Final Fantasy 4: The Complete Collection
Oct. 1st, 2012 10:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroOriginally released in the US as a dumbed-down version called Final Fantasy 2 that nonetheless captured my heart, this game has seen re-releases on the PS1, GBA, and DS; and a sequel released via WiiWare. This PSP disc finally puts it all in one place, complete with another graphics update and adjusted translation. As if inspired by George Lucas, this game has been re-re-re-re-mastered so hard it would be virtually impossible to master it again.
Final Fantasy 4
Like most remakes, this has a graphical overhaul. I’m not wild about it; the character designs look a little too “iOS” cartoony, and the redrawn spells mostly take longer without adding a lot (except the Bloodsuck attack used by bats, which is thankfully faster). Also, the redrawn version of Bio lacks both the cool appearance and awesome sound effect of the original, which is irritating because it otherwise remains a great spell. The new summoned monster animations are very pretty, but like summons on most of the later systems, they feel too long to want to use regularly. This version also adds FMV cutscenes at a couple of points; I don’t remember if they’ve been in any other version, but they’re either from the PS1 version or they’re new.
In my recent replays of older games (Secret of Mana, A Link to the Past) I’ve been trying to play them a little differently than I “always” did, to make things more interesting and to see how my more recent play-style holds up. (Made more interesting by the fact that I know these games inside and out, by this point.) This run through Final Fantasy 4 has been similar: I’ve been exploiting various tricks I’ve known for years (like using weapons as items), de-equipping characters before they leave to save cash, running from battles that would be too costly or too boring/unrewarding to fight, and hitting enemy’s weaknesses hard. This led to a first for me: In the underworld, there are two optional caves you can visit before continuing the plot, the Sylph Cave and the Land of Summoned Monsters (aka the Feymarch). Both gives you some extra items and new summons for Rydia, and are decent places to acquire a bit of XP before heading on. They also both have damage tiles that necessitate Rosa casting Float on the entire party. This was the very first time I reached this point in the game, and had to grind levels before doing either cave because Rosa didn’t know Float yet!
It also occurred to me how short this game is when compared against the later installments, especially with the auto-dash feature and generally faster battles in this version. If not for the pre-final dungeon bonus dungeon (this keeps the two bonus dungeons from the GBA version, along with the ability to swap in any living character for the final segment), I would probably finish the game in about 15 hours. Though that lets you get the best weapons for those characters in an easier dungeon, then take them to the moon and use them to retrieve all of the original party’s best equipment from the Lunar Underground.
Among tips for an easy run: Keep Rydia equipped with a Rod until you get the Ice Rod; with both items, never attack, always go to the item menu and use them to cast spells instead. Tellah can do the same, or just use magic since he knows Osmose and can recover the MP. When you get to Mysidia, grind with the twins a little on the overworld, since Cecil’s new sword can insta-kill most of those enemies. Also, equip them with a Fire Rod and a Cure Staff, get an extra Fire Rod for Tellah, and buy the paladin armor early if you can afford it. Also, strip Cecil’s equipment (to sell) after the second Scarmiglion fight. When you get to Baron, if you have a lot of cash, you can go back through the Mist Cave, collect some items from Mist, and buy a Dancing Dagger (use as an item) for Palom. De-equip it after the Baigan fight and give it to Rydia when she re-appears. Buy mithril weapons and armor before going into Cave Magnes to use in the Dark Dragon fight. Make sure you have equipment for Rosa before returning the earth crystal. And fight Bahamut after getting FuSoYa but before returning to the blue planet—having two Reflect casters makes life much easier.
Final Fantasy 4: Interlude
This extra three-hour segment was added exclusively for this version. It plays like a fanhack and reminds me of Prophet’s Guile more than anything—they stitched together a bunch of pieces from the original game to tell a short “interim” story. You switch off a collection of characters (having Cecil the whole time, of course) and go through Mt. Hobs (slightly expanded), the Sealed Cave, the Eblan Cave, and the Underground Tower of Babil. (The party starts around level 30 and reaches level 40 by the end.)
