It’s evident from the moment Uematsu’s incredible John Williams-inflected Red Wings theme booms over its soaring intro. Here’s where it got its hooks in me:

An earth-shattering event in the opening hour of the game has the player guiding a condemned Cecil Harvey through a scorching desert, burdened by the weight of his armor and an unconscious orphan while fending off hordes of vicious monsters. Until now the player has only seen flashes of the Dark Knight’s festering conscience over the atrocities he’s committed, but now he becomes decisive. Despite injury and lack of direction, with nobody to hold him to a moral standard, Cecil takes his first steps toward redemption by taking responsibility for the last surviving member of a village he’s inadvertently incinerated. It’s a powerful and understated gesture, represented only through the player’s own desire to press on through the overworld map and clobber goblins in intermittent random battles (curiously, a blue-clad hero would usher a green-haired girl to a desert oasis following an act of terrorism a second time just two games later). Subtle pieces of characterization like this permeate the battle mechanics. Cecil’s special ability as the Dark Knight is to cut a fraction of his own health for the sake of unleashing a powerful attack, evocative of his self-hatred, which is countered by Rosa’s potent healing spells. It even develops when Cecil becomes a Paladin and, effectively, becomes more like her. This is one of the key elements which makes Final Fantasy IV and other games of its ilk so fascinating to me. Since the developers were working in a time of abstractions, they had to find ways to use the language of the genre to convey their intent. How do you make a character feel like a person in a role-playing game? Square took to the tools they’d developed over the three previous installments and rearranged them in the shape of a drama.

Where previous entries in the series (and the next) would be content to keep classes significant only for strategic purposes, Final Fantasy IV uses them for character development as well. Palom’s rambunctious attitude is evident when he’s casting devastating offensive spells as a black mage, and even though he has a rocky relationship with his sister Porom, their “Twincast” ability assured me that they could get along when necessary. Yang’s focused and calculated physical combat maneuvers are emblematic of his discipline, which take time to build, but pay off in spades. Rydia refuses to cast fire spells until Rosa can help her come to terms with the aforementioned arson of her village, and eventually matures to the point at which she’s willing to trade in her aptitude in white magic for greater proficiency in those offensive abilities. Kain's bouncing between both sides as he’s repeatedly mind-controlled by Zemus is reflected in his elongated disappearances during battle as a leaping Dragoon. I’m half-joking with that last one, but this stuff really is all over the place. You might say I’m giving it too much credit given the simplicity of the characters, most of them are little more than archetypes, but the handful of ways those archetypes are expressed (and in some cases developed) still leaves an impression when every battle becomes an opportunity to participate in characterization.

If the DS remake is any indication, with its cinematic cutscenes, voice acting and the like (which nuke the pace from orbit), the Square Enix of today doesn't value these techniques as I do, but this is precisely the sort of thing that makes classic RPGs so special, and particularly Final Fantasy IV. It takes advantage of its game-dom to find routes to the player’s empathy using interactive systems. I mentioned that Cecil’s metamorphosis was one of my favorite sequences, and it’s not just the implication for his character, but the execution which makes it so memorable.

The setup is fantastic. A lone, weary Cecil is left to take refuge in Mysidia (the very place he pillaged as captain of the Red Wings), and the villagers try to tear him apart until the elder advises him to take to Mount Ordeals. Only there can he be purified of his sins and become a holy Paladin.

On arrival, the shambling undead who stalk Mount Ordeals take minimal damage from Cecil’s sword, emphasizing his nature as an agent of evil, unable to stand against it. He has to rely on the support of his allies, twin mages Palom and Porom and the elderly sage Tellah, to help him find redemption. His dependence reaches its apex as they stand against one of the Four Elemental Dante’s Inferno references and resident spelling bee stumper “Scarmiglione” (or Milon, if you like being wrong) and kick him off of a bridge to the beat of The Dreadful Fight. At the summit, the group crosses a rift into a mysterious chamber, and just as Cecil receives the Paladin’s blade and transforms, a manifestation of his past wrongdoings, fully clad in the armor of the Dark Knight, emerges from his reflection to face him. No matter what the player tosses at their doppelgänger, it cannot be defeated. “A true paladin will sheath his sword,” a voice whispers into the text box at the top of the screen. Cecil’s evil half pummels him again and again, and it can easily kill the player if they aren’t careful. It’s only when they recognize the metaphorically and mechanically self-destructive nature of the Dark Knight that they hold back to defend and heal themselves with Cecil’s newfound power, and his shadow dies expending the last of its violent energy. The player wins by refusing to fight, rejecting self-destruction and embracing love, and they do it using Final Fantasy IV’s battle mechanics. He takes up the Paladin armor and he returns to level one, but quickly ascends beyond his previous limits. It’s awesome. It’s Final Fantasy IV at its best. Just seventeen hours to go.

