FF4TAY – Final thoughts ~
So this game is a thing. Let’s tackle the game in two parts; before and after the moon.
The game is pretty uneven in plot writing and gameplay alike before the moon. It definitely has its moments (Ceodore is a generically likeable main character, I like the father-daughter stuff between Ursula and Yang, and Palom and Porom have both been written into interesting enough characters, and Luca is cute.) I’m not exactly praising the plot here or anything but I definitely think the game has some good plot ideas even if they aren’t very well executed. Because of the overarching ensemble cast, the characters don’t get much time to be developed.
Now for the recurring characters (twins don’t count). You definitely get the impression fairly quickly that Cecil and Rosa at the very least seem to have moved on with their lives and are convincingly parent-like; Edge’s personality paints him as a younger man than he is but you can chalk that up to him being a life-long moron, I guess. Rydia has no personality at all again! Yang plays a very different role as well, it’s not bad.
The two glaring problems in the cast are Kain and Edward. I ranted about this extensively during my initial posts, but I am going to emphasize how grossly out of place these two feel in a game that was written to be 17 years after the original. Both of these dudes have issues that should have been resolved years earlier and while they would fit in a sequel that was immediately after the game, they don’t here. So you have Edward blathering about his girlfriend who died 17 years ago which is completely inappropriate considering how long he knew her compared to how long she’s been dead. I remember I had a friend in university whose fiancé died in a car accident. For about a year she went through a terrible time, but eventually she got a new boyfriend and moved on with her life. Not that she totally forgot him or anything but it wasn’t something she dwelled on. Edward basically seems totally unable to move on with his life over what amounted to a teenage fling. He is embarrassingly neglectful of his duties as a leader and basically seems to sit around with his thumb in his ass instead of being a leader.
Kain is pretty terrible because he also can’t get over his teenage love interest. He separates into two and his evil side does evil stuff!!!!!! It is really lame. Turban!Kain is just this ultra-mysterious douche (omg “I don’t have a name… I left that behind years ago.” Loooool) and is a bit of a Mary Sue. They fuse and he becomes a HOLY DRAGOON oh yeah. Bleeehhhhh. The fact is that he has been spending the last 17 years wandering and being all
because some girl banged his best friend instead of him. Get the fuck over it man, you are like 37. The game also likes to drool over Cecil (and Yang to a lesser extent) a bit too much for my taste, but I guess he is a world savior or something?
For gameplay, you can definitely see the imprint of a good battle system but you only get glimpses of it. Too much solo stuff and overpowered characters and Edward’s chapter which you mash attack a lot in. Edward’s chapter is again terrible because EDWARD HAS A SPECIAL ABILITY BUT LOL HE CAN’T USE IT BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE POTIONS. Siiiigh. Dark Kain stuff is just terribad because it is easy and solo and stupid. Rydia is probably my favorite gameplay-wise, there’s a couple of really neat bosses.
My favorite quest is probably Palom’s because the Dark Elf is kinda fun to fight and Palom himself is a hilarious ball of bitchiness and acting like a bratty prodigy.
Porom’s is okay but once you go to the present it does lose steam because of Mt. Ordeals crap and DARK KAIN.
Edge’s is interesting, you get to choose scenarios ~ Playing as the ninjas is pretty fun and then them all meeting up again is fun. I liked the Tower of Babil. Edge himself is very silly and I enjoy that.
Rydia’s is all gameplay~ Good gameplay too.
Ceodore/Kain’s is okay as long as it’s not being really easy and you don’t have to play as Dark Kain or have Kain plot.
Yang’s has URSULA! And shows off that speed actually works in TAY~
Lunarian chapter is just really hard. It has a lot of competent randoms and some good bosses. Golbez/Fu are good PCs but bad shit’s going down, so it’s hard as fuck.
The second-to-last chapter has Edge, who spends most of it dead, Luca, Golbez, and Rydia. The plot is pretty minimal but you kill Summons and shit. Ramuh totally ruined my shit and it was very sad. I was possibly underlevelled, I didn’t do any side stuff which is why Edge was not very good apparently (he looks very good if you collect items specifically for him, lazy). Stuff happened, we fought Odin, Cecil was awakened, he turned into a zombie, we flew to the moon.
So overall, this game has pretty campy plot with glimmers of goodness scattered in and gameplay with potential but not much execution due to unfortunate party choices. The game has an amazing auto-battle feature which doubles the speed of everything including summons and is just generally very solid at helping you wipe out things quickly. Speed works and you are allowed to switch between characters and charge times both exist and are shown on the ATB gauge. So basically the game is ATB in its most evolved form if it is utilized properly. Unfortunately it hasn’t really been tapping into said potential. I think the game gets a fairly mediocre score if it judged based on this point.
