Abridged too far!
Hey, you may have heard, but I have been playing Final Fantasy IV Advance since the beginning of December. You may have also heard I just last night completed it. And you also also may have heard that I've been writing weekly diary updates about my virgin playthrough of it. Well, if you've heard all those things, you'd have good ears! Normally, I do a write up of completed games, and I give these write ups the garrish name of B-LOG SLAYING. I generally go pretty in depth into the games I've played, and I discuss what I liked and didn't like about them. I also include lots of pictures. Bloated, you could call them. Well, this particular B-LOG SLAYING isn't going to be that. I've talked at length about this game, in eight seperate posts. I'm not going to rehash it all right here. What I AM going to do here is link back to those eight articles, plus list a traditional "cons/pros" list, and VERY BRIEFLY discuss them. So, as I've been wont to say, without further adieu, let's jump into this fun-ness!
FIRSTLY, HERE ARE THE LINKS TO THE PREVIOUS EIGHT POSTS:
WEEK 1
WEEK 2
WEEK 3
WEEK 4
WEEK 5
WEEK 6
WEEK 7
WEEK 8
SECONDLY, HERE ARE MY "CONS/PROS" FOR THIS GAME:
CONS:
- Not a huge variety in both enemy sprites and dungeon designs
- LOTS of random encounters.
- The story starts pretty strong (I'd say), but it loses steam a bit in the middle and towards the end.
- Finally, NO ONE DIES in this game. It's not a big complaint, but you SEE several characters die, but they don't stay dead. Except poor Tellah, of course
PROS:
- Great graphics for the GBA
- ADDICTING gameplay. It's simple, and it's turn-based, but I NEVER wanted to shut off my GBA. Not for one second. I don't rememeber the last game I played that I did not want to stop playing
- While I'm sure this is true of a large majority of RPGs, this game has a lot of boss battles. They are almost all fun and varied
Allow me to discuss these individual points very quickly! You don't notice until you are several dungeons in, but there is not a lot in the variety of the enemy sprites. The same ones are recycled time and time again, with only a name change and a palette swap. I think the dungeon bland-ness is worse. How many underground cave dungeons does one game need? There must be five or six at least off the top of my head.
I haven't played a traditional turn-based RPG in a long while. I want to get that out in the open. Holy shit there are TONS of random encounters. Sometimes, in a dungeon, you'll start one battle, finish it, take three steps, and another one starts. It gets very annoying. I remember this being a problem in Breath of Fire III as well (awesome game, by the by).
I was genuinely intriguted at the start of the story. The king had turned evil and was having his personal guard steal and murder people to find these powerful Crystals. Hell, Cecil and Kain MURDER AN ENTIRE VILLAGE (not that they knew they were doing it, though) within the first like 30 minutes of the game. Once Golbez is revealed as the villain (or is he?), it gets a little cliched. He didn't have much depth at all. I did enjoy the fact that all the Crystals open up a path straight to the Moon. But then, more than three-quarters of the way into the game, the REAL villain of the game is revealed to be someone (or something) named Zemus. BUT! He's not ACTUALLY the villain. His true form, Zeromus, is the REAL TOTALLY TRUE EVIL villian. The ending was silly as hell too.
A minor complaint, but throughout this game, you see (or the game implies) the following characters die: Yang, Tellah, Palom and Porom, Cid, and even Rydia. Only Tellah (and his unforuntate daughter Anna) truly seems to have died. Why couldn't they have killed Edward? He's the shittiest character in the game!
I really enjoy the look of the game. Again, this was my first playthrough ever, so I don't have the SNES version to compare against. Well, I can look at screenshots. And screenshots between the GBA version and SNES version reveal that the GBA version looks way the hell better. All the sprites in this one are vibrant and interesting looking. The only graphical drawback is the look of many of the dungeons are awfully bland and boring, mainly because they are all the same.
Obviously, I loved this game. I wrote a shit load of words about it. I've dedicated 25+ hours of my life to play it. The gameplay, as stated, is pretty simplistic, but it's so much damn fun I don't even care. I'm hardly a prude who won't play an old turn-based RPG because some of the mechanics haven't aged well. That stuff doesn't bother me. Simply put: if you are any kind of RPG enthusiast, play this game!
Bosses! This game has 'em in spades! They are all fun to fight (with a few exceptions), and they usually look great. I will say, none of them are very big. Even Zeromus isn't huge. And bosses like Bahamut and Leviathan you would think would be gigantic, but really they are kind of small. Oops, this is supposed to be positive! Look, the bosses are fun!
THIRDLY, AND FINALLY, HERE ARE THOSE BOSSES!
Because I love you all so much, here is a nice (linked) list to all the boss battles in the game. Follow the links to read the specifics on each one.
MIST DRAGON
OCTOMAMMOTH
ANTLION
MOM BOMB
SCARMIGLIONE (and Skullnant Zombies)
SCARMIGLIONE (true form)
DARK KNIGHT
BAIGAN (plus Left and Right arms)
CAGNAZZO
DARK ELF/DARK DRAGON
MAGUS SISTERS
BARBERICCIA
CALCABRINA
GOLBEZ
DOCTOR AND BARNABAS
DOCTOR LUGAE
KING and QUEEN (of Eblan)
RUBICANTE
DEMON WALL
ELEMENTAL LORD (all four in a row)
CPU and ATTACK & DEFENSE NODES
ASURA
LEVIATHAN
BAHAMUT
WHITE DRAGON
PLAGUE
LUNASAUR (x2)
DARK BAHAMUT
OGOPOGO
ZEROMUS
And that's all folks! I'd like to sincerely thank everyone that has kept up with this diary, and in general anyone that has enjoyed my writing over the last almost-year. I'll see you all soon, with more video game/Simpsons (maybe some silly music lists too) nonsense
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