(This is the 47th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
It's always exciting to hit a milestone in video gaming with this challenge, and we certainly did that by arriving at the first 'Final Fantasy' game for the SNES, Final Fantasy IV. Called 'Final Fantasy II' in North America, because FF II and III didn't release in NA originally, Final Fantasy IV is a rather big step forward for the series in many ways. It originally released for the SNES on July 19, 1991 and was re-released for PlayStation in '97 before the decade was over. The game also got a 3-D release in 2007 for the Nintendo DS, which, if ever get there, will probably be the time where we revisit it. Is it worth revisiting? Absolutely it is, but I'll go through all of my thoughts one by one in this lengthy review, hope you enjoy the read.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
Finally a game with more to write about than "this is character X, he is hunting after evil person Y to save person/object Z". In Final Fantasy IV, the main character is Cecil, who is hunting after Golbez to save Earth. Just kidding, there is of course a lot more to this.
Cecil is a Dark Knight and Captain of the Red Wings at the start of the game, an elite air force unit of the kingdom of Baron. They are tasked to steal the Water Crystal from Mysidia, which makes Cecil feel guilty and ask the king of his motives. Due to this, he is relieved from his duties as Captain. He, along with his friend Kain, is taked to go to the Village of Mist and deliver a package there, a package that, once they arrive, releases bombs and destroys the village.
In the aftermath, he meets Rydia, who is a young and gifted Caller who loses her mother during the bombings and summons a Titan out of anger, a Titan that causes an earthquake. The earthquake separates Cecil and Kain, and leaves Cecil next to an unconcious Rydia, whom he brings to a nearby town. There, Baronian soldiers try to kill Rydia at night, but Cecil fights them off and he and Rydia become allies as a result, and Rydia can help you in battle.
From here, Cecil goes on to meet many important characters that have story impact and/or become playable characters. There are a dozen playable characters in fact, which regularly rotate throughout the game. There are Cecil, Kain and Rydia, then there is Cid, an aircraft engineer, Edward, the Prince of Damcyan, Tellah, a sage, Palom and Porom, twin mages, Rosa, Cecil's love interest and many more. Each character has a set class, so the job system from Final Fantasy III doesn't make it over here.
Final Fantasy IV is lauded for taking a big step forward in dramatic storytelling. Is that fair? If you compare it to games from the last decade, FFIV obviously does very little in comparison. If you compare it to the 46 other games I've played through this challenge, Final Fantasy IV is probably only outmatched by Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and blows everything else out the water just thanks to its depth and its many, many, dramatic set pieces.
THE PART WITH THE SPOILERS: The problem? So, the dramatic scenes mainly include the death of some of the playable characters. Palom and Porom turn to stone to lean against walls that were closing in to crush the party. Tellah can't bring them back to life. "They have turned into stone by their own will." Yang, a monk from Fabul, sacrifices himself to do ... something in a control room to destroy artillery systems, I couldn't make sense of that one yet. Cid BLOWS HIMSELF up to allow Cecil and crew to leave an underground area. Tellah uses his life energy to use a powerful spell and scare off the antagonist, Golbez, for the time being at least. Some manage to feel more dramatic than others, but the issue is, that apart from Tellah, all of them return to life later on. What? It's like they couldn't do that to all the kids playing the game, so they reversed their decision a few hours later into the game. Are any of these returns explained? Nope. Palom and Porom's return is actually, but apparently it's because their elder unpetrified them, but I thought you couldn't do that because they turned into stone out of their own will? Oh well. As a result, all the dramatics that are being lauded end up being teases than anything else, which is a shame. The game also pulls one of my least favorite ploys of any story, in a game or any other medium, which is present you with a main antagonist for pretty much the entirety of the game, and then announcing an even bigger antagonist right before the end, an antagonist who you never meet until the final boss fight. All this said, some characters do stay dead, and the plot twist of Golbez being used by Zemus, being the brother of Cecil and killing all of these innocent characters does manage to stir one's emotions, especially as you are left feeling like all of this could have been avoided.
The main themes of the game are, of course, the interplay between the Dark and the Light, and the power of friendship / support of your loved ones. Especially the latter you will find to play a role in a ton of JRPGs near the end, but not only does it work, but FFIV is one of the earlier games to do it.