Random observations: Why they decided to use the Sealed Cave, being one of the most complained-about dungeons in the original game, I have no idea. There’s a Developers Room slightly off the beaten path in the final area. It’s cute. (You can get the porno mag from one developer and trade it to another for a Golden Apple item.) They add one new weapon, the Index Finger sword, which lets Cecil hurt flans. It’s random. They call two random airship pilots Biggs and Wedge, but don’t bother to name the two monks who briefly join your party. The chests are all in their original spots and many of them have their original contents, though there are more Dry Ethers and Elixirs scattered about.
You end up rather mage-heavy for much of the game. The Osmose spell is really useful. Also, in an echo of my grinding on Underworld enemies during this run through the original, I ended up grinding right outside the Sealed Cave to get my party up to par.
They obvious pulled a few assets from The After Years while making this, but playing the games in “chronological order” (as I did) makes the most sense.
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years
Did I say Interlude felt like a fanhack? The After Years is that over and over again. It’s a series of chapters, each following a different central character. You can then import your characters from all the chapters into the final chapter, which is almost as long as the rest combined. The thing is, chapters means you have to do the grind over and over again, like in Dragon Quest 4 but worse. Each chapter generally includes a reprise of dungeons (usually including events) from FF4, interspersed with a new dungeon or two, all with a single party or slight variations. Every chapter also has a “Challenge Dungeon” at the end that you can grind for XP and items to bring to the final chapter; which generally isn’t necessary.
Every set of characters has some variation of Palom and Porom’s Twincast ability in a new system called “bands”. You gain them through story events or by randomly testing combinations of abilities; they use the turns and a set amount of MP from both (or all) characters involved. Many of them are powerful and a bunch can ignore the damage cap in the late game, but they take a long time to charge up and are often outclassed by solo abilities.
“Moon phases” affect the power of various abilities; any given phase can strength or weaken Attack, Specials (monk abilities, ninjitsu, Jump, etc), Black Magic or White Magic. They change when you stay at an inn or use a tent, when a certain amount of real-time has passed, and at certain story events. There is some degree of strategy in cycling the moon phase before boss battles depending on the strengths of the boss and your party.
On that topic, several of the returning characters’ special abilities have been adjusted/upgraded. Edge’s Steal has become Mug, which attacks and attempts to steal, making it actually worthwhile. Rosa’s Pray restores more HP and some MP, as does FoSoYa’s Blessing. Porom’s Cry ability is gone, replaced with a Pray ability like Rosa’s. And Edward’s Salve can be used for Hi-Potions and X-Potions, and works with the accessory that doubles item effects, making him significantly more useful.
Ceodore’s chapter is fairly long and mostly introduction. Rydia’s chapter gives you the first of several times you’ll have no white mage, and makes up for it by giving her healing rod that heals the party when used as an item. (Protip: In the final chapter, go immediately to the Lodestone Cavern and get the Recovery Rod from the first chest. It’s an upgraded healing rod and it’ll make the rest of the chapter much easier.) Yang’s chapter is the shortest of the first few, because there’s no magic, no subtlety and no real strategy. Just KARATE everything you meet into submission. Palom was a self-centered jerk as a kid; he’s no better as an adult. Edge’s chapter involves a lot of solo areas, including four that are crossovers with the other chapters. There’s a reason the original game didn’t involve a lot of solo battles—the system doesn’t work well for it.
Similarly, the original system made sure you always have at least one physical fighter for a reason: The game is much, much easier when you’re not trying to rely solely on black magic to deal damage. Yang and Edge’s chapters are much easier than Palom, Porom or the Lunarians’. Upon reflection, the original was very good about making sure you almost always had access to both kinds of magic AND a physical tank. This forces you to play to your least-favorite strategy (whatever that is) by giving you severely unbalanced parties.
I think this would have been better as it was originally released, as basically a serial game via WiiWare. Because when all you have is one chapter for a month (or more), then it seems worthwhile to grind your characters to the level cap and play the challenge dungeons. When you can go straight on to the next chapter, all of that seems like a waste of time. Also, the repetitiveness of the chapters would be less of an issue: In two sequential chapters, you do the Watery Pass three times, which I’d complain about less if I didn’t play them two hours apart.
In the final chapter, you input all of your separate saves from previous chapters and continue on through the plot, but most of the dungeons are sealed off. I suspect this was done in the original to save program space (similar to how all the dungeons were sealed off in Disc four of FF8 and FF9), though it feels kinda arbitrary.
