The game starts with the introduction of Cecil, a dark knight. He is in command of the Red Wings, an elite force of airships from the kingdom of Baron. Their mission is to take control of the four elemental crystals from around the world. The king wants to control them because he says that the nations with the crystals will use them against Baron. Cecil questions the king about why he is killing innocent people to steal the crystals, and the king then immediately questions his loyalty and sends him out on a mission to the villiage of Mist. Upon arriving there, a Bomb Ring activates, surprising Cecil, and killnig everyone in the village except a little girl named Rydia. At this point Cecil is furious at the king for using him to destroy the village and vows to stop Baron at all costs. With his companions Kain and Rydia, they set out to stop his former homeland from devastating other kingdoms for the crystals.

The story of Final Fantasy IV is excellent, with many twists and turns as you play through the game. Your party changes constantly, characters come and go for different reasons, and you do not have control of who you have in your party through pretty much the entire game. The battle system is a simple, traditional turn based system, and for those of you who have played any of the other Final Fantasy games, you already know what this means. There is a white bar at the bottom of the screen that slowly fills up, when it reaches full, that character’s turn has come. During the his or her turn, a menu opens up and you choose what the he or she does. It can be anything from a basic attack to casting magic, or using a different ability. Each character has their advantages and weaknesses; for example, Rydia is a summoner who can call forth different monsters and she can also cast both black and white magic spells. Cecil, on the other hand, is a dark knight with no magic capabilities, but he does however have a number of attacks and offensive abilities.

Final Fantasy IV makes a smooth transition to the Game Boy Advance. The music and sound effects in particular are slightly worse than the original. While the score is the same, if you listen closely, it almost sounds as if you are listening to AM radio. Also, there are a few bugs in the transition. During the fights occasionally a character gets to go without having the time bar fill up. Usually when that happens, they go two times without anyone else getting a turn. There are also a couple of boss fights that have special conditions. For example, there is a boss fight where the enemy puts a cape in front of himself for protection. At this point in the game only one type of attack is supposed to do damage and take him out of it, however, while attacking, I was able to still do damage through his defense.

Even with these small bugs, the game still does a fantastic job of character development, and story-telling, and the musical score is still one of the best in Final Fantasy history. I still catch myself humming the boss music, and other themes to the game from time to time. Graphically it looks exactly the same as the first release, with one minor difference. The spell effects are animated slightly slower. I cannot tell if that is intentional or if it is actual slowdown in the game.

Armed with the updated translation, and new abilities that we did not get in the original release, Final Fantasy IV is definitely a classic RPG worth picking up and playing through again or for the first time. This particular Final Fantasy is one of my favorites, and I plan on playing through it many times over in the future. Final Fantasy IV Advance even outshines the PS one version of the game found in the Final Fantasy Anthologies collection, for the simple reason of no load times! Bottom line, if you are a fan of the genre, this game is one for your collection.