Friday, June 10, 2011

Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection (PSP)

I'm a big fan of the Final Fantasy series, especially the Super Nintendo entries, so when I heard that a remake of Final Fantasy 4 (or 2 when I was a kid*) was coming-out for PSP, I was very excited. Of course, it's hard not to get excited for a new version of the game that not only packages the original game and the After Years (which was an episodic sequel that came out on the Wii's download service) onto one disc, but also comes with a brand new story that bridged the gap. When I got the game, I was blown away by just how good it was.


Glorious.


This version of the game has redone everything. The sprites, the character portraits, the monsters, the world, the spell effects, everything has been redone with a cleaner, prettier look. They even added in some (not very well done, honestly) cutscenes! The whole game looks leagues better than its Super Nintendo version.





Side-by-side comparisons. Top: Super Nintendo, Bottom: PSP.


On top of all this, the game sports a brand new translation which is very well done. This translation fills in some storyline gaps while still keeping in some fan favorite lines.

There also seems to be a definite bump in difficulty, though I don't know if it's above the Super Nintendo "hard version"** or not. It's certainly easier than that awful DS remake***, that's for damn sure.

Now, I waited to post this review until I actually completed the game, which I finally did last night (Zeromus is a bitch). I also went through the Interlude scenario, which was pretty short and honestly felt a bit pointless. I mean the main point of it is to say "Hey, there are monsters again and people are having babies!" which...well, yeah, that's going to happen. Most of the events confused me more than anything. Also, as a side note, Cecil, the main character, should not be allowed to name anyone's child, including his own. One of the other character's wife has a daughter, and so Cecil is asked to be the godfather and name the child. What does he choose? Ursula. I'm sorry, Ursula? Ursula is reserved for sea witches ONLY! Then he names his own son Ceodore.

Final Fantasy as a whole isn't known for its realistic names, but 4 was an exception for the most part. Cecil, Rosa, Edward...mostly normal names in there. So what the hell is Ceodore supposed to be? It's like almost a real name, but just dumb sounding enough to not be.

I'm not going to lie to you, Final Fantasy 4 is my favorite in the series (I think I've beaten it all of 5 times across several versions now), so I am a bit biased, but I think this version of FF4 is truly the complete version. If you're going to pick up any version of the game, it should be this one.

Now on to something a little different. I find it interesting how SquareEnix is giving the special treatment to various games in the franchise. 10 was first, getting its own sequel. Then 7 got special treatment for a while, getting its own movie and several spinoffs, now it seems to be 4 with the After Years and remakes. What I'm wondering is, when will 5 and 6 get this treatment? They're both awesome, and 6 is a lot of people's favorites, and I'd love to see it get the same treatment as 4 has on the PSP. Get on it, guys!

Gay Geek signing out.

*For those who don't know, Final Fantasy 4 was originally released outside of Japan as Final Fantasy 2. The reason was that the actual Final Fantasies 2 and 3, which were both NES games, were never released outside of Japan. Neither was Final Fantasy 5. So we got Final Fantasy 1, 3, and 6 labeled as 1, 2, and 3. Then when the Playstation was released and Final Fantasy 7 was made, they decided to call it 7 in all regions, confusing just about everyone, or just me. Now any other remakes of the series just goes back to the original numbering sequence. And now you know!

**In addition to releasing it under a different title, we also received a different version of Final Fantasy 4 which toned down the difficulty of the game and also removed some character's abilities. When the wonder that is emulation gained popularity, someone saw fit to translate the Japanese version to English so we all could revel in the glory of what was actually supposed to be the game.

***I hated this version of the game. They amped up the difficulty of the game waaaayyyy too much, so that fighting a boss became a chore. Oh, you hit him magic? Well, he's going to counter with this. Oh, you used a physical attack? Well, he's going to counter with this! Annoying. I eventually gave up halfway through because I just got frustrated.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

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