To play Final Fantasy IV is to be forced to appraise it along two axis: against the moment it came out, and in comparison with what JRPGs would become afterward. It is a game that feels at once boundary pushing, palpably energized by the new hardware of the SNES, and simultaneously thin, spinning a tale that would be handily outclassed in terms of complexity within a few short years. I ended up liking FF4! But it is a bit of a strange object, permanently caught in a transitionary period between the evocative bareness of the NES Final Fantasies and Square’s future, more extravagant output.
FF4 goes out of its way to reintroduce the series to new players, often functioning as a greatest hits of the prior games. There’s a gradually intensifying sci-fi narrative bent last hinted at in FF1, affixed onto a plot that feels like an expansion of FF2’s fight against an evil empire (complete with a rotating cast of playable characters), all joined by an expanding world map, breadth of locations, and discrete character abilities that feel in line with FF3. FF4 takes things further by constantly foregrounding its narrative and world in ways that the NES did not allow for. FF2’s opening scene, where your party is cut down by the empire’s troops within the battle screen, feels like the template upon which FF4 bases much of its identity on. Characters have firmly established combat roles with unique abilities (largely modeled on some of FF3’s jobs). They will often leave or join battles mid-fight, meaning that only Cecil is consistently in your party throughout the entire game. “Cutscenes” will often play out as automated battles that you view as an outsider; in one of the game’s best moments, you have to defend against Cecil’s shadow self in order to win and become a Paladin. All of this represents a new interest in integrating characterization into what your party members can do in battle.
This is all very cool to see! But FF4’s actual thematic content lacks depth. Characters typically get One bit of growth or wrinkle to complicate their archetypes. For instance, Cecil has to atone for his sins of pillaging and (accidentally) blowing up a town by becoming a Paladin…and then he’s pretty much good to go from there. Kain tries to be a rival/foil to Cecil (as well as his friend), but continually gets brainwashed. Rosa is a woman. There are characters I have a little more affection for than others (the summoner Rydia, who disappears partway through only to return older and more experienced, is my favorite), but none feel particularly interesting in and of themselves. Nor does the game seek to take its most interesting ideas, like its opening half hour where you work for the bad guys, anywhere other than the path of least resistance. FF4 is therefore in a bit of an awkward position, more interested than ever in emphasizing its narrative but unequipped to fill all that time with something particularly engaging. At least the setting feels at its most diverse and exciting yet! Towns probably get the biggest facelift, filled with the best bits of NPC dialogue in the series so far and demonstrating more of an inclination toward naturalism. There are finally bespoke rooms and buildings you can enter that serve no other purpose than to give the world a little more personality!
Combat also gets a pretty major overhaul with the implementation of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, wherein each character has a bar that fills up over time before they can perform an action. I like how this represents each character’s agility more, but I personally never got much out of the added focus on reaction time; I kinda wished the wait mode just paused time whenever one character’s bar filled up. More interesting is how the game continually rotates your party members, which effectively ends up de-incentivizing grinding for most of the game (since you could lose a character you’ve put time into building up at any given moment). This meant that the difficulty curve generally resulted in a measured level of challenge throughout most of the game, as you’re encouraged to use each party member’s abilities to get through challenges instead of spending much time leveling them up. It gives the game a similar kind of puzzle-y feeling that FF3 had, although FF4 has the added strength of being able to design battles while knowing the player’s exact party composition.
Reading back over this, I feel like I may be coming off a little more negative than I intend to. Part of this might be due to me playing these early Final Fantasies via their pixel remaster versions; I get the desire to have the NES games at a “comparable” fidelity level to the SNES games, but there’s an aesthetic flattening that occurred in the process that I think dulled my perception of FF4’s generational leap and ambitions. Nobuo Uematsu’s increased compositional acumen shines through more than the game’s art at least; while the IOS version of FF4 PR does not allow one to switch back to the original OST, there’s a comparative scope and playfulness to the PR tracks that feel like they’re drawing on denser arrangements than what were present on the NES. Every facet of the game has some marked addition like this. It makes me excited to see this team’s iWork going forward; if nothing else, FF4 certainly lays a compelling groundwork for future Final Fantasies.
