Final Fantasy IV in 2021

or, wrapping childhood around your adulthood to feel like a person who wants to feel like a person who wants to feel; or, should I play FFIV in 2021?

yoshitaka amano’s artwork - maybe I’ll write a whole thing about it if people are interested

There are things I don’t remember about my life. Weird, big holes in time. I’ve learned somewhere that this may be a side effect of major depressive episodes, which is super cool and fun. But one thing I think I remember is the first time I saw Final Fantasy IV being played. It was definitely the first Final Fantasy game I’d ever seen.

I was at my friend’s house in Minneapolis, where I live now, where I lived then. My older brother was there too, because my friend had an older brother and our brothers were friends with one another. Probably it’s why we were friends, too¹. My friend’s older brother was playing a JRPG and I think it was Final Fantasy IV from the way the people lined up on one side of the screen while the enemies lined up on the other to abstract a battle. I remember watching characters from high above as they wandered a landscape.

It’s more likely that Super Mario World was my first real taste of videogames, but memory is a fickle, unreliable, and malleable thing. All my early memories of videogames happened together, really. Whether it was Zelda or Mario or Final Fantasy that I witnessed at any point hardly matters, but I think it’s why these three have always had such a hold on me.

Many years ago, I had the idea that I should play through every Final Fantasy in order. I’ve loved every game I’ve played² but never managed to get around to some of them. And the idea strikes me every few years and every time I start up Final Fantasy I, I get a few hours in and hate it so much that my enthusiasm for the project completely falls away.

But after playing God of War and remembering what it felt like to play videogames without a walkthrough or guide, I decided to just go for it again.

For so long, I had sort of been playing games like a checklist. I never acknowledged this to myself, probably because the truth of it was too depressing. But I’d play until I got stuck, then pull out my phone and find out what I had to do. I stopped trying to solve puzzles or even engage with the puzzles as aspects of gameplay, rather than annoying obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible.

God of War taught me, again, how to play videogames. I mean this in a very real way. For some amount of time—maybe a few hours—the game’s HUD³ is rather naked and so I simply explored. There was no map guiding me or compass pointing me in the right direction. Points of interest didn’t light up when I got close or looked in the right direction.

It astonished me how immersive this became. By the time the compass became available to me, I turned it off. Turned everything off, so it was just me and the landscape.

It really did remind me of playing games as a child. When I played Ocarina of Time, for example, I couldn’t pull out my phone every time I got stuck or to figure out where I should go to complete some quest or make sure I didn’t miss any secret spaces. I just played the game. Trial and error and spending hours wandering the Water Temple hopelessly confused and lost, even on the fifth time I played it because if Dante wrote the Inferno today it would be its own circle of hell.

I had forgotten that feeling, both frustrating but also edifying. There’s something ecstatic about solving puzzles, making your time with a game an act of continual discovery rather than…checking plot points off a list.

And so I wanted to return to the series that meant so much to me with that wide-eyed enthusiasm I once had for discovering these pixelated worlds. And I decided to just jump ahead to Final Fantasy IV, which I had played years ago but had essentially no memory of⁴, but everyone speaks of it as one of the best the series has to offer.

Booting up my PS Vita brings its own waves of nostalgia. Not for times that I’ve previously played it, but for the child I was, burning through batteries on my Gameboy Color.

Should you play FFIV now?

I’m not your mom, but, yeah, sure, why not.

Which version should I play?

I don’t know, buddy. Probably whichever one you already have, but they’re rereleasing the first six again so maybe pick one of those.

What can you tell me that’s worth my time? Are you going to help at all?

I can tell you that I had the best time playing on my PS Vita.

I can tell you that the opening is killer and Red Wings makes me want to fly an airship the way I always dreamt when I was young and too dumb to fully separate dreams and hopes from reality.

I can tell you that Theme of Love makes me want to cry a little bit.

What I mean to say is that the Nobuo Uemetsu’s score still punches my dumb heart hard enough to give me feelings while I watch pixelated abstractions talk on a screen held six inches from my face.

FFIV doesn’t have my favorite score, but Uemetsu has an undeniable way of bringing so much life and resonance to scenes, from that opening genocide to a few unforgettable deaths (more on this in a bit). The sweet simplicity of Uemetsu’s composition envelopes my heart, moving me in ways that only pianos and strings and just the right kind of wind can, reminding me of some of my favorite classical composers I’ve come across.

