I love how Kain ‘jumps’ in and out of the party. And every time he lands back into it, he makes a big impact! Awesome way to design a character’s story in reference to his mechanics.
I played this game when it was FFII on the SNES. As a 12 year old girl I fell in love with the story of Cecil and Rosa and was determined to finish the game to see how it ended. Back then I had to share the SNES with my little brother so getting to finish any game was a challenge but I finally got my ending. A few years ago I found about FFIV The Complete Collection (FFIV, The Interlude and FFIV The After Years) so of course I had to play all three. It was amazing to see the story continue and even get to play as Cecil and Rosa’s son and Golbez as well. I enjoy the other FF games but theres no doubt that FFIV will always be my favorite.
There's nothing like that first compelling experience. For me, it was FFVI when it was released as III on the SNES. I think Terra/Tina was one of the first characters I really personally identified with, and that allowed me to witness the stories and relationships of the other characters in a way I'm not quite sure I've ever experienced anywhere else. Just goes to show how important our formative experiences really are.
Agree. FFIV was amazing. The prolog where you kill innocent people and wizards. Prior to that, the most we saw was ghost n goblins of you having sex in a graveyard and Satan kidnapping her. That was like 10 seconds. The music too! Got me hooked immediately. It cost $70 back on the day when other games cost $50. But it was incredible. Everything people praise FF7 for was there in FFIV. Characters dying. Complex storyline.
Other things. The remake had A monster list that couldn't be completed cause it contained the Medusa monster that only spawns on one specific square. Cecil starts the game controlled by golbez. It was his half human genes that made him snap out of it and was also the reason his father couldn't talk to him as telepathy was lunarian only. Cecil would have heard whispers. Not sure if it was true but supposedly Golbez intercepted his father's cries to Cecil and that how he knew where he was. 'caller' enemies could fail to call but most spawn infinite enemies. If you had the right speed you could spawn kill overnight and make Cecil 99 thus making everyone else 96-99 when rejoining. The first time you can do this is before the magus sisters.
Back when I played this there still was no internet so for the longest time it was ff2 for me for ages. That aside everything about that game was such an amazing story to Cecil doubting about being a dark knight and the sacrifice that porlam and polam made but turning themselves into stone by their own will which couldn't be unbroken. So many moments in this game and in 6 as well that well did shape my personality on how to treat others despite what might be afflicting them. And believe me not every game can do such a thing and they are very few and far between. But 4 and 6 definitely hit those notes and an amazing soundtrack to go with it these game will always be on my favorites list for all time right along side of chrono trigger and the very underrated legend of dragoon. Can't forget to add chrono cross for its incredible soundtrack can't count the times in another world how I'd just let that song play over and over its so peaceful and beautiful. And my last honorable mention for crisis core reunion I feel in love with the story of Zack when I was playing ff7 but then finding out you get the full experience of what Zack goes through I know that game wasn't for everyone but I have yet to get through the final scene of crisis core without being reduced to tears because although Zack was indeed solider he never let it compromise the good person that he was and along the way losing track of time and not receiving those letters aerith wrote for him daily I really feel for Zack Fair that it's ended the way it did to cover up and loose ends shrina was doing I love games that can do such incredible things to really pull you in and love the character you play.
Everything to be known about FF is already known. Nothing new here. That's the problem with a channel only focusing on a single franchise... only so much left to (maybe) uncover without repetition.
People learn things at different paces and in different ways. I've been playing FFIV since its US release and I didn't even know about the intended Famicom version until seeing this video. Perhaps instead of ripping on a channel with a misguided take, make some content of your own?
We need Chrono trigger, done like live a live, but I’d like it being more proper widescreen, and close up over zoomed out, but they could separate the backgrounds so they pop out better.
As a 10 year old...I played FF4 (FF2 US) back on the SNES...it was my first RPG and turned me into a life-long FF fan, still loving the series almost 30 years later.
I still think this is my favorite FF game. The beauty and simplicity of the story allows it to really shine. i actually kind of really like how you can't build your party, but Forced through story beats to use certain party members for different parts of the game.
If there ever is a Stranger of Paradise 2, we should play as Golbez and his Four Fields. Rubicante in particular is an excellent character. And Golbez is beyond fantastic in the Dissidia games.