So we get to the moon and we have full character choice, which is pretty amazing. There is a pool of about 12 PCs or so that I consider quite worth using; Ceodore, Ursula, Porom, Palom, Rydia, Rosa, Kain, Edge, Yang, Luca, Gekkou, Izayoi, Golbez at the very least, I could maybe be argued a couple of others? Cecil is fine once he becomes unzombie and isn't too underlevelled (or wasn't for me), I ended the dungeon at like 43-45?. I decided on Ceodore/Ursula/twins/Rydia because of sheer fangirlism and Rydia because she’s an awesome Summoner babe.
I actually have very little to say about the final dungeons; there is about 10 minutes of plot for about 18 hours of gameplay and most of the scenes are certainly solid enough for what they are, which is FF4 fanfiction and teenage romance. Okay, that wasn’t very flattering but they are fine. The great thing about the final dungeons is the huge like xobox amount of bosses to use the shinies you slowly collect along the way. You can switch characters and stock up on stuff every few floors, which is where I drew the DDS2 comparisons. Just… you actually care about being able to switch because a lot of the PCs are unique compared to one another.
I’d say approximately half of the bosses are competent; there are 11 in the penultimate dungeon and 18? required bosses in the final dungeon. I like the game because it definitely feels like different characters are MVP and LVP throughout the dungeon. Ursula gets stupid good once you get Minerva and Godhand just because she is so goddamn fast, mages are always solid but Rydia gets passed once I got Dualcast, white mage is always useful, and Ceodore played an important role in surviving boss fights while being able to Haste himself and heal himself effectively. I generally thought Ceodore and Ursula were better as time went on, whereas the mages devalued a bit, especially Rydia because the final dungeon didn’t emphasize multiperson randoms as much as the second-to-last dungeon did. I ended up smashing all of the optional bosses; Omega was probably the hardest overall, but Ceodore with white mage setup (robe/staff for max healing) won the day. Ceodore was MVP against all the optional bosses as well as the final boss for his variety and HP and higher defenses than Ursula. I definitely like that Ceodore is genuinely a mix of Rosa and Cecil instead of mostly just Cecil redux.
One really great thing about the final dungeon is how the old school bosses (it has four bosses from FF1-6 minus 4 in the final dungeon) are pretty true to their original forms (but tweeked to fit a different battle system, Twinheaded Dragon does things besides physical to not be totally spoiled by Blink, etc.). For example, Omega walks around and has Surge Beam, the counter confuse, Thermal Ray (Atomic Ray is the name in this game). Except they gave him a death counter. Fuck you, TAY! Doomgaze runs away like a bitch, and Shinryu hangs out in a box. Overall, of the cameo bosses, Ultros, King Behemoth, Iron Giant and Kraken were probably the best. Lich and Ghost Train were kind of bad.
The superbosses were all entertaining. They were very hard but fair. Shinryu is a very funny case in that if you can survive the first two tidal waves he is easier than Omega but the key is that survival. Ultima Weapon is solid because it gives you Ultima Weapon, which is awesome and makes Ceodore better than Ursula probably~ Rydia was dead for most of those fights since I had Dualcast which makes Palom better. Sadly it is very late (have to beat Doomgaze) but the fights he has it he rapes so much. Also, so much death countering in this game. So rude.
Final boss was not a bad boss, but slapping Slow on him makes him a bit wussier than some of the others.
So I guess what I’m trying to say is that this game, in its second half and on the PSP is:
-Aesthetically pleasing – I like the character art and sprites a lot, especially the twins and Ursula
-Gameplay is very solid, an evolved form of ATB which utilizes its strengths: has charge times on the atb bar, has speed that works, and allows for character switching (which most of the series does to be fair)
-Character balance is pretty good (at least to a certain point, there are some pretty horrid PCs like Harley) and you have a wide variety of characters to choose from in the final dungeon and have freedom to play with a range of teams
-There is new music finally!! YAY!!
-Has varied, fun boss design and tons of bosses to use your broken equipment on, which is pretty cool compared to a lot of games which don’t let you play with your tons quite enough
-The series fanservice bosses are cool if a little random.
-The plot barely exists. There are a couple of worthwhile scenes (I kinda like Ceodore/Kain even if I can’t help but giggle due to bad fanfiction writing, and the Leonora/Luca rivalry over Palom scene is very cute)
-So I guess what I’m saying is that the second half of the game is like DDS2’s second half but with a better battle system and more character choice.
I think the game also does a pretty good job of making the game not about Cecil, which I was afraid it would. Having him possessed/zombied makes it easy to justify him not playing as major of a role as he could have, and I think this is a good thing for the game. Cecil is actually not very important to the plot at all. Also I think he’s the worst of the five old final dungeon PCs, which I think is amusing.
So overall, the game is much better than I was expecting once you hack through the campy and at times insufferable FF4 fanservice.
First half gets a 4/10 or so, second half gets a 9/10 or so. This balances to around a 7, because second half is more important. I wouldn’t recommend the game to those who don’t like long dungeons, because the dungeons are very long. But I think if you can endure a few hours of FF4 fanservice and questionable design decisions you will find a very pleasant gameplay game, so I’d recommend it to anyone who likes ATB or FF4 or DDS2’s final two dungeons.
That was rather long! But at least I am not Meeple.