So yeah, here comes the heel turn. If you want a gauntlet of battles that’ll put your RPG combat skills to the test in a world of exhilarating twists and turns, you’ll find what you’re looking for in Final Fantasy IV. Part of me loves that about it, that I can boot it up and know exactly what I’m getting myself into, that I won’t have to bother with character customization or stat manipulation and just get the dungeon-crawling monster-fightin’ show on the road. That strict attention to pacing, party composition and encounter design is a quality it shares with MOTHER 3, Dragon Quest V and Chrono Trigger, but it’s all about the execution. These games weave the story into progression in meaningful ways, carefully constructing both elements alongside one another to great effect. FFIV was slated to do exactly that.

But in one hilarious moment, it became all-too clear to me that Sakaguchi had no idea where this was going.

Co-writer and director Takashi Tokita would tell you that they were only able to cram one measly fourth of Final Fantasy IV’s sprawling, epic script into the original cartridge. As Patrick Roesle of socksmakepeoplesexy.net once said (in an excellent write-up on the topic), “even though Square Enix proclaims itself a shaper of unique multimedia interactive art experiences, the SquareSoft that created Final Fantasy IV in 1991 made video games.” Which is to say, “bull[crap].” You can’t tell me that Sakaguchi had carefully and painstakingly deliberated over the implications of a man leaping off of an airship and strapping himself to a bomb to “seal the entrance” of a colossal chasm in the Earth and surviving. “JUST THROW IT, YOU MORON,” I howled (telepathically) at the screen. This guy had a daughter at home.

Final Fantasy IV began as a tale of self-reflection, revolt and redemption, and it is that for a good while. Cecil travels the world, proves himself to those he’s failed, and recruits a group of companions from across a variety of cultures and kingdoms, all to stand against the corruption of his homeland. Then they return to Baron, and so begins the slow descent into the Twilight Zone. I made a face when the evil king was revealed to be Cagnazzo all along, having killed and supplanted the real king. But wait, wasn’t that real king still the guy responsible for raising Cecil as a Dark Knight? Maybe Golbez had a hand in that, he seems to know what he’s doing. I thought the revelation that Kain had been mind-controlled the entire time was silly, but it was nice having him back in the party. Then, after a fierce fight with Barbariccia (Valvalis sounds cooler) and a thrilling escape to…Cecil’s room(?)…Kain’s gotta break the news. Golbez only has four crystals. Only? Whaddaya mean, isn’t that four outta four? Cid drops this gem of a quote, “So the legends are true after all!” (“Legends,” to which not one character has even tangentially referred over the course of this entire game), and this could’ve been anything. Instead, there are four more crystals underground. But, ya know…They’re dark crystals. They're darker.

Tellah died and took the story with him.

That was my first impression as a recently-converted Chrono Trigger shill in 2019, but even that wasn’t entirely fair. All of this plotting, this attention to the staging of events with animated characters and personalities whose crisscrossing actions and motivations contextualized the adventure, was completely unheard of. Dragon Quests I through IV were less “narratively-driven” and instead centered around exploring worlds whose goals and scenarios provided players the thread to weave their own experiential stories. Nobody does it like Yuji Horii, and if Final Fantasy had stayed its course, it’d have remained an awkward, lesser Dragon Quest. And so, Sakaguchi sought out and studied under Shonen Jump editor Kazuhiko Torishima in an effort to distinguish Final Fantasy from that philosophy. Tokita leapt at the chance to lend his theatrical expertise, and the result speaks for itself. The story may have commitment issues, but its manga-like attention to escalation and efficient characterization can’t be denied. In no previous JRPG did the party sit around a campfire mid-dungeon to discuss their worries, hopes, and doubts. Rarely did the player’s units bicker amongst themselves, turn against each other, or change their minds. Everyone is given their own animated identity, especially impressive given how few overworld sprites there are. It’s just unfortunate that the game’s chosen structural devices are horribly, goofily brittle.