From a critical standpoint, obviously the story does not leave you impressed anymore. There are some plot holes, the dialogue being rather basic, characters being one-dimensional, characters being swapped in and out regularly (which doesn't allow for character development for most) and many of the tropes you've become used to.
But if you look at it from the perspective of your inner child, and, from the perspective of the early 90s, you can't help but feel impressed by what this game set out to do and what it accomplished. Knowing what I know about the reception of the Final Fantasy games that are to come, I'm pretty excited to dive further into the series, which this game accomplished a lot more than Final Fantasy III did.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Final Fantasy IV is at a glance of course the same as the previous one's from a gameplay perspective, and as the one's to come in the next years as well. You have your party on the right side, the enemy's appearing on the left side whenever you are randomly (or as part of boss fights) pulled into battle, and you order each member around on a turn-by-turn basis by telling them to attack, use special attacks, use healing magic or an item from your inventory.
But looking at it deeper, there are some additions, subtractions and changes compared to FFIII. First, the game introduces the 'Active Time Battle' (ATB) system, which means that you need to give orders in 'real-time'. So if you take too long, the enemy will not wait for you but instead start attacking again. Second, this is the first Final Fantasy where each character has a pre-determined job/class and unlike in FFIII, there is no job system, so it can't be changed. Third, this is the first and only Final Fantasy which allows your party size to be five. Finally, unlike the previous versions, this has a very simple character development system, in that spellcasters get to gain new spells as they reach pre-determined levels, so you can't purchase spells and give them to your characters anymore.
For the first half or so of this game, this was considerably easier than FFIII. Without having to grind at all, you could pretty much spam attack through the entirety of the boss fights in the first half and heal with your white mage. Done. Then, three things happened. 1) Bosses and regular enemy types start doing a ton of damage, 2) You pretty much have to find a bunch of hidden items in order to deal enough damage or have enough defense to withstand the stronger enemies and 3) The game introduces the single worst enemy attack ever to a bunch of enemies and to pretty much all late-game bosses, which is one-hit kills. Doesn't matter if you're at full health, if you are parrying or whatever, you will simply get one-shot.
This is the biggest game design flaw in my opinion, but there are a few more minor ones that become annoying. For example, if you want to heal someone and he dies before the healing animation plays, you pretty much wasted a heal. If, on the other hand, you anticipate a death and use LIFE on someone (to revive them), and the character does indeed die before the animation plays, you still do not revive them. If you want to punish me due to timing, I should be rewarded for anticipation as well. There are also a lot of late-game bosses that pretty much attack you after each turn of one of your characters, meaning that before you go through all five party members, you are attacked five times. If you don't grind a lot, look up a guide to find all those easily missable 'OP' items and go through OPTIONAL late game areas to grind/get items as well, those attacks all also do a ton of damage.
This all culminates for the final boss fight, where it is not difficult to arrive in a state where your entire party can get one-shotted. I think this is really poor game design where simply following along the main storyline is punished this way. Once you're there, grinding the area immediately prior to the boss fight for hours is pretty much the only thing you can do at that point, and as you can imagine, that's no fun.
Overall, the ATB system I'd say was more negative than positive to me, because you're essentially being punished for having to go through various menus to find the option that you're looking for, which gives your enemies ample time to skip the attack order and strike again. I'd have rather appreciated more time to choose and strategize.
But all the critique aside, if you want to look at it from a glass half-full perspective, the game rewards you for taking your time with the game and then some. It rewards you for not escaping out of fights more than a couple times, for going through optional dungeons, visiting optional areas and yeah, grinding a little bit, by allowing you to make your way through the game easier. At the same time, it makes completion impossible if you simply follow the main path, which is what irks me.
The gameplay itself, which does continue to involve from one Final Fantasy entry to another, is also still not varied enough to really make me feel like playing those extra 5 - 10 hours to do all those optional things or to pop open a guide to go through dungeons again and find those missable items hidden each and every way.