Wtf that would make zero sense, if there was a second, it would either A) follow the first game with a the full part of chaos, or B) go to ff II. Golbez and the arch fiend stories were explained, there’s zero to do with that
Maybe expand more on meeting the four fiends, since the after years is canon and using Golbez against them shows he did care for the four of them and they in turn respected him
I never understood the "easy" versions of North America Final Fantasy games. Both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are literally simplified versions of Ultima which is a hard Western RPG series. We were playing hardcore RPGs for years like Wizardry, Ultima, and Rogue. It's kind of insulting for them to think that but my guess is that they probably felt that the console crowd of Westerners were REALLY new to RPGs and they wanted to play it safe.
FF4 will always hold a special place in my heart. It was my 1st introduction to both FF & Square. I had bought every international version (except the Pixel Remaster, which I have mixed feelings on) of the game starting from the PS1. A close friend of my had the SNES version, before selling it (still wish I could have bought it from them), so it was my 1st exposure to the game before I started buying it regularly.
I'm forever thankful that FF4 was my introduction to the JRPG world. It's fun and epic and goofy and exciting while also being fairly accessible gameplaywise. Certainly there are much better games, even within FF proper, that are better than 4 in just about every category, but 4 set my baseline for what I love and appreciate about the series and the genre as a whole.
I've been obsessed with this game since I was a kid. Didn't think there was anything new I could learn about it, but almost all of the items described here are news to me. Well done!
16:07 “”Cain” was possibly the worst “loyal friend” name in the history of history.” That quote made me laugh, although I think back then he didn’t fully understand the story.
Good to see FFIV getting some love. Please do more videos about the NES and SNES-era Final Fantasies. I'd love to see, for instance, a review of the FFII manga by Yoshitaka Amano, or the video on the original story ideas for FFII (just to give a couple of examples).
It isn’t a manga but a short novelization. It is super interesting and although the story is actually a bit different then the game it absolutely gives some interesting context to stuff that happens in the game. (Especially the leonhart stuff) To me it made the game even more enjoyable. Sucks it hasn’t been fully translated but it’s very cool piece of history!
Kurt Busiek: " I don't like the names 'Cecil' & 'Cain', but I am going to rename this other guy and call him 'LORD BLAST' cause I liked Mary Poppins. Everyone else on the team thinking to themselves: *shaking their heads* "This shits gunna get cancelled for sure..."
I see what you did there. You put 7 & Final Fantasy in the Title. You sneaky Petes you. Bravo, also queue the Leonardo pointing at the TV meme with his head replaced with cloud.
ff4 also has three of the best back ground music of any final fantasy game those being red wings the song playing in opening where the air ships are flying theme of love the song that plays when you help rosa in the dessert oasis town and battle theme 2 this one is one of the random bgms that plays during a random encounter
I think some of the re-added scenes add some context between Cecil and Golbez, but I feel it really clouded up the nature of the world's backstory of humans on the blue planet, Kluya, and the events leading up to when humans started learning magic vs. comments of ancient magic powers.
The First FF i played, for me One of the best 😊. Being italian i understood the Divina Commedia references from the start, i love how japanese people can appreciate a culture so diffrent from their own. Sorry for my english
FF IV (specifically the DS remake) is my favorite FF game so far, and one of my favorite games of all time. It's really interesting to know that it was originally going to be FF V.
I remember a friend from school loaned me this game back in the summer of 2002. It was bundled as Final Fantasy Chronicles on the PS one. I played it right after beating my very first play-through of FF9, a lot of the references to it in FF9 now clicked and made sense. It was my first 16bit era FF game. It’ll always have special place in my heart. My friend let me keep it all those years ago and I still have the case to this day although the CDs have long stopped working, before it became available in the App Store I used to re-play it from time to time on emulators. Idk how I found the time to keep up with FF4, FF8, Chrono Trigger and FF10 all in 1 summer 😂
I'm _very_ surprised I didn't catch the Golbez HP setting, I'm fluent enough to have recognized that had I just stopped to pronounce it myself. Great find!
Thank you guys for what you do :) ff4 was my first (and for that reason my favourite) final fantasy game. I've played it numerous times, but still learned some new stuff
I played this game on the SNES and I loved the glitch of item duplication. I am upset that they fixed that for the steam version lol - I loved using it - to get 99 Excaliburs and then throw them in the battle with Zeromus.
I hate how in America we get the "easy" version. Still find it to be rather insulting... especially knowing why they made Final Fantasy Mystic Quest...
I think you underestimate the FF fanbase a bit, not only did I know all of these facts, I have watched multiple RU-vidrs long after I had known these facts who have done let’s plays of the game who brought them up at some point during their gameplay. Could have just said they were interesting facts without coming across as condescending by saying you were pretty confident nobody knew them.
