GBA Final Fantasy 4 review so far

Unlike many people, Final Fantasy 4 was my first Final Fantasy game. It was a game unlike any other game I've every played. I've dabbled into RPGs before, the vastly more popular Dragon Warrior. In fact Dragon Warrior is so popular in Japan that it is required by law for the game to be released on a Sunday in to prevent mass school truency by students waiting to buy the game. One of the earliest memories was a screenshot of Final Fantasy which featured a group of sprites fighting some flaming beast with a technological background. It looked interesting enough and when we bought I dabbled in it, only to forget about it.

I don't know what drew me back into the game, but it forever changed how I looked at it. I essentially played a saved game to the finish, starting with our main character Cecil heading towards Mount Ordeals in order to become a Paladin. It's quite bizarre because now, no matter how many times I play the game, I always see the beginning of the game will be at that moment, everything before that is a precursor.

So this game has a lot of memories really, fond ones. I liked the characters, they were imaginative and to tell the truth it was probably the last true old school Final Fantasy before even FF6 kinda messed it up. I do have an affinity for FF6, but FF4 was the first. Why do I say it's the last true old school one? Well aside from the theme of crystals (which FF5 also has I admit), it was also one of the Final Final Fantasies where not everyone could be a like to each other. Mainly dragoons were dragoons. Knights were knights. No magic for everyone or skillz for everyone via a equipment. Plus not to mention full equipment abilities. Not just a weapon, an accessory and a piece of armour. But most importantly was the use of the ATB (active time battle) system. I liked it because it actually made it so you had to choose what spell to cast. A higher level spell will take longer to cast than a lower level spell. Do you need the spell now or later? Would you rather have your fighter fight, or perform his more powerful attack for a sacrafice of a turn? Granted it sounds nice on paper, but pratical application usually has you casting the most powerful spells in general. But the illusion of choice is good to have.

Basically the GBA port was the original Final Fantasy 4 filled with somethings that were left out from the US version. It was an reworked and reissue in the PS1 version but I've never played it before. Somehow I find playing 8-16 bit games on the next gen systems bordering on blasphemous.

It's basically a good port aside from a few minor inconviniences. Lag of inputing commands is the most important thing which truly does piss me off. It disappoints me and sort of frightens me on how lazy the programmers were in producing this. The latter exists because I wonder how they will treat the FF5 and FF6 ports. Possibly not as well considering a lot of resources seemed to be put into porting FF3j into the DS as a 3D game.

The other minor thing which is more associated with the lag is the magic animation. It looked far smoother and more impressive on the SNES and yet the GBA seem to make it into less quality.

The good parts is that the script has been revamped. It's not Post FF6 fare, hell it's not even Ff6 quality, and yet there is a noticiable difference. Even after not playing the game for so long. If anything the improvement of the script almost shows the glaring weaknesses of some of the writing because some parts are bad.

I admit, at one point in time I was disenchanted with the game. This was before the last dungeon. I was at a piddly level 45 with my characters where realistically you needed to be at level 80 to defeat the final boss. And that alone is one of the things that really make or break an RPG, if not...seperate the RPG player from the casual games. I never really relished leveling up unless I have some goal to work to, and quite frankly just getting high enough to defeat a boss isn't one of the motivators for me. I basically half assed the game a while and then when I decided to hunker down and play the new extra feature allowed to us, I regain my spark for playing the game again.

Namely what I speak of is the extra dungeon on Mt. Ordeals in which you can get the ultimate weapons for other party members. In the original you usually end up having only 5 characters to work with. It's a typical team full of variety. But the game itself has total of 12 characters in which you can play with, 10 of which are alive and spirtually supporting you before the last dungeon. So now in the port, you are allowed to use the remaining 5 characters who are still alive at your disposal. And it's just fun in general to make a mishmash of teams. Even setting them up to get their ultimate weapons was greatly enjoyable. The bosses guarding them were extremely well done and imaginative, and above all else challenging; I loved them.

The game itself is a challenge because there is a need to level up. I didn't however considering I blazed through a lot of the parts of the game, but it's fun nevertheless to play an RPG were one battle could really do you in. But ultimately it was a game that fell flat as a port. I am disappointed because I don't want a generation of players to consider that this is the best that FF4 could offer where in reality it was much more than laggy gameplay. However in the end I thank Square for the memories of the game again. I have yet to play the 50 level dungeon that awaits so that's why my review falls a bit short, but still. I'd give it a 3.5/5.0 stars

I love Power Girl

These two pictures basically explain it all (might have to cut and paste the url): Pic 1 and Pic 2.

Granted she isn't the most indepth character ever created. She's basically the "other unspoken cousin" of Superman and let's face it, it's her breasticles that we're interested in. They are so prominent and defining, the absence of them would be like...the absence of Superman's "S" or Batman's pointy ears. Power Girl could have a dozen different designs, from costume changes, to having 80's hair, a buzzcut, shoulder length to even male corporate hairstyle; her body size could change from buff, to she-hulkish, to thick and even to moderately thin, but the thing that stays the same....is her boobs. You could never really do that to any other characters period without having people screaming bloody murder. Hell you couldn't even change a hair style without people going nuts.

