Final Fantasy IV Advance - Haste Makes Waste

[Dracos]

Just released at the end of 2005, Final Fantasy 4 Advance is 'yet another' port of the SNES classic Final Fantasy, with some redone graphics, a 'better' translation, new characters, and new levels and items.  You may wonder off the bat, if it has so much new stuff, why do I call it a port?  Because, at the heart, it is a port.  There was no effort taken to integrating this new stuff into the story or redo more than a percent of the actual game (they added facial portraits, big whoop).  It's a port with some bonus features and that's largely what I'm going to focus on here.

   Graphically, the game polished a few character sprites, ran interpolation on others, added a small handful (and then proceeded to introduce color changed copies of them), and added facial features that for the majority of the cast made them look like someone had broken their nose at a previous point in their lives.  The music, despite their credits naming some six odd composers I don't remember and didn't see on the 'original staff' credits, never struck me as different from the original.   What those composers were doing is really beyond me, especially since the bonus content entirely used sounds and music from prior in the game.

   Maybe it's just been a long time since my last replay and having played lots of more advanced RPGs recently, but the rate/randomness of the random encounters got to me, often fluctuating heavily between no encounters for walking across a huge room to suddenly getting in a fight every step for six steps in a row.  I recall it being like this in the original but playing it again, it really cut a lot of the fun of exploring.  Getting some average safe walk distance would've been nice, even if balanced against a lower max distance (walking across an entire dangerous dungeon floor without a fight has its own negatives as far as the effect goes).  So I'm gonna to toss that in here.  Come prepared with a tolerance for fighting if you get this.  In fact, come prepared with a very large tolerance.

   Anyhow, beyond that, the main game is pretty much just as Final Fantasy IV was originally.  It has nothing new in it until the end.  You follow the story of the Dark Knight Cecil as he falls from grace and seeks redemption and, with the help of his friends, eventually saves the world.  You've got the first incarnation of the active-time battle system in all its raw glory, some white mages, some black mages, airships to fly around the globe, etc.  For those of you who've never experienced it at all before, it's not half bad, even if I'd say there are better things to whet your palette on these days.  It's a decent chance to get into it.

   I say decent and not definitive largely for the same reason I title this review haste makes waste.  It really has no excuse.  This game shouldn't have another port.  There's little point in retranslating it yet another time.  It's come out on more systems than most series have games and has been sold to folks time and time again.  This should've been a definitive version, having the most polished translation they could give it and letting the game as a whole shine as best it can.  Unfortunately, it didn't get that.  The translation is certainly more detailed, but it is also awkward at many points, sometimes involving spontaneous rewrites that leave parts of the game making no sense at all.  There's a real sense that they rushed the translation.  That they didn't really check deeply to see how it read straight up or something.  Either way, I feel at best, this is no better than the original translation we got for Final Fantasy 2.  It doesn't have much heart in it and the added verboseness isn't taken advantage of to really better the game.

   The first bonus content revealed is the ability to take any character that was in the party at any point in the game to the final level (and the two bonus dungeons).  This is another of those little haste points.  Instead of more classily revealing it with the Mysdian elder or something, or a little added scene following the Giant of Babel, they just have this namingway pop up as you're leaving the 'Lunar Whale' to go to through the last level and say that the bonus characters are now accessible at Mysdia.  Altogether, it does get the job done, but it is crude and really when the bonus content is the majority of what you're adding, you shouldn't be able to have a little more style than that.

   So I went back to see what I had to work with there.  The first thing I checked, reflexively, was what exactly the little tykes, white mage Porom and black mage Palom, had in their spell list.  And then sighed a bit.  They both, at the moment, out listed both of the adult mages currently in my party.  Yes, technically it was balancing since they sucked even worse at attacking, but given how big Meteo (or Meteor as it is in this version) is in the game, there's something that just rubs me wrong about a little kid casting it and in fact being hands down the most powerful black mage in the game, particularly when they kept the ending the same and show him bragging over the concept of casting the weakest ice spell.  I'm not saying necessarily they should've rewritten the ending to match their characters, but it just adds the feeling that these are slapped in to be 'fan pleasers' and, as I'll go into shortly, to maximize the time spent on the new content.

   Now, while they've upped the levels (and spells) of all these characters, they didn't touch their equipment, so naturally they started off completely useless for tackling the last level.  They did do a neat thing where anyone left there gains xp as cecil does, which means that no one will get left behind (my current party is about 75 across the board).  That, I give kudos on because they have more than enough reusing of content coming up that leveling up each character separately would've quite enraged me.

