The Final Fantasy IV Retrospective

by the summer of 1990 Japanese video game developer Square had gone from a small Studio on the verge of bankruptcy to one of the Premier developers of role-playing games while the first two titles in the Final Fantasy series had respectable sales it was Final Fantasy 3 that would be the series breakthrough topping Japan's best sellers list the week of its release and ultimately selling more copies than its two predecessors combined while not quite as successful as even the first of enix's astonishingly popular Dragon Quest series the fourth entry of which had released two months earlier and would ultimately sell more than twice as many copies of squares 3 equal Final Fantasy 3 would firmly establish Square's Premiere series as one that could stand alongside Yuji hori's cultural juggernauts between this newfound level of success and the rapidly approaching Super famicom Final Fantasy Creator Hiro Nobu sakaguchi and his team were already concocting plans for the series future on Nintendo's upcoming 16-bit console but this enthusiasm was not going unobserved as Nintendo's North American Branch had already he begun making moves to bring the genre across the Pacific by the time a final fantasy 3's launch in Japan Nintendo of America was well underway with bringing the original Final Fantasy to the west and it would be just the shot in the arm the genre needed to establish itself in the western gaming Zeitgeist or would it foreign [Music] but before Final Fantasy came to Western Shores we need to understand what was happening in the United States in the 1980s while the 1970s were a Time marked by economic recession the 80s would claw the country out of a depression and into an era of excess brought on by the social and economic deregulation of various government agencies by President Ronald Reagan during his two consecutive terms he would use his image Consciousness and media Savvy from his years as an actor during the Golden Age of Hollywood to his Advantage bringing what many Americans had considered an air of legitimacy back to the office of the president for the first time since president Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal in the early 70s the Reagan's on-camer Charisma and their heavy governmental deregulation would help to usher in a new age of materialism narcissism and image Consciousness which would engulf 1980s American culture the perfect distillation of this is perhaps the proliferation of MTV which accentuated Aesthetics in popular music at times more so and to the detriment of the aural Artistry the first music video to air on the channel the Buggles Video Killed the Radio Star may as well have been a warning for how prophetic it would become this individualist culture would also man manifest in the form of a national anxiety concerning a particular foreign power only it wasn't the Soviet Union As Americans might have expected during this Cold War era nor was it a military power it was Japan and their cultural and economic influence which seemed to be slowly encroaching on every aspect of American Life thanks to their post-war economic prosperity and economic policies which would result in the revaluation of both the Japanese Yen and U.S dollar Japanese companies would gradually begin investing in and even gobbling up entire U.S companies throughout the decade so frequents and prevalence were such occurrences that there was a genuine fear from some that Japan would eventually buy all major American companies and where they couldn't buy influence they would Court social favor with expensive and illustrious gadgetry so pervasive was the idea of Japan having an ineffable influence on American Business and culture that American Media began incorporating it into Hollywood Cinema such as the setting of nakatomi Plaza and die hard future Marty's boss and Back to the Future Part 2 being Japanese and the widespread use of Japanese iconography and lettering in Blade Runner The Works of Japanese animation companies were also becoming more prevalent on the U.S market whether through U.S companies Outsourcing the animation to various Japanese Studios as a cost-cutting measure or through anime trickling onto the budding us home video markets the Capstone of anime coming to the US in the 80s would be the seminal film Akira which would see an extremely limited theatrical release during the Christmas of 1989. obviously this proliferation of Japanese culture in the U.S also extended to video games while the U.S market for Home console games was thriving from the late 70s into the early 80s with the likes of the Atari 2600 and in television the market would bottom out in what has since become mythologized as the video game Crash of 1983 this was brought on by a combination of Market saturation and a lack of quality control as these consoles tended not to have any copy protection or anti-piracy measures allowing third-party companies to spring up overnight to churn out quick and cheap cash grabs what is commonly seen as the Tipping Point was the poor state of atari's exclusive tie-in game for Steven Spielberg's ET which was overproduced and rejected in such high volumes that the company dumped excess stock in a New Mexico landfill for a little while video games were written off by the American public as just a passing fad while those still interested in the medium would move on to more capable home computers to get their gaming fix this would clear the path for Nintendo to dominate the North American Games Market just as they had been doing in Japan following extensive market research which determined that Americans were burnt out on simple games which were deceptively marketed Nintendo of America redesigned the famicom to resemble a VCR bundled it with a robot named Rob to make it seem more toyetic plastered pixelated artwork from the game itself on the game's packaging and most importantly did not use the term video game to sell it the newly christened Nintendo Entertainment System would be sold as just that an entertainment system rather than being sold in electronic shops it would be sold in toy stores such as the famous FAO Schwartz in New York City New York would serve as initial test market for the system in the holiday season of 1985 where Nintendo had to bend over backwards for stores to stock systems and games as well as to set up displays on show floors but their efforts would pay off as 90 000 units would be sold by Year's End after another successful test run in Los Angeles the following February the NES would launch Nationwide in October 1986. according to Ronald Judy then vice presidents of marketing at Nintendo of America they had matched their sales projections for the holiday season selling 1.1 million units but noted that they could have sold an additional 300 000 had they been able to keep up with demand sales for the NES would rise dramatically as the decade reached its conclusion with more than 20 million consoles and over 100 million cartridges sold and command of over 80 percent of the U.S Home console Market by the end of 1989. this was partially brought on by the high quality of the games released for the platform compared to those from before the market crash but also the special lockout ship that wasn't present on the original famicom on this lockout ship known as the 10 Nest chip prevented other companies from manufacturing unlicensed cartridges for the NES and flooding the market like in the early 80s forcing them to work with Nintendo directly if they wanted their game released for the platform such working relationships and Licensing agreements also came with strict rules for third-party developers and Publishers namely the requirement that they keep their games exclusive to the NES for at least two years purchase cartridges directly from Nintendo and the strict limit of only 5 Games per year accusations of Monopoly were levied against them the Federal Trade Commission conducted an official investigation and atari's ten gen division tried suing Nintendo to the tune of 100 million dollars for supposedly violating Anti-Trust laws Nintendo would countersue as 10 gen had circumvented their lockout ship and were producing and marketing their own unauthorized third-party games indirect violation of their licensing agreement but all of this is to say that Nintendo had successfully revived video games in America reaching a point of cultural ubiquity that that their very name became synonymous with video games as a whole even if you had the ever so less popular Sega Master System your parents would likely still call it a Nintendo the epitome of this is on Full display with the 1989 film The Wizard produced by Universal Pictures in collaboration with Nintendo to effectively act as a feature-length commercial for Nintendo products games and accessories most notably the Grand Western reveal of Super Mario Brothers 3 which by the time of the film's release had been available in its native Japan for over a year [Applause] hooray [Music] [Applause] the wizard was a modest success opening in over 1100 theaters across the United States upon its release on December 5th 1989 at the number five spot and ultimately earning over 14 million dollars at the domestic box office more than double that of its somewhat meager 6 million dollar budget while the enthusiasm of the Nintendo Nation wasn't reflected in critical reviews at the time with Roger Ebert lambasting it as quote a cynical exploitation film with a lot of commercial plugs in it the film has gone on to achieve cult status among both the enthusiastic and the nostalgic despite or even because of that same soulless commercialist quality for which it was derided in its day but not everything released for or surrounding the NES would see financial success in its day also in 1989 Nintendo of America would localize the original Dragon Quest for the territory renamed Dragon Warrior as the rights to the original title were held by then Dungeons and Dragons publisher TSR despite a heavy marketing push in Nintendo Power Dragon Warrior would unfortunately be passed over by the legions of Nintendo fans across the country in favor of more action-oriented games your super Mario's Mega Mans and castlevanias the game's menu-based systems emblematic of the RPG genre combined with the visuals which were not only already dated at the time but had to be slightly updated to be less primitive simply failed to capture player interest it also didn't help that the wonderful artwork of Akira Toriyama while still retained in the game itself was excised from the game's marketing materials and cover art in favor of a more generic European fantasy aesthetic then game master for Nintendo of America Howard Phillips believes that Dragon Quest came far too late for it to make an impact in America being released over three years after its Japanese debut but Nintendo of America president minaru arakawa was adamant that the series be released in the territory as it was hugely successful in Japan they ordered 1 million cartridges and were left with excess stock due to the lack of Interest it was only because of a promotional offer through Nintendo Power the following year that they were able to clear out much of the excess stock though because of its initial failure Nintendo of America wouldn't bring the rest of the series over themselves leaving Annex to do it themselves throughout the early 90s however while Dragon Quest was the biggest RPG Series in Japan it obviously wasn't the only one in July 1990 Nintendo would localize the original Final Fantasy in a second attempt to bring the genre Stateside alongside heavy Marketing in multiple issues of Nintendo Power a dedicated strategy guide and a special mail-in contest where One winner and three friends would embark on an adventure of their own on the island of Tortola in the British Virgin Isles with 50 Runners up receiving a special glass orb reminiscent of the crystals held by the Warriors of light themselves referred to as orbs in the localization on the whole the localized version of Final Fantasy is serviceable aside from changes made to the visuals to conform with Nintendo of America's content policy churches are now clinics references to death have been excised and some Sprites have been altered to meet with these mandates the most notable Sprite alteration is that of the beholder which was completely replaced with a new enemy dubbed the evil eye likely to avoid the litigious ire of TSR who owns the copyrights of the beholder from Dungeons and Dragons unfortunately much like Dragon Quest before it final fantasy's iconic artwork from yoshitaka Amano would go unused when marketing the game in the west once again opting for more generic European fantasy Aesthetics Final Fantasy was even more successful in North America than it had been in Japan selling over 700 000 copies and its popularity would continue to hold for several years becoming a Mainstay on Nintendo power's list of the top NES games for every issue following its release until the magazine ceased publishing a top 20 for the console in January 1995. a total of 52 months this success would have a knock-on effect for the localized release of akatoshi kawazu's saga games on the Game Boy which would be published by Square's own Redmond Washington based subsidiary squaresoft that had been established in 1989. Saga would be hastily rechristened as the Final Fantasy legend in the west to capitalize on the success of Final Fantasy and a similar fate would befall another Square Game Boy RPG 1991 psychon densetsu Final Fantasy Gaiden which would see its subtitle elevated and renamed Final Fantasy Adventure the ubiquity of the Final Fantasy brand would also extend beyond the realm of video games in the US as the world of the original game would act as the setting of an episode of the NBC Saturday morning cartoon Captain N the game master in which the teenage main character Kevin is hypnotized by astos as part of the dark elf's plot to conquer the world of Final Fantasy foreign [Music] Together We Will Conquer This Land once and for all time thankfully this perversion of the Final Fantasy name for the sake of selling other unrelated games wouldn't last akatoshi kawazu in a 2019 interview with us gamer would shed some light on y-square were initially so liberal in rebranding everything to Final Fantasy in the west and why the practice quickly petered Out quote back then Square as a publisher was desperate to have its name known in the west this is why it was trying to create a very simple square equals Final Fantasy formula as such Saga and Mana Series titles were released under the Final Fantasy name but in the end it seems people felt something was off when games with completely different contents were released under the same series name unquote with the exception of Saga 2 and 3 maintaining the Final Fantasy legendary titling in 1991 and 1993 likely for the sake of consistency squaresoft would then attempt to reserve the Final Fantasy name in the West for actual Final Fantasy titles with Final Fantasy 2 now with the subtitle Dark Shadow over palakia undergoing localization for a western release and plans for Final Fantasy 3 to soon follow but these plans would be canceled as the successor to the NES the Super Nintendo was soon to be released in North America and NES sales would begin to decline in anticipation whereas over 7 million consoles were sold in 1990 less than 5 million would be sold in 1991 still strong but a far cry from the over 9 million sold in 1989 however while Americans were waiting for the Super Nintendo to land on store shelves back in Japan the super famicom had been available for months and by the time the Western World got a hold of Nintendo's 16-bit machine Japan had already gotten the next installment of Final Fantasy but the road to get it out the door was one page with growth learning and hardship as it proved to be an important transitionary period not just for the series but for series Creator hironobu sakaguchi and all those who had brought it and the first three games to life foreign [Music] immediately after the completion of Final Fantasy 3 plans were being laid for not one but two Final Fantasy games Final Fantasy 4 for the famicom and Final Fantasy V for the super famicom this decision may have been solidified by Square's relocation to akasaka and the establishment of a second branch in Osaka in February of 1990 as having two development houses could possibly allow for such division of Duties to create two full-scale RPGs within only a year or so plans for the fourth installments were ambitious with a brief magazine preview complete with a mock screenshot describing the return of Final Fantasy 3's job system save points being added to dungeons new twists and combat mechanics and the addition of new jobs namely the magician Carpenter cook and priest the most prominent details however concerned that most quintessential mode of Transport in the series the Airship Final Fantasy 4 was to have a strong focus on airships as a regular part of its World there would be multiple types of ships with all all previous varieties returning from the first three games as well as new colossal ones which would purportedly take up a whole third of the screen Airship shops would be a common sight in this world and the regular people would use them as well leading to the player possibly colliding with others ships during flight this proliferation of the Airship would also leave the skies without a dominant Force to control it it was just an average part of life this would all be accomplished by a special job meant specifically to deal with airships though exactly how it would have done so is unclear this preview would be accompanied by predictions on what the game would ultimately be like from both Enix and Namco the former predicted transforming airships with nuclear weapons and the latter asking for variations in ships and special weapons but more so simply praising Square for doing something new with Final Fantasy whereas Dragon Quest tended to