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Final Fantasy IV (DS)
Given that the game was just released this week for the DS, I'm surprised that no one has started a discussion thread about it. I hadn't played it since my SNES gaming days and since I skipped its Playstation and GBA reincarnations I decided to go ahead and pick it up.
I'm enjoying it thus far. The English voice acting is decent but used sparingly, so the fully acted cut scenes are enough of a rarity to be a treat and not bog things down too much. Unfortunately the game play itself does enough bogging down for you. Yep, I'm going to hit on the negative stuff (or perceived negative stuff) first.
"HERESY!!!" I can hear you crying. "Blow it out your ass," says I. I'm not complaining about the challenge level. I don't mind it when a game makes me think and work to get through it. What I do mind is when that difficulty level is artificially pumped up. You see, this iteration of the game was based on the original Japanese version of FFIV, not the watered-down weak-sister version we got in the US as FFII. Unfortunately that means we got it warts and all, or should I say "random encounters and all." I hate random encounters with a passion, and this version of the game commits the egregious act of throwing them in all over the place. It feels like I'm running into a random encounter every ten steps or so, and good ghawd does it drag the pace of the game down. It ends up turning it into a game of "did I bring enough Potions and Ethers to be able to get through this dungeon?" Combine that with a few nasty surprises when it comes to boss monster difficulty and you may get to the anger level where you want to let fly with a string of epithets that would make a sailor blush.
Case in point: (Sidebar - I refuse to stick a huge spoiler warning in here. The statute of limitations on spoilers for this game ended back in the early Nineties. Also, Aeris dies, Vader is Luke's father, Bruce Willis is already dead, the narrator really is Tyler Durden, and the chick from The Crying Game is really a dude. So there.) At the point in the game where you end up in Mysidia after the shipwreck you will undertake a quest to get Cecil transformed from the dark knight class to the paladin class. This involves hiking up a mountain filled with undead monsters, with two squishy wizard-class members in tow (Palom and Porom). About halfway up the mountain you pick up a third wizard, Tellah, and then when you get to the top of the mountain there is a save point where you can pitch a tent just before the two-part boss battle. I wasn't paying attention to my inventory before I left the city, so I ended up at the top of the mountain with next to no potions left, no tent, and I proceeded to get my ass handed to me by the boss when he started slinging Counter spells to my attacks (and I know damn good and well those things weren't in the US version before). This prompted me to say several nasty things about the game's developers which called into question their lineage, the possibility that their mother's species might be canine, their sexual orientation, and their possible oedipal complexes. I then reloaded from my previous save at the bottom of the mountain, headed back to town to stock up, and then trekked back up and beat the everliving tar out of the boss's undead ass. I also made sure to bring along a quick exit item so I could get off the mountain and wouldn't have to hike back down through all those undead with a now-pussified level 1 Paladin who would just as well be using a safety razor to hack at the monsters that are now ten to fifteen levels higher than he is.
My point to that rant was basically this: If I had not played the game before and did not have any idea what was coming up at that point, I would have been tempted to say, "screw all this!" and would have seriously started considering slapping my copy up for sale on eBay or Amazon. Hell, even with prior knowledge it was an order of magnitude greater than what I was expecting. Things of this nature would be totally daunting for a new player and would tend to make the game somewhat frustrating and possibly downright unplayable.
All that being said, I am still digging the game. The character design and animation fits very well, the storyline holds together a hell of a lot better than the original FFII hack-job did, and the game play is a solid translation. I have a couple other minor gripes with the battle system (the lack of your characters' max hit points on screen anywhere and the camera cutting in to focus solely on the current spell caster while you're trying to pick your targets), but those are small potatoes compared to my other frustrations.
The only other part of the game that I'm neither enthusiastic about nor hating on are the mini-games. They've added in a new Eidolon called "Whyt", who looks like a Kodama spirit and is fully customizable. The only way to boost this character's power is to play various mini-games. Since the character isn't really a requirement to finish the game, I can take it or leave it.
All in all, it's a good adaptation and one I would recommend to someone who is a fan of the series that hasn't played it in a while. If you've played either of its last two iterations, though, I'd say give it a rental or pass on it.