But ultimately, whether you enjoy this or not will pretty much depend on whether you enjoyed the combat system in the other turn-based Final Fantasy entries. This one will improve upon that in some ways, potentially worsen in others depending on your viewpoint (ATB system) but will stay the same more or less.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. This game takes it a step further with its sound design in that there are a bunch of different attacks with their own special sound effect. That's a small thing, but definitely noticeable. The soundtrack for the most part ranges from good to great. There were a few tracks that I remember hearing in the few hours that I had spent on FFVII before I started this challenge (Red Wings for example), and they were good tracks, so it bodes well for FFIV's soundtrack for those to be originating here. Of course, some tracks are relatively similar to earlier FF entries (battle themes) but the main beauty in the soundtrack of FFIV lies in its diversity and the way it hits the tone of the different dramatic scenarios. You have your romantic tracks (Theme of Love), your ominous tracks whenever you'd take a look at what the antagonists where doing (Ring of Bomb), bittersweet tracks that capture the feeling of powering through despite the loss of your loved ones very well (Rydia), the sad tracks for one of many sorrowful moments (Cry in Sorrow) and then your "shit's going down" track to top it off (Run!!!). Each city/town/village have their own themes as well, many of which differ in tone and theme. Overall, one of the great soundtracks of the early 90's.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The jump to the SNES from the NES obviously comes with an improvement in graphics. From improved sprite quality and detail, to increase in detail in the overworld, in locations and in dungeons, to more impressive looking special effects and enemies, and to actually have a background in the battle screen that aligns with the overworld location / dungeon you find yourself in, all of these points are improvements over the previous main entry. Then you add the underworld, some futuristic looking locations and the damn moon to add some variation to the environments and this is overall the kind of step up you would like to see with the jump to the 4th gen of consoles.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
You have a mash of themes here with medieaval fantasy along with elements of science fiction, both in terms of location and enemy design. At the same time, apart from using magic, your party is limited to weapons and skills you'd only see in medieaval fantasy, whilst you're being beamed with lasers and such from the enemies. The soundtrack would also support a focus on medieval fantasy rather than the science fiction elements, so it can feel out of place.
CONTENT | 7/10
You have 12 party members overall, about a dozen or so main + optional dungeons, about as many towns/villages/cities, plenty of different versions of your equipment, plenty of dialogue compared to pretty much any other game out there at this point in time and overall a good 20-30 hours of content depending on how much of the optional stuff you end up doing. The optional dungeons are more of the same compared to the main dungeons, of which more than a couple do unfortunately lack in variety and are much too big in size. Apart from those dungeons, and a little bit of optional dialogue here and there, there isn't much else as far as side content goes, but overall there is plenty to do here if you're not opposed to repetitive gameplay.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The formula works in a specific way throughout. You go into a dungeon and go in deeper and deeper until you defeat the boss, get back to the quest-giver and get story progression. This game doesn't deviate much from that formula, but it's a good formula, so it doesn't have to. It would be appreciated if it did in some sort of fashion though, because unless you are really into using the same few moves for dozens of battles per dungeon for a dozen dungeons, it will get repetitive after a while.
But a part I subjectively don't like about these old-school RPGs and that I appreciate about more modern ones is the fact that, whether you go through the main path or grind a lot more and do optional dungeons/side quests, the game is designed in a way to be beaten either way. So for the game to be unbeatable at the final boss for me, I definitely didn't like that personally and would call that poor game design personally.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This game successfully evolved the Final Fantasy formula and made a rather big leap in storytelling, which is great to see. It didn't put everything in terms of storytelling together quite yet, but it's much improved, and the jump in graphical quality makes this a big step forward compared to FFIII for sure.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you didn't do any or much of the optional content and still managed to beat this game, you have a few optional dungeons to look forward to for replay value.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 68/100
You want sequels to be better than the previous game in some shape or form. Final Fantasy IV is better in many ways compared to Final Fantasy III. Graphics are much improved thanks to the jump to the SNES, there is a much bigger focus on storytelling and the new ATB system, even if not ground-breaking, can be something that makes battles more enjoyable to you. So yes, FF IV is better than FF III in my opinion. But ultimately it comes down to this. Did you enjoy earlier FF versions? If yes, you will enjoy this more. If not, you won't enjoy this either. Personally, I enjoyed it but see a lot of room for improvement, and am excited to see what Square came up with for Final Fantasy V.
