Final Fantasy IV is a very good game. Maybe nowadays it has nothing outstanding, but if we evaluate it by its merits and its historical importance, I think it ends up being a game worth admiring, beyond the affection I have for it because it was the first RPG I finished. The gameplay and story are not perfect, but I learned to admire this game more for its ambition (for its time) than for its perfection.

I'll start by talking about the story, which although I realized it's not great, in fact it's very silly at times, it's still an enjoyable and good-hearted story. It's about a kingdom that craves power and dominance, and to get it they start raiding other nations and killing innocent people to get their hands on the Crystals, the most powerful source of power in the FF world. Our protagonist, who is the captain of the air force of this kingdom, Cecil, begins to question his actions and his king when he realizes that what he is doing is totally against his principles. After a certain event, Cecil can't take it anymore and decides to leave his kingdom for good, even though he knows he has no chance of stopping it by himself, but it is his determination that leads Cecil to start his quest to stop the king's madness and find redemption for his actions as a dark knight. For its time, it was a very good story and presented a complexity that no other game had had up to that point. Things like the interactions between characters or the fact that they have personalities, motivations, or internal conflicts, all together make you care a little more about them beyond knowing which one hits the hardest and which one heals.

One thing I really like about this game is that it maintains a very good balance between story and gameplay... well, almost always. But I'll start by talking about where it does get it right. For starters, things like scenes that not only translate into captivating dialogue, but also use things like the battles themselves or elements of the game as such to tell the story by making use of common elements (but linked to the gameplay). There are examples I'd like to mention, but they're spoilers, so I have no choice but to move on to the bad.

Because this FF in comparison to 1, 2 and 3, has no character customization as each character is a class as such, there is no way to make the gameplay more varied or customized, so the game will be constantly changing the members of your party to compensate. The downside of this is not in terms of gameplay, but in terms of story, and that is that sometimes the story of the game doesn't have a decent good justification for changing your party members, but sometimes it does, which results in the story having moments of some very sad and touching sacrifices, and on the other hand, it also has moments where some characters leave your party for super stupid reasons.

But speaking more in depth about the gameplay and game design, it's very cool. Final Fantasy IV features an innovative (for the time) real-time turn-based combat system... sounds contradictory, doesn't it, but that's what the combat system called Active Time Battle (ATB) is. This combat system means that the turn of each character and enemy in battle is determined by the passage of time, which is indicated by a meter that when full means the character can attack. The thing here is that time doesn't stop even when you're selecting commands, as everyone else's ATB meter will keep running in the background. This gives the battles a better pace and a higher level of complexity as you have to choose your actions and plan the battle in real time, but always giving you enough time to plan. Although if you think this is too much for you, you can always switch to a mode that makes the combat stop when you navigate in the item or magic menu (but only on those occasions), and if on the other hand, you think it's too easy, you can also change the speed of the battles so that everything goes faster, but giving you less space to choose commands or plan strategies carefully. Another thing I love about FFIV is that thanks to this combat system there are some bosses that have some gimmick or require some strategy to be defeated, which makes them more entertaining to fight and adds some more layer of depth beyond just being a monster with high HP and strong attacks. In closing, I should just mention that ATB doesn't replace ordinary turn-based combat for me, I think both systems are equally great.

Something I'm not entirely satisfied with now that I've revisited this game, but it's great for beginners, is that the first ¾ the game is linear and somewhat easy, this in order to make the story progress quickly and players don't get lost, I guess. But at least it is compensated at the end by giving you very strong enemies and a couple of optional locations waiting to be explored. Another thing I noticed is that money is worthless, since now in this FF, spells are learned naturally when your characters level up instead of being sold in stores, and as for weaponry, most of the time each dungeon will always have new equipment for most of your characters, which makes it more exciting to enter a new dungeon, but at the same time makes armor stores stop being useful very fast in the game.

The music of FFIV fascinates me. It is here where Nobuo Uematsu's compositions really become masterful. I can't think of a single piece I don't like, on the contrary. Some tunes that I really like:
-The town theme.
-The main theme.
-The theme of the red wings.
-The cave theme.
-The normal and boss battle theme, simply fantastic and iconic.
-The introductory theme. One of my favorite songs of video games and it was in this game where I heard it for the first time.

Conclusion
Thanks to this game, Final Fantasy started to not only focus on interesting gameplay, but also on having stories with drama and more complexity, captivating stories.

FF4 is a very special game for me, and one that defined me as a gamer forever. Thanks to this game I really learned what an RPG is, I learned what a Chocobo is, I learned about summoning, black magic and white magic, I learned about flying ships, etc. Final Fantasy IV was the game that got me interested in RPGs, which is nowadays one of my favorite videogame genres. After some years without playing any FF game, returning to Final Fantasy makes me feel complete.

You can't go wrong with this. Final Fantasy 4 defines what a solid RPG is. Action-packed, mysterious and scary at times. I praise soundtrack, gameplay and environments. The score blends very well with the colours, especially during battles.
It may be too hard in some sections to the point of actually giving up. However, this is solved by paying attention to resource management and monster properties. For example, I found out that Toad and Confuse (which I rarely use) are extremely useful in the Underworld.
Check it out!