I didn’t feel the need to mention the crystals up until now because…what’s there to say? Cecil just needed something precious to steal from the Mysidians. Baron needed justification for conquest aside from “just cuz”. They gave our heroes an urgent, tangible reason to seek out and protect other countries and people. Now you can forget about that whole theme of agency and redemption because it’s crystal time. It’s far less graceful about swapping party members around (now they all die (except not really)), Kain gets mind-controlled a second time, they recruit an edgy ninja named Edge whose parents have been turned into monsters by a mad scientist, they go inside a giant robot (and hear the best song in the game), we find out that Golbez was also mind-controlled so he’s a good guy and he’s Cecil’s brother and their dad was an alien, and one of the aliens has been behind everything from the very beginning so they take a spaceship to the moon to kill him (if you squint, you might notice that almost all of these points made their way into Final Fantasy VII in some form or another).

The tonal whiplash of fighting aliens with Cecil, the man who burned down a village, rescued an orphan, and spent the first quarter of Final Fantasy IV paying recompense for war crimes and becoming a holy knight, never left me. In fact, the sheer strangeness of later events got me to start poking holes in earlier bits of the story. What’s the point of Rydia’s mother’s soul being connected to the Mist Dragon? Cecil incinerated the entire village, I could’ve believed that she’d burned to death. How did Rosa reach Kaipo on foot? Couldn’t Cid have just taken her there on an airship? How did Edward end up all the way in Troia if he drowned in the ocean? Why does Leviathan attack the party if he’s actually a sapient, moral being? Why does Cecil sleep in his armor? How did Yang get captured and mind-controlled if he drowned in the ocean? I'm being deliberately facetious here, but the point stands. The magic began to evaporate as soon as I realized that SquareSoft had no interest in developing the premise that got me invested.

But in its place, something different bubbled into being. In spite of all I’ve said, I’ll admit that the longer I spent with Final Fantasy IV, the more appreciation and affection I developed for its bizarre, freewheeling narrative approach. It may not hold together on a literary level, but, strange as it might sound, there’s something endearing about that. The way its theatrical setup and dramatic cast dissolves further and further into incoherent chaos brings to mind a late-night tabletop campaign gone horribly wrong in all the right ways. The Dark Crystals exist because you and your buddies are having too much fun, the contrived reveals and sacrifices and even the fake-outs feel epic when the group is coming up with them on the fly around an empty pizza box, and, even as I was picking it apart with a scalpel, I couldn’t deny that familiar energy. While one half of me was laughing at the stupid alien spaceship, the other was laughing with it. Make no mistake, Final Fantasy IV is a videogame. It’s a digital monument to the joys of role-playing. If the first Final Fantasy is the manual, the fourth is the first to demonstrate its potential. There’s a reason why nearly all subsequent entries (in the entire genre) look to it for inspiration — it represents the unfiltered imaginative spirit of a team wading into their first generational leap. Final Fantasy IV is absolutely bursting with ideas, and it’s easy to get swept up in the fun of its exquisite corpse of an adventure.

And yet, it was just as easy for me to become detached from its increasingly preposterous twists and turns, and my inability to reconcile these two perspectives on my initial playthrough became exhausting. Time and reflection and revisits have tempered my judgement, but even if I never found it in my heart to forgive Cid’s idiotic sacrifice, I’d have more than enough reason to see it through.

Because I kept at it anyway, all the way to the end. I even decided to complete a handful of optional side-quests to add Odin, Leviathan and Asura to Rydia’s summons. I conquered the PSP’s Cave of Trials to get Yang, Palom, Porom, and Cid back up to speed (c’mon, I couldn’t keep Edge in the party). I had a rough go of it too, this was my first Final Fantasy. I did a frustrating amount of grinding before the Tower of Zot, a whole lot more before I could survive encounters on the moon, and had yet another sprawling session before I could give Zeromus so much as a sidelong glance without instant annihilation. Definitely a far cry from Chrono Trigger, where a rearrangement of equipment and a bit of tactical reconsideration was preparation enough, but something kept me going. Maybe it was a feeling of obligation, maybe it was the awesome ludo-narrative characterization, or maybe I’d come to appreciate the dissonant story in all of its Silver Age comic book-ish glory. I’d like to say it was the music, and I’ll get to that, but Uematsu couldn’t have done it alone. No, I think it was because, despite it all, Sakaguchi and co. had succeeded at making exactly what they’d envisioned. The game was kicking my ass, but settings and level designs were varied, enemy strategies kept me on my toes, I always felt like I had to discover and conquer whatever came next, no matter how stupid the narrative justification. I wanted to find treasure, see what was on the other side of that door, explore dungeons and vanquish monsters. Something clicked.

