FF4DS: Completed!
Game was overall and improvement and fun stuff, but did a few retarded things I'll bring up!
First off, endgame difficulty spike. No, the entire final dungeon doesn't need to involve MT 2HKO damage spam off durable, fast, randoms that resist Holy.
Character balance of the final team is even LESS balanced. Cecil is god, Rosa heals, everyone else felt kind of there. Rydia's charge times are too high to make her really the kind of cannon you want, Edge explodes to magic, Kain too until Dragon stuff (most things he resists), and otherwise, lacks damage. The dungeon wasnot balanced well for going in there UNTIL you got Dragon Equips and Protect Rings (stuff that resists most of the big MT damage.)
Augments needed to be able to be unequipped. Can't see a logical reasons for this. You can't see WHAT an Augment does until you use it and see its option as an ability. This leads to annoying saving and reloading to know exactly what it does, and if you donm't like how it works after playing around with it, you can't remove it and give it to someone else for whatever reason. I fully support the idea of augments, mind; FF4 NEEDED something like this to make it interesting, a degree of character customization to make the game less static...but why augments couldn't be removed I haven't the foggiest.
CPU fight. Stupid cause they made Beam Barrage too good. I do like the idea of the reversal they pulled in FF4DS compared to the original (Kill the attack node instead of defense one, and yes, spamming your MT magic is a good thing here!)
Otherwise, the game was generally an improvement to FF4 in all other ways. Bosses were more interesting as a whole, especially the Fiends Redux cause it felt like you were ACTUALLY FACING THE FIENDS AGAIN instead of characters who had the same sprite but didn't really do much barring use a few of the same moves (example is Cagnazzo Redux just hurled Tidal waves, whatever, how boring. Cagnazzo Redux? Does the exact same thing the original fight did with the Building up Waves and such, and all the same moves, just scaled up in damage and abilities (like Rubicante now uses Firaga instead of Fira))
Zeromus was actually a neat fight. Kicked my ass the first time (though WOULD have won if I had more Elixirs!), second time, knew what to expect...and learned a quirk with Big Bang that I won't share cause it spoils the way you treat that fight. The final Meteor stage basically can be summed up as "Rocks fall, everyone but Cecil dies, Cecil tanks from there."
The game telling you status hit rates was awesome; yes, like an SRPG, you can see the hit rate of a status attack against a respective enemy! You just don't know if its going to work or not until you cast it due to immunity. Thankfully, the game is nice enough to tell you "No Effect" when a status is immuned, ala FF9 and FF10 saying "Guard" or whatever. Game's Libra was cool except that it needed to tell you elemental resistances, not just Absorptions. Similarly, game needed to not kill a turn when you swap equips. FF2 (Remake anyway; I THINK Original had limited weapon swapping due to how inventory was handled), FF3 (both Original and DS), original FF4, FF5, and FF6 all let you swap weapons on a fly, and its hardly overpowered. Why should you have to suffer cause the game bit you in the ass? Mrf, annoying.
New plot things...uhh...
GOLBEZ NOW HAS A REAL NAME! Also learned his life sucked or something. Being able to see it the way they did, with a controllable flashback thing ala FF6's Maduin section, FF7's famous flashback sequence, and BoF2's Valerie arc was neat though.
Kain failed even as a kid. "You're a noble whose favored by the king, I HATE YOU CECIL! *Smack*" And then Cecil takes the blame in front of Rosa despite it being entirely Kain's fault. Um, yeah, game just secures the fact that Kain fails.
They really needed to not name Kain's father "Richard." Its bad enough they retconned his name as "Richard Highwind" in FF2 Dawn of Souls, and that the little kid who was suppose to be his step son was named Kain (apparently, this was ALWAYS the FF2 Dragoon Child's name), but did you really need to throw that easter egg in there <.<? Ok, don't really mind, except that I *KNOW* idiots are going to take that scene at face value and go "OMG FF4 IS RELATED TO FF2!!!"
Kluya looks nothing like Cecil. Why do I care? Cause FuSoYa in every single translation I've seen has explicitly said to Cecil "You look just like your father!" They could have AT LEAST given Kluya blonde hair!
(ok, it was Ricard, but his name was actually Richard, just Ricard was used for space purposes I believe. Same difference in any event.)
...yeah, FF4 PLOT! Well, replaying it DID remind me that nowhere in the game do they hype Cecil as being this almighty powerhouse like I remembered; just Golbez muses that Cecil's a bigger threat at first, later undermined by Rubicante saying their power comes from their ability to work together as a team. Yeah, hate these "CECIL IS GODLIKE POWER!" fanboys at specific boards, will hold that against them should I hate myself enough to get into another plot power argument.
Anyway, probably a 6/10? 7/10? Hard to say. It was doing well, but that last section of the game was just handled so poorly in terms of balance. Things were well until they decided Rydia's good stuff needed to have ridiculous charge times, Rosa's healing must be timed PERFECTLY and she can't take hits, and Edge is just pasted by everyone and everything (Kain could be twinked for elemental resistance before Dragon Equips, though this compensates his physical defense; not a huge deal if you give Cecil Draw Attack...which you should.)
