Final Fantasy The Four Heroes of Light

With my 30 day trial of World of Warcraft coming to an end I decided to start playing Final Fantasy: The Four Heroes of Light for the Nintendo DS. When I heard about the game I assumed like most fans of the Final Fantasy series that it was going to be a typical FF game. I was completely wrong. FF 4 Heroes has turned out to be a hardcore, traditional Japanese RPG (JRPG) with cute graphics to throw you off. Like most traditional JRPG’s from when I was a kid (25+ years ago), there was no hand holding in the games. If you ventured out too far or brought the wrong set of spells or equipped the wrong armor, the game wiped the floor with you. There were no warnings. FF 4 Heroes is pretty much the same way except with some modernized tweaks.

For starters there is an awesome class system designated by the various “crowns” you collect throughout the game. These crowns or hats are interchangeable and provide various stat boosts as well as unique attributes. For example a White Mage can cast spells for one less AP than say someone wearing a Wayfarer hat. To add another layer of depth to how you approach the game, you can enhance the crowns with the gems that you collect from various monster battles. Each crown has a certain arrangement needed to advance to the next level. These gems can fetch you a fair amount of Gil at the shops if you are strapped for cash. I would recommend not selling gems too often since you will not know which ones you will need as you progress further into the game. Another reason why keeping your gems is so important is that if your entire party is wiped out in a battle, you are taken back to the nearest town and you lose a percentage of gems as a fee.

So what is AP? AP or Action Points are what allow your characters to perform various actions such as attack, use an item, or cast a spell. Each character has a maximum of five AP and each action can cost one or more points to execute. When you start a battle each character gets a new AP and can use the special attribute Boost to skip a turn and gain an extra AP. Yes you can still button mash and just choose attack every time, but the AP adds a nice level of strategy when deciding how to approach a given battle.

As you progress through the game you will realize that you cannot just hack and slash your way through every fight. Even as early as the second town you visit, Guera, you encounter a monster during your quest that requires a certain spell to be cast on it before you can defeat it. I forgot about what the king of Guera told me and I got decimated after a few rounds with the monster. By figuring out what you need to take into battle, with what hats, equipment, and spells, you will be able to move along in the game. One of the things that can throw you off with developing strategies is that early on your party keeps changing. Some points you have one character, other times all four, and occasionally you will get paired with a temporary party member. Be careful what items you give the temporary companion because after they leave your party, the items they have go with them.

Another aspect that adds depth to the game is the item management system. Each character can only hold a maximum of 15 items at any given time. Since each character has four equipment slots, right off the bat you are down to 11 available item slots. Depending on the character’s crown, for example a Black Mage, the available slots decreases rapidly with each spell book you carry. So besides coming up with a crown combination for your party, what spells to bring, and what armor and weapons to equip, you have to worry about how much you are carrying. The last thing you want to do is head into a dungeon with little to no slots and not be able to take rare items or worse, have to drop items you otherwise would have kept. To help make it easier on you there are storage facilities in towns that can hold onto items you do not want to lose or carry.

One thing to keep track of is what time of day it is. In FF 4 Heroes time passes from Day to Afternoon to Night. So far I have seen it affect whether a person is standing in front of a gate or appears in a corner of town or tide levels change. I wasted a little time trying to clear a dungeon because I couldn’t find where the magic spell was that was needed to defeat the main boss. Turns out I just needed to revisit a certain place at night and the guard was no longer blocking the entrance way to the catacombs where the magic spell was hidden. I haven’t seen too much of a change in the monsters you face in battle, but I think there is a possibility that they do.

Speaking of battles, the battle system for FF 4 Heroes is not like other Final Fantasy games that you have played. You have no control over what monster your character attacks or casts a spell on and you also cannot choose which character gets affected when you cast a spell against your party. At first I was a little turned off by this type of battle system, but the game does a nice job of determining what monster to attack and which character desperately needs the Cure spell. Like the other features of the game, the battle system adds a nice variety and moves you in the direction of really thinking about what actions to take during battle.

Since I am only in the beginning stages of the game I cannot really comment on the equipment upgrade feature that happens later in the game. The story so far is engaging and when the party is split up the narrative does a nice job of keeping it all together. Already from the beginning there was a nice twist and I am sure there will be more as I make my way through the game. I am not a fan of the single save feature the game has though. I know that old-school, traditional JRPG’s were meant to be difficult and hardcore, but I can easily see winding up in a situation where you would like to go back and redo something or fix an error you made. Because you go back to a town after your party is defeated, having your last save in a dungeon will not trap you permanently, but at least one more save slot would have been nice. What if you wanted to play the game using a different crown strategy? You need to wait till you finish the game completely or start over, wiping out your current progress.

Now that I realize that this is not your everyday Final Fantasy, rather it is a cute exterior with a kick-your-butt center, I think I might start over from the beginning and start taking notes of the information I learn from the townsfolk, where I have to go, and what I have accomplished so far. Once I get further into the game I will try to post more of my experience.