This wasn’t technically my first brush with Hirouki Ito’s Active Time Battle system, but it was dramatically different from the one I’d become used to. My first thought was that I preferred Chrono Trigger’s iteration of the concept, with its dynamically wandering enemies and tech system, but there is something to be said for this heavier, more direct style. You know how it goes, you’ve gotta think fast or you’ll get clobbered. Some enemies and bosses make use of it by requiring the player to bolt in during a rare opening in their defenses or wait until they let their guard down to avoid a massive counterattack. In one weird, memorable battle, a demonic wall (with a Xenomorph stuck inside?) creeps closer to the party in real time in an attempt to crush them. If it closes in, it’ll annihilate all five party members at once. Yeah, five.

This remains the only RPG I’ve played to use a five character setup, and if the ATB didn’t make things tense enough, managing five different characters at once took a bit of getting used to for a novice like me (especially after Chrono Trigger’s three character format). Still, I insisted on using “active” mode instead of “wait,” which essentially pauses the game while the player cycles through spell books and darts through their inventory, because I really came to enjoy the momentum it brought. You’d think that five characters would make things easier, but battles can get pretty frantic. If your experience was anything like mine, you found that the FFIV crew isn’t a particularly durable bunch. There’s not much the player can do to shape them, so they’ve gotta learn to deal with each character’s weaknesses by figuring out how to juggle their skills in the heat of the moment. Powerful abilities take time to perform, adding another layer of strategy to their use, and retaining the weaker abilities’ utility. Learning when and how to arrange characters in either the front or back row (and knowing who to select to strike which enemies, who abide by a similar system) according to their strengths is essential to minimizing damage taken and maximizing output (the dreaded “back attacks” made that all too clear). 

With time, my appreciation for FFIV’s combat design has deepened. It may not be as solid as Dragon Quest, but they certainly hit on something here. It's energetic and nerve-wracking, patient and explosive in equal measure. FFIV is still absorbing on replays, still able to generate a brand of momentum that effortlessly carries me through its various setpieces, dungeons, and boss encounters. With better planning and more decisive strategy, I’ve never had to spend as much time grinding levels as I did on that first attempt. It’s edging toward that prolific marriage of action game design and RPG mechanics that Chrono Trigger would eventually master, and what’s here is still blood-pumping when all of its ingredients gel. No doubt Uematsu’s contributions have more than a little to do with that.

I’ve made no secret of my love for Final Fantasy IV’s soundtrack, and it’d be criminal not to dedicate even a small paragraph to it. When I emerged onto the overworld for the first time and heard the Main Theme of Final Fantasy IV, I was still for at least a minute. I’d already been exposed to Nobuo Uematsu’s work intermittently throughout Chrono Trigger and had heard some of his stuff out of context (the classic victory fanfare, Final Fantasy VII’s battle and boss themes, etc.), but not until playing FFIV had I been hit with the full force of his talent. Final Fantasy IV’s overworld track might just be my favorite in the series, maybe because of that staggering first impression, and it continues to impress me now. Like a rising shepherd tone, it’s a melody that only seems to ascend with every loop. When I finally did move, that classic bass line (the very best in video games) ushered me into Fight 1, and I was blown away all over again.

Where most RPGs use their battle themes to heighten the dread of combat and the threat of the enemy (and the boss themes certainly accomplish that), Final Fantasy IV’s always sounded to me like an expression of hope that the heroes will overcome this trial and prevail against any obstacle. The airship theme lasts only twenty two seconds, but beautifully elicits the feeling of soaring through the mode seven skies, an exclamation of joy for the party’s newly-earned freedom. Even when I was rolling my eyes as the story reached the peak of its lunacy, I couldn’t deny the power of The Lunar Whale. Without voice acting, Uematsu’s music serves as something of a narrator for the adventure, managing to make even the story’s worst contrivances sound incredible. That the last dungeon features the triple whammy of Fight 2 during every enemy encounter, Within the Giant, and The Final Battle almost makes up for everything I’d groaned about.