Honestly, so much of this game feels like an exercise in gameplay padding. For every new dungeon, you do an old dungeon at least once, and many of them you do twice. Heck, several of the new dungeons get done twice.
Only a couple of the chapters feel like they are justified by the story events that happen in them or the characterization they enable. Edge’s is the worst, because it mostly re-hashes events from previous chapters with a slightly different viewpoint; but neither Edward nor Yang’s chapters actually add much and Palom and Porom’s chapters could easily have been cut significantly. I think they could have had a much stronger game overall if they’d gotten a merciless editor to chop it down to only important events and mostly new gameplay content.
The last segment is basically a boss rush (interspersed with cutscenes and occasional bits of dungeon for grinding) of every boss from FF4 you haven’t re-fought yet, followed by all of the major bosses from FF1, FF2, FF3, FF5 and FF6. (Remember the Soul of Chaos dungeons from the Dawn of Souls version of FF1? That’s basically what they did here. Except it’s not really optional if you want to complete the game. Only four of the 24 returning bosses can be skipped; and there are several pseudo-optional story battles mixed in, too.)During this segment, they put some conversations between characters at each save point, but you don’t actually get the explanation of the main plot until just before the final battle!
In the beginning of the last chapter, incidentally, you can by Spider Webs in Kaipo; they cast Slow on the entire enemy party. Buy a giant stack of them to use on every boss from there on out. (Stock up on Antidotes, too. You’ll thank me.) Also, I found that reflex memory of the original SNES version tends to prevent me from casting Protect and Shell (because they didn’t exist in that version). Cast them; they’re useful.
Though the boss rush does make you acutely aware of the weaknesses of the game’s systems: There really isn’t that much strategy compared to FF1 (which had a much better selection of buffs and debuffs, especially in the remakes where they actually worked) or FF5 (where the available party configurations were practically unlimited and there are many more available abilities). Most of these battles came down to: Choose the best moon phase. Cast Slow on the boss; cast Protect/Shell/Haste on party; go to town with attacks.
Overall: It only took twenty years, but I got the sequel to one of my favorite games in a format I could play it in. And make no mistake, this game was made for people like me, who’ve been fanboys since forever. But it falls flat in a lot of places, most notably in the lack of plot for the absurd amount of grinding and padding. Honestly, in the Final Fantasy pantheon, unless games like this are really your thing, I’d skip it.
Final Fantasy 4
Like most remakes, this has a graphical overhaul. I’m not wild about it; the character designs look a little too “iOS” cartoony, and the redrawn spells mostly take longer without adding a lot (except the Bloodsuck attack used by bats, which is thankfully faster). Also, the redrawn version of Bio lacks both the cool appearance and awesome sound effect of the original, which is irritating because it otherwise remains a great spell. The new summoned monster animations are very pretty, but like summons on most of the later systems, they feel too long to want to use regularly. This version also adds FMV cutscenes at a couple of points; I don’t remember if they’ve been in any other version, but they’re either from the PS1 version or they’re new.
In my recent replays of older games (Secret of Mana, A Link to the Past) I’ve been trying to play them a little differently than I “always” did, to make things more interesting and to see how my more recent play-style holds up. (Made more interesting by the fact that I know these games inside and out, by this point.) This run through Final Fantasy 4 has been similar: I’ve been exploiting various tricks I’ve known for years (like using weapons as items), de-equipping characters before they leave to save cash, running from battles that would be too costly or too boring/unrewarding to fight, and hitting enemy’s weaknesses hard. This led to a first for me: In the underworld, there are two optional caves you can visit before continuing the plot, the Sylph Cave and the Land of Summoned Monsters (aka the Feymarch). Both gives you some extra items and new summons for Rydia, and are decent places to acquire a bit of XP before heading on. They also both have damage tiles that necessitate Rosa casting Float on the entire party. This was the very first time I reached this point in the game, and had to grind levels before doing either cave because Rosa didn’t know Float yet!
It also occurred to me how short this game is when compared against the later installments, especially with the auto-dash feature and generally faster battles in this version. If not for the pre-final dungeon bonus dungeon (this keeps the two bonus dungeons from the GBA version, along with the ability to swap in any living character for the final segment), I would probably finish the game in about 15 hours. Though that lets you get the best weapons for those characters in an easier dungeon, then take them to the moon and use them to retrieve all of the original party’s best equipment from the Lunar Underground.
