This is the first Final Fantasy on the Super NES, and one of the most acclaimed of the series. It presents us with a man named Cecil, who came to be a soldier for the kingdom of Baron, and took the rank of Captain of the Red Wings, in command of that kindgom's fleet of airships. He was commanded by his king to master use of a weapon known as the Dark Sword, which has been wielded by Dark Knights through the ages. He did as he was told, hoping that he would use his powerful new weapons and skills of the Dark Knight to defend his kingdom. Things, however, quickly began to happen differently than how Cecil wished them to.

The game opens with Cecil and the Red Wings returning from the city of Mysidia, where he and his crew retrieved the elemental Crystal of Water by force under order of the king of Baron. It is at this point that the soldiers begin to question how right such a raid was, and Cecil first sees that he may have been serving evil all along. Upon returning to Baron and presenting the spoils of the attack to his king, he questions Baron's reason for trying to collect the Crystals, which are considered to be sacred artifacts of extreme power. For dissenting, he is stripped of his job and unwittingly sent to complete another mission of wanton destruction to test his loyalties. His friend, Kain of the Dragoons, accompanies him. Cecil is determined to stop following orders to kill innocent people, and vows to do everything in his power to stop Baron from achieving its goal of world domination through possession of the crystals.

This was the first Final Fantasy to use the Active Time Battle system, which for the first time made it possible for a "turn-based" battle to occur in real time, even though the battles' representations of real time were actually much slower than real life. Combat was still menu-based (which I like a lot), so things had to be slowed down enough so that everyone could get in a command on time.

It was also the first game on the Super NES to really "wow" me, and really get my imagination moving. I actually had dreams about this game quite often, enough that I lost count at some point. It always had to do with finding some previously-unknown area in the game's world, or fighting some new, hidden enemy, or a new plot twist, or a character changing somehow or discovering new powers (one involved Rydia the Caller coming under the control of evil and summoning demons to destroy various planes of existence - very creepy).

The battle system works rather simply. Each of the characters have a certain profession, or class. Their abilities are limited by this class, which makes sense the more you think about it. Cecil can only attack enemies with his sword and use items that he has collected (in the Japanese version, Cecil can wield the power of the Dark Sword and fire an energy wave at a cost of a few hit points). Kain the Dragoon has only been trained as a Dragoon, and can only attack with his spear or use the special Jump attack that is the trademark of the Dragoon fighting style. It makes the characters true to their backgrounds. There is also a great deal of exploration involved in the game. It is possible to complete Final Fantasy IV and completely miss several subplots by not exploring thoroughly - many useful spells can also be missed.

Plot and Characters

This game has perhaps two of the most critically interesting characters of any Final Fantasy. Each game (with the possible exception of FF5) has a character or two that is of real interest to people with a literary sense - a character that could easily have appeared in some great work of literature, but instead appeared in a video game, and has been trivialized and forgotten due to the reputation of video games as being cheap, meaningless time killers for small children. Final Fantasy IV breaks that stereotype in many respects.

The two characters of the most interest would be Cecil and Tellah. Cecil is the more intriguing of the two, and tied for a close second with Final Fantasy VI's Locke in the ranking as my favorite Final Fantasy hero (Cloud from FF7 is, surprisingly, first). So I shall examine Cecil first. His birthplace is unknown. It is not mentioned early in the game, but he never knew who his father was. This fact making him a bastard child, the subject was more or less ignored in the American version, which suffered more at the hands of reactionary censors who viewed the game as kiddie fare than any other game with the possible exception of Mortal Kombat for the SNES.

Cecil presents an image of man's eternal inner conflict between good and evil. In the beginning, he wants to be a good man, but continues to find his dark side taking over, and his own will submitting to the orders of a higher power - he kills out of duty, knowing it is wrong, but refusing to take a stand against it. He revels in the physical strength he has received from his Faustian deal with evil, and this is perhaps one of the most powerful forces keeping him a Dark Knight - he doesn't feel he'd have as much power as anything else. Only when his conscience becomes too heavy to ignore does he decide to do something.

Throughout the early part of the game, while Cecil is still a Dark Knight, he is fighting his king because he views him to be evil, but he is using the very evil power guiding the king as a weapon. He finds that almost nobody trusts him - all his allies are reluctant to fight along side a warrior of the dark side. He is eventually forced to renounce the Dark Sword and become a Paladin both to atone for his sins and to achieve the strength needed to defeat evil.

Cecil represents a classic tale of redemption - a man with good intentions led astray by temptation and duty to a corrupt ruler. Eventually, he finds his way back to virtue and justice, and he is able to achieve the goals that mattered the most to him. Truly, Cecil is a character with whom many people are able to identify in one way or another.