not take as many risks unfortunately these predictions would ultimately be fruitless as Final Fantasy 4 for the famicom would be canceled relatively early in development likely due to waning interest in the Aging Hardware as well as the logistic sticks of developing two full RPGs for two different consoles simultaneously thankfully aspects and resources would be funneled into the super famicom game now re-christened Final Fantasy 4. in the years since there have been rumors flying around that this famicom game was actually 80 complete when it was canceled though these claims have yet to be verified and as such we will be proceeding under the assumption that they are untrue unfortunately this merging of projects would not be the only serious shake-up for the final fantasy team just as akatoshi kawazu had left to spearhead his own game between Final Fantasy 2 and 3 koichi ishi hiromichi Tanaka nazer gabeli and Kenji tarata would also take their own respective leaves of the series following three games worth of growth Discovery and success like kawazu with whom he had worked on the inaugural title In The Saga series ishi would become the architect for his own RPG for the Game Boy The action-driven saikon densetsu Final Fantasy Gaiden which as mentioned in the pre previous section would be retitled Final Fantasy Adventure when released in North America not only did he feel the time was right for him to move on from Final Fantasy but he wanted to create a thrilling adventure that turn-based games simply couldn't provide Tanaka would leave upon realizing that the action-based combat system he had been creating for four featuring Dynamic battles that weren't separated from exploration simply didn't feel like Final Fantasy anymore but his work wouldn't go to waste as the project would be split off and given the code name Chrono Trigger with Tanaka acting as producer under the direction of ishi and with nazer gabelli as the main programmer it would ultimately be released as second densetsu 2 for the super famicom in 1993 renamed Secret of Mana in the west this left only three members of the original final fantasy team working on the series series Creator Hiro Nobu sakaguchi composer nabuo oematsu and graphics artist kazuko Shibuya who herself would be far more involved with koichi ishi's second and setsu than she would be with Final Fantasy 4. her contributions would ultimately amount to character illustrations none of which she would Implement into the game herself with uematsu still on board the game was sure to retain the Sonic Brilliance of the first three and Not only would Final Fantasy 3's battle programmer katsuhi sahiguchi still be working on the fourth game but Long Time Square employee Hiro Yuki itso who had done plenty of uncredited work on the first three games would be stepping up to help formulate a new battle system for a new era of the series this would leave sakaguchi with but one last role to fill that of a creative collaborator for the first three games sakaguchi had worked closely with Kenji tarata to help flesh out his outlines and ideas into a full-blown narrative he would lay out the critical plot points and poignant lines of dialogue and terata would connect everything together into a cohesive whole with tarata no longer involved sakaguchi sought guidance he wanted Final Fantasy 4 story to be more complex and gripping than its predecessors while utilizing the Advanced Hardware of the super famicom to enhance its presentation but he also wanted to supplant the the ever popular Dragon Quest in the pages of weakly Shonen Jump which in addition to publishing serialized action manga like Dragon Ball and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure also dedicated space to featured video games in every issue though these Pages would often be occupied by Dragon Quest sakaguchi's desire to see Final Fantasy featured in Jump became an obsession to the point that shortly after the release of Final Fantasy 3 he met with the publication's editor kazuhiko Tori Shima to ask him directly about what it would take for Final Fantasy to be featured in response Tori Shima asks sakaguchi why is Final Fantasy so bad over the course of their dinner meeting Tori shimo lectured sakaguchi on all of the shortcomings of the first three games and the young developer realized that the experienced editor was correct the characters and stories of the famicom trilogy whether due to technical restraints or a lack of writing ability were fairly flat but sakaguchi hell-bent on getting his game featured in the popular magazine saw an opportunity he would continue to meet with Tori Shima presenting him with scripts which the editor would relentlessly tear down and identify what he felt was lacking sakaguchi would revise them and present them to Tori Shima again during their next meeting eventually the jump editor would begin pointing out things he felt were good and over time his unorthodox methods of mentorship would teach sakaguchi how to write stories just as Tori Shima had done with countless manga authors before him but this wouldn't mean he would issue the idea of having a creative partner and so sakaguchi would promote a part-time employee who had been with square since before even the first Final Fantasy had entered development to be his collaborator this go around to born on January 24th 1965 Takashi takita grew up during the burgeoning days of anime and originally aspired to be a voice actor while drawing manga on the side as he grew into adulthood his goals had shifted from acting in front of a microphone to acting on the stage which would bring him to Tokyo however to keep himself afloat he took a part-time job as a graphic designer in the affluent Roppongi District of Minato it was while working there that an acquaintance who worked at chunsoft gave him a copy of a game that he had helped work on Dragon Quest 2 takita was initially hesitant to play it he didn't like computers nor RPGs his game genre of choice was Shooters but he gave it a chance and his perspective had flipped completely he saw the potential inherent in video games as a storytelling medium and became drawn to working in the game's industry eschewing his dreams of being a stage actor completely shortly after sokita would join Square where he would still be working part-time as a graphic design designer he would contribute to multiple games across the company for several years including aliens for the MSX the original Final Fantasy makaitoshi Saga and Final Fantasy 3 but it was most likely takita's artistic passions that convinced sakaguchi to uplift to the young part-timer to such an integral role in the development of Final Fantasy 4 and in doing so takito would finally begin working at Square full time from there the process of putting together the game's story and bringing it to life was very similar to that of the third game the entire development team would contribute ideas and collaborate with sakaguchi and tokida to stage and block scenes to tell their Tale But it simply wouldn't be enough to have a compelling story to tell they wanted to take full advantage of the power of the super famicom to enhance its presentation tokido would liken their approach to that of a film editor using mode 7 Graphics the battle screen and music timed at specific moments to enhance the drama Beyond The Narrative aspect however there was also the desire to come combine the strongest aspects of the first three games to create the ultimate Final Fantasy the job archetypes from 1 and 3 with the story driven nature of two and its wide cast of characters all of this would be tied together by a simple theme brute strength alone isn't power this ambition would unfortunately brush up against the reality of data restrictions prompting Takeda to cut the game's scripts down to roughly a quarter of its original length for the final game thankfully none of the narrative would be excised from the game as a result of these drastic edits according to tokida the only parts of the script that were cut were extraneous and unnecessary dialogue the team's Ambitions would be further compounded by the lack of RPGs on the still nascent super famicom Annex had not yet released a new Dragon Quest on the platform and the only two RPGs that had been released for it by the time of Final Fantasy 4's release draken and yeez3 were ported from other platforms Square was effectively facing no competition for Final Fantasy 4 which would be released on July 19 1991 just in time for summer vacation [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] unlike its predecessors Final Fantasy 4 does not open with a star wars-esque opening text crawl to set the stage for the adventure ahead rather this time nabuoimatsu's iconic Prelude imbued with new life thanks to the sampling capabilities of the super famicom to sound closer to a real harp is accompanied by a simple title screen reminiscent of the third game The Game's title displayed with the same iconic type bass as the box art dominates the top of the frame from end to end while below it stands one of the crystals which has pervaded the series since the very beginning [Music] from there we are thrust right into the story in medius res as a fleet of airships soars the land in spectacular mode 7 presentation this Fleet the Red Wings is captained by Cecil Harvey the most formidable warrior in all of the kingdom of Baron a dark knight who was raised by the king himself since he was an orphaned child and the hero of our story Cecil is ruminating on the successful raid he and his men had just staged on the town of masidia to steal their water crystal an event we see play out in flashback despite being just as perturbed about the king's sudden and ruthless demands as his men Cecil shouts down their descent reminding them that they must follow orders following this brief indiscretion their ship is attacked by several monsters which Cecil dispatches with ease his men note how monsters have been appearing more frequently as of late and Cecil can't help but wonder if it's a bad omen upon their return to Baron Castle the captain of the Guard baigen sees through Cecil's Stoney facade and brings him to the king who takes the crystal without so much as a thank you Cecil voices his grievances over the assault on messidia not understanding why any of it was necessary they didn't even fight back for his insolence the king strips Cecil of his command and orders him to slay the idolan that resides in the nearby Mist Valley and deliver a ring to the nearby Village of mist as Penance when his childhood friend Kane a Dragoon who had also been raised by the king comes to Cecil's defense he has ordered to accompany his disgraced friend lest he also be stripped of his title the night before his journey to mist Cecil is visited by his lover Rosa who tries to comfort him in his hour of needs but he closes himself off from her ashamed of what he has become the following day he and Kane set out on their assignments slaying the Mist Dragon and bringing the ring to the Village however upon their arrival the ring lets loose a torrent of bomb monsters to wreak havoc on the small Summoner Villa College setting it Ablaze and killing all but a single child sobbing over her mother's corpse but it wasn't the bombs that killed her she died when her idolan was slain by Cecil and Kane outraged that the King used him to destroy this Village and leave this girl in orphan Cecil denounces his adoptive father and he and Kane resolve to seek the aid of other nations in their fight against Baron they attempt to save the young Summoner they had unwittingly orphaned but she retaliates by calling Titan Shifting the Earth in mountains of the valley separating them racked with guilt and invigorated with new purpose Cecil takes the beleaguered child with him to protect her from Baron and begins his search for allies in his Crusade against his own kingdom as evidenced by the amount of time it takes to establish the premise and inciting incidents it's fair to say that Final Fantasy 4 has a lot more going on than any of its predecessors it would be false to say that the first three games were completely devoid of character as Final Fantasy 2 had established names for each of its party members and three's party was composed of a group of bickering and somewhat naive children but there wasn't really any depth to any of them aside from Leon moreover their narratives were all driven by external circumstances be it the need to restore the crystals fight against an evil empire or stop the coming tide of Darkness Final Fantasy 4 by contrast is driven first and foremost by Cecil Harvey within the first half hour we learn his occupation his skill set his relationships with other people and how he feels about all of it he's a dark knight but not because he ever had any selfish or ill intent it's because he wants to protect people and please his King he did lead the attack on messidia but he is visibly uncomfortable with his actions he shut down his men's questioning of the attack but likely so they don't get themselves into trouble by expressing their apprehension to the king's more loyal officers Cecil did check to see that they were safe after they were attacked so he does seem to care about their well-being he holds no ill will toward the people of Baron and in fact wants to protect them but they view him as something of a boogeyman someone who has no qualms with Doling out harsh punishments to those who step even slightly out of line he and Kane are his closest brother and that shows through Kane's defensive Cecil and as the linchpin and getting the player on Cecil's side he does his best to keep Rydia safe without expecting her to trust or forgive him for unwittingly killing her mother and destroying her Village it's Cecil who decides to fight against Baron and the player is both shown and experiences firsthand why he ultimately resolves to do so Destiny and circumstances don't push Cecil into the role of a hero his actions and convictions do and while the story as a whole isn't driven by his personal conflict it does remain a consistent part of it even as he and the party are guided more by circumstance as the game goes on like Cecil the rest of the party have far more personality than those of past games although due to there being more of them overall there are some who are more interesting than others Kane is the first party member the player meets and he's an example of Final Fantasy 4 putting its best foot forward when Cecil meets Kane again after being separated at Mist he finds that his lifelong friend has turned against him reneging on their vow to fight against their corrupt King and serving the newly appointed captain of the red Red Wings an evil sorcerer named golbaz naming him Kane seems to have been a deliberate allusion to the firstborn son of Eve in the Book of Genesis he had betrayed and murdered his younger brother Abel when the latter's offering to God earned the Lord's recognition while Cain's offering was disregarded for this Kane was cursed with the inability to grow crops and he was forced to wander the Earth God would lay upon him a mark which would dissuade anyone from killing him lest they suffer a worse fate disallowing Kane easy release from his torment he would travel East of Eden to nod where he would meet a woman who would bear his son Enoch for whom Kane would name the city he built but this biblical illusion goes beyond mere names in brotherly betrayal as the game subtly hints at the reason Kane was able to be manipulated well ahead of the reveal when Kane is prepared to strike Cecil down in fabul he's caught off guard when Rosa enters the crystal chamber lowering his head in shame and begging her not to look at him and while she's being held hostage by gulbez Kane remarks that he'll prove to her that he's better than Cecil it's ultimately revealed that Kane's facial turn was brought about by a form of Mind Control golbez used Kane's Envy of Cecil and unrequited affections for Rosa to turn him into a loyal servant similar to how the biblical cane turned against Abel out of Envy for God's acknowledgments Rosa being a White Mage a job Associated primarily with healing the wounded and whose ultimate offensive magic is literally called holy seems only appropriate in this context the Mind Control may seem like a bit of a cheap trick a hand wave to absolve sakaguchi and takita of needing to come up with a deeper explanation but considering that this is not Kane's story that the theme of power not being born solely of strength doesn't tie into a struggle I don't think it's really an issue at all in fact it helps to foreshadow another Revelation much later in the story Rosa like much of the rest of the party is mainly a supporting character she has her own sense of agency which is how she ultimately joins Cecil's quest in the first place she left Baron to search for him after what happened to mist and she remains headstrong in her desire to stand by him through thick and thin but she also falls into the role of a Damsel in Distress for a decent chunk of the early game however this is more emblematic of another problem regarding the game's storytelling and how it affects gameplay which we'll wrap back around to momentarily the way the story is told is a notable Evolution from the famicom trilogy not only is there a significantly larger color palette available than what could be utilized on the older Hardware allowing for more vibrant and detailed environments in Sprite work but the use of mode 7 to rotate stretch and scale Sprites to create a faux 3d effect mostly used when the player flies an Airship helps to add a more cinematic quality to the visuals whenever it is employed emulating wide camera angles used in film The trade-off of course is that the complexity of scaled Sprites is reduced significantly but the implementation of mode 7 here makes this a non-issue in my opinion as enough detail is retained to allow the player to recognize landmarks while still allowing the Airship to pop characters are