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| Kimberley Wallace |
It's your new DS Final Fantasy Fix!
06.17.10 - 6:58 PM
I'm going to start off this impression with a fun little tidbit: Final Fantasy: The 4 Heores of Light is the first Final Fantasy designed from the ground up for the Nintendo DS. Due to hit shelves on October 5th, the game has been completely streamlined to appeal to a wide variety of gamers. Honestly, who wants to spend their time always crunching numbers? The 4 Heroes of Light is more focused on providing you something that you can just pick and up and play - this is nice considering it's a DS title. The story of the game focuses on a young boy on his fourteenth birthday. He's having his coming of age ceremony to celebrate the occassion and presenting himself to the king. Let's just say for now, without spoiling too much, the ceremony doesn't go according to plan. Instead of simply getting a pat on the back and a congratulations for reaching your fourteenth birthday, you're recruited for a special quest to help the king.
Once you're sent on your quest, you find yourself thrust into fighting monsters. As far as this combat goes, Square Enix has created an easy to grasp battle system revolving around Action Points (AP). There's no longer any MP, TP, SP, etc. All you are concerned with focusing your attention on is AP, which you have a maximum of five at any given time. During combat, players receive one AP every turn, which is the number of AP used for a standard attack. There's also a boost mechanic that replaces the defend option, so players can earn additional AP while they boost, but they won't take an action on that turn. The game has also eliminated classes and replaced them with crowns. You'll literally wear many hats – or should I say crowns – in this game. Each crown you can wear has its own perk and functions almost like a job system. You can enhance these crowns by putting gems in them, which you obtain by slaying monsters. Each crown has a starting ability and additional unique abilities you can unlock as you wear it and imbue it with gems. Each character can only have six abilities assigned to them at any given time, but depending on the crown you wear it will influence these abilities in various ways. You will either get better stats or new abilities unlocked with your crowns. You can also level crowns up to three times, giving you additional abilities or perks.
This game is no doubt meant to be a fun multiplayer experience, as well. You can play local multiplayer with up to four people, where you have one host and the rest of the players as guests. The nice part of multiplayer is that if say a gem drops, the host isn't the only one who gets it, the entire party will have it in their inventory. With the exception of story progress, all guests will also keep their other progress in the game. The 4 Heroes of Light also features a day and night cycle, and similar to most games with this cycle, enemies are more difficult at night. Based on what I've seen, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light looks like it will provide a thrilling experience for not only hardcore fans, but also to those new to the series. Fans can make their own opinions of the title when it releases on October 5th.
