Finally!

Kefka: Why so serious?

Full heros cast:

Full Villians cast:

DURR HURRR YAYYYYY (I’m a few days late on this news, sorry)

The article states that Cecil will be able to switch back and forth from Dark Knight and Paladin. OMG Hax out of context much?

So far, I am unable to find any character designs of the two (perhaps yet to be released). Thanks Wikipedia:

DK Cecil:

Pally Cecil:

Golbez:

In any case, it is only a matter of time before Terra and Kefka are confirmed, amirite? Well you’d be surprized how much messege boards like to argue that it wont be them… Captain obvious needs to pay them a visit.

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I think there might be spoilers here? I don’t know…

After about four hours of over-grinding the lunar core, I beat FFIV DS last night X>. Every boss battle in the game was made more difficult - except Zeromus, who seemed just as easy as ever. I wonder why D:.

The ending sequence played exactly the same as the original with lots of improvements on the visuals. Rosa was given a wedding dress :>>> Cecil stayed in his Paladin armor (Too cool for a Tux?.. I guess he wanted to look “Kingly”).

FF4DS was a genuinely good game and a good remake. I’m proud to own it.

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There have been some extra scenes added at the Giant of Babel’s climax. FFIV DS has been worth playing just for that! I’m not going to spoil things, but I’m happy to find out things I’ve always wondered. I drew little Rosa as shown in one of the added scenes -her pig tails were so cute@- though this sketch is kind of crappy.

The game makes it very difficult to continue the Namingway story once he asks you for Rainbow Pudding. The item is apparently an .8% success rate drop… (with a Treasure Hunting augment which I don’t have ><). I really want to see Namingway through all the way to the end... so this is going to kill me.

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I like the Namingway stories. During the Cheatingway story, it was cute to see Cecil order a glass of milk at the bar. Like a kid.

I’m currently getting my ass handed to me by the Dark Elf. Now I remember what a pain this fight was. Onward, ho.

Time for a mini-review.

Final Fantasy IV DS came out in English over the weekend. I purchased it after work yesterday and stayed up for ungodly hours just to get Cecil to Mysidia.

The game is good.

Here’s a rundown of the pros and cons if you care to know. I guess there are spoilers here, but not enough detail to ruin the game if you’ve never played it:

Pros:

• The voices fit the characters (for the most part), and more importantly the voice actors actually emote (see: ACTING! ).
• The script is extremely localized into “fancy fantasy novel paperback speech”, which is a lot better than braincell-destroying Engrish. I admit, I enjoy it a great deal.
• Yes. It’s SEH-CIL not SEE-CIL (yay)
• Spoony Bard lives.
• The newly rendered 3D world keeps the same feeling as the original flat 16-bit version. Even small details are kept.
• Mini games. So far I’m better at Rydia’s Math than Rosa’s Meditation D:
• Nice details like changing weapons, and you can read a person’s thoughts if you have them as party leader (DK Cecil’s thoughts: “Oh Rosa… It’s so good to have you near again…” XDDDDD LOL SOFTY)
• The music

Cons:

• The mistranslated names from the SNES “Final Fantasy II” are kept in this version. Gilbert is still Edward, Cain is still Kain. Though, I imagine they actually did this intentionally for old fans who bought the game for nostalgia purposes.
• There are some voices that I could do without. Anna’s for one.
• The cut-scenes are unbalanced. Some seem like exact replicas of the original; the bombing of Damcyan looked just as lame as it originally did. While other scenes have nice camera angles, direction, better physics, and added dialogue. The Leviathan scene was excellent; the dragon opens his mouth to swallow Cecil and then in the next scene he’s in the “dragon’s throat” near Mysidia (see map). Nicely done.
• Not sure if this is really a con, but this game is hard. Yes, it seems even more difficult than the snes “hard-version”. But that means debuffs and buffs are actually useful now.

This game owns me for the next week or so.