Just like FF3 was a much better version of FF1 that seemed to not have learned much from FF2, FF4 is a much better version of FF2 that seems to not have learned much from FF3.
This is the first Final Fantasy to just have a decent story with no caveats. It’s not some masterpiece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty good story and it even has some really cool intersections of story and gameplay, especially the Mount Ordeals section. The Mount Ordeals section and Cecil’s character development in general is by far my favourite part about the storytelling.
My least favourite part about the storytelling are some of the female characters. There are exceptions (Rydia is pretty good and Yang is also pretty bad) but overall, the female characters don’t really get to talk or do much. Porom gets to be the voice of reason to the much more interesting Palom, Rosa gets to say “Cecil…” a billion times, Yang’s wife gets to be Yang’s wife, and I am not sure if there are any other female characters that appear more than once. Oh right, there’s Barbariccia but uhhhh yeah
There’s also a gameplay-related story issue. Up until now, Final Fantasy protagonists have been kids and teens, so it made sense that they were weak. Kain and Cecil, two of the highest-ranking soldiers in Baron’s army being as weak as they were at the start of the game was a bit weird.
Speaking of the gameplay, this game made some pretty radical changes to the combat. The ATB system was overall very fun but when you have all 5 party members (take notes modern games, you can have more than 4 party members) it can get a bit stressful.
There’s also not as much variety as in FF3 due to each party member being forced into a job and not having much/any build variety within those jobs. The fact that black magic is near-useless again doesn’t help and neither does so many party members leaving before you properly get used to them.
Just like the game itself, I saved the worst for last. The last dungeon is awful. It’s not quite as bad as Crystal Towers/World of Darkness, but it’s close. It’s a massive spike in difficulty. Before I started it, I blasted through Odin and Bahamut so quickly that I was worried the rest of the game might be a bit too easy. I wish it had been.
At some point I was considering if I should stop opening chests because Behemoth is a pretty rough fight and it was becoming a bit of a drain on my resources. When Behemoth started becoming a random encounter, I couldn’t believe it. And then eventually there is a double Behemoth random encounter. One big issue with this difficulty is that Rosa, as your only healer, just doesn’t get to do non-healing things anymore.
I ended up being slightly too weak for the final boss and probably could have beaten him with some grinding but at this point I was very tired of this game, out of ether, and also streaming the game for my partners and I didn’t want to bore them so we just ended up watching the ending on Youtube.
Despite the last dungeon souring the experience a lot for me (especially because as of writing this the last dungeon was only a few hours ago) and despite the other issues I mentioned, this game is super decent. An important step in the history of Final Fantasy and maybe even video games in general and absolutely worth your time if you want to check it out.
Oh and of course the music is amazing though I can’t hear the boss theme without thinking about this
This is the first Final Fantasy to just have a decent story with no caveats. It’s not some masterpiece of storytelling, but it’s a pretty good story and it even has some really cool intersections of story and gameplay, especially the Mount Ordeals section. The Mount Ordeals section and Cecil’s character development in general is by far my favourite part about the storytelling.
My least favourite part about the storytelling are some of the female characters. There are exceptions (Rydia is pretty good and Yang is also pretty bad) but overall, the female characters don’t really get to talk or do much. Porom gets to be the voice of reason to the much more interesting Palom, Rosa gets to say “Cecil…” a billion times, Yang’s wife gets to be Yang’s wife, and I am not sure if there are any other female characters that appear more than once. Oh right, there’s Barbariccia but uhhhh yeah
There’s also a gameplay-related story issue. Up until now, Final Fantasy protagonists have been kids and teens, so it made sense that they were weak. Kain and Cecil, two of the highest-ranking soldiers in Baron’s army being as weak as they were at the start of the game was a bit weird.
Speaking of the gameplay, this game made some pretty radical changes to the combat. The ATB system was overall very fun but when you have all 5 party members (take notes modern games, you can have more than 4 party members) it can get a bit stressful.
There’s also not as much variety as in FF3 due to each party member being forced into a job and not having much/any build variety within those jobs. The fact that black magic is near-useless again doesn’t help and neither does so many party members leaving before you properly get used to them.
Just like the game itself, I saved the worst for last. The last dungeon is awful. It’s not quite as bad as Crystal Towers/World of Darkness, but it’s close. It’s a massive spike in difficulty. Before I started it, I blasted through Odin and Bahamut so quickly that I was worried the rest of the game might be a bit too easy. I wish it had been.
At some point I was considering if I should stop opening chests because Behemoth is a pretty rough fight and it was becoming a bit of a drain on my resources. When Behemoth started becoming a random encounter, I couldn’t believe it. And then eventually there is a double Behemoth random encounter. One big issue with this difficulty is that Rosa, as your only healer, just doesn’t get to do non-healing things anymore.
I ended up being slightly too weak for the final boss and probably could have beaten him with some grinding but at this point I was very tired of this game, out of ether, and also streaming the game for my partners and I didn’t want to bore them so we just ended up watching the ending on Youtube.
Despite the last dungeon souring the experience a lot for me (especially because as of writing this the last dungeon was only a few hours ago) and despite the other issues I mentioned, this game is super decent. An important step in the history of Final Fantasy and maybe even video games in general and absolutely worth your time if you want to check it out.
Oh and of course the music is amazing though I can’t hear the boss theme without thinking about this