Japanese release day highlights: 11.30.06

Cautiously optimistic about FF6A... one one hand, the original was probably the best in the series (and easily the best anything from the 16-bit era). On the other hand, FF4A was buthcered, and I'm afraid that 6 got the same treatment.

Powerstone is one of the best multiplayer games ever, god I miss my Dreamcast, it died last year :( .

Where's the PS3 games?
I need something else to play after beating FoM in 2 days!

WTF do you mean ff4a was butchered. Do you prefer the engrish easy version that was FFII on SNES? FF4A is the closest we have to the original japanese.

Localization didn't get good until the PS2 era of games (at least from Square). I watched the FF7 recap on advent children (with the subtitles, obviously) and its shocking just how badly translated FF7 originally was.

You sound a bit like the people who were bitching about the re-localization of Akira for the special edition awhile back. Nevermind that the original localization was a total bastardization of the film.

I see Crono doesn't remember anything from 5 years ago. Otherwise, he'd remember Final Fantasy Chronicles for the first Playstation, which contained the full version of FF4 with a solid updated translation. Now that is the pinnacle of the FF4 experience in the United States.

But FF4 Advance? Oh, where to begin on where they screwed up there.

First off, the clock speed is way too slow. If you compare the clock speed for the enemies in FF4A to even the original SNES release, you'll see that the enemies move at the speed of molasses. Certain abilities (like Kain's Jump attack) do as well, but the ones you'll use most often (Attack, Black Magic, White Magic, and Summons) move just as fast. The result is that you easily move and act twice as fast in the GBA version. It doesn't matter if enemies are no longer dummied down when you get no less than two times the number of actions than you used to.

And that's not even getting into the timing bug. Frequently, a character will be allowed to act again immediately after completing their attack, without having to wait for your action bar to refill. It's like the game decided the clock speed issue wasn't bad enough, so it throws even more attacks your way.

Finally, the extra weapons... you realize it's completely possible to use the new weapons to defeat the final boss in two hits? (Kain's weapon has the ability to reduce any enemy, even Zeromus, to single digits, making the next hit instantly fatal.) I don't care if it is an extra, optional dungeon that gives you this. It's just plain wrong.

If you want a great version of FF4, fire up the PlayStation and play FF Chronicles. The GBA version is an shadow of the real game.

Didn't many of those bugs get fixed in the FF4A European version? I've heard that we Americans got screwed on that one (same as the international versions, bleh). Thankfully, the GBA is region-free, so US residents still get the choice.

That said, the Playstation re-releases were pretty awesome, especially if you value having the hard-core mode and fidelity to the originals.

I did notice the immediate action bug, and I haven't beaten FF4A yet, but the translation itself seems true enough from what I remember of FF Chronicles. I couldn't play it on Chronicles though, due to the playstation related garbage on it, like the menu load times (worse with chrono trigger).

In any case, I'm waiting for it to get the FFIII treatment. Booyah!

Goddamn do I love me some Power Stone. I wish they would make more of those games.

crono141 you've obviously NOT played the GBA port.

I was 15 hours in when I tossed the towel and put the game back in its cardboard box... which it will NEVER leave again. Suffered long enough, and the infinitely superior FF3DS had just gotten released.

WORST. PORT. EVER.

I'm not aware of any fixes done to the European version of FF4A... but it might be worth it if they're there.

As for the FF Chronicles version... eh, I can deal with load times, if everything else is spot-on. Which both CT and FF4 had going for them. I'm not terribly fond of load times, but it's only when they surpass 20 seconds that I get antsy.

actually, super robot taisen xo IS a remake... It's just an "enhanced" port of a gamecube game.