Just like FF3 this game also continues the tradition of the main party tracking down crystals of the 4 elements. If it ain't broke don't fix it, I guess. 3 was where they finally tried a little with the story but 4 is the point where they actually start doing stories and giving characters agendas and making them feel alive in the world. They removed guest characters joining your party but to make up for it you now have a 5 character party. I really like the change from 4 to 5 members. It makes the battles feel more exciting and makes the combat flow more smoothly than ever before. I think so far this has the best gameplay in a FF game. My favorite character in this game would have to go to Rydia. I really like her arc in the game. They fumbled the ball with quite a few of the other character arcs though. Not only that, the story was quite poor and sloppy.
Parts of the story needed to be handled better. The story needed major work to actually be great. They relied on far too many plot contrivances to make everything in the story work without having to explaining anything. Rydia's fear of fire is cool and interesting because of what she went through. But at one point the party needs to get through some ice that blocks the way but can't. Rydia is the only member who can use black magic. She refuses to cast fire magic so the party talks to her and she just gets over her fear like that, no fanfare or anything. Rydia can you cast fire? No! ...Pretty please? Okay I'll do it. For this to work they should have brought this up a couple times before this and not have the whole plot resolved in a couple of text boxes. The game also relies too much on betrayals and character death fake outs. They use them so much that they lose all impact and meaning. Like one character betrays you 3 times. The "character deaths" make no sense either. When Yang sacrifices himself to try to stop an explosion he knocks the party out of the room then blows up with it. How does that help anything? Everyone should have just left the room. Him staying behind helped nothing. Or when Cid sacrificed himself to blow up an entrance with a bomb to stop the enemy from following us. Why did he jump off with the ship with the bomb? He had no reason to do that he could have thrown the bomb overboard and accomplished the same thing. You are suppose to feel sad about this but you find them both later on in the story perfectly fine. They both survived big explosions with virtually no damage. Also when the twins turn to stone to stop the walls from crushing the party you can't unstone them because they chose to turn to stone so nothing works on them. But they show up later perfectly fine and the only explanation you get is, "Oh the elder helped us".
I think the real reason for this is that they couldn't think of a better way to remove people from your party so they did a bunch of fake character deaths to remove them. Also feels like the devs heard the complaints about how almost every guest character sacrificed themselves in 2 and 3 so they made it to where they all sacrifice themselves but survive this time. Finally the game reuses the mind control plot device 3 different times. This party member who attacks you, mind controlled. You best friend who betrays you 3 times, controlled. The big bad who you spend the whole game hunting down, who keeps destroying you... Controlled by the even bigger big bad. One thing I do like though is that they use their spells in cutscenes / outside of battle. It adds to the immersion. But in doing that it also opens up more plot holes. Like why when the place was blowing up did you not just teleport out instead of slowly running down the tower?
This game got rid of the job system of 3 and instead went back to everyone having a predetermined role. This does make things easier to build around but removed the customization you had when building your party. Though this way you won't be screwed for not having the job class the devs want you to have at certain points. This game has one of the funniest spells in FF called the "Piggy Spell" All it does is turn someone into a little pig. This is the only mainline game it is in other than 14. I played the PS1 version and it's so much harder than the SNES one. For the US release of 4 they made the game way too easy because this was during the time where "Americans were too dumb to understand Japanese RPGs" so they had to dumb them down for us. In the SNES version I never had to plan out anything or gain levels just to beat a boss. But on the PS1 I got to a point where I had to gain a couple of levels just to survive the boss's first attack so I could actually continue with the battle.
Just like in 3 you go through airships like candy. I think by the end you have 4 different things you can go inside and ride, all on the map at the same time. It makes tracking them down harder when you need a certain one to make progress because they all do something that the others can't. There's still numerous hidden passages in this game but they made them into jokes. They're not hidden at all. You can see them plain as day. Why bother having them when you basically put a big sign next to them that says "Hidden Pathway Here" One modern convenience this game makes me miss is that in newer games when someone leaves the party even if it's just for a minute their equipment auto unequips meaning you get their equipment and don't lose it. But in FF4 if you don't have the foresight to know when someone is going to leave the party you lose everything they have on them. This especially sucks if you just spent a bunch of money on new stuff for them and they leave. You're just out of luck at that point.
