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Final Fantasy IV Turns XV
Jeremy Parish, keeper of the retronaut flame, has a nice post on his personal site marking the fifteenth anniversary of FFIV. Released in the states as Final Fantasy II for the SNES, the game chronicles the adventures of dark knight turned paladin Cecil and his wacky band of cohorts. It's still one of my favorite games in the series. From the article: "Tiny sprite theatrics notwithstanding, FFIV had something called moxie. It boldly featured one of those videogame plots where things happen for seemingly arbitrary reasons and there's a lot of traveling back and forth and into dungeons on mini-quests to justify endless killing random monsters and fighting bosses. I guess that's not moxie, really. But whatever it was, it drove dark knight Cecil Harvey across the entire world, into the dwarf-infested depths and eventually to the frickin' moon, so it would be silly to split hairs."
I declare July 19th National Spoony Bard Day!
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
I'm a huge fan of Square and the Final Fantasy series, but isn't celebrating the 15th anniversary of the 4th game in a series kind of stretching it?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Final Fantasy IV Turns XV
In non-mathematics major terms : Final Fantasy 9 Turns 15
I may have a minor in math, but it wasn't college that taught me my roman numerals; it was Square One Television.
So far as FFs go, only FF7 and FF10 really stood out and can be considered revolutionary. Again, being revolutionary doesn't necessarily mean good or bad, but those are the games that defined the FF franchise if not the genre, and the general sales numbers support that at least at a public level. Yes I am well aware that selling more doesn't mean something has to be intrinsically better, but selling less definitely proves nothing positive about the intrinsic value of a game, either.
If by plot emphasis you mean "Taking your hand and guiding you, through numerous superflouous cutscenes, along a trite and cliché'd storyline that could have been written by an emo high school student".
The one thing that I thought was really good in FFIV was that the characters were given reasonable motives and grew in hard to predict but reasonable ways. I don't think you get that in many other FF games -- FFIX and FFX try, but I think that FFIV might have had the best character development.
;P
Even if you disagree, it certainly had the best ninja-sorceress love affair
IANA*
See, I love trying to figure out the mindset that would lead someone to think that FF4 and FF6 have deep characters. Posts like yours help. For instance, now I see that oldschool FF fans have a definition for "villain" that states "someone who blows a lot of shit up and kills people." Motive, personality, or anything else apparently doesn't enter into it. And as a bonus, you also give me a definition for "gameplay:" Bashing a button over and over again until the enemy dies. Thanks for giving me a glimpse into your mind, good buddy.
Rob
Actually, Final Fantasy defined the genre. (Don't start with DQ/DW, since those were fundamentally different "back in the day".) Final Fantasy 2 and 3 set the pace. Final Fantasy 4 took that torch and ran with it. And when it ran, it ran. FF5 merely continued the work that FF4 started, while setting the stage for the "OMG OPTIONS!" games made for the PSX. FF6 was the pinnacle of storytelling and party configuration.
FF7 was a tech demo and an unfinished, poorly-told story, and is where the series started falling apart. Did anyone understand the FF7 storyline on the first (or even the second) time through the game? Yeah, me either. The characters were awful. By the end of FF7 I was hoping that Sephiroth would win and wipe out all these whiny asshats and their little angst, too. The only thing that was revolutionary was the ZOMG 3D graphics, and even they were poorly done and grainy.
FF8 and FF9 were more of the same pre-rendered BS with half-done stories written by crackheads. FF8 had an interesting (though annoying) magic system. FF9 was completely unremarkable. I gave up on Final Fantasy after that, so I can't comment on FF10. Maybe it truly is better, but I'm more inclined to believe that it's about as "better" as FF7.
