FINAL FANTASY IV (3D REMAKE)

FF2 (as it was called back when it was released for SNES in the early 90s) was the first RPG I ever played. I was a little skeptical of this when I bought it, but 6 bucks isn't a big investment so I decided why not. This was an awesome play. I loved the fancy renderings of the dungeons that were so basic in the original version. I love that they added some dimension and backstory to the characters, and all in all it was a big improvement. The 3D characters were not cheesy or overly cartoonish and the voice acting was good. I was very impressed. The monsters, on the other hand, were funky to me, specifically the difficulty and certain attacks (laser barrage, anyone?). I remember the final boss in the SNES version being extremely hard even though I had raised my characters to level 80+. I fought the final boss with all my characters' levels between 72 and 76 and I absolutely pwned him. He didn't even cast Big Bang. Just meteor once and everyone survived. I was worried as I was going through the final dungeon when some of the enemies were laying waste to my party and I had to run from every battle during the last 3 levels, but no. Some random mobs hit much harder than the final boss which is weird, but everything else was great. Will definitely be playing through again.

I’ve had this game on my iPad for a few years now but am writing this review because of a problem on my 3rd playthrough. I had always planned to try and get all of the augments and best armor and defeat the 2 hidden bosses. Apparently what I’ve read from blogs and have just experienced myself is that on the iOS version they Do Not give out a 2nd limit break augment when you start a new game on the 3rd playthrough. But they do on the DS I guess. Idk I’ve never played a DS. Other than that I absolutely Love this version of my favorite rpg. I could play it over and over again forever. I know the story by heart and where all the treasures are these people who remade it did a perfect job I think. The music goes along perfectly with the story just as it did on the snes. Graphics are awesome too. I love going into the land of summoned monsters, looks great. The small changes to the script are fine and modern.

response required

I would forewarn you to not select the Hard mode if you like to grind out levels to make the game easier for you. I put in about 8 hours of grinding levels in areas that gave good experience and I’m just barely surviving fights in that first tower you are trying to save Rosa from. I should be annihilating these enemies. So, my complaint is that enemies are overpowered and your characters are underpowered with both physical attackers and magic wielders. Even when using the correct strategy, you run into ridiculous situations where you quickly run out of MP points. Why in the hell does Tellah only have 90 MP points at level 36!? He’s got all these fantastic spells and he can’t use them without running out of MP super fast. And then to add insult to injury, they really string you along with Ethers so that you have to be oh so frugal otherwise you are out before you know it. You cannot buy them at least this far into game. You can only find them on maps. I hate how difficult they’ve made this. Hard work does not pay. There is simply no relief. I played this game on the Nintendo and it was never this hard. I’m sorry but they need to rebalance this game. Way too difficult to be fun. If I cannot even work hard to get ahead I’m going to lose interest really fast in this game. At least enable me to change difficulty to Normal without having to start new game.

The story is really good and I love the battle system. What I really hate is that some bosses, like Dr. Lagae. I didn't do any level grinding up to that point and always loss the 3rd battle. I had to go back and level up. What I also find really stupid is, why in the world the DS version!? 1. ITS EXTREMELY UGLY 2. FOR DEVICES LIKE IPADS IT LAGS which makes the battle slow The PSP version looks much better and I don't care if it's in 2D. At least everyone didn't look like small *ss children. If they did PSP version, then there wouldn't be lag. Sometimes I find this game annoying because in the underworld, there are flamehounds. Their scorch attack really pisses me off because when you get ambushed, they all use the scorch attack (3 flamehounds: very common) the party dies. The thing I mostly care about is playing the game and carrying on with the story. I try not to pay attention to the graphics, but I can't. When the characters talk, I find it really funny, especially when Cid talks. His mouth is humongous and everyone else's mouth are so tiny. Overall, the game is decent.

This game completely lacks the cursor memory setting which has been a standard in this series long before this, or even the DS port that this is based on, was released. This gets very irritating during longer boss battles, because you have to manually select the action you want every turn. The auto battle feature, unlike the FFV iOS port, only repeats an action you determine in some relatively obscure menu before battle. The previously mentioned FFV's auto battle button repeats the previous action. All of these factors combine to make playing this game feel like a chore. The "back" button in the battle menu is on the top right of the screen, while the action menu is on the bottom left. It's very inconvenient and unintuitive; I often find myself extremely frustrated. I'm not a huge fan of the graphics of the DS remake but I'm not factoring that into my score, because, as far as the graphics go, I knew what I was getting when I bought this. I'm pretty sure most of my problems with this version should actually be directed at the DS port, and most of these problems could easily be fixed. However, they still create unnecessary difficulty and....eh I don't feel like writing anymore. You get the point. I still give it two and a half to three stars because the game underneath these **** controls is solid.