Why You Should Care - Final Fantasy 4 DS

Final Fantasy 3 for the Nintendo DS was not a good game. It was an NES era rpg, and despite having a nice new graphics engine, it still very much played like one. The story and characters could hardly be even called as such, the combat was shallow and a bit random at times, and the world was stale and not fun to explore. One of the few redeeming qualities was the music and possibly the CG intro.

Final Fantasy 4 was the first entry into the series on the Super NES. The game had a good story, good characters, and great combat. It was the first time characters in the series had real personalities. They became memorable. The story was full of twists, turns, and unlikely alliances and betrayals. Heroes died and villains lived, but in the end I knew I would prevail. And as a kid I was blown away. This was the first RPG I had ever played and is what I blame my geeky love for the genre on. This was for me, the real start of the Final Fantasy series.


But the largest improvement this game had on the series was its battle system. This was the first Final Fantasy game that used the Active Time Battle(ATB) system, which has since become a staple for the series. In Final Fantasy 3 the battles were pure turn based and character actions would often come out in a seemingly random order. Now in FF4, your characters will act based purely on their speed stat. The bar would fill up and then they could act. What made this intense is that the enemy never stopped attacking. It had its own ATB meter (unseen by the player), and it would not stop its actions to wait for your. So you had to be quick in order to overcome your foes.

So besides the core game, which still holds up really well, there are quite a few reasons why you would want to pick up this version. The first being of course the huge graphical improvements. The old game did not have the graphical polish of FF6. It was quite ugly. Final Fantasy 4 on the DS runs in the same beautiful engine that the last DS iteration used. Whether or not you like this new art style, it's still interesting to see the old characters in a new light. The presentation has also been dialed way up. Fully voiced major cut-scenes with cinematic camera work really help had a new layer of personality to the story and characters. Check out this video to see a scene-by-scene comparison of the two games next to each other:



But perhaps what excites me the most about the game is its difficulty. The SNES version we got here in the States back in the day was toned way down versus the Japanese release. Final Fantasy 3 on the DS retains the difficulty of the Japanese original, which may come as a shock to some players. This is not an easy game. But this excited me as Final Fantasy has been a piss easy series for the longest time now. I'm ready for the challenge and have been playing Etrian Odyssey 2 in preparation.

The game comes out July 22. Don't skip this one.


Brad