It's always exciting to hit a milestone in video gaming with this challenge, and we certainly did that by arriving at the first 'Final Fantasy' game for the SNES, Final Fantasy IV. Called 'Final Fantasy II' in North America, because FF II and III didn't release in NA originally, Final Fantasy IV is a rather big step forward for the series in many ways. It originally released for the SNES on July 19, 1991 and was re-released for PlayStation in '97 before the decade was over. The game also got a 3-D release in 2007 for the Nintendo DS, which, if ever get there, will probably be the time where we revisit it. Is it worth revisiting? Absolutely it is, but I'll go through all of my thoughts one by one in this lengthy review, hope you enjoy the read.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 8/10
Finally a game with more to write about than "this is character X, he is hunting after evil person Y to save person/object Z". In Final Fantasy IV, the main character is Cecil, who is hunting after Golbez to save Earth. Just kidding, there is of course a lot more to this.
Cecil is a Dark Knight and Captain of the Red Wings at the start of the game, an elite air force unit of the kingdom of Baron. They are tasked to steal the Water Crystal from Mysidia, which makes Cecil feel guilty and ask the king of his motives. Due to this, he is relieved from his duties as Captain. He, along with his friend Kain, is taked to go to the Village of Mist and deliver a package there, a package that, once they arrive, releases bombs and destroys the village.
In the aftermath, he meets Rydia, who is a young and gifted Caller who loses her mother during the bombings and summons a Titan out of anger, a Titan that causes an earthquake. The earthquake separates Cecil and Kain, and leaves Cecil next to an unconcious Rydia, whom he brings to a nearby town. There, Baronian soldiers try to kill Rydia at night, but Cecil fights them off and he and Rydia become allies as a result, and Rydia can help you in battle.
From here, Cecil goes on to meet many important characters that have story impact and/or become playable characters. There are a dozen playable characters in fact, which regularly rotate throughout the game. There are Cecil, Kain and Rydia, then there is Cid, an aircraft engineer, Edward, the Prince of Damcyan, Tellah, a sage, Palom and Porom, twin mages, Rosa, Cecil's love interest and many more. Each character has a set class, so the job system from Final Fantasy III doesn't make it over here.
Final Fantasy IV is lauded for taking a big step forward in dramatic storytelling. Is that fair? If you compare it to games from the last decade, FFIV obviously does very little in comparison. If you compare it to the 46 other games I've played through this challenge, Final Fantasy IV is probably only outmatched by Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake, and blows everything else out the water just thanks to its depth and its many, many, dramatic set pieces.
THE PART WITH THE SPOILERS: The problem? So, the dramatic scenes mainly include the death of some of the playable characters. Palom and Porom turn to stone to lean against walls that were closing in to crush the party. Tellah can't bring them back to life. "They have turned into stone by their own will." Yang, a monk from Fabul, sacrifices himself to do ... something in a control room to destroy artillery systems, I couldn't make sense of that one yet. Cid BLOWS HIMSELF up to allow Cecil and crew to leave an underground area. Tellah uses his life energy to use a powerful spell and scare off the antagonist, Golbez, for the time being at least. Some manage to feel more dramatic than others, but the issue is, that apart from Tellah, all of them return to life later on. What? It's like they couldn't do that to all the kids playing the game, so they reversed their decision a few hours later into the game. Are any of these returns explained? Nope. Palom and Porom's return is actually, but apparently it's because their elder unpetrified them, but I thought you couldn't do that because they turned into stone out of their own will? Oh well. As a result, all the dramatics that are being lauded end up being teases than anything else, which is a shame. The game also pulls one of my least favorite ploys of any story, in a game or any other medium, which is present you with a main antagonist for pretty much the entirety of the game, and then announcing an even bigger antagonist right before the end, an antagonist who you never meet until the final boss fight. All this said, some characters do stay dead, and the plot twist of Golbez being used by Zemus, being the brother of Cecil and killing all of these innocent characters does manage to stir one's emotions, especially as you are left feeling like all of this could have been avoided.
The main themes of the game are, of course, the interplay between the Dark and the Light, and the power of friendship / support of your loved ones. Especially the latter you will find to play a role in a ton of JRPGs near the end, but not only does it work, but FFIV is one of the earlier games to do it.
