Super FamiComplete #24: Final Fantasy IV (Redux)

Title: Final Fantasy IV (JP) Final Fantasy II (NA)

Release Date: 7/19/91

Developer: Squaresoft

Publisher: Squaresoft

This was the review, when I was thinking of "revising" this blog, that always stuck out in my mind. I have a deep and nostalgic love for this game, but I covered this game before I really hit my stride with this review. I think I was too intimidated by this game to really do it justice. I said nothing novel, didn't really add anything to the discussion, and was, overall, just really displeased with the end result. Hopefully I can now rectify this mistake. 

This was actually the first Final Fantasy game that I had ever played. I had heard of it through Nintendo Power when it was listed as one of the most popular games for sale for the SNES.  I decided to pick it up from one of those old mom and pop video rental stores (Video Tonight oh how we miss thee). Needless to say, this game grew into one of my favorite games. I rented it countless times, and this game, with Final Fantasy VI, has become synonymous with the phrase "turn based RPG" in my mind. It was the game that I actually learned the genre and gameplay conventions that are now natural for me. For example, this was the first game where I saw numbers fly off an enemy after attacking them , or wondering why, when entering a battle, my character couldn't directly interact with the enemies. It was a really unique experience; platformers and action oriented games have an intuitive tutorialization around them, but RPGs can be a bit more vague in their mechanics. I had to learn this system through experiencing it firsthand and parsing out the correct path.  

Background

For the uninformed, Final Fantasy is considered the most approachable and arguably the most popular franchises of the JRPG genre. The first title, debuting on the NES in 1987, took the best parts of WRPGS and JRPGS and made them accessible to Japanese/North American gamers. From WRPGS, they took the medieval fantasy setting and class archetypes that had been popularized by Dungeons & Dragons. From JRPGS, they took the turn based battle system, a focus on spirituality in the story, but pared off the esoteric difficulty and focused instead on a story driven experience. 

The game has a pretty solid pedigree. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy as a franchise, is at the helm as a director, and the future director of Chrono Trigger, Takashi Tokita, is the lead designer. Of course, the wonderful Nobuo Uemetsu is the composer to the games music (I would say that this, in my humble opinion, is the first great Uemetsu OST, with some great standouts), and Yoshitaka Amano providing some truly stellar art for the game (I think 2nd only to the art of FF6). Originally, this game was going to be released for the NES, but due to the impending arrival of the 

Super Famicom, and the fact that this game was becoming larger than an NES game could handle, they ended up moving this to be a SNES title. This game was going to combine some of the best parts of previous entrants in the series: from the original Final Fantasy they were going to take the elemental "Four Fiends," from Final Fantasy II a focus on story, and from III the much loved job system. They also added what could probably be considered FFIV's greatest contributions to the genre in the ATB (active time battle) system. This battle system put your party and your foes on a timer; whomever's timer filled first got to attack first. This made what was usually considered a slow, methodical, and strategic genre into a much more tense and "think on your feet" affair. 

This game was one of the first that really started the "set piece" dungeons and events that this series would become known for and, in many ways, was a staple of director/franchise creator Hironobu Sakaguchi (even evidenced in his post-Square works, such as Lost Odyssey, which was an onslaught of set-pieces). The game, at times, definitely feels like a pastiche of many great ideas and set pieces, but it actually works quite well for some reason. Another game that tried this, Breath of Fire, did not fare quite as well, but Final Fantasy IV is able to pull it off through solid writing, a developed world, and actual stakes/drama. I mean, what game features a Towering Giant as a dungeon, a trip to the moon, an underground lava kingdom, a dungeon where your very equipment inhibits you through its magnetic properties, and a dungeon where the doors and walls come alive to attack you. Just so many disparate ideas that should clash together, but somehow this game makes blend together in a way that is not only believable, but enjoyable as well. 

