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Role Playing (Games)

Final Fantasy IV One Of The Greatest Games 53

Posted by Zonk from the you-spoony-bard dept.
Gamespot's series of "The Greatest Games of All Time" rolls on with a look at Final Fantasy IV. Dubbed Final Fantasy II in the states, it was easily one of the best games to be released for the SNES. From the article: "The narrative in Final Fantasy II gripped you and shook you like a rag doll right from the beginning of the game. Your introduction to the protagonist, Cecil, took place on the deck of a military airship that had been ordered to extort a magic crystal from an innocent town (not a very heroic vocation). After his complicity in this war crime, the conscience-wracked Cecil was dismissed from the military and sent on an errand to a nearby town, along with his best friend Kain. Using generic archetypes for characters (like Final Fantasy's White, Black, and Red Mages, for instance) was standard operating procedure in RPGs at the time, but Final Fantasy II went off on a far more interesting tangent."
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Final Fantasy IV One Of The Greatest Games More

Final Fantasy IV One Of The Greatest Games

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  • We're Nerds. We've known this for years.

  • Whoops! (Score:2, Informative)

    by radicalskeptic ( 644346 )
    Actually that links to a news article about some other game. Here is the correct link: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6132899/index.htm l?tag=boxcar_all_features_image [gamespot.com]

  • Slow day? (Score:3, Funny)

    by gordgekko ( 574109 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @01:13AM (#13554605) Homepage
    Apparently a slow news day in the Games section.
  • ObLink for any pre-ff7 Final Fantasy:
    http://www.nuklearpower.com/ [nuklearpower.com]

  • Final Fantasy Series (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rolman ( 120909 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @01:26AM (#13554660)
    Not only IV was an incredible breakthrough that shook and redefined the whole genre, Square kept adding and reinventing the saga in parts V and VI. Though not everybody really liked FFV, it did help the genre advance to what many people (myself included) is the culmination of the FF series: FFVI.

    FFVI had everything that made FFI-FFIV great and none of the so-called flaws of FFV, while retaining its improvements in storyline structure and technical merits, and then went far beyond. It's nice to think Chrono Trigger's was released only months later, with a similar level of excellence.

    FFVII was OK, neat and and even overwhelming for its time, but it started the trend to make RPGs more mainstream-friendly, up to the current marketing and merchandise fests we see today in FFX-2, Kingdom Hearts and the such.

    I like to see the transition this way, FFI-III defined the series. FFIV-FFVI reinvented it and took it to the highest standards, achieved by very few games even today. FFVII-FFIX made it accessible to the masses. FFX and beyond are definitely taking the genre and the series to a new place again, though I'm not sure I like it, I haven't played FF to the end since part X.

    So, yeah, FFIV marked the beginning of the era that ended with FFVI, I certainly agree with it being one of the best games of all time. I hope none ever get remade, only ported like the PSOne versions.
    • I'm a big big fan of two in particular; Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI (or III in the US) are my favorite games. There are other gems also which never got released in the US like Tales of Phantasia, Final Fantasy V, etc. Like most of you, I figure that Final Fantasy VII was the peak of the series though.
      • FFV was released in the US. It's on Final Fantasy Anthology for Playstation.
      • FF IV is my favorite game of all time, even more so than VI.

        When I first picked up FFVII to play, boy was I disappointed. It seemed to me that the 3d characters on the 2d bakgrounds didn't match each other at all. The 3d characters didn't have the expressiveness or "detail" that I always pictured in my imagination. After 17 hours in that oppressively dark city I was beginning to wonder if everything too place there. I was about to give up. Thankfully it did get better. Although...killing a character in a ga
        • Baten Kaitos is an incredibly good looking game. I rented it, and it looked absolutely stunning. However, I never got into the "card" system they had going on. I should have played the game a while longer to see if I could fully understand the system, but I gave up.
          • The card system is one of the things I am really enjoying about it. It's so radically diferent that it's going to be a turn off for a good number of people I'm sure. It gets better when you have a larger selection of cards. Balancing your deck for each area becomes more important later on.

