Final Fantasy IV: The After Years – I started playing this a while ago, then put it aside and lost my game data when switching computers. I think it’s actually still backed up somewhere, but I hadn’t gotten that far, so I just started again, partially because I recently revisited FF4. Now I’ve completed everything before Kain’s chapter. From what I understand, when the game was originally sold in different installments, it was just the prologue and Ceodore and Kain’s chapters, but the way I bought it on Steam, you have to complete a bunch of other chapters before being able to access Kain’s, probably because they want to keep his actions in the other tales mysterious. This game was created for the seventeenth anniversary of FF4, and it takes place seventeen years later. One of the first things I remember reading about it was that it was repetitive, not only because you revisit the same locations from the earlier game, but that you have to go back to some of them multiple times within this sequel. The FF4 world is pretty small, so I guess there aren’t that many places you can go. Then again, it is fifteen years later, so it seems something new could have been built in that time other than the Epopts’ Tower in Troia. I do like games that revisit places, like how Dragon Quest III includes the same locations from DQ1, only centuries earlier. Then again, that’s not the whole game, and only happens after you’ve already explored a different world. And there are some dungeons that were pretty annoying the first time, and now you have to do them again, often with less powerful characters. At least they somewhat reduced the number of trap doors in the Sealed Cave, but I would have preferred none of them. You have to travel through the old waterway three times during Edward’s tale (although the third is abbreviated), and once in Porom’s. It’s also weird how, when you play the characters, they’re much weaker than they almost certainly were at the end of FF4. I suppose they’re older and out of practice, but does that make sense for people who are constantly honing their skills? Yang and Edge still spend a significant amount of their time training. The plot is also repetitive in several ways, as it once again involves someone stealing all the elemental crystals, and a lot of story beats are repeated, often with the characters specifically mentioning how something just like it had happened before. I don’t mind some of that, but did they really need to bring back the fight with the Dark Elf, sneaking into Baron Castle through the waterway, Palom turning himself to stone, or someone finding an airship underground at the Tower of Babil?
Okay, a meteor strike didn’t happen in the original game. Just FF5, EarthBound, Maniac Mansion, and probably a bunch of other games I’m forgetting.
You do get to play as some new characters, however, and there are some interesting new relationships. The chapters also intersect to some extent, with the characters running into or purposely avoiding each other.
Cecil and Yang both have children, Ceodore and Ursula. While I haven’t yet seen Ceodore interact with his parents, he starts out not wanting to just be seen as the son of these two super-famous people. Ursula interacts with Yang quite a bit, and you see flashbacks explaining why he’s reluctant to train her.
I love her dress.
The main villain, as far as I can tell so far, is a mysterious girl who looks like Rydia, whom I’ve elsewhere seen referred to as a Maenad. This name comes from the followers of Dionysus who went into a drunken frenzy and ripped people apart (presumably what’s being referenced with the Bacchus’ Wine item that causes Berserk status), but this Maenad participates in more of a cold, aloof sort of cruelty.
She steals the crystals with help from the Eidolons, as well as Kain, who, as explained at the beginning of his chapter, has become two different people.
He’s telling this to Yang and Ursula, but I have to suspect it’s also the writers trying to convince the audience.
Rydia is accompanied on her quest by Princess Luca of the Dwarves, who is now Cid’s assistant, and has refurbished the Calcabrina into battle robots.
Palom teaches black magic to a girl named Leonora, who is training to become an Epopt in Troia. Porom’s chapter goes back to shortly after the first game then to an attempt to visit the Eidolons with Rydia, before reaching the present, when the Lunar Whale blasts off again, and Porom seeks out Kain.
There’s also a developing relationship between Edward and his secretary Harley. Another annoying trend is that of party members with no names, as if just pointing out how unimportant they are and that you shouldn’t get attached to them. Be that as it may, how difficult would it have been to come up with something more than just “Monk B”? It’s especially jarring when the game sometimes makes a point of reusing and naming other characters from the original game: Yang’s wife is now called Sheila, two members of Cecil’s crew when he stole the crystal from Mysidia are Biggs and Wedge (recurring names in the series, as well as Star Wars references), and Leonora is a girl Palom briefly flirts with in the ending sequence (although he doesn’t remember her at first). The four ninjas who work for Edge do have names (Gekkou, Izayoi, Tsukinowa, and Zangetsu) and basic personality traits, but still don’t really get much of a chance to distinguish themselves.
Other new mechanics in this game are Bands, attacks that characters with strong bonds can cooperate on; and moon phases that make different skills more or less potent and sometimes affect what monsters appear. It’s an interesting idea, and perhaps a nod to Ultima (the game series, not the spell), but is mostly just mildly annoying in practice. Boss battles tend to focus on requiring one particular strategy, and there are a lot of fights that you can’t win. There are actually two sorts of unwinnable fights, ones where you can just go through the motions until something inevitably happens, and others where you have to keep yourself alive for a certain amount of time. So yeah, it has its flaws, but it’s fun to play as these classic characters again.
VoVatia 