#ff4hol

⋆·˚ ༘ * 🔭

names: beau, star

orientation: aroace-spec

gender identity/pronouns: demigirl | they/she, sometimes xe

age: 21

interests: kingdom hearts, final fantasy, percy jackson, narnia, attack on titan, fe3h

tag dump 1 2

hey look

since it's final fantasy's birthday, I wanna put a spotlight on an(in my opinion) undeservedly obscure spinoff: final fantasy the 4 heroes of light

the game is a lovely retro-style adventure with great visuals, a great ost, and the first version of the bravely series's combat

This is going to be the first in a long line of games in which I have plenty of experience with the game from previous times playing it. As such, I will focus on the play experience from this time specifically, but I’ll also use personal anecdotes from those other times playing it.

The very first game that I played for this blog, FF:4HoL is actually the predecessor for Bravely Default. Everything from aesthetics, character designs, gameplay mechanics, and even some of the songs are aspects that made their way into Bravely Default. That said, Bravely Default certainly ironed out a lot of what makes FF:4HoL the weird, debatably bad game that it is.

My play experience this time around started just a few minutes after the start of the game and ended nearly two-and-a-half hours in (which is considerable given my one hour minimum playing experience I have set for this blog). And just starting off, the game has major pop-up book aesthetics going on as you adventure as the first protagonist Brandt, who starts his journey in the village of Horne. He receives a request from the king to go save his princess from a witch’s castle in the north.

Going out into the open world to experience combat, one of my major gripes with the game comes to fruition here. You cannot select the target of spells and abilities your party members do. Rather, said ability will automatically target based on individual factors. For example, if you’re using an offensive spell, it will always target an enemy in the back row before anybody in the front. This back row only requirement also extends to several weapon types, including bows and spears. Additionally, healing automatically goes to whoever has the least amount of HP. You can’t target somebody who actually needs it, and while it’s not that big of a deal, you also can’t heal an undead enemy to deal damage to it.

This also ties in to the main gameplay mechanic, AP. This is similar to BP in Bravely Default, in that your characters can store up to 5 AP to use their commands. The difference here, however, is that all actions use AP, and certain ones use more than others. You can use the Boost command to give yourself more AP to use commands that need more, such as spells or special commands. This isn’t inherently a bad mechanic, but it does come with it the caveat that in a game this hard, you’ll inevitably need to constantly spam the Cure spell to get yourself out of a tight spot. And between taking heavy hits and needing to Boost to get more AP, it becomes somewhat frustrating in certain parts of the game.

Also, one weird focus of the game is on inventory management. Every party member can hold only 15 items at a time. While this was never an issue in my playthrough (nor do I recall it ever being a problem in any of my other playthroughs), I can easily see it being a problem down the road. Plus, in order for a magic user to cast spells, they must have the associated tome with said spell to let them cast it in the first place. This does allow anybody to have any spell regardless of their Job, but if you want a dedicated caster, their inventory is going to be cluttered with tomes in addition to any weapons, armor, accessories, and other miscellaneous items you may want them to have. I’ve easily had my caster reach 14 items multiple times before swapping items around.

Which leads me to my main, final problem, which makes itself apparent as soon as you beat the first boss after getting all four party members. Upon defeating the witch and returning to Horne, you discover that the town has been turned to stone, and the king has gone missing. Two of the party members decide to look for a cure, while the other two go off to a coastal town in the meantime. However, each party member keeps their respective inventory when they leave. As such, the squishy princess Aire kept her upgraded armor, which would’ve been helpful for me to have when she left, as the enemies in the desert get particularly difficult.

This was even more infuriating with the guest party member, Krinjh (yes, that is his name. And I’ll assume the pronunciation is as funny as it is). I give him my water-elemented dagger, as well as the valuable Aero and Cure tomes, and the game automatically gives the Earth Sword that I received from the boss to him. So what happens immediately after the fight ends? He leaves the party, with no opportunity to retrieve the equipment. It doesn’t get sent to storage, it doesn’t go into any party member’s inventory. As far as I know, it’s gone. Meaning to effectively keep his good stuff, you need to intentionally set him up with terrible equipment going into the fight.

My second piece for @ffgirlsonlyzine: Yunita preparing to ascend the Rainbow Bridge into Spelvia.

I feel as though Yunita’s trevails and character development weren’t given as much attention. We’re told by the others that she never asks for help and/or that she just gets in the way, but these flaws aren’t made clear the way that Aire’s brattiness, Jusqua’s defeatism, or Brandt’s recklessness are. Maybe that’s just because those are more obvious and obnoxious, but it’s still a bit of a pity.

Rolan:...what did you do?