Konami is out here once again proving you can make a good licensed video game. It's a puzzle game where you can swap between the 4 main characters and each of them have different playstyles. There's 17 stages and each stage is broken down into multiple levels. It looks decent and has some music from the movie. But, man... Is it brutal. You make one wrong move or use an item somewhere you were not suppose to or out of order and most of the time you can not beat the level. You'll have to start from the beginning of the level if that happens.

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.

Going to start off strong and say FF3 is the best game in the original trilogy. An argument can be made that 1 is better if you like that the game is more simplified or you have nostalgia for the first one. But both of these clear 2 easy.

This game continues the tradition of the main party tracking down objects surrounding the 4 elements. A tradition that carries on to a majority of future titles. We are finally getting to the point where the story in FF games matter and there’s actual effort being put into it. It’s nothing astounding by any means but there’s effort being made to make you care about the story and characters. Speaking of characters they’re also fleshed out and there’s a lot of named side characters. This game even lets you talk to the guest characters after they join your party. You get a few lines of dialogue or hints about what to do next. For the first time I could also pick out a favorite character because they finally decided the characters actually have to have personalities and stuff. They don’t just exist as guideposts. For the main party I’d go with Refia and for side characters you can’t go wrong with picking Cid.

But not everything is improved with the story and characters. FF3 will still have a guest character join your party to go into the next dungeon. Then at the end of the dungeon they get killed or sacrifice themselves. It happens to almost every single person in 2 and 3. In terms of the story they probably spend days or weeks together but that doesn’t translate well to the player. You probably know them for less than 30 minutes. For this to work you need to introduce the characters earlier. When they die they play an emotional scene like you are suppose to care about this person you barely know. With it happening so often you already learn to not care about anyone that joins your party.

This game introduced the job system and I love it. It lets you make your team and play however you want. Though a downside of this being the introduction of the job system is at certain points in the game you are basically punished if you don’t have at least one member of your team a certain job. It’s like the devs wanted you to experience certain jobs so they almost force you to use them. One example is if you don’t have a dragoon during a certain boss battle the fight is basically 5x as hard. The final boss also almost requires you to have 2 certain classes. My favorite starting class was the thief. I love that they are actually useful in this game unlike FF1. Most of the time you’re better off going with another warrior but not here. The thief has a passive ability that lets you unlock certain doors. Usually you have to buy magic keys to open the doors but if you have a thief you can just do it and a lot earlier than you normally can too. In fact my strongest character was the thief who I never changed their job class until end game when I unlocked ninja. They were the first person to hit 9999 damage well before anyone else even came close to that damage. FF3 also introduced summons and there’s a lot of the classics here. They are treated like magic and a lot of them you just buy from shops, but 3 of them you actually have to track down and fight to be able to summon them.

Another first is that this was the first FF game to crash on me. It only happened once and it was after someone joined my party. I tried talking to them over and over to see all the dialogue after the 4th or 5th talk the game went to a pure white screen and froze.

The game also has unique sections that change the gameplay up a little by making you cast mini or toad on yourself to go through certain places. It help to diversify the dungeons. Though during the mini sections you have to have a magic user to do any real damage otherwise you’re better off running for every fight. Something else that’s new to 3 is that they got rid of the ability for anyone to use items that cast spells in battle like the fire rod. Now you can only use that item in battle if you can actually equip it. It does make the game more balanced and makes you use the actual items that cause magic damage instead of everyone using the infinite use stuff.

There’s a fat chocobo in the game and I love it. He acts as an item storage which is pretty useful in the original NES version but useless in the PSP game since you don’t have an item limit. You can summon it in certain places and to store items you feed him whatever you want to store. Then I guess when you want the item back he either throws it up or you just shove your hand down his throat and pull out whatever you need. Another interesting thing is the amount of airships you get. You go through them like candy. You get one it blows up, you get another one it gets shot down, etc. The final airship rocks. It has a place to rest, store items, buy anything you need. You never have to run to town to rest ever again.

There’s so many hidden pathways / items in this game it almost becomes too much at points. I mean hidden paths have hidden paths in them. I enjoy hidden things when used sparingly but this game takes it to the extreme and hides stuff / paths everywhere. In this game you can only find / rarely steal phoenix downs. You can’t buy them anywhere. So if you use all of them up early on or you don’t find them you are out of luck. You can steal some, which needs a character using the thief class and their thief level needs to be high enough to even have a chance at stealing one. Some enemies do drop them too but it’s extremely rare that happens.

Unlike FF2 I never felt overpowered in this game. I actually had to plan out my moves and use strategy instead of smashing the attack button until the fight was over. The dungeons are also fun unlike FF2. They got rid of most of the BS and made interesting dungeons…. That is until my biggest gripe with this game, the final dungeon.

