First Impressions Final Fantasy IV DS
The day before I shifted I picked up a couple of new games to keep me entertained during summer, they were Final Fantasy IV for the Nintendo DS and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Wii. I haven’t really given Force Unleashed the time it deserves yet – because of the move and simply put Final Fantasy IV has really sucked me in, once I have settled in a bit more and get a chance to sit down and spend a few hours on Force Unleashed I will probably post my first impressions of that as well.
Final Fantasy IV is the remake of the SNES version for the DS, outside of Japan this game was originally released as Final Fantasy II. It was in this game that the Active Time Battle system was introduced, this system was used in many of the subsequent Final Fantasy games. This remake has seen the game transition to 3D engine (the same as what was used in the Final Fantasy III remake.) with new rendered cut-scenes and voice acting. I am told that the script has had some of the content that had been cut in the original version restored to this version, however because I don’t want to risk spoiling the story for myself I don’t know how much content or where the content takes place.
Final Fantasy IV is my first venture into the games of the Final Fantasy franchise, having before only watched the not so great movie – Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, and the awesome Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. Up to this point I have been just iterating over many of the points that you can find on a retailers site or Wikipedia, that wouldn’t make much of a post about my first impression if I didn’t actually give any impressions, so here we go. Final Fantasy IV is a visually stunning game and would easily be the best looking DS game I have played or seen for that matter. The actual game-play is quite addicting, I can happily sit down for a few hours and lose myself in the game. It took me a little while to get used to the battle system but once I was it added that little bit more excitement than the more traditional turn based systems. Having not gotten all that far into the story line I can’t really comment much on it, but what has happened so far seems good.
The game doesn’t use the touch controls of the DS much, at most it allows you to move the character around inside of a dungeon, to me this felt more clunky than using the D-pad so it was quickly abandoned. I would of preferred to see the designers try and use the touch pad for the interface more, in particular the the menu based elements of the game or the selection of an enemy/character in a battle. Aside from that small gripe I can’t think of anything bad to say about the game, I’m sure there are some annoying qualities but I haven’t come across them yet or they haven’t begun to bug me yet.
So to sum it all up Final Fantasy IV has made a good first impression on me and I would recommend anyone who owns a DS to go out and pick up a copy, I am seriously considering also going out an picking up the remake of Final Fantasy III for the DS which is based off of the same graphics engine. Perhaps once I finish the game I will do another post detailing any annoyances that I come across and give a better indication on how good the plot is.
