If there were any portable rerelease I’ve ever hoped for, it would be one for Final Fantasy IV. It is, without a doubt, my favorite video game of all time. I’ve played through that so many times, I have practically deconstructed every line in the game. Prior to its Game Boy Advance reissue, I bought three different copies of it – including the Japanese rerelease, just because I was too impatient for Final Fantasy Chronicles to come out. So it wasn’t a question of whether or not I’d get Final Fantasy IV Advance. It was merely a question of how much I’d love it.
The story remains completely unchanged. It starts with Cecil, a Dark Knight and captain of the nation of Baron’s elite air force, the Red Wings. They’ve just returned from having stolen the Water Crystal from the city of Mysidia, and Cecil is feeling guilty over attacking innocents to get the crystal. Angry, Baron’s king sends Cecil and his friend Kain to deliver a package to the village of Mist. From there, Cecil realizes the king of Baron’s power-hungry ways must be stopped, and he quickly moves in an inceasingly desperate race to prevent the destruction of the entire world.
It’s difficult to really discuss the story without getting into spoilers, as a lot happens in the game despite its relative shortness. However, all of the story elements that make this game a classic are still rendered well. You have Cecil and his quest for redemption and understanding. You have Kain, torn between his loyalty and friendship with Cecil to his jealousy of his close compatriot. You have Rydia, who forces herself to fight on and mature even as she feels overcome by her fears. I could really go on about each character, But that’s beyond the scope of this review and more the work of an academic paper. Suffice to say, however, that anyone who claims that few games have really pulled off meaning or emotion, and even then only recently, is full of themselves and not fully appreciative of Final Fantasy IV’s plot.
This might not hit modern gamers as deeply, but Final Fantasy IV was also significant because it was the first time you would ever see characters die and not come back in a game. While some of the characters eventually do come back, the game’s desperation is partly driven by the fact that several people give their lives to stop the ultimate villain. Even your best efforts aren’t enough to save everyone, making the urgency of the plot hit you all the more.
Perhaps the game’s best strength, however, is actually in its villains. Now, I’ll grant you that the game does rely on some classic RPG clichés – in at least a couple of cases, this game is the origin of them. Seriously, who thinks that Golbez will be the final boss? However, the game manages to fit in as many diverse types of villainy as possible. You have the mad scientist Dr. Lugae, who treats other lives like toys and delights in psychologically torturing his foes. You have Golbez himself, who wrestles with his own inner doubts while pursuing his goals. And, of course, you have the classic Rubicante, who heals you before fighting with you (to make the fight fair and honorable) and who treats you with a level of respect you never see out of most villains. We’re talking about a guy who compliments you with his final words (in this version, “Farewell, valiants”). The game works so well not just because the heroes are interesting and compelling, but because all the major players are.
This release comes with a new translation, and it does the job admirably well. It’s a bit more slang-heavy than the excellent work done on Final Fantasy Chronicles, so some will find this easier to read. Personally, I slightly favor the Playstation remake a bit more, but I certainly have high regards for the work done on this translation. Internet-savvy folks may wish to check out all the random chatter with townspeople, as several popular websites and Internet jokes are referenced in the game.
The gameplay itself, however, is a terrible hack job compared to any previous version. First, the good news. The basic system is still the same. This game was originally the introduction of the Active Time Battle system, which had each turn in battle come up at their own pace instead of everyone getting one attack in evenly divided turns. This was revolutionary back in the day, although at this point it might seem a bit simple to the unfamiliar. Characters are only customizable with their equipment; they always get roughly the same bonuses to levels and learn the same abilities at the same time. You don’t get any customization at all with the characters, but in some ways this is good. The enemies are always well-balanced against your party based on when you should, ideally, be first entering a given area. It’s impossible to see the game get cheesy against you or in your favor, which keeps the game a challenging (at times) but fair match. It also helps that this was one of the few games in which status ailments tend to work, and in fact are required against certain enemies. It’s nice to play a game where brute strength isn’t always required.
Actually, scratch that last line. That would be quite true if I was talking about the Playstation remake. See, now it’s time for the game’s serious bad news. For reasons I can’t fathom at all, the internal clock speed is well short of what it should be for this game. Battles encounter frequent slowdown at all times, and this hits the game whether you play it on the Game Boy Player, the Game Boy Advance, or the Nintendo DS. Thing is, it hits the computer much worse than your characters, and of course you can still react at your normal speed. Thus, the computer almost never reacts to you as quickly as it should (with the exception of monsters that automatically and immediately counterattack, like a Behemoth). As a consequence, most monsters are much easier in this version than they were even in the Super Nintendo North American version, where monsters had lower stats all around. Enemies that should be out of your league are quite possible in this version. Enemies that should be on your level are absolutely cake. And bosses? They get hit worst of all, for some reason, and it’s completely possible to take out some bosses before you can even see their signature moves.
The part that will frustrate many gamers, but particularly those who enjoyed the previous versions, is that there are quite a few abilities that get hit by this slowdown as well. Now, it’s not so bad that Yang’s Kick ability is hurt by this – most people don’t bother with it anyhow. It’s a bit annoying that Palom and Porom take forever to use Twin magic – but that ability is only useful for so long. But the fact that Kain’s Jump ability, which should be useful right up until the last fight you have him in, is slower than dirt (and some battles can start with you selecting the ability and end with you winning before he even starts using it) makes this game beyond frustrating. It actually got to the point at the end that I’d rather have Edward, the infamous spoony bard himself, in the party than Kain.
