Huge layoff and I'm back with a whimper! I've been craving to take a quick run through Final Fantasy IV (my introduction to the Final Fantasy series as part of the Final Fantasy Chronicle collection on PS1), so I booted up my copy of Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection on PSP and ran it through. After finishing it up, I figured I may as well finish up Cecil and company's adventures, so I played through Final Fantasy IV Interlude and am currently working on Final Fantasy IV: The After Years.
Boy, is Final Fantasy IV ever important, and it's actually still really fun! I had psychically depressed it in the rankings in my mind due to how much I truly love other games in the series, especially V, VI, VII, and X. My preference in the Final Fantasy series is always for games that permit you to customize your characters and truly role play, and IV is really light on these elements, particularly in comparison to the game changing customization possible in III (which is really a dreadful game). But the storytelling is still phenomenal, as is the world to explore, and you can just see the titanic leaps forward in character development and battle mechanics that are present in every game after IV. So, I really loved my time in IV, and moved expectantly on to the next game in the series, Final Fantasy IV Interlude.
Calling this a game is a bit disingenuous, and it requires a bit of explanation of what's going on in this collection. Final Fantasy IV is the same old game as always, with a fresh coat of paint and a garish new remixed soundtrack. Fortunately, you can play the old soundtrack, which you can do immediately. Unfortunately, you can't revert to the original visuals, which I would have preferred. They're not horrible, though. Then you have Final Fantasy IV Interlude, which is a tiny little game that explains some of the events in between Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. I'll explain a bit more about the third game when I review it. The game I'm reviewing here takes probably less than 2 hours, which feels a bit cheap, but I did review DuckTales, The Little Mermaid, and Super Mario Land, all of which were much shorter, so I'll count it, and shamelessly pad my stats a bit (I just had a baby, my completions are slowing down, and I desperately need to get to 50 this year! Give a guy a break!).
Anyway, there's not a ton to review here. It's an RPG. It's in the Final Fantasy IV universe. It's got the exact same music and places to explore. It's done in 2 hours, and is less an homage to the original than a hackneyed repeat of a ton of tropes from the original. Don't play it, unless you really, really like Final Fantasy IV and just can't do without knowing what happens after you rescue the world from the Lunarian nightmares. I'll give this a 5.0/10, purely for the glorious glow that was left hanging around after completing Final Fantasy IV.
Up next on the handheld section of What I'm Playing is Final Fantasy IV: The After Years!
-TRO
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