When it comes to breakthrough Final Fantasy games, Final Fantasy IV easily makes the grade, but unfortunately this came at a time long ago when standards were much lower. As the first Final Fantasy for the SNES, it had monumental strides in plot and character development. While these elements may be good, they still don't hold a candle to games later in the series.
     With Final Fantasy IV came a large emphasis on plot and characters that had never been seen before. The three Final Fantasy games preceding it basically just had four characters in a plot to save the world from darkness. Final Fantasy IV instead tells the story of one man: Cecil Harvey, and his quest to save the world. After he notices the king he'd worked under beginning to act much more evilly than normal, Cecil is given a task by the king that is meant to kill Cecil, which sends him into a series of events leading up to the inevitable saving the world plot. The plot is very character-driven, but sadly it's done in a poor fashion. Cecil, who is central to this story, comes up very low on the list of interesting personalities. He begins as a dark warrior and later becomes all good and noble. Aside from that, he has nothing. Then as the quest goes on, Cecil gains and loses party members like the wind. In addition, each time a party member leaves the group, they typically leave by sacrificing their own lives. Or do they? Too often the characters sacrifice themselves, yet miraculously still live. It seemed to me that their miraculous survival was a weakness in the writing and that the creators of the game were too scared to think how people would react to killing off characters, but that's just my opinion.
     Some of the characters have really entertaining personalities, but because they come and go so quickly, their development is never really seen. Possibly one of the most disappointing aspects of the game is that you encounter so many people with interesting abilities and personalities, yet you can never swap out party members to form your own team. This might have been a lack of designing capabilities since Final Fantasy VI was the first one to actual do this, but it would have been nice in Final Fantasy IV. With such a large cast of characters, it would have been appreciated. Also, because you couldn't change your party around, the final team given to you is set with their abilities, so the option to customize your team and go with original fight tactics is completely lost.
     Some of the end of game's sidequests I can get behind. They're not fun sidequests like I always enjoy, but they have good sidequests to gain better summons or weapons and things. There aren't a ton of sidequests, but it's nice. Along this same thought are the final weapons/armors. They are basically all found in the final dungeon, which is actually not a bad thing. You don't have to search the entire world looking for a secret battle to gain the best sword for Cecil or anything along these lines. You can see the treasure sitting there on the screen, you try to take it, fight a difficult villain, then the weapon is yours. It's simple, but after too many lightning bolts to the head from Final Fantasy X, it is very welcomed to just up and take the best equipment.
     This game has a few areas that are interesting in how you must approach them, such as one area where you must use non-metallic equipment. It's a neat feature that makes a new area interesting, because in early games like Final Fantasy IV where all the dungeons look the same, it gets a bit monotonous, so adding something like that breathes a bit of new life into it. Though because of this, it is a very difficult dungeon.
     The ability system in this game is very straight forward, but I had a few issues with it. First off, the magic usage is pure crap. This was the first FF to implement MP, but despite the huge improvement over the old system of limited uses of levels of spells, the MP was incredibly costly. A rough fight could cost your white mage most of his/her MP to just cure your fighters up to full life. And if that white mage is also your black mage, then you'd better hope you have a lot of ethers (which by the way, don't provide much MP...).
     Aside from MP, the abilities are decent enough. In general, physical warriors should only attack and mages should only use magic or defend. Warrior abilities include things like 'kick' that does a small amount of damage to all enemies. If you go back and fight hordes of weak little imp guys, then it might help, but if you proceed as normal, it'll take about a million kicks to kill enemies.
     The graphics and music are both about the same. They're not disgusting, but nothing too special. The menu interacts decently, though the most annoying thing in the world is that after using a spell in the menu (i.e. Cure), it immediately goes back to the magic selection menu, which means instead of selecting "Cure 2" and using it once on Cecil, once on the party, and once to cap off Rosa (for example), you use Cure 2 on Cecil, re-select Cure 2, use it on the party, re-select Cure 2, and use it on Rosa. It's not a huge flaw, but with all the menu transitions and such, it's just an annoyance that would require a tiny fix and make things much more tolerable.
     The game is decent, but nothing special. One thing, however, that I'm highly looking forward to is the remake on the Nintendo DS. With improved graphics and some small bugs fixed, it could amount to a pretty good game. Though the essential, unchangeable things such as story and characters will still hinder it. But pretty FMVs, completely re-rendered material, and reworked systems will easily make me drop the money to own it on my DS. 

Goatbob's Rating: 
6.5/10 Lamps