The Shrine

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http://ds.ign.com/articles/887/887583p1.html

Played a few hours of the Japanese one but figured I'd wait for the English version to finish. Stoked.

"Square Enix delivers the definitive version of its classic RPG epic."

I'll prolly pick this game up, since Phoenix Wright has me bored with it ATM, but I'm going on record to say this:

Fuck FFIV. People have been holding this fucking game up on a golden pedastol for decades now and doesn't fucking deserve it. The first iteration was unbalanced and insidiously difficult, with cumbersome inventory systems and a lot of "hit or miss" characters. Golbez never really came across as a compelling villain, especially since he literally just shows up in the plot, Cecil's journey from being a dark character to a light one is tacky and superfluous, and there's no long-term reprecussions for his past actions later in the game. As soon as he becomes a Paladin, everybody basically forgives him. Additionally, you spend almost half the game LOSING, and you never get a permenant party until the end, which limits the amount of customization and character building you can do. Most of the characters are pretty 2-dimensional, and there isn't anything in the game that's particularly transcendent.

Now, a number of those problems have been fixed with better translations/script rewrites, the GBA fixed the character issue by bringing them all back at the end, and since this DS version seems to flesh out the story a lot more, as well as add better technical presentation, I'm likely going to be more than satisfied with it.

However, I think people have this bizarre impression that Pre-FFVI Final Fantasy games are these glorious masterpieces, FFIV being everyone's favorite. Frankly, though, its the exact same shit as all the others before it. Sure, it had more characters and more dialogue and more...plot...but ultimately it was just another story of a creature of infinite darkness destroying crystals and trying to explode the world. I don't feel it really deserves much of the praise it gets.

RentCavalier wrote:I'll prolly pick this game up, since Phoenix Wright has me bored with it ATM, but I'm going on record to say this:

Fuck FFIV. People have been holding this fucking game up on a golden pedastol for decades now and doesn't fucking deserve it. The first iteration was unbalanced and insidiously difficult, with cumbersome inventory systems and a lot of "hit or miss" characters. Golbez never really came across as a compelling villain, especially since he literally just shows up in the plot, Cecil's journey from being a dark character to a light one is tacky and superfluous, and there's no long-term reprecussions for his past actions later in the game. As soon as he becomes a Paladin, everybody basically forgives him. Additionally, you spend almost half the game LOSING, and you never get a permenant party until the end, which limits the amount of customization and character building you can do. Most of the characters are pretty 2-dimensional, and there isn't anything in the game that's particularly transcendent.

Now, a number of those problems have been fixed with better translations/script rewrites, the GBA fixed the character issue by bringing them all back at the end, and since this DS version seems to flesh out the story a lot more, as well as add better technical presentation, I'm likely going to be more than satisfied with it.

However, I think people have this bizarre impression that Pre-FFVI Final Fantasy games are these glorious masterpieces, FFIV being everyone's favorite. Frankly, though, its the exact same shit as all the others before it. Sure, it had more characters and more dialogue and more...plot...but ultimately it was just another story of a creature of infinite darkness destroying crystals and trying to explode the world. I don't feel it really deserves much of the praise it gets.

I think I might hate you now. Polum, Porum, Kain, Rydia, Edge, Edward, and Tellah all have compelling storylines. Just because Cecil is a douche like all FF main characters doesn't mean you should write off the whole game. Also, Yang and his wife are amazing.

While I agree it was a flawed game, and that it suffered quite a bit from those flaws, there are a few things that I have to say. First, it did have the best music of any game at the time. Second, it had one of the most in depth stories of any game at the time. Third, it was far from being an overly difficult RPG, it was one of the easiest games in the entire Epic adventure/RPG genre... It was the first RPG I think I ever played where you couldn't die easily before hitting the dungeon boss.

The Japanese version wasn't necessarily any harder because you get to use stuff like Dark Wave in the earlier phases, and later on the difficulty is about the same. It is difficult in an absolute sense because if Rydia doesn't have enough HP to survive 1 Big Bang from Zeromus then there is a random chance you'll die to him no matter how good you are. I've seen videos of low level game clears and they all revolve around getting lucky on Big Bangs being spaced out far enough that you can outheal it with just Rosa alive (and generally involving Kain jumping on time to avoid a Big Bang to lessen the healing needed).

I don't think FF4 is all that great, but there's nothing particularly bad about it, either.