   Here as you try and leave, they introduce bonus dungeon 1, the cave of trials, designed solely to fix this issue of equipment and having really no other merit.  A single new enemy is in there and five boss enemies, but other than that, it is just a semi-long walk in the park with enemies your main party will kill without any effort.  This is also the introduction of what really wears down the new content.  You can't just go through it once if you want to finish both dungeons.  You have to go through it and beat each of the five bosses which you are only allowed to fight with the corresponding 'character getting weapon' in your party (There is no linking correspondence with the similar weapon guardians on the moon, so you don't have to bring the core party there to get them all, as a small mercy).  Well, the issue is you only have 5 slots in your party and 1 is permanently taken by Cecil.  So in effect, the dungeon takes a minimum of two runs through to get all the stuff.  Unfortunately, because everyone would have really sucky weapons prior to this, you really do need to mix and match some of your original powerhouses in, meaning you'll walk through that entire dungeon (which as I mentioned has pretty much nothing threatening in it for 'ready for the last boss' type characters) three or four times, and possibly five if you're extra cautious.  This is really stupid and unnecessary.  Usually I found that the characters who were 'fighting for the weapon' were virtually ineffectual against the guy guarding it due to their sucky equipment (Yang being the exception) and instead just left all the real work to the power house originals before suddenly being boosted by their superweapon up to that level.  This was lame and the first instance of them just maximizing the time spent on a given piece of content.  There's no other reason to have you walk through the dungeon 3-5 times.  If you can do it once, you can do it every other time easily.  A simple 'party switch' room would've fixed it, if they absolutely had to hold to their guns on the issue of having the benefiting character in the party, and that really didn't need holding to their guns.

   The second bonus dungeon, the Lunar Ruins, is post game content, unlocked when you beat the game and consisting of some large number of floors (I've heard fifty, but it doesn't count for you and I'm not keeping count), randomly picked from a set of maps each floor (many of which are floors from previous parts of the game) with 'trial' floors set in between every 3-4 floors.  Now, to get to the end you have to beat all of these trial floors and then you can get to the final floor.  They are each a personal trial with a save and warp point right outside the start and they reward with new weapons and/or new powers for the trial goer.  Reasonably, the game requires you to have the trial goer with you to do the trial.  Unreasonably the game requires that you beat the game with each trial goer in the party (again requiring 3-4 times going and crushing Zeromus, which becomes more and more base as you'll quickly move from level 40 (difficult fight) to level 70 (stupidly easy fight) in the lunar ruins) and, as the previous dungeon, does not allow any mid dungeon swapping, so you have to walk through a majority of the dungeon 3-4 times, possibly more depending on how much you switch it up.  The dungeon, of course, introduces actually dangerous enemies, with the average enemy hp being over 11000.  This is part of the reason I warn of requiring a high tolerance for battle because you will be fighting a lot of it and at this hp level, it usually won't be a one turn finish.  It's fairly easy to get killed around it with bad luck, but thankfully the game will increase the money drops to the point where it was remarkably sensible to buy oh 50-100 elixirs to help out.  It's not hard really with the fights dropping 20-100k each fight.  It also helps that elixir, megaelixir, and full ether are pretty common (I've got 10 megaelixir glancing at the inventory).  So, expect to play about 100-140 floors worth of the dungeon.  Luckily a lot of them are quick.

   This dungeon actually angers me a bit, because on certain facets, it is praiseworthy and on certain other ones, it shows extreme contempt for those playing through it.  The stuff I just went over above has no reason to be there.  A party swap point would've been simple and having people have to sit through the ending that many times is insulting.  It's not that good, especially not repeated several times in a row.  Despite this being only two dungeons, it's eaten as much time (largely spent repeating motion) as the entire rest of the game.  It's also more than 50 floors in effect, which gets a serious bleh from me on principle.  The bosses?  They're all color shifted summon bosses.  Would've have hurt them that much to make original art for these things?  Lunar Odin?  Lunar Bahamut?  Bleh.

