FINAL FANTASY 4

Once again I needed a long break from the FF series, but after finishing up some other parts of my backlog it was time to try Final Fantasy 4. I loaded it up, and after the first three or so hours (it keeps track of time now) I'm pleasantly surprised.

Here are some of the highlights


Aaah, SNES.








You basically play as a character who was in charge of raiding villages for crystals, but you can't make yourself do it anymore, so you leave the service of the king. Soon enough you find out that some evil guy is getting the king to do his bidding, and it's up to you, your buddy, and the people you meet, to stop them.


Cid's back!


The first boss fight. This time bosses change shape, and behave in more interesting ways than in the previous games. In this pic one of the characters is doing a jump attack (dragon warrior), and as you can see the attack menu is still open for the other guy. You see, combat is closer to real-time now, so attacks take place while you're using the menu, and if you for some reason leave the game with the menu open you might get back and find your group dead. If you're fast this can be used to your advantage though.





Awesome.


A hovercraft lets you reach new areas. It works like the chocobos, so you don't get attacked while using it.


Rosa is a girl who had a serious fever. After beating up a bunch of antlions we got the cure, and got her back to consciousness. She joins the party as a much needed white mage.


With Rosa along we moved to a nearby mountain, where we ran into a monk


who has a nifty flying kick ability.


Graphics are great so far and the music doesn't make me want to kill myself. Gameplay is smooth and overall less annoying than before. At times the random encounters are really close to each other, but I'm managing. Thumbs up so far.

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