...an engrossing bleh
Played Through in Winter, Spring, and Summer 09
So…you play as this guy…who has really cool looking armor and decides to get rid of it to stand up against the King he used to wear it for…which is SAD because…it was really cool looking armor... Anyway he teams up with some not so coolly dressed comrades and “Oh” the hijinx they get themselves into over some shiny ass crystals….
As you can see, this game took the majority of a year to play through to my satisfaction (all characters fully leveled, rare items equipped, side quests conquered). And for those of you who have that weird kinda unexplainable urge to delve into the mirco-managing, time-tasking, strategic-studying that Role Playing Games offer, Final Fantasy IV hits that spot….hard.
What makes me enjoy games like this? I’m not sure I know. Or that I WANT to know. Maybe the in depth care and time I spend with the characters makes me feel closer to them and therefore more passionately about their outrageously silly storylines. Perhaps it’s the breadth of their worlds that I can’t wait to investigate and familiarize with. Or maybe it’s the way they force you do be patient, something other genres can’t offer. What ever the reasons are, I’ve been way into RPGs since I was 13. Now 11 years later, I find them just as engrossing.
Now I can’t say I really CARED for Final Fantasy IV’s characters…they filled all the roles necessary, none truly stood out. I think the Story suffers from the lack of a good hero. Cecil might has well have had sticker on his chest that read “Hi My Name is Hero”. He was Bland and Generic. Which can be defended by the time period in which this game was originally made, but Uninspired is Uninspired; regardless of the time period.
The crux of this game is simply the GAMEPLAY itself. The exploring, the fighting, the managing, the leveling, is all put together in a challenging and rewarding package. The Addition of the Mini-games works surprisingly well, but ONLY since the mini-games are actually FUN to play...multiple times even. This is a gamers’ RPG, and while it’s not as insane as some Japanese Role Playing Games out there, you stilly really gotta take your TIME to enjoy it fully…or even complete it at all.