Screenshots :.
Final Fantasy IV Advance
GBA
Matt
10-05-2007
"Hope you brought a map"
"Old school name action...Cecil...The Mighty...."
"Oh fine, just fall asleep during a critical plot moment. Tsk."
One of my worst character traits appears to have become the way in which I – completely unintentionally, of course – have issues in staying concentrated on a conversation if something amusing or entertaining is going on within eyeshot. Jay will certainly attest to this having spent what must now be a combined total of several hours talking to the back of my head, only for me to turn round and him to realise that I’ve been preoccupied with a bunch of dancing badgers on my screen, or perhaps even a amusing article on a cat stuck in a sticky situation up a tree. You can rest assured that nowadays I am ridiculously easy to distract with even the simplest of things.
Hence, when I get my hands on something like Final Fantasy IV Advance the chances are that not even the onset of the apocalypse would distract me from peering intently at the brightly coloured antics whizzing around on screen. Appearing as an updated version of the WonderSwan Colour update of the PlayStation update of the SNES original (gasps for breath), the game begins with a chap named Cecil commanding his royal air force to destroy a town and steal a precious Crystal from them. Whilst returning home from aforementioned task, Cecil begins to have grave doubts over his King’s actions and openly questions them, leading to his expulsion and subsequent despatch on a seemingly easy errand. Things don’t turn out well and from there on in you’ll be helping Cecil gain redemption from all of his personal demons.
The game that unfolds amongst all this is classic Final Fantasy stuff. Random battles, turn-based combat and oversized characters strolling around the world map searching for tiny towns and mountain passes are the order of the day, and it’s surprising just how well it all works some 16 years after the original release. The story keeps trickling through at an even pace and the game has a pretty decent levelling curve too, although it’s a little less forgiving than subsequent Final Fantasy titles and will require you to do more than a few hours of concentrated levelling to ensure smooth progress.
But hey, when the story is so involving that’s not so much of a problem. Playing out in front of you is a classic story of love, loss and revenge, with characters old and new having layers gently peeled away as you progress through the game. The characters themselves are wonderfully diverse, ranging from the thoughtful, kind Cecil through to the brash, unbridled child wizards-in-training Palom and Parom. When released originally, IV was the first Final Fantasy game to really spend good chunks of time developing characters and their back stories, and it’s a testament to the good old folks beavering away in Squaresoft’s story and plot department back then that the original plot has only needed tweaking and polishing to make it remain as fulfilling and exciting compared to current titles as it was when compared to games circa the early 1990s.
On the topic of polishing and tweaking, the Game Boy Advance version of the game brings a few new things to the table. Localisation teams have added a bit more information and padding to the story, giving players the chance to chat to a few villagers and such in order to get a more complete version of what’s going on. Dialogue seems to have been updated too; casually strolling up to a playing child in the first town you visit will have him describing Dark Knights as ‘totally sweet’, which in a way makes you feel sad that the original title didn’t make use of equivalent phrases from the time period such as radical, or maybe even bodacious. Fans of the series need not worry though; the classic line ‘You spoony Bard!’ has been left in all its baffling glory.
On top of this, there are a couple of extra dungeons chucked in with some armour and other such offerings for players to scout out and plunder, as well as a bestiary for you to swot up on your enemies and a soundtrack player. The game’s been given an extra layer of spit and polish too, with the WonderSwan’s optimised visuals upgraded once again with more detailed textures throughout.
Chances are that many of you reading this will have already sampled Final Fantasy IV on some system or other. Is it worth buying again on the strength of the additions that have been packed in for the Game Boy Advance? Probably not, no. Whilst they’re nice additions to the overall package, none of them add sufficiently enough to make this version vastly different to others. On the other side of the coin, however, this is probably going to be the version of Final Fantasy IV to get for series purists who want to milk every possible drop out of each episode, with the extra graphical sheen and story padding making it by far the most accomplished port to date. If you haven’t had a chance to spend a good thirty-hours or so in the company of Cecil, Kain and Rosa yet, this is firmly recommended. It might not give the instant gratification that some players will crave, but as a slow-burning piece of entertainment that keeps you hooked from start to finish it works as beautifully now as it ever did.
Hence, when I get my hands on something like Final Fantasy IV Advance the chances are that not even the onset of the apocalypse would distract me from peering intently at the brightly coloured antics whizzing around on screen. Appearing as an updated version of the WonderSwan Colour update of the PlayStation update of the SNES original (gasps for breath), the game begins with a chap named Cecil commanding his royal air force to destroy a town and steal a precious Crystal from them. Whilst returning home from aforementioned task, Cecil begins to have grave doubts over his King’s actions and openly questions them, leading to his expulsion and subsequent despatch on a seemingly easy errand. Things don’t turn out well and from there on in you’ll be helping Cecil gain redemption from all of his personal demons.
The game that unfolds amongst all this is classic Final Fantasy stuff. Random battles, turn-based combat and oversized characters strolling around the world map searching for tiny towns and mountain passes are the order of the day, and it’s surprising just how well it all works some 16 years after the original release. The story keeps trickling through at an even pace and the game has a pretty decent levelling curve too, although it’s a little less forgiving than subsequent Final Fantasy titles and will require you to do more than a few hours of concentrated levelling to ensure smooth progress.
But hey, when the story is so involving that’s not so much of a problem. Playing out in front of you is a classic story of love, loss and revenge, with characters old and new having layers gently peeled away as you progress through the game. The characters themselves are wonderfully diverse, ranging from the thoughtful, kind Cecil through to the brash, unbridled child wizards-in-training Palom and Parom. When released originally, IV was the first Final Fantasy game to really spend good chunks of time developing characters and their back stories, and it’s a testament to the good old folks beavering away in Squaresoft’s story and plot department back then that the original plot has only needed tweaking and polishing to make it remain as fulfilling and exciting compared to current titles as it was when compared to games circa the early 1990s.
On the topic of polishing and tweaking, the Game Boy Advance version of the game brings a few new things to the table. Localisation teams have added a bit more information and padding to the story, giving players the chance to chat to a few villagers and such in order to get a more complete version of what’s going on. Dialogue seems to have been updated too; casually strolling up to a playing child in the first town you visit will have him describing Dark Knights as ‘totally sweet’, which in a way makes you feel sad that the original title didn’t make use of equivalent phrases from the time period such as radical, or maybe even bodacious. Fans of the series need not worry though; the classic line ‘You spoony Bard!’ has been left in all its baffling glory.
On top of this, there are a couple of extra dungeons chucked in with some armour and other such offerings for players to scout out and plunder, as well as a bestiary for you to swot up on your enemies and a soundtrack player. The game’s been given an extra layer of spit and polish too, with the WonderSwan’s optimised visuals upgraded once again with more detailed textures throughout.
Chances are that many of you reading this will have already sampled Final Fantasy IV on some system or other. Is it worth buying again on the strength of the additions that have been packed in for the Game Boy Advance? Probably not, no. Whilst they’re nice additions to the overall package, none of them add sufficiently enough to make this version vastly different to others. On the other side of the coin, however, this is probably going to be the version of Final Fantasy IV to get for series purists who want to milk every possible drop out of each episode, with the extra graphical sheen and story padding making it by far the most accomplished port to date. If you haven’t had a chance to spend a good thirty-hours or so in the company of Cecil, Kain and Rosa yet, this is firmly recommended. It might not give the instant gratification that some players will crave, but as a slow-burning piece of entertainment that keeps you hooked from start to finish it works as beautifully now as it ever did.
8/10