Among tips for an easy run: Keep Rydia equipped with a Rod until you get the Ice Rod; with both items, never attack, always go to the item menu and use them to cast spells instead. Tellah can do the same, or just use magic since he knows Osmose and can recover the MP. When you get to Mysidia, grind with the twins a little on the overworld, since Cecil’s new sword can insta-kill most of those enemies. Also, equip them with a Fire Rod and a Cure Staff, get an extra Fire Rod for Tellah, and buy the paladin armor early if you can afford it. Also, strip Cecil’s equipment (to sell) after the second Scarmiglion fight. When you get to Baron, if you have a lot of cash, you can go back through the Mist Cave, collect some items from Mist, and buy a Dancing Dagger (use as an item) for Palom. De-equip it after the Baigan fight and give it to Rydia when she re-appears. Buy mithril weapons and armor before going into Cave Magnes to use in the Dark Dragon fight. Make sure you have equipment for Rosa before returning the earth crystal. And fight Bahamut after getting FuSoYa but before returning to the blue planet—having two Reflect casters makes life much easier.
Final Fantasy 4: Interlude
This extra three-hour segment was added exclusively for this version. It plays like a fanhack and reminds me of Prophet’s Guile more than anything—they stitched together a bunch of pieces from the original game to tell a short “interim” story. You switch off a collection of characters (having Cecil the whole time, of course) and go through Mt. Hobs (slightly expanded), the Sealed Cave, the Eblan Cave, and the Underground Tower of Babil. (The party starts around level 30 and reaches level 40 by the end.)
Random observations: Why they decided to use the Sealed Cave, being one of the most complained-about dungeons in the original game, I have no idea. There’s a Developers Room slightly off the beaten path in the final area. It’s cute. (You can get the porno mag from one developer and trade it to another for a Golden Apple item.) They add one new weapon, the Index Finger sword, which lets Cecil hurt flans. It’s random. They call two random airship pilots Biggs and Wedge, but don’t bother to name the two monks who briefly join your party. The chests are all in their original spots and many of them have their original contents, though there are more Dry Ethers and Elixirs scattered about.
You end up rather mage-heavy for much of the game. The Osmose spell is really useful. Also, in an echo of my grinding on Underworld enemies during this run through the original, I ended up grinding right outside the Sealed Cave to get my party up to par.
They obvious pulled a few assets from The After Years while making this, but playing the games in “chronological order” (as I did) makes the most sense.
Final Fantasy 4: The After Years
Did I say Interlude felt like a fanhack? The After Years is that over and over again. It’s a series of chapters, each following a different central character. You can then import your characters from all the chapters into the final chapter, which is almost as long as the rest combined. The thing is, chapters means you have to do the grind over and over again, like in Dragon Quest 4 but worse. Each chapter generally includes a reprise of dungeons (usually including events) from FF4, interspersed with a new dungeon or two, all with a single party or slight variations. Every chapter also has a “Challenge Dungeon” at the end that you can grind for XP and items to bring to the final chapter; which generally isn’t necessary.
Every set of characters has some variation of Palom and Porom’s Twincast ability in a new system called “bands”. You gain them through story events or by randomly testing combinations of abilities; they use the turns and a set amount of MP from both (or all) characters involved. Many of them are powerful and a bunch can ignore the damage cap in the late game, but they take a long time to charge up and are often outclassed by solo abilities.
“Moon phases” affect the power of various abilities; any given phase can strength or weaken Attack, Specials (monk abilities, ninjitsu, Jump, etc), Black Magic or White Magic. They change when you stay at an inn or use a tent, when a certain amount of real-time has passed, and at certain story events. There is some degree of strategy in cycling the moon phase before boss battles depending on the strengths of the boss and your party.
On that topic, several of the returning characters’ special abilities have been adjusted/upgraded. Edge’s Steal has become Mug, which attacks and attempts to steal, making it actually worthwhile. Rosa’s Pray restores more HP and some MP, as does FoSoYa’s Blessing. Porom’s Cry ability is gone, replaced with a Pray ability like Rosa’s. And Edward’s Salve can be used for Hi-Potions and X-Potions, and works with the accessory that doubles item effects, making him significantly more useful.