Now, for the purpose of this blog, I played the North American SNES version known as Final Fantasy II. The United States received the NES original but missed out on the Japanese only FFII and FFIII, so for the sake of sparing American audiences from confusion, Square decided to pretend that those entries into the series didn't exist (North America also did not get Final Fantasy V, so when Final Fantasy VI was released in North America, it would be released as Final Fantasy III).

Now the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy IV is known as the "Hard Type" version of this game. This version of the game, as the name implies, is very challenging. The enemies hit harder, their attack gauges (i.e. how often they attack) fill quicker, and your attacks deal a lot less damage. This version was eventually released in North America for the PS1 in the compilation "Final Fantasy Chronicles," and I can tell you from personal experience that it is exceptionally challenging and only for those who enjoy grinding. To put in perspective, in the "Easy Type," each enemy will attack around once for your entire team. In "Hard Type," each enemy will instead attack about once for every one or two of your character's turns (this can be mitigated by over-leveling your characers). Now eventually the Japanese would release an "easy type" version of the game three months later (in October) which is not EXACTLY the same version that was released in North America, but very close to it in terms of difficulty. The enemies attack only once or twice in the time it takes your entire party to attack, you deal a great more damage, and the game doesn't really require that much grinding in order to beat.

Story
In this game, you play as Cecil, the Dark Knight commander of the Red Wings, the Airship airforce of the Kingdom of Baron. Recently, the King of Baron has instructed you to capture the elemental crystals (a staple of the Final Fantasy series) from neighboring kingdoms. The game actually begins with a dynamic story sequence, a rarity for games of this time. The game opens to a group of red airships flying across a 16 bit world map. The world map itself is a very lush green and blue, with some detailed landmarks; forests, mountains, rivers, deserts and bridges are easily distinct (very similar style of world map to the Dragon Quest series) It wouldn't be until FF6 that the world itself started to have a distinct personality in its map and exploration. The game begins with Cecil  tasked with going to the kingdom of magic, Mysidia, and retrieving their elemental crystals. Cecil takes this by force, and brings it back to the King of Baron. The game is set in motion when Cecil questions the imperialistic motivations of the  King's orders, and both Cecil and his friend Kain are dismissed from their respective command positions in the King's forces. They are both tasked with taking a package to the Village of the Mist in order to be reinstated in the King's good graces. 

The game then starts with what has been a staple up to this point in a Final Fantasy game, which has been the slow text scrawl leading up to the title. It is a very cinematic opening to a game for this time. The game begins in this way as it lets you know, first and foremost, that story is at the epicenter of this game. It preempts everything else, even gameplay!

After this intro, you are off! You have control of Cecil and Kain and can begin their adventure. You can take them into the town of Baron, buy some supplies (only items really, the weapons, spells, and armor shops are all locked). Aside from buying supplies, you learn the other RPG trope of talking to townspeople in order to learn where to go, as the King never informs you where the Valley of the Mist and Mist Village is.

Characters and Class
Unlike Final Fantasy III, where the player had complete control over the "job" classes of the players, instead the game predetermines which jobs your character inhabits. Now, what I mean by "jobs" are the classes that your character uses. For example, in FFIII you had to make a character a White Mage in order to use healing magic; if you wanted a quick character who could steal items from the enemy, you would make a character a Thief. In FFIV your characters jobs are static. Cecil will always start the game as a Dark Knight, and Kain will always be a Dragoon. You eventually will get a White Mage, a Black Mage, Monk, Sage, Bard, and all the other typical Final Fantasy jobs at some point in your party; in fact, your party is a continual revolving door of characters. Now, while many players might be frustrated by the fact that they can't control the jobs directly, I actually like this. What the game does, instead, is turn each enemy encounter into a complex puzzle battle. Many bosses become a "lock" where you try to figure out how your party can "unlock" the fight with your party's configuration. This also means that you can't use the game's systems against it and "break the game" as you can in FFIII and FFV (another game where the job system gets fully implemented), but instead must participate in the "script" the game wants you to follow. This may be an unpopular opinion, but it is one that I will happily defend.

