Final Fantasy IV (or 2 for the Super Nintendo) really brings me back to my childhood. This is the first real role-playing game that got me hooked. The graphics and music were great, the story was intriguing, and the game was pretty tough. Well June 1st Square Enix released what was to be the sequel to this game and boy was I excited. I downloaded the title for 800 Wii points, and dug right in. The game was everything I expected and it totally had that awesome nostalgic game feeling. And then I beat it… Less than 5 hours played. What a freaking let down!
Design
A few hours after I completed the game, I was finally able to calm down enough to review this game. Apparently I should have done my research a bit before purchasing this downloadable.
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is a series of episodes that you have download separately. The main story costs 8 dollars, followed by 6 smaller stories for 3 dollars each, and finally a larger finale for 8 additional dollars. So 34 dollars later and 9 downloads, you will have this entire game. What’s worse is that only 2 of the 9 episodes are available for download at the time of this review. I am still very disappointed with this delivery approach. Why did square not simply charge you a flat rate for the entire game and let you download it all at once. I probably would have paid full price for the game if it were available all at once, but now I’m likely to forget about the new episodes coming out and skip it entirely.
Story
Alright; So to be fair to the game for what it was, the story wasn’t too bad. First of all, each of the 9 downloadable episodes, follow one of the primary characters from the original Final Fantasy IV. The initial download follows Ceodore, son of Cecil the Paladin. Following his father’s footsteps, the story begins with Ceodore preparing to begin his initiation into the Red Wings. Flying home after his initiation his Airship is attacked and we find that his hometown Baron is also being assaulted. Without revealing too much, the basic plot of this episode is for Ceodore and his party to determine why his hometown was attacked and what happened to his family. Along the way he will run into a cast of new and old characters including favorites like Kain the Dragoon, Rosa the White Mage, Parom the now grown-up Mage, and of course family friend Cid the engineer.
Gameplay
The game takes on most of the traditional turn-based RPG features that were found in the original Final Fantasy IV. There are random encounters as usual, as well as the Active Time Battle system which shows timers next to each character in combat letting you know how long it will be until their next turn to participate in combat.
There are also a couple new features that are introduced to kind of mix it up a little bit. A new Band System combines two or more characters together to produce an extra powerful attack. Your characters must first try to figure out how to do a Band attack, but once they do, it is available at any time to use after that. Apparently there are 50 Band moves in the game, but I was only able to figure out one, as for whatever reason, they never seemed to work right for me and I didn’t feel like grinding monsters to take the time to figure it out.
There is also a new Moon system that affects how powerful your characters attacks are. Depending on the lunar cycle of the planet’s moons, certain types of attacks will be more or less powerful. Frankly the new features didn’t need to be introduced, as I always thought Final Fantasy IV was fine how it originally was.
Now, one thing I really enjoyed with this game was the fact that it was pretty difficult right from the start. I had to stop and heal myself after almost every battle. Most of your time played in this game is with only one or two people in your party, so they start to take a lot of damage. I’m guessing the developers are assuming you know what you are doing by completing the first game before starting this one.
Presentation
The graphics in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years are just how they should be, bright vibrant 2d sprites on colorful backgrounds, just as I remember them from back in the day. I know that the Nintendo DS has a 3D rewrite of the original Final Fantasy IV, which I can appreciate, but the old-school graphics brought me back to my childhood, so I absolutely loved it!
That being said; there were some graphical enhancements that were made when Final Fantasy IV was remade for the Gameboy Advance. Those enhancements are carried over into The After Years, bringing the graphical quality of the sprites up to par with those of Final Fantasy V, or 3 for the Super Nintendo.
The music is the exact same as the original version of the game. Now, I haven’t played the original for some 15 years or so, but while I was playing I found myself humming along to the tunes. It’s fun how playing a game like this can trigger some of those old school memories.
Summary
Alright, for the 5 hours of gameplay that I got for the 8 dollar price I paid, I actually had a really fun time playing this. It felt like I was a kid again playing the original title. It was great. The graphics and sound are how I remember them and the story adds to what I remember from the previous title. But the fact that the game wasn’t released as a finished piece, and for 8 dollars for 5 hours of gameplay… Man… Square, you really messed up big this time. I can’t recommend this game to anyone in its current state. It is simply too disappointing. The story just stopped dead in its tracks and there was no conclusion. It just left you wanting some more. Let me leave you with this recording of me playing the game right at the end:
