First Time Final Fantasy – Final Fantasy IV

I stated early on in this project that I suspected that with each entry in the franchise there would be new and interesting innovations, not only within the context of Final Fantasy itself but in the wider field of RPGs and games writ large. Four entries in and I can say with confidence that so far my hypothesis is looking more and more likely to be true. Final Fantasy IV takes enormous swings in nearly every aspect of its design, breaking from conventions established by the previous three games. And I say nearly every aspect because, in a lot of ways, the game seems to slip into old pitfalls.

Whereas the first three games in the series felt like they were always advancing, always iterating, adding new features and expanding its scope in both a narrative sense and a mechanical sense Final Fantasy IV seems to go hurtling backwards towards a some of the bad concepts from Final Fantasy II, heedless of the danger, the futility of the act. II took on a more story-centric approach. It was linear but let you wander into dangerous areas only to immediately die to trick you into thinking it wasn’t. One of my biggest complaints, aside from the extremely lackluster narrative content, was that it couldn’t make its characters special and well thought out OR blank slated enough that it was fun to tinker with their abilities. Unfortunately, IV seemed not to hear my complaints… decades before I made them.

IV begins with the story front and center. An introductory sequence introduces us to the Kingdom of Baron, the Red Wings airship brigade, and our …hero? OK, we’ll circle back to that, trust me. Cecil (our protagonist) is a member of the Red Wings, and has just returned from a mission wherein he massacred the peaceful inhabitants of a village of mages, stealing their elemental crystal. He laments that he has done this to his lover Rosa and questions the morality of his actions (big thinker, this Cecil) with his comrade-in-arms, Kain. However, for expressing doubts in his King’s methods, Cecil is stripped of his title, removed from the Red Wings, and given another assignment: to deliver a package (a totally NOT suspicious task to give to a, as of seconds ago, disgraced military commander).

This package is a bomb. Like, the monster. Capital B, Bomb. It blows up another village (sick kill count, Cecil) and leaves one survivor, Rydia, whose mother dies before her very eyes while Cecil looks on in horror at what he has unwittingly done. Cecil takes her with him and flees the village, headed towards… I don’t remember. Honestly, aside from some highlights, I remember very little at all about the story of this game, and I JUST played it.

So, this might be the right time to tell you: I think this story is bad, and a lot of it has to do with the way the game integrates party members.

Because Final Fantasy IV is trying its best to tell a more complicated story, the game returns to Final Fantasy II’s notion of giving you characters with predetermined identities, but doubles down to remove any element of customization for how these characters play by essentially making each one their own Job. This makes them stand out, yes, and makes your party varied and gives you lots of new mechanics to play with each time you get a new member of the crew, and (perhaps most importantly for this series) begins a new era for Final Fantasy, one in which the party members are all unique characters with unique abilities and personalities. Aside from, you know, the MMOs, Final Fantasy mainline games are never going to be about you and your band of self-insert adventurers again. It’s about… these guys.

And in Final Fantasy IV, these guys suck. But don’t worry, none of them stick around for more than a few hours! Because, in a staggering display of misunderstanding which parts of FFII were good and which were bad, the game is constantly shuffling characters in and out of your party, never giving you a chance to go through more than a few areas with a consistent party at a time. Furthermore, you know the mage Rydia who has perhaps the most classic fantasy backstory of all time? She is essentially side-lined until late in the game where she returns as a powerful mage who has spent time living among divine creatures of myth from another world and learning to summon them in battle, on a quest for self-discovery and revenge against the evil empire which destroyed her home and family. This is a way more interesting story than, “guy who does genocide feels bad about the genocide he already did”, but the game doesn’t seem to want to engage with it all that much.

But you know what this game does want to try its hand at? The brand spankin’ new and flashy ACTIVE TIME BATTLE SYSTEM. <The crowd goes absolutely ballistic with applause>

Yes, folks, not only have we arrived at one of the most defining features of Final Fantasy’s storytelling, but at the combat system which has essentially become the franchise’s identity, and one of the critical ways it distinguishes itself from other JRPGs.

I may have mentioned in the past that I have ADHD. This can make turn-based combat a little tricky for me, as it’s easy to get a little bored and have my attention and motivation slide off the game like the screen has been freshly buttered. So, with the combat taking a more urgent pace, I should be thrilled rig- WRONG.

The active time battle is the bane of my existence, the enemy of my already frantically hamster wheel spinning brain. “Oh, you were having trouble paying attention? How about pay rigorous attention or lose hours of progress?”

Hey, FFIV, screw you, man!

The menus are already a little clunky to maneuver, and the fact that many boss fights have weaknesses and reactions that change depending on how you time your attacks (while genuinely a very good idea) ends up feeling clumsy and hard to manage. You can’t just sit and wait for a good opportunity to strike, because if you idle the enemies keep whacking you regardless. And if you’re waiting to time something correctly you’re giving up any opportunity to protect yourself or heal up with some items. There is also a brief windup period before spells are cast, making it even more difficult to gauge the timing.

This would suck even worse, were the game not stupidly easy. Not once in my playthrough did I get a single Game Over, and I did minimal grinding between dungeons. And how are those dungeons?

Boring, mostly. While there is a higher degree of aesthetic variation between locales (at the end of the game, you go to the FUCKING MOON, dude), there still has yet to be much difference in how you navigate these dungeons. FFI had some puzzles and environmental hazards in its dungeons, and FFIII had a… fun(?) boss rush at the end which you could take on in any order you wished. FFIV has a few neat moments, and the world maps are pretty cool, but so much of the presentation is focused on a story that simply can’t hold my attention. Nonsensical twists, characters popping in and out so often that it’s hard to get attached (to anyone but Rydia; Rydia rules).

The other thing I need to keep in mind is that I play a lot of games… a LOT of games. And playing other long games including other JRPGs while also playing Final Fantasy at a near constant rate can at times drag me down. That being said, I don’t think that playing this after a several month gap in FF games would’ve made much of a difference.

The attempts at something new and fresh are interesting on the surface, but the game ends up feeling overly structured. There’s no experimentation, no real exploration for much of the runtime, and the story is so scattershot and dull with characters who rarely feel like they’re getting enough time to say much of anything.

I think FFIV is probably a fine game, but for me it only barely beats out II and pales in comparison to both I and III. And the other one, the secret one I’ve already played. We’ll get to that.

It sets a lot of precedents for the series going forward, or so I am led to believe. This gives me some anxiety. How will the next entry grapple with the changes to FF? And how will it draw on the games further back in its lineage?

And will there be anyone nearly as cool as Rydia?

Next month: Final Fantasy V