Is Final Fantasy IV for the DS a Valuable Remake?

Square-Enix, how you love to rerelease your old titles. Final Fantasy IV (originally called Final Fantasy II for its North American release on the SNES) has yet another remake. The first remake was under Final Fantasy Chronicles for the playstation; the second was under Final Fantasy IV Advance for the Game Boy Advance. However now we have another release on the Nintendo DS called Final Fantasy IV DS. Is it worth it?

Absolutely.

Even though I personally already have the game because of the PS1 version, I still think this release is worth a buy (though not at the full 40$ price tag. But if you can find it for 25 and under, it's worth it).

Graphics:

This version has all new 3D graphics, the same style as Final Fantasy III DS. This may only be a small addition, but it adds up to a lot more involvement. Role Playing games are basically interactive stories. Final Fantasy 4 has one of the most invigorating stories you can find on a Final Fantasy game, with twists and turns leaving you shocked, amazed, and sometimes disappointed. By updating the graphics to something a little bit more real, it will bring the gamer that much closer to feeling emotions for the characters. They've even added voice-overs (and yes, the ability to take them away if you don't like them is available). Voice-overs are tricky, since if you don't carefully choose a voice that'll fit to how most people would perceive the character, it'll bring a lot of discomfort. However, the voice acting only occurs during important scenes and it's actually not that bad.

The game's box is misleading however. While it does tell you of the remade graphics, it also boasts "all-new CG cutscenes" and an "updated" battle system. However, updated in comparison to which release? The new CG cutscenes are new indeed, but they are lacking. So far I've played through about half of the game and I've yet to see a CG cutscene except when I load the game.

Gameplay:

The battle system is very faithful to the original. It uses the ATB, the active time gauge, to allow characters to use characters as their turns come up instead of as the team's turn comes up; it allows you to use magic with MP; people with special jobs have special abilities. It's the same FF song and dance. However there are a few wonderful additions. The first one to mention is the ability to pick an automated ability. You pick one (yes only one) ability that each character will constantly use during automated battles. So I would have my fighting guys set on attack, my white mage set on "pray" (which heals), my black mages set to whatever spell seems to work best on monsters in this area, etc.. This allows for easier level grinding. After all, being an old school rpg, bosses and even regular enemies can get tough quite quickly, and leveling is a much needed task. Now all you have to do is carefully choose your automated abilities and just move around for battles without paying attention - which means I can now level while watching tv, looking only every few minutes to make sure no one's dead. You can turn automatic battling on/off at any time during a battle. Another neat feature are the augments. These are special automated abilities that are used in regular battles (like counter or auto-potion). The last great new feature of battle is the ability to see how a spell fared against an enemy, and I don't just mean the HP it lost. If you use a spell and the enemy has a weakness for it, it'll say "weakness" on the screen. Just pay attention, try out a few spells, and you might find it.

The only downside really is that the stylus does barely anything. You can use it to walk around, and you can use it in minigames, but you can't use it directly for anything. This is a feature that was available for FF3DS ,but somehow disappeared in 4's remake. This is disappointing. I liked the ability to be able to do a whole battle via stylus command. Of course, the reason this changed probably has to do with the addition of maps. Every town and dungeon has a map. Some of them are given to you and some of them you have to complete yourself (and you get rewarded if you do). Because of this, they decided to put the map on the lower screen. However I would have rather they put the map on the upper screen, so that the characters would be on the touch screen, thus allowing the ability to play solely with a stylus.

Sound:

The score is, as always, amazingly gorgeous. However the sound quality of the voice acting and some special sound effects can give off a buzzing sound. You can get rid of it by augmenting the volume, but that wastes more battery. They should have made sure the sound would still sound perfectly fine even on a low volume setting, especially since people who use headphones would probably use a lower setting than those who do not.

Online:

There is a summon, called "Whyt", that you can use for online battle. You can raise it up via minigames, choose its battle abilities, change the way it looks, and take it to battle. You can summon it instead of Rydia (the summoner) during normal gameplay, but you can also take it to battle online. This is the only real online feature but it could be fun. It's like raising an extra non-FF creature and setting it off to do your bidding.

A few extra thoughts:

The game does reveal its age. Newer RPG's would adjust newer characters to match the level you should be at. However this one, you will often feel as though you have to babysit new characters so that they may catch up. Newer RPG's would also keep all monsters in an area to about the same strength, whereas occasionally you might run into super monsters in this one. It's also not uncommon to have 2-3 boss battles in a row with no warning. There are 3 save slots, and a quick save if you need to turn off the DS but don't want to have to redo everything you've just done. Also, like pretty much all remakes, there's a bestiary, a karaoke feature, and the ability to replay cutscenes. Unlike other FF4 remakes, you can access them rather quickly in the game.

Conclusion:

This is a great and very entertaining RPG. If you like role playing games, and you don't mind a slightly traditional storyline (but it has a lot of magnificent story turns to keep you occupied), then you should get this game. Should you get it if you already have it? If you have the GBA release and don't think the few updates are that interesting, maybe not, but if you have older releases then yes.