Better late than never. Final Fantasy 4 PSP completed.

Well I was going to talk about how great it is being a RPGamer down under (yeah right!) but I am not sure if I can tell a decent story, so cop-out time! Luckily I beat FF4 so at least it gives me something to talk about.

I think Rosa secretly fancies Kain. She's always standing
up for him. Those kinda people don't exist in real life.

And it's about time too. I've finally beat the beast that is Final Fantasy 4. It has been a bit.. underwhelming. All these years I've been thinking the game was epic because it was so long and tough, with a great story. Yeah, exactly. Now for my rant, spoilers ahoy.

It certainly was a tough game. Good thing I had the foresight to solo grind to level 51 on Mount Ordeals, so most of my party would join at a high level. My party levels were in the mid to high 50s when I beat the game (Rydia hasn't learned Meteor yet), though Edge, whom did not join at a boosted level, was only level 46. He gets regularly 1-2 shotted in even random encounters. I would not know how I would have fared if I didn't power level and would have gotten very frustrated with the game and would have had to grind with much harder enemies as a team.

My game time was 19:30 when I beat the game. So yeah, the game is much much shorter than I had imaged. And that is with 5 hours of grinding, although if I didn't grind, I would have had to grind later on to survive some of the brutal dungeons, so I guess it was a case of picking your poison. If I was to play through this game again, I would have ground to 60.

I didn't do any of the "new" content, anything that involved the 5 other team members that weren't in the original game, and none of the post game content, so it was a very much "classic mode" game.

I was running away from all fights towards the end.

The last boss was fairly tough I guess, but I did beat him on the first go. I got lucky a few times where  
I've lost 2 party members and the others are in critical, waiting for Rydia/Rosa's turn to come up. I didn't do the "safe" thing of using Rosa to cast Curaja every turn. I tried to sneak in a Holy whenever I can as it did about 9000 damage, where as Rydia's Flare only did half as much, so I tried to get Rydia to be my main healer with Asura, but it wasn't so reliable. So yeah, took a few risks, I guess the fight might have been "easier" by being more conservative.

Let's talk about the villains. Golbez I sorta already know his story by playing Dissidia. The fact he was mind controlled, while mind controlling Kain, was a bit contrived, especially considering Kain switched sides no less than 5 times. Well I guess this was made in 1991, and I guess plot twists like this was gasp-worthy back in the day.

Zeromus looks fishy. Like Anima from FFX.

As for Zemus. Lame lame lame. He had no development. Why did he want to kill everything? He was a typical one dimensional 8-bit-or-less-era villain that's just evil for the sake of evil. I mean if you think about it, what does anyone get out of destroying everything? Imagine sitting on your throne after destroying the world, ready to rule it and realise that the only thing left to rule are the cockroaches? Imagine him saying "you two fetch me a drink, while the rest of you grovel at my feet". And when he dies, he's even worse. He mysteriously turns into Zeromus out of all the hatred in his heart. Hatred of what? How does anyone hate anything so much that when they die, their hatred takes on a life on its own. It makes less sense than Necron from FF9, even he was ridiculous.

Anyway. Glad that's over and done with. FF4 ranks towards the bottom of the FF games that I like. It's always been a chore to play. At least now I can say I've beaten that one. The only main FF games I have not beaten now are 2 and 3. As for the Interlude and the After Years, I will leave them for later, perhaps after years.

Looking forward to Final Fantasy X / X-2 HD Remaster getting released this week. Of course I am getting the Limited Edition, so hopefully my pre-orders (can you believe I've pre-ordered this from 2 places just in case?) gets to me. Unlike most people though, I am getting it mostly to play X-2, which is my favourite FF main series game. X I've replayed a couple of years ago and I'm not about to torture myself with the lame arse mini games anytime soon. So waiting with bated breath I am.