FF4 goes out of its way to reintroduce the series to new players, often functioning as a greatest hits of the prior games. There’s a gradually intensifying sci-fi narrative bent last hinted at in FF1, affixed onto a plot that feels like an expansion of FF2’s fight against an evil empire (complete with a rotating cast of playable characters), all joined by an expanding world map, breadth of locations, and discrete character abilities that feel in line with FF3. FF4 takes things further by constantly foregrounding its narrative and world in ways that the NES did not allow for. FF2’s opening scene, where your party is cut down by the empire’s troops within the battle screen, feels like the template upon which FF4 bases much of its identity on. Characters have firmly established combat roles with unique abilities (largely modeled on some of FF3’s jobs). They will often leave or join battles mid-fight, meaning that only Cecil is consistently in your party throughout the entire game. “Cutscenes” will often play out as automated battles that you view as an outsider; in one of the game’s best moments, you have to defend against Cecil’s shadow self in order to win and become a Paladin. All of this represents a new interest in integrating characterization into what your party members can do in battle.
This is all very cool to see! But FF4’s actual thematic content lacks depth. Characters typically get One bit of growth or wrinkle to complicate their archetypes. For instance, Cecil has to atone for his sins of pillaging and (accidentally) blowing up a town by becoming a Paladin…and then he’s pretty much good to go from there. Kain tries to be a rival/foil to Cecil (as well as his friend), but continually gets brainwashed. Rosa is a woman. There are characters I have a little more affection for than others (the summoner Rydia, who disappears partway through only to return older and more experienced, is my favorite), but none feel particularly interesting in and of themselves. Nor does the game seek to take its most interesting ideas, like its opening half hour where you work for the bad guys, anywhere other than the path of least resistance. FF4 is therefore in a bit of an awkward position, more interested than ever in emphasizing its narrative but unequipped to fill all that time with something particularly engaging. At least the setting feels at its most diverse and exciting yet! Towns probably get the biggest facelift, filled with the best bits of NPC dialogue in the series so far and demonstrating more of an inclination toward naturalism. There are finally bespoke rooms and buildings you can enter that serve no other purpose than to give the world a little more personality!
Combat also gets a pretty major overhaul with the implementation of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, wherein each character has a bar that fills up over time before they can perform an action. I like how this represents each character’s agility more, but I personally never got much out of the added focus on reaction time; I kinda wished the wait mode just paused time whenever one character’s bar filled up. More interesting is how the game continually rotates your party members, which effectively ends up de-incentivizing grinding for most of the game (since you could lose a character you’ve put time into building up at any given moment). This meant that the difficulty curve generally resulted in a measured level of challenge throughout most of the game, as you’re encouraged to use each party member’s abilities to get through challenges instead of spending much time leveling them up. It gives the game a similar kind of puzzle-y feeling that FF3 had, although FF4 has the added strength of being able to design battles while knowing the player’s exact party composition.
Reading back over this, I feel like I may be coming off a little more negative than I intend to. Part of this might be due to me playing these early Final Fantasies via their pixel remaster versions; I get the desire to have the NES games at a “comparable” fidelity level to the SNES games, but there’s an aesthetic flattening that occurred in the process that I think dulled my perception of FF4’s generational leap and ambitions. Nobuo Uematsu’s increased compositional acumen shines through more than the game’s art at least; while the IOS version of FF4 PR does not allow one to switch back to the original OST, there’s a comparative scope and playfulness to the PR tracks that feel like they’re drawing on denser arrangements than what were present on the NES. Every facet of the game has some marked addition like this. It makes me excited to see this team’s iWork going forward; if nothing else, FF4 certainly lays a compelling groundwork for future Final Fantasies.