Final Fantasy IV

"Final Grind IV: A New Grind"

well, after a bit of time off from reviewing and working on my people skills I think I'm finally ready for another review, a review of Final Fantasy IV (FFIV henceforth). I'm not a huge fan of Final Fantasy but it has been good to me, Final Fantasy IX was a gem I never got to finish and I regret not being able to finish to this day, Final Fantasy X was fun but really wasn't the same or as long as IX, Final Fantasy X-2 pretty much killed one summer when all my friends went away and left me alone for two months, Final Fantasy XII had great characters and voice acting but I didn't like the "No random encounters" thing, Final Fantasy III was good for about two weeks and I actually regret selling it up until I managed to find a copy of it at my local Gamestop, and now I have FFIV. I can safely say I like the cast of characters, the story is enough to keep me interested, the sound is great and the graphics, surprisingly, isn't bad considering the system its being played on. I really only have two real problems with the game and its the half-assed New Game+ and the drop rates. OK, that is an under-statement, the drop rates are nothing short of a joke and will keep you grinding for one god damned tail or summon for more time then it actually takes to beat the game.

Sound: 7
The sound, being a Final Fantasy game, means it has good to decent music here and there, and the voice acting is nothing short of spectacular. each voice actor fits his or her character very nicely except for Tellah because he's a very pathetic character and I can't think of any other White Mage in the entire FF universe that is anymore worthless then him. Besides Tellah, I really like the battle music and the boss music and some of the other stuff they have but not everything, such as whatever the **** starts playing when "Samba de Flan" plays and I can tell you right now if you want the best armor in the game you'll probably spend a load of time listening to it.

Graphics: 7
For the DS it's not that bad, now if your a big PS3 or Xbox360 fanboy then change my score to a 1 and go finish sniffing off your bottle of glue you got from Wal-Mart. The graphics, for the DS anyways, aren't bad and compared to other DS games that use 3D it's not horrible either. The summoning animations are cool and some of the cut scenes you see are pretty nice as well.

Story: 9
Final Fantasy's are usually all about story and this is nothing short of one of the all time greats. Basically you start out as a some-what pathetic Dark Knight, who is in love with some White Mage named Rosa and has a friend Dragoon named Kain. One day King tells Cecil he wants crystals and so sends Cecil to steal crystals from other countries and after doing so Cecil doubts his king who finds this offensive and sends Cecil and Kain on some quest to deliver a ring to another country.

Game-Play: 9
For a Final Fantasy it's one of the better Final Fantasy's I've played. It's not as fast as X-2 and it's not as slow as XII and even changing the battle speed doesn't make it seem like either X-2 or XII. Not only that, but you can also organize your spells and such and also assign stuff over the Attack command and even replace the worthless stuff with stuff you'll actually use. Also we have Augments, give an augment to a character, equip it in Abilities, and boom Cecil is now the center of the enemies attention and will counter with what ever is in the first slot. Auto-Battle makes the grind-fest that will eventually come even easier and makes Tail/Summon hunting so much easier.

Only problems = Drop Rate
OK, I really enjoyed FFXII, I even stayed with it until I had a bunch of legendary weapons for all my characters, spent a good two weeks farming them. Now the drop rates in this game are entirely laughable, each item for each legendary weapon has less then 1% drop rate (.4% to be exact). This means if you want to pimp out your entire party with a set of Onion equips you have to waste more time grinding the items then it would take to actually play and beat the game itself. It's not even exclusive to the Rat Tails either, to get Rydia's summons drops, you have to go through the same mother ****ing procedure of grind quest. I'm sorry, but if I can spend one entire day trying to get one damn drop and not get anything but a wasted evening and fall asleep during a football game... OK so it was the Steelers versus the Browns which are two boring teams to watch anyways. My point is, if your going to use rare drops for legendary weapons and side summons don't make it enormously time consuming. I know getting them is optional, but it's such a turn-off for those who want them but don't want to spend the rest of their lives trying to get one stupid Pink Tail, then these same people go on internet forums and ask for cheats for these items only to get laughed at because they don't want to waste the time knowing cheating would only last about 3 minutes at maximum were as doing it normally would take about four years, exaggeration intended.

Final score: 7
This game, in the end, is all grind all the time. You'll spend more time grinding then you will actually playing the game, either for Rat Tails for Onion equips, summons for Rydia, or levels. OK, I'll admit that FFXII was about the same but at least I had a change of scenery every couple hours and not every other day. Now you could get really lucky and get all the rare drops right off the bat but since everything has the same drop rate of .4% I highly doubt that. Everything else about the game is great, loved the sound, Auto-Battle was a great addition kinda like what FFXII had, the story was Grade-A cheese cake and the graphics aren't bad for what it's worth but it all comes down to: "Do you want to just play through the game then quit or play through the game three times and shoot for perfection?"

If your a die-hard Final Fantasy fan, then you probably won't mind spending the next two months playing the grind side of the game. If your a casual gamer then play through once then bench the mother ****er. Only reason I'm still playing the grinding quest is because Star Wars: The Force Unleashed hasn't come out yet.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/15/08

Game Release: Final Fantasy IV (US, 07/21/08)