Tellah, the Sage, is the second most fascinating character - don't let his appearance as a strange, old man or the poor translation of his words deter you from this. In the beginning, we see him as an elderly man who knows much about the workings of the world and of magic. He also loves children and believes in them being the greatest hope for a bright future, which is demonstrated by his affinity to young Rydia and his sorrow following the final actions of the twins Palom and Porom.

During all of his stints on Cecil's crusade, however, another, less noble trait in Tellah manifests itself. At first, he is aiming to travel to the kingdom of Damcyan to retrieve his daughter, who eloped with a wandering Bard. He is clearly infuriated that such a disobedience took place, but is also genuinely concerned for her safety. When he reaches Damcyan, he discovers that his daughter had been killed in an attack by Baron, while her lover the Bard survived. Upon seeing this, he immediately begins to flog the Bard with his staff. Only upon hearing his daughter's last words does he stop long enough to realize that she had sacrificed herself for the Bard, who is actually the prince of Damcyan, Edward (called Gilbert in Japan). She shielded him from the fire from the Red Wings. Tellah manages to forgive Edward, but has renewed rage for Golbez, the man who is revealed to be the new commander of the Red Wings and suspected to be controlling the king of Baron through powerful black magic.

The rest of Tellah's days are spent chasing Golbez, sometimes with Cecil, sometimes alone. He is transformed into a man torn between his love of peace and harmony and his burning desire for vengeance. His affinity to the young is further demonstrated when he joins the young twin mages Palom and Porom to guide them down the road to becoming better wizards. All that he does, however, is in actuality only building toward his goal of one day killing Golbez with the power of a long-lost spell he knows will kill him in the process. Tellah meets his end trying to kill Golbez. While the man responsible for his daughter's death is severely wounded, he survives nonetheless, and Tellah's old body proved too fragile to channel such powerful sorcery.

While Cecil illustrated the classic struggle to come to grips with our wrongdoing and gain power over our dark sides, Tellah showed us what happens when one obsesses over a single goal, especially that of revenge. A man who had much to give, and had every good intention in the world, ultimately destroyed himself in vain, all because of an all-consuming thirst for the blood of his enemy. These two characters will not be forgotten soon by anyone who plays this game.

I did find certain characters to be slightly obnoxious at times, however. Edward, for example, served basically no purpose whatsoever. He was only thrown in because he was necessary to complete two tasks in the game. His contribution to the potentially high literary quality of the game was nil. Rosa, too, was a thoroughly useless figure. She was merely Cecil's love interest who happened to be a powerful enough wizard to help out. No explanation was given as to why Cecil and Rosa loved each other, or about Rosa's past, or her motivation for participating in Cecil's dangerous quest, other than a desire to be with him. Early in the game, she acts as the typical damsel in distress, merely there as an incentive for Cecil's selfish Dark Knight persona to continue on his quest.

Kain, the Dragoon, does little for the story aside from looking cool (I will never forget his dragon helmet - I want one of those), but those little things add up to make the story a little better. He is Cecil's best friend, and has an automatic place in the plot because of that. But he is constantly shifting his alliances, from Cecil to Golbez and back and forth. It is revealed that Golbez had actually placed a powerful spell of mind control over Kain, but how much can one expect such a spell to alter one's nature? His sudden shifts in allegiance are timed so that they are simply too convenient to be believable. This always bugged me. The most interesting detail about him, however, was completely lost in the translation. He became a Dragoon to follow in his father's footsteps. This he did in spite of efforts by the king to make him a Dark Knight like Cecil. Why this was left out, I will never know - the miniscule detail adds a lot to the character as a whole.

The plot is a classic one at times, but horribly bored at others. There are numerous predictable plot twists involved, such as there always being one last crystal to retrieve, or Kain falling back under Golbez's spell just when you thought you had won. On the other hand, it is a sweeping tale of redemption and revenge, propelled by the adventures of Tellah and Cecil. These two characters make the storyline worth what it is. Without them, it would be horribly clichéd and uninspired. The two of them basically are the main attraction in terms of plot.

The ending, I won't spoil for those of you who haven't played it. But I will say this much about it - there is entirely too much closure. We simply don't need to know what happens. Several of the characters become kings. Others become queens beside these kings. Basically, we know exactly how each character lives out the rest of his or her life. Nothing is left to the imagination. This is not the sort of ending I like. I like a slightly open end, where I can give the story my own personal touch by deciding the finer details of the ending. Final Fantasy IV gives us a classic "And they lived happily ever after." This works good for fairy tales, but calling Final Fantasy IV a fairy tale is like calling the black plague a sniffle - it's a tremendous understatement that doesn't do it justice.