visually well defined both in and out of battle each of them now has a unique headshot accompanying their status in the menu as was the case in the second game Cecil and Keynes even helped to visually convey core aspects of their characters they're both clad and armor which hides as much of themselves from the world as possible the obfuscation of the eyes is particularly notable as the old adage goes the eyes are the window to the soul so the inability to look into their eyes suggests an unwillingness to be emotionally intimate with others this is exhibited in the earliest minutes of the game when Cecil refuses to open up to Rosa despite her protestations because he feels he's undeserving of her affection furthermore it's a fitting trait for a character whose name means blind and when he sheds the armor to become a paladin his face is exposed and he's able to more easily connect with other people while their field Sprites are proportionally identical to those of the famicom trilogy they are far more expressive allowing for a wide range of emotions to be conveyed without dialogue the number of expressions for a given character may not be that high basically amounting to tilting their head forward or raising an arm but the emotion they communicate is malleable based on context a tilt of the head can be a display of Shame exasperation or fatigue a raised arm can be cheerful argumentative or declarative probably my favorite use of the expanded number of Sprites is Cecil and Rose's Embrace after he rescues her from the guillotine in the tower of zot it's not only the most expressive character sprite in the game but probably the most impactful and on an artistic and Technical level highly impressive it really is just a single Sprite meant to represent two characters but it's the closeness between these characters which truly helps to make their relationship feel genuine if there are other interactions up until this point hadn't already for the record I was already sold on it long before this point but this moment is just too powerful for me not to mention it Final Fantasy 4 also uses the battle screen to help tell the story fairly often scenes will play out not in the field but in combat allowing characters to express themselves in more aggressive ways without the need to employ as much visual abstraction as they would in the field dialogue albeit someone limited will even be spoken during these scenes as well meaning that very little is sacrificed when interjecting such scenes for dramatic effect these narrative battle scenes often require no input on the part of the player effectively making them cut scenes but there are several battles with these narrative interjections that do require player interaction the most significance of these comes only a few hours or so into the game when Cecil separated from Rydia Edward and Yong by Leviathan went on their way to Baron by sea washes up on the shores of messidia the people there understandably hate his guts and when Cecil approaches their Elder in shame the Elder sees a glimmer of Light Within him he tells Cecil that he must Cast Away his dark blade lest it further taint his soul with darkness and sends him to mount ordeals where his spirit will be tested and he will become a paladin if he is truly worthy of the light when he reaches the summit a mysterious Spirit bequeathes the sword of light to him but he must overcome his past self before he can truly become a paladin this leads into a battle between Cecil and his Paladin form and himself as a dark knight literally his past self but also a physical manifestation of his insecurities and his guilt the player's immediate instinct is to fight but not only only is Cecil unable to inflict much damage but the Dark Knight constantly uses the darkness ability which Cecil no longer has access to in favor of white magic and it hits pretty hard when Cecil attacks however text blurbs at the top of the screen explain the solution a true Paladin would sheath his sword the way of winning this fight paradoxically is to not fight at all the fight is scripted to end After the Dark Knight attacks twice without Cecil fighting back and while this may seem like it doesn't require interaction from the player at all the fact of the matter is that it does require conscious decision making Cecil fighting the monsters in the introduction and tele-attacking Edward are all completely automated the power to make any sort of decision is stripped from the player in favor of telling the story but here the player is interacting with the story by doing what Cecil must do to put it another way the player must play the role this scene also puts into perspective what Cecil's all about he wants to protect people which paladins do thanks to their coverability and use of white magic whereas is the ethos of a Dark Knight is inherently selfish and self-defeating hurting themselves in order to bolster their offensive capabilities most importantly it's an excellent example of what taquita had envisioned as the core ethos of the story strength alone isn't power this also brings to Bear the use of game mechanics and systems to help tell the story at the start of the game Cecil as a dark knight is already level 10 and just about every party member is above level 1 when they become playable this reflects their proficiencies to some degree they're all experienced to some extent Cecil for example was captain of the Red Wings only Radia is level one when she first joins the party and that's because she is a literal child and while she learns blizzard and thunder as she levels up she does not learn Fire this way it's not because she doesn't know how to do it but because she hates fire she was traumatized when her Village was raised to the ground and refuses to cast the spell until she absolutely has to when ice blocks the path up Mount Hobbes and even then she needs to be coaxed into doing so by Rosa and Edward only then and can you have her casted in battle the chamber atop mount ordeals in particular concludes with two significant instances of such ludo-narrative cohesion Cecil upon becoming a paladin loses all experience and progress from his time as a dark knight his level is reset back to one and he can no longer use any of his old equipment the rest of the party at this point consisting of palum porum and tella have levels between their mid-teens and early 20s and have to pick up the slack while Cecil gets back up to speed becoming better accustomed to his new role the second instances with Tela who ascended mount ordeals in order to learn the ultimate black magic Medio when Cecil becomes a paladin tela's memory becomes clear allowing him to freely cast all of his most powerful spells without the player needing to use one randomly with his recall ability he also learns media which costs a whopping 99 MP as porum points out when they meet him on the mountain Meteo is far too powerful for a man of tela's advanced age to cast while Meteo is in telespellus once he's learned it as part of the story the player is unable to cast it as his maximum MP Taps out at 98 and leveling him up never increases it when tella does use it against golbez in the tower of zot it is part of a non-interactive battle scene and just as Purim suggested the spell proves to be too much for the old sage to handle as he dies from the exertion shortly after casting it for a game that's so driven by its story and characters it shouldn't be so surprising that it would use elements of its gameplay to help tell the story in a way that likely wasn't possible before and yet it does so with such finesse such careful attention to detail that it almost blindsides me with how brilliant such little touches are they didn't have to put Meteo until his spell list but they did it anyway they didn't have to keep fire off of rydia's spell list before it became narratively necessary but they did it more than makes sense to do these things both narratively and thematically doing so like using battle scenes as window dressing for cutscenes Narrows the gap between story and gameplay and Final Fantasy 4 is all the better for it of course there's also the truly began to hit his stride with Final Fantasy 3 but even then he was still hampered by the limitations of the famicom five sound channels four electronic beeps buzzes and hums were all he had to work with and one or two of those channels often needed to give way to sound effects despite this uematsu had composed numerous iconic tracks across the first three games the super famicom would lift most of the limitations uematsu had when composing the soundtrack for Final Fantasy 4 thanks to the inclusion of a dedicated audio chip produced by Electronics Mega Corporation Sony the SPC 700 also referred to as the ssmp Not only was it capable of producing eight simultaneous tones but those tones could be samples of real instruments allowing for compositions that sounded significantly closer to real recordings than anything produced for its 8-bit predecessor uematsu would put the new sound Hardware through its Paces with Final Fantasy 4 expanding the series soundscape far beyond where it could have gone before oral abstraction and Technical needed to be used as a cudgel any longer but technical knowledge means nothing without being able to apply that musical expertise to enhance the storytelling to that end Final Fantasy 4 is where uematsu begins playing with light motifs to help tell the story of Cecil and his friend's quest to save the world from Baron and golbaz for example the first track we hear when starting the game is the Red Wings theme a militaristic March reflecting the power and duty of Baron's Fleet but also the distressed Cecil feels when this Duty comes in direct conflict with his virtues laughs [Music] [Applause] [Music] this track is used again when Cecil is forced to confront his past self his own inner Darkness recontextualizing it not as the Red Wings like Motif but rather ceciles this power and Duty are no longer in service to Imperial Conquest but to protect others and defend the world against the evil Cecil as well as his light Motif once represented Cecil isn't the only part of the story to get his own light Motif however just about every party member gets their own Musical theme although some like the monk Yong share theirs with their home Kingdom which are based on various real world cultures like China and Japan of these musical motifs the ones that stick out to me the most are roses the theme of Love which also represents the bond she shares with Cecil [Music] hey Sid which is a jaunty Little tune that reflects the Stout Engineers chipper and can do attitude [Applause] the theme for fabool which Loosely acts as the light motif of Yong so bombastic and Powerful yet so controlled and disciplined foreign which reflects both the character's innocence and Grace believing the awesome power she possesses bubbling just below the surface a power which comes not from Force but from her gentle and caring personality the ominous organ dominated theme for our villain galbes and Kane's light Motif suspicion reflecting both the tragedy of his betrayal and his own shame at having his own weaknesses and insecurities be used to turn him into a pawn against those he cares about foreign [Music] if I were to criticize anything about Final Fantasy 4 soundtrack however it would be how limited it is in its use of light motifs particularly in how these themes are reused without compositional variation it's not the worst problem to have as it all still works but it does feel as though uematsu had missed an opportunity here thankfully the rest of the soundtrack is fantastic as always although uematsu himself may not entirely agree with this sentiment while he was working on the soundtrack he heard what composer yuzo koshiro had produced for the action game act Razer the first title from newcomer game developer quintet and published by Enix for the super famicom in December 1990. in uematsu's opinion it made his own still in progress work for Final Fantasy 4 seem feeble in comparison foreign [Music] while he tried to increase the sample quality for the soundtrack ahead of the game's release such efforts wouldn't come together in the end it's a shame too as while I do agree that koshiro's work on act razor is technically very impressive I find oematsu's efforts here to be very moving and Powerful even if they might be a bit lacking on a purely technical level even without the generational leap we were still going to see the former but the latter isn't really a hindrance considering how much of a leap there was the substantial upgrade we got for the Final Fantasy title track for example is truly something special [Music] fitting too that the first time it plays it's immediately followed by this game's Overworld theme which embodies both a spirit of Wonder and urgency that pervades this story [Music] [Applause] [Music] and it's further invigorated when the party gains access to an Airship which sees an increase in the track's Tempo and a change in key to give the player a greater sense of freedom and optimism foreign contrast these with the main dungeon theme which has a tinge of foreboding on top of that spellbinding mysticism of the Overworld track making the player feel even smaller than they had out there uematsu composed just as many tracks for Final Fantasy 4 as he had for three though it did come out a few minutes longer overall and I could go on and on about so much of this wonderful soundtrack but I want to draw special attention to this game's battle themes which do an expert job of balancing both the tension and the thrill of combat foreign the Second Battle Theme which is used for bosses loses this balance just a bit leaning more towards tension but sprinkles in glimmers of Hope in its bridge to help you keep going clamoring for a hard-fought victory [Music] [Applause] the battle system itself has several of the Hallmarks from the past three games still intact you've still got your standard physical attack command Magic Guard items the ability to flee by holding both shoulder buttons and more specific commands for each party member reminiscent of the various jobs from Final Fantasy 3 but everything has been shaken up with the introduction of the active Time battle system or simply the ATB system the way it works is simple rather than combat coming to a complete stop for the player to choose their players actions every turn the action will keep going as commands are chosen and the character will enter a cool down period before the player can select their next command the faster the character the shorter their cooldown period and the more powerful or Advanced to the commands the longer it will take for them to execute it this change to the gameplay came about as a result of wanting to bridge the gap between in turn-based and pure action combat for players battle system designer hiroyuki Ito knew that chucking players who were accustomed to turn-based systems into an action game would be difficult for them and so looked to Formula One Racing for some minor inspiration at the time F1 racing had been employing semi-automatic transmissions and he felt that having a system where the action would continue moving while the actual inputs remained consistent with what had come before would provide the experience of something that was similar to real-time gameplay while retaining the spirit of what had come before I can see ito's reasoning and I enjoy the ATB system on paper but I feel that its implementation here is a bit lacking and this is entirely down to the charge up period for anything that isn't a basic attack the attack command will put that character next in line immediately without delay but casting a spell or summoning an idolin will see delays in executing that command to compensate for the greater power output it wasn't enough that the more powerful spells cost more MP which has replaced the spell charge system for good this time but but now the player has to compensate for that character's Sitting Duck status in the meantime I understand the trade-off but it's still annoying and even frustrating at times my own gripes aside it is an inspired system and sakaguchi seemed to believe so as well as his name appears alongside ito's on Square's patents for the system moreover the size of the party has been expanded from four members to five with a rotating cast of 12 characters coming and going during the story similar to Final Fantasy 2 though rather than allowing the player to freely assign everyone to the front or back row they are always divided into groups of three and two with the rose each group are assigned to freely swappable both in and out of battle that may sound restricting but because the player's party composition is restricted based on the point they're at in the story both who should be and what row and the general difficulty balance of Random Encounters and bosses have been carefully considered it helps that Cecil who is always in the party is just versatile enough to be effective in either row that said the non-standard pace of the more free-form ATB system combined with the extra party member can make combat a bit more difficult to keep track of particularly during boss battles bosses in Final Fantasy 4 are probably the most interesting they've been so far in that they tend to have varying phases during which their tactics change these phases tend to be accompanied by a visual cue typically a Sprite change something that wasn't possible on the famicom and this concept is introduced early on when fighting the Mist Dragon which in its missed phase can't be hit and will counter with a devastating cold Mist should the player get careless in many cases this turns bosses into a test of deductive reasoning and experimentation rather than Brawn this is especially the case with the mega sisters and the giant of Babel's CPU which consists of multiple entities with their own unique functions that synergize with each other the trick is to figure out how to effectively dispatch each of them