            I really appreciate the option to retry boss monsters without having to go back to a save point. If you fail against a boss(I did lose once), you can retry. If you do, you don't get thrown back in to the wolves. They let y

    • Re:Final Fantasy Series (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      the fault of ff6 was that the story floundered in the 2nd half -- a problem which square would revisit in ff7.

      as soon as you collect the airship in the world of ruin, the story 'stops' and you just run around picking up items, espers and characters (as needed) until you raid kefka's castle. the final battle and the epilogue make up for some of that, but those of us who want to see and experience a story are left high and dry.

      furthermore, because of the nature of magic in ff6, the average player tends to ma
      • After you returned to Midgar and more or less destroyed Shinra, the story pretty much 'stopped'. The only story left was going to the North Crater and killing/stopping Sephiroth. Everything else was optional bosses (Emerald, Ruby and Ultimate Weapons), mini-games (Chocobo Breeding, need I say more?) or last minute 'collect'em all' items (all the Enemy Skill attacks, Forgotten Summon materia, etc).

  • An ancient prophecy! (Score:3, Funny)

    by brandonY ( 575282 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @01:47AM (#13554783)
    The world is veiled in
    darkness. The wind stops,
    the sea is wild,
    and the earth begins to rot.

    The people wait,
    their only hope, a prophecy....

    'When the world is in darkness
    Four Warriors will come....'
      After a long journey, four
    young warriors arrive,
    each holding an ORB.

    'They shall settle
    In one single massive flamewar
    The answer to which was best:
    IV, VI, or VII.
    • Well Ultima IV did introduce the Ultima series in its modern form: to become the avatar of virtue. You guide a civilization onto the path of virtue by your actions. Pretty heavy stuff.

      Ultima VI is a big favorite, the end of the trilogy of the Virtues it started to turn everything you believed on its head. Even more heavy stuff, especially when you found out who the false prophet is and what havoc has been wreaked.

      Ultima VII is the BIG world changer. You now appear in Brittania 200 years after your last visi

      • ::blinks::

        I never really thought about the fact how well the FF and Ultima parts correspond to each other... apart of some silly crossover fanfictioning [beastwithin.org], or course. Both series have these days largely ignored parts 1-3, the 7th part getting popularly regarded as the high point and getting most sequels, and everyone seems to agree that part 8 was only kind of okay and the series went to hell after that. =)

    • You spoony bard!!!
  • The proper link: http://www.gamespot.com/features/6132899/ [gamespot.com] Final Fantasy II (I'm going to use American notation because I am - RPG snobs can shove it) was the game that turned me on to RPGs back when I was a wee lad. For a long time, I considered it one of the best games, well, ever. However, even on the SNES platform, it gets beaten out soundly by numerous other games. Final Fantasy III was similar in many, many ways, but soundly cleaned FF2's clock. You could say that FF2 was better simply because when
    • I replayed Final Fantasy 2 about a year ago when I got the Playstation port of it. I agree that is wasn't as good as I remembered it, but to say that Mario RPG was in any way better than it is utter lunacy. Mario RPG had all of the quality and depth of one of those movies with child heroes fighting bumbling adult baddies. It might be an okay starter for getting young kid into RPGs, but in terms of being a good RPG, it lags behind even Final Fantasy 1.
    • Well it's all a matter of opinion now isn't it? I for one much prefer IV to VI(for ex.), the gameplay is the perfect balance of simplicity and fun, and the characters are alot "cooler" in style.

  • It's all nostalgia (Score:1, Informative)

    by halofan_sd ( 683327 )
    People who grew up playing FF4 think it's the greatest RPG ever, just like people grew up playing FF7 think it's the best (same for FF6, FF10). All are good games, but how can you decide which one is the best ever without regarding to the nostalgia people have? If FF4 is a great time compared to games in its day, but if it's released today, even with updated graphics, will people think it's better than FF10? I doubt it.
    • but how can you decide which one is the best ever without regarding to the nostalgia people have?

      I like to think that those who had to grow up with videogames advancing from the NES to the Playstation have more weight on the subject. It is old-hat to spurn the "Playstation is he first console I ever bought" crowd, but I think it is more than reasonable. They started with a certain level of graphics that really havent progressed in over ten years (more polys and bigger textures are not progress). 2d game
    • I never played the games back when they were new, so I have no nostalgia.