This fanboyism and weird love for FF7 is just another example of the rift between gamers who remember what games were like before Sony destroyed the industry by making it "cool" and gamers who remember their "first Playstation". This is not a rant about how all games were better or how we only had 2D and we liked it uphill both ways forty miles butt naked in the snow. It's a rant about how Sony threw money at dev houses to steal them from Nintendo and produced a whole generation of EA-style overhyped, underdelivered, shoddy, games that cater to people who buy games because of how "cool" a game is. FF7 is "cool". I only wish that Squaresoft had actually bothered to finish the game and make it "good" as well.
I'd love to give FF5 a shot, but I'm not willing to play the PlayStation port - I've tried, the loading times are too extreme. If they ever get around to releasing it on a Nintendo console (GBA, DS, Wii), then I'll give it another go. Screw Sony and their massive load times.)
Ahm... I hear there's video games on the... uh... internets...
FF4 (the real version) is the best in the series, in my opinion.
It is difficult without being ridiculously so. The boss enemies are tough, and you don't have ridiculous limit breaks or way overpowered summons to do the job for you (FF4 summons are weak compared to those in the later games, IMO).
It has some of the best characters, remembered by their personalities and character development, not their outlandish character designs like Cloud & Co. It had a reasonable plot that was actually completed and not rushed, and an ending that made sense.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
I was waiting for something to happen in Elder Scrolls oblivion due to the day night cycle (somehow that makes the game more fun.....:( and started playing Final Fantasy IV advance. I played IV for an hour and never played oblivion again, Final fantasy IV is such a good game, and the combat system is so much better than any straight up role playing game I have played lately, its worth celebrating as far as I am concerned, run out and buy the new GBA version of this, it has a bunch of new content in it after you beat the game.
The real problem with FF6 is that, at the end, the game sort of falls apart as they try to allow a more open-ended approach to RPGs, but just sort of fail.
Agreed. I don't know of any real solution to that problem, so I tend to like structured RPGs with post-game extras. No matter how tough you make high-level enemies, it's entirely possible to kill a few either deliberately (or by accidentally wandering into the area early) and screw up the difficulty curve.
Uhh... you haven't played FF6, have you?
FF4 was pretty lame in the villain department. Zemus/Zeromus hated Earthlings so he wanted to destroy them by using the power of the crystals or something. No backstory was given for why he hated them. So your criticism stands.
But FF6 is a different matter entirely. Kefka starts as a general in the Imperial army. The Empire is greedy for land and power (obviously, or it wouldn't be The Empire). So Kefka is already a powerful goon in the goon army. He's also a prick. So he hatches a plan to not only usurp the emperorship, but also to take over the world and rule it to his greedy ends. In the process, he "blows a lot of shit up and kills people". It also seems that he's mentally unstable, and by that, I mean that he's batshit-fucking-loco. All of this qualifies as both motive and personality.
As for gameplay, well, it's all about deciding what happens and when. FF6 is quite a bit less challenging than FF4 in this department. FF4 definitely had the best balance of any FF game. It was the first FF game that wasn't strictly turn-based, but had attack timers (the Active Time Battle system), and yet it hadn't degraded into the realm of FF6-and-up where by the end of the game every attack does 9999 damage. You actually could get to the end of the game and have your ass handed to you by the enemies you met wandering the final corridors of the game. And yet, every step of the way you were constantly getting it handed to you, so it wasn't a matter of the rest of the game being too easy. And my experiences are based on the US version, which is based on the Japanese "easytype" version! Now that's gameplay!
This fanboyism and weird love for FF7 is just another example of the rift between gamers who remember what games were like before Sony destroyed the industry by making it "cool" and gamers who remember their "first Playstation".
Oh, God, not this crap again. How many times is this chestnut going to get trotted out before someone finally decides to shoot it and turn it into glue?
I've played FF since it came out in 1990, and I still think that FF7, FF8, and FFX are superior to any of the ones previous. And if you really want me to measure my geek dick for you, I'll add that FF3 (that's the real FF3, not FF6) has the second-best gameplay of the entire FF series. I bet most of you so-called "true FF fans" haven't even played that game at all.
So stop it with that "only noobs like FF7" crap, it's not true.
