This game is more poignant, and tells a story better than any Final Fantasy game made in the last 8 years!
I remember playing this game when I was 18. Half my life ago, and I loved it! Now, 18 years later, here I've been, playing it on my phone, sneaking it in between lunch breaks and vacation trips.
The one thing that strikes me most solidly about any final fantasy game I've played between 4-7, is how fast they get things established, and yet they layer it along the way. To establish this point, I'll site FF13, which as far as 20 hours in, you still really don't know what exactly is going on, or why you're trodding along.
In FF4 (or 2, to us SNES guys), by hour TWO, you know the main character's motivations, who his friends are, who the enemy is. Then, very precisely, and very fluidly, they turn the prism as the game goes on. Friends die. Enemies change faces, and all the while, the story grows larger, more poignant, without ever once losing it's focus.
Quite the opposite. The focus actually grows sharper for the deepening plot twist.
In short, the game follows Cecil, commander of the Red Wings, air guard to the Kingdom of Baron. It starts with him returning from a mission given to him by his king, who he respects deeply, but the mission called for him to murder many people for his kingdom's goals. He begins to question his king's motives, and his own morals. Sensing this, his king takes him away from his important duties, and sends him on an errand run with his friend Kane, to deliver a package to a nearby kingdom. When he arrives, he discovers the package destroys the neighboring kingdom, and at that point, swears off his oath to the king that he reveres, the people that he loves, and vows to stop his king from swallowing the world with his madness.
And, all that happens, inside of hour one! It only gets better, deeper, and more amazing from there. Yet, through it all, the characters, and the story, grow sharper, instead of more diffuse. The teams of characters often changes. Loved ones are taken away, allies leave, betray you, return wiser, redeemed, and some simply die to sacrifice their lives against the growing threat of evil.
I have a hypothesis that RPG's were popular back in these days, because with system limitations, creators were forced to worry about only two things...story and gameplay. And, there's something to be said for this substance over style approach to game creating. It's not to be said that great games can't be made with modern technology. Many games have proven that otherwise. But they put story and gameplay first, most and always.
The best example of this I can think of in this game of that type of poignancy, is two brother mages named Porom and Palom. One a white mage, kind and generous, and one a black mage, confidant and brash. They are sent to "accompany" Cecil, who invaded their kingdom and murdered many of it's inhabitants. After effectively spying on him, they meet through Cecil, Tellah, a mage of great knowledge and renown. Slowly, they grow fond of the Cecil, through his association with Tellah, who they revere deeply. They watch Cecil face his own morality, face himself, and come through the ordeal a better person, capable of defending the world against the growing threat of ignorance and power that is corrupting everythhing.
Later, when the party is in trouble, facing certain doom, they save the party by sacrificing their lives for their revered master and Cecil, who they've grown to understand and respect., turning themselves to stone to stop the party from being crushed.
No fanfare, no spectacle or cutscene glitter. Their decision is resolute. They die so you may carry on. No monument is built. But, many quests bring you back to the castle they saved you in, and every time you visit to get your next quest, you must pass through that room, where their stone bodies still hold the walls open which allow you to pass.
It's touching, subtle, and most of all, poignant. And its only one of MANY such character turns within the game, and each are meaningful.
It's my opinion, that every time Square makes a game, everyone on the team, from the level designers, to the writers, to the background animators, should be required to play FF4-7, so they can remember how to tell a good story, and remind themselves of what makes a game great.
But, it's also my opinion that since Sakaguchi left square, there has been such a loss of directorial focus over the creative team, that their future games are doomed to trade depth for convolution, with one team crying "it needs more cutscenes!" and another crying "there aren't enough levels!", and in the background, Tetsuya Nomura shouting "they all need MORE ZIPPERS!!!", finally producing games that look like god swallowed Jackson Pollack, Leonaro Da Vinci, and George Lucas, and instead of digesting it all, just barfed it all up onto the canvas of a video game.
My point is this. FF4 (or 2 for some of us) is a fantastic game. It is deep, the gameplay is fantastic, the pacing is near perfect, the character and plot twists are fantastic and poignant, and it is as enjoyable today as it was half my life ago. It is, for many, THE Final Fantasy game that made us fall in love with the series, RPG's, or for some, gaming altogether. And it's still there, waiting to be played, to remind anyone who has forgotten, or for anyone who never knew, just how great this series was at it's peak.
It also reminds us that the series now, is just a shadow of it's former self, but thankfully, there are gems like this to wash that bad taste away, and give us a full helping of what people like me loved about gaming to begin with.