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Scott P says:

First Impressions – Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light is the most recent installment into the Final Fantasy handheld market. While it’s not a full fledge sequel to a numbered Final Fantasy game, it still contains a lot of the little nuances that we have all come to love from the series. Does this game deliver a profound handheld experience on the Nintendo DS or is the cutesy art more at home with a younger crowd? Read on to find out how I felt after a couple hours with the game.The first thing you may notice when looking at the gameplay for Final Fantasy: Four Heroes of Light (FF4H from here on out) is that the artwork is very…different. Some may not like it, I know I didn’t when I first saw it. I thought it looked a little childish. Don’t be put off by it though. For starters, it grows on you and you will learn to appreciate the time and effort the artists no doubt put into making the art. Secondly, it’s deceiving. You would think a game with graphics like this would be easy or child friendly. Wow, this couldn’t be further from the truth. FF4H is one of the toughest handheld games I have played in a wild. It’s not because the game is unfair, it’s just old school. If you played Final Fantasy games back in the NES days and Super NES days, you’ll know that something exists called “grinding.” Grinding is the art of killing enemy after enemy with no direction only to gain levels. This is something you absolutely must do in this game and do it a lot you will.The game begins with no tutorial. You wake up in your house as a 14 year old boy name Brandt (you can change the name) and are instructed to go to the castle to present yourself to the king, since today is your birthday and it’s the day you become a man in the Kingdom’s eyes. After making your way to the castle, you find out the princess was stolen by a witch and you much track her down and rescue her. With a sword and a smile, you set off to her lair to reclaim the princess for the King. And with that, the story begins. You are given a general direction to go and the lair isn’t hard to find, but after your first fight you’ll realize the game doesn’t F’ around.The fights are tough and require you to constantly have a fresh supply of potions. Unlike in previous games though you can only carry 15 items on any character at any given time. With 4 max controllable characters, each with their own set of armor that counts as a spot, a weapon, accessory, and non stackable items…this becomes a bit of a meta-game. You are going to constantly be checking your inventory to make sure you only have the bare necessities for survival. You can drop off extra items at a range of “shops” across the land that hold your excess items. Think of these as ATMs for your items.Fights are actually handled a little different as well in FF4H. Instead of mana, you are given 5 AP orbs. You begin with 1 filled in the beginning of the game and each turn you take awards you one more. Basic attacks use up 1 AP orb while magic usually takes 2. If you only have one orb and want to use magic, you can use the boost option which will give you an extra AP (along with the AP you get from the end of a turn) to give you 3 for the next turn. It sounds a lot more confusing than it is so if you are getting hung up on this don’t. It’s no biggie. The next way it’s different is that you can’t pick who to fight. You hit attack and the computer automatically picks an enemy to attack. It’s a little odd that this happens but it speeds things up a bit and the computer usually does a good job of prioritizing enemies. This really helps with grinding too since you can just keep spamming attack and not worry about who to hit…the game will do that for you. The system is new, but it’s not bad. It just takes a little time to get used to it.One of the main new additions to the game is the way the game handles jobs. Instead of picking a class (like a thief, mage, etc.) you pick hats that you acquire over the course of the game. You begin with no hats but after defeating the witch you get your first. Each hat grants powers and stat benefits and can be upgraded using gems you find off of enemies. Think of the hats as a way to change your party on the go without having to go back to a town. You always have the hats on you and switching is as easy as going into a menu. As you upgrade, new abilities become available, but they aren’t shared with other members. Each hat for each person must be upgraded separately. From what I can see, the system works fine with the non transferable upgrades being the only issue I have. But, it makes sense though. The person who is your white mage will probably also be your other magic classes in order to keep the equipment with one magic user. Switching to the warrior class doesn’t make much sense since they don’t have the weapons or armor.The game is old school in style and technique and…