Rob
FF7 is revolutionary. Technically because it's the 'first' 3D RPG in the same sense Mario is the first action platformer. It was far more ambitious in the story department than any game before it, to the point that it is responsible for the 'story that does not possibly make any sense' genre (ironically FF7's story does make sense, it's just hopelessly complicated). It is a special game, for better or worse, which is why it is remembered by the masses. The game tried to changing the RPG genre and I don't know if it succeeded, but the earlier FFs did not even try.
Are you serious? [quote]when everything else sucked and plot is not taken seriously in a RPG[/quote] Storyline was the only thing that could sell RPGs in the days before 'awesome cutscene graphics'. People certainly weren't buying them for nonstop action. FFVI did not center around one central whiny guy who had trouble talking to women (which is why i presume FFVII relates to so many gamers) but rather FFVI develops 12 main characters! FFX does have a good story, if you forget about the dismal ending. You make claims like FF7 and FFX are revolutionary, but provide no examples. Perhaps only that they were the first FF on each respective system (PSX and PS2). Revolutionary was the Job system in FFIII or Espers system in FFVI (which materia then expands upon) And you can't compare sales numbers between the two titles as gaming scene was tremendously different. It was not even conceivable to sell 2.5 million copies in a weekend of any game during snes days. Gaming exploded with the playstation/n64 releases. As far as game sales go, FFVI did very well for a snes game. And yeah FFIV is good too.. minus kain.
Kefka was simply insane. Sometimes simplicity is good, but Kefka is most definitely not a complicated character. FF4 has stricter level-based requirements than most RPG now (especially compared to FFs). If you're not at a certain level (around 60) Rydia can't survive a Big Bang no matter what which means you'll be down one healer for the last battle right away. The game paces well for a Final Fantasy game, but part of it comes from the system being much simpler than all the later ones so there aren't cheap loopholes to be exploited. It's also one of the last FF where you not only constantly need to use your MP out of necessity in the regular battles, but also have no way of easily replenishing them so you actually have to budget your MP carefully, but not to be so stingy that you don't make it to the end.
Since when did Sephiroth have personality?
Never meant to imply that Sephiroth had a great personality, just that it was far better than Kefka's "HOLY SHIT I'M CRAZY" spiel.
His "motive" was, essentially, "I want to blow shit up"
Incorrect. Sephiroth had a strong and clear reason for doing what he did, relating to issues with his birth and heritage. Kefka, on the other hand, was just insane. Not insane for any particular reason that would relate to the plot, just insane.
In all previous FF games (although end-game FF6 came dangerously close to "mash attack") you had to decide which characters and which abilities to use on which enemies.
Until FF12, FF3 and FF4 were the only ones that really ever tried to go beyond button-mashing in battle. The other early FFs, especially FF2 and FF5, were just as much about button mashing and just as little about "deciding which characters and which abilities to use on which enemies" as any of the later FFs.
Still, though, you don't seem to understand that gameplay goes beyond the battle screen. Take FF8, for example. It's true that FF8's battle system is all about button-mashing, but the Junction system combined with item refining, the card game, and so forth give the gameplay overall a much greater depth than in any FF before or since.
Rob
Kefka starts as a general in the Imperial army. The Empire is greedy for land and power (obviously, or it wouldn't be The Empire). So Kefka is already a powerful goon in the goon army. He's also a prick. So he hatches a plan to not only usurp the emperorship, but also to take over the world and rule it to his greedy ends. In the process, he "blows a lot of shit up and kills people". It also seems that he's mentally unstable, and by that, I mean that he's batshit-fucking-loco.
OK. Why is Kefka a prick? Why is he mentally unstable? Why does he want to take over the world other than the fact that taking over the world makes him powerful? What distinguishes him from all of the other cookie-cutter villains in all of the Silver Age comic-books of the world?