Standout Set Pieces/Boss Fights

• One of the dungeons is known as the "Magnes Cave" and the boss of the area, the Dark Elf (another staple character from FFI), is causing a large magnetic pull to occur (almost like they are increasing the gravitational pull of the area). This means that any character using metallic armor or weapons is going to have a paralyzed status effect for the entirety of the dungeon, and is effectively inert in all the battles. In order to prepare for this dungeon you have to either outfit your entire party in cloth/leather armor and wooden weapons, or just run from every battle until you reach the boss. 
• The game brings back the "Four Elemental Fiends" from the first Final Fantasy, and these boss encounters are always some of the standout moments of the game. Instead of Tiamat, Kraken, Lich, and Marilith, you have Milon (known as Scarmiglione in some translations), Barbiriccia, Cagnazzo, and Rubicante (all named after demons from Dante's Divine Comedy, which explains why all their names are oddly Italian). Each one embodies one of the four major elements (earth, water, wind, and fire) and they all have fun little personality quirks. --Scarmiglione appears to be this weird little Jawa looking man who summons zombies, until he back attacks you and turns into some unholy undead beast. This is handled in a really fun way where you beat his boss fight, actually exit the boss fight, and then he attacks you as you walk across an upcoming bridge from behind; as a kid this terrified me and completely caught me off guard as I wasn't used to such RPG and narrative driven trickery. Cagnazzo is a weird turtle demon who is the one who body-snatched the king of Baron and drives the initial plot for the game (he is deliciously and remorselessly evil). Barbiriccia...has no personality sadly, she is just a half naked wind woman. Finally, Rubicante is the honorable warrior of fire who will heal your party before fighting him, give you a chance to save, and is arguably the toughest of the four. Even after you defeat all four fiends, they all return in one of the final dungeons for one final slugfest where you have to fight them all one after another. It is a suitably grand showdown for such memorable enemies.

• The Tower of Babel is a dungeon you return to three times over the course of the game. In a medieval fantasy style world, this impossibly tall tower is a sci-fi inspired techno-base. The music inside is a completely different from anything before it, and the enemies are suddenly all robots and/or mutants. The boss encounters at the end of these dungeons are also really stunning in design, from the Mad Doctor/Frankenstein's monster combo of Dr. Lugae and Barnabas (which starts as a joke fight and quickly turns into one of the toughest encounters thus far), to fighting monsterified versions of one character's parents, and the creme-de-la-creme the Magus Sisters. The Magus Sisters are, effectively, a D&D party recreated in a JRPG context; one is a tank, one is a healer, and one is a DPS. If you manage to kill a sister, the healer will always revive her after a few turns, but if all three sisters are active, then they will blast you with high level magic spells. It is easily one of the best puzzle fights in the game, and a fun deconstruction of an RPG party. Things with the tower get even more "real" when the tower turns into a walking mech known as the Giant of Babel (so I guess you technically come back to this dungeon four times), and this serves as one of the big set-piece final dungeons.

• You go to the moon! How cool is that? The moon and its core serves as the final dungeon of the game, and it is appropriately one of the more challenging final dungeons in the Final Fantasy franchise. You have a series of optional bosses, and then a very strange final encounter with a space tumor. This entry carries on the proud Final Fantasy tradition of having a final boss who was "pulling the strings of the main villain" all along. 

• There is a boss that is a sentient wall (at the end of a dungeon filled with sentient doors) that is one of the toughest and most terrifying bosses in the game. 

Why do all your characters keep killing themselves?

Seriously, your party has way too many people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. I count at least seven (one character sacrifices themselves twice) characters in your party who, at some point in the story, will stop some horrific tragedy by killing themselves. I know they had to give story reasons as to why your party members would suddenly disappear from the party, but...you know...they could just choose to leave. They didn't have to turn themselves to stone, or jump off the airship and blow themselves up, or go down with the Tower of Babel. It turns out that most of these characters (except for one, whose sacrifice actually makes sense), end up coming back for the ending of the game, but that just makes it feel even weirder. 