I think of Max Richter or Olafur Arnalds or Michael Nyman and Shigeru Umebayashi and my heart is ready to break for the beauty, the simplicity of their music. And, for me, Uemetsu has defined so much of what appeals to me in classical music (post for another day, maybe?)

The music is just perfectly what it is and if you’re going to spend twenty hours with a game—you will—it may as well be filled with beauty.

A few weeks ago, even, I put on the FFIV score while I was hanging out with my son. It was an interesting experiment, seeing how he reacted to music without experiencing the game it accompanied. Like most children, he loves music, but he actually stopped what we were doing and sat down on the couch to listen. His face a canvas for his feelings. He furrowed his brow and listened with so much seriousness, so taken by the music, that I was lost, too, in watching him listen, living in those songs with him. When The Red Wings played, he felt war, told me the bad guys were coming⁵. When The Battle Theme played, he told me they were fighting. When the Airship Theme played, he got giddy and smiled. He got up and just had to move.

He’s never seen a Final Fantasy game, but he was there in it, caught in this music from thirty years ago made for a pixelized world that, to him, didn’t yet exist.

Except it did. The music brought it to life.

And I think this is, in part, the lasting effect and power of Final Fantasy. They’re not simply videogames. Not even simply very good ones. They’re a collaboration between incredible artists from multiple disciplines.

I think, especially, about Yoshitaka Amano’s artwork. The vividness and ethereal beauty of it all, how soft the world he creates is, even when he’s drawing big lumbering monsters.

They have these books of his artwork at the library and I check them out sometimes, because I’m a fucking loser, but this most recent time led to more interesting moments with my son.

He, too, loved luxuriating in these images. He’d run his fingers over the page, tell me about the heroes, the villains, the monsters. We spent hours this way over the course of several weeks. Thumbing from image to image with him filling me in on the world we stepped into.

At nights, I tell him stories before bed about whatever he wants. But I asked him if he wanted to hear one of my favorite stories and, of course, he said, Yeah, with his little boyvoice that fills my heart so full I want to collapse. And so I told him about Cecil and Rosa and the fight that took them around the world, plunging beneath its skin, and, finally, to the moon. I told him about their willingness to do anything, give up everything, in order to protect the people they cherish. It’s only an impossible darkness, a malevolent otherness twisting the hearts and minds of humanity that leads to a near extinction event. But they have each other. Rosa and Cecil. And they have their friends.

I think of him, now, dreaming of a world where good people do good things.

Yeah, that’s nice and all, but, like, is the game fun?

Oh, god, absolutely not. Or, I mean—this game is old. If random battles happening every five steps is going to bum you out, get a different hobby because these ancient JRPGs are just brutal with regard to wasting your time.

Or, that’s unfair, but, really, if turn based battles constantly happening is going to wear you down—it might!—there are better games to play. Even better Final Fantasy games.

And you like that?

I can tell you that playing FFIV as an adult in 2021 on a PS Vita reminded me of playing Pokemon Red endlessly on my Gameboy Color in 1998 or the way I’d sneak downstairs when everyone was asleep to play Ocarina of Time or Mario 64 for the third time, trying to get all those Golden Skulltulas or all those Stars.

It’s not exactly that the game is good or bad, but that you tumble in time when playing it. The story is…kind of silly, for all its operatic extravagance. There’s a wide cast of characters who come and go who seem to have serious suicide ideation.

Like, the speed at which characters will suicide themselves the moment you encounter a difficult problem almost makes me hear Hironobu Sakaguchi’s laughter coming through my headphones. Almost every character you encounter in this game commits suicide to avoid some temporary calamity. It’s something, I think, that undercuts the seriousness of the themes here, and even of the sacrificial actions. If only Tellah or Yang sacrificed themselves, I think I’d see this differently. Possibly as a powerful statement of ideology and love. But when just about everyone throws their life away to help you out, it feels almost comical.

It’s not helped that at a certain point, Kane straight up says, Why is everyone always killing themselves?

I laughed.

Aren’t the stories the reason people play these games?