without one of the others undoing your progress by resurrecting your slain Target this effectively turns several of the game's boss encounters into puzzles which is interesting and makes figuring out a solution and defeating them that much more satisfying there are still the occasional bosses where the challenge is to deal damage as quickly as possible like the demon wall but the challenge with them is more about maximizing efficiency than simply dealing damage knowing which Buffs to cast on which party members to reduce the amount of time you need to spend in sub menus to make decisions as the more time spent deciding what to do is time the enemy spends refilling their own invisible ATB meter this can be mitigated by setting the battle style from active to weight which pauses the action whenever you're combing through item or spell lists and also makes battles just a bit less complicated to follow but I find it also removes some of the tension the game's dungeons are a marked step up from its predecessors in terms of visual Fidelity having interesting layouts Aesthetics and overall difficulty balance thanks to the greater power afforded by the super famicom foot pads are no longer boxy angular walkways which require the player to suspend their disbelief to some degree caves now appear far more organic and natural in their design with rough curves rounding off edges and race platforms obfuscating there's still basic geometric pathing the towers of zot and Babel however lean into this more classic angular design philosophy although this was combined with a very high-tech aesthetic to lend them in Era function over form that said unlike every other dungeon the Tower of zots isn't really given much context in the world itself it's goldbez's first space of operations of course but it's not exactly clear what or where the tower is when Cecil and the party travel to it their Airship simply ascends even higher into the air implying its high up in the sky it shares its Aesthetics with the Tower of Babel but whether This was meant to imply similar Origins is unclear if nothing else it's an appropriate callback to the first game's Flying Fortress right down to the encounter with barbaricia the arch fiend of wind at the end if there's one dungeon I can really appreciate it's the lodestone cavern getting there requires riding the New Black Chocobo which has the ability to fly but can only land in forests until the very end during the battle with the dark elf to retrieve the Earth crystal the party can't use any metal equipment lest they be paralyzed it's definitely a frustrating handicap but it's probably the most unique dungeon in the entire game more so than the optional dungeons which ultimately aren't that difficult but are still worth doing either for the extra idolans or to confirm that Yang survived the Trek to the Tower of Babel's lower floors something I'll touch more on later easily the most significant Improvement to the dungeon design however is the addition of rest points here the player can save their progress and use tents or Cottages to restore the party's health and MP some may think wow this would really have been useful in the last game and it seems that sakaguchi had thought so too as there originally was going to be arrest points in Final Fantasy 3's ending Gauntlet but because the few children they had play testing that section were able to clear it with little trouble after playing it so much the team believed it was unnecessary unfortunately once the game got out into the world they found that the average player who hadn't run through the gauntlet dozens of times thought it was punishing difficult and so rest points were made a priority when designing the dungeons for Final Fantasy 4. this has a bit of a cascading effect because there are points in dungeons where players could stop restore their party and take a break the dungeons themselves could be made longer and more complex with winding and hidden Pathways leading to extra treasure just begging to be found combined that with parties tailor-made for just about every dungeon and a fairly modest random encounter rates and you have a recipe for a truly gratifying experience with just about every dungeon except maybe the sealed cave where every single door is laced with an enemy encounter making it one of the more tedious trials in the game not difficult per se unless you're unprepared for the demon wall at the end just tedious and Kane's subsequent betrayal after clearing it is a major gut Punch coming off of Final Fantasy 3 I found each of the game's dozen party members to be mechanically simple to grasp as they're all based on the previous game's jobs with consolidation of redundant archetypes and streamlining of abilities Cecil is a palette in effectively a knight with some white magic and the ability to use bows Sid is a scholar with the two abilities combined into one and he uses hammers to deal a fair amount of damage Edge is a ninja with the abilities of a thief can throw weapons like shurikens for big damage and has new Elemental Ninjutsu abilities that cost MP Rydia is a Summoner but also a highly capable Black Mage Rosa is the White Mage but can use bows like a ranger and while her unique preyability can restore the party's HP it's a pitiful amount even in the earliest parts of the game Yong is a monk who can attack all enemies with his kick ability Edward whose name in the Japanese version is Gilbert is a Bard although his relatively brief presence in the active party in the early game before Cecil even becomes a paladin leaves a lot to be desired the most overrepresented archetype among this game's party though is Mages I've already mentioned Rosa and Lydia the latter of whom also has access to low-level white magic as a child in the early game but telepalum Purim and fusoya are all powerful Mages who briefly join the party for certain segments of the narrative fusoya is present for the shortest stretch of time among them but is easily the most powerful able to cast the strongest black and white magic in the game as soon as he joins though his MP pool is a bit shallow Tela joins the party on a couple of occasions in the early game both when Cecil is a dark knight and when he makes the journey to become a paladin with palom and Purim tele is a bit of a Mercurial character mechanically speaking as he's gotten older he's struggled to remember how to cast his most powerful spells and so his unique skill recall has a chance at randomly casting one however it's unreliable as it's more likely to cast a low-level spell and has a 20 chance of doing nothing at all when tella learns Meteo he also remembers all of his spells losing his recall ability but because of his MP cap using his more powerful spells quickly chews through his MP meaning the player either has to be picky when using him Reserve their limited ether supply for him or use Osmos on enemies to steal their MP interestingly his physical stats his strength and stamina decrease as he levels up which is a nice attention to detail reflecting his Advanced age then there are palum and Purim the twin magical prodigies under the tutelage of the messidian Elder to call them prodigies isn't hyperbole I've only mentioned it in passing thus far but the way that characters learn new spells in Final Fantasy 4 is a complete departure from the first three games there are no magic shops instead characters learn spells as they level up which is understandable given the transient nature of the party I wouldn't want to be constantly buying new spells as new characters rotate in and out palom and Purim in particular learn new spells fairly quickly almost every other level or so up to the low to mid 50s even though they'll most likely have left by the time they hit Level 30 and while their Max HP is low their MP pools quickly Eclipse tell us making them the preferred spellcasters for their brief appearance the twins also have some unique abilities palum's Bluff increases his intelligence stats raising the power of His spells and purim's cry makes it easier to steal items from enemies the latter confounds me as there is no way way to steal while she's still in the Party by the time Edge joins the twins have long since left so why she has an ability like this is anyone's guess maybe Edge was supposed to join the party sooner or there was going to be an option to choose your own party later on as it stands her cry is useless thankfully purim's ability deficiency is made up for by a shared second ability twin cast the two of them combined their power to unleash a powerful magic attack with a relatively low MP cost the trade-off is just a longer cast time I didn't make heavy use of it but I found it to be a fun way to incorporate there being twins into the gameplay while I do have some clear favorites when it comes to party members on a purely mechanical level by and large I do like all of them as characters I've talked at length about Cecil it is his story after all but he also keeps some pretty good company at least for the most part I've already discussed Kane as he arguably has the greatest narrative presence out of all party members besides Cecil but I wouldn't say he was my favorite of the bunch that honor goes to Rydia who while not as complex as Kane I found to be more fascinating when Cecil vows to protect her after unwittingly destroying everything she holds dear she is understandably hesitant to trust him but after he defends her from barren's soldiers she begins to open up to him as a child she's a bit hot-headed scolding Edward for grieving the loss of his fiance and Kingdom despite such emotions being more than understandable as not only the prince of damsian but as a human being but she is also out of her depth scared and obviously traumatized by the loss of her home she refuses to cast a fire spell until doing so becomes necessary for the party to continue forward and even then it takes some coaxing and while traversing one of the early dungeons she needs to sleep for the night because well she's a child and the way she's written is very believable for a child after Leviathan attacks the party's ship on the way to Baron however Rydia finds herself in the fame Arc where all idolans reside until they're called by Summoners such as herself as it happens Leviathan is the king of the idolan and he brought her there believing she was in danger time flows differently there and thus by the time she returns to save Cecil and Company from golbez and his shadow dragon little Rydia has grown into a young woman issuing the use of white magic in favor of maximizing her proficiency with black and summon magic as an adult Lydia is still outspoken and exudes confidence but isn't as impulsive as she was as a child her compassion shines brighter now and her trust in Cecil is now total and in a subtle bit of Storytelling her use of the Mist Dragon seems to imply that she was able to reunite with her mother who has become one of the idolans she summons in battle this is supported by the actual king of Baron becoming the idolan Odin after he was deposed by kegnazo and lending his strength to the party only if they're able to defeat him unfortunately not every party member is as deep or complex as Kane or Rydia most can be easily summarized in just a sentence or two without losing much detail this is almost certainly a symptom of the story being so focused on Cecil and his journey although that isn't to say they lack for personality they may not be complex but they are distinct and mostly likable of course this is only if one is looking to the game itself but roughly a month before Final Fantasy 4 was released NTT publishing released a reference guide for the game which expanded on its world and characters providing background details which were likely used to guide takiya's writing of the scenario the details in this guidebook entitled Final Fantasy 4 Satay Shirley ohen do offer intriguing insight into the histories of and relationships between both characters and Nations that don't appear or are only vaguely alluded to in the final game such as the Summoners of mist having their lifespans cut short by generational inbreeding dark blades being infused with negative energy that can corrupt the hearts of those ill-equipped to wield them Rosa being a descendant of nobility whose family don't approve of her fraternizing with Cecil and Kane being appointed captain of the dragoons because of his notable ability to connect with Dragons of course this ancillary text as interesting as it is doesn't make up for half the party having little attention paid to them thankfully a handful of them do do get a moment in the spotlight like the aforementioned Kane and Rydia but also Edward Edge and Tela Edward gets a solitary scene where he grapples with his grief and is encouraged to push forward by the spirit of his fiancee Anna though it passes quickly and is framed in such a way that it's unclear whether it actually happened or was merely a dream and because Edward isn't in the party all that much longer afterward it hardly leaves an impact shortly after joining the party the ever cocky Edge the prince of a blonde with a very obvious crush on Rydia is forced into a battle that we have to win but none of us even want to fight galbez and the archven rubicante had recruited a scientist Dr lugai to conduct all manner of experiments for them mostly creating weapons and Monsters by the time Edge joins lugai's already been defeated but within the Tower of Babel they find his most horrifying work he had conducted his experiments on Edge's parents the king and queen of eblan and turned them into chimeric nightmares after a brief scuffle during which Edge pleads with his parents to come to their senses they eventually regain their sense of self are horrified at what's happened to them and take their own lives for all of his bravado Edge isn't ready for the responsibilities that come with leading his people and he doesn't want to lose his parents but he also knows that they can't live like this even rubicante thinks lugai went too far with this one the only nitpick I have about this scene is how the flow of combat is completely uninterrupted during the king and queen's dialogue and how Edge in particular is mechanically unimpeded it doesn't ruin the scene but it is a bit of a head scratcher it's not the only instance of death in the story however in Final Fantasy 4 death usually self-sacrifice is the most frequent route to someone leaving the party the problem though is that everyone battella is eventually revealed to have survived undercutting the emotional weight of their sacrifices it's repetitive and the player is less likely to take them seriously once they recognize the pattern even when Sid blows up both himself and Baron's Fleet with a bomb he's revealed to be alive and well the next time Cecil and Company visit the dwarf Kingdom in the Underworld apparently he just needs bed rest palom and Purim turned themselves to Stone to stop Baron's castle walls from crushing the others and Tela can't turn them back because they chose to do this to themselves but the messian Elder cures their petrification off screen with no further explanation tela's death is the only one that sticks Meteo was in fact too much for his body to handle but as he lays dying he confesses to Cecil and the others that he regrets that he was so consumed by his desire to avenge his daughter's death that he basically forfeited his life in an effort to kill golbez an effort which ultimately fails he wishes he hadn't been so vengeful in the end before asking Cecil to avenge his death seemingly unaware of how hypocritical this request is I don't want to say this is poor writing but it helps demonstrate why tella is my least favorite character of the bunch big racist Grandpa energy it was then however that I realized that just about every party member's sacrifice is reflective of their personality and some way Tello was short-sighted and reactionary in life disapproving of his daughter's engagement to Edward because he was seemingly a common Bard he only came to like him after he saved the party's lives using the whisper Eden lodestone Cavern this short-sightedness led him to take drastic actions to try and kill golbiz even if that meant he goes down too Yang's sacrifices are spontaneous and see him separate himself from the group reflecting his selfless and pragmatic nature Sid being both a boisterous show-off and a surrogate father of sorts for Cecil blows himself up with a bomb to stop the party's enemies from following them and the twins display a strong grasp they have over their abilities their synchronous thinking and resourcefulness when they turn themselves to Stone to stop Baron's walls from closing in of course these sacrifices are still undercut and these characters are given little time to exhibit much depth beyond what we see when we first meet them but I do find it interesting how sakaguchi takita and the rest of the development team were able to squeeze whatever character they could from them in their supposed final moments that being said the revolving door to the party can be seen as a minor allusion to a classical literary work which may have been one of the artistic and cultural influences on Final Fantasy 4 14th century Italian poet Dante alighieri's The Divine Comedy consisting of three parts representing the Soul's Journey towards God Inferno purgatorio and Paradiso The Narrative of the Divine Comedy sees the pilgrim Dante Journey Through Hell purgatory and Heaven respectively being accompanied by three guides along the way the first Virgil represents human reason and is with Dante through Inferno and the majority of purgatorio the second Beatrice represents Faith Theology and divine revelation and guides Dante through the end of purgatorio and most of Paradiso for the last leg of his journey he is joined by Saint Bernard of clairvaux who represents the awareness of God and the Divine broadly speaking Cecil's Journey can be applied to the framework of Dante in the beginning he's a