I’m very late to the Final Fantasy IV (or, as I used to know, Final Fantasy II, the original Super Nintendo incarnation) party: I didn’t finish the game until 2000 for the first time The increasingly imprecisely named Final Fantasy game is the one I’ve replayed most often, so when the opportunity arose to review it, I took it. The Pixel Remaster format lacks a few things, but it still holds up.
Final Fantasy IV certainly starts off with a bang, as hero Cecil is being attacked by monsters right after the jump when he returns from a military mission on behalf of the formerly peaceful Kingdom of Baron. After the cleanup, Cecil is stripped of his orders by the king for daring to question why the kingdom was attacking other nations to obtain crystals, and must instead deliver a “bomb ring” to a nearby village. If that question is a small domino, then the final giant domino is “literally a whale in space flying to the moon to destroy intergalactic evil”, with Cecil’s true love A certain Rosa, his friend, is accompanied by the first instance of “face heel”. The game’s Kane’s revolving door’ and an ever-changing group of people with specific skill sets.
The combat system is as basic as any 32-year-old RPG should be, with a unique turn-based “Active Time Battle” system. Battle screen. Yes, all encounters are random, but one of the biggest additions to the Pixel Remaster version is the ability to toggle encounters on and off by pressing the right stick or selecting a menu option. Use equipped weapons to use character-specific abilities, including magic, or use items from the menu when the meter on the right is full. Emphasize that is tied to the character.In the game, there are exactly two times that anyone changes their class ability. No. Anyone who learns magic learns a new spell at a stipulated level.Unbalanced team composition: In the time it took to clear the first one dungeon, I had 3 squeeze magic users and a party of melee attackers with a small healing ability to three melee attackers and magic users who cannot physically earn magic points. I couldn’t understand why it had to happen.
The most obvious way to avoid unstable team compositions is to grind. Thankfully, Pixel Remaster makes this incredibly easy. In-Game Boost – A switchable setting for money and experience that can be set between 0 and 4 times the normal value. This means you were in the final dungeon with about 10 hours of in-game time. If you don’t see if you can easily polish the best armor in the game in the final dungeon, you’ll probably finish the game in under 12 hours. (And got armor for the whole party. I think the pixel remaster also buffed the drop rate of the items I traded in to get the armor.) For comparison, I believe the clear times in the file Masu (SNES) Defeated FFII. Twenty-three years ago he was 36 hours, but he is often called “EasyType” because he brought it back to Japan. Unfortunately, later re-releases of FFIV offered additional content, so I had to dig through the SNES cartridges to check it out – two bonus dungeons and a modified party beyond Cecil in the GBA and PlayStation Portable versions. ability to play, and carryover options for New Game+ and abilities. From the DS version on Steam. None of that content has been reworked here, as I feared on first impressions.
The first release of the Pixel Remaster version was heavily and frequently criticized for its choice of very left-aligned and small Western fonts. Square Enix listened and offered us his second choice of fonts for console release. Thank heaven for that. The new font is much larger, better suited to the art style of these 2D games, and generally easier on my eyes. There wasn’t, but the remaster offers it as an option for those who want to get involved. The game works very well.
Retro filtering aside, I’ve never seen Final Fantasy IV look this good. The character’s sprite reflects the finer details of the original artwork by Yoshitaka Amano, and one of his flying vehicles on the map lets you finally see the shadows on the ground. The new version of the soundtrack sounds exactly how I envisioned it at the time, but if it doesn’t sound pretty you have the option to go with the original version. Personally, I wouldn’t bother flipping that switch.
If you love a game, it’s tempting to ignore its flaws, but you can’t do that here. Especially since I’m really hoping to trade a rated E10+ superstar out of the endgame party for someone who knows what the defensive stats are. It’s been around, and it’s nice to finally see it on the Switch in some form.