From a critical standpoint, obviously the story does not leave you impressed anymore. There are some plot holes, the dialogue being rather basic, characters being one-dimensional, characters being swapped in and out regularly (which doesn't allow for character development for most) and many of the tropes you've become used to.
But if you look at it from the perspective of your inner child, and, from the perspective of the early 90s, you can't help but feel impressed by what this game set out to do and what it accomplished. Knowing what I know about the reception of the Final Fantasy games that are to come, I'm pretty excited to dive further into the series, which this game accomplished a lot more than Final Fantasy III did.
GAMEPLAY | 13/20
Final Fantasy IV is at a glance of course the same as the previous one's from a gameplay perspective, and as the one's to come in the next years as well. You have your party on the right side, the enemy's appearing on the left side whenever you are randomly (or as part of boss fights) pulled into battle, and you order each member around on a turn-by-turn basis by telling them to attack, use special attacks, use healing magic or an item from your inventory.
But looking at it deeper, there are some additions, subtractions and changes compared to FFIII. First, the game introduces the 'Active Time Battle' (ATB) system, which means that you need to give orders in 'real-time'. So if you take too long, the enemy will not wait for you but instead start attacking again. Second, this is the first Final Fantasy where each character has a pre-determined job/class and unlike in FFIII, there is no job system, so it can't be changed. Third, this is the first and only Final Fantasy which allows your party size to be five. Finally, unlike the previous versions, this has a very simple character development system, in that spellcasters get to gain new spells as they reach pre-determined levels, so you can't purchase spells and give them to your characters anymore.
For the first half or so of this game, this was considerably easier than FFIII. Without having to grind at all, you could pretty much spam attack through the entirety of the boss fights in the first half and heal with your white mage. Done. Then, three things happened. 1) Bosses and regular enemy types start doing a ton of damage, 2) You pretty much have to find a bunch of hidden items in order to deal enough damage or have enough defense to withstand the stronger enemies and 3) The game introduces the single worst enemy attack ever to a bunch of enemies and to pretty much all late-game bosses, which is one-hit kills. Doesn't matter if you're at full health, if you are parrying or whatever, you will simply get one-shot.
This is the biggest game design flaw in my opinion, but there are a few more minor ones that become annoying. For example, if you want to heal someone and he dies before the healing animation plays, you pretty much wasted a heal. If, on the other hand, you anticipate a death and use LIFE on someone (to revive them), and the character does indeed die before the animation plays, you still do not revive them. If you want to punish me due to timing, I should be rewarded for anticipation as well. There are also a lot of late-game bosses that pretty much attack you after each turn of one of your characters, meaning that before you go through all five party members, you are attacked five times. If you don't grind a lot, look up a guide to find all those easily missable 'OP' items and go through OPTIONAL late game areas to grind/get items as well, those attacks all also do a ton of damage.
This all culminates for the final boss fight, where it is not difficult to arrive in a state where your entire party can get one-shotted. I think this is really poor game design where simply following along the main storyline is punished this way. Once you're there, grinding the area immediately prior to the boss fight for hours is pretty much the only thing you can do at that point, and as you can imagine, that's no fun.
Overall, the ATB system I'd say was more negative than positive to me, because you're essentially being punished for having to go through various menus to find the option that you're looking for, which gives your enemies ample time to skip the attack order and strike again. I'd have rather appreciated more time to choose and strategize.
But all the critique aside, if you want to look at it from a glass half-full perspective, the game rewards you for taking your time with the game and then some. It rewards you for not escaping out of fights more than a couple times, for going through optional dungeons, visiting optional areas and yeah, grinding a little bit, by allowing you to make your way through the game easier. At the same time, it makes completion impossible if you simply follow the main path, which is what irks me.
The gameplay itself, which does continue to involve from one Final Fantasy entry to another, is also still not varied enough to really make me feel like playing those extra 5 - 10 hours to do all those optional things or to pop open a guide to go through dungeons again and find those missable items hidden each and every way.