dark knight an agent of evil unable to find the path of righteousness just as Dante was lost in the darkness of the woods represent sin and unable to evade the beasts that keep him from salvation which is represented by the sun behind the mountain at each of their lowest points both Dante and Cecil are found by the first of their guides Virgil and the messidian Elder respectively who set them on the path to Salvation for Cecil this is to mount ordeals where he sheds the darkness that weighs him down to become a paladin and do the work of the Divine on Earth for Dante it's through the underworld where he sees the true nature of sin through the nine circles of hell where the souls of the Damned are dealt ironic punishments for their sins in life interestingly when both emerge from the other side they are met with a mountain whether you pinpoint the end of Cecil's own Inferno as being when he first becomes a paladin or when the party first emerges from the underworld he is present at a mountain with worldly significance just as Dante and Virgil emerge from the underworld to be greeted by the mountain of purgatory and just as Beatrice guides Dante through the Spheres of heaven so too is Cecil guided to a sphere beyond the Earth that of the red moon albeit not by a sentient figure but by an advanced and ancient vessel the lunar whale at the behest of a spirit it's in heaven where they each find their final guides Saint Bernard for Dante and the ancient lunarian Sage fusoya for Cecil but the allusions to Dante don't end with vague allusions to Spirit guides and travel through hell and the heavens the idea of Love becoming sinful is the Crux of Kane's vulnerability to gulbez's malicious influence and several of the Demons from malbolga the eighth circle of hell are repurposed as golbez's most powerful minions skarmiglioni cagnazo barbaricia Andrew bakante with a fifth demon Cal cabrina appearing as another boss separate from the arch fiends while the exact details Beyond this are scatter shot when attempting to directly apply them to Dante's work it does paint a picture of Final Fantasy 4 as being rooted in its framework at least in regards to its main protagonist there are other allusions to Christianity such as Kane's name and how it reflects his character as we've discussed but there's also notably the Tower of Babel a structure which has its foundations deep in the underworld and Rises up into the heavens unfortunately unlike The Divine Comedy the name isn't exactly reflective of its inspiration in the Book of Genesis the story of the Tower of Babel spelled with an E rather than an i is one of man's hubris as humans who spoke a Common Language built a tower that reached into the clouds so that they may quote make a name for themselves God saw this and confounded their tongues making them unable to understand each other and so they scattered across the Earth leaving their Tower behind the story has typically been interpreted as a condemnation of man's Pride though others have taken to seeing it as an origin point for a multicultural world and while the latter interpretation may have some applicability to Final Fantasy 4 as the various kingdoms of this world are based at least aesthetically on real world civilizations such as Japan and China the tower itself has practically no significance to the world or story in this regard it merely serves as a base of operations for golbaz and is the holding place for a gargantuan automaton which is capable of wiping out all life on the planets after acquiring the eight crystals the four light crystals from the surface world and four dark crystals from the underworld golbez does successfully activate the Giants of Babel and it's up to Cecil fusoya and the others to infiltrate and destroy it from the inside while the combined forces of all the world's armies including the dwarves from the underworld hold it back for as long as they can I can kind of see the thread of multiculturalism tying back to the tower in this story with that in mind but it's so incredibly tenuous that it feels more coincidental than purposeful there's also Mount ordeals where Cecil becomes a paladin the names of two sections of the mountain May confound some players both for the choice of noun and their numbers the third and seventh stations this may be a reference to the Stations of the Cross a series of images depicting the path Jesus Christ had walked with the cross on the day of his crucifixion in certain Christian sects the Stations of the Cross are part of the Faith's themes of repentance which is reflected in Cecil's reason for ascending the mountain to repent for his sins and embrace the light the third and seventh stations in particular depict the first and second times Jesus fell while carrying the cross and while the chamber at the summit where Cecil Embraces the light can be interpreted as a tomb where Jesus is laid to rest in the 14th station attempting to apply every station to Cecil's Journey to the summit would be quite the reach they're still thematically appropriate but the value of these Illusions airs a bit more towards Aesthetics beyond the realm of theology I had noticed numerous similarities between Final Fantasy 4 and Terry gilliam's 1988 film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen based on the tall tales of the fictional 18th century German nobleman and his Fantastical escapades while fighting the Ottoman Empire unfortunately this International co-production between the United States United Kingdom and Germany with production costs to the tune of over 46 million dollars was an absolute bomb at the box office hardly grossing more than 8 million dollars globally among the 20 countries to see it in cinemas in 1989 however was Japan and while I couldn't find any data regarding its performance at the Japanese box office I'm doubtful that the similarities between it and Final Fantasy 4 are purely coincidental both feature an imperial Nation hell-bent on wiping out a small town and the people who reside there with one of those townsfolk being a precocious young girl who joins the protagonist on his adventure to gather a crew to stop them the protagonists both played some part in this Imperial campaign with Cecil once having been captain of the Red Wings and Munchausen becoming the target of the sultan following a life or death wager gone sour both protagonists also have a party of companions who they meet along their travels though Cecil meets his for the first time as he goes along while the baron is trying to find a group of compatriots he had known for years with both groups featuring a forgetful old man tella and bertold the latter played by fellow Monty Python alumnus Eric idle both see their Heroes take a trip to the moon where they meet the resident overseer or ruler of the satellite they both even feature a face on the moon's surface although admittedly Final Fantasy 4 is maybe more of an allusion to the face of Mars there is respective parties make brief trips to the underworld through a volcano and the baron meets Vulcan the Roman got a fire in the Forge who here is depicted as a loud boisterous engineer with a large red unkempt beard similar to Sid vulcan's wife the goddess Venus played by Uma Thurman Bears a striking resemblance to Rosa and is similarly quite taken with the baron interestingly Thurman also plays an actress at the local theater at the beginning of the film simply named Rose and finally the baron and his associates are attacked and swallowed by a Great Sea Beast which can theoretically apply to both Leviathan attacking the party's ship early in Final Fantasy 4 story as well as the party boarding the lunar whale to fly to the moon much later on and of course it should go without saying but the prominence of the baron himself and the film's title being shortened to Simply Baron in Japan seem to be paid homage by naming the kingdom after him just as well the true king once he's discovered to now be the idolan Odin strikes a pose very similar to that of the baron himself on the cover of the Japanese LaserDisc release of the film obviously the two stories play out very differently but several characters they encounter and locales they visit even if they're used in a distinct Manner and set in differing orders do air closely to one another while sakaguchi's Akita or anybody else have yet to comment on these similarities I'd also Imagine overlap between people who have seen the film and played Final Fantasy 4 is infinitesimally small after all the film was a bomb at the box office but today it has enjoyed a bit of a Renaissance among film enthusiasts with the esteemed Criterion Collection adding it to their catalog this past January if you're at all curious how much certain aspects of the film resemble Final Fantasy 4 then I would highly recommend a viewing interestingly the prominence of airships in the story seems to have been carried over from the canceled famicom game though they're not nearly as prominent in this world as they were implied to have been in the ill-fated 8-bit title in a similar vein while the series airships can be traced back to the works of Hayao Miyazaki their creator in this world Sid palindina may have also been inspired by lapuda his appearance somewhat resembles that of motro dola's husband and engineer of her Airship the tiger moth in addition to the two of them being Engineers they each sport eyewear which completely obscures their eyes as well as big bushy facial hair though while motro only Sports a mustache Sid sports a full beard Landing him between motro and Vulcan in visual similarities but if we're going to have an honest conversation about cultural and artistic influences on Final Fantasy 4 there's one aspect that cannot be ignored the illustrious sorcerer clad in Black armor galbaz I've mentioned him frequently in passing up until now but I wanted to save the bulk of the discussion about him for this very reason golbiz as the new captain of the Red Wings following Cecil's defection is a dark reflection of Cecil a man shrouded in and consumed by Darkness his name is derived from the golubaser or golubat's fly a venomous black insect which wrought havoc on Southeastern Europe in the late 18th century with their name being derived from the Serbian Village of golibach from which they seemed to originate they would kill an average of 22 000 livestock and other domesticated animals each year and local Legends in folklore posited that the Flies had come from within the cave and the walls of the river's Gorge where a dragon wounded by Saint George had hidden itself for safety before ultimately succumbing to its injuries at which point the Flies had begun to spawn from its corpse expelled from its maw this Smith adds another parallel between him and Cecil as Cecil was meant to make them a city and legend of the lunar whale spawning from a dragon's mouth a reality with the dragon actually just being a reference to the shape of the land by which the ship had been lying dormant interestingly golbez briefly commands a shadow dragon in one of his battles with Cecil and Company but the Eastern European folklore which gives Gomez his name and the parallels to our protagonist are not what immediately spring to mind when one catches sight of him or learns of his role in the story while his black armor certainly still evokes his namesake his presence and Visage call to mind one of sakaguchi's favorite film series one which has inspired aspects of the first three final fantasies and continues to influence the series in its fourth installments this faceless powerful sorcerer clad in bulky black armor is very clearly inspired by the iconic villain of Star Wars Darth Vader [Music] foreign the inspiration is pretty evident when examining the most basic of these characters traits imposing figures clad in Black armor hiding their faces the top enforcers of imperialist rulers powerful practitioners of mystical Arts both Marshall and Arcane and of course the antagonists for the majority of their respective works it's fitting that Vader would be paid homage in Japanese media when his own design is rooted in that of ancient Samurai and indeed much of Star Wars was inspired at least in part by Japanese culture and media most notable among them are the works of legendary Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa particularly his 1958 film The Hidden Fortress and indeed the beginnings of Final Fantasy 4's plot can be seen in kurosawa's 1962 film sanjuro in which a group of Samurai rebel against a corrupt Lord but the similarities between galbez and Vader run a bit deeper than that and it's these parallels which help to propel Final Fantasy 4's story to Greater Heights before heading into its climax upon his return to messidia as a paladin Cecil is regaled with the messidian legend by The Village Elder when he notices that the legend is engraved on the blade of Cecil's newly acquired sword of light fading in against a blue backdrop accompanied by Naboo oimatsu's prelude for the series The Legend reads one born from a dragon's mouth hoisting both light and darkness rises up high in the sky over the still land veiling the moon in the light of Eternity he brings a promise to Mother Earth with Bounty and mercy this unfortunately doesn't answer Cecil's question of who the voice was that bequeathed him the sword and light atop Mount ordeals and the Elder doesn't know either but he does believe Cecil to be the light of the legend and so he and the rest of masidia will stand by and pray that he fulfills the Legends unfortunately golbez thwarts Cecil and the party's every attempt to protect the crystals using Kane to swipe the last one before declaring that the path to the moon will now open to them the dwarf King jiots urges the party to return to messidia Hope hoping that the legend is true immediately upon their arrival in the city of they're met by the Elder who brings them to their Tower of prayer where their prayers are answered and the lunar whale a highly Advanced ship capable of traveling Among the Stars emerges from the sea between two peninsulas that resemble the mouth of a dragon during this prayer the Elder hears a voice calling for Cecil to go to the moon the lunar whale like the towers of Babel and zot is an astonishing technological wonder that acts more or less as this game's version of the Invincible from Final Fantasy 3 it has beds to restore the party a Fat Chocobo for extra storage and allows the player to access new areas specifically the Moon it doesn't have any shops on board like the Invincible but considering that this is near the end of the game it's not a terrible loss I especially love its triumphant Musical theme it stands in stark contrast to so much of the game's soundtrack without feeling jarring and after the crushing failure to defend the crystals it managed to put a big smile on my face and make me think everything is going to be okay foreign [Music] has a startlingly contrasting atmosphere initially it's impressive seeing the transition to it from the earth and the lunar whale theme continues uninterrupted until the party steps off the ship and is greeted with the desolate surface there are abstract enemy types mixed in with the more recognizable ones navigating to the crystal tower requires moving in out and around various mountains and caves and the music waffles between the unsettling defeatist tone of the surface [Music] laughs [Music] and the mysteriously enchanting theme in the caves which the player first heard atop amount ordeals where Cecil conquered his past self and became a paladin [Music] to sum the shift towards science fiction may seem to have come out of nowhere or is otherwise out of place in the story but not only has Final Fantasy had sci-fi elements as part of its DNA since the very first installment but there was ample set up for the story to go in this direction the messidian legend is the most obvious illusion but there's another which pops up frequently that would likely pass by non-japanese players naming way throughout the game the player will come across a rabbit-like NPC called naming away who allows the player to change the names of their party members seems a bit random but then when you reach the moon there's a small cave off the beaten path filled with more of naming ways people the hummingway most of whom can only speak by humming but others will sell you items this is an allusion to a Japanese folk tale that of the rabbit on the moon in which a Heavenly figure is so moved by the rabbit's willingness to offer himself his food for them while masquerading as a beggar that they place a Visage of the animal on the moon so the world may see them it also serves as a fun little rationalization for why the dark parts of the full moon resemble a rabbit pounding Mochi the hummingway home is also the final location in the game which sports the regular Town Theme further setting it apart from the uneasy tone of the lunar surface and the various caves leading to the crystal tower as already mentioned the ladder track was first heard in the chamber where Cecil became a paladin which is appropriate because it's the light motif of the inhabitants of the red moon the lunarians as explained by fusoya the ancient guardian of their Slumber the lunarians once inhabited a planet between Mars and Jupiter at a time when the Earth was still young a cataclysmic event destroyed their world but a small number of survivors had managed to escape on a ship headed for Earth unfortunately the planet was still undergoing its long period of development and evolution and so the lunarians constructed a second moon on which they would sleep until such a time that the inhabitants of Earth were sufficiently developed enough that the lunarians could cohabitate with them but there was one who refused sleep wishing instead to wipe out all life on the still nascent World below and claim it for himself zemas though fusoya was able to use his power to force him in to Slumber with the rest of their people zemus's malevolent will continue to exert itself