Final Fantasy 4: Unprecedented Crisis
Jun. 29th, 2015 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroWhen in doubt I just drift back to my old favorite games: This will mark the eighth different version of FF4 I've played, and at least my dozenth time through the game. (Also, it turns out that when you know the game as well as I do, you can burn though it in under ten hours.) The patch can be found here.
This is a really, really impressive fanhack. The changes seem minor until you get on the boat to Baron, at which point the plot changes radically: Leviathan never sinks the ship, so instead of running two steps behind Golbez for the rest of the game, the party actually gets ahead of him. Rydia never ages up; Cecil can opt to stay a Dark Knight; certain characters don't show up until much later. Both mind control and the Lunerians are dropped entirely, many characters survive who otherwise wouldn't, and the dungeon order is heavily altered.
The opening sequence is unchanged, and a bunch of the features popular in other hacks (b-button dashing, heavy retranslations) aren't present. The translation changes are all relatively minor and usually item/character related: Heal potions as "Remedy" and Life as "Phoenix". The Callers of Mist are called "Summoners". The Fiends have their full names used. A bunch of equipment is either changed or just renamed.
The equipment system has been overhauled, and that's the first big change: Rydia equips gloves, and the "ring" items are now equipped as shields. Lots of items are renamed, and there's an assortment of new swords for Dark Knight Cecil that aren't dark-aligned. (Cecil also wears generic armor, instead of the Shadow equipment.) Rods and staves can still be used as items in-battle. Characters get some of their Hardtype abilities back (Dark Wave, etc) but some also get new abilities, like Rydia's "Help!" and Cid's "Rage".
If I had a big complaint, it's that your party composition doesn't include a proper healer for most of the game--because Rosa has been changed to an archer, only Tellah and Porom are real healers. You have an abundance of black magic, though.
An assortment of sidequests are added just before the trip to the moon, which allow you to remove the party you have at that point and add in returning characters. There's clearly an issue with the hack with characters joining your party: Apparently if you have a full party and a character tries to join, they're just lost forever; though it warns you about this repeatedly. This meant that I actually kept three different saves, so that I could try every sidequest but not get stuck with a party I hated for the endgame. In a perfect world, you'd be able to put party members you weren't using someplace to swap them in again later (like in FF4 Advance and later versions), but I can understand the fanhackers not being able to deal with adding that feature.
Overall: This was one of the best hacks--for me--that I've played since Crimson Echoes. It didn't try to be "hard mode", but it did a massive overhaul of the plot that fit together nicely and adding a lot of interesting content. It's an AU fic of FF4, and I loved it.
This is a really, really impressive fanhack. The changes seem minor until you get on the boat to Baron, at which point the plot changes radically: Leviathan never sinks the ship, so instead of running two steps behind Golbez for the rest of the game, the party actually gets ahead of him. Rydia never ages up; Cecil can opt to stay a Dark Knight; certain characters don't show up until much later. Both mind control and the Lunerians are dropped entirely, many characters survive who otherwise wouldn't, and the dungeon order is heavily altered.
The opening sequence is unchanged, and a bunch of the features popular in other hacks (b-button dashing, heavy retranslations) aren't present. The translation changes are all relatively minor and usually item/character related: Heal potions as "Remedy" and Life as "Phoenix". The Callers of Mist are called "Summoners". The Fiends have their full names used. A bunch of equipment is either changed or just renamed.
The equipment system has been overhauled, and that's the first big change: Rydia equips gloves, and the "ring" items are now equipped as shields. Lots of items are renamed, and there's an assortment of new swords for Dark Knight Cecil that aren't dark-aligned. (Cecil also wears generic armor, instead of the Shadow equipment.) Rods and staves can still be used as items in-battle. Characters get some of their Hardtype abilities back (Dark Wave, etc) but some also get new abilities, like Rydia's "Help!" and Cid's "Rage".
If I had a big complaint, it's that your party composition doesn't include a proper healer for most of the game--because Rosa has been changed to an archer, only Tellah and Porom are real healers. You have an abundance of black magic, though.
An assortment of sidequests are added just before the trip to the moon, which allow you to remove the party you have at that point and add in returning characters. There's clearly an issue with the hack with characters joining your party: Apparently if you have a full party and a character tries to join, they're just lost forever; though it warns you about this repeatedly. This meant that I actually kept three different saves, so that I could try every sidequest but not get stuck with a party I hated for the endgame. In a perfect world, you'd be able to put party members you weren't using someplace to swap them in again later (like in FF4 Advance and later versions), but I can understand the fanhackers not being able to deal with adding that feature.
Overall: This was one of the best hacks--for me--that I've played since Crimson Echoes. It didn't try to be "hard mode", but it did a massive overhaul of the plot that fit together nicely and adding a lot of interesting content. It's an AU fic of FF4, and I loved it.