I'm going to head the only possible counter-argument off at the pass: In the game, it's actually shown that Kefka was made insane due to an experimental technique in Magitek infusion. But it's left to be explained how this motivates Kefka to take over the world and kill a lot of people (even crazy people have a motivation to do things beyond "I'm crazy"), nor how the circumstances of his insanity affect our understanding of his character in any meaningful way.
Rob
FFVI develops 12 main characters!
FSVO "develops." In reality, FF6 doesn't develop any of them in any way beyond the cliche. Of course, you could say the same thing about FF7, with the very arguable exception of Cloud.
And FF7 certainly was revolutionary (or perhaps "influential" is a better word). Before it came out, the console RPG was very much a niche genre in the West, even considering the lower sales of games back then. Now-a-days it's the most popular genre behind the old standbys of sports and action. And then there's the fact that it was the first 3D console RPG of note, just like SM64 was the first 3D platformer of note.
Rob
If you didn't understand 7's story, there are two problems with you.
;)
The first is that you don't speak Japanese. Okay, I can't blame you for that, but it means that the localization team screwed you over. The original story team can't be blamed for the things that were mangled or glossed over in the English version.
The second is that you simply didn't pay enough attention to detail. Everything is in there somewhere. There are people who have paid the requisite attention, and come up with complete, satisfying answers to essentially every question. The Ultimania Omega guide and the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII provide further insights.
That said, it's a good story. It's deep. Everything has a purpose, all of the characters are valuable, and all of them grow. The execution was imperfect, due to various technical and financial issues, but that's true of everything. If you're able to realize that and look at what the game was really trying to be, it's an amazing thing. VI is also pretty good in this regard, but as other people have mentioned, the story sort of unravels halfway in. Amazingly, FFX is right up there in terms of "depth of story", but a lot of people don't realize it, because it's stealth story. You can easily play the game without noticing half of the things that go on. Maybe it's just because you fell asleep during the 20-minute FMV segments
Aeris alone is probably the main reason they loved FF VII.
Not me. I was actually kind of glad when she died. The main reason why I like FF7 more than most of the other FFs is because of its story. You can talk about plotholes all you want (and I'd say that most of them probably come from your own weak understanding of the plot), and the translation was pretty bad, but at least it tried to have a storyline that went beyond the utter simplicity of the games that came before it. Even today FF7 deals with the issue of identity better than most other video games.
As for Chrono Trigger, it deserves a lot more credit than both it and the early FFs get.
Rob
FF7's plot is probably needlessly complicated, but after you get past the artificial complexity, everything fits together pretty well. However it does get the stigma for starting the 'nothing possibly make sense' genre. I realize you shouldn't fault a game because other games tried to copy it and screwed it up, but FF7 almost single-handed changed the plot we get in RPG from overly simplistic to borderline nonsensical, and I rather have a simplistic plot than one that doesn't make sense.
Not every story has to be twisted and convoluted with hard to understand characters.
You're right, but that fact doesn't make Kefka a good villain, or even a mediocre one. I'm not saying that Kefka should be hard to understand, simply that there should be something to understand.
Kefka was insane because of the Magitek experiment but it also left him with a taste of power. This taste of power gave him cravings for more power.
A reasonable theory, but there's no explanation for what makes power so enticing to him, or why he uses it to the ends that he does.
Rob
If you really want your ass handed to you, download and play ff3j. nuff said
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
16bit games are better then the newest games, they put more time into the story line. I don't buy games just for the graphics.
FF4 is the last FF game to requires you to use more than 4 characters while also attempting to develop them (FF5 only used 4 not counting Kara). Your party goes through about 10 guys and all of those guys, in theory, have something to do with the game and you get to use them when they're relevant. It is really hard to take character development seriously when you see Barret pop up and say something at the end, and you're thinking "I haven't used this guy since Disc 1 because I didn't like him." This applies to 6-9, though 10 tries to make you feel at least all those guys are supposed to be doing something with the semi-mandatory character switcharoo combat system.
Because it's power, dipshit. What more reason do you want?!