The game also straight up lies to you. I'll get into a battle and it will say "First Strike" usually meaning I get the first move. So I start smashing the attack button to make sure I attack first, but the enemy always gets one attack off first. The is a personal gripe I have with the PS1 version, but I hate how when I click which save slot I want to load from it doesn't automatically default to my save on that card. It defaults to load new save. If I wanted to load a new game I would have clicked new game not load game.
This had a lot of unique areas to explore and other than one or two places you never really felt like you were in the same place with a new coat of paint. Though one of these unique places, the magnetic cavern, can suck it. You can't use metallic equipment in this place. I just ran from every fight until I got to the point in the cave where I could use my normal equipment. I didn't want to buy non metallic equipment for one area. The game doesn't do a good job of telling you what you need to do or where to go. This is the first time I got stuck at a certain point. I went everywhere and talked to everyone. Not a single person tells you where to go. I had to go to every location and interact with everything I could find until I got lucky and found the place where progress is made.
This is the first FF game that has a truly stress inducing fight, the Demon Wall. It's a big wall with a face that slowly moves across the screen. If you don't kill it before it reaches you it will start instant killing your party one by one. I wish there was more gimmick fights like this in games instead of who can do the bigger number faster. On that note, the final boss is miserable. On the US SNES version you can almost beat him without paying attention because they cut his damage down A LOT, but the PS1 version he would one shot 2-4 members of my party with his opening attack then before I could heal / revive finish me off. Didn't matter how well I planned out my moves or how I tried to counter him. It honestly felt unfair. It's not like I went in at a low level either. I actually thought I was going in overleveled because the normal enemies leading up to the boss were such pushovers. It was random how many were killed by the first move so I just had to be lucky to make it through to the end. After that opening salvo if enough people survived I could actually do the boss fight. Now I could have just went and grinded until I was so powerful he couldn't do anything to me, but that's not how I like to play games.
One final thought is I'm sad that Vampgirl never makes an appearance after FF4. I thought her sprite was one of the best in the game. The way she's hanging upside-down from the ceiling and her pose is cool and different from every other enemy.
Now it may seem like I hated this game but that's far from the truth. I actually really enjoyed the game except for the story. The gameplay was solid. Most of the characters were fine. The music was fantastic. Art and design were great. Honestly if the story was fixed I could easily see this making it into my top 5 FF games.
Parts of the story needed to be handled better. The story needed major work to actually be great. They relied on far too many plot contrivances to make everything in the story work without having to explaining anything. Rydia's fear of fire is cool and interesting because of what she went through. But at one point the party needs to get through some ice that blocks the way but can't. Rydia is the only member who can use black magic. She refuses to cast fire magic so the party talks to her and she just gets over her fear like that, no fanfare or anything. Rydia can you cast fire? No! ...Pretty please? Okay I'll do it. For this to work they should have brought this up a couple times before this and not have the whole plot resolved in a couple of text boxes. The game also relies too much on betrayals and character death fake outs. They use them so much that they lose all impact and meaning. Like one character betrays you 3 times. The "character deaths" make no sense either. When Yang sacrifices himself to try to stop an explosion he knocks the party out of the room then blows up with it. How does that help anything? Everyone should have just left the room. Him staying behind helped nothing. Or when Cid sacrificed himself to blow up an entrance with a bomb to stop the enemy from following us. Why did he jump off with the ship with the bomb? He had no reason to do that he could have thrown the bomb overboard and accomplished the same thing. You are suppose to feel sad about this but you find them both later on in the story perfectly fine. They both survived big explosions with virtually no damage. Also when the twins turn to stone to stop the walls from crushing the party you can't unstone them because they chose to turn to stone so nothing works on them. But they show up later perfectly fine and the only explanation you get is, "Oh the elder helped us".
