The game takes place in a medieval fantasy setting, and focuses on Cecil Harvey , the captain of the Red Wings of Baron. After performing a raid on Mysidia to steal the Water Crystal , Cecil and the knights question the orders of their king as they believed stealing from the Mysidians was wrong. As punishment for disloyalty, the king strips Cecil of his title, and orders him and Kain Highwind to win back his trust by sending him to the village of Mist.
This sets Cecil off on an adventure in which he and many other allies he meets must uncover the truth and save the world from monsters. Final Fantasy IV introduced the iconic Active Time Battle system, in which characters' moves are represented by a gauge that slowly fills up, allowing them to perform an action when the gauge is full.
A party consists of up to five characters, each with up to three unique abilities. Characters unlock new abilities and improve their stats as they level up. In the 3D versions, additional customization is available in the form of Augments , that allow characters to use different abilities. As of , Final Fantasy IV is celebrating its 30th anniversary with a modest social media campaign that launched in mid-July. In addition to releasing on at least one console or handheld for each generation following the SNES, the game has enjoyed a substantial following on mobile devices since 's release of the 3D remake to iOS and Android.
A from-the-ground-up remake of the original 2D version was released September 8, as part of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection. Characters traverse an overworld to fulfill requirements of various quests, using towns to replenish strength, buy new equipment, and discover clues, all the while fighting monsters at random intervals. The game introduces the Active Time Battle ATB system to the series where players must issue orders to their characters in real-time. The ATB system would return in the next five games as well as making appearances in other games produced by Square Co.
In battle, the player controls a party with up to five characters, making Final Fantasy IV the first and only Final Fantasy in the main series where the maximum party capacity is greater than four party members. Each character has certain strengths and weaknesses, including either spellcasting powers or other special abilities, based on their job. Characters gain abilities as they gain experience from battles.
Many enemies can counterattack when attacked under certain conditions. Examples include the Behemoth , the Antlion , and the final boss. Dealing with these enemies requires a variety of strategies, including avoiding using attacks that trigger a counter, using disabling status effects to prevent counters, or using attacks that can kill the enemy in a single hit.
This feature was not used as extensively in later Final Fantasy games. Character shuffling in battle was a problem in Final Fantasy IV ; the player could cycle through the entire party twice before getting to select the character they wanted. This was not necessarily caused by the ATB gauge; even with the character's gauge full, one might still need to cycle through the party twice before being able to use them.
Spell casters, which account for eight of the twelve playable characters Kain , Edward , Yang and Cid cannot use magic , gain magic spells at pre-programmed experience levels or fixed events in the story; thus the game's ability development system is considered the simplest in the series.
Unlike the original Final Fantasy , almost no time is needed to level grind to advance to the next area, as long as the party does not escape from the majority of random encounters. Another new addition is save points , which became a staple feature. Final Fantasy IV features twelve playable characters, with Cecil as the main protagonist and the only permanent party member.
The characters join and leave the party as dictated by the story. Final Fantasy IV was a big development in terms of music, because up until then the games had one piece music per map, but for Final Fantasy IV , they focused on how to make the game more emotional and to have the music play at the right timing.
In fact, Culex himself was purposely based on a boss that would be typical in the Final Fantasy series. After Final Fantasy III was finished the team started Final Fantasy IV with the idea of a slightly more action-based, dynamic overworld rather than keeping combat as a separate thing, but the project wound up "not being IV anymore" and was eventually released as Seiken Densetsu 2 Secret of Mana.
Final Fantasy IV has been released in a variety of different versions for a variety of different platforms. All versions tell the same story, and feature the same characters. There are two distinct versions of the game: the original 2D version whose remasters use the same graphics, sound, music and basic game engine, and the 3D remake version originally released for the Nintendo DS with new graphics, voice acting and additions to the character development system and increased difficulty level.
Nonetheless, there are certain key distinctions between each version. The idea behind creating Final Fantasy IV was to create an "ultimate Final Fantasy game", one that would compile the good aspects of the previous three installments. The team wanted to balance the two aspects, ending up with what became Final Fantasy IV.
The series moved from NES to SNES, allowing for the use of more colors and story, although the maximum cartridge capacity still posed a limitation, and developing an expansive, narrative-driven adventure was a challenge with the available space.
Takashi Tokita, the game's lead designer, wrote the scenario, but had to cut down a fourth of what he had written to make it fit, although some of the cut material would make it to the 3D remake version. Not everything could be in full color either or they would have run out of memory, and thus certain areas were prioritized: airships, bosses, and main characters with the supplementary aspects' colors being halved. Up until then, RPGs tended to have a map, a dungeon, a castle, and boss battles, and the player progressed back and forth between gameplay and boss battles.
The idea for Final Fantasy IV was to approach it from a movie editing perspective to create a more dramatic, story-driven game. By minimizing player confusion as to where to go next, the developers elevated the story-driven impact. Making Final Fantasy IV a story-driven game led to decreased level of party customization compared to the previous entries to the series. By adding the Active Time Battle system, the goal was to mitigate this.
To create a battle system as close to real time as was possible at the time, the Active Time Battle system was born. Ito felt that too many action elements would alienate users and the theme he came up with was an action-like game without reflex action elements. One thing Ito had in mind was automatic transmissions in cars, as opposed to a stick, but even if processes are automatic, the player had to have something to do, lest they get bored.
At the time, there was a shift going on in Formula One racing where semi-automatic transmissions were introduced. From this, the concept where character speed would differ depending on the type of character was coined.
With this system, the team could implement an action game type of gimmick where enemies will change shape, or fight as a wall closing in —this was a new kind of enemy structure that had not appeared in a Final Fantasy game before.
Ito felt that implementing that kind of system would give people the illusion that they are doing more to drive the action than what might actually be happening, because of a lot of the processes are automatic. Ito felt the system in Final Fantasy IV was not yet complete. In Final Fantasy IV , the charge time for actions depends on the strength of the spell being cast, but this feature was scrapped for subsequent installments because the developers did not want long waiting times, and so the goal in the future was to create a balance between physical and magical abilities.
Solutions range from modifying font files in the game's directory to switching out the title's Japanese and English default font styles. In both cases, the fixes offer a far more sightly and accessible typeface for players to use during their time with the game. Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter. Pixel remasters for the series' first three games launched on July Posted Aug. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you.
Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn. By Scott Baird Published Aug 24,
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