is up on WiiWare today.
Has anyone tried it yet?
I’ve finished all the content for this month so far.
For 800 points, you get
- Prologue
- Ceodore’s scenario
- Kain’s scenario
Which were apparently three different DLCs in the Japanese release. Still, the whole thing isn’t particularly long - it took me about 4 hours to complete it.
For another 300 points, you get Rydia’s scenario, which covers the entire underground world except for the Tower of Babil, so I doubt any newer scenarios are going back for a while. That one was even shorter - about 2 hours and 30 minutes.
The next three DLC scenarios (Yang, Palom, Edge) will be released on July 6th. There will be another three released on August 3rd, and the final one is out on Septermber 7th. They’re all 300 Points, except the last one which is another 800. So, the whole thing will cost 3700 Wii Points.
The story seems okay so far, but a lot of the events seem to be almost carbon copies of events that happened in the original game. For that reason, it doesn’t feel very original…although strangely, since so many characters have drastic redesigns, and you’re zipped through from place to place so quickly, it doesn’t feel nostalgic, either. It’s weird.
Gameplay is about what you’d expect. You hit people, you hit people with magic, you cure people, or you cure people with magic.
There are two big gameplay innovations, and one minor one:
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(Minor) You know how the SNES games could be played 2-player? Well, if you didn’t know, now you do. The After Years not only brings it back, but you can actually play with 4 players. I don’t know who would actually do this, though…like, seriously.
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Band Attacks. Choose “Band” when a character’s turn comes up, and then you select one or more characters to Band with. When you pick a character to band with, you choose a certain action with them, and if you pick the right one, you might to a Band attack, which is just a combo.
What I don’t know about the Band system yet:
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They said that Band attack consume a little MP from everyone, but I’m not sure how much, or even if it varies depending on the Band attack.
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Since you have the select the ‘correct’ action with the second person, I wonder if the action you need to select when triggering a band attack is different depending on who started the Band?
I also didn’t use them much, so I don’t know how crucial they are. I was able to beat both episodes without using Band attacks (other than curiously seeing if I was able to find any).
- Moon Phases. There are four types of actions in The After Years: Physical Attacks, Black Magic, White Magic, and Special Abilities. Also, there are four Moon Phases; each one augments one type of action and weakens another. So for example, when there’s a full moon, physical attack damage is severely reduced, but Black Magic is way more potent. This is a kind of neat idea. It’s not as innovative as FF4DS’s counter-attacks-for-enemies shtick, but it’s a whole hell of a lot less frustrating to deal with.
The only problem is, I’m finding that it’s really easy to break the game with them. For one, if you buy a lot of tents, you can just spam tents until you get the moon phase you want (although it’s worth noting that the moon phase will change naturally after a certain number of steps, but it’s a LOT of steps).
Personally, I set it frequently to the phase that lowers the efficiency of White Magic and boosts Special Abilities. Items are incredibly potent at these early points, and White Magic is still really useful if you use it in conjunction with Items. So, your special abilities are stronger, and it’s there’s virtually no penalty in your ability to heal. Also, it’s not as if weaker white magic means that status heals and buffs will miss, so many White Magic spells are not even affected.
The final feather in the cap that would make this the ultimate phase is if enemy abilities are not affected by this phase for some reason (so far, I couldn’t tell any difference, but I’m not about to make a conclusive statement).
The one that just seems like suicide, though, is the one that ups attack power. So many enemies can already hit your party really hard. I died so many times during Ceodore’s scenario thanks to that phase, and it was still pretty bad on Rydia’s scenario, too. In an RPG, it’s almost always more important to be able to take a hit than it is to deal damage, unless your damage potential is absurdly low. So, giving just about every enemy the ability to kill you in two or three hits is just asking for it.
This post is lengthy, I’ll post my impressions about the individual scenarios later.
- They said that Band attack consume a little MP from everyone, but I’m not sure how much, or even if it varies depending on the Band attack.
On the band menu, it says 15/All (or a different number), that’s the cost of that particular one.
I just got it, played through Ceodore’s scenario and got into Kain’s.
It’s really disappointing, actually. SG already commented on the combat system, it just feels really uneven. Thrown-together, really. One of the things that REALLY bugged me was the fact that you could encounter those Flan/Jelly enemies when no one in the party could use black magic. I can’t remember a single instance in the original FFIV where you could encounter those things along the way in the story when there wasn’t some black magic to use, they knew better than to throw enemies like that at you if you couldn’t beat them.
The attack power of the average foe is quite ridiculous at times, it’s especially bad if Ceodore is your only healer. The encounter rate is also a tad high, I don’t recall getting into that many fights in the original.
The graphics bug me too, as they’re inconsistent. They improved the sprites of all the characters on the world map, made them a bit larger, but none of the tilesets are altered. So you have characters walking through doors that look a little too small for them. The text windows also look really off. I’ve seen people compare it to an RPGMaker game in reviews, and I think that’s pretty apt. The game just doesn’t look right.
