Check out my NES trilogy retrospective for my thoughts on Final Fantasy I, II, and III

Whenever the topic “What’s your favourite Final Fantasy?” comes up, I’ve always had a single answer. Final Fantasy IV. On the SNES as a kid, it was my first JRPG, and I just remember the music, the story, and the characters really speaking to me. It inspired me to seek out dozens of JRPGs over the years until that genre became a part of my identity.

I’ve replayed portions of Final Fantasy IV over the years. I’d usually get to the part where Cecil becomes a paladin, or even as far as Palom and Porom turning to stone, but generally I’d be playing on an emulator on my phone or something else non-ideal, and I’d end up dropping the game before too long, so I was quite eager to reach this entry on my Final Fantasy playthrough.

The Story

Final Fantasy IV begins with The Dark Knight Cecil Harvey on an airship. Having just completed a raid on the village of Mysida and claimed its crystal at the behest of his king. He fulfilled his duty, but his internal monologue has doubts. Some of his men express doubts, but being the loyal leader that he is, he silences them quickly. Suddenly, monsters attack, although The Dark Knight dispatches them with ease.

Upon returning home to Baron and handing the crystal to the king, Cecil asks if the force is necessary. The king admonishes Cecil for questioning his rule and strips him of his rank as commander of the Red Wings as punishment. Cecils childhood friend, the dragoon Kain, stands by his friend’s side, and receives a similar admonishment. Cecil is then tasked to deliver a package to the nearby village of Mist, with Kain to accompany him.

In the moments that follow, you’re also introduced to Cid, the excitable engineer, and Rosa, Cecil’s love interest. She tries to comfort Cecil, but he’s emotionally closed off from her. The next morning, Cecil and Kain go to Mist, slaying the Mist Dragon guarding the pathway to Mist. Upon arriving in the village, the package is revealed to be a bomb ring, sending bomb monsters to raze the village. Cecil and Kain, horrified at the attack, rush to save a child, crying over the body of their mother. They quickly learn that the mother didn’t succumb to the bomb attack, but fell when her summon, the Mist Dragon, was slain. Cecil and Kain try to get the girl, Rydia, to safety, but she panics, and summons Titan, who causes an earthquake and landslide, cutting Cecil off from his path back to Baron.

When the dust settles, Kain is nowhere to be found, and Cecil is alone with Rydia. He carries her to a nearby inn, and vows to keep her safe. Even when Baron guards appear at the inn, dispatched to finish the job of slaying the summoners, Cecil fights back.

What follows is a tale of redemption. Party members come and go, from royalty of destitute castles, to magical prodigies, to old friends, characters come and go from Cecil’s quest, each one lending unique abilities to help him overcome his trials. Cecil himself travels to Mt. Ordeal to cast off The Dark Knight moniker and become a paladin instead. Cecil’s task of gathering the crystals is taken over by a fearsome foe named Golbez, who has some ability to control the minds of others, as he manipulates Kain to torment Cecil. Cecil, however, forges alliances with people all over the world to fight back against the forces of darkness.

The Generational Jump

The jump to the SNES was obviously significant for the Final Fantasy series. The expanded hardware gave the team more of everything to utilize. From sound, to colours, to just the number of pixels you could use to create a character, everything was expanded. While still restrained and limited in certain areas, like how most sprites are unable to physically interact, instead opting to just have characters stand next to each other, and perhaps raise an arm or two, or to just have a sprite spin in place to show excitement, Final Fantasy IV manages to convey a surprising amount of emotions within these constraints, except for the one moment where Rose and Cecil embrace, which switches to a specific sprite for that moment. It was surprisingly powerful, especially when you’re used to emotional moments having fully animated cutscenes.

I find it quite fascinating that moving from Final Fantasy I, to II, then III, there has always been an emphasis of freedom in how you build out your party. You could always choose to have a very rounded team, or a brute force squad, or even make every party member a mage if you wanted to. Final Fantasy IV removes all of that freedom. For the entire game, your party is based on which characters are with you, and each character has a defined role, including specific abilities and equipment that cannot be swapped between characters. The most jarring part of this adventure for me was when the white and black mages Palom and Porom are in your party, and then you’re joined by the Sage, Tellah. Having such a magic forward party is generally not my preferred way to play, but in Final Fantasy IV, you have to work with what you get.

I can’t say that having teammates locked to certain equipment or skills is such a negative, however. If you’re new to JRPGs in general, it does give you an easy on-ramp to typical character archtypes and builds. The characters flowing in and out of the party works for the story too, as generally, a character leaves your party by sacrificing themselves, much in the vein of Final Fantasy II, although here, most of the characters miraculously survive, even when leaping from an airship holding a ticking bomb, which can undercut some of the dramatic moments. As always in media, if you don’t see the body, you can’t assume they actually died.

The difficulty in Final Fantasy IV is generally pretty easy, and I give partial credit to having the party built for you, and built for each specific dungeon. There were a few moments where my whole party got wiped out, particularly reaching the moon for the first time, or getting totally paralyzed by gold dragons. But I never felt like the difficulty spiked particularly badly. There’s also a much less emphasis on equipment here, with most characters only having 4 or 5 different weapons throughout the entire game. No longer are you buying a new sword in every town, you really just pick them up in the dungeons as you go along, and wouldn’t you know it, the chests in the dungeons contain loot specifically tailored for your party.

The magic system has been overhauled as well. You’ll never need to buy spells from the towns, instead each character learns spells as they level up. It’s a fine system, but it, again, feels like it’s stealing freedom from its players. These characters will learn their skills at their pace, and you just have to accept it.

The real big change in Final Fantasy IV is the Active Time Battle system. instead of queueing all of your attacks at the top of a round, and them having them execute one after the other, then take an enemy beating, now each character has a timer. Faster characters will act more frequently, sometimes twice as often as the slowest enemies. It made the battles feel much more dynamic and exciting. Especially during the battles where I was desperately waiting for my healers bar to fill up so I could revive or heal someone else that was close to death.

Conclusion

Final Fantasy IV is the first time I’ve really felt like I’ve been playing a Final Fantasy game since I started this little adventure down memory road. Perhaps because characters and story have become such a mainstay of the series, that the first 3 games felt like empty shells rather than the full Final Fantasy experience I was expecting. Final Fantasy IV has its problems, namely the lack of freedom in building your party, railroading the characters in your party, the lack of side quests or optional dungeons to really test your mettle, but it’s still a great game. I think that Final Fantasy IV is the best place for someone to start if they wanted to experience Final Fantasy for the first time, or even JRPGs for the first time. It delivers an emotional story while taking away some of the nitty gritty details of party building and inventory management. Players won’t be looking up class guides to min/max their stats, and rarely will they even need to look up directions. I loved my time with Final Fantasy IV, I almost never felt frustrated or lost. I was happy to be back with old friends, re-experiencing a tale of redemption that has been buried in my psyche since I was a child. As of now, Final Fantasy IV remains my favourite Final Fantasy experience, but only time will tell if it’ll hold onto that honour.