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The complete experience houses a couple of dozen hours of play, attractive visuals and audio, preserves the classic Final Fantasy RPG experience
First half is arguably repetitive and boring, less cohesive plot than one would expect from Final Fantasy, story takes a long time to become interesting
An episodic, mobile-only sequel to a 2D Final Fantasy game from 1991 may not immediately jump out and scream, "I'm hot stuff, baby!" But the recent incarnation of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years developed for iOS and Android hosts a few reasons to raise an eyebrow -- for better and for worse.
On the positive eyebrow-raising front is that the game After Years continues the story of, Final Fantasy IV, is arguably the best of the FF games currently on iOS (until FFVI lands). That game's story is rich and engrossing; it's lengthy; it has a huge cast of characters and graphically it's a joy to point eyeballs at. After Years preserves the graphical and musical qualities of its predecessor, as well as the characters, locations and overall gameplay length.
Its plot begins just under two decades after the ending of
Final Fantasy IV and revolves, as many classic
FF titles do, around the safety of crystals, double-crossing characters and a looming threat to the planet.
The preservation of many themes and characters from the first game makes it an immediately enjoyable game for familiar players to jump into, and we'd recommend everyone play the game straight after completing the original. There are some massive new attacks called Bands, where instead of setting one character to unleash one assault, several characters can learn to strike in unison for enormous damage.
Where things begin to break down a little is when the game is played as one single story -- in reality, it's about a dozen short stories joined together to form a whole. The title was originally released in several individual chapters, each of which with quasi-standalone plots that chronologically occur simultaneously, and which follow the adventure of one or two of the characters in the game. The final chapters pull these individual quests together, and a much longer final instalment concludes the plot with all characters present.
This final chapter (16 hours of gameplay alone in our playthrough) is the strongest element of the game as a result of this design because the early chapters of the game are repetitive exercises in grinding, with little immediate payoff. You'll find yourself at the start of each chapter with a low-powered character setting out to explore one area. You'll grind through low-excitement battles, level up your character as you do so, then backtrack after a "final" battle. The chapters conclude with your characters levelled up just enough to be decent fighters, but with no immediate opportunity to exploit your hard work. This will happen with each of these first segments. It's interesting, because if released individually on iOS as they were on mobile devices back in 2008 they'd come across as condensed and fun doses of Final Fantasy. But played back-to-back it can get boring between the narrative-based moments.
Persevere, and eventually the plot thickens from a disappointing milk into a reasonably tasty butter; characters will join up, and the second half of your experience will feel like a solid body the first half was just the shadow of.
If nothing else, it's a bit more Final Fantasy to digest during the wait for FFVI to land on iOS later this year.
Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is available now on iOS and Android.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
