Most of the gameplay is based on the original Final Fantasy IV, but a few new elements are introduced. The most notable is the lunar cycle; the phase of the moon affects which tactics do more or less damage. One phase might make black magic (’attack magic’, basically) stronger while making physical attacks weaker, or improve white magic (healing and protection, etc.), or even change what enemies appear. A few fights that seem impossible at first become much more viable if you pick the right moon phase, and it is an interesting touch.

That said, After Years has some problems. The first

three hours or so go off with only one minor hitch: a ’cutscene battle’ lasts far longer than it needs to, seemingly glitched until you wait an extra minute or two. However, the last hour becomes merciless, loading up on unfair mini-boss encounters, and a dungeon with an inordinately high rate of ambushing random encounters; one such encounter killed me before I could do anything of note, causing me to lose about half an hour of play time. Worse, another cutscene battle clearly didn’t anticipate that the player might come up with a winning solution; I did, and the game forced me into a loss so the plot could continue.

But those issues aren’t enough to stop After Years from being a great game, and I enjoyed it so much that I played its first chapters from start to finish in a single session. The storyline is solid, the controls are familiar, and the graphics and music carry the ’retro game’ presentation very well. If you’re a fan of Square’s classics like Final Fantasy 4 and 6 as well as Chrono Trigger, get this; you’ll love it. If you missed out on those for whatever reason, give After Years a try, it’s fun and serves as a great history lesson for the console RPG genre.

Post-Review Thoughts on the Add-On Chapters: After Years consists of eleven chapters. You get the first three as part of the base game which costs 800 points. Chapters four through ten are reportedly 300 points each, and chapter 11 will apparently be 800 points. At the time of writing, only chapter 4, "Rydia’s Tale", is available. If you buy all these to get the complete story, you’re looking at about 3700 points or $37, putting this squarely in the same price as a bargain-level retail game. If the original three chapters are any indication though, it seems like we’ll get our money’s worth.

As for Chapter 4, it is essentially ’more of the same’ but tells the ongoing story from a few different points of view than you see in the main game. It introduces you to a few new characters who are quite fun to play, as they specialize in inflicting random but useful buffs on your party or nerfing the enemy. It also offers some interesting challenges that force you to think outside the box, mostly because your party members are not the typical well rounded RPG group and not all the usual roles are covered. My net play-time for this chapter was just over 3 hours, but that includes about half an hour of having to level up my characters so I’m going to put that at about two and a half hours of ’real’ play time. Not bad for three bucks! This add-on chapter comes highly recommended and should be played after completing the main game.