Ceodore’s chapter is fairly long and mostly introduction. Rydia’s chapter gives you the first of several times you’ll have no white mage, and makes up for it by giving her healing rod that heals the party when used as an item. (Protip: In the final chapter, go immediately to the Lodestone Cavern and get the Recovery Rod from the first chest. It’s an upgraded healing rod and it’ll make the rest of the chapter much easier.) Yang’s chapter is the shortest of the first few, because there’s no magic, no subtlety and no real strategy. Just KARATE everything you meet into submission. Palom was a self-centered jerk as a kid; he’s no better as an adult. Edge’s chapter involves a lot of solo areas, including four that are crossovers with the other chapters. There’s a reason the original game didn’t involve a lot of solo battles—the system doesn’t work well for it.
Similarly, the original system made sure you always have at least one physical fighter for a reason: The game is much, much easier when you’re not trying to rely solely on black magic to deal damage. Yang and Edge’s chapters are much easier than Palom, Porom or the Lunarians’. Upon reflection, the original was very good about making sure you almost always had access to both kinds of magic AND a physical tank. This forces you to play to your least-favorite strategy (whatever that is) by giving you severely unbalanced parties.
I think this would have been better as it was originally released, as basically a serial game via WiiWare. Because when all you have is one chapter for a month (or more), then it seems worthwhile to grind your characters to the level cap and play the challenge dungeons. When you can go straight on to the next chapter, all of that seems like a waste of time. Also, the repetitiveness of the chapters would be less of an issue: In two sequential chapters, you do the Watery Pass three times, which I’d complain about less if I didn’t play them two hours apart.
In the final chapter, you input all of your separate saves from previous chapters and continue on through the plot, but most of the dungeons are sealed off. I suspect this was done in the original to save program space (similar to how all the dungeons were sealed off in Disc four of FF8 and FF9), though it feels kinda arbitrary.
Honestly, so much of this game feels like an exercise in gameplay padding. For every new dungeon, you do an old dungeon at least once, and many of them you do twice. Heck, several of the new dungeons get done twice.
Only a couple of the chapters feel like they are justified by the story events that happen in them or the characterization they enable. Edge’s is the worst, because it mostly re-hashes events from previous chapters with a slightly different viewpoint; but neither Edward nor Yang’s chapters actually add much and Palom and Porom’s chapters could easily have been cut significantly. I think they could have had a much stronger game overall if they’d gotten a merciless editor to chop it down to only important events and mostly new gameplay content.
The last segment is basically a boss rush (interspersed with cutscenes and occasional bits of dungeon for grinding) of every boss from FF4 you haven’t re-fought yet, followed by all of the major bosses from FF1, FF2, FF3, FF5 and FF6. (Remember the Soul of Chaos dungeons from the Dawn of Souls version of FF1? That’s basically what they did here. Except it’s not really optional if you want to complete the game. Only four of the 24 returning bosses can be skipped; and there are several pseudo-optional story battles mixed in, too.)During this segment, they put some conversations between characters at each save point, but you don’t actually get the explanation of the main plot until just before the final battle!
In the beginning of the last chapter, incidentally, you can by Spider Webs in Kaipo; they cast Slow on the entire enemy party. Buy a giant stack of them to use on every boss from there on out. (Stock up on Antidotes, too. You’ll thank me.) Also, I found that reflex memory of the original SNES version tends to prevent me from casting Protect and Shell (because they didn’t exist in that version). Cast them; they’re useful.
Though the boss rush does make you acutely aware of the weaknesses of the game’s systems: There really isn’t that much strategy compared to FF1 (which had a much better selection of buffs and debuffs, especially in the remakes where they actually worked) or FF5 (where the available party configurations were practically unlimited and there are many more available abilities). Most of these battles came down to: Choose the best moon phase. Cast Slow on the boss; cast Protect/Shell/Haste on party; go to town with attacks.
Overall: It only took twenty years, but I got the sequel to one of my favorite games in a format I could play it in. And make no mistake, this game was made for people like me, who’ve been fanboys since forever. But it falls flat in a lot of places, most notably in the lack of plot for the absurd amount of grinding and padding. Honestly, in the Final Fantasy pantheon, unless games like this are really your thing, I’d skip it.
Well...
Date: 2013-04-23 06:23 pm (UTC)Re: Well...
Date: 2013-04-23 09:43 pm (UTC)