   What then about it is praiseworthy?  Well, the trial floors, when unlocked are generally pretty nifty and well tailored things.  From Rydia battling her own summons as a child to doing air ship travel with cid (that one was annoying) to a series of events testing how much of a paladin Cecil is.  There's actually the ability to fail the trial as well (though they don't indicate this much other than not getting the prizes) but at least there's a save point right outside you can reload from.  Some of the random floors are pretty good too, not all being combat oriented and some being fun puzzles, though I stab at the teleporter floor with teleporters that redirect themselves randomly.  The repetition of them, of course, weakens their value tremendously (I've gotten this guy the Mysdian History book how many times now to complete this 'floor'?).  Several of the floors give megaelixirs, which help notably.  Some of the bosses are puzzles in their own right, which I always find pretty fun.

   Edge's level gets points for artsiness, even if it is annoying.  They went ahead and just created a 'glitched' castle, everything being insanely placed and the game needing you to walk through walls, over empty space, etc to find your way through.  It's a unique puzzle certainly, but I suspect it'd be extremely irritating for anyone not at least partially used to the concept of a level's collision areas having little to do with what you are seeing.

   Finally, now just having beaten the last boss of the Lunar Ruins...  Ew.  That's just a wretched monster design.  It's horrible and entirely not worth the effort of seeing.  And I think I underspoke on the commonness of megaelixirs.  You see, the hidden boss didn't even get a chance at drama because I had 41 of them.  Had I chosen to, I could've used one every single round of combat.  You'd never notice.  Additionally, I hope you like the twins if you want to fight him, because given that their trial is on floor 47 or some such, you'll have a long walk to repeat if you don't.  Really, just bad form.

   On the upside, testing, it appears it was a rumor.  You do not need to defeat all the trials to fight the hidden boss at the end.  That's at least good to see.  Serves me right for going on word of mouth in that regard.  So...Pick the party you want, beat the last boss, and just go do the trials you want.  Again, the ender is lame, and the real benefit is the going through the trials on the way, many of which require perfect finishes.

   Overall, whether you enjoy this is directly proportional to your tolerance for random final fantasy style battles.  They do have neat stuff in the bonus content, but they sure don't want to make it doing it.  And as a final bit of advice, Magic Dragons in the bonus dungeon aren't worth fighting.  At all.  Just run, it's really the best thing you can do.

[Anastasia]

Graphically, the game polished a few character sprites, ran interpolation on others, added a small handful (and then proceeded to introduce color changed copies of them), and added facial features that for the majority of the cast made them look like someone had broken their nose at a previous point in their lives.  The music, despite their credits naming some six odd composers I don't remember and didn't see on the 'original staff' credits, never struck me as different from the original.   What those composers were doing is really beyond me, especially since the bonus content entirely used sounds and music from prior in the game.

The sound had to be adapted and redone from the SNES midis, due to differing sound capacities with the Gameboy Advance. It's why certain tracks are tinnier or have different pitch properties, like the Overture. I imagine those composers are really the recreators and adaptors.

The first bonus content revealed is the ability to take any character that was in the party at any point in the game to the final level (and the two bonus dungeons).  This is another of those little haste points.  Instead of more classily revealing it with the Mysdian elder or something, or a little added scene following the Giant of Babel, they just have this namingway pop up as you're leaving the 'Lunar Whale' to go to through the last level and say that the bonus characters are now accessible at Mysdia.  Altogether, it does get the job done, but it is crude and really when the bonus content is the majority of what you're adding, you shouldn't be able to have a little more style than that.

Agreed entirely. While I wouldn't want much, at least make it vaguely amusing like the Kappa the Imp segments from FF6, damn it. Bleh. Hell, have the Elder tell you once you finish the Giant of Babil off that they want to help you! That would be nice, wouldn't it? -_-

So I went back to see what I had to work with there.  The first thing I checked, reflexively, was what exactly the little tykes, white mage Porom and black mage Palom, had in their spell list.  And then sighed a bit.  They both, at the moment, out listed both of the adult mages currently in my party.  Yes, technically it was balancing since they sucked even worse at attacking, but given how big Meteo (or Meteor as it is in this version) is in the game, there's something that just rubs me wrong about a little kid casting it and in fact being hands down the most powerful black mage in the game, particularly when they kept the ending the same and show him bragging over the concept of casting the weakest ice spell.  I'm not saying necessarily they should've rewritten the ending to match their characters, but it just adds the feeling that these are slapped in to be 'fan pleasers' and, as I'll go into shortly, to maximize the time spent on the new content.

