More Final Fantasy IV
Here’s a quick little game to play:
Hold your hand over this image so that everything below the nose is covered up, and look at it for a minute. Then move your hand so you’re covering everything above the eyes and look at it again. You see what I mean? Without the mustache, he looks like a crazy karate monk. Without the braid, he looks like a tough-as-nails army colonel. With both of them, though, he doesn’t much look like a tough-as-nails karate monk army colonel; instead, he looks like your dad trying out a hip, experimental hairstyle.
Yang aside, one thing that’s getting me about the new Final Fantasy IV is the things that are mechanically different from the old version, but don’t give you any advance warning. Here’s an insiders tip for anyone who remembers the SNES game and means to play this one: Bahamut’s mega flare attack is no longer reflectable. It is entirely possible to find yourself absorbing the thick end of it and then being unable to heal before the next one comes down because all of your characters have goddamn Wall on. I mean, it could happen, in theory. Not that I know anybody that did happen to. Oh, another fun fact: there are no save points in that cave. But, on the bright side, Kain can still solo that fight, so I didn’t suffer too badly for it. Uh, I mean, theoretically.
On the subject of Kain, he’s gotten nerfed a bit (jump seems to take WAY longer to land than it used to, and for some reason they’ve tanked the accuracy on spears, so I tend to have him fight with an axe instead), and all of his dialogue has about fifteen pounds of pointless angst tacked on to it, but he’s still my favourite character. Because he r00lz, obviously. Edge is now way more of a penis than he used to be, though, and I find myself wishing I could jettison him from my party in favour of the Mustache Monk.
Quick fact: yes, there are minigames. Yes, they suck. However, they are completely ancillary to the actual game and you don’t need to play them ever.
Did they finally give up on making new FF games and are now just remaking the classics?
Comment by Dave | 13 November 2008
Nah, they’re doing both; it’s more
moneyfun that way. Final Fantasy XIII is apparently coming out sometime, but I can’t say I’m paying any attention, since odds are it sucks large sweaty balls. Oh, also I’m not going to buy a Playstation 3 for it.Comment by Darien | 14 November 2008
It takes a PS3? Is it some kind of Blu Ray movie?
Comment by Stephen | 14 November 2008
That pretty much sums it up, yeah.
Comment by Darien | 15 November 2008
So, am I correct in assuming that you use the stylus to select your move and your target(s)? Not that I’m likely to get it, since I already bought the Advance version, similar to how I’m not likely to get Twilight Princess for the Wii since I got the Gamecube version back when Wiis were pretty much still sold out.
Comment by Nyperold | 18 November 2008
No sir — stylus use is limited to a bizarre alternate movement scheme (similar to Mario 64 DS’) and the stupid minigames. Move selection is done with the D-pad and the A button.
Comment by Darien | 18 November 2008