Maybe a reason that actually means something? Everybody wants power. But people want power for different reasons. The reason why Kefka wants power (and the reason he blows things up) isn't specified anywhere.
Which is, it's worth noting, almost EXACTLY the same as Sephiroth's "motivation" for anything in FF7. (Why is Sephy destroying stuff? 'Cause his REAL mommy did, and he's a big mommy's boy.)
Might be a good idea to actually be right before you make claims like this. His motivation has nothing to do with the fact that Jenova (who isn't even Sephiroth's "mommy") destroyed things. In fact, he doesn't even know that Jenova was responsible for what happened before. The reason why Sephiroth does what he does is because he's been fooled into thinking that he and Jenova were the last of the Cetra, and that the human race was responsible for wiping out the Cetra instead of Jenova herself.
Rob
I'd much rather see FF3 (because it's the one early FF that's really worth playing now-a-days) and FF7 (because it's currently an eyesore) modernized. And that's exactly what Square is doing with FF3, while FF7 has a pretty good chance of being upgraded eventually.
Rob
Have to throw in my nerd-2c here. Kefka went insane due to the imperfect 'magitek fusion' procedure that he was the first to volunteer for, the process of fusing esper energy to the human mind was poorly understood, and failures in the first attempt caused Kefka to go batshit insane bit by bit. This was mentioned in the plotline, just not strongly played up. I tell you what tho, I never dreaded what was going to happen next in a console RPG as much as when I heard the kefka 'giggle' off screen and knew bad shit was about to go down. Sephiroth in comparison was a whiney emo-fag with a crush on Cloud, he was a third rate villian at best.
Devil bunnies! I snort the nose! Lucifer! Banana! Banana!
I think it's likely to change in the DS version, and if it does, remember what I told you about the original version. I only reached the final fight one time. I got so fed up with the thing that I deleted my saved game to avoid more frustration and wasted time.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
A lot of people miss the point of why FFIV was so great.
Complicated situation re: villian? Check.
Complicated relationships with multiple party members (other than angsty crap)? Check.
Good balance between different characters (a huge rarity in FF post-IV)? Check.
Good music? Check.
There are also a few VERY important things that FFIV did that others mostly do not:
Tie the characters around the story (class change as plot device, the designers' ability to create dungeons with a set party in mind).
It was an pretty good bit of technological workmanship, considering it was almost wholely designed for the NES.
First to do ATB.
ATB.
ATB.
Did I mention Active Time Battle?
People talk about how "deep" the newer RPGs are compared to the older ones. This is completely untrue. People often confuse "depth" with complexity, and say that either something is deep being it is overly complex, or because the writer hides the ball. One need only look to shakespeare to show that it is quality, not quantity or complexity, of character that makes a good plot. FFIV didn't have overly complex characters, nor massive amounts of dialogue to flesh them out, but the game used every bit that it did to create quality characters that worked well off each other.
Cheers, FFIV. Still the best.
I agree that Kefka and Golbez/Zemus (and even more so X-Death) aren't especially deep characters. Their motivations for doing what they do are pretty simple, but the characters can be interesting if they do interesting things, regardless of how simple or complex their motive for doing so might be. Iago from Othello is a classic example of this. The guy was just passed over for a promotion in lieu of an untested lietenant... but becomes the evocation of pure evil and deceit. His motive is simple: revenge, but his method of carrying it out is interesting. OTOH, none of what these villains do is really that interesting, either. The storyline and characters of both is relatively simple compared to FF7, 8 or X. FF4 and 6 are still fun games from the standpoint of gameplay challenge (FF4 to a much greater extent) and of presentation, (FF6 to a somewhat greater extent) however.
