Final Fantasy IV (Pixel Remaster)

Final Fantasy IV, or Final Fantasy 2 outside of Japan, was my first RPG. I have beaten this game on almost every platform that has ever released it in English. I was looking a game to chillout to, and this one popped up Game Pass and the rest is history.

It had been a while since I had played it, and the best (and worst parts) of the game are present-- yet the quality of life improvements brought by the Pixel Remaster edition smooth them over well for a aged millennial lower-case G gamer like me.

What I Didn't Like

Difficulty Walls

There are a couple of points in the game that are clearly difficulty walls that are meant to pad out the game and force the player to go experience grind. The one I still dislike the most is getting the Earth Crystal.

I won't elaborate for the sake of spoilers, but I dread that specific part in the game because it slows you down to a crawl, and the random encounters in the area do not provide enough experience to level up quickly.

Edge, the Ninja

Edge is the last character you find the in the game, and he is an end-game character nonetheless. My hope was that maybe my memory of this character was wrong and he wasn't as terrible as I remembered-- but no, my memory is accurate.

He does have a purpose to provide some support in the game with his blitz attack, but it is very niche and consider how low is HP is, he is constantly dying and needing to be revived before the end of the fight to give him the XP he clearly so desperately needs.

What I Liked

Disabling Encounters

For the longest time I felt as though having the ability to turn encounters on and off was "cheating".

And maybe it is, but I'm old and busy with IRL responsibilities.

This feature lets the parts of the game that I dislike so much turn into a breeze. The whole Earth Crystal section, which I dreaded, became a breeze because I could get through it with out level grinding for hours.

Achievements

It sounds really silly, but I liked getting the achievements for things I have done many times over in other versions of the game.

It also had the benefit of listing parts of the game that I didn't know about or had forgotten about. Almost like a walkthrough written in a way if that makes sense, only if you know the context around things.

For me, I learned about "the pink tail" which is nuts to me. I thought I knew everything about this game, but even after 30 years, I'm occasionally learning more about it.

New and Classic Soundtrack

I really like that you can switch between the new and classic soundtracks whenever you wanted to.

I have a lot of nostalgia for the classic soundtrack, but the new orchestral version are really beautiful.

The Conclusion

This game set my expectations for character development and story with all future games I would play, not only RPGs. I would probably go as far to say that if it wasn't for this game, then I would might not have the love for video games that I do today.

I know I look at this game through a nostalgic lens, and that bias might overlook what many people dislike about this game.

But this is my gamelog, not theirs, so it's great and that is that.