And the sound, oh man the sound. I understand that the original cell phone version probably sounded more like the GBA port of FFIV did, but I can’t see a single reason why SE couldn’t just port the SNES music to this game for the Wii version. It uses 95% of the original’s music anyway, and the SNES samples sound so much better.
I really have no desire to finish this. I’m certainly not going to download Rydia’s scenario, I probably won’t even finish Kain’s. I stopped playing after I got ambushed by Baron soldiers in the Kaipo Inn which is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SAME INN DURING THE ORIGINAL GAME WHAT THE HELL SCENARIO WRITERS. Then I transferred it to my SD card, I may not even bother with it again.
I’ll keep up on reviews on the individual scenarios as they come out. If any seem worthwhile I’ll give them a shot, but I’m not counting on it.
The Flan thing was really weird, to be sure. But I only ran into them like twice, so I was fine. And yeah, the enemy attack power really kicked my ass in Ceodore’s scenario. It wasn’t nearly as bad in Rydia’s. Still, I usually had to go with Full Moon (Attack Down, White Magic Up) when playing Ceodore’s scenario. And yeah, good GOD, absurd counter rate.
Also, has anyone had the problem where the enemy gets the initiative/back attack more frequently than battles that start with an even advantage? I wonder if that’s just me bad luck 
The graphics bug me too, as they’re inconsistent. They improved the sprites of all the characters on the world map, made them a bit larger, but none of the tilesets are altered. So you have characters walking through doors that look a little too small for them. The text windows also look really off. I’ve seen people compare it to an RPGMaker game in reviews, and I think that’s pretty apt. The game just doesn’t look right.
Lol! The only thing I’ve noticed is what you mentioned about the sprites being larger. What’s even funnier is that, during the flashbacks, it uses the normal-sized FF4 sprites. wtf?
And the sound, oh man the sound. I understand that the original cell phone version probably sounded more like the GBA port of FFIV did, but I can’t see a single reason why SE couldn’t just port the SNES music to this game for the Wii version. It uses 95% of the original’s music anyway, and the SNES samples sound so much better.
The SNES samples definitely do NOT sound better than this. They might be more preferable, sure, but the SNES soundfont couldn’t even realistically emulate a lot of sounds. For example, you never hear the sound of just one violin/viola in the original Final Fantasy 4; sure, you hear the sound of several strings playing in unison, but compare the SNES town song with the one from the DS or The After Years. The scope of sound from the SNES was just too narrow.
I’ll give you this, though: What really bothers me about The After Years’ arrangements is their choice of bass guitar sounds. They use some awful bass…I’m guessing it’s a picked or synth bass, and they switch to the picked bass every now and then. What a tease! The original FF4 used picked bass for the majority of its songs…because it sounded good.
I really have no desire to finish this. I’m certainly not going to download Rydia’s scenario, I probably won’t even finish Kain’s. I stopped playing after I got ambushed by Baron soldiers in the Kaipo Inn which is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED IN THE SAME INN DURING THE ORIGINAL GAME WHAT THE HELL SCENARIO WRITERS. Then I transferred it to my SD card, I may not even bother with it again.
I’ll keep up on reviews on the individual scenarios as they come out. If any seem worthwhile I’ll give them a shot, but I’m not counting on it.
Man, yeah…if that bothered you, then I wouldn’t recommend continuing. They flat out copy events from FF4, like, STRAIGHT out, as you’ve seen. The one in particular you mentioned really baffled me, since there was no reason to even make that scene happen, you were forced to stay at the inn at Kaipo for no good reason! And, as far as I’ve heard, this doesn’t stop happening.
I admit that a big part of my enjoyment for this game is that I love FF4 (it was the game that got me hooked on RPGs), but in reality it’s not a very good game.
Yup. But here’s something worse. I’ve had battles where I got a Pre-emptive on the enemy and decided to run. But the characters just DIDN’T run. It took so long the enemies recovered and got a few hits (KOing Ceodore) before the party finally ran. Just, what the hell game.
I love FFIV too, really. But I just can’t get through this. Granted it was VI that got me hooked on RPGs, and if we got a crappy sequel of THAT I might be forced to slog through it. But this is just not a good game. I’m just glad I only spent the initial 800 points, it would cost over 3000 for the entire thing. If the ENTIRE game, all episodes included, were only 800-1000 points I might be able to recommended it. But this game is just not worth paying for in chunks.
Oh yeah, that too. Man, that happened in FF4DS a lot too.
I love FFIV too, really. But I just can’t get through this. Granted it was VI that got me hooked on RPGs, and if we got a crappy sequel of THAT I might be forced to slog through it. But this is just not a good game. I’m just glad I only spent the initial 800 points, it would cost over 3000 for the entire thing. If the ENTIRE game, all episodes included, were only 800-1000 points I might be able to recommended it. But this game is just not worth paying for in chunks.
I dunno, I don’t think this is really a BAD game, but it really is…the same game but a bit worse in most respects.