Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is a collection of small stories in style of final fantasy 4 or the 3d version of it. It's a decent collection, the stories are fun and connect to some of the events of final fantasy 4 and the characters, the short story style also works nicely for steam deck use on the go. The battle system is the active time battle of that era with familiar spells and all kinds of skills. I thought this game was harder when I originally played it but it's not all that grindy or hard in this version. I do not like the old-timey 3d graphics, I didn't like them when they came out and it looks just bad now, 2d graphics of original final fantasy iv would've survived much better. The music is guaranteed final fantasy quality though. Unfortunately a borked update on my steam deck made that I had to re-install everything and the saves were not saved on the cloud so couldn't finish it but maybe I'll re-re-restart playing it one day...

The After Years is a frustrating game. Set some 17 or so years after FFIV, I was so excited to see these characters again and how they have changed over the years. The game is split in 10 miniature stories (most of which are 1.5-2 hours long) as you follow both old and new characters around as a mysterious plot unravels across the land. The narrative itself is honestly quite compelling for the most part, though I do love a good mystery.

Sadly, the filling in the map feature is gone as well as character thought bubbles in the pause screen. What has been added are two interesting new features - phases of the moon that affect different damage types that change when you rest, and band attacks which are like limit breaks between different party compositions of 2 or more characters. What is even more disheartening is the heavy re-use of assets. Don't get me wrong, it is to be expected to some degree, but it eventually borders on the obscene. Some dungeons you have to traverse 2, 3, even 4 times over the course of the main plot and to keep it light on spoilers, the finale itself drags on for EVER. If it were not for the tedious nature of this game, I would score it a 4 or even a 4.5, but it was too much even for me to bear.

There is still a lot I do love about the game which makes this so frustrating. The insane number of band attacks and some aspects of the finale remind me of the Trails franchise in some ways, they just really needed to tone down the dungeon reuse ever so slightly. Even cut one or two of the tales out if they had to. Still, if you ultimately loved FFIV like I did, it might just be worth playing this to see those characters again for a new adventure.