Review ~ Final Fantasy IV DS

Okay, this game is a little old. Well, technically the game itself is a LOT old, but this incarnation isn't so bad.

So on Saturday I finally beat the game, which I had previously complained about here and here. 


(Oh, and this review contains no crappy iPhone photos taken in a car.)


Let's get down to it.


Final Fantasy IV originally came out for the Super Nintendo a number of years ago. It has been reincarnated several times since, and I'm pretty sure I own all of those efforts. However, this version of the game was improved with new graphics, cut scenes and junk, which refreshed it a bit. After starting and stopping this game so many times, I was determined to finally beat it. (Success! Yay!)


Story: In the early days, Squaresoft (remember those days?) was obsessed with crystals, apparently, because it seems like the story of all their early titles revolves around them in some way. This game is no exception. An evil guy is stealing all the crystals in the world for an evil purpose and it's your job to stop him! OMG! To the 16bit airship! Okay, so the story isn't going to win any prizes, but it's really not bad as far as early RPG's go. There's a clear purpose and actually plenty of twists and turns along the way. What more do you need, really?


Characters: At most points in the game you have a 5 character party. A what? Yeah, it's worth repeating. 5 CHARACTERS. IN YOUR PARTY. AT THE SAME TIME. We can only dream of that in this gaming era, but the fact is you kinda need every last character you can wrangle into your band of misfits. But more on that later. As far as the characters themselves go, aside from Cecil, your main dude, and to a lesser extent Kain, his pal, there's not too much character development. They all have their own personalities though: Rosa, the annoying homemaker wanna be; Rydia, the mysterious one; Edge, the brash one; Yang, so full of pride and honor; Palom and Porom, the vivacious kids; Tellah, the old guy; Edward, the sissy; Cid, hardworking and determined - you get the idea. You don't get to pick and choose what characters you want to use at any point in the game. You use who you have and you deal with it. Characters rotate in and out of your party, but unlike most other games, they don't usually come back. It kind of makes it hard to power level, because there's a good chance you'll be losing a character or two in the not too distant future. One of the characters you finish the game off with doesn't show up until the final few hours of gameplay.


Battle System: There's really nothing special here. It's pretty basic for an old school RPG. Each character has a set job they're forced into. It comes with various abilities. You learn new spells and the like by leveling up. You can't see what spells or abilities you're going to learn, nor can you choose or control it in any way. There's no skill to learning stuff except grinding. However, there was a new augment system added into this version that reaps pretty good abilities - but if you don't understand how this system works, as I didn't, you'll miss out on a lot of good stuff. The game never really explains how this works. Once your character learns an augment they can use that ability. Some are battle abilities that you can add to your menu to use on the field, but others are default abilities you just have all the time. I strongly suggest using one of the good guides you can find at Gamefaqs if you want to get all the augments. It's worth it. Because a lot of them are pretty awesome.

Gameplay: Battles move fast in this game, even when you don't have the ATB set to active. (If you're not a gamer, that last sentence will mean nothing.) I found several bosses to be very difficult to defeat, despite being over leveled. (And there were even a few random encounter enemies - dragons, mostly. WTF is with the crystals and the dragons?! - that slaughtered my ass.) I was over level 70 and still had a hard time with the last boss - something I never have a problem with in Final Fantasy's newer installments. Cecil was the only one with decent HP when it finally fell. Another character had 2 HP and everyone else was KO'd. So you remember when I said you'd need every last character? Yeah. But there's more to this game than level grinding. Many of these bosses and enemies require good strategy to go down. Not just brute force.



Graphics: The updated graphics are pretty, if kind of cutesy. You even kinda wanna cuddle armored Kain. For a DS game, though, it's fine. The game has voice acting in most of the cut scenes, which really isn't a lot, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. The new graphics and updating really does a lot to make this game fresh, but at the same time proves that older games can stand the test of time.


Sidequests: The older Final Fantasy games aren't really known for their side quests - but there a few. Most of them involve getting better summon or equipment and can be completed later in the game. There's also the obnoxious Namingway side quest, which I never finished and don't feel about. If he wants to wait forever for that stupid pudding, so be it. You also get items for map completion, which I thought was a nice touch and really had me going into every nock and cranny of the dungeons in order to reap the rewards - which were pretty decent, especially towards the end of the game.


Overall: Great classic RPG with good story and characters, solid gameplay and appropriate, enjoyable updates. Fans of both new and old school RPG's will have fun with this one - I know I did. It really does stand the test of time.


93 out of 100

You Can Kiss .04% Of My Ass!

So. RPGs. You are often awesome, but also often frustrating. Why, why, why must you make me seek out rare items from usually equally rare monsters? And even if the monster isn't rare, why is it that I could slaughter thousands and still just end up with nothing but potions?

Explain.

I make fun of this concept in RPGs all the time. "Oh, you can only get this awesome weapon from me if you go up to the dangerous avalanche prone snowy mountains of death and get a silvery golden hair scrunchy! One of the monsters there drops it! In the meantime I will stand here, torturing you with said awesome weapon of amazingness. You know you want it."

Okay. Since you can't just kill the random townsperson and take said item, you look on Gamefaqs or in the strategy guide and find out what drops this stupid item and how often. That's when you get the bad news. And when you go on the Gamefaqs message board 90% of the topics involve people asking how they can get this stupid item easier. And the horror stories of people who spent 45 hours trying to get it. 45 hours?! The game programmer wanted me to waste that many hours of my life looking, hoping for this stupid pixelated baddie to drop this fucking thing?! Why is this viscous beast carrying this item anyway?! He's holding money, too - hell, I'll buy it off him! How much does he want?

