GameSpy
Review
of Final Fantasy IV
Every RPG fan should play Final Fantasy IV at least once. Seventeen years after its release, the game is still a brilliant example of solid storyline, excellent character turnover and fast pace, both in battles and in exploration sessions. Its main characters are still remembered with affection by thousands of gamers and its soundtrack is so popular that it's even taught to Japanese children in music classes. There's no need to talk about the plot here: If you've already played the game, you know what we're talking about. If you were born sometime after 1990 and you've managed to get this far without any spoilers, you should definitely pick up the game and see it yourself. One more reason to do so: the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV is the best version yet.
The modernization efforts made by the Square Enix team are immediately visible when inserting the game card: Final Fantasy IV now opens with a beautiful introductory movie, in which every character is featured in realistic proportions in full dual-screen glory. Cecil, Rydia and the other characters have never been this real, expressing their emotions and moving in a fluid way. The graphic style used in-game is, however, slightly different, as characters are now represented by polygonal models with big heads and a smaller lower body. The effect is cute, especially with the big anime-style eyes expressing so much of characters' personalities, and makes a nice substitute for the beloved sprites from the original version. Further, almost every cut-scene in the game is fully voice acted; from Kain's deep bass voice to Rosa's sweet tones, everybody sounds exactly the way players have been imagining them for seventeen years. Along with the evergreen soundtrack, the voice acting makes Final Fantasy IV a pleasure to listen to when wearing headphones.
Unlike the Final Fantasy III remake, which was beautiful but still bore traces of old-school, somewhat slow gameplay, Final Fantasy IV manages to successfully stand the challenge of time. The pace is faster and the tedious job of leveling up is eased by the continuous character turnover in which some party members disappear for a while and then come back, making up quickly for the missed time. As for battles, Final Fantasy IV marked the introduction of Square's well-known ATB (Active Time Battle) system. This system has been kept intact in the DS remake: Players will still have to input orders for their characters in real time, but they can now choose between six different levels of speed. This option shouldn't be underestimated, as the general difficulty of Final Fantasy IV DS is much closer to the original Japanese version of the game than to the dumbed-down game published in North America in 1991.
The game also features an auto-battle system which can be activated by pressing the X button. This speeds up random battles, but players will still have to take full control of their characters when facing real challenges, heavily relying on their individual skills. Strategy is more important than in other Final Fantasy installments and picking the right spell or ability in the shortest time can really change the outcome of a battle. Thankfully, the new menu system allows players to customize their control bars, placing the most-used abilities in the main menu. Even spells can be positioned in a different order, which is great for quick access.
Summons take full advantage of the DS' capabilities and are now introduced by nice cut-scenes. Rydia's new Eidolon, the Whyt, is a funny white creature that opens several possibilities for customization and mini-games. After accessing the Whyt menu by talking to a fat Chocobo, players will be able to design their own Eidolon's face with the mini-editor and play some short mini-games. This is the only time the DS stylus is used. Mini-games include solving simple math problems, throwing shurikens at enemies, meditationg for a certain number of seconds and killing as many goblins as possible. Not all of them are fun, but they all help to increase the Whyt's stats. The same Eidolon can also be used to challenge friends in multiplayer battles in local Wi-Fi. This is something that very few players will probably do, as the main single-player story draws most of the attention. Other than the Whyt, the fat Chocobo also unlocks a bestiary and a collection of cut-scenes and music tracks, a nice addition to the DS version.
Along with the characters, the settings have been heavily reworked too. Players move in beautiful 3D environments displayed on the top screen, with the bottom screen being mainly used for the overworld map and for smaller maps such as dungeons, mountains and castles. One of the best additions in the DS version of Final Fantasy IV is the reward that comes from exploring every single map in its entirety: When the indicator in the lower-right corner of the bottom screen reaches 100% for a given map, players get number of useful items. Sets of five potions or three Ethers are given away at the beginning of the game, but rewards become more and more consistent as characters level up and are better-equipped. In addition, players can now carry an unlimited number of items instead of having to store some of them with a Chocobo.
The new Augment System allows players some customization. Abilities known as Augments can be found randomly and assigned to one of the party members, becoming a permanent option in their menu. There are abilities such as Item Lore, that doubles the effect of items, along with the more obvious Auto-Potion and Limit Break. Even better, the Augment System is a powerful tool to pass rare abilities down from a character to another. As characters' abilities would be lost forever when they leave the party, players can now have other party members learn them as Augments. This is even more useful in case you decide to beat the game once and restart it all over again, with Augments accumulating from the previous playthrough.
Give that this is a remake, one would have expected the development team to go even further and fix a couple of technical issues. The problems that affect Final Fantasy IV are those of an old RPG: the maximum number of HP and MP for each character is not shown in battle, making it harder to decide when to use an item or a healing spell; similarly, the characters' command queue is not displayed, so that there is no way to determine who will attack next and to consequently plan a strategy. Even Augments are not described properly, making the decision to assign them to one or another character a leap of faith. All these problems could have been solved with a little extra work; however, it would be unfair to consider them major flaws. Given how much work has been put into an already-excellent game to give it a modern feeling and a beautiful look, it's hard to sweat the little things.
©2008-07-25, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