But ultimately, whether you enjoy this or not will pretty much depend on whether you enjoyed the combat system in the other turn-based Final Fantasy entries. This one will improve upon that in some ways, potentially worsen in others depending on your viewpoint (ATB system) but will stay the same more or less.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. This game takes it a step further with its sound design in that there are a bunch of different attacks with their own special sound effect. That's a small thing, but definitely noticeable. The soundtrack for the most part ranges from good to great. There were a few tracks that I remember hearing in the few hours that I had spent on FFVII before I started this challenge (Red Wings for example), and they were good tracks, so it bodes well for FFIV's soundtrack for those to be originating here. Of course, some tracks are relatively similar to earlier FF entries (battle themes) but the main beauty in the soundtrack of FFIV lies in its diversity and the way it hits the tone of the different dramatic scenarios. You have your romantic tracks (Theme of Love), your ominous tracks whenever you'd take a look at what the antagonists where doing (Ring of Bomb), bittersweet tracks that capture the feeling of powering through despite the loss of your loved ones very well (Rydia), the sad tracks for one of many sorrowful moments (Cry in Sorrow) and then your "shit's going down" track to top it off (Run!!!). Each city/town/village have their own themes as well, many of which differ in tone and theme. Overall, one of the great soundtracks of the early 90's.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 8/10
The jump to the SNES from the NES obviously comes with an improvement in graphics. From improved sprite quality and detail, to increase in detail in the overworld, in locations and in dungeons, to more impressive looking special effects and enemies, and to actually have a background in the battle screen that aligns with the overworld location / dungeon you find yourself in, all of these points are improvements over the previous main entry. Then you add the underworld, some futuristic looking locations and the damn moon to add some variation to the environments and this is overall the kind of step up you would like to see with the jump to the 4th gen of consoles.
ATMOSPHERE | 5/10
You have a mash of themes here with medieaval fantasy along with elements of science fiction, both in terms of location and enemy design. At the same time, apart from using magic, your party is limited to weapons and skills you'd only see in medieaval fantasy, whilst you're being beamed with lasers and such from the enemies. The soundtrack would also support a focus on medieval fantasy rather than the science fiction elements, so it can feel out of place.
CONTENT | 7/10
You have 12 party members overall, about a dozen or so main + optional dungeons, about as many towns/villages/cities, plenty of different versions of your equipment, plenty of dialogue compared to pretty much any other game out there at this point in time and overall a good 20-30 hours of content depending on how much of the optional stuff you end up doing. The optional dungeons are more of the same compared to the main dungeons, of which more than a couple do unfortunately lack in variety and are much too big in size. Apart from those dungeons, and a little bit of optional dialogue here and there, there isn't much else as far as side content goes, but overall there is plenty to do here if you're not opposed to repetitive gameplay.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
The formula works in a specific way throughout. You go into a dungeon and go in deeper and deeper until you defeat the boss, get back to the quest-giver and get story progression. This game doesn't deviate much from that formula, but it's a good formula, so it doesn't have to. It would be appreciated if it did in some sort of fashion though, because unless you are really into using the same few moves for dozens of battles per dungeon for a dozen dungeons, it will get repetitive after a while.
But a part I subjectively don't like about these old-school RPGs and that I appreciate about more modern ones is the fact that, whether you go through the main path or grind a lot more and do optional dungeons/side quests, the game is designed in a way to be beaten either way. So for the game to be unbeatable at the final boss for me, I definitely didn't like that personally and would call that poor game design personally.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This game successfully evolved the Final Fantasy formula and made a rather big leap in storytelling, which is great to see. It didn't put everything in terms of storytelling together quite yet, but it's much improved, and the jump in graphical quality makes this a big step forward compared to FFIII for sure.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you didn't do any or much of the optional content and still managed to beat this game, you have a few optional dungeons to look forward to for replay value.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 68/100
You want sequels to be better than the previous game in some shape or form. Final Fantasy IV is better in many ways compared to Final Fantasy III. Graphics are much improved thanks to the jump to the SNES, there is a much bigger focus on storytelling and the new ATB system, even if not ground-breaking, can be something that makes battles more enjoyable to you. So yes, FF IV is better than FF III in my opinion. But ultimately it comes down to this. Did you enjoy earlier FF versions? If yes, you will enjoy this more. If not, you won't enjoy this either. Personally, I enjoyed it but see a lot of room for improvement, and am excited to see what Square came up with for Final Fantasy V.