Final Fantasy IV Review

The Final Fantasy name holds a certain level of prestige for most gamers, and the reasoning is simple. For the last 20 years, Square has crafted what was originally a final farewell to classic role-playing games into some of the best storytelling in our industry, and it has done it with more consistency and diversity than any other single franchise. Now that the Final Fantasy name is celebrating its 20th anniversary (over the course of a few years, we'd assume) we're seeing remakes of Final Fantasy III, and now Final Fantasy IV on Nintendo DS, coupled with a seemingly never-ending list of titles from Square Enix on Nintendo's handheld. Outside of Nintendo itself, SE has fueled the portable with more consistently strong software than any other company out there, and you can add yet another title to the list with Final Fantasy IV, as the game smashes FF3's offering from last year, and delivers what is hands-down the definitive version of FFIV across all platforms.

FFIV has been around for quite a while, spanning virtually any system you'd care to play it on, so I'm not going to spend time going into what the game's about, or why you should care. It's Final Fantasy IV; you know what you're getting.

What you don't know about yet, however, is how the game stacks up to previous versions, other DS offerings, and just how worth your cash this premium-priced $40 DS game is. I went into Final Fantasy IV with faint but pleasant memories of the original, having played it just briefly on Super NES and then again on GBA just a few years back, but it wasn't until I had a chance to see Cecil and Kain in motion (and beautiful 3D) that I really felt like the Final Fantasy world truly opened up in IV. It's no secret that IV isn't exactly known as the top Super NES Final Fantasy title -- the huge debate is between FF3 (Japan VI) and FF7 for top in the series, more often than not, giving "top Super NES" accolades to FF3 -- but the game truly came alive on DS, and I find it's better here than on any previous platform.



Final Fantasy IV is hard on the DS, and any indication that it wasn't was quickly thrown out within the first two hours of play this time around. If you'll remember -- or care to check out -- I actually called this version easier all-around during my last preview with the game, though that was a big mistake in hindsight. The game is a bit more manageable during the opening hours as you get familiar with the new auto-battle system, the ability to check maps during dungeon crawling, and rip through the opening chapters of the story with Cecil and Kain both at the ready. Once things start to move along story-wise, however, things get very difficult, and FFIV quickly turns into a game designed specifically for the hardest of hardcore gamers.