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1991 · SNES · Super Famicom
| Region | Date | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Japan | 19 Jul 1991 | Square |
| North America | Nov 1991 | Square |
Cecil Harvey is the captain of Baron's airship fleet, the Red Wings, and the game opens with him carrying out an order he knows is wrong. Final Fantasy IV is the story of what he does next: a dark knight turning to the light, set against a sorcerer named Golbez who is gathering the world's crystals. Friends join, leave, betray him and sometimes die. Twelve characters pass through the party, each with a fixed role, from Rosa the white mage to Kain the dragoon.
The big change was in battle. The Active Time Battle system gives each character a gauge that fills in real time, and enemies act when their turn comes, whether or not you have chosen. Hesitate and you take the hit. Up to five fight at once, a first for the series, and you can place each one in the front or back row.
Square first planned a Famicom game and a Super Famicom game, but dropped the Famicom one and made this its first 16-bit Final Fantasy, released in Japan in 1991. A team of 14 finished it in about a year. Takashi Tokita, on his first full-time Square project, wrote the scenario; Hironobu Sakaguchi supplied the story; Hiroyuki Ito designed the Active Time Battle after watching Formula One cars pass each other at different speeds. Nobuo Uematsu wrote the score, and the team reworked the sound late in development after hearing Yuzo Koshiro's ActRaiser.
Cartridge space forced the script down to a quarter of its planned length. In North America it came out as Final Fantasy II, because the real second and third games hadn't been released there, and it was partly based on an easier version Square had made for Japan. The Active Time Battle went on to be used in five more Final Fantasy games.
The story still works, and its pace is the reason. Short dialogue and fast turns keep scenes moving, the cast is memorable, and the timed battles make even routine fights feel alive. Uematsu's score does a lot of the emotional heavy lifting, and it holds up. Level rewards are balanced so you rarely have to grind.
Its limits show. You can't choose your party for most of the game, so strategy is shaped by who the story hands you. The original English script is stiff and cut down, and some story turns arrive without enough set-up. Random battles come thick in the later dungeons. A later version with a revised translation fixes the worst of the script.
Final Fantasy IV opens with Cecil Harvey carrying out an order he knows is wrong. The rest of the game is Cecil trying to become someone better, and the player walks every step of that turn from dark knight to the light.
Andrew Przybylski and colleagues found games are most engaging when playing a character brings people closer to their ideal self. Cecil makes a neat test case. Few players see themselves in an airship captain, but most know what it is to go along with something and regret it. Playing Cecil's turn lets you rehearse the version of yourself that says no next time. The Active Time Battle adds its own quiet lesson: hesitate and you take the hit. Choices happen whether or not you have finished deciding. Cartridge space cut the script to a quarter of its planned length, and the story still lands, because the idea at its heart is simple and common. We all want to be better than our worst order.
Read: Who you are when you play →
Verdict · 9/10
The game that made Final Fantasy a story series, and still a brisk, dramatic play. The original shows its age in the script; the story and battles don't.
