@LazyWerebear sent me his dump of the scripts of the game (as well as 5 and 6) here:
@JupiterJesus I donāt know if that would be useful to you if you intend to manage the spreadsheet.
I personally think that sooner or later weāll have to leave the full spreadsheet behind us simply because itās going to be overwhelming to deal with all this text ahead of time, but maybe with some automation it could remain workable.
At any rate, itās cool that weāre finally reaching the Super Famicom games, the first three were cute but now the real FF begins.
It occurs to me that I donāt think Iāve ever heard much of anything about FF4. I didnāt really start them myself until 6. According to the internet 1 was just novel for being the originator, 2 was the terrible game everyone hates, 3 has jobs, 5 is the underrated fun one, 6 is the masterpiece if you want to be enough of a contrarian to avoid 7 and 10 but not enough to pick a real oddball one. 4? Not a word about it. I wonder what this game has going on; I genuinely donāt really know.
I also remember very little of the game, Iām sure I played it like 25 years ago and Iām also sure that I didnāt finish it but I donāt know where I stopped. It seems to be decently well regarded. I have a distinct memory of a specific setpiece but I donāt remember if itās from 4 or 5.
I remember those times. The āGTA IV is better than Vā of its era.
Being a beginner to the series, what Iāve heard of 4 is that itās where the series truly began telling deeper and more involved stories. I think FF2 was a little undersold on that front, but 4 is the one that everyone seems to agree is the true start for the stories stepping beyond āexcuse plotsā and becoming one of the main foci. Like this is where we start getting main characters with defined personalities (much beyond what we got with 2)
Not to rain on everyoneās parade too much but FF4 still feels like an NES game. I donāt know if this was apocryphal, but I heard a long time ago that it was intended to be, and ended up being pivoted to the SFC later. (I double checked, and 4 was being made for FC at the same time as 5 was for the SFC. The project was cancelled and switched to become an SFC game, and an unknown amount of the original FC version was kept.)
Your characters all have jobs from FF3, but you canāt change them. I didnāt realize that at the time of course, but now that Iāve played it itās obvious. The plot is still FF2-like - walk forward, meet new people, someone dies or gets kidnapped, repeat. The gameplay is still very basic. Dungeons are shorter than any in the series so far - sometimes only 2-3 screens.
The plot isnāt going to win any awards, but compared to the first three itās a goddamn masterpiece. Itās the first one that actually HAS character arcs. No, meeting a person, them opening a door for you and then dying doesnāt count as an arc! Thereās trauma, internal conflict, emotions, motives. People grow and change based on the things that happen to them. Basic stuff that every story should have, but the ones before this only pretended to have.
Itās also quite a short game, but I rented it from a Hollywood Video after Iād already played FF6, which is comparatively very long and a much better game.
The spreadsheet approach works fine at least through six. The amount of text increases, but the basic structure remains the same. After six, the total amount of text becomes astronomical, so who knows. I like doing it though, it really exercises my brain compared to reading it on the fly.
Transcribing it isnāt even a big deal, at least with my setup. Iām already playing the game. I just hit the hotkey to read the screen as I encounter it, then copy and paste it. Actually, I usually will record my gameplay so I can read casually and then go back and transcribe if I donāt feel like doing it while I play.
Yay! Almost time for FF4! I played it in English many many years ago (though after FF6) and loved it. I remember it having a really fun story, though not as epic of one as 6. And characters that actually felt like people with real personalities (so much more developed than 1-3 based on now having played those).
That said, while Iāve replayed 6 several times over the years since, I have not replayed 4 in quite a long time. Iām curious to see how it will hold up against my memories, or if Iāll find Iāve been looking at it through rose-colored glassesā¦
Oh hey, Iāve played this one (and V) in English before. Iāve tried VI a couple times but I never get much farther than Splitting the party and then running into the phantom train. IV is pretty cool for the story but the bar for a video game having its own storyline wasnāt that high at the time because itās competing with arcade ports like street fighter or contra (not to knock them but itās light on storyline). I like V more not for the story, but the gameplay is cool and the plot is like a parody of the other ones they had made at that point. Saturday morning cartoon vibes. IV is a bit more soap opera maybe and VI, if I can ever stick with it, is a proper novel or something.
Itās not really contrarian to pick FF6 as your favorite. Sure FF7 and FF10 are a little more commonly picked, but FF6 is common as well. I would actually consider FF9 as the contrarian favorite pick, because it probably has the strongest cult following. Though for all I know consensus has changed in the 15-20 years since I played most of these games. (For what itās worth, FF6 is my favorite, though I love FF7 and FF10 as well and FF10 is probably the most fun to replay.)
As for FF4, Iād say itās the first game that has a deeper story. Now, I say that as someone who dropped FF2 after an hour (because the battle system is so broken) and never had a chance to play FF3 back when I played through most of the original 6, so I canāt really justify saying itās the first deep one. But I do think it has a solid story. To be fair, I think the story in FF1 is still not bad for the times, but FF4 blows it out of the water. It helps that there are real characters with names and such.
Depends which version you played, but the PS1 port had the original difficulty from the Japanese Super Famicon release and it was brutal. I barely managed to get through some segments toward the end. I canāt remember if I beat the final boss, but I definitely at least got to the final boss.
Arguably nothing else in the series compares to FF6 in terms of narrative, so itās not really a fair benchmark. Regardless, I think FF4 has a better narrative and better characters than FF5 and is on par with the likes of FF8 and FF9.
Based on my vague recollections, I could rank them something like this for narrative and characters.
S tier: 6, 7, 10
A tier: 4, 8, 9
B tier: 5, 13
C tier: 1, 12
(These could be skewed based on my opinion of the games as whole since I only played 1, 4, and 9 once and never finished 5 or 12. Plus this was all 15+ years ago.)
IV is the only PR I havenāt played prior, Iām excited to experience the 2D version together with everyone else! I played the 3D version a few years ago, back when the EW patches had just started coming out, and I had a blast with it. That game is hard lol. Iām hoping I donāt feel split on the 2D/3D versions like I do FFIII, where I despise the 2D and adore the 3D. I think they arenāt as different? I could be wrong. The 3D version has some voice acted scenes though which really makes some moments hype, I wonder if the PR will still be cool to me without that.
I played FF4 on my DS in my native language, more than 20 years ago, and donāt remember anything of it, nor if I liked it or finished it. Now I only have the PR version in Japanese so I think thatās the one Iāll play (though seeing @Kelsyyās post definitely makes me hesitate a bit, Iām also enjoying the 3D version a lot of FF3)! I think it will feel like a brand new game to me in any case, exciting that itās a step up from the first three!
I almost went with the DS one when creating the thread but decided that the integrity of this club would be compromised if I stopped using the original boxart.
I remember hearing something recently about the reasoning behind that terrible FF4 box art. I eventually remembered that it came from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=945vegkemAQ
