What I Played Today: October 7

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

I got the newest Final Fantasy for the DS, and I am liking the hell out of it. It bends pretty well, being fairly difficult but manageable, and having a lot of potential. You start the game as just some dumb kid who is told to save the princess from an evil witch, and you eventually pick up all the other party members on your way there and have the kill the witch after she turns into a griffon. Then, a magic crystal decides that you are hot shit and gives you a hat (they call them crowns, but they are obviously just hats), and you head back to town to find everyone turned to stone. Then in a huge twist, the party breaks up, half deciding that they are going to save the town and the other half deciding that pina coladas sound like a better idea. Of course you control the two who want to save the town, and have to go into the desert to find some hidden kingdom. You do pick up a supporting character to help though, which is good, because the desert is hard.

Probably my only complaint at this point is that the game expects a lot from you; it doesn’t tell you where to go very well, and I’m currently stuck against a boss wall because I need a certain spell and am at a loss of where to get it. (Naturally, the guy who told me to kill this boss took all those spell books off the market, which is all kinds of mysterious.) But the system is neat, in which you have to use AP to use abilities instead of some arbitrary MP pool that typically never runs out. The only way to get AP back is to participate in combat and take a block action, which means that you trade time to use special abilities, and you’re always guaranteed to be at less than full strength. Plus, each ability you have that doesn’t come from your hat takes up an inventory slot, of which each character only has 15, so that limits you significantly too. It’s pretty neat.

Also, small word up to all those idiots who assumed this was a remake of the first game. Maybe thirty seconds of research would prove that untrue. Come on, dummies.