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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."
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*
The series turned to crap the day it went 3d and turned into a teen angst soap opera. FF7 was okay but FF8 was the death of the series as far as I'm concerned.
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.
the combat system encourages (nay, demands!) that you spend massive amounts of time drawing cards instead of having fun.
Ah, here's another one. You don't "draw cards," BTW.
Also, the characters are interchangeable.
If you mean gameplay-wise, they're much like those in most of the other FFs. The characters in FF2, FF3, and FF5 are completely interchangeable (and FF1 as well if you bring the character creation screen into consideration), while those in all of the FFs from FF6 on are nearly completely interchangeable. Except maybe FF9, I don't remember much about that one.
As for FF8's plot, it was pretty weak. The game didn't really gear up until about Disc 3, and at least one scene that's important to understanding Squall's character development is optional. But the story (which, as you should know, is not the same as the plot) is pretty good, certainly better than FF6's or FF4's. (FF6's plot was worse than FF8's too; it fell totally apart halfway through.)
The combat system can be horribly abused in the late game to make everyone into hideous nuke characters (if you power-level), but for the majority of the game, there is rich diversity in the characters abilities that most later FF games has not had.
That diversity ain't that rich. There's very little difference between how Cyan's sword techniques distinguish him and how Squall's Renzokuken distinguishes him, for instance. The only real difference between the two is that you can use Cyan's techniques at any time. (And you can use Squall's limit break at almost any time if you know what you're doing.) The only diversity in FF6 is the sheer number of characters, and that damages other parts of the game far more than it benefits the battle system.
As for the differences between the Junction system and the Esper system, there aren't that many as far as interchangeability is concerned. Just as it takes a while to hard-level everyone into using the best magic in FF6, it takes a while to build everyone's GFs and magic stocks up in FF8. The difference is that FF8's advancement methods are far more enjoyable--if you know what you're doing, of course.
Rob
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.