What about that epic music?

These last two are easily some of the best songs ever written for a video game, specifically for a boss theme. 

Ads

So I found an old Nintendo Power excerpt, and what is fascinating is that they aren't using the Amano concept art, but instead creating their own take on the characters in a similar style? The results are fascinating.

 

Art

Commercials

Wow, the NA commercial really didn't get these games at all. Also, what is with the Dad's voice?

Somehow, the Japanese commercial is even worse. Like...I don't even know how to explain this...

Final Verdict

This game is one of the greats. If you haven't played it before, there are tons of ports out there that you should try. This is an easy 10/10 recommendation.

Super FamiComplete #23: Super R-Type (Redux)

Title: Super R-Type

Release Date: 7/13/91

Developer: Irem

Publisher: Irem

So here we have our third horizontal shooter in the history of the Super Famicom (the first being Gradius III and the second being Darius Twin).  So far in this series we have played some difficult games. Some have been difficult due to poor conveyance of game rules to the player (I'm looking at you Drakkhen), some due to a poor transition from the PC to console (Populous), some due to some really poor game design (Ys III), and a very few have implemented difficulty expertly and with care to make sure that the rules and expectations are conveyed properly to the player before the difficulty ramps up. Super R-Type, though, is just plain punishing in its difficulty. Gradius III proved that horizontal space shooters could have high but balanced difficulty, but in a way that urged players to try again: introducing new rules and enemy types in a controlled setting before throwing them full force at the player, frequent level segmenting that allowed for a checkpoint system, a truly generous amount of player customization, and the ability for Vic Viper to take multiple hits via shields before destruction. Super R-Type, though, eschews all of that; this game is cruel in its difficulty and is very unforgiving in its gameplay. Sadly, this does not leave a very enjoyable experience for the player. I still can't believe 8 year old me liked this game...

Background
The game is a partial port of R-Type II, an arcade title. Irem was a well known developer of arcade and console games that dates back to the early 80s. They made such games as LodeRunner and the much loved gem Dinocity. Nowadays, though, they have repurposed themselves to being a pachinko and slot machine developer. Sad.

The story, as well, is very straight forward. You are Earth's fighter against the evil BYDO empire from space. You are tasked with repulsing the invasion and taking the fight to the enemy.

Gameplay
On its surface, Super R-Type seems like a typical shooter. You fly alternatively through levels of space and certain set piece areas (alien bases, alien hives, etc), fighting both mechanical spaceships and bio-organic extraterrestrial enemies. Your little fighter, though, only has a single hit to brave his way through this onslaught of alien forces. Anything touches your spaceship, your fighter is dead and heads straight back to the start of the level. That happens three times, and its game over and you start all the way over. Now the stages themselves aren't long, but they are long enough that getting sent back to start each time really sucks. Any game that is technically stuck "on the rails" shouldn't be so punitive with sending players back to start.

As well, many of the enemy placements and attacks make it seem less about skill and more about rote memorization. For example, the first half of the first level is rather simple; the enemies don't plague you too harshly, and you have the ability to react and respond accordingly to their patterns. Suddenly, though, a giant mech pops from the top of the screen and immediately shoots a laser that moves with the ship as it travels about 3/4 down the screen. If you didn't happen to be on the bottom portion of the screen, you are pretty much toast. It is a tough enemy, so there is no chance of killing it before the laser touches you. You just have to "know" that the enemy is going to arrive there. This enemy seems to pop up a lot actually, as there is another segment in the second level where two of them appear: one from the bottom of the screen and one from the top. As far as cheap moves go, this one is pretty bad.

The bosses are rather challenging as well, but nothing you wouldn't expect from another shoot-em-up. At least when you are killed by them, you start in the boss arena. 

