After playing Final Fantasy XIV for “a couple” hours now, I figured that it would be a good idea to see where everything started, and thanks to these lovely Pixel Remasters of the first few Final Fantasy games, it is easier than ever to do.

Overview
As all the other classic Final Fantasy games, FF IV is a turned based jrpg with a huge open world and not too much guidance. Since it’s a rpg from the “old days” it expects you to talk to NPC’s to find out where to go and to explore its world. Which has its charm but can certainly be challenging if you haven’t played a game like this before.
(But in case you get lost, there are guides, so don’t let this discourage you from enjoying this great game.)

Story
Once again it falls to you and your party to save the world from evil and corruption. Someone is collecting all the powerful crystals for an unknown goal, all you know is that you have to put an end to the killing and fighting and stop whatever doom looms in the distance.

While, like always, I don’t want to say too much to the story, FF IV is so far my favorite. If you are like me a FFXIV players, lets say you will meet enemies from the post Endwalker content.

Gameplay
After a brief intro and learning the very basics of the combat system, the world is yours to explore within certain limitations. Monsters don’t scale with your level (thankfully) so I can happen that you run into monsters which you aren’t ready for yet.
Like in most classic Role-Playing-Games you level up through combat, find new gear, new key items through quests, and unlock new skills and meet new party members along the way. One of the benefits of this system is, that if you hit a little wall, you can always just go and grind monsters for an extra level or two and overcome the wall. You never really get stuck. I still recommend saving often and to do so on more than one save file, just to be sure.
Final Fantasy IV introduces some new elements to the combat, of which I’m a huge fan of. Each party member has an energy bar which slowly fills and only then you can do an action, in this way the fights feel like a mix of round-based combat, mixed in with some light element of real time combat. This system works really well and made the fights much more enjoyable to me personally.
Another difference is that, beside summons, your party members learn new abilities by leveling up and you cannot choose your party members like in previous games.
Your setup changes depending on your story progress and characters you meet. While this at first sounds like a downgrade, it is well balanced and worked well for me in every combat encounter.


Features
-A huge open world
-Lots and lots of enemy variety
-Tons of different spells, gear and weapons
-Lots of dungeons with different themes and creative challenges
-Boss Battles of which most offer their unique challenges and twists
-Modern, optional, comfort features, like quick saving at any point and more

Graphic/Audio/Tech
For the Tech, I had zero issues, no stutters no crashes, the game is perfectly optimized for modern PC’s

On the graphic side, if you enjoy pixel art, this game looks fantastic. The world is full of wonders, and the sprite art is great. Enemies, Combat backdrops, and dungeons in general offer so much variety in their optic. The spells especially look fantastic when used, and you won’t grow bored of looking at them.

The soundtrack of Final Fantasy III is still a feast for your ears, it’s really amazing how much they managed to do with the tools they had back in the day.

Final Thoughts
If you like older jrpgs or are a fan of the Final Fantasy franchise and haven’t played this game yet, I can only recommend it. The world is huge and offers a lot of variety, the combat system is a lot of fun and it’s all packed into a good story that keeps you hooked from start to finish.
It maybe takes a while to get the hang on it, but it is absolutely worth doing so.

And if you are a Final Fantasy XIV player like me, you will discover so many places, and meet npcs and enemies which also exist in FFXIV, it will put some smiles on your face and provide a lot of “ahhhh” moments.

A solid entry in the series, I enjoyed the story a lot but the sidetracking and grinding seems to have doubled with the next generation, the SNES era. So keep in mind going into this, that if you want to complete this game, it will take a bit more effort than before!

9/10 - It's the next level of Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy IV takes what is good from the previous entries and overhauls a lot of its system, with some interesting additions that not only marked the remaining titles of the series, but also helped shaped RPGs to come. The game introduces us to some resemblance of sidequests - very simple and straight to the point - and also hits us with more grinding and farming, both land with mixed results.

The jobs this time are more limited and fixed to each character, but have been all fleshed out, each with stronger and more unique identities. The combat system is different, to say the least - gone is the old regular turn-base system and in is the new ATB system, which replaces regular turns with character stamina and it is a bit weird some times.

The story is simple, yet beautiful and it is helped by its amazing cast of characters, with figures such as the legendary Kain Highwind and the twins Palom and Porom making such remarkable appearances. Storytelling takes a heavier focus compared to previous entries.

Overall, it's a package of very good things, with a few minor inconveniences, that make for an amazing experience, it makes for good starting point for anyone new to jump in the series.