The final dungeon sucks ass. It’s a 2 part dungeon, The Crystal Tower and The World of Darkness. You have to do both back to back without saving, resting, or leaving the dungeon. You have to go through the multi floor CT to fight a boss then after that you go to the WoD. Here you have 4 hard bosses to fight in opposite corners of the dungeon. You also have the 3 optional bosses you can fight. Now I say optional but they are basically mandatory. They drop ribbons that protect you from status effects. You only get 1 during the story. Without these the final boss uses Bad Breath and can turn you into a toad, sleep you, poison you, among many other things. So after all of that you can go fight the final boss. Now that’s 9 bosses in a row plus random fights with the hardest enemies without saving the game because you can’t leave the final dungeon once you start it.

My first attempt at this I lost. It was a 15 minute back and forth fight where I used every elixir I had struggling to find time to attack. That cost me 3 hours. I had to do every boss fight and both dungeons again. Before I tried again I went and grinded some exp. So far in this journey through FF history, this is the first game that I had to grind in. Everyone always talks about how grind heavy old FF / RPG games are and I always laughed because I never felt I had to grind just to beat the game. But not here. I felt if I didn’t grind some levels I would never beat the boss even though I was in the low 50s during the fight. So I ended up grinding 5 more levels and got 3 more levels while defeating all the bosses again. In total I was about 4 levels higher than the first attempt because I didn’t have as many random battles as I did during the first attempt. At this point I was around 55-56. Even then I still almost lost. The boss gets multiple attacks per round and sometimes they go before me and sometimes some of my characters go before them. Everything was going fine, it was still hard but not oppressively so. That is until near the end when the boss used a party wide attack that did over half to everyone for their first attack. If they would have done that again I would have lost and there would have been nothing I could have done. And that’s not it, if on the next turn the boss got to go first before my heal went off and used that attack it would have been game over.

This final dungeon has to be the reason why you can save in dungeons in every Final Fantasy after this one. They know what they did and how much everyone hated it.

This is a review for the PS1 version of the game:

I'll just come right out at the beginning of this and say I do not like Final Fantasy 2. I did not enjoy my time with this game. I will not go back and play the game ever again. But I am glad I finally got around to playing it.

I'll also go ahead and list everything I liked about this game before I rip into it further down in this post. One thing I will praise it for is that this game isn't afraid to get dark. Characters will die. The story gets dark and they try to make you feel hopeless. The fact that it tries to have a story is great. A real step up from the basic adventure of the first game. It would have been nicer if it did this well, but for its time this was a breath of fresh air. I actually do like the idea of the leveling system. They were bold to try something like this, but sadly this game doesn't do a good job with it. The game would have been better with just a classic system like the first game. But good on them to try to innovate something. I do have to applaud this game for introducing a lot of the series staples FF has become known for. A lot of the well known things originated in this game.

Okay with that out of the way it's time to move onto the mountain of complaints I have with this game. I could do without the keyword system. They never really did anything cool or unique with it. You just end up going through every word with every character you can ask question to until someone has something new to say. It feels like busy work and could have just been replaced with more natural dialogue with the characters. Most of the time for every word they just hit you with the dreaded ?, meaning they know nothing about that word. Unlike FF1 the main characters in this game have names, personalities, backstories, and relationships. A departure from FF1 where the main party are just blank slates you can name and roleplay a story for them. That being said this game does such a poor job of telling/showing their personalities and relationships that I couldn't tell you a single thing about any of them. The character development of the main trio is also laughable. The best I could tell you is that two of them are related. I couldn't tell you how they changed/evolved throughout the game either. Well, except for Gus/Guy. He's the big strong, slow character. But at a certain point it's revealed that he can speak beaver, so that's nice. That's honestly one of the high points of the game.

The PS1 version of this game has insane balancing issues. Monsters in the beginning of the game give you next to no gold and all the attack spells cost 400 gil. That's over double the cost in other newer games. Also forget about getting a Phoenix Down early in this version. It cost 5,000 gil to buy one of them while it only costs 500 gil in the GBA version. The prices on just about everything is wack and makes grinding for cash in the beginning almost a necessity, just to get some of those spells. But grinding for a couple of those spells was a waste of time because I ended up not using any magic other than cure at a certain point in the game. I didn't know that leveling up the magic would take so long, at least in the PS1 version. In the PS1 version of the game the magic takes so long to level up it's not worth it. I compared my progress to someone playing the GBA version and by the time I got one of them to level 2 they already had the spell to level 4. So after a couple of hours I abandoned the notion of using magic during battle. I ended up only attacking and did nothing else. I did use magic to heal, that's it. Though even with only using magic to heal, my Cure spell was only level 5 by the end of the game. That's a laughable level for end game spell level.