I think the real reason for this is that they couldn't think of a better way to remove people from your party so they did a bunch of fake character deaths to remove them. Also feels like the devs heard the complaints about how almost every guest character sacrificed themselves in 2 and 3 so they made it to where they all sacrifice themselves but survive this time. Finally the game reuses the mind control plot device 3 different times. This party member who attacks you, mind controlled. You best friend who betrays you 3 times, controlled. The big bad who you spend the whole game hunting down, who keeps destroying you... Controlled by the even bigger big bad. One thing I do like though is that they use their spells in cutscenes / outside of battle. It adds to the immersion. But in doing that it also opens up more plot holes. Like why when the place was blowing up did you not just teleport out instead of slowly running down the tower?
This game got rid of the job system of 3 and instead went back to everyone having a predetermined role. This does make things easier to build around but removed the customization you had when building your party. Though this way you won't be screwed for not having the job class the devs want you to have at certain points. This game has one of the funniest spells in FF called the "Piggy Spell" All it does is turn someone into a little pig. This is the only mainline game it is in other than 14. I played the PS1 version and it's so much harder than the SNES one. For the US release of 4 they made the game way too easy because this was during the time where "Americans were too dumb to understand Japanese RPGs" so they had to dumb them down for us. In the SNES version I never had to plan out anything or gain levels just to beat a boss. But on the PS1 I got to a point where I had to gain a couple of levels just to survive the boss's first attack so I could actually continue with the battle.
Just like in 3 you go through airships like candy. I think by the end you have 4 different things you can go inside and ride, all on the map at the same time. It makes tracking them down harder when you need a certain one to make progress because they all do something that the others can't. There's still numerous hidden passages in this game but they made them into jokes. They're not hidden at all. You can see them plain as day. Why bother having them when you basically put a big sign next to them that says "Hidden Pathway Here" One modern convenience this game makes me miss is that in newer games when someone leaves the party even if it's just for a minute their equipment auto unequips meaning you get their equipment and don't lose it. But in FF4 if you don't have the foresight to know when someone is going to leave the party you lose everything they have on them. This especially sucks if you just spent a bunch of money on new stuff for them and they leave. You're just out of luck at that point.
The game also straight up lies to you. I'll get into a battle and it will say "First Strike" usually meaning I get the first move. So I start smashing the attack button to make sure I attack first, but the enemy always gets one attack off first. The is a personal gripe I have with the PS1 version, but I hate how when I click which save slot I want to load from it doesn't automatically default to my save on that card. It defaults to load new save. If I wanted to load a new game I would have clicked new game not load game.
This had a lot of unique areas to explore and other than one or two places you never really felt like you were in the same place with a new coat of paint. Though one of these unique places, the magnetic cavern, can suck it. You can't use metallic equipment in this place. I just ran from every fight until I got to the point in the cave where I could use my normal equipment. I didn't want to buy non metallic equipment for one area. The game doesn't do a good job of telling you what you need to do or where to go. This is the first time I got stuck at a certain point. I went everywhere and talked to everyone. Not a single person tells you where to go. I had to go to every location and interact with everything I could find until I got lucky and found the place where progress is made.
This is the first FF game that has a truly stress inducing fight, the Demon Wall. It's a big wall with a face that slowly moves across the screen. If you don't kill it before it reaches you it will start instant killing your party one by one. I wish there was more gimmick fights like this in games instead of who can do the bigger number faster. On that note, the final boss is miserable. On the US SNES version you can almost beat him without paying attention because they cut his damage down A LOT, but the PS1 version he would one shot 2-4 members of my party with his opening attack then before I could heal / revive finish me off. Didn't matter how well I planned out my moves or how I tried to counter him. It honestly felt unfair. It's not like I went in at a low level either. I actually thought I was going in overleveled because the normal enemies leading up to the boss were such pushovers. It was random how many were killed by the first move so I just had to be lucky to make it through to the end. After that opening salvo if enough people survived I could actually do the boss fight. Now I could have just went and grinded until I was so powerful he couldn't do anything to me, but that's not how I like to play games.
One final thought is I'm sad that Vampgirl never makes an appearance after FF4. I thought her sprite was one of the best in the game. The way she's hanging upside-down from the ceiling and her pose is cool and different from every other enemy.
Now it may seem like I hated this game but that's far from the truth. I actually really enjoyed the game except for the story. The gameplay was solid. Most of the characters were fine. The music was fantastic. Art and design were great. Honestly if the story was fixed I could easily see this making it into my top 5 FF games.