timrod's Final Fantasy IV review

While this is certainly an improvement over your other review for this game (why did you submit two?), I'm a little hesitant to trust it. You spend a lot of time talking about post-game elements, which isn't really valid criteria for judging a game. It's not entirely consistent either. For example:

"you need at least ten different pieces of Onion armor and two Adamant Armors for the optional bosses, not to mention full stacks of 99 Silver Apples and Soma Drops in order to max out everyone’s HP/MP."

And then:

"Each [optional] boss will take you all of two minutes to kill. Congratulations, you just wasted 300+ hours grinding FOR NOTHING."

Some of the discrepancies between the two reviews is also curious as well...

This guy is fast becoming my favorite comedian.

"This makes for dungeons that are ridiculously hard with a boss that is dead simple. A prime example is a later-game dungeon known as the Sealed Cave, which has enemies capable of killing even an insanely overlevelled party in two hits with an AOE breath attack that take literally five minutes to kill."

"But that’s one item – you need at least ten different pieces of Onion armor and two Adamant Armors for the optional bosses, not to mention full stacks of 99 Silver Apples and Soma Drops in order to max out everyone’s HP/MP."

"You’ve spent six months grinding your characters to 99. You’ve gotten all of the Adamant and Onion gear, maxed out your characters stats, and farmed Apples and Soma Drops until everyone has 9999HP and 999MP. Hell, you even got three scores of 9999 on all the minigames and maxed out Whyt. So now what’s left? The only actual new content: Proto-Babil and Geryon. What are they? Generic “optional bosses” that are essentially the same as the final boss with extra health, a unique model, and some more instant death attacks. Each boss will take you all of two minutes to kill. Congratulations, you just wasted 300+ hours grinding FOR NOTHING."

I think he overreacts a little sometimes.

(And not quite as comedical but straight up laughable nevertheless - "The GBA remake was so much better ." Yeah, I miss having my turns skipped and enemies going out of order, too. They should have kept that for the DS version, definitely.)

This guy is fast becoming my favorite comedian.

I guess with Carlin gone, it's time for some new folks to step forward with new routines. :-D

If this guy hates Final Fantasy games so much, why does he keep playing them? Life is too short to waste time on games you don't enjoy.

weren't the post-game elements (ie additional content) supposed to be a selling point, though? seems like fair game to me.

A. It isn't FF4 I hate. The SNES FF4 was actually decent, as was FF5 and the vastly superior almost Earthbound-level FF6. I played through the SNES FF4 all the way to Zeromus.

B. The reason I dock it so many points for post-game content is because guess what, that was the main selling point of this remake, along with the redone graphics (which weren't so good to begin with) and slightly retouched script (which is still lacking). Proto-Babil and Geryon were supposed to be the reason for people to shell out $40 for this remake instead of finding the superior GBA remake (which had actual new content that didn't require 300+ hours of grinding to see) for less than twenty dollars, or emulating/buying the SNES version. If any other company did this, they'd get torn a new asshole by reviewers. Square-Enix may be a large company with many zealous fans, but they do not deserve special treatment. If it won't fly for everyone else, it won't fly for them.

Edit: I typed up a long post, but I'll spare you all of that. What it comes down to is that you've written some great reviews in the past, but this is not one of them. You're reviewing a company and concept you despise, rather than the actual product, and it really shows.

Can you please explain how you spent 300+ hours on this game in 10 days?

I didn't spend 300+ hours. I got up to the point where you're supposed to farm a Rainbow Pudding (1/256 drop). After spending the better part of two hours grinding it, I went on GF to find out what I was doing wrong, only to find out that most people took 20+ hours to find one. The person who DID spend 300+ hours was GameFAQs's SBAllen, who wound up doing three playthroughs on the Japanese version (which has been out for over a year) several times to collect everything.

He also wrote a walkthrough, and you're using one person's playthrough as a basis for your review.

It's like saying I spent 100 hours on FFX, so it takes 100 hours to beat FFX. (Just as an example.. I practically speed run RPGs compared to some people)

Remakes are difficult to review. Some people are merely interested in what's different, while others with little or no experience with the original want to know more about the core game. I've played through a couple versions of the SNES FF4, and I'd mainly be interested just re-experiencing the game in a more novel form. To me reading complaints on grinding from optional stuff would not dissuade me from personally playing the game. That's not to say others wouldn't find this information important or valuable. It sounds like last time there were some problems with the validity of some of the review's content (I wouldn't know, I haven't bothered with the game), but it seems like there are less complaints of such things this time.

EDIT - I MEAN DAMN YOU TIMROD FOR BASHING THIS GAME. I'M GOING TO RAPE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP.

He did make one good point: The graphics are certainly barfy, to use a technical term. When I was trying out FFIII-DS at my buddy's house, I couldn't help but think "Gee, this would be so much better if there were SNES/PSX-style character sprites instead of these awful polygon ceatures."