The real Final Fantasy 4 was the chocobos we rode along the way.
My opinion ended up being a bit more mixed than I thought it would be after enjoying it so much early on. The final dungeon and boss might take the cake for the least entertaining in a FF game thus far (The emperor in 2 was a pushover too IIRC but I do remember hell being a little more interesting than "Floating cave land") and the world exploration didn't have as good of a "Flow" to it, for lack of a better term. Not as good about giving you hints about secrets/where to go/etc by talking to random NPCs in every town, possibly because the towns tended to have more characters in them. Also thought it was a little cheap how they fake-kill basically the entire goddamn roster of characters only to bring almost all of them back. RIP Tellah and his daughter, sucks to be Edward.
To continue the least entertaining bitching, the enemy design didn't seem as cool in 4. Balance-wise things were alright until the late game, but I'm talking about the sprites. There are still some cool looking monsters but it didn't feel as good as 1-3, matter of personal taste of course but I come to ramble about what I've been thinking about the FF games as I slowly get through 'em.
Edgelord didn't get Rydia in the end which was a little surprising, and the moon men flew the moon off into deep space because reasons. That left me a little puzzled since I didn't remember any reason WHY they should fly the moon away, I vaguely remember Fusoya talking about how they were sleeping until the earthlings had advanced so maybe they decided that time had come so they... Left? Speaking of Fusyoa, I will provide a bonus picture because his sprite grew on me. Laughed about his 5head at first but his flashing bright red eyes while casting and especially his death-sprite were great. And speaking of moon men, little odd that Golbez is Cecil's brother and then flies off with the other moon men because of his alien blood but Cecil's left behind to become king. I assume it's because Golbez is fucked up after being mind controlled by the big bad so he needs his peace while Cecil's still in fine shape, but I'm pulling this out of my ass since the majority of the dialog was "Cecil..." "Golbez..." "Cecil..." "..." "..." "..." "I'm leaving..." "..." "..." "GOLBEZ... MY BROTHER..."
Was a little weird that Yang became a king. Edward makes sense, Edgelord makes sense, Cecil doesn't REALLY make sense but since he's a paladin I will assume people just stuck him on the throne, but I didn't remember Yang having any real claim to it. Was slightly interesting that after his experience of being locked in a pixie sex dungeon for god knows how long once he's finally reunited with his wife he immediate blows her off to go rasslin' with sweaty half naked men.
Little surprised how much I'm bitching about it since I really did enjoy it, but it felt like the ending soured me on it a bit so that's what's most immediately in my mind. Looking forward to 5 since that sounds like it may become my favorite since it sounds like it's back to open fucking around. Will likely take another sizable break before starting it, especially due to Persona 4 now squatting on my JRPG time (Which has also been a rollercoaster of opinion but surprisingly enough it's still trending toward positive) but the FF-train will keep rolling.
Bonus Fusoya:
Bonus stunties:
