Final Fantasy IV: The After Years -- First Impression
Of all the games that they could've made a sequel to, Final Fantasy IV was one of the last games anyone would've thought of. At the end of the original, the characters celebrate the end of all wars, especially the dwarves, who melt down all the tanks for the raw materials they contain.
I bet they feel silly now.
My Father's Name Is Cecil, And My Mother Is Rosa
The sequel picks up about 17 years after the original, and opens in exactly the same way: the Red Wings theme plays while we follow them in their flight...
...in fact, a lot of the game follows the same path the original took, as if they took the ROM of the original game and applied a hack. Not only that, but there's only a handful of new characters, so far, including Theodore... oops, I mean "Ceodore", the son of Rosa and Cecil. Okay, so "son of main character, who is just as awesome or even more awesome than main character" is such a fan fiction trope that I would probably classify this as a fan fiction romhack, if not for the fact that Square-Enix put it together, and that it's actually a port of a cell phone game. I've not played enough of the game to decide whether the quality is that of a bad fan fiction or not, considering only a quarter of the game has been released so far, but what has been released follows the general fan fiction pattern: a new evil threatens the world, the elite group from the first game has been split up, and so far it looks like the brand new character is the only one who can save the day. Yep, sounds like bad Gary Stu fan fiction to me.
There is only one new tune used so far, from what I can tell. It's a mysterious piece, one that I wouldn't mind hearing a couple more times, just to see what I feel about it. The rest of the music sounds pretty much the same as the music from the first game; when combined with the recycled visuals, it at first sounds like Square-Enix didn't put much effort into the game.
The battle system, though, shows that they at least made sure the game works, unlike most of the Final Fantasy IV releases. The most notably buggy version was the one on the Game Boy Advance, while the one on the DS was pretty much clean. The battle system in the sequel is as clean as the DS version, which is a good thing. For a while, it looks like Square couldn't seem to get a five-character party to work right in a game. But not only did they make it work, they added a couple special new features. The first new feature is the moon phase system. Basically, depending on what the moon's currently doing, certain battle commands and techniques will be strengthened, and others will be weakened. The moon advances when you stay at an inn, pitch a tent, or play the game for a half an hour after your last rest stop. What this means, of course, is that in the world of Final Fantasy IV, the moon's cycle lasts only four days. Cecil and company will no doubt find it very strange that ours takes 28 days to make one full cycle.
The second new feature of the battle system is the ability to execute combo attacks. Unlike games such as Chrono Trigger and Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, you do not automatically get combo attacks at the end of a battle. You have to discover them yourself. It's not as hard as it looks, though. You can just explore the battle system during random battles, and experiment with combinations. It's a fun system to mess around with for a while, although the sheer number of random battles you encounter might make you forget the feature even exists, especially if it takes a couple hours to find another new character.
You shouldn't have a problem leveling up, though. The level curve is shallow enough that you can level up to around level 15-20 quite easily in one go, then go on to the next dungeon and level to 25 in about ten, maybe fifteen more minutes. The one problem might be healing.
As for the plot, the first quarter of the game raises a lot of questions. Why did the second moon reappear? Who is the mysterious girl? What does she have to do with the sudden escalation in monster attacks? And what happened to... okay, that's a spoiler. Suffice to say, the first quarter will leave you wanting more.
To be continued, week of July 6th...
Art stolen from Wikipedia, which in turn borrowed from Square-Enix
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I have to say I wasn't expecting a whole lot from this, but what you've said has made me very disappointed, and continues to put me off sequels to Final Fantasy games.
However I suppose you have remarked only on the first half of the game, so the rest has the capacity to surprise us, but I predict it will continue to follow the path of it's original game, SE seem to be taking the easier path with their games now...
Yeah, the mini-review covers the first quarter of the game. I would say, for a game like this, that most people should probably wait until all four parts are released (September is when the last part shows up) and then play it all at once.
It acts a lot like a Lazy Sequel, like what they did with Final Fantasy X-2, but that game at least had new music to go along with the new battle system. At this point, I'd be hoping for a brand new final dungeon in part 4, but I suspect the characters will end up descending into the Lunarian's moon again...
Anyway, if you're at all curious about the story, I'd say that's the only reason to play. If not, just read the Wikipedia entry. They probably won't change anything from the Japanese version.
(Oh, and there's one annoyance that they put into this game that they also put into Crisis Core: at the end of each "chapter", they show the logo for a few seconds, then continue with the game. I have no idea why they do that, except to remind stupid people what game they're playing. Wow, I had no idea I was playing a Final Fantasy IV sequel! I thought I was playing Mirror's Edge! I guess this explains the Wii controller in my hand.)