I mean, yeah, but just because the story is kind of dumb and absurd doesn’t mean you can’t give your heart and soul away, yeah?

There’s a real messiness to the game, honestly. The double hunting for Crystals, the consistent suicidal sacrifices, the reveals near the end that, no, all those suicides were maybe less than permanent, that the villains is…well, did you want me to spoil everything or just mostly everything?

Even so, despite all the silliness, the absurdity, the sloppiness, I like these characters. Even enjoyed the writing. Enjoy how the suicidal sacrifices are written in their scenes, the ways they surprise you, undercutting your expectations, and dragging emotion out of your dumb adult heart, moving you in ways you forgot pixels could.

And I’m eleven again playing Super Mario RPG for maybe the sixth time telling myself, lyingly, that this time Mallow won’t make me cry.

The characters of FFIV are well drawn, even the ones who only appear for an hour. You buy into their hopes, their motivations, their sacrifices. You believe them, even if, later, it seems a bit much, a bit contrived, a bit silly⁶.

The utter sincerity and openhearted optimism of the game just lifts you up, carries you along with these airships in the sky. With that full throated belief in itself, the game is able to tell stories of love and sacrifice, even if broadly. It touches on isolation, loneliness, honor, ideological rabidity, imperialism, revolution, and demands that we believe the human animal can be changed—not perfected, but maybe steered in a better direction.

And then the game is funny! Sometimes accidentally, sure, absolutely. But there are real slapstick moments here that made me smile and situational comedy written better than certain sitcoms I’ve watched⁷.

Is this a recommendation?

The game is delightful! Even with all the random battles and so on. I found so much joy in discovering where to go, listening to the stories of these little people in their little towns while the world fell into a maelstrom of violence and hopelessness before…well, before our heroes did what heroes do.

And the random battles and grinding isn’t so bad if you just put on The Office for the thirtieth time while you sort of robotically carry out the battles.

So—

There’s a joy—simple as it may be—in following these little breadcrumbs that direct the narrative. The kind of joy in discovery I had forgotten. These little characters you find in town give you strange clues and you wander out after them, discover new ways to interact with the world, understand it, believe in it.

The exploration is fun! It feels like an ever-broadening world. One that’s lived in.

I guess what I want to know is—

And even thirty years later, this little game manages to stand on its own. Yes, it can’t compare to, like, the Final Fantasy VII Remake (I have Things To Say about this, too, shockingly) and it doesn’t have the quality of life improvements of a modern game that make playing a videogame in an endlessly distractible era easier to hop in and out of. But that’s part of the charm. Part of why you’re here, playing a thirty year old game again instead of those shiny new ones that everyone’s raving about.

That’s all fine and—

It reminded me of so many gaming experiences of my youth as I played curled up in the dark, the only light coming from the screen just inches from my stupid face, headphones on so I could hear the music and not wake up Chelsea sleeping beside me, brought me back to the me I used to be, when videogames were more than portals to new worlds, but words and images and storylines that lived and breathed inside me, that gave me a reason to believe in life, in love, in hope.

Are you done?

Howl.

Wolf.

1. At his house was the first time I experienced something that I remembered from before. We were watching Star Wars, I think. He was obsessed with it, made me watch it almost all the time, which is maybe why I never had much affection for it, even though it’s been sort of constantly present in my life, floating at the edges. Anyrate, I don’t know if I enjoyed being around him but I remember remembering things with him that happened to me before but in dreams. Fifteen years later I’d read Steve Erickson write that dreams are memories of the future and felt my heart give out for a moment, remembering, again, the memory of remembering something that I hadn’t actually experienced because it hadn’t happened yet.

2. Excepting XIII, I guess, but that’s hardly my fault.

3. Honestly don’t even know what this stands for but I know what it is, yeah? It’s all that noise on the screen telling you stuff.

4. Depression is good?

5. Bad guys have become a peculiar obsession of his, and he’s always been more attached to the bad guys than the good guys when we watch movies, which is slightly hilarious but also, apparently, reminiscent of me as a child, which is, you know, cute and sweet.

6. Remember being a drunk teenager telling someone you love them for the first time? Yeah, it’s kind of like that.

7. Buddy, I LOVE sitcoms and I’ll tell you all about it someday.