Let's Play Final Fantasy 4! Again!
Yes I did FF4GBA and Beyond Babil and just a shitton of noncompetitive Free Enterprise and god dammit I'm doing Final Fantasy 4 again.

Of course, it's dual-screen, which makes for some huge images (that's accounting for the whitespace in the middle meant to simulate the distance between the two screens on a physical DS). So unless it's necessary I'll be cropping out one or the other and just showing a smaller window of relevant information.

But like in the FFT Randomizer LP, I'm gonna rush through and skip the actual plot. I've done this game before, I don't need to retreat the script, do I? Cecil Harvey is commander of the Red Wings, the airship fleet of the mighty nation of Baron. They just broke into the nation of Mysidia, murdered a bunch of dudes, and stole their Crystal of Water. They're on their way back home when... Monsters!
What's Different: Cecil doesn't instantly end two fights with a Red Fang and Blue Fang. You actually get to control him, and there's only one fight.

There's a nice end-of-battle posing screen that gives a good idea of how much money you've got (Cecil is broke) and how much more you need to fight to gain a level.

So Cecil heads back home, turns over the Water Crystal, and for having the nerve of asking "Hey, are we the bad guys?" gets demoted and given a job as a delivery boy. His buddy Kain comes with him.
What's Different: The translation! The original FF2/FF4SNES had an incomprehensible translation in places. FF4GBA cleaned it up significantly. FF4DS has the embellished, flowery prose you may have seen in the Ivalice series games. There's voice acting, too. A generation of people who pronounced the protagonist's name as "SEE-sil" balked at the VAs always calling him by the British-er "SESS-il".

What's New: There's a minimap! It is helpful most of the time because the game's graphic upgrade means less stuff fits onto the screen. You often can't tell where you're going without looking at the map.

A half-joke, half-retained. One of the translators of FF4GBA was an enthusiastic member of the Something Awful community, and translated this line "You and your goons busted up my airships something awful!"



Namingway has an identity crisis when he realizes that Cecil's name reverts, no matter what he tries to change it to. There's voice acting, and the VAs didn't record for the eventuality of GAY420GAY plaintively calling for COOLRANCH. Rather than refer to Cecil as the Star Player for the Zanarkand Abes the entire game, they just don't let you name him.
Anyway Cecil goes to his room and mopes and doesn't smooch Rosa because he's so sad. Then the next morning he leaves.