So this has gotten the DS-3D remake. I picked it up on a whim yesterday since I never quite finished the original. I have to say, so far I’m impressed. I’m sure it will get bogged down with FF III DS level insane difficulty, but no sign of that yet after an hour or two of play (far too early to tell, of course). It’s not afraid to kill you even at the low levels, for sure.
But what I’m enjoying most is the retranslation / representation of the story. It’s no King Lear but when it was first released back in original form in the US I quite enjoyed it, and it has benefitted immensely from improved presentation.
Also just all the polish level items are in place nicely for the game – very good map, nice clear UI decisions, attractive mix of 2D & 3D art.
How are you finding the art style? I know the screenshots really turned me off of it. I was interested in picking it up, but ultimately decided not to because I couldn’t stand the idea of Cecil looking like an emo fashion model.
My local game store was sold out of this when I stopped by, but they did have Izuna 2, which I’m enjoying.
I love Roguelikes, but am not manly enough for Shiren (getting reset to level 1 after a cheap death just makes me feel too much like I’m on a treadmill) and this one is just my speed.
They’ve added a TAG feature that lets you explore with two characters and swap them out, as you like, or sometimes combining them for MASSIVE DAMAGE. If you liked the first one you’ll dig the sequel.
But I will be snagging FF IV the next time I see a copy. The GBA version got worn out in our house.
I’ve put about 5 hours into the FF4 remake, and I love it so far. My only exposure to FF4 was on the GBA port, but I lost interest in that after about 2 hours.
The music, graphics, smooth presentation… everything is very well done in this port. I also really didn’t like the remake of FF3. This one seems to be a bit more forgiving, with savepoints in the dungeons, etc.
I was worried about the art style from screenshots as well, but it works in practice much better IMO. The presentation, the animations, the voice acting, the way they do the cutscenes, and they also do 2d art for a lot of big vista shots, etc. all kind of comes together.
I do agree it’s a little weird, but it works. Maybe it works better with the female characters – I’m finding I care much more about Rydia and Rosa than I did in the GBA or SNES versions. Cecil & Kain look a little out of proportion and emo, but Cecil is kind of emo in the first place, really…
This is probably the best JRPG for the Nintendo DS that I’ve played. I love the automapping (and the completionist rewards) and the challenge level is just about the right level of pain. Grinding, a necessary evil of every FF, is pretty painless thanks to a well-done auto-combat feature (not Persona 3-level painless, but very close). And the translation’s very well done.
Plus, the autobattle is fantastic since you can customize what action each character should take if you select autobattle. Not quite a full gambit system like FFXII, but it’s a lot more customizable than most JRPGs offer and makes battling generic mobs quite painless.
In fact, the whole interface is nicely customizable- you can just stick favorite spells or items right on the main menu instead of needing to go into a submenu.
The FF3 remake did very little for me but, eight hours in, the FF4 DS remake is really great.
I’ve read like 5 reviews of this so far, I even waded into the cesspool of idiocy on NeoGaf for some impressions (because our thread didn’t exist yet), and I still am not sure what to expect if I pick this up-I have been looking for a good jRPG for while, but my question is how this stacks up to the more modern style of 7-12. I never played any of the others save for FF 1 when I was a kid, because DQ was my thing.
It’s more difficult and the battles are more vanilla in terms of conventions, but the difficulty is ramped up (compared to both FFVII, FFIX, etc., and the old FFIV) and you should have a lot of fun. My friend and I have both played through FFIV repeatedly, but with this version we did so once more. The soundtrack is wonderful. The story does have some strong emotional moments. I don’t see why any JRPG fan wouldn’t buy it if they hadn’t played it before.
There have been a couple comments so far, but I’m curious how the DS remake of IV compares with III. I played III a year or so ago and found it… quite unpleasant.