and he would orchestrate a plot to gather the eight crystals to awaken the giant of Babel and wipe out all life on Earth and he's using galbes to do it fusoya also confirms that the lunar whale was constructed by one of the lunarians specifically his brother clueya kluya was fascinated with Earth and he spent his time there teaching the people how to build airships and creating the magical Devil's Road between messidia and baron it was also during his time on Earth that he fell in love with a woman who bore him two children one of them was Cecil fusoya confirms that the voice Cecil heard on Mount ordeals was in fact the spirit of his father who imbued his son with his power so that he could stop zemas and protect the planet he so loved Cecil doesn't appear to have much of a reaction to this revelation he's noticeably silent for What Little remains of this scene before fusoya joins the party and his dialogue when the giant appears and the world's armies arrive to confront it consists mostly of brief reactions and exclamations this leads me to believe that Cecil is either processing this information or is simply too busy focusing on what needs to be done to dwell on it right now but the revelations don't end there after destroying the giant of Babel's CPU gulbez confronts the party fusoya uses a crystal to break zemus's hold over him and golbez now free from the hatred that had overtaken him is able to remember his true name Theodore as well as that of his father kaluya Cecil and golbez are brothers this completely recontextualizes golbez's hesitance to kill Cecil in the tower of zot it was his brotherly Instinct briefly fighting against zemus's influence it now seems that what he wanted to say there was you are my brother while fusoyam uses over golbez's lunarian blood likely making it easier for zemas to control him Cecil realizes that zemas could have just as easily controlled him instead and that their roles in this conflict could have been reversed golbez rejects this idea however claiming that his soul was marred by malice for a long time realizing that he was the perfect Pawn in zemus's plan but now he plans to put an end to it fusoyo joins him in destroying the Giants and when golbaz says farewell to Cecil Cecil says nothing even as the giant begins to crumble around them and a newly freed cane leads them all to safety Cecil is very clearly distraught over the Revelation that he had been fighting his own brother this whole time within the context of Cecil's character Arc this is thematically appropriate Cecil is right in believing that his and Gomez's roles could have been reversed as he was indeed in gulbez's shoes at the start of the narrative Sans mind control as if to support the idea that golbez could have theoretically been the hero of the story had their roles been reversed his birth name Theodore is derived from the ancient Greek name theodoros meaning gift of God an allusion to his father being a benevolent figure from Beyond this world who shared many Fantastical gifts with the people of Earth unfortunately we aren't privy to golbez's history prior to the events of the story though for what it's worth it's not all that important to the immediate narrative its themes or Cecil's Arc these Revelations do intensify the game's Star Wars Inspirations as well we now have a familial connection between our hero and the villain he's been facing for most of the narrative and like Darth Vader golbez's story is a tragedy we never see play out we merely see the results as he's a pawn in the game of another far more malevolence foe some of the details differ namely gulbez being mind controlled as opposed to Vader being resigned to his position thus negating the need for a direct analog to Luke Skywalker in this context but the uncertainty and skepticism Luke felt following the Revelation at the end of Empire that Vader was his father and how that followed well into the runtime of Jedi is also present here in Cecil from the moment he learns of Gomez's parentage all the way to the final moments of the story with Kane now firmly on the side of the light and Rosa and Rydia stalwart in their resolve to stay with Cecil the party used the lunar whale to return to the Moon following fusoya and golbez to put an end to zemus's machinations once and for all the final dungeon the lunar subterranea is a Marvel of dungeon design with Pathways and root stretching and Crossing in Myriad ways that the famicom game simply hadn't done all the while taking inspiration from the final Gauntlet of Final Fantasy 3 but there are rest spots of course so it isn't a trial like the crystal tower but there are a host of powerful weapons and equipment to be found within the depths with the best of them being guarded by great beasts just like in Eureka as if to increase the tension the standard battle theme is often replaced with the Boss music track which I find to be a nice touch between the final rest area and zemas himself is a small set of floors where aspects of zemus appear as common enemies they go unacknowledged outside these Random Encounters but it does reflect what fusoya said about zemus's will projecting Beyond his sleep making it seem as though he is either losing control of his will or that he is already aware of the party's presence and is either sizing them up or thinks so little of them that he can snuff them out while expending little efforts despite how easy they are to defeat their presence lends this final stretch an additional sense of foreboding which wasn't present in the final dungeons of the first three games at least not nearly to the same degree at the end the party finds fusoya and golbez already locked in combat with zemas himself who appears to have broken from the shackle of his Slumber his appearance is simple yet radiates and intimidatingly bizarre Aura like fusoya he's adorned in cool colored robes and appears humanoid but his skin is dark and clammy seemingly necrotic his head is devoid of hair his fingers are tipped with claws as yellow as his eyes which themselves are surrounded by Inky Blackness it would seem that zemas is too far gone and the only way to stop him is to destroy him and so the duo of fusoya and golbez do just that lobbing their most powerful magic toward their fiendish adversary from Fire 3 to Holy before resolving to finish the job with a combined casting of Meteo despite zemas's taunt that they may die trying to cast it they pull it off and live to fight another day but before succumbing to his injuries zemas declares that despite his body dying his spirit will live on and live on it does in a manner of speaking our heroes breathe a collective sigh of relief but before Cecil can share words with his brother zemus's corpse begins to violently convulse before combusting in a flurry of flames giving rise to another more monstrous and ethereal being born of darkness and nourished by zemas's hatred zeromas no matter what's thrown at them zeromus is unfazed and when golbez attempts to use the crystal which fusoya had used to break him from zemas's control it doesn't work as its light cannot shine when in the hands of one so tainted by Darkness with everyone seemingly defeated and zaromas setting their sights on consuming all the world with their hatred one final Light Of Hope begins to shine on all of them from the planet below back in messidia the Elder leads his people and all the friends cecilos made along his journey in prayer to return him from the brink of death accompanied by nobuo oematsu's iconic title theme golbez too weak to continue the fight hands Cecile to Crystal as their prayers reach them even from beyond the grave as is the case with Tela the party are gradually restored to full fighting strength and the final prayers come from fusoya and golbez with the ladders restoring his brother to full fighting form goal pleads with Cecil to use his holy power with the crystal to reveal zeromus's true form the onus of this specific task falls to the player and only when the crystal dispels the illusory Sprite before them to reveal xeromus's true far more monstrous form does the true final battle begin and what a battle it is with over 65 000 hit points and four phases to their attack pattern zoromis is easily the most complex final boss the series has seen up to this point they not only deal massive damage with their signature Big Bang enough to nearly incapacitate most of the party in a single blow but in doing so they inflict the sap status on those who remain standing slowly draining their remaining HP they have a tell for when they're about to use this devastating attack they'll shake for a moment or so at which the player will have a small opening to attack them to lower their intellect stats and reduce the damage of big bang although this will be reset the next time they Shake however they must strike in this moment with a physical attack as black magic white magic and defensive items will trigger zaromas counter-attack with a single Target flare which has a high likelihood of obliterating its targets thankfully the fight starts with an easy opening to help implicitly teach the player that this is the moment to strike this is all accompanied by a simplistic yet striking backdrop a Visage so simple yet indescribably abstract and kinetic that it just feels so right is the inky black representative of the vast emptiness of outer space are those blue clusters Stars maybe maybe not but I can say with certainty that uematsu has composed a phenomenal track for this ultimate confrontation feeling like a proper evolution of all of this game's previous battle themes it's fast Grand and just a bit desperate but not fearful more than anything it's determined [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign at this point in the game My party's levels range from the low to mid 50s and I struggled immensely against his Aromas while I had enough raw power to deal terrific blows to them what was holding me back was endurance and survivability Rydia would often be the first to fall when zeromus pulled out a big bang as she only had a paltry 1700 or so HP even with their intellects temporarily dropped zaromas's signature attack made quick work of her this would prompt a slight pivot from dealing damage or healing for the sake of Reviving her which would Cascade into needing to revive and restore party members to fighting shape and speeding up party members with haste would only work for so long as the scripted attack patterns for xeromus's first three phases for the fight see them regularly cast disrupt which removes all the party's status Buffs as if to Salt the wound further should they have a turn while their HP is between 16 and 12 000 xeromas will completely replenish their health and continue on to their third phase script with no indication that this has happened at all and should the player bring the Abomination below the 12 000 HP threshold they will enter their fourth and Final Phase which sees them alternating between a random action and a relatively low power single Target Media would ultimately allowed me to win the day wasn't grinding however nor any sort of cunning tactic but rather changing how combat itself worked as mentioned much much earlier Final Fantasy 4 allows the player the option to switch between having its active Time battle system being in constant motion or setting it to weight mode in which the action pauses while one sips through sub-menus this periodic stopping of the clock allowed me to better assess the situation in the moment and afforded me a precious extra few seconds advantage to allow party members to move ahead of zoromas Rydia and Edge were still lying defeated by the end but the end had come nonetheless through this whole final battle from the prayers of their friends on Earth to golbez handing the crystal off to Cecil to the party's coordination during the fight itself the game's core ethos strength alone isn't power is on Full display and never before had I been so early to see a final boss crumble apart line by line signaling that the long journey was over and all would be well again foreign as they disintegrate zeromus decrees that they will never die as long as there is still darkness in people's hearts this leaves Our Heroes a bit uneasy but fusoya is quick to wave away xeromus's warning every heart holds both light and darkness so long as there is Darkness so too will there be light and that light will put a stop to the encroaching Darkness just as it did today with that it's time for everyone to go their separate ways fusoya plans to return to rest with his people now that zeromus is gone there's no need for him to stay awake anymore Cecil and the others shall return home where their friends are waiting before they all depart however golbez approaches fusoya with a humble request to join the rest of the lunarians in sleep feeling he could never return home after all he had done moreover he would like to meet his father's people fusoya grants His Wish warning him that it will be a long Slumber which golbez gracefully accepts before joining their uncle and the rest of their people in hibernation golbez apologizes to Cecil for all he's done for all the pain he's caused not expecting his estranged brother to forget nor forgive him Cecil doesn't respond but galbes doesn't pry he seems to understand that Cecil is conflicted over his feelings on the matter but Cecil's comrades tried to get him to say something anything to his brother now while he still has the chance Cecil simply turns away unable to face the man who had done him and his friends so much harm even if he was being controlled by a much more malevolent Force dejected golbez merely says goodbye but as golbez and fusoya send to meet the rest of their people Cecil rushes forward to call out to his brother and Say Goodbye as well not only does he refer to him as his brother but he also calls him by his true name Theodore Cecil has accepted and embraced the truth his brother Theodore isn't a perfect person if he was zemas wouldn't have used him as a pawn in the first place but he is still his brother and when the chips were down if he was able to make his own choices he chose to put the good of others before his own interests putting his life on the line to stop zoroma and when he was helpless to stop them he did all he could to support his brother he regrets what he did on Earth even if his will wasn't his own then and he's aware enough of the harm he's caused that he doesn't expect forgiveness nor does he believe he's deserving of it he feels tremendous guilt and wants his brother to know that before he goes to sleep with their father's people because he may never have another chance to say it Theodore once ceciled to have some kind of closure even if he himself may not find any in kind he's a good brother really and a tragic character it's here that Cecil recognizes this and not only tries to ensure Theodore that he knows this but to give his brother the same closure he had given Cecil and Theodore is verbally grateful for this cementing that the two of them will be separating on good terms it's the best one can hope for as they may not see each other again for a long time if they meet again at all time passes the lunar whale is returned to its resting place palom and Purim continue their lessons Edge is adjusting to being king of eblon but his mind mostly wanders to Rydia Rydia returns to the Fey Mark where she assures Idol and children that their external differences don't matter it's what's inside that counts a lesson she learned from Cecil Yang has become king of fabul where he now leads the Kingdom's monks in physical training every day Edward has returned to what remains of damsian as its king and is hard at work rebuilding his kingdom the dwarves are hard at work rebuilding their Castle scrapping their tanks for more materials because King jiot believes there won't be another War when his daughter Luca wonders aloud how Cecil and the others are faring jiod informs her and the player that Cecil is to become the new king of Baron with Rosa as his Queen and that they have been invited to the ceremony before the ceremony however we see Kane high up in the mountains having removed his helmet and letting his blonde hair Flow In The Wind he will not return to Baron to see his friends again until he feels he has earned the right to be a true Dragoon again it's a self-imposed Exile likely as Penance for falling to Gomez and zemas's control Kane is himself again but he wants to make sure he will never be taken advantage of like that again for his friend's sakes and finally at the observatory in a guard choreo and his assistant see the red moon fall out of the planet's orbits beginning the lunarian's long journey to find a new home once more in his bedroom in Barren Cecil hears his brother's voice cut through the chatter about his wedding wishing him farewell in the throne room the ceremony is about to begin as all of Cecil and Rose's friends and allies make their way inside greeting the two of them personally after not having seen each other in a long time there's no written dialogue here their interactions are all visual pantomime all conveying their personalities in brilliantly succinct ways as Cecil and Rosa tie the knot all set to a medley that finishes with the series title theme and so Final Fantasy 4 ends on a high note foreign OBU sakaguchi and Takashi takida had wanted to make Final Fantasy 4 the culmination of everything the series had been working towards up to that point the ultimate final fantasy and in my opinion they succeeded the classic Hallmarks are all here medieval fantasy ancient Advanced civilizations the elemental crystals four Elemental fiends and the clash between light and darkness good and evil as well as elements like chocovos and job archetypes but everything has something extra added to it that wasn't in previous entries expanding on what was there in new and interesting ways with the character-driven story being the centerpiece of the game's Ambitions this isn't to say I found