I feel that if you grind enough, the game is pretty easy. But then again, that may apply to all jrpgs. The next game in the franchise, Final Fantasy 6(3), is far superior though.
Cecil isn't a heroic name, it's a noble-sounding one and that's the point. Cecil doesn't start out as a hero but as a conflicted individual. Also, Kain isn't exactly Judas level of spoiler-y name and I bet 99% of players didn't think much of it. And Lord Blast... But Cecil is a bad name, ok then. I'm glad they cancelled that project.
im still convinced from a throwaway statement i read that ff7 was initially supposed to be a detective story in new york. = Parasite Eve. Aya Brea is like a femaile Cloud, and Melissa is straight up Sephiroth. The mitochondria is essentially jenova. Her captain is clearly Barret, Dr. Klemp is all Hojo. also a decent amount of Xenogears is like if Clouds story of DID was told with gundams.
You know I can't count how many times I have heard the final Fantasy story/ timeline/ Japanese version/ US version blah blah blah. And yeah I still can't keep all this garbage straight in my head
Love hearing production stories and histories. The Golbez hp informs so well how much thought and detail goes into things. Not always, but maybe more than we think. Evil and atonement, what a fun opening message to level up.
Wow super interesting information! My introduction to FFIV was on the PS1 when I was in middle school. I was obsessed with FF7 and went back to play FF1 & 2. I never completed it as a kid but recently did as an adult and it is now up there as one of my favorite Final Fantasy’s and one of my favorite games of all time.
Nowadays, I see FFIV as 3 different games: Classic FFII on Snes, FFIV Advance/PSP, and FFIV DS. …and now the Pixel Remaster I guess, which is Advance/PSP without the bonus dungeons.
FF IV is still my favorite JRPG to this day. Lord Blast is the worst name ever. Cecil has been used as a knight's name before FF IV, in a solo adventure book, and Cain might be a bad brother, but that's the point... the "loyal friend" betrays Cecil twice. This Kurt Busiek guy isn't very smart or knowledgeable...
Anyone familiar with FF4: Free Enterprise or speedruns of FF4 will be familiar with both of the bugs mentioned. There's another bug that gets used a lot in some randomizer flagsets like the item-duplication glitch, or the RNG manipulation done in some instances to trigger a specific random encounter during the Giant of Babil dungeon (a useful EXP grind location in certain speedrun or randomizer routings). FF4: Free Enterprise is a lot fun to both play and watch races of. Even complete newbies to randomizer-modified ROMs can get their feet wet with an easy, casual-style flagset with lots of free character and key item checks and all the MP, item, and EXP bugs, or more hardcore runners and racers can apply rules like no free characters or key items, everything would be behind a boss and all aforementioned bugs are patched out.
The gameplay may be simple and the difficulty is easier than most other mainline games but what truly shines in this game is the cast and character development also factoring in the events of the after years. For its time it's really impressive how interesting and engaging each character is with kain and rydia for example being two of the most known characters of their classes respectively.
Same difficulty as the other games, the changes in difficulty change by era, i.e. FF1 way more difficult than later one etc. And ofc the dumbed down US version.
I find that FF4 tends to throw you into super hard battles out of the blue. I hate that time I thought I was unstoppable until I opened a random chest in Eblan and three ogres came out. At the time I never knew Stop worked on them.
I've seen some pretty ridiculous things in final fantasy 4. I don't know how but my brother was able to beat kain in the first encounter. He ended up using a cure2 item though.
I must have purchased Final Fantasy 4 at least five different times. Twice for the SNES to replace my original which I lost when my mom let go of her storage locker after she offered to hold onto my game collection.
The first RPG I ever beat as a kid was FF4. This game led to a lifelong love of RPGs for me to where I am even developing a JRPG now in the style of FF4 and DQ5. FF4 is still my favorite even though I've played all of them except 3 and 13. (I don't count 11, but I have played 14.) I did not know any of these. That's how obscure these facts were and I am really glad for the work put into this video.
ff4 does have a rather nasty glitch on the super Nintendo and ds remake where in if you've beaten the game twice on the same profile during the third playthrough during the part with the hovercraft if you crossed the rocky waters and the game froze when you loaded back in the hovercraft would be on one side you on the other with no way of continuing the short of restarting from square one one the first playthrough
Been playing this since the SNES and have played almost every variation. Thank you for this and giving me more history on my favorite game of all time.