Speaking of grinding, there's no way to know if you're overpowered for the area you're in or if you're underpowered. You don't gain levels or exp for battles. Only your stats and proficiencies gain exp. So you never know if where your stats are at is good or bad until you start fighting. There's no sense of progression. The numbers all feel arbitrary. It almost feels random when your actual stats go up. If you want to power level the best way isn't fighting the monsters in the world.... Oh no, it's fighting yourself. Just start wildly attacking yourself during battle then finish off the enemy. You'll gain more exp for your stats and proficiencies this way than you would ever get from fighting the actual enemies in the game. It's a joke and I wish they would have removed it from later ports or just not coded it like that. On the topic of battles, the random encounter rate is way too high in this game. This has to be one of the highest rates I've seen in RPGs period. There's way too many fights and boring fights at that. At one point I got an encounter 5 steps in a row. These were never challenging, unless they got the jump on me. Then depending on what assortment on monsters you were fighting they could just one shot you before you could blink. They should have dialed the battles back by half. The reason it's so high is because of how leveling works. You need those fights or else your stats and proficiencies will never go up. It's also a waste of time trying to escape from battle. 9/10 it never works and you just ended up letting the enemies get free damage on you. Running away is tied to one of your stats but I had equipment equipped that rose that stat and had over 80 in that stat and I still couldn't run from most battles.

The world is so small so they make you do a lot of backtracking in the game. Backtracking in games isn't inherently bad, but it all depends on the situation. This game doesn't handle that well at all. At one point I got so aggravated at one section of the game. You are trying to find a pendant, on one of the floors there's 3 set of stairs you can pick from. Two lead deeper into the dungeon and one of them takes you straight to the pendant. Unless you got lucky and picked the one that led you straight to the keyitem you need you end up exploring the whole dungeon, which doesn't sound that bad. You want to explore the dungeon for items and exp but now is not the time, which you don't know. But anyways after you inevitably take the wrong set of stairs and explore everything you will find yourself picking up the keyitem after you went through everything. So you finally go back to the place that gave you this quest and talk to a NPC there thinking this quest is over. But, oh no, they give you an item and tell you to go back to the place you just spend a lot of time exploring in and go to the very bottom floor to drop off the new item you just got. So after you fight your way back through there again you drop the item off and that's it. You have to wait until the final 1/3 of the game for that to have any payoff. This feels like a filler arc in an anime. It would have been smoother to take the item in there with you to begin with. You'd have to rewrite that section a little bit but that's super easy to do.

The dungeon design in this game is some of the worst I've even seen in a RPG let alone a FF game. It almost feel like an AI who's never played a game before made them. There's a bunch of paths that lead nowhere and a lot of stairs that take you up or down levels that lead to dead ends. It's not clever design it's tedious. Every dungeon also has a ton of empty rooms called "Trap Rooms" there's nothing inside of them. Except for random encounters that you'd rather not do. There's so many of them that at a certain point you almost just want to skip out on every room you see, it's that annoying. But if you do that you'll miss out on a lot of the best items in the game. So you inevitable have to play the lottery and see if there's an item or a fight inside. Also basically at the end of almost every dungeon they throw 3-6 doors at you. Only one of them is the correct way to go to reach the boss fight or the way out of the dungeon. Every other door is a trap. Only put there to waste your time. The enemy placement in these dungeons also feels random. At about 1/3 or 1/2 way into the game a dungeon throws very tough enemies at you. If you get an encounter with two of this enemy 9/10 you'll end up wiping. But after that dungeon the next handful of dungeons throw weak enemies at you. There's no rhythm or reason for this. Even the final dungeon still throws some weak enemies at you. Another thing that really pushed me over the edge was the loot in the dungeons. Even as far as the last dungeon some of the treasure chests were giving you equipment you started the game with. There's no reason to give you basic starting equipment in the final dungeon unless the developers were trying to troll you. There's no reason these dungeons should be like this at all.

I praised FF1 for making you think during battles and engaging you in combat. You had to pay attention and use your attacks and spells wisely or else you'd die. In this one however all I did after the first 2 or 3 hours was smash X to win, which is something I hate in RPGs. I would only stop smashing X when I need to emergency heal or use a life spell to bring a dead party member back to life. Which honestly wasn't too often because I'd usually just do that outside of combat. Why waste time healing when I can just go unga bunga caveman on the enemies to end the fights faster. I couldn't be bothered to engage with the magic system because like I said earlier it took too long to level up anything in the PS1 version and I wasn't going to spend hours grinding them up. When I tried to use them even around a 1/3 of the way through the game they were such low level I would only do double digit damage even using the weakness of the enemy. A single physical attack would do triple or quad damage depending how far I was in the game. I didn't do any grinding for stats or manipulation to cheat the game. If you know what you're doing you can break this game over you knee. But because of how I ended up equipping some of my members and how the leveling system works in this game 2 of my characters had 99% evasion with a buttload of attack power. So I would hit real hard and be hard to hit.