Final Fantasy 4 storytelling to be perfect however while the characters all exhibit to find personalities and most of them are fairly likable not all of them are particularly deep or complex and the overuse of death and self-sacrifice to Psycho party members is Clumsy at best but when it works it works exceedingly well hitting the right emotional beats just about every time I've heard Final Fantasy 4 story being described as Shakespearean in nature and while I'm not sure if I can pinpoint any direct parallels or specific influence or Illusions from The Bard's work I certainly agree with the sentiment on a gameplay level I appreciate that every step of the journey was tuned to be fought by specific party compositions but I find this to also be a double-edged sword while the difficulty is fairly balanced the trade-off is that Final Fantasy 4 is left with little replay value maybe doing a playthrough without the optional idolans or keeping Cecil in only one specific row of the party would add some amount of variety but beyond that self-imposed challenge runs and simply wanting to experience the story again there's little reason to play the game multiple times as each successive playthrough will ultimately play out very similarly to those that had come before this is the only major gripe I have with Final Fantasy 4 that I want to play it in different ways like I could with the first three thankfully this is not the only version of Final Fantasy 4 however not every version of the game game was created equal foreign [Music] Nintendo of America had done the legwork in localizing and Publishing the original Final Fantasy for the territory in 1990 Square's U.S subsidiary squaresoft would take the reins in bringing the latest installment of the series to the West however due to the cancellation of plans to localize the second and third games in the series Final Fantasy 4 would be renamed to be consistent with what had been released in the region and so Final Fantasy 4 became Final Fantasy 2 in North America for the sake of clarity I'll be referring to this version of the game as simply the US version in order to avoid confusion with the original famicom Final Fantasy 2 and to avoid the use of excessive qualifiers when discussing this version specifically during the localization process squaresoft were hit with three primary stumbling blocks censorship the script and game difficulty Nintendo of America had strict content policies regarding explicit and religious imagery and Concepts including death which would prove worrisome for a game with a narrative so Laden with fatal or seemingly fatal moments this would make the work of translating and localizing the script significantly more difficult as Not only would innuendo need to be applied at various points in order to gesture towards the subject of mortality without breaking Nintendo's guidelines but this would have to be done while contending with the worlds of differences between the Japanese and English languages simply puts Japanese is made up of characters representing syllables as is the case for hiragana and Katakana with kanji being used for whole words or concepts English meanwhile requires far more characters to express even a single word Kal room oriyama the primary translator for the US version can attest to this saying quote usually the beautifully translated version of the text had six to eight times more letters than we can afford for screen text so the toughest job was to chop them off and squeeze them back into the allocated area unquote unfortunately despite her efforts moriyama wasn't exceptionally well versed in the English language and square didn't have what one might call a formal logo realization process at the time it was all very much an afterthoughts moriyama along with two others credited as K okahisa and H Takahashi spent disgustingly long amounts of time in blocks of up to 24 hours revising the script to the best of their abilities without having ever played the game and thus lacking necessary context mistakes would be left in due to the volatile nature of the process as changing just a bit of on-screen text could break something if not break everything these issues would be compounded by Nintendo's eagerness to have the game ready for the launch window of the Super NES and with a lead time of two to three months to manufacture ROM cartridges this left very little time following the game's Japanese release in July to have an English release prepared for manufacturing and release in November Takashi takida would also be present for at least part of the localization process spending about three weeks in Washington state unfortunately the first leg of his trip would go to waste as he had forgotten the discontaining the game's data in Japan requiring his colleagues to air mail it as quickly as possible during his brief time in the U.S Takeda also worked closely with Nintendo of America to edit offensive content and learn more about the tastes and playing habits of the US markets realizing that there was a wide Gulf between the first and fourth games levels of complexity it was decided to tone down the difficulty and intricacies of the US version to make it feel more like an organic follow-up to the first game the result is a game which sports a Bland's mostly unremarkable translation and far simpler gameplay than the original Japanese version several abilities like Dark Knight Cecil's darkness and palum's Bluff have been removed the Myriad Curative items for various status effects have been removed and replaced with cure-all remedies sacred passageways have been made more easily identifiable Rosa's life is no longer under Threat by a large blade but by a cartoonish metal ball and the list goes on for what it's worth the US version is certainly easier so in that regard squaresoft had achieved their goal beyond that however the only other noteworthy aspect of this stripped-down incarnation of Final Fantasy IV is tela's angry Cry of use spoony barred during his confrontation with Edward due to the seemingly nonsensical nature of its adjective in actuality the word spoonie is a fitting descriptor for Edward as its meaning amounts to being smitten in a somewhat doltish manner but the word itself is as archaic as they come having long fallen out of modern parlance moriyama's use of the word demonstrates her unfamiliarity with English but I find it suits tela's character of being an out of touch old man at least on some level the only Point against it in that regard would be its comparatively demure connotation when compared to the indignancy expresses during this scene as spoony as the line is however it has been celebrated as much as it has been ridiculed and it would continue to be a constant presence in all subsequent versions of Final Fantasy 4 whenever they're localized but it would be some time before the Western world would see any other version of the game whereas Japanese fans would get a second Taste of the adventure before Western players even got their first and ironically it was thanks to the perceived necessity to alter the game's difficulty for the West that would facilitate this thank you released in October 1991 and based on the then upcoming US version of the game Final Fantasy 4 easy type would retain the reduced difficulty of its Western counterparts moreover the script has been revised to be more easily read by those still learning their kanji the battle with zeromis has also been overhauled with a new appearance and abilities possibly to incentivize those who had already purchased the original version to buy easy type aside from a few other small tweaks and changes easy type is still largely the same game only as the name suggests easier however going forward the original Super famicom version would be used as the sole basis for further re-releases and ports starting with the Sony PlayStation ports released on March 21 1997 in Japan and ported by tosei this version featured a bestiary the ability to dash in towns and Dungeons and the new memo Save which allowed players to temporarily save their game anywhere so long as they didn't shut off the console there was also a new CGI FMV opening sequence with an extended version playing at the end of the game keep in mind that this sport was released less than two months after Final Fantasy VII which had made heavy use of pre-rendered cutscenes like these unlike sevens however which played back at roughly 15 frames per second the FMV for the PlayStation version of 4 plays at a smoother 30 frames per second and as a result the stiffness of the animation and lifeless stall-like models are made much more apparent I'm not a fan of this FMV but I'm sure there are some who find it Charming nonetheless this version of the game would end make its way Stateside until June 2001 and would be released in Europe the following February both as part of compilation packages with a second game in North America it was bundled with Chrono Trigger under the name Final Fantasy Chronicles and in Europe with Final Fantasy V as part of Final Fantasy Anthology bundling it with Chrono Trigger under just the Final Fantasy name may seem odd but Takashi tokido was one of the writers for both games as well as a director for Chrono Trigger with both games featuring variations on the active Time battle system so so it makes some amount of sense this marks the first time that Western players would be able to play the original version of the game Nintendo's censorship was no longer in play and the original difficulty character abilities and item and spell names have been left intact all accompanied by a new more faithful translation although as previously noted the line you spoonie Bard would remain mode 7 effects aren't quite as pronounced and sound effects are noticeably muffled in this port but aside from those minor issues it's often seen as a solid version of the game in Japan more options would continue to manifest as the years wore on several of which would be exclusive to the territory such as the case for the Wonder Swan color version released in 2002 which sported a host of new more detailed Sprites but beyond that had little else to offer this version would serve as the basis for later Japanese exclusive mobile versions released in 2009 but also for the first version of the game to expand on the original Super famicom release and provide some amount of replay value 2005's Final Fantasy 4 Advance 4 as the name would suggest the Game Boy Advance this release would be accompanied by a special edition game boy micro exclusively in Japan which sported a faceplate depicting Cecil and Kane it would finally add a visible ATB meter for party members during battle as well as a music player the ability to freely swap party members in masidia after defeating the Giants of Babel and two new bonus dungeons it also sported further updates to the English localization improving upon what had been present in the PlayStation version unfortunately this version of the game is notable for a host of bugs that can lead to improper game balance lag and in severe cases outright crashes the most egregious bugs would be addressed in a revised 1.1 Edition released only in Japan and pal regions as was the case with the GBA versions of the first two games I did not play this version as it would serve as the foundation for a PSP version released in 2011 which I did play but not before indulging in perhaps the most significant Recreation of the game a complete from the ground up 3D remake for the Nintendo DS developed in collaboration with Matrix software and released in December 2007 in Japan and in July and September 2008 in North America and Europe for the record I played the PC Port that was released in 2014 on its face the decision to remake the game for the DS so soon after the GBA release may seem strange and Takashi takida recognized this when tomoyo asano producer of the Diaz remake of Final Fantasy 3 expressed interest in the idea Taquito was drawn to the challenge of making a version of ff4 in a similar style to the ff3 Remake but he also wanted to deliver a high quality RPG experience for the DS the soundtrack was rearranged a new pre-title FMV was created the difficulty would be enhanced a new augment system would be implemented a new game plus mode was included where the player could carry over progress and take on new bonus Dungeons and certain scenes would feature full voice acting interestingly the remake's logo artwork was changed from Kane to golbez as he would receive additional Focus this go around in the form of an exploration of his backstory when fusoyo releases him from zemas's control we play through a brief sequence from golbez's childhood Theodore was a happy child who lost his parents to tragic circumstance kluia was mortally wounded by someone who disagreed with his teachings hypocritically using the magic cluya taught them to strike his mother Cecilia died from the strain of giving birth to Cecil and while he was excited to be a big brother losing his mother imbued him with some amount of subconscious resentment for his baby brother and zemas used that to control him he abandoned his baby brother outside Baron where the king would soon find him and adopt him as his own I don't know if this was always intended or just conjured up for the Remake but it's highly appreciated and makes golbas out to be an even more sympathetic and tragic character than he already was and Peter Beckman does a magnificent job of portraying golbez as both menacing and sympathetic in equal measure all the while echoing James Earl Jones performance as Darth Vader I took to the Borderlands where I could hide from others eyes racked by guilt a ashamed to show my face I would not think to ask for your forgiveness now but I am glad that you survived what better upon could see must have possibly chosen than this where will you go to put an end to all of this originally the remake's English localization was going to repurpose the GBA script which led to one translator at Square Enix Tom Slattery who had previously worked on Final Fantasy VI advance and Final Fantasy Tactics the War of the Lions to request not to be put on the localization team for it Final Fantasy 4 was slattery's most favorite game and he felt he couldn't work on it if he wasn't able to do a full re-translation imagine his surprise when he was not only assigned to work on it but got approval to re-translate the entire script provided it got done within the already scheduled time frame but even that restriction would be loosened to give him more leeway Slattery was able to bring consistency faithfulness and up-to-date terminology to his new script and it's probably my favorite it's a shame then that all subsequent versions would revert back to the advanced script albeit with small changes pulled from slattery's efforts of course this is all to say nothing of the actual game part I was not a fan of the 3D remake of Final Fantasy C3 due to the meaningless narrative alterations and at times absurd difficulty thankfully the PC version of the ff4 Remake added a normal difficulty mode with hard being the same as the original DS version suffice it to say I chose normal mode and aside from a few minor aberrations here and there I found my playthrough to be reasonably comfortable I didn't engage much with the augment system which allows you to add new abilities from other characters and games to your party members I found it fairly Superfluous and I disliked that augments are permanent and unswappable I did give Cecil the draw attacks augment thinking it would work like the Vikings provoke command in the ff3 remake but instead it's a passive effect that always draws aggro to Cecil which I didn't figure out until many hours later because of my distaste for the augment system and the need to play the game a second or third time via a new game plus to access them I didn't engage with the new bonus dungeons here but I honestly felt that a regular playthrough of the game was more than fulfilling enough on its own thanks to the presentation the use of a 3D camera and voiceover brings that cinematic quality to this story that Takeda had wanted all the way back in the early 90s and it's better for it this shot of Cecil sulking in the light of the two moons is wonderful foreshadowing and those moons continue to appear in more of these cutscenes even the music mostly sounds good being incredibly faithful to the original Super famicom Tracks I'm not sure if I would recommend this version for someone's first play through a Final Fantasy 4 but as long as it's the PC version which actually has a lower difficulty option I wouldn't argue against it unfortunately none of the bonus content from the GBA version made its way into the Remake and none of the remake's bonus content would make its way into the version released for the PSP in 2011 as part of the compilation release Final Fantasy 4 the complete collection in addition to a version of ff4 based on the advanced version with all of its bonus contents included this collection also sported a remake of the 2008 sequel the after years as well as interlude a new bridging chapter which to this day remains exclusive to this PSP collection I won't be discussing these games here but maybe one day I will just not today the only new additions to this version are in Auto Battle toggle and the ability to switch between the original Super famicom soundtrack and the arranged version made for the 3D remake and until defeating the Giants of Babel this version plays more or less like the original Super famicom version the real draws are the bonus dungeons carried over from the GBA the cave of Trials and the lunar ruins the former opens up at Mount ordeals after changing out party members for the first time in masidia and features powerful new weapons for Sid Yang Edward and the twins to help bring them up to speed for the end game with each weapon guarded by a boss some are easy others less so but it's an overall fun little dungeon that requires at least two trips to get everything as in order to