That brings me to another gameplay change, although this one is in Final Fantasy IV Advance’s favor. As veterans of the original version and the Playstation remake will recall, five former members of your party stay in Mysidia while your party goes to the final dungeon. Originally, they stayed there and just helped during a story sequence during the final battle. However, in this version, you can swap them in to replace your original party and fight the final boss with them. There’s also a new optional dungeon that gives you new equipment for them, and you get to see things you’d never predict – like Edward actually being useful against the last boss (seriously, he is).
One minor point on this, though – for some reason, there’s a bug in the game (on top of all the others) that keeps Yang from gaining any hit points at the end once he gets around 6000. I don’t understand this; nobody else in the game has any cap like that. However, fans of Yang will be sorely disappointed to discover that he is clearly the worst of the characters suddenly playable in the endgame.
The game also gives an extra dungeon that opens up upon the game’s completion, but this dungeon is honestly the worst extra dungeon I’ve ever seen. The enemies there are no stronger than ones in the final dungeon; they merely have more hit points and make the battles take a little longer. However, to help you cleave through things, they give you new equipment that turns your characters into nigh-invincible terrors. There’s a sword for Cecil that not only does monstrous amounts of damage above and beyond the Ragnarok sword found in the final dungeon, but has a chance of casting Holy on top of all its damage. Palom and Porom get gauntlets that enable them to cast the most powerful spell in the game for free via Twin magic. Kain is probably the most ridiculous, though. He gets a spear that not only does massive damage, but has a chance of casting a spell that instantly reduces any enemy – even the final boss – to single digits of hit points. I managed a two-hit kill on the final boss with his.
Now, if there’s any rule that I have about a video game, it’s that any game that allows a one-hit kill on a final boss is irredeemably bad. I’m going to stretch this a little and say that any game that allows a two-hit kill on a final boss (no matter how unlikely, given that the ability seems to work around 33% of the time) is nigh-irredeemably bad. A game that allows me to kill the final boss that quickly and easily honestly makes me angry. If I wanted to be spoon-fed the plot that easily, I’d have just read a book. It’s a game; you should have to earn it. I think I’m going to have to track down each game developer that puts in ways to cheap the final boss and squirt them with lemon juice until they get the hint – don’t make your final boss easy under any circumstance.
The funny thing is, the optional dungeon could have been solid. They could have given enemies new abilities. They could have made useful (but not overpowered) items that were really rare finds in the main game and made you earn them in the optional dungeon. For the record, I’d throw myself against a super-hard boss a thousand times if it meant I could get a Pink Tail out of it in FF4. There are enough rare items (even if they aren’t the best) in the game that they didn’t need to fill a dungeon with over-powered new items.
Finally, on bugs and tricks. The original Final Fantasy IV (and the Playstation remake) had two bugs that a player could exploit to make their lives easier. It was possible to duplicate weapons and shields (thereby raising more money for you) and it was possible to cast one particular summon spell for free under the right circumstances. These were removed, which does help game play balance a bit. However, a much worse bug replaces them which breaks the game worse than either old bug did. Sometimes, the game will randomly allow a character to act immediately, despite his active gauge being nearly empty. This is almost guaranteed (multiple times, even) during longer battles, meaning you’ll get a few extra shots at bosses (above and beyond the slowdown issues already mentioned). Great, because this somehow needed to be made even easier.
The game’s graphics are almost exactly like the original game’s graphics. The text is made a bit smaller to fit with the different dimensions of the portable screen, but it’s still easily readable. Moreover, the character portraits on the status screen (now also placed next to the characters’ dialogue when they speak) are retouched, and they do look much nicer. There are two enemies with an altered appearance – palette swaps of each other, they were translucent originally but now opaque – but beyond that the graphics are duplicated perfectly. The sprites are a bit small at times, and seem quite dated given how far video gaming has come in the 15 years since the original release. However, they’re still quite clear and distinct, and Square Enix were quite solid with the graphical shift.
The music does suffer a bit compared to the original, though. I know that we are talking the Game Boy Advance, and no portable Nintendo system is capable of playing good music out of its pitiful speakers (though the DS is passable). Despite this, Square Enix gave it a college try, and the MIDI files sound very close to the original. I’ll grant that they do sound a bit tinny, even on the Game Boy Player, however. I got the sense that Square Enix tried their hardest to get it to work on just the GBA, but didn’t go the extra mile for those playing it on any other system. Granted, some of the memorable tunes (like the battle theme for the Elemental Lords, previously known as the Four Fiends) are perfectly rendered, but many other songs (like the music played in most towns) sounds amateur.
Honestly, it pains me to play this game. It still has all of the story elements that I loved about it originally. It still looks just the way I remember it. And the music, while not quite as good, is as good as I could have hoped to expect. But yet, despite the fact that I’d bet that my Game Boy Advance (let alone my Gamecube or my DS) is much faster and technologically sound than my Super Nintendo, this game’s slowdown and terrible enemy clock speed make this way too easy. That’s even going beyond the bugs and new additions that just break the game play and balance. This isn’t the game that captured my imagination years ago. It’s just a pale shadow, and it actually hurts, in a way, to see the pitiful shell that’s trying to pass as one of my favorites. Don’t get me wrong, Final Fantasy IV is still my all-time favorite game. It’s just that this isn’t really Final Fantasy IV, and don’t try to convince me otherwise. It’s just a clever imitation.