It's kind of ridiculous. And while it's not a hair scrunchy I'm currently searching for, the circumstances are nearly as stupid in Final Fantasy IV.

So there's this rabbit. Yeah, a rabbit. Here's the little demon spawn:
His name starts out as Namingway, but considering he's having some kind of identity crisis, he keeping moving around the world, taking on different career paths and changing his name every time. My personal favorite so far has been "Cheatingway, the two timer" after he panicked and revealed he was dating two human females at once. Disgusting reasons aside, I don't think any subsequent names will live up to that.

Especially his current one. "Puddingway".

I swear I am not making any of this up.

So Puddingway wants me to find this certain pudding for his girlfriend. (He was able to settle on one, apparently. The other girl is still crying her eyes out that even a hormonal rabbit didn't want her.) She wants a "rainbow pudding". And he'll wait here patiently until you bring it to him.

Great. Onto the web I go - where can I find this shit? And does it have anything to do with Bill Cosby?

So I find out what kind of monsters drop the pudding. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't eat some pudding that was dropped but some random disgusting blob monster:


Ew. And that's only one kind. Anyway, I find out these blobs are easy enough to find - no problem, right?

Wrong.

Then I get a look at the drop success rate.

0.04%

In case you ain't good at math, that's a LESS THAN ONE PERCENT DROP RATE. Are they kidding me?! And then I saw all the posts for people begging for help and the guy who spent 45 hours looking for a rainbow pudding dropped by a blob of mustard.

The rational side of my mind says: Fuck it. It's a game. Move on with your life.

But the gamer side says: ...I gotta complete this quest.

So what's a nerd to do?

I am by no means a completionist when it comes to games. In fact I rarely get 100%. But I have had times where I spent an godly amount of hours with a controller in my hand, slashing monsters with a sword and casting cure when needed. (Final Fantasy X and XII both come to mind...) But at the same time I have a life here. I have a job. I can't be chasing pudding until the wee hours of the morning for some stupid ass lazy rabbit that should be getting it for his own goddamn girlfriend.

So I'm gonna back off for now. Make the rabbit sweat a bit. Apparently there's some kind of augment I can get later in the game that makes it easier to get rare items. Then me and mustard blob can talk again.

In the meantime, rabbit, better change your name to Waitingway.

4th Time's a Charm

So I randomly decided today that I want to play Final Fantasy IV once and for all.

I can't tell you the amount of times I have started that game, stopped, forgotten about it, and had to start over again. This had to have been like the fourth time. (Hence the title of this post.)

The sad part is, I have purchased this game THREE times. Yeah. Three times, still haven't beaten it. The first time was part of Final Fantasy Chronicles, which came out for PSX (yeah, the ORIGINAL Playstation) in 2001. Then again when it came out for Gameboy Advance in 2005 and finally more recently, when it came out for Nintendo DS. At least I bought it used this time.

But guess what? I only have the guide for Final Fantasy Chronicles. So I'm using that.

Yeah...

I used the guide to play the reincarnation of Chrono Trigger for the DS. It was okay. Obviously there was plenty of new stuff in the newer game, but none of the boss strategies led me hopelessly astray.

Final Fantasy IV, however, has been a whole other fucking story.

So I'm playing along, la la la, and I'm fighting this boss. Now I know from my past experience that IV is a harder RPG and you kind of have to level grind in order to stay ahead of the game and stay alive. So I've been there, done that, I was good to go. Or so I thought. I'm fighting this boss, "Mom Bomb" or whatever, I've got 5 fucking people in my party, and things are going swimmingly. Ye olde guide says that mama bomb will explode at one point into 6 smaller bombs causing, AND I QUOTE "about 60 - 100 points of damage to each member of your party"!!!!!!! Oh noes! Whatever. My current party could have brushed that off like a paper scratch. Okay, so my HP weren't super high, but they were high enough that I could have absorbed that no problem, and gone on with my day.

Only that's not what happened.

Instead, mommy bomb exploded in violent balls of flame, causing 400+ damage to each and every member of my lovely party of five, killing them all instantly. "The Party Has Fallen" the gamely pleasantly informed me in a neat little bar at the top of the screen, as if I was blind and couldn't see my five supposed heros lying flat on their little pixeled faces. That god damn outdated guide! WTF?! How is that 60 - 100 points of damage?! Can someone not count?! Do they need a calculator?! I was so pissed I threw my DS onto the couch proclaiming, "Fuck this game!" And stormed upstairs to check something that wasn't published when Baywatch was still on the air.

So I checked Gamefaqs. Trusty gamefaqs. And you know what I learned? That the only way to survive that battle in this newest reincarnation is to have everybody defend. Because otherwise it's game over.

So I don't know if I should be mad at Square Enix for changing their own game that drastically (can't you leave the boss battles alone at least?) or myself for using a guide as old as the series finale of Daria. (Yeah, it's been that long. Can you believe it? And the DVDs are where, MTV?)

Anyway, lesson learned. I'm not trusting that guide for boss battle advice anymore!

...But I'm still gonna use it. Because I'm cheap. And I'm not buying a new one.