Final Fantasy IV is the first game in the series to make great progress with the leap to a new generation of consoles. You notice this right from the start when you are greeted by a lengthy in-game cutscene instead of a text crawl. This sets the mood wonderfully. And that is important because until this game the world and the characters had never had so much depth. Something which Squaresoft will continue to refine and perfect. Friends become enemies, short travelling companions grow on you and more twists decorate the exciting path from the captain of an air force unit to the saviour of the blue planet. And here in the fourth part of the series, it is Sakaguchi who begins throwing the fate of characters in our faces. Everyone remembers that one scene from Final Fantasy VII, but three games prior you shouldn't get too attached either. Another revolutionary change is the introduction of Active Time Battle, which should bring more tension and urgency to the battles. And they are not wrong. However, I think that with many characters, especially when they can attack in a close time frame, it brings much more stress than tension. Even with the option to set ATB to Wait, it only pauses when selecting spells and items, but not when a character has filled his bar. Otherwise, the battles play out quite similarly to before. We are surprised by a group of monsters and we have to kill them before we die. But wait: This time there are some encounters that actually require tactics instead of just attacking and healing. There are boss fights with clear patterns like enemies casting Reflect on friends or bosses tanking. This doesn't get particularly deep but it's a welcome change from mostly auto-battling. Level up continues to be character based and spells use MP instead of slots. The locations and dungeons are wonderfully designed, sometimes with parallax backgrounds and finally no longer have that pipe-like design. It's really fun to fight your way through the areas, some of which have dangerous floors. And then there is a twist or two as far as the world map is concerned. In general, the game manages to give the impression of a living world with an ongoing story. The world does not only exist during the playthrough. Yes, Final Fantasy IV is a true masterpiece, but it doesn't come without a few flaws this time either. After some imperfections already noted, part four also fails to create an exciting boss fight. Again, it only uses powerful attacks and we try to finish it off before we are dead. In addition, there is grinding to expand the sufficient HP and MP pool and a long introduction to the fight that is repeated after every wipe. Ugh... And the boss doesn't look interesting this time either. Even though I found the last fight incredibly annoying, it's the way to get there that is once again exciting. The story around each of our characters, twists, love affairs and betrayals is too entertaining for that. So once again, it's the world and the characters that make a Final Fantasy game stand out and become a truly great game.