Now the upgrades system, as well, is rather punitive. Upgrades are handed out quite sparsely. As well, there is no handy system to really tell how what upgrade you are receiving. I am guessing that if you don't have the manual to tell you which upgrades you are receiving, then you are SOL. One interesting choice is Super R-Types version of the "options" buddy from Gradius. The options in this game are instead a pod that can be attached to the front, side, or back of your ship. It hangs there, shoots extra bullets, and can be fired off/reattached for when you need to change up the direction of fire. This idea was actually pretty novel for a shoot-em-up and allowed for some diversity of play. Granted, though, if you die (and you will) you lose all upgrades and added options to your vehicle.

The game overall, is short, and it only took me 50 minutes to beat. If you have the patience to grind the game out, go right ahead, but in my opinion, it is a shoot-em-up that you can really skip.

Sprite Art and Bosses

The sprite art and bosses are really quite visually striking, so I wanted to make sure that they get a shout out.

Music

Oh yeah, we got some good music too!

Ads and Commercials

Omgoodness we have a glut of commercials though...

Here are the NA commercials...

Here is the PAL (Spanish) version...

And here is the Japanese commercial...

Final Verdict

For the hardcore boys/girls out there looking for some retro schmup goodness, I will recommend this game. For the casual boys/girls out there, I would avoid this one. It was very hard to pick up and play, and took rote memorization to beat. That is not a fun way to play games. 

Super FamiComplete #22: Super Baseball Simulator 1000 (Redux)

Title: Super Ultra Baseball (JP)/ Super Baseball Simulator 1,000 (NA)

Release Date: 7/12/91

Developer: Culture Brain

Publisher: Culture Brain

It's another baseball game. This was my first big case of "phoning it in" for the blog, and one I hope to rectify with this update.

Background

Culture Brain was the developer that would also make the mediocre but curious Super Chinese and Super Ninja Boy series. Not a sparkling pedigree but they did make the excellent standalone NES game Magic of Scheherazade. They had a reputation for playing with genre concepts and being pretty experimental in their games (if you have ever played Super Ninja Boy, the beat-em-up/RPG then you know this to be true). I never thought that this could be extended to a baseball sim, but Culture Brain managed to do that too. 

This game is actually the SNES port (or update would really be more accurate) of the NES game Baseball Simulator 1000. It has some (barely) updated graphics and a new sound chip with compressed voices that scream what barely sounds like "play ball!" at you. 

Gameplay
Now this game is, for the most part, a standard baseball game. There are three "leagues" you can play in: the Atlantic League, the Northern League, and the Ultra League. If you play in the first two leagues, the game is a standard baseball simulator (one functions as a minor league, the other as a major league). It is when you decide to play in the Ultra League that this game gets very interesting.

In the Ultra League, I am guessing that the players have had access to either Compound-V or some sort of Wizarding School, because both the pitcher and the batter is able to perform a myriad of superpowers or magic. For example, the batter can choose to hit the ball so hard that they can drive the fielders into the back wall, or can change the properties of the ball midflight after they hit it (in one case it turns into a leaf and floats slowly down to earth). The pitcher, as seen below, can multiply himself and throw "shadow balls" to confuse the batter. They can also perform a "lightning" pitch which sends the ball over the plate at ludicrous speeds and can only be hit with a frame perfect slug. It is really surreal, and it makes multiplayer for this game really quite fun. Other than that, it is still a baseball sim, and a rather mediocre one at that.



Music?

Ads and Commercials
Not any print ads that I can find, nor for the SNES version, but here is a commercial for the NES version!

Final Verdict

This game is a neat diversion, but it definitely feels like it has its solid foot into the NES side of the SNES. Its music is still very tinny, and the visuals feel aged even for a game of this early an SNES vintage. I would say that this is better than Nolan Ryan's Baseball, but is still no where near as good as Super Bases Loaded.