      And FFVI is better.
  • Rubicant: I will show you how!

    I always liked Rubicant, he was cool. Edge was a dumbass for casting a fire based spell on the fire elemental Fiend.

    I remember FF2 fondly. Always felt a bit sorry for Kain, that he had to be charmed time and time again. As for which was best of FF2 and FF3, why must that choice be made? They're both great games, let's leave it at that.

  • Final Fantasy : RPGs :: Halo : FPSes (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Haeleth ( 414428 ) on Wednesday September 14, 2005 @06:25AM (#13555731) Journal
    Final Fantasy IV (II) a pioneer in featuring moral dilemmas and character development? Don't make me laugh. Try Ultima IV, perhaps, which did it all half a decade earlier in 1985.

    Puh-lease. Maybe Final Fantasy IV was something new and special in console terms, but computer-based RPGs were already way ahead, and providing little things like mature themes and non-linear gameplay that the Final Fantasy series still hasn't got the hang of, for all its flashy graphics.

    Don't get me wrong - the FF series is on my "great games" list too, particularly nos. 5-7. Just don't go kidding yourself it ever broke any ground -- because it didn't, whatever its fanboys want to think. Truly Final Fantasy is the Halo of the RPG world.
    • Final Fantasy IV (II) a pioneer in featuring moral dilemmas and character development? Don't make me laugh. Try Ultima IV, perhaps, which did it all half a decade earlier in 1985.

      Hallelujah.
    • Truly Final Fantasy is the Halo of the RPG world.

      I wouldn't go that far. After all, Halo is in the same genre as Half-Life et al. with no fundamental gameplay differences. Comparing FF to Ultima, on the other hand, is almost like comparing apples to oranges. Western RPGs have always been fundamentally different stylistically from Eastern ones, and some people prefer one style over the other. So saying that FF is like Halo is unfair to those who have sensible reasons for not liking Western RPGs.

      Rob
    • Not exactly where you're going, but does anybody else think that the (Dragon Quest|Warrior) series is just so much better? I just love the way the locations (and the little mini-dilemmas within) drive the plot, rather than the character's feelings or some crap like that. I never have to worry about the emotional baggage my character is carrying in that game- just about whatever I need to do to help person X in town Y so he'll give me item Z that I need to get to place V.

      Also, while simpler-looking, at
  • Final Fantasy VI, which was a great game. Instead, they wrote FF IV, which is boring.

    It is just an "I" misplaced, no big deal.
  • Most oldschool FF fans consider FF6 the peak of Final Fantasy. I disagree--as good as FF6 was, it doesn't compare to FF4. It's been years since I've played FF4, and it still ranks as one of my favourite games of all time.

    If you haven't done so yet, play FF4 once, and see how great this game is.
    • Try playing IV again. I used to have an identical oppinion. That was until I aquired both of the original games for the SNES. Albeit, I would like to beat them both on the PS re-releases just for the FMV (VI's is absolutely astounding, I've seen it... once).

      Back to the point. I'm not saying that IV is worse than VI. In my regard, I have absolutly no preference of one over the other. I loved them both and they sit on the same rung of my all time top 10 latter. The only way I could have loved IV any mo

  • I'm a _huge_ FF dork (figuratively), and even I'm smart enough not to comment on this one. It's a war waiting to happen.

    Having just said that: FFIX had Freya Crescent, ergo it wins.
  • The thing that gets me about all these new (post FFVII) RPGs is how they feel the need to create teenage characters the player can supposably identify with. I'm sick of protaganists who wear "sk8er" pants, have gratuitously spiky hair, are constantly moody and speak with modern slang that will sound dated in 5 years. Cecily was a real RPG hero, no acne, no bitching, no hormones. He was a grown man, a professional knight with a steady girlfriend, not a surly teenager halfway through puberty. Please RPG-m
  • ...if you like camp, cliche, one-dimensional characters, final villains that come from out of nowhere, and overly simplistic gameplay. You can't even choose your party, for crying out loud.

    Rob
  • this one was my fav ff of all time.

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