Final Fantasy IV Review| From Dark Knight to Paladin

Hi everyone and welcome to my place!

It is time to start the Final Fantasy series!!! As you know I’m a big fan of the Final Fantasy franchise and I told you I would be reviewing every each of the Final Fantasy games I’ve played so far. Starting from the oldest one, it is Final Fantasy IV (Final Fantasy II in North America).

Let’s start with the story shall we?

For the current age, Final Fantasy IV plot can be seen a little bit as standard. However I do think there is at least one idea they come up that was interesting.

So, the thing that is out of the box in this game is that you start as one of the bad guys. Basically (from what I can remember – which is not much) you start as Cecil, one of the most important guys in the army of your kingdom, commander of the airship fleet, Red Wings. Cecil was adopted by the king (he is an orphan) and for that he devotes himself a lot to him and is 100% loyal. However, the king is not the same person as he was before. There is someone who the king started to listen recently that he’s making him to start to be not such a gentle person as he was before (I can at least think about other Final Fantasy game that has this kind of plot – Final Fantasy 9). Moreover the king trained Cecil to be a dark knight – yeah it’s like Batman! He’s orphan and a dark knight.

The first thing you will do is attack (and kill) a bunch of defenseless wizards so you get control of the water crystal, a source of great power. Basically the wizards don’t even defend themselves, since they are peaceful, but Cecil kills most of them regardless. However, when he gets back to the castle he asks to the king directly the orders that were given indicating that it was wrong to attack such defenseless people. The king response is to take him out from is post of commander of the Red Wings. His best friend also protests and the king decides to send them into a mission. Go to a nearby village to kill the eidolon residing in a nearby cave and bring a signet to the village. They, of course, do that. However when they get to the village the signet releases bombs, destroying the village and killing almost everyone. Here he meets Rydia, a kid which is a summoner and he decides to protect her with all of his might.

And here is when he starts to change his attitude and stop being so blindly towards the king. Shortly afterwards you will be crossing the world trying to defend the elemental crystals from the king who wants to get the hands on all four of them.

In the middle of this journey you will be attacked by Leviathan while on a boat and end up alone in a village. This village has been attacked by the kingdom so they all treat you horrible, but the elder tells you for you to go to a mountain, repent your sins and this way transform into a paladin. This is the point where the game goes out of the box. Although there are many Final Fantasy games where you can change your class, Final Fantasy IV is not one of them and when Cecil atones for his sins (by having one of the most difficult battles in the game – yourself) transforms fully into a paladin. The problem with this? Well, first of all your level goes to 30! LOL So Cecil just passes from the strongest guy in your team to the weakest one and secondly… Well you are at the half of this game and you will just need to find a way to understand how to pay with your main character… Again lolol

 

Well, afterwards you are going to continue your fighting against the king. There are many events that happens in between, but I just wanted to give you the guiding lines of the story! I don’t want to make spoilers to the parts of the story that really makes Final Fantasy IV different and not so “normal”. Although, if we think through it, it is not that predictable, this game probably was one of the firsts to have this kind of plot.

Now the characters. You will have the opportunity to meet many characters along the way that will join you and then go with their lives or just get lost in the process. I can say that the characters are well made and even though you don’t pass much time with every each of one (which normally is not the way I prefer) it is enough for you to grow attached to them.

The gameplay is pretty basic, really. I think this was one of the first Final Fantasy games where you had designated fighting classes for each character (maybe I’m wrong I don’t know), but this makes you to have some strategy and choose the right characters to go with you when you are going to rough battles. The battles it self, well it is the normal for the most of final fantasy games, turn based 🙂 I don’t think that in this one you have special attacks or something like that (can’t remember that well) so it is straight forward.

The graphics… Well, I’m not going to say that they aged well… I mean you can make games in the newest Rpg Maker with better graphics that Final Fantasy IV ones. However, they did release a 3D version for the Nitendo DS some year ago… To be honest I wasn’t really fond of it. For me Final Fantasy IV is a classic and I prefer to play it with the classic graphics 😀

The game is OLD, like 26 years old, so the soundtrack of the game has that kind of sound that you get from this classic/retro games which is not that pleasant, at least for me, but for the time it came out it’s pretty decent. Moreover you have some musics that appeared afterwards in other Final Fantasy games (enhanced of course) so they have to be good right?

Now… Am I thinking of replaying this game? Probably not. (Arthifis from the future here! It seems that Final Fantasy IV came out in Steam and looks damn fine! Maybe I’ll replay it afterwards! It’s the pick below!) Am I going to tell you to stop everything you are doing to go grab this game… Probably not. However, if you like RPG and you are fond of more classic/retro games I say that it’s a pretty decent game for you to try 🙂

Tell me in the comments if you already played the game or not and what do you think about it! 😀 Next week I’ll come back with Final Fantasy V! 😀

See Ya Soon! 😀