Final Fantasy IV - I finally beat one!

I have known of Final Fantasy for ages now. It was one of the first franchises I discovered by myself, outside the usual Nintendo games, FIFA or Halo. I remember learning about RPGs and figuring out what turn based combat was, I thought that such a granular level of control over character actions would be kinda neat, although I ended up focusing a bit more on Pokemon.

Downloading a ROM of Final Fantasy I & II for Game Boy Advance, to play on my HTC ChaChaCha and mapping its physical keys to control the game is quite the memory! But I died and died and died and I gave up on that first game. I was still too green, unfamiliar with what old games were like. Pokemon let me continue after dying, going back to a Pokecenter, but here? I could die and lose everything. I could only save from the world map, and I never bothered to learn how.

Later I also realized that the first games on the franchises were rather punishing, and that FFIV is where they start to actually focus on a story too. I did choose to focus on FFVI and FFVII though, since they were the best ones, so I played them for a while and made decent progress on them, so I took my time to get to IV. It’s funny how it ended up as the first Final Fantasy I beat!

At some point early in 2022, my family and I went on a trip, and I brought my PSP with me! Back then I didn’t write blogposts as often as I do now, and I didn’t keep track of my gaming either.

But looking at my save data, that’s when I finally decided to give Final Fantasy IV: The Compete Collection a spin at last. I had heard it was the best way to enjoy the classic, so the time finally came.

Enough backstory, how’s the actual game?

Story

This game has an actual story! Though the main focus is on Cecil, a Dark Knight that leads the Red Wings, a group of Flying Ships serving the kingdom of Baron, alongside Kain, his childhood friend who also commands the Dragoons. The story begins when Cecil questions the actions he’s ordered to do, which result on destruction and despair wherever the Red Wings go.

We meet multiple characters along the way, which will join the party as the game continues, all of them will have defined classes and traits. So each one has equipment and unique characteristics. Some of the characters will be affected by the actions you did before, some will not trust you, and others you’ll have to meet and help out with their journeys. With a dozen playable characters, not all of them get to shine as much as the main cast, some are straight up kinda useless, but there’s some great designs and strategies to many of them too.

The story itself is a bit of a classic hero’s journey, with Cecil facing his own actions and trying to make ammends while traveling all over the world to fix some of the mayhem he has caused, and doing everything they can to stop the big bad guy from bringing catastrophe on the planet.

It is not the most incredible story every, but it’s a classic one with plenty of fun tropes, romance moments, funny dialogue and the like. I really had fun going through all of it, and it even turns into a bit of a Sci-Fi by the end.

Gameplay

This is the first game in the series that featured the ATB combat system. Instead of the back and forth of waiting for your turn, there’s a bar that needs to fill up before you can perform an action. The party and the enemies have these ATB meters. This means that you can end up hit multiple times if you take too long to attack of use some spell. There is a “Wait” mode that let’s you choose at your own leisure, which I quickly turned on.

Other than combat however, you will also explore around the map where you can move freely, although some areas require certain vehicles to get past. The usual gist.

Of course, there’s also random encounters, in the world and during dungeons.

Dungeons vary in theme, but they all amount to the same classic tropes. Secret passages, lots of chests, lots of monsters-in-a-box, and some story sequence or cool item by the end. We’ll explore caves, mountains, castles, sewers, and all the typical stuff.

It’s a turn based JRPG, and this one doesn’t have anything new or unique by modern standards. What it has is a classic formula that mostly holds up to this day.

If I were to complain about something. I wish they had done diagonal movement as an option. The grid style movement was really annoying at times.

Music

The soundtrack of Final Fantasy is instantly recognizable. Nobuo Uematsu composed an absolute masterpiece, not surprising at all, to be honest.

The PSP remake of this game turned the classic SNES score and brought it to modern times. This entry even let’s you choose between the original and the modern soundtrack, so there’s no reason to complain. I played with the enhanced score, and had a wonderful time.

My favorite piece has to be Theme of Love, call me a romantic, I just can’t help it. There’s people out there who walked down the aisle with this one!

Anyway, all of it is pretty fantastic. I think there were a couple sections with weird themes though, that last dungeon feels a little goofy to me because of the music, but nothing major!

Art

Once again, the PSP remake features very detailed sprites that are a far cry from the original spritework back in the SNES days. People seem to have mixed opinions about it, but given how bare bones the Pixel Remasters are. I think public opinion has started to change towards updates with higher resolution sprites. I think the style used by the Dragon Quest I, II and II HD-2D remakes made people see that high-res pixel art really does have a place!

I really enjoy the look of pretty much everything, and the character designs are awesome. Playing on an original PSP, with the original screen resolution and everything, I couldn’t find any flaws. I have to say, the monster designs here look absolutely stunning, especially the bosses which already made for excellent pixel art on the original game, look better than ever here.

I scrolled through the Bestiary multiple times during breaks here because of how cool the designs were.

The game does feature high definition cutscenes with 3D animation at times. I think they are really cool additions to the game.

During combat, some spells and attack will include 3D animation too, on top of the spritework, and they don’t feel out of place at all, I really enjoyed how smooth they were, adding to the cool factor of it all.

Overall

It feels to have so little to say about each aspect of this title. There’s rarely anything new to it compared to Chrono Trigger and later Final Fantasy entries. This is pretty much a game that ticks all the boxes, and does everything you would expect when you think “Turn Based SNES JRPG.”

This is the first Final Fantasy I’ve ever completed, despite 40+ hours on FFVI and almost 20 hours on FFVII. It is kind of fitting that the first one had to be the classic. The one where everything else builts on top of. The first one in the series that was released for an american audience.

While the original trilogy can feel kind of aimless. From here on, there are characters and plots and reasons. Even though some of it doesn’t make sense, and some things just happens, it still works out, because it’s an old game and you can imagine and fill in the blanks for yourself.

I actually think I may revisit this one. It is a masterpiece, especially at nailing the fundamentals, it just has that nice sense of progression and familiarity to it. It’s also less than 30 hours long, on the short side for the genre, which helps a bunch to go through it all fast—even if it took me four years to do that.

Anyway, definitely check this out. I think the PSP version is genuinely the best one, featuring auto battle mode, excellent artwork, a nice script—though some say it’s tampered compared to the original—and all the extra dungeons and cutscenes that are lacking in the Pixel Remaster. It was very nice to have a few extra rounds using previous characters and getting new weapons and equipment for them there. Although I did the finale with the original party, of course!

I played this on my PSP and ended up with a playtime of about 33 hours, 12 of which were played in the span of a month! This game really managed to grip me all over again, and it kept me hooked until I rolled credits. Now there’s an extra dungeon waiting for me with new bosses and all that. There’s also Interlude and The After Years, which are whole new stories inside of FFIV’s universe. I may get to them one day, but I’m plenty happy with the base game as it is!

This is day 57 of #100DaysToOffload