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By:
wsim
Review of
Key Features
You all remember how horrible the FF
Chronicles port was on the PlayStation? The loading times seemed to have
taken forever and was fairly sluggish. With FFIV Advance for the GBA,
Square-Enix has managed to fix a lot of issues and added a whole bunch of
extras too. The graphics are crisp and look fairly sharp when ported on the GBA. There is little slowdown and the overall game runs flawlessly. There
are a few remixed musical scores from the original version of FFIV, but I
think most of them are a bit of a disappointment. Even still, there is a music player feature that allows you to listen to all of the classic themes
found in the game which is a nice touch of nostaglia for many fans. There
are some minor improvements in the dialogue compared to previously and they
make the experience even better than before. There are a few other subtle
changes in the actual gameplay, including the fact that characters
automatically run in dungeons and other areas. One thing that I have noticed
is that the difficulty seems to have been toned down from FF Chronicles. You
also have the option to choose from several difficulty levels, such as easy
or ha rd. What FFIV Advance does right is pretty much everything. It tweaks a
few things from the original game and presents a more polished port than FF
Chronicles. In addition, there are now several new dungeons to tackle that
aren't found anywhere else. From Mysidia, you could now take control of
other important playable characters and obtain new legendary weapons for
them in the new Cave of trials on Mt. Ordeals. As well, the new Lunar Ruins
dungeon opens up after you beat the game. As you defeat the final boss with
a different combination of characters, this opens up various
character-specific trials in which gamers could then take on new bosses and
challenges in order to collect all new equipment and weaponry. This randomly
generated dungeon has a number of puzzles and other features that will keep
people busy for quite some time. To fully complete the dungeon, you will
have to take on some new versions of familiar bosses and complete all of the
character-specific challenges.
This game does not present anything radical or drastically new to the
framework of FFIV. It simply fixes up a few of th e problems that plagued the
previous port found on the PSX and adds several cool new features. With
different settings of difficulty and a brand-new dungeon after the game is
completed, FFIV Advance is a very good portable RPG on its own and the
extras just make it that much better. As it stands now, this is the best and
most complete version of FFIV available and really makes FF Chronicles look
fairly mediocre. If you are looking for a classic old-school RPG to play on
the GBA with a decent amount of sidequests and extras to keep you busy for
hours, then definitely check out FFIV Advance.
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