Am I crazy to really dislike FF4?

I have recently been going back through the old FF games. I am now up to FF4 [the one with Cecil and all that]. I feel sometimes as if I am the only one who can't stand this game....

I think the story is fine and all, but the gameplay feels incredibly weak compared to any of the other pre playstation games.

1. There is an extreme lack of character progression for massive portions of this game. I find myself running from almost every single battle because they are simply not worth my time. I am many hours in and it is still a long time until I get anyone in my party that will actually matter in the long run other than Cecil [and even him they make you reset as a different class and start over at level 1 anyway]. This is perhaps the only pre playstation FF games where I never found it fun to get a few extra levels just to see my characters grow a bit. I know this will change later on when I finally get my mostly permanent characters/final party but still....It just feels unworth my time to invest anything in any of these characters.

2. The gameplay character design feels weak for a good first half of the game. They just throw red mages in you party for hours like they can't think of anything else better to put in it [one of my problems of why I had trouble with ff post snes as it always felt like every character ended up being generic red mages in the long run]. Every battle it feels like I have 15 black mage casters and 15 white mage casters in my party, and then with a ton of random abilities that mean next to nothing. The gameplay just feels very weak because of this even if they do have focuses due to their stats on what you should be doing with them. Most of the characters just feel like they were designed by a random number generator picking abilities from a pool. It feels like a mess for massive portions of the game in this way.

I never had a problem like this with Two or Six either [the even number games being the non completely class focused games of the pre playstation era]. Six the characters are dramatically different in interesting ways, and you generally do get progress in them even if you have a million, even if you swap around them a crazy ton. Two, which is an odd duck of the group, swaps out a fourth character constantly, but you are still getting fun progression on your main three guys, with a fun wildcard fourth.

I don't know, five to me just has the weakest gameplay by far of the nes snes games, and that is even including FF2 which is crazy weird. Back in the day i hated it and even going back to give it honest second shots I just can't stand playing it. Sure it has a nice enough story, but I am not sure it is worth the gameplay to suffer through. I would rather just read a book at that point.

You are never crazy to dislike something that other people like. It's called an opinion and everyone's entitled to one.

After reading your post though, I'm not convinced you're not crazy in general. Or at least have a hard time organizing your thoughts coherently in writing.

Yeah I definitely see where you are coming from. I like 4 well enough, but it's far from my favorite. It just takes really long time to introduce your party proper, and it's kind of a gameplay slog to fight my way through encounters in the beginning. It has made the game one of the least replayable for me (and I like 10 and 9). I will say though, I think the game really picks up and becomes great if you stick with it. At least if you like a little more straightforward/traditional story. It kind trades off some of the goofy parts of FF to just be good.

I was gonna say you weren't crazy also, but please don't say any game has weaker gameplay than FF2. That thing is a busted piece of shit. You lunatic. <3

While II will always be the most broken FF gameplay-wise, IV is probably the most boring one to me from both a mechanics and story perspective.

Nah. All non-PS1 Final Fantasy games are terrible and bad.

I stand by my notion that FFV, and FFVI are the best games in the series. There are so many ways to play through FFV with the class system, and FFVI is just the best overall package of the games that precede it, and in my opinion, the games that followed it.

FFIV isn't bad, but the game's ridiculousness in some of its story telling isn't great by today's standards, and I found several of its main characters less interesting then they should be.

It laid the groundwork for all future games though, so it definitely deserves credit despite the shortcomings.

Didn't read the post but just gonna say... nope! Opinions! Everyone's got'em! It's what makes you you!

No, you aren't really crazy to dislike it. That being said, your first point sort of doesn't make sense to me at all because the whole thing with FFIV is character progression one after another. It sounds like your knowledge of what's going to happen later in the game (or in each arc in the game) has soured your ability to appreciate the moment to moment for what it is. But then again, all of this is opinion so whatever, neither of us is wrong!

Nope! I disliked Shadow of Mordor and Giant Bomb awarded it game of the year. We all have different opinions and that's great!