Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes Of Light Review

Posted in Gaming, Reviews by Janx, October 5, 2010 at 2:13 pm | 966 views, 10 comments

Playing through Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (T4HOL) is about as much fun as it is playing through any old school SNES Final Fantasy game is these days. If old school RPG elements and plot are your thing, you’ll absolutely eat this game up. If, however, you cringe at the idea of playing a 16-bit RPG game with its retro’esque feel and delivery… you’ll absolutely want to shoot yourself… despite the fact that it’s really quite cute.

Let’s address the plot here first. It’s forgettable at best. You play as Brandt, a young boy who wakes up and then is essentially tasked to go try and rescue the local princess from an evil witch. Why would you, a 14-year-old teenager, be best suited for this task? Well because it’s a Final Fantasy game of course! Duh! The rest of the plot falls into place the way all other Final Fantasy RPGs seem to. It really shows that the team who developed T4HOL also had a hand in developing the other DS Final Fantasy game adaptions.

Now let’s talk about the combat system. It employs the old school turn-based RPG system Final Fantasy fans in the ’90s grew up using. It’s simple enough to use but it does have a few weird shortcomings. There are no MP points in T4HOL. Which I find odd considering it’s obvious draw is it’s old school Final Fantasy elements and audience. The inventory system is also a mess. It still blows my mind developers have such a hard time with inventory systems these days. I mean, if Final Fantasy I – VI were able to get it right, there’s really no reason why T4HOL can’t… and yet they do. You’ll soon know what I’m talking about if you’re planing on buying the game.

The other aspect that’s gathering some heavy criticism from the games combat system is targeting. Simply put, there isn’t any and at times there really needs to be. If the games only had one enemy attacking you at a time, this might not be much of an issue. But it doesn’t, it has multiple enemies attacking you and you aren’t allowed to specify which of those enemies you want to attack. So, the whole strategy of taking down one enemy at a time as a team doesn’t work. It’s not as big of an issue as I might be making it out to be, but it’s annoying at the very least. The same goes for healing, you might heal the right person, or you might not… who knows?!

Lastly, let’s talk about the multiplayer. It’s not very good. I don’t have many friends who want to come over to my house and play Final Fantasy with me to begin with, even if it was super fun to do so and the multiplayer kicked ass. But, it’s not super fun and it doesn’t kick ass.You can’t progress through the storyline as a team either so realistically it’s not even worth checking out.

To sum it all up, it’s an alright game if old school RPGs are your thing and the cute little DS Final Fantasy world reels you in. It also helps if you think Brandt looks like a Vagrant Story character and you have a crush on him. If on the other hand you don’t, and you aren’t sold on “cute” alone, it isn’t that much fun and lacks some refinements. I suggest playing Final Fantasy VI instead if you already haven’t.