For one thing, that's flatout wrong. There were several 3D RPGs before FF7: Wild Arms 1, for starters. Now, I'm not going to compare these two, they're totally different, and I would agree that FF7 comes out on top, but saying that it's revolutionary is a bit of a stretch. If you step back from graphics, though, FF7 hardly does anything more than FF6 did, it just does it with a bit more flash and flare, and a bit more cliche. I would argue that FF6 has much better dialog (granted, some of that due to a bad translation on the part of Square's localizers, for FF7), and more flushed out character personalities. FF7 trades character personality for backstory, which I think is an inferior direction to take. FF7s characters are also much more archetypical. FF7s events are also less applicable than FF6s, they constantly relly on completely fantasy/sci-fi factors, where-as, more often then not, FF6s fantasy elements are far more applicable to day to day existance. In it's ability to create a compelling narrative, with flushed out characters you can actually empethize with, at a time in which even the most advanced RPGs were composed of completely archetypical personas, FF6 stands to be the far more revolutionary game. Sure, the sprite-based graphics may be deciving, but I think of FF6 as, quite possibly, the first moddern console RPG, the first truely great one.
Now, in terms of game design, and architecture, FF6 is a 3D game as well, it just was forced to use 2D graphics because of the technology at the time. You can totally feel the developers struggling to get every ounce of their vision out with the hardware they have... which is why, sometimes, you get god-aweful side-effects, like the mine cart ride. All the houses and buildings are laid out in very concise 3D models, with nooks and crannies you may find yourself walking behind, all the time... unfortunately, the SNES had only the most basic polygon rendering engine (who's extent can be seen in things like the spinning triforce in LttP). I've always hoped that they would redo FF6 in the 3D glory that its creators hoped to be able to give their vision. Partially for their own sake (and for ours), and partially so ignorant fools like you would open your eyes and realize that the holy church of FF7 is nothing but a minor tweak of FF6.
Now, that said, FF7 is a fine game that I hold very dear, but it is greatly overshadowed by the ingenuity and deapth of both games on either side of it.
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I guess Final Fantasy has now joined the ranks of "I'm l33t if I hate the new and praise the older classic versions", along with Star Wars and Weezer. But then again, the new Star Wars did kinda suck...
Ah FF3. I was in the final castle, I'd estimate 10 minutes away from the last dude, and my buddy came over one night and magically killed the computer. I never picked it back up. I did preorder it for the DS though. Here's hoping that it's the same game just with updated graphics.
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Kefka was the first magitek knight (you know, like Celes & General Leo, only their procedures worked). The procedure for infusing him with magic went wrong, and his mind became unstable. Sephiroth fused with JENOVA and, umm, became mentally unstable. Your point?
I've already addressed this point elsewhere in the thread.
For completeness, in IV, Zemus/Zeromus wanted to wipe out everyone so that Lunarians could colonize the planet rather than hibernating on the damn moon forever, and in V, X-Death just wanted to get out of the damn seal he'd been stuck in by the original four warriors and resume taking over the world.
Yes, I'll freely admit that Kefka is a better villain than either of those two. Of course, a chihuahua in a tutu would be a better villain than either of those two. Zemus (as opposed to Zeromus, which was just "absolute evil" and came out of friggin' nowhere) did at least have a reasonable motive, but besides that he's a cipher, an absentee villain, letting Golbez do everything interesting up to the end. And Ex-Death just blew.
Rob
I've played a translated ROM version of it, and I just finished up the bit where you get the 3rd airship (you destroy them like you're James Fricking Bond in that game). I quit playing when I couldn't find the time to play. I figure I'll pick it back up and finish it one of these days.
Though it didn't seem very hard to me, others have said this is the most difficult FF ever. I'd be inclined to believe them if I weren't so good at mapping out how memory is used by old console games. You know, stuff like 06FB = 1A to keep my lead party character from getting poisoned, petrified, or zombified, and to keep me floating, hasted, and regenning. (No, that's not really a functional mapping, and at 06xx on the NES, it's more likely to be a hard stat like Agility or Max HP than a fight stat like poison.) And freeze-states tend to make everything easier too.
If I find the time to finish it, I won't need to remember what you said about that version. I'll experience it firsthand, though without the as much difficulty overcoming it.