Final Fantasy IV

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North American SNES box art.

Final Fantasy IV, originally released in the USA as "Final Fantasy II," is a fantasy role-playing game developed and published by Square on 1991-07-19 for the SNES. It is the fourth Final Fantasy game.

I remember seeing this game being played by a friend after I had seen Final Fantasy VI, so it seemed quite dated to me. I made a joke at it, but my friend explained that it's actually a great game. Many years later, I played through and found that it is indeed a good game.

Status

I do not own this game, but I have beaten it on the SNES.

Review

  • Overall: 7/10
  • Best Version: ?

Good

  • I like the variety of different characters and classes. It allows you the ability to appreciate the subtleties of the combat engine.
  • For it's time, the graphics and sound are above average.
  • The battle complexity is not too simple or too hard to enjoy. You have many different attacks to choose from, and the monsters have many different abilities to take into account.
  • The game is entertaining to the point where you want to keep playing and the story is compelling enough to want to see what is going to happen next.
  • You only need to do a small amount of grinding in each section to be plenty powerful enough to stay alive through the game.
  • Having played Final Fantasy VI first, I wasn't that impressed by the music in this game when I first played it. However, I think this is the very first SNES game for Nobuo Uematsu, so he may not have had enough time to familiarize himself with the new audio architecture, or the driver may not have been as powerful. After awhile, it grew on me, and now I appreciate it a lot more.

Bad

  • The story is very linear meaning the game is identical every play through, and, with only a few side-quests, you will see almost everything the game has to offer the first time you beat it.
  • The story overdoes several elements. Porom and Palom, Sid, and Yang all martyr themselves, and are later found to be alive. Edward, Sid, and Yang all end up bedridden through the remainder of the game with no way to get them back until the very end.
  • I would have liked to see more weapons and armor for the spell casters and ninjas. They're often stuck with old equipment for long stints while the fighters keep getting upgrades.
  • Like most RPGs, the game suffers from having a wide variety of spells that are either too weak or completely useless. Piggy never works on enemies, Psych never stole more than 1 MP, Drain doesn't steal nearly enough HP to be useful, etc.

Ugly

  • Normally, dialog boxes are closed with the A button, but this game allows the D-pad to close dialog boxes. This caused me to miss numerous messages without any way to go back and read them.

Media

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Titles

Language Native Transliteration Translation
English (Original American) Final Fantasy II
English (Re-release) Final Fantasy IV
Japanese ファイナルファンタジー Fainaru Fantaji IV Final Fantasy IV

Links

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