The original SNES release was hard? Oh, hold on, the kid must be talking about the GBA version. Well, Rent, if you thought that one was hard, this one is gonna make you it's bitch

FF4 was a huge landmark RPG title here when it came out on the SNES. It was the first one to have true characters instead of generic ones, it had a much more epic feel to it, and it still has some of the best music in FF history. It's a little easy and feels dated now and hasn't held up quite as well as later SNES RPGs like CT or FF6, but it's put on a pedestal 'cause it changed RPGs here and until FF6 came out, it wasn't really beat.

The ever changing characters allowed for unparalleled story telling for its time and from an American POV the difference between it and FF1 was so absolutely amazing that FF2 def gripped and didnt let go until the end. Wow, thats a horrible sentence i just wrote, but so is three versions of fuck in only two sentences.

The difficulty was fine.

It wasn't so much that the game itself was DIFFICULT--there were a number of VERY excruciating boss fights here and there, but my major gripe is that you have almost no control over your party layout, and most of the extra characters suck (Edward). My major gripe is the fucking RETARDED encounter system.

Random encounters in that game followed some twisty moon logic that made them unbearably common, and that alone made the game itself much much harder. Also, Palom and Porom are not engaging characters. The best ones of the bunch were Yang, Tellah, and maybe Rydia. Rosa was always fairly meh, and Kain vs Cecil got very old very fast.

And for the record, I first played FFIV on the Playstation, in FF Chronicles, so if that version was summarily fucked up in technical terms, maybe my perception is skewed by a lousy port.

And, while I liked Edge, he was a fairly lousy Ninja. He's more of a black mage with good physical stats than an actual Ninja. Shadow was a ninja. Stealth people, its all about stealth.

Zeus wrote:FF4 was a huge landmark RPG title here when it came out on the SNES. It was the first one to have true characters instead of generic ones,

Cough!!

How many people died in FF4? How many of those people were brought to life? That alone was pretty damaging to the storyline. After a while, you really didn't give two shits about people dying.

Sure, FF4 was one of the first JRPGs I played, but FF6 was infinitely better.

RentCavalier wrote:It wasn't so much that the game itself was DIFFICULT--there were a number of VERY excruciating boss fights here and there, but my major gripe is that you have almost no control over your party layout, and most of the extra characters suck (Edward). My major gripe is the fucking RETARDED encounter system.

Random encounters in that game followed some twisty moon logic that made them unbearably common, and that alone made the game itself much much harder. Also, Palom and Porom are not engaging characters. The best ones of the bunch were Yang, Tellah, and maybe Rydia. Rosa was always fairly meh, and Kain vs Cecil got very old very fast.

And for the record, I first played FFIV on the Playstation, in FF Chronicles, so if that version was summarily fucked up in technical terms, maybe my perception is skewed by a lousy port.

And, while I liked Edge, he was a fairly lousy Ninja. He's more of a black mage with good physical stats than an actual Ninja. Shadow was a ninja. Stealth people, its all about stealth.

The PSX ports of the SNES titles are almost unplayable due to load times. Trust me, the encounters were MUCH less painful on the SNES and GBA versions.

FF4 isn't very hard aside from a few notable battles, like:

Velivous (2nd time) - If you don't slow her it gets really, really hard when she starts doing Maelstorms.

The eyeball that guards the white lance - No way to win unless you're above a certain level with the Doom on everyone attack.

Zeromus - No way to win below about level 60 which is about what Rydia has to be to survive Big Bang. If you're able to win you either had a lot of stuff to throw at him (Excalibur, Spoon, etc) or you were very lucky on the timing of his Big Bangs.

A lot of gimmick fights that you can't win without using Wall, like Bahamut and Asura.

The only legitmate hard fight is probably the evil wall guy. That guy is tough but it's not an unreasonable jump in difficulty or requires some really weird combination of stuff to win.

The Kain betrayal thing gets old after the first time. The only character I thought that was interesting was Rydia. Most of the plot in FF4 is like a precursor from Naruto. When the plot stalls, kill someone off to create a new climax! But unlike Naruto people, people don't stay dead in FF4 so it's not even much of a climax.

RentCavalier wrote: And for the record, I first played FFIV on the Playstation, in FF Chronicles,

Ok, this makes a little more sense. As much as we hate to admit it on this board, we get nostalgic about re-releases of our favorite games as kids.

I still remember racing home from elementary school to play FF2 to see what happens next and loving the huge leap of quality it was from what was currently out. I can understand with your feelings that playing it later might seem, meh, much like FF5j was when i finally got a chance to rip on it as an adult.

From what I've read, FF4 DS is the hardest version of FF4 by far. They assume you've played the game before. Keep that in mind if you're just looking for a fun romp.

Dutch wrote:

Zeus wrote:FF4 was a huge landmark RPG title here when it came out on the SNES. It was the first one to have true characters instead of generic ones,

Cough!!