Notice the past tense.

My first playthrough of Final Fantasy IV left me torn and unsure how to feel about the game as a whole, but time has been kind to it. On every revisit, especially since becoming more seasoned in the conventions of the genre, I find more to love. FFIV is a daring game, and even where it fails, it fails with passion. It’s easy to sneer at the fake-out sacrifices (and god knows I do) but I feel that the consequence of each sacrifice, whether the character lives or not, belies a little something about the game’s philosophy. That so many of the character deaths are fake-outs draws attention to the party members who truly die. The one who does.

Tellah destroys himself failing to avenge his daughter Anna, a moment during which he’s completely overcome with hatred. Palom, Porom, Yang, and Cid all survive (and succeed) in their sacrifices because all of them are concerned with keeping others alive. Edward lives after Leviathan’s attack because he was able to grow beyond his cowardice, honoring Anna’s memory by helping those in need. Rydia has to overcome her fear of fire because, tragically, she can’t do anything about those she’s lost, and that frightening power can still be leveraged for the benefit of humankind. FFIV spends its entirety teaching the player the same lesson Cecil had to learn in that chamber on the peak of Mount Ordeals: one should not fight for the purpose of bringing death, but to nurture and cherish those whom we can still protect. Maybe the team picked up this idea as they went along, but Sakaguchi ’n pals would spend the rest of their careers zeroing in on and more deeply exploring this concept.

I have to admit, wild though it was, I did feel something triumphant when Edward revealed that all of those dead party members were still alive. However idiotic the instruments of their demise, they all deserved to live.

It's the first Final Fantasy game with a REAL story, with actual characters with believable relationships. Still nothing truly mindblowing, but it's good, especially for the era in which it was released. Once again the characters have their own unique moves which help you connect further to them, and unlike FF2, these moves are actually useful and makes you appreciate the characters more. The one MAJOR flaw with this game's story is that it cannot commit to anything, every single plot twist or event in this game is a fakeout, near every single character in this game dies, only for a "SIKE! They're actually totally fine!" for no reason. One of my favourite points in the plot was Kains betrayal, which is not only then repeated but "oh uh he was just under mind control the whole time!" which they then use this "mind control" shtick multiple times over. Its just bad, and also totally unnecessary, it only diminishes its great moments while adding nothing, most of the fakeout deaths only come back to say Hi for a few seconds then cease to be relevant for the rest of the game, so why even bother ruining their death?

This game also introduces the active time battle system, which is huge! And greatly improves the gameplay, the entire battle system even beyond this is much speedier than before with improved UI and damage indicators to help the game flow much better. And if you're a little baby and cant manage the time battle system, there always the option to slow it down or have it wait for you, but its not necessary and much more fun to fight in real-time. The enemies are also greatly improved, with bosses that actually serve as a unique challenge, and not like FF3, where some bosses where more like puzzles, with a few clear solutions, which has its upsides, but here the battles actually feel like battles, with bosses having multiple forms and unique techniques for you to fight against. Due to these unique encounters it allows for challenging boss encounters without the need to simply grind, although if you want to grind (for some reason) there are quite a few collectibles for you to go grind for.

The soundtrack of this game is brilliant, definitely the best so far, especially all the battle tracks, perhaps some of THE best final fantasy battle themes in the franchise.


In conclusion, Final Fantasy IV represents a turning point in the franchise's history, setting the stage for what followed. With its engaging story and memorable characters, it introduced a more character-driven storytelling style. The active time battle system injected new life into gameplay, making battles quicker and more exciting. The improved user interface and challenging boss battles made the game a satisfying experience. The soundtrack is a standout. Despite its quirks, Final Fantasy IV is a classic and a great starting point for those exploring the world of Final Fantasy.

I first played it in 2009, 18 years after it first came out, and still had a good time. Despite showing its age in some ways, it has an epic timelessness to it and shows a lot of heart. I also loved that you started the game as a walking death dealer instead of a whiny kid or plucky unskilled adventurer.

I do have to pick on the story a bit though - the ridiculousness of some of the twists as well as the sheer number of fakeouts (avoiding spoilers but if you've played it you know) have to count against it, especially since FFV's storyline is panned for being bad and (imo) isn't half as ridiculous as this one!