I also praised the multiple hits system of the first game but this game had to go and ruin that too. In the first game every time you got an addition hit you could feel yourself getting more powerful. If was a nice sense of progression. In this game within the first hour you're already doing like 3 hits, so the multiple hits become meaningless. By the end you are doing more than 10. It doesn't feel rewarding or anything. It just feels random and you don't get excited to see it. You don't even pay attention to how many hits you are doing. Using armor and weapons during battle also made a return from the first game. But unlike the first game I never interacted with it. Why would I waste my time doing that when I could end the battle faster by mashing X? There was no point in it. The only time I used any of these items was during the final boss fight. I used the weapon that hasted the whole party. I had to do it this way because I wasn't going to waste my time leveling up the haste spell to a high level to make it better and more likely to succeed. Poison is also a useless mechanic in this game. Never try to poison the enemy, it's not worth it. I would inadvertently poison enemies with my venom axes and the poison would do like 4 damage. It's so minuscule that's it's laughable.

Finally Final Fantasy is a series known for their superb soundtracks. But this game has one of the weakest OSTs I've heard in a FF game. It does have some quality tracks, don't get me wrong. But a lot of the them are very repetitive and boring. Some of them are straight up bad and I dreaded every time they would reuse them.

This is a review for the PS1 version of the game:

Today I just finished replaying Final Fantasy 1 but this time I played the PS1 version. I appreciate it so much more than the original NES version. First off everything works in this version unlike the NES one. The updated soundtrack was great and the overall presentation was smooth. I also like all of the additions and changes to the game. People always talk about how grind heavy the old FF games were but I didn’t find that true at all. I finished the game in the upper 20’s while the max level is 50(NES) and 99 PS1. I never really needed to grind for EXP. Though I did need to grind out money since that’s hard to come by until late game and everything after a certain point is so expensive it’s not funny.

One thing I really like is the concept of multiple hits in this game. As you level up and get better weapons you start being able to do multiple hits. It never feels broken and is a nice way to show how your team is getting stronger during their journey. I also quite enjoy how small the numbers are in the first FF game. They don’t inflate those numbers in this game. Another thing I really like is the equipment that can be used as items during battle. That way your non mage members can use lower tier spells instead of attacking. Finally another thing I really like is how you have to actually strategize in this game. You can’t just smash X to win. You need to plan out your moves. Unlike a lot of the newer games where you can smash X to win. You’ll still get damaged a lot but you’ll survive. In this game you’ll just die. Though not everything is great about the first FF. Some parts of the game get rough fast. If you walk in somewhere unprepared you will wipe and lose all your progress since your last save. You could also just get unlucky and run into a real strong “rare” encounter that uses high tier multiple target spells and just obliterates your party. A certain dungeon in the game really showed that off while I was playing. I ran into a group of enemies that got the jump on me and use instant death spells on us and we all died without being able to do anything. This was after I was in the dungeon for like 40 minutes. Another disappointing thing is a lot of the bosses were way easier than just a normal enemy encounter. I’d go in there and wreck them but one wrong move and a normal encounter would send me back to start.

For being the first entry in a long running franchise it still hold up well all things considered. If you want to play the game I’d recommend any version other than the NES if you want the full experience. There’s nothing wrong with playing the NES version but it’s really showing its age now.

A game that makes for a better experience than an actual game. The gameplay is kinda bad. There's two attack buttons, one for gun and one for melee. All combat is the same. Either spam the gun or spam the melee. The camera works against you in places and the platforming can be wonky. But the actually concept for the game is brilliant. The game plays out like an old school monster / b-movie and the director is providing commentary throughout the game. Almost everything you do he has something snarky to say about it, even just spinning in circles. I honestly wish the game felt better to play. I would recommend this to everyone if it did. But as it stands I can only recommend it to people who find the premise interesting.

This is definitely a hidden gem for the Genesis. Everything about it feels smooth and responsive. You are always in control of your characters and nothing every feels unfair. You get plenty of continues and lives to beat the game in one go. When you die you get to start back exactly where you died, unless that's your last life then you have to start at the beginning of the stage. Everything animates well and the sound effects are nice. There's a nice variety of weapons for you to use, but some are definitely better than others. There's also a good assortment of mini bosses and main bosses for you to fight. If they remade this today I would gladly pay $20-$30 and playthrough it again. If you have time and want to play one of the best Ghostbusters games out there then give this a shot.