unlock a weapon you need its wielder in the party the lunar ruins are far more interesting and are only unlocked upon defeating zoromis and saving your clear data a passage opens at the Stone Face on the moon and within our 40 random only generated floors and special challenges for every party member to unlock their ultimate weapons but in order to face a given challenge the respective character must have cleared the final battle with zeromus I personally just used the standard end game party as it's already pretty well-rounded and I didn't want to go through the effort of struggling against Aromas again with party members who weren't balanced around being able to fight them the idea of the twins in particular going up against them made me shudder as even with their levels in the mid-40s they still only had something in the area of 1600 HP I know it's possible to do it but that final boss has been a consistent thorn in my side with every version of the game I've played so far the challenges are in a set order on predetermined floors each with rest and warp points outside the door should you want to exit the dungeon and try again later they're all designed in a way that embodies their respective character each of them has a boss fight against a lunar eye Dolan at its Climax and will receive a special piece of equipment that greatly enhance their abilities or an Ultimate Weapon the player will also receive a grimoire that will allow them to call the respective lunar eidolin once per battle and retry their trial I enjoyed all five trials I played Rydia is temporarily reverted to her child State and must fight the classic Elemental idolans who regain the ability to call them Rosa must heal the people of a besieged town while taking care to avoid monsters disguised as townsfolk Edge has fun navigating a destitute castle with Twisted Dimensions but Cecil and Kane stood out the most to me Cecil's trial is a test of his character and worthiness as a paladin it's not difficult but it is an interesting little test with a couple of Tricks thrown in there like the guard test where the player has to fill in for a castle guard whose wife is having a baby a guard's job is to remain at their post unmoving and without talking you have to ignore the things that happened right in front of Cecil even if he would otherwise investigate them because you have to keep the promise you made the reward you get for doing everything right is the lightbringer Cecil's Ultimate Weapon which has a chance of casting holy whenever he attacks andaluner Odin gives it to him before their battle fail even a single test and he'll get something weaker and failing all of them will get something useless Kane's trial however plays off of his unrequited feelings for Rosa and envy of Cecil after entering the chamber alone he's transported to Baron where a figure in Black armor wielding a spear has been killing townsfolk in the night Kane Cecil and Rosa help investigate and Kane is framed for the attacks when the bloody lands used to slay the people keeps finding its way back to the end where he's staying Rosa even gets kidnapped and while Kane saves her he stands aside as she Embraces Cecil it's eventually revealed that the culprit is Kane himself or rather a dark manifestation of his jealousy who encourages him to kill Cecil so Kane may claim everything he believes he deserves the player is actually given the choice of what to do fight Cecil or refuse giving into Kane's dark thoughts will end the trial immediately but refusing and remaining stalwart in his convictions we'll see him fight his darker self which transforms into lunar Bahamut for winning Kane receives the Dragoon gloves turning his jump command into a double jump and Abel's Lance a nod to his namesake that has a chance of casting tornado whenever he attacks this trial lasts four days but when Kane exits the chamber the real Cecil remarks that he had only entered mere moments ago he asked what happened but Kane lies and says that nothing happened reflecting both the shame he feels over his Envy for Cecil as well as his desire to grow past it although in the case of the latter it may not be the healthiest way to do so but I digress at the bottom of the lunar ruins awaits one final challenge the game's only super boss zaromas EG whose appearance is lifted straight from Easy type the name is clever as EG and easy are spelled and pronounced identically in Japanese Katakana meaning that EG could mean easy game or end game reflecting both the origin of this particular form and its current status as zoromis's final form and the ultimate challenge of the game while there are a couple of curveballs here and there I didn't find this fight all that difficult maybe it's because my party had leveled up considerably going through the dungeon or because they had gotten extreme power-ups from their new weapons and equipment or maybe it's a combination of the two whatever the reason the challenge wasn't obscene although the lack of rewards for winning the fight besides a bestiary entry does sting a bit maybe different party compositions make the fight more challenging but for now I think I've had my fill of this version of the game there is however one final version of Final Fantasy 4 left to talk about and that is the pixel remaster released for PC and mobile in 2021 featuring all the quality of life editions and other Hallmarks of the rest of the pixel remasters while I enjoyed the first 3 pixel remasters immensely I found this version of Final Fantasy 4 to be somewhat less compelling than the PSP version this wasn't necessarily due to the removal of that version's bonus dungeons so much as it was just another version of the same game complete with the same set party as the original only more streamlined and thus quicker to play through the newly arranged soundtrack is nice but because it was working off of of a foundation that was closer to sounding like real instruments than computerized beeps it's not nearly as impressive at least in my opinion zeromis as expected still gave me a bit of a hard time in this version too but I was able to do them in on the second try I may be disillusioned with the pixel remaster but by no means do I think it's a bad version of the game if you've got a PS4 or switch and this is your only option you've still got a solid version of the game to play there have been so many versions of Final Fantasy 4 over the years and I think it's a testament to the game's lasting appeal and quality but of course this didn't come from nowhere as Final Fantasy 4 made quite the impact when it was first released [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] upon its release in Japan on July 19 1991 Final Fantasy 4 was met with glowing praise from famitsu achieving an overall score of 37 out of 40. particular attention was paid to the game's Stellar presentation and Innovative blend of real-time and turn-based gameplay elements although it was noted that it felt less like an RPG and more like an interactive narrative this critical success would be accompanied by strong sales as the game would remain at the top of the sales charts for more than a month and continue to remain on the top 30 bestsellers list either through its original or easy type release all the way into the following spring it would ultimately sell 1.43 million copies in Japan a highly respectable figure but because the super famicom was still fairly new having only sold roughly 4.5 million units by the time the game fell out of the top 30. its sales only just barely surpassed its predecessor's 1.4 million copies sold on Hardware which had sold over three times as many units by March 1991 that being said assume assuming all 1.43 million copies were sold by March 1992. Final Fantasy 4 would have had an adoption rate of nearly 38 percent a significant increase over ff3's 8 percent it's unlikely that every single copy was sold prior to that date but it still puts into perspective just how significant its success was even if the sales figures seemed comparatively underwhelming at first glance it helped that unlike its predecessor the super famicom had not seen an absolute glut of RPGs and that Final Fantasy 4 was the first RPG on the console to not have been ported from another platform across the Pacific however the sales and reception were somewhat different for the game as publishing was being handled by square themselves Nintendo Power wouldn't feature the erroneously numbered title as heavily as they had for its predecessor the previous year the publication first mentioned the game's existence in their July 1991 issue in the form of a screenshot of the Japanese version of the game as part of a glimpse of what games would be releasing in the fall for the Super Nintendo interestingly even at this point it was referred to as Final Fantasy 2. it would make two appearances in their October issue once to compare its Graphics to those of the original Final Fantasy and again in a blurb amongst other upcoming Super NES titles it would ultimately be the cover story for their November issue alongside a condensed walkthrough of roughly the first half of the game or so and a review score in the back pages but beyond that wouldn't see any further coverage from the Big N thankfully Nintendo weren't the only game in town when it came to video game coverage while they were certainly the most prolific Nintendo Power was also the most filtered and narrow focused as it was controlled by the company who made the hardware while coverage and advertisements of the US version of Final Fantasy 4 coming from Nintendo would be a bit minimal others would help pick up the slack albeit a bit more slowly whereas Nintendo Power had its numerical score for the game a stellar 4.5 out of 5 nestled in the back of the November issue electronic gaming monthly and Game Pro readers would have to wait until December and March respectively unlike Nintendo Power however these Publications would elaborate on the reasoning behind their scores for the game citing an excellent story and engaging gameplay as well as impressive Graphics egm would give the game a 32 out of 40 partially owing to half the critical panel not being particularly enamored with the genre but it is still an admirable score and game Pro's Monty Hall using the publication's face-based rating system would give it a perfect score of 50 out of 50. surprisingly in his review and coverage of the game Hall would note that it was originally the fourth game in the series in its native Japan possibly the first mention of this bit of local realization trivia in the Western World unfortunately Final Fantasy 4 wouldn't be nearly as successful in the west as it was in Japan nor would it reach the success that the original had seen the previous year selling only a mere 340 000 units less than a quarter of its Japanese counterparts this was during an era when Square saw 1 million as the target for every game they sold if it didn't sell a million it was considered a failure and so would be the case for Final Fantasy 4 in the west at least from a narrow-minded business perspective but there was more to consider than sales data alone the game released a mere months after the Super Nintendo and by March 1992 the number of consoles sold in North America was roughly three quarters of the super famicom in Japan still impressive figures considering that the consulate had had nearly a Year's Head Start in Japan but there was still apprehension among some parents about buying a whole new console when their child's NES was perfectly functional they saw it as a rip-off a scam just as well the success of the first Final Fantasy the previous year did not suddenly overwrite the Tendencies towards action games Western players held in mass and Nintendo's comparatively sparse promotion for the title may not have helped either even if there was a television commercial produced for it [Music] all right wow okay Dad I just want to finish this game [Music] okay Dad I'm coming [Music] to Summer Final Fantasy yeah Game Boy it ain't over till it's over wow show up man there were even plans for a comic book series based on the game penned by Kurt busiak with illustrations by Mike mignola for Disney's Hollywood Comics imprint busiek had written the scripts for all four issues Magnolia Drew all the covers and artist Dal baras had nearly completed the penciling for two issues when the series was canceled which busier felt was probably a good thing work on the comic had begun before the game had finished developments in Japan and busiak who Square software eyeing up as being a potential in-house translator at the time was given carte blanche to rename characters as he felt was necessary namely Sid would have been named Lord blast as an homage to Admiral boom from Mary Poppins the comic was shaping up to be noticeably different from the final game and based solely on what little information we have on the project I can wholeheartedly say that I agree with busix sentiment that the comics cancellation was probably for the best of course despite what some suits may have believed at the time Final Fantasy 4 was decently successful in North America if not in raw numbers then in professional and player appreciation as Final Fantasy 4 would remain a Mainstay in Nintendo power's top 20 list of SNES games for three years straight based on reader polls sales reports and a wee bit of favoritism from the publication staff its placement on the list would fluctuate over time but this level of consistency is truly remarkable for a game in a niche genre that wasn't heavily promoted perhaps this consistency plays a not insignificant part in why Final Fantasy 4 is so fondly remembered today both in Japan and in North America it's one of the most prolific games in the series having been ported numerous times over the decades with these re-releases consistently garnering praise and the Adoration of longtime fans who even if they don't necessarily hold it as their favorite Final Fantasy still have a special soft spot for it I occasionally see some people who see it as a relic of a bygone age a simple game with a simple story without much to grab onto but I and countless others disagree in September 2017 Fami 2 celebrated the publication of their 1500th issue by asking readers to vote on what they believed to be the 100 greatest games of all time Final Fantasy 4 made the list coming in at number 82. in 2021 TV asashi conducted a similar poll with a sample size of over 50 000 people in this poll Final Fantasy 4 was voted number 51. it's often recognized with similar honors in the west with Game Spot listing it among the 25 RPGs you need to play before you die in 2016. IGN placing it as the 22nd greatest RPG of all time in 2017 and in 2018 the staff and readership of Game Informer would recognize it as the 23rd best RPG ever and 146th greatest game ever respectively and this appreciation can be seen outside the realm of video games in Spring 2005 Japanese grade schools began to include one of nobua oematsu's compositions from the game Cecil and Rosa's theme of love in 6th grade music textbook books and in Edgar Wright's 2010 film adaptation of Brian Lee O'Malley's graphic novel Scott Pilgrim Vs the World the title character played by Michael Sarah would gloat that he had learned the bass lines of the game's Battle Theme hey check it out I learned the baseline from Final Fantasy 2. foreign [Music] which is then slightly incorporated into a battle with one of these seven evil exes sounds like someone wants to get funky [Music] within the context of its own franchise however Final Fantasy 4 would serve as the foundation for the rest of the series going forward it wouldn't be much longer before every game in the series sought to deliver not just an engaging gameplay experience but a gripping story with likable and complex characters and themes the ATB system would continue to stick around through the rest of the decade becoming a staple of the series with square continuing to push the limits of game Hardware every step along the way and I'm looking forward to seeing how sakaguchi and his team build upon this fantastic templates foreign Final Fantasy had officially become a Powerhouse Series in Japan but there would be no rest for hironobusakaguchi and the rest of his team as always once Final Fantasy 4 had shipped they immediately set to work on making the next game which they decided would focus more on its mechanics than its narrative but before too long the situation surrounding Final Fantasy 5's developments would rapidly change masafumi Miyamoto would step down as company presidents with tatsuo Mizuno coming in to replace him Takashi tokido would leave the final fantasy team to work on other projects within the company sakaguchi who had been a prominent figure within Square since its humble beginnings would be promoted to Executive Vice President and all the while Enix was hard at work on the highly anticipated Dragon Quest 5 and it was unclear which of the two RPG Titans would hit the market first which would work as terrific motivation for the team but despite the fervor surrounding Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest all was not well in Japan sales success wouldn't be guaranteed for either game when they would eventually hit store shelves Because by the end of 1991 the Japanese economy had bottomed out foreign [Music]

Channel: Andrew Bluett

Views: 159,614

Keywords: video essay, analysis, Andrew Bluett, LordDrubie, retrospective, review, SNES, NES, Takashi Tokita, Nobuo Uematsu, pixel remaster, Cecil, Golbez, Kain, dragoon, paladin, Final Fantasy II, FF4, FF2, Squaresoft, Square Enix, Dragon Quest, the night sky prince, resonant arc, Final Fantasy XVI, psp, retro, rpg, Japan, gametrailers retrospective, PlayStation 5, SaGa, Seiken Densetsu, Legend, Adventure, Mana, Nintendo DS, 3D remake, Zemus, Zeromus, FF7, FF16, remake, rebirth, Cid, chocobo, video game, documentary

Id: 0m2gHKZVM6Y

Length: 139min 16sec (8356 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023