Yes, I played PS too before FF2 came out. But I figured "that people actually played" would be implicit in that. It don't matter how much you innovate if you don't have much of an audience. Sega fans played it, but that was only a small fraction of the market

Zeus wrote:

Dutch wrote:

Zeus wrote:FF4 was a huge landmark RPG title here when it came out on the SNES. It was the first one to have true characters instead of generic ones,

Cough!!

Yes, I played PS too before FF2 came out. But I figured "that people actually played" would be implicit in that. It don't matter how much you innovate if you don't have much of an audience. Sega fans played it, but that was only a small fraction of the market

None the less, the landmark title that you described was not FF4. Phantasy Star was also popular enough. When it came out here it was easily more popular than Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, even despite the Master System not having a large userbase.

Dutch wrote:When it came out here it was easily more popular than Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior

You're 100% correct! FF and DW weren't even out when PS came out here so there's no way they could be as popular.

Dutch wrote:

Zeus wrote:

Dutch wrote: Cough!!

Yes, I played PS too before FF2 came out. But I figured "that people actually played" would be implicit in that. It don't matter how much you innovate if you don't have much of an audience. Sega fans played it, but that was only a small fraction of the market

None the less, the landmark title that you described was not FF4. Phantasy Star was also popular enough. When it came out here it was easily more popular than Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, even despite the Master System not having a large userbase.

For something to be a landmark, it has to have influence. To have influence, you have to have a large enough fanbase to have significant reach. As great as PS1 was (I still call it the best 8-bit RPG I ever played), not enough people cared for it to be a landmark title. It had a rabid fanbase, yes - I was one of them - but that doesn't mean it was influencal or a landmark title

Zeus wrote:

Dutch wrote:

Zeus wrote: Yes, I played PS too before FF2 came out. But I figured "that people actually played" would be implicit in that. It don't matter how much you innovate if you don't have much of an audience. Sega fans played it, but that was only a small fraction of the market

None the less, the landmark title that you described was not FF4. Phantasy Star was also popular enough. When it came out here it was easily more popular than Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, even despite the Master System not having a large userbase.

For something to be a landmark, it has to have influence. To have influence, you have to have a large enough fanbase to have significant reach. As great as PS1 was (I still call it the best 8-bit RPG I ever played), not enough people cared for it to be a landmark title. It had a rabid fanbase, yes - I was one of them - but that doesn't mean it was influencal or a landmark title

Phantasy Star 2 and 3 were also before Final Fantasy 4, and they were certainly popular enough. A lot of the reason why people looked forward to Phantasy Star 2 was because either they played the first one or knew its reputation. But to say Phantasy Star was not influential isn't right, Final Fantasy 2j, FF4, and Dragon Quest 4 were made as direct responses to that series.

\ discussion

RentCavalier wrote:Additionally, you spend almost half the game LOSING, and you never get a permenant party until the end, which limits the amount of customization and character building you can do.

two of the biggest reasons why i think FFIV is awesome.

when you spend most of the time winning, that just means the villains are lame and incompetent. when you have halfway decent villains you lose sometimes.

recent games are so scared of people like you, that are so wrapped up in building a group of people to customize, it always take a large element away from the storyline.

you never lose any major characters, every character that matters you don't get to use them much at all and you never really get a chance to grow attached to them.

you have games like Suikoden and Chrono Cross and you get tons of people to customize and you really care about like 3 of them.

FFIV is nowhere near perfect though, the revival of nearly every character that you supposedly lost is lame. the entire Zeromus and the moon part is lame.

Almost all RPG has the good guys losing until the end, or it wouldn't be much of a struggle. But in FF4 you lose in a very pathetic manner, on par with Shining Force Neo where Vandolf always comes in and smash the force crystal you're trying to protect right as you get there. And whereas SFN guys actually started noticing Vandolf always has the villian's backdoor pass to the crystal rooms, it seems like the good guys in FF4 never figured this out with their respective crystal rooms.

And if you want a game where the good guys are winning, I'd say Suikoden 3 is the best example.

Don wrote:Almost all RPG has the good guys losing until the end, or it wouldn't be much of a struggle.

"losing" but with nearly no ramifications on your party. how many times do you beat Seymour in FFX?

Suikoden 3 had a great story, but it was SO BORING...

It took so long for you to get to the best part (recruitment) and the battle system was atrocious. Any game where my OWN MAGIC can hurt my own people, especially if I have NO WAY to control their position on the battlefield, sucks ass. HUGE.

Just a friendly reminder, Final Fantasy 4 is out tomorrow =)