Postmortem: Final Fantasy IV

I just finished Final Fantasy IV. This was one of the first Final Fantasies I ever played (although that was in the FFII version for me), and being as such, I have some pretty good memories of it. Let's go into it:


Good

• This is an unbelievably solid foundation. It's got great framework.
• Rydia's theme is one of my favorite pieces of character music in the entire FF series. The score is strong on the whole, although it's still relatively weak for a FF game.
• Rydia's my favorite character in this game, although Cecil is pretty likable too. She's not hugely developed, although she at least has some inferred dveelopment with respect to forgiving Cecil. Then again, none of the characters are really that well developed.
• The story has nothing particularly objectionable. It's mostly straightforward, but most of the games are. It does have one huge twist, and it's a decent twist (with the Kluya/Golbez/Cecil stuff). Nothing spectacular, but plenty to build from
• It pulls the trick of "the final boss.isn't the person you've been fighting the whole game" without making it seem as if it's a "Hi, I'm the final boss. Let's fight!". I enjoy that trick, as long as it doesn't come from absolutely nowhere.
  

Bad

• Edward. I have some serious complaints about this game, but none registers louder than Edward. He's a useless party member that's basically there to annoy you. I don't think doing this is funny or makes for a good game. I equate this to how much I hate TV Shows that have downright unlikable characters. I don't think it adds anything.
• The level pacing in this game. I feel like most games are best done where the game should be "decently challenging" if you don't go out of your away to avoid or to have lots of random battles. To get it less than decently challenging, you need to do a pretty good chunk more than that. Say what you will, but at some point, it's just not possible to beat the game if the boss's attack one-shots three of your characters, like I did the first time I fought Zeromus. It just was kind of not fun.
  
• The interface in the PSX version of the game is pretty annoying. The memo save is kind of cool, but it's only there because their access of the memory cards is pathetically slow. The worst thing, though, is if you accidentally start a new game from the load screen, you have to wait 20 minutes before you can get into a fight and die, and you have no way to get back. Combine that with the memo save getting cleared if you restart the Playstation, and, well, that's a nasty combo, since you can't simply restart, because you might lose your save.
  
• The characters are pretty stale. They're all kind of black and white (besides Kain, but he's always being controlled when evil) and don't really develop at all. The only real development is Cecil becoming a Paladin, and there's never really any "hard" choices characters have to make. They're just mostly a boring cast of characters. Edge has to be about the least cool ninja I've ever seen.
• The interface needs some help; it could do more things to tell you what different items do. Minor quibble here.
  
• Oh, and Edward.
  

My first impression: I feel like this is going to end up near the bottom of the pile. I like FFVIII far more than most people, which means it's likely to end up in front of FFIV. the rest mostly take the framework that this game built and better it. That's not an insult to this game; it's more of a compliment to the rest..

Up next: FFV.