Here I'll quibble - while the Twins learn their magic faster, Porom has - horrible - HP for a White Mage, something that really hobbles her usefulness. Palom lacks the summons and whips of Rydia, at the expense of learning Meteo early. Whoo, he learns a 3 round charge time 9999 blast? What could beat that? Oh hi, Bahamut! Smaller charge time and only 60 MP? Yay! The fact that they get their spells earlier shouldn't be held against them, the balance of the game is made for it to be as such.

Now, while they've upped the levels (and spells) of all these...

Palom and Porom could learn all those spells in the original version if you levelled them up. In fact, all the characters levelled up well, it was just nigh insane to do so. Yang still has his 6000 HP cap in place, too. -_-

Usually I found that the characters who were 'fighting for the weapon' were virtually ineffectual against the guy guarding it due to their sucky equipment (Yang being the exception) and instead just left all the real work to the power house originals before suddenly being boosted by their superweapon up to that level.  This was lame and the first instance of them just maximizing the time spent on a given piece of content.  There's no other reason to have you walk through the dungeon 3-5 times.  If you can do it once, you can do it every other time easily.  A simple 'party switch' room would've fixed it, if they absolutely had to hold to their guns on the issue of having the benefiting character in the party, and that really didn't need holding to their guns.

I'll argue that point partially; Yang, Palom and Porom were all useful against their bosses. Quake was incredibly useful for Palom(And something he learns as an absurdly low level), Porom had -gasp- healing, and Yang is Yang.
   

Finally, now just having beaten the last boss of the Lunar Ruins...  Ew.  That's just a wretched monster design.  It's horrible and entirely not worth the effort of seeing.  And I think I underspoke on the commonness of megaelixirs.  You see, the hidden boss didn't even get a chance at drama because I had 41 of them.  Had I chosen to, I could've used one every single round of combat.  You'd never notice.  Additionally, I hope you like the twins if you want to fight him, because given that their trial is on floor 47 or some such, you'll have a long walk to repeat if you don't.  Really, just bad form.

Yes, it's an ugly and horrible sprite. It's also a homage, since it's what Zermous looked like in FF4 easy type over in Japan. As for the Megaelixirs? -_- Pretty much just -_-. It was a decent fight without those!

[Dracos]

Here I'll quibble - while the Twins learn their magic faster, Porom has - horrible - HP for a White Mage, something that really hobbles her usefulness. Palom lacks the summons and whips of Rydia, at the expense of learning Meteo early. Whoo, he learns a 3 round charge time 9999 blast? What could beat that? Oh hi, Bahamut! Smaller charge time and only 60 MP? Yay! The fact that they get their spells earlier shouldn't be held against them, the balance of the game is made for it to be as such.

It just felt rough having meteo, which has such story significance, being used by a little brat.

From a pure mechanics standpoint?  I absolutely agree with you.  It was just a '...meteo?  On palom?'

Palom and Porom could learn all those spells in the original version if you levelled them up. In fact, all the characters levelled up well, it was just nigh insane to do so. Yang still has his 6000 HP cap in place, too. -_-

He does?  I thought I saw him over that myself.

I'll argue that point partially; Yang, Palom and Porom were all useful against their bosses. Quake was incredibly useful for Palom(And something he learns as an absurdly low level), Porom had -gasp- healing, and Yang is Yang.

Just in my experience they didn't do much.  I just slaughtered them for the most part.

Dracos

[Anastasia]

I dunno. It felt like almost everyone learned it by endgame. Golbez uses it, Tellah used it, FuSoYa has it, Rydia learns it. Palom's there when the seal on Meteo is removed, so it's not surprising that he's learning it as well as Rydia as he gains experience.

Yang's cap is roughly six thousand HP. GIve or take a little, since that's about when it caps - random variance effects the exact number 50 points or so either way.

[Dracos]

It did... but in general, it was sensible enough to beat the game before Rydia learned it and thus limit it to only the Lunarians and Tellah.  Of course, Yeah, that wasn't restrained either, but it just felt weird.

Dracos

[Anastasia]

It did... but in general, it was sensible enough to beat the game before Rydia learned it and thus limit it to only the Lunarians and Tellah.  Of course, Yeah, that wasn't restrained either, but it just felt weird.

Dracos

Eh, endgame levels in Hardtype are anywhere from 50 to 65 on average, so it's debatable. I thought it was amusing; the seal on Meteo was gone so everyone who has the skill starts learning it. Coooooool.

For all that it kinda sucks compared to Flare or Bahamut. <_<