Hands on Final Fantasy IV, Antlion nonsense begins

I’m sitting down to play the Final Fantasy IV demo and I’m expecting to play some part of the game I know. Maybe walking through the Cave of Mist since that’s at the very beginning of the game. The demo begins with Dark Knight Cecil and Kain making their way out of Baron castle. They meet in the center and talk. That’s right talk. Final Fantasy IV has voice acting! When they exit the castle Baron’s army greets them on their journey and all of the sudden you’re grouped with an impossible party: Dark Knight Cecil, Kain, child Rydia, Cid and Rosa.

The goal is still to get to the Mist Cave, but when you get there Gilbert (Edward) is on his last breath. He dies at the cave warning you about the Antlion and he gives you an item to pass on his song ability to any character. Cecil seemed like the strangest choice to use song magic so I equipped it on him and assigned another blank slot for potions. You can equip any item as a command, which allows you to instantly use a phoenix down instead of scrounging around the item menu to find one. Even though you can mix/match abilities each character is still limited to five slots for skills or quick items. Rosa was filled with her abilities Pray, Aim, White Magic, Fight and Item. Child Rydia was the same way.

In battle some of the classic commands work quite differently. When you use “Darkness” Cecil does not shoot a wave of energy. Instead he switches his stance and purple aura surrounds him. When this is activated Cecil gives much more damage with the attack command, but he loses life since he is using the skill. Cid’s “peep” skill hits all the enemies on screen instead of making it a free version of Libra. Once you use this you can glance at the bottom screen to reference weaknesses.

Rydia has all new summon animations to check out and they look fantastic. Ifrit appears from a river of lava and he crushes a rock from the sky in his Hellfire attack. Ramuh summons bolts of lightning by hitting his staff to the ground. Shiva appears from an exploding boulder of ice, sitting on a throne, before she calls an ice storm to rain on the enemies. Shiva wins the award for coolest summon if you don’t count the pre-rendered CG sequence where adult Rydia calls the Mist Dragon. When Rydia calls a monster there is a wait period between choosing it from the menu and her action. Final Fantasy IV has a new way of representing this. On the bottom screen there is a yellow ATB bar and when it fills up you can act. Once you initiate a summon or cast a spell, a red meter fills up on top of the yellow bar. When the red meter fills up the action happens. 

At the end of the dungeon the Antlion pops up. When it attacks the two mandibles pop out of the ground and strike your characters. I thought this was really neat considering how in the other Final Fantasy games characters don’t really “hit” each other. They stand on their side of the screen and swing at the air. The Antlion was weak against ice so a few hits of Shiva finished it off quickly.

I know Final Fantasy IV has been remade/ported many times, but this is the biggest overhaul it has ever had. Fans of Cecil's story are going to absolutely love Final Fantasy IV on the DS… even if they have a shelf with the Playstation 1, Wonderswan and GBA remakes.