I'm enjoying it thus far. The English voice acting is decent but used sparingly, so the fully acted cut scenes are enough of a rarity to be a treat and not bog things down too much. Unfortunately the game play itself does enough bogging down for you. Yep, I'm going to hit on the negative stuff (or perceived negative stuff) first.
"HERESY!!!" I can hear you crying. "Blow it out your ass," says I. I'm not complaining about the challenge level. I don't mind it when a game makes me think and work to get through it. What I do mind is when that difficulty level is artificially pumped up. You see, this iteration of the game was based on the original Japanese version of FFIV, not the watered-down weak-sister version we got in the US as FFII. Unfortunately that means we got it warts and all, or should I say "random encounters and all." I hate random encounters with a passion, and this version of the game commits the egregious act of throwing them in all over the place. It feels like I'm running into a random encounter every ten steps or so, and good ghawd does it drag the pace of the game down. It ends up turning it into a game of "did I bring enough Potions and Ethers to be able to get through this dungeon?" Combine that with a few nasty surprises when it comes to boss monster difficulty and you may get to the anger level where you want to let fly with a string of epithets that would make a sailor blush.
Case in point: (Sidebar - I refuse to stick a huge spoiler warning in here. The statute of limitations on spoilers for this game ended back in the early Nineties. Also, Aeris dies, Vader is Luke's father, Bruce Willis is already dead, the narrator really is Tyler Durden, and the chick from The Crying Game is really a dude. So there.) At the point in the game where you end up in Mysidia after the shipwreck you will undertake a quest to get Cecil transformed from the dark knight class to the paladin class. This involves hiking up a mountain filled with undead monsters, with two squishy wizard-class members in tow (Palom and Porom). About halfway up the mountain you pick up a third wizard, Tellah, and then when you get to the top of the mountain there is a save point where you can pitch a tent just before the two-part boss battle. I wasn't paying attention to my inventory before I left the city, so I ended up at the top of the mountain with next to no potions left, no tent, and I proceeded to get my ass handed to me by the boss when he started slinging Counter spells to my attacks (and I know damn good and well those things weren't in the US version before). This prompted me to say several nasty things about the game's developers which called into question their lineage, the possibility that their mother's species might be canine, their sexual orientation, and their possible oedipal complexes. I then reloaded from my previous save at the bottom of the mountain, headed back to town to stock up, and then trekked back up and beat the everliving tar out of the boss's undead ass. I also made sure to bring along a quick exit item so I could get off the mountain and wouldn't have to hike back down through all those undead with a now-pussified level 1 Paladin who would just as well be using a safety razor to hack at the monsters that are now ten to fifteen levels higher than he is.
My point to that rant was basically this: If I had not played the game before and did not have any idea what was coming up at that point, I would have been tempted to say, "screw all this!" and would have seriously started considering slapping my copy up for sale on eBay or Amazon. Hell, even with prior knowledge it was an order of magnitude greater than what I was expecting. Things of this nature would be totally daunting for a new player and would tend to make the game somewhat frustrating and possibly downright unplayable.
All that being said, I am still digging the game. The character design and animation fits very well, the storyline holds together a hell of a lot better than the original FFII hack-job did, and the game play is a solid translation. I have a couple other minor gripes with the battle system (the lack of your characters' max hit points on screen anywhere and the camera cutting in to focus solely on the current spell caster while you're trying to pick your targets), but those are small potatoes compared to my other frustrations.
The only other part of the game that I'm neither enthusiastic about nor hating on are the mini-games. They've added in a new Eidolon called "Whyt", who looks like a Kodama spirit and is fully customizable. The only way to boost this character's power is to play various mini-games. Since the character isn't really a requirement to finish the game, I can take it or leave it.
All in all, it's a good adaptation and one I would recommend to someone who is a fan of the series that hasn't played it in a while. If you've played either of its last two iterations, though, I'd say give it a rental or pass on it.
Comments
In any case, I remember being very surprised that the game was different from the original Stateside SNES version. I found myself preferring the harder version, as it better rewarded smart and careful gameplay.