Game Play

This is one of the better FFs in terms of game play. Some people will call me crazy for saying this, but it is true - the system in which each character has a distnct class makes the characters' abilities more sensible. Let's think about the next three games in the series in this department - in Final Fantasy V, it is possible to create a knight who can use the most powerful Call or Black Magic! Such a character is incredibly powerful, it's illogical. A person would not spend a lot of time building up swordfighting skills, then build up magic skills, too. Final Fanatasy VI has the system of Magicite and Relics. I think the Relics were good, but the Magicite just made it entirely too easy - why should someone as seemingly dense as Sabin be able to learn every single spell in the game??? And don't even get me started on the weirdness of Materia in FF7...

My biggest complaint about FF4's game play, however, would be the poor use of the five command slots. I loved having a party of five, and I liked having five slots in the command menus, but in the U.S. version, only two characters filled up all five slots, and one of them only did it for a short time (young Rydia and Edge). I still don't understand why so many commands were removed from the U.S. version - Cecil had the power called "Black Wave," which is demonstrated by the Dark Knight on Mt. Ordeals. Yang could use the BuildUp command of FF5 Monks, and Tellah had a command he'd use to try and remember forgotten spells at random.

I also don't like how Black and White Wizards automatically learn all their spells. This makes no sense at all - where are these spells coming from? They should have to buy them or find them in chests like in the previous three games and following one.

But aside from these minor problems, the game play in Final Fantasy IV is pretty good, probably its best feature aside from the music. We should also note that FF4 marks the first appearance of ATB, the Active Time Battle system, which would be implemented in every Fantasy to come. It makes all turn-based games seem dated, especially the more recent ones such as the Breath of Fire trilogy.

Graphics & Sound

While the graphics are extremely old-fashioned and at times downright crude by today's standards, try and think back to the kind of reactions they elicited when this game first came out. They were revolutionary back then. My fondest memory was entering the Misty Cave and seeing the transparency effects with the fog, then thinking how incredibly cool my Super NES was - and the haunting music that plays in caves helped a lot, too. I also remember thinking that the spell effects were top-notch. Graphically, my favorite part (aside from the final battle) was the fight with Golbez in the Dwarf castle, right when Rydia showed up again. I remember seeing that huge list of call spells compared to her old one, and she instantly became my favorite character to use in battle. I also remember seeing the multiple backgrounds in the Watery Pass on the way to Damcyan for the first time, and thinking how deep the chasms must have been.

While the detail of the graphics was often lacking, even compared to other games of the time (anyone remember Castlevania IV?), what was there managed to convey the story extremely well. That is why I am still somewhat partial to the graphics of the game, especially the portraits in the status screen of grown-up Rydia, Edge, the Dark Knight Cecil, and Kain.

Musically, this game contains a lot of Uematsu classics. The cave theme is the sort that plays in your dreams - it is with you years after you finish the game. The overworld music is equally haunting. So many wonderful songs are found in this game that I was shocked to play Final Fantasy VI and find out that that music was an improvement still. But in any case, the best song in this one would have to be the cave theme. That one has survived in my memory the best and longest.

I have to complain about the lack of artwork by Yoshitaka Amano anywhere in the game. The monsters didn't look to be drawn in his style, the status screen portraits were definitely not his work, and the packaging and instructions were completely Amano-free. This bothers me quite a bit now, but back then, I wasn't even aware of who Amano was. Still, he did draw quite a few pictures for this game, and they were nowhere to be seen anywhere in this country.

Final Thoughts

This is a good game. Don't get me wrong on that. I would reccomend to any Final Fantasy VI or VII fan that he or she play it. But there are a lot of things to complain about - this is probably the worst translation of any Square game in history, Nintendo censored the American version almost beyond recognition at times, and the graphics are incredibly old-fashioned. But this game is vital Final Fantasy, and nobody's collection is complete without it. There is much to be said for it in the way of influence and of quality in certain areas. It is also the last "true" Final Fantasy to be released in the United States. All of the games centered around saving the four Elemental Crystals. U.S. Final Fantasy II had them, but U.S. Final Fantasy III had them conspicuously absent. While subsequent games were better at times, the theme of Crystal gathering will always be central to the idea of Final Fantasy for many of us.

This game is also very old, now, so if you find it, it will most likely be extremely cheap. This is only one possibility, however. It is an extremely rare game as well due to its age and its slow speed at gaining popularity. Many second-hand game stores carry this game for a fairly high price, but it should never be above thirty dollars used. If it is, you are paying too much. Still, if you see this one and don't already have it, buy it. It is good enough that you should, and it is essential enough to the series mythology that you need to play it to complete the Final Fantasy experience. But you don't have to take my word for it. You can always go to the web site I linked to on my Final Fantasy IV main page and download the game yourself, but be warned that it will not sound very good when played on even the best emulator.

But all in all, this is a good game, and it is the one that first got me hooked on the series. I was into it so much that I actually postponed playing Final Fantasy VI (3 U.S.) just to finish this one. This is the game that started it all for me. The future seemed very bright playing this game. Very bright indeed.