FF4 Fangame

Intro

"Final Fantasy 4 Fangame" is as the name would suggest is a fan game of one of the most popular Final Fantasy games from the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) era of gaming. Albeit this game was originally released in North America under the name "Final Fantasy II". After all, why import a game and keep the name the same when you don't have any plans of ever importing the actual "Final Fantasy II" and "Final Fantasy III". Oh well, at least this name confusion isn't as bad as Brock's mom apparently being a zombie in the Pokemon anime since were told in the first season that she passed away and left Brock with the responsibility of caring for all of his siblings on his own.

At any rate this game was developed by Brad and Thuckey using RPG Maker 2003. Though it looks like this game never got past the demo stage. Which I guess isn't that surprising considering some of the stuff on the game's summary page.

Brad
I've always made some pretty decent stuff but never released anything so I decided to at least release a demo of something I could be a little proud of.

The sad part is this demo is pretty solid so it's a shame this project will forever remain a demo.

Story

You play as Carius, a soldier, whose been assigned to recover some skin from a legendary monster living in a nearby cave by King Rowain. This task goes awry though when a ninja steals the skin because the King wants to use the deadly toxins for less than noble ambitions. This same ninja also lies about us handing the skin over which causes our boss to declare us a traitor. So we decide to team up with Marcus in order to dethrone our own king because Marcus claims he's evil.

Admittedly the king being evil is a staple of fantasy stories, but the fact Carius just swallows this notion hook, line, and sinker bothers me a bit since you'd think he'd ask for some kind of evidence that King Rowain is up to no good. Instead he just accepts Marcus's claims that he's descended from a legendary evil ruler and that he murdered his father like Carius and Marcus are best friends forever.

At any rate the game ends shortly after we've joined the rebellion since we can't complete our next task since the monster were going to fight isn't in the database yet. And yes, this is something the game itself points out. So the demo ends on a joke that utterly shatters the 4th wall.



Gameplay

The game utilizes the standard combat system that comes with RPG Maker 2003 which kind of sucks since I'm not a big fan of the active battle system promoted by games within the Final Fantasy franchise among others. I've just always found the process of flipping through menus quickly rather annoying. Thankfully you can set the game to wait mode which makes the combat operate more like the conditional turn-based battle system found in games like "Final Fantasy X" with faster characters getting more turns than others. Albeit you really can't abuse this mechanic in this game since you'll barely be pushing level six by the end of the demo if you go out of your way to buy up new gear as it becomes available.

And while the demo is short I do have two complaints. For starters you can't sell items at any of the stores. This is annoying since it means you can't sell off excess magic potions and whatnot for better gear. And secondly while you can sell monster hides to someone in the two caves in this game. You can't sell them in bulk which makes selling a dozen hides or so more time consuming than it needs to be. And I'm not particularly fond of each shopkeeper selling a single item either.

And while I didn't try out the card system I'm not that found of the dueling system either. This is because the dueling system relies on the player just guessing the correct answer. At least in something like "Suikoden V" the enemies give you a line of dialogue to work with so you can more readily guess what they are going to do is. Though I didn't test the system enough to learn if the enemies are hyper predictable or not since I used the funds I got from betting on my first and only duel to buy the only set of armor in this game.

Graphics & Sound

As you can probably guess based on the inclusion of the word fangame in the title. This project uses a lot of graphical assets, background music, and sound effects from the Final Fantasy franchise. As such this game definitely looks and sounds like an entry in that series.

Conclusion

On one hand this game has a pretty solid demo that will take about 40 to 50 minutes to complete. Though that will definitely get a lot longer if you decide to spend time on the dueling and card mini games. At the same time this is a demo for a long abandoned project so it feels kind of pointless to play it in the first place when there is stuff like "Final Fantasy IV Alter Destiny" by Sphere on the site to enjoy if your looking for a fan game for "Final Fantasy IV" specifically. At the same time there are worse ways to spend the better part of one hour.