So, of course, there were some bad parts, which I'll cover first. The encounter rate, surprise attack, and back attack rate are noticeably increased, to my discontent. This made certain sections frustrating as hell. The difficulty is a bit ... bipolar. Sometimes the game is hard as balls, other times easy. Also, some Tales have too simple or just bad party setups - Edward's Tale is 'Press A to Win' for the entire thing. You just spam attack and you win. Bleh.
However, other chapters give you really interesting setups and make you think about abilities and equipments differently. I learned a lot about the original game by playing TAY, as I've been forced to do things I elsewise wouldn't. There's a wealth of equipment options, towards the end, which is nice. Gearing your group out correctly really affects endgame difficulty, as does party layout. I think I ended up with, pretty much, the strongest party - Though, one could argue for one change. I used Man in Black (Stupidly good fighter/Black Mage combo) + Rosa, Rydia, Edge, Kain. Kain is a destroyer of worlds, Rydia's summons are gold, Edge is stupid good if you speed spec him, and MiB ... is both a tank and a great caster. Now. Porom *might* be better than Rosa, as she can get the ability to doublecast. Now, however, if you want to ... you have a choice of 25 people in the final chapter. Now, some of them are totally worthless (HAAAAARLEEEEEEEEEY!), but there's a *lot* of variety you can bring in.
Speaking of the chapters (Tags: Plot important means you'll understand the plot of the whole better if you play, import character means you get 1+ extra characters in your final party for importing data):
- Ceodore/Kain - Eh, some of the most irritating moments, and the hardest chapter. Hooded Man + Ceodore is a bleh party. Plot important, though.
- Rydia - ... Actually? Probably my second favorite. Black Mages are fun, and Calca and Brina are cool. Plot important + Import characters
- Edge - OH GOD, SO MANY NINJAS. You Wild Arms them in the beginning, where you have solo sections for them all, which are kinda boring. Once they get together in the end, though, neat. Plot important + Import characters
- Porom - You get to see a bunch of stuff in the past! It's cool. Background important, not really plot important.
- Palom - Bleeeh. Kinda boringish. It's Palom and a White Mage that wants to learn black magic! ... eeeh. Import character, though.
- Edward - GUH. Import character.
- Yang - Boringish, but not that bad. It's all meleers. Meh. Import character.
- Lunarians - This was *damned* fun. A Black Mage and a Black Mage/Fighter. You rely on Osmose, smarts, and good spells. It's also fairly tough. Plot Important.
- The Crystals/Final Chapter: Here's the, obviously, important one. You have a great party layout before you can choose party, the character interaction is at it's very best, and it really shows how good the game is.
[The good, though, very outweighs the bad, heh]
But, really, I found the repetition of areas and music and bosses (... you fight every boss from the original, again. However, some have ... a few twists) to be great. I love the feeling of nostalgia and of knowing /every damn secret/ in FF4, and this gives me a fresh set of plot to do it to. And the plot of the game isn't that bad, actually. It jumps 17 years forward and you get to see the world after it's recovered from the events of the first game (up until shit goes to hell again, of course). Of course, you go through the damn waterway between Kaipo/Damcyan and the waterway into Baron like 3 times each, which is a bit ... much, but... Ah well. There's 5 new dungeons in the game, too, which add a little bit of spice to things - And the final dungeon is fairly stupid long. 42 floors and 30 bosses. It was longer any of the chapters themselves, heh. But, I really liked it. It was an overall solid game.
(Heh. I barely covered any of the new features. The moon cycles are neatish, but only really matter for bosses. The bands are cool, but I barely used em/thought about em. My final party didn't have any great band combos. They have awesome
graphics for em, though.)
{Oh! In terms of the time I took to beat it. Some people claimed this game was really short. I took about 35-40 hours to beat the game. So, for $37, that's not bad. And I did literally none of the optional stuff. To be fair, it all requires a bunch o' grinding, but, still.}
