My Good Friends, it is time for my official introduction, as part of It’s Dangerous To Go Alone! As the final member to produce a review of my own, I feel it is my duty to ask for your assistance in finding fellow video game nerds who would wish to view out reviews. As I type we are working on the best way to archive our reviews, and should have results within a few weeks. Now, on with the review!
So, what do you think of when you hear RPG? World of Warcraft? WRONG! *Smacks you* No, what you should think of is one RPG that has proven that not all incredibly long series suck or die: Final Fantasy. Since the first game came out in Japan in 1987, the games have been released, rereleased, and rerereleased over more than half a dozen systems, and over multiple companies, be it Nintendo, Sony, and most recently, Apple. My game of choice for this review goes nowhere near as far back as the 80s, but merely a rerelease from 2008. My fellow video game fanatics, It’s Dangerous To Go Alone presents…
Final Fantasy IV!
Cover
In my opinion, Final Fantasy IV(From here on abbreviated to IV, cause I’m lazy) is definitely one of the better games given to us by Squaresoft. Beginning on the SNES, IV has appeared on the Playstation, WonderSwan, GBA, DS, Wii, and on Japanese mobile phones. Besides some tiny cosmetic changes, most of these release appear to be the same, simply in a different format. I have played the most unique of the releases, given to us on the DS.
Story:
We are introduced at the very beginning to the Dark Knight of Baron and Air Force Commander, Cecil Harvey. After stealing a magic crystal from a town of magicians and sorcerers, he begins to question whether the king of baron is actually doing what’s best. (An evil king, stealing? Preposterous!) Upon speaking his mind, the king becomes enraged and stripped of his ability to command air ships and turned into a courier and ordered to deliver a package to the village of mist, which is the only village on the entire planet that has summoners. Now, I just need to point this out-in the Playstation version, the ‘package’ was called the Bomb Ring, give you three guesses what’s gonna happen when you deliver the package. Cecil is accompanied by his good friend Kain Highwind, who’s special power is jumping. You also meet their childhood friend/love interest, Rosa Farrell, whom you won’t see again for a good while. When the two reach Mist, they are attacked by a huge, awesome looking dragon made of Mist. They kill the dragon and enter the village, only to meet a young girl named Rydia. Turns out when you kill a summon(Like the mist dragon), you kill the person who summoned it, in this case the summoner was Rydia’s mother-you bastards! Before you can even begin to feel bad, your conscious gets even heavier as the package turns out to contain four bombs, which blow up the village-big shocker! Rydia, pissed that you killed her mommy, summons a huge freaking giant to cause an earthquake, which separates Cecil and Kain. Upon regaining consciousness, he finds the earthquake has magically teleported him safely to another town. Angered the king would lie about the package(It was called a BOMB ring, what did you think was gonna happen?) He and Rydia set out on a magic quest to stop Baron from doing more evil things. And thus, the quest truly begins. (For those of you who are familiar with brentalfloss, this would be the time to start playing Final Fantasy Classic with Lyrics)
Gameplay and Combat:
IV, like most games in the Final Fantasy saga, allows you to travel over a giant world map, at times coming in contact with towns or some form of nature which you can enter. Nature normally serves as a dungeon, which you must travel through while finding treasure to either progress to the next village, or reach a boss. The villages primarily serve as means to heal your party, buy weapons with which to kill things, or find subtle clues on what to do next. IV was a turning point was a turning point in the Final Fantasy Battle system, as it was the first to unveil the Active Time Battle system. Instead of simply choosing your character’s command and letting the game decide what characters attacked in what order(be it you or your enemies), you could now control your characters in real time. A gauge appears next to the character’s name and HP bar, which will slowly fill. No matter how quickly you input the commands, each character’s gauge would fill at its own pace, allowing you more time to plan a strategy rather than simply clicking ‘attack’ every turn. IV is also unique among FF games in that it is the only game in the entire series that allows you to control a maximum of five characters per battle, as opposed to the standard 3-4. This allows for a wide variety of attack and more fun-especially when you have more characters later on. And there WILL be a lot of characters to enjoy, a max of 12 over the entire game. Being able to rotate between magic, summoning, healing, and attacking all in one round definitely shows how badass this game’s combat system is.
Graphics:
Ok, it’s a DS game, it doesn’t have the best graphics in the world. But for a DS game, they’re pretty damn good(most games from Square on the DS have had great graphics). Here, let’s have a look:
Click here pl0x!
Compared to what these graphics looked like on the original SNES release(Completely flat and scrunched together), these are pretty impressive. And even outside of battle, there isn’t much lost between graphic transitions. If anything, the characters look better when you can get a close up view of them on the world map.
Conclusion:
Final Fantasy IV is definitely my favorite of the FF series, and you can see why. Great gameplay, amazing characters, and a very in depth story. And the best part, being a near 2-year old game, this game can be bought at an actually good price of $20($10 if you want the GBA version). I would greatly suggest at the very least borrowing it from me or someone else, you won’t regret it.
And thus concludes my first review, I’m off to go save the Crystals…or the orbs…or the moon…Whatever.
And Remember, It’s Dangerous To Go Alone!
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