Now I'm not going to claim that I'm an expert on her. Hell This article is way cooler and more indepth than I could ever enter. But there is just something about how she's handled in the comic industry that appeals to me. She essentially the playboy bunny, the piece of meat of mainstream comics. Vampirella takes the "[i]piece of meat[/i]" crown, but there's something subtle almost deceiving about Power Girl, enough so that she is Comic book Authority approved piece of meat.

I mean aside from her "Magical Cleavage Window" (as it's so aptly named coined in the article) there really isn't a whole lot that raised the slut alert. Perhaps it's because she was most well known in the funnier days of the JLA where tongue in cheek comedy took precedent over extreme sexiness. But even though the truth is that I'm probably liking her more for her bosoms a plenty, there is still something semi-serious that I like about her. How she's Supes cousin and yet not in a Superman outfit like the more prominent cousin of SuperGirl. How she's very similiar to Superman and yet because of her costume you never really associate her with him. There's something very classic and simple about her costume design. It's not entirely complex but yet it's simple enough to not distract most people. It's by no means goofy, and yet somehow her wearing it doesn't exactly bring up to extremly classic costume status.

She's a great facination not only for her mammaries, but because her convuluted history basically makes her as interesting as any comib book character, if only to see how her life has been retconned to death.

The Funeral

The feelings with my father's death and the events leading up to it were very confusing. At that moment we had our business up for sale which we were delivered an ultimatum to push the deal through quickly or he'll leave. Yet when it all happened, everything was put on hold. Yet a lot of things had to be done quickly. Perhaps not quickly, but it only goes to show that no matter what happens, anything that needs to be done seems all to quick when you were mourning.

In some ways that week between his death and the funeral was possibly the longest week I've ever had. Not so much all the stuff that had to happen, but the yearning for some sort of finality, some closure to the entire ordeal and that was the funeral. It wasn't because I wanted my father gone, buried (or in this case cremated). It wasn't because I wanted to see people to come to the funeral and bear some of the grief. I just wanted the whole thing to be over because it was a cloud over my head and a weight in my heart. It's like life couldn't continue until after the funeral.

There isn't much to say about the funeral. It was a nice service. When we actually walked it, I felt alone with my family. Despite having people there, I didn't have much heart to look at anyone to see who came. The first and only person I saw was Mike and even though it wasn't hard to look at him, something drew my head down. I couldn't look at him. I really couldn't look at anyone.

The Pastor's talk was great. It was a speech that could have lifted up your spirits if only to make you feel only slightly less sad. It wasn't by no means the best thing since we are not a Church attending family, the message cannot be specifically applied to my dad, but it was certainly something worthwhile to hear.

My cousin did the euology well enough. I imagine it was hard enough for him to do it on such short notice. I said some part words in which I nearly lost my composure at the end, blurting out the last word. I don't really know what caused me to feel so nervous, I was never good at speaking in front of an audience or doing presentations, but I suppose the words I had to say didn't sound as eloquent as it did in my head. Perhaps I have to take a toastmasters course. But it wasn't hard as so much a thing to do, that I felt I had to do to tell somebody, anybody about my dad and what he meant to us.

I tried to keep in mind some of the things the pastor suggested, many hint in how to talk to everyone. And yet the only thing I remembered is to look up occasionally at 3 points at the back of the Church and now have my head down all the time. I did look at someone straight in the eye but I don't even remember who it was anymore.

We walked to the legion hall. My brother congratulated me on a good job with the speech. I thought he was joking but he was not. That made me feel a lot better.

The tea/reception afterwards seemed even worst to a certain degree. You met people and thanked them, not that I mind it. But it just seemed when you first opened the door; there are so much people to see, so many people to meet and a large task ahead. I don't know what to say to some of the people I talked to. There was a feeling of wanting to just end the night right there, instead of what seemed like dragging on a part of the funeral, or just wanting to stay there.

We went home and I got out of my clothes feeling I've been wearing them for days.

The viewing...

One of the most talked about things during the whole process of the funeral arrangements was having an open casket. Having never been to a funeral, very naive and fed a steady diet of television, I imagined that apart from mod hits to the face, every funeral had an open casket affair. There are many reasons in which an open casket is not welcomed. More respectfully on the earthly realm, it might upset some of the attendees of the funeral. On a more spiritual level, the church itself might have traditions against an open casket.

At the viewing a handful of people showed up. For some reason I expected more, but that was the optimist in me. I did realize that somewhere along the lines not many people would show up, not because my dad wasn't close to people, but because it was a viewing and after what I learned in that week people are uncomfortable. I did pretty well in holding my composure, it seemed a bit harder to keep it with the people who did come showing their compassion. I was actually a bit happy though, my grandma however was quite sad, sad for most of the time there. I kinda lightened up the time with my brother talking about how cheap my black shoes were. They were 20 bucks I told him. The pants I also got from Winners which was also 20 dollars. Overall I was pretty damn proud that my ensemble was under $60 which seemed to have amused my brother.

There was a point where I just felt bored. I mean there wasn't much people to talk to. It was a time of mourning and yet I felt this was a good feeling because it only prepared me for saying something about my dad the next day at the funeral. It made me feel I could keep my composure enough to get through a speech. We ended the night, leaving my dad. He looked very good, very handsome and he had a small wry smile through it all.