January 04, 2006
Happy New Year!
Just got back from Singapore, where I spent the New Year's break with the lady and her family. Had a wonderful, relaxing time on the 60th floor of the tallest hotel in the country (the view was incredible), and managed to get in plenty of shopping and sightseeing in between breaks of Final Fantasy IV Advance, which I finally completed over the weekend.
This latest remake of FFIV took me about 24 and a half hours to finish, which is probably a bit long, though I did do all the optional side quests and spend a fair amount of time leveling up for the final battle. My crew averaged out at about level 55 in the end, though they're a bit higher now as I've started working through the bonus dungeon that opens up after the ending. As expected, the new content is pretty boring and unoriginal so far, but I'll press on regardless in hopes of seeing everything the GBA version has to offer.
Some quick, nitpicky pros and cons:
[+] Translation is easily the best yet, though some of the writing comes off a bit too casual at times. I hear some of the ultra hardcore FF nerds were throwing fits over the internet pop culture references (Real Ultimate Power, Something Awful, etc.), but I thought they were hilarious.
[+] Story holds up far better than I was expecting. The pacing is fantastic throughout, and the characters are all surprisingly well-developed. The emotional attachment that develops is quite strong, which is no doubt helped in part by...
[+] ...Nobuo Uematsu's incredible musical score. FFIV through VI were the high points of his career, and his talent really shines through in this one. Definitely play it with headphones, as it features some of the best videogame music of all-time, IMO. The battle themes in particular are amazing.
[+] The ending is still one of the best ever.
[-] It's very obvious this version of the game could've used another month or two of development, as it's littered with minor technical annoyances that probably could've been patched up with a bit more time. In particular, the menu slowdown that occurs during battles can be very frustrating when you're in a heated encounter, and the choppiness during all the Mode 7 scenes is distracting and disappointing.
[-] While most of the music tracks are as good as, if not better than the SNES originals, a select few do sound worse, including the final battle music and some of the ending themes, which seem to be missing a channel or two. Also, I'm not sure if it was just a one-time thing that happened to me or what, but the fade from the second ending track (Epilogue 2 in the music player) into the credits theme (Epilogue 3) got abruptly cut off about two seconds too soon, which was weird.
[-] As I mentioned above, the bonus content so far seems pretty dull, not unlike that of Dawn of Souls. We'll see how things progress, but so far, I'm not impressed.
If I were reviewing this for EGM, I probably would've given it a 9.0. Sure, it's got a few problems here and there, but all things considered, it's still a fantastic RPG that truly belongs in every GBA owner's library.
Speaking of EGM, look what I stumbled upon when I was in Singapore:
Nice, huh? It's only the second issue so far, and it's mostly just repackaged content from the US EGM (this issue in particular was basically a slimmed down version of EGM #199 with a couple of original pages), but it's still great to see the mag turning up in other countries, especially in a timely fashion like this.
In other EGM news, we're just a few short days away from the monumental 200th issue showing up in subscribers' hands and on newsstands. EGM has been a big part of my life for a very long time, and several of the guys running the show there are like family to me, so I'm especially excited about this. I'm planning to post an EGM-related entry here in a couple of days, so please keep an eye out for it. Look for my reviews to start showing up in the Review Crew pages again from next month (#201) as well. :)
And finally...2005 is over -- it's Game of the Year time! I still haven't played through Resident Evil 4 or God of War yet (shame on me, I know), but aside from those potentials, I'm thinking my GOTY was proooobably Shadow of the Colossus. How about you guys?