With Final Fantasy IV: After Years on WiiWare adding new chapters lately, this seems like a good time to look at the game that started it all... or rather, its DS remake that comes nearly two decades later. Final Fantasy IV was one of the earliest RPGs for the then cutting edge Super Nintendo, telling a high-fantasy story of swords and spells, a battle between good and evil. There is one big twist however; the main character is a reluctant villain who wants to make amends to those he has hurt, and the themes of supportive friendship and redemption play a major part of the story.

Gameplay is fairly typical for a 1990’s RPG; you’re given a cast of characters with various talents, and move them through a vast world to meet new people, fight monsters, and otherwise advance a plot that starts simple but eventually turns into an epic of its own. The controls are simple, as you simply pick from various commands ("Fight" with a melee weapon, "Magic" for various spells, etc.) and pick the target you want to use them on. Each character has their own unique skills, and figuring out how they work together with others is a major part of the strategy. In an interesting addition for this remake however, you can gain various ’Augments’ throughout the story, which enable characters to dabble in skills and abilities their friends have. Some of the best Augments are even obtained by pretending you never played the Super Nintendo version back in the 90s, with rewards for giving due attention even to characters you know will be leaving your party soon.

The biggest, most obvious change however is the graphics. Gone are the old 2D sprites, replaced with surprisingly well animated 3D (for the DS, anyway) that do a lot to impress on you just what sort of fantastic locations the characters are in. These same graphics tend to show character emotion a lot better, making it easier to ’feel’ certain scenes that didn’t quite work right in the original game. The sound on the other hand is a mix of old and new, containing some classic tracks alongside modern remixes of them. Even better, key points in the story are given full voice overs by mostly good actors, and the few who do poorly at least had the courtesy to be "so bad they’re good." Along with a whole new translation of the plot freed from the overly restrictive policies of the Super Nintendo era, this remake is easily the best one at immersing players in the story.