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Final Fantasy IV DS, Part Three
Mar. 10th, 2015 08:42 amI'm still playing this game and still enjoying myself immensely.
I appreciate that the game is okay with being less than forty hours long. I hate it when games (LIKE FFXIII OMFG) have extraneous endgame content that amounts to nothing more than dozens of hours of grinding. Grinding can be fun in limited quantities, and FFIV DS certainly requires grinding (especially before the two tower dungeons), but more than an hour or two of grinding that doesn't directly lead to exploration or story development isn't good game design. Online games are an exception, but you (presumably) play them with friends and thus receive stimulation other than base repetition.
I also appreciate it that many of the more annoying aspects of gameplay in the original were updated in the remake. For example, it's nice that Rosa can now be equipped with a type of arrow instead of with a specific number of arrows. I know it seems more realistic to expend one arrow every time she attacks, but honestly, who in real life going to walk around with 99 arrows, I mean seriously.
Anyway, I'm really enjoying the boss fights as well. They're in the Chrono Trigger vein of boss battles, which are generally short but include interesting tricks and traps that need to be learned through experimentation. The bosses are dangerous even if you know how they're programmed, but no boss fight is going to last more than ten minutes. What I hate about post-FFXI Square Enix boss battles is that they last forever, not because your characters aren't prepared but rather because the boss has a gazillion hit points. Again, this sort of gameplay makes sense in online cooperative games but not in single-player console games. FFXII generally did okay with long battles in that the boss would change its pattern of attack or switch out with other boss enemies within a single battle, but FFXIII was ridiculous (especially towards the end, when even battles against regular enemies could take upwards of ten minutes).
Basically, FFIV DS is a perfect game...
EXCEPT
...the rainbow pudding. The miserable, god-forsaken rainbow pudding. I was lucky enough to have it drop during my first battle against a group of slime enemies in the Antlion's Den in my current playthrough, but I remember logging almost seven hours trying to get it in my first playthrough back in the day. Shit like that drives me crazy.
I appreciate that the game is okay with being less than forty hours long. I hate it when games (LIKE FFXIII OMFG) have extraneous endgame content that amounts to nothing more than dozens of hours of grinding. Grinding can be fun in limited quantities, and FFIV DS certainly requires grinding (especially before the two tower dungeons), but more than an hour or two of grinding that doesn't directly lead to exploration or story development isn't good game design. Online games are an exception, but you (presumably) play them with friends and thus receive stimulation other than base repetition.
I also appreciate it that many of the more annoying aspects of gameplay in the original were updated in the remake. For example, it's nice that Rosa can now be equipped with a type of arrow instead of with a specific number of arrows. I know it seems more realistic to expend one arrow every time she attacks, but honestly, who in real life going to walk around with 99 arrows, I mean seriously.
Anyway, I'm really enjoying the boss fights as well. They're in the Chrono Trigger vein of boss battles, which are generally short but include interesting tricks and traps that need to be learned through experimentation. The bosses are dangerous even if you know how they're programmed, but no boss fight is going to last more than ten minutes. What I hate about post-FFXI Square Enix boss battles is that they last forever, not because your characters aren't prepared but rather because the boss has a gazillion hit points. Again, this sort of gameplay makes sense in online cooperative games but not in single-player console games. FFXII generally did okay with long battles in that the boss would change its pattern of attack or switch out with other boss enemies within a single battle, but FFXIII was ridiculous (especially towards the end, when even battles against regular enemies could take upwards of ten minutes).
Basically, FFIV DS is a perfect game...
EXCEPT
...the rainbow pudding. The miserable, god-forsaken rainbow pudding. I was lucky enough to have it drop during my first battle against a group of slime enemies in the Antlion's Den in my current playthrough, but I remember logging almost seven hours trying to get it in my first playthrough back in the day. Shit like that drives me crazy.
