I’ve heard it said that a superhero movie is only as good as its villains. I don’t know if I fully buy that, but I loved the Maenads. They were well-defined and built up gradually, especially with the Interlude serving to set the whole thing up.
I have a feeling that the Creator will stick with me. We weren’t explicitly told the scope of his involvement, whether he really created these worlds and races or just watched or tinkered with them or something in the middle. Whatever the case, there were SO MANY CRYSTALS just lying around the lower reaches of the Depths, and in the Creator’s room. I have to imagine that the rest of the Final Fantasy games were somehow watched, helped, or overseen by the Creator.
The Emperor from FFII seemed ambitious. He conquered the earth, heaven, and hell. But he’s got nothing on the Creator.
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Primary Characters: This was the true strength of the base game, and “the After Years” built beautifully on that foundation. I love the relationships in this game deeply. Just as with FFII, the ostensible protagonists of each – Kain, Cecil, Rosa – were the least interesting to me. They felt a bit paint-by-numbers.
“The After Years” was so brilliant in bringing other characters to the forefront. Luca, Ursula, Ceodore, Edge and Rydia. Porom! Palom and Leonora! EDWARD EDWARD EDWARD. There was so much hidden potential in these stories, so much room to explore, and it took its time in exploring it.
They took many breaks from pure grinding to dive into this. All the different night cutscenes on Moon #2 are prime examples. Sometimes they add gameplay elements, like setting up new Band attacks, but that’s a side bonus. The relationships are intrinsically interesting to me.
The story set-up was great too, how you could pick which story to follow first. A nice change from the purely linear style of the FF games preceding it.
A negative: the story itself could feel grindy at times. They kept going back to the style of setting up a mystery in an individual story, coming close to telling us wtf was really happening, and then the story ended. It all sort of paid off when the stories came together on the moon, but they kept delaying it so often that it became a bit frustrating at times.
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Length This absolutely felt like the longest game. And not just in terms of writing, but in terms of pure game time.
FFIV (base game + Lunar Ruins): 46 hours, 38 minutes
FFIV (Interlude): 3 hours, 12 minutes
FFIV (After Years): 52 hours, 23 minutes
TOTAL: 101 hours, 13 minutes
THAT’S A LONG FREAKING GAME. (I know, it’s basically like two separate games, but still.) Roger Ebert once said no really good movie is too long, and no really bad movie is too short. The same may generally be true for games, but this may be a case of a really good game that was a bit on the long side.
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Gameplay: The on-rails class system wasn’t an entirely welcome shift from FFIII. I’m fine with the games switching it up a bit, but some variety and choice would’ve been nice.
Combat felt smooth and intuitive. The bosses were often like puzzles to solve rather than simply walls to climb with grinding and higher levels. I have no doubt I could’ve gone that route, but I like how smooth the natural leveling curve felt. Similar to FFIII.
Band attacks were a good system, and I wish I had taken more advantage of it.
The lunar phase seems like a nice idea, but again, I didn’t end up having to interact with it much. I found a Lunar Phase that was good for my composition, and tried to keep it up. It was maybe too easy to avoid interacting with this system just by stocking up on cabins and sleeping away the “bad” cycles.
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Music: It’s hard for me not to be biased. This was defining game music of my childhood, especially the combat music. Not sure how much time my brother and I spent imitating it and trying to transliterate it: “ZZZZHHHHWOMP! Dununununununu…” So many great themes.
My two favorite, from the After Years:
The Mysterious Girl music, for the Maenads, nee Evil Moon Girl:
Master of Creation, from the Creator’s montage. See 2:43 of the following:
(see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcdogxuswhI)
Graphics: I never had played PSP before, and this was so clean and crisp. Wonderful upgrade from SNES. Style-wise, WAAAAAY better than FFIII on the DS in my opinion. I get that it’s a style thing and a matter of taste, but the whole “kawaii” thing just isn’t my favorite.
Many monsters were creepy and creative and horrifying. Some favorites:
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Replayability: YES YES YES. I don’t want to replay it now, but there are so many party compositions and stories and things I missed. I remember now that I forgot to go back to the Challengingway Dungeons, and though I won’t do that (feel free to spoil for me if you’d like and have cool stuff to share from those), this is the first game that felt like I could play it a lot of different ways.
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So that’s that. A fun game with great characters and combat, and a clear step forward in many ways from FFIII, but holy hell is it long.
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Next time: Final Fantasy V.
