Review by: James Fudge

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," King Henry IV lamented in the famous Shakespeare play that bears his name, but how much more so is the burden for heroes that are thrust into the roles of saviors of a world? In Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light, that weight is as great as Sisyphus's boulder dilemma. Like a teenage girl that "never asked to be born," this burden is mostly unwanted, thrust upon the heroes at the behest of a king whose days are about to be numbered.

The game opens with four heroes coming together to save the world, but the first quest is standard RPG trope: rescue the princess for the king and bring her home in one piece. The problem is she has been kidnapped by a nasty witch, whose swan song is a doozey. After you rescue the haughty princess and return home, your merry band realizes that the witch has put a nasty curse on your hometown. This is where 4 Heroes really begins and it is not your standard Final Fantasy RPG in many ways.

The weight of the world is on these saviors of the world from the very beginning; the evils of the wilderness impede their progress and assail them by the minute, mystical crystals whisper secrets and demand more actions, and every town seems to have a problem that you have to solve. Final Fantasy has its fair share of NPCs standing around, looking for a handout or a hand-up, and while you expect this sort of behavior from the shallow denizens of a world in trouble, it is still as irritating as it was in Final Fantasy I.

4 Heroes retains many of the core devices you'd expect to find in a hand-held Final Fantasy game: overland and under-land exploration, a variety of familiar job classes, minimalist story-telling, (frequent) random battles, boss battles and a storyline that revolves around powerful crystal artifacts. Some might call the battles in 4 Heroes repetitive, but saying that shows a real lack of understanding about what the Final Fantasy series is all about. The game is no more repetitive than killing thousands of zombies in Left 4 Dead, fighting off swarms of Locusts in Gears of War, or exploring the overland in a Dragon Quest game. This is how Final Fantasy games are played and if you are not used to that part of the game, then you probably should go read a book.

There are some changes in 4 Heroes that dramatically change the game, and players’ possible perception of its worth. The most dramatic is how combat plays out. The battles continue to be turn-based, with each hero taking turns whacking away at monsters in front and back positions using skills, spells and basic attacks. Unlike previous Final Fantasy games, players cannot control how these potions are used. In other words, you may want to cast fireball on the monster in the back row, but you do not get the option to choose where the attack lands. Likewise, defensive and curative efforts meant for your party are out of your hands as well. The game handles all of this for you. While this hands-off approach to combat is irritating at first blush, it does require that players think more strategically when deciding what to do in the game. Unfortunately, this may cause players to play more defensively. For example, players might heal more often than they should for fear of dying inadvertently because of the game's way of prioritizing who is healed and when. Ultimately players will get used to this c'est la vie style of gameplay, and loosen up.

The other dramatic change is the way the jobs (classes) are handled. Instead of cycling through a list or going through a series of quests that might involve a rat rail, 4 Heroes uses "crowns." As players take on and defeat the game's many bosses, they will earn crowns that serve as the job classes in the game. Now players put this headgear on to become an Adventurer, a Black Mage or a White Mage. There are crowns in the game and each gives a handful of special skills that players can use to deal with the special challenges that await them. The way these job classes are evolved has also changed; in previous games players would have to spend a lot of time leveling each class up to unlock other skills and gain stat bonuses (intelligence, strength, etc.). In 4 Heroes crowns are enhanced with gems that you earn simply by killing monsters. As players insert these gems into these different crowns, they unlock new abilities and bonuses.

Finally, the way 4 Heroes tells the story is interesting, even if frustrating at times; the four heroes in the game often strike out on their adventures, new characters come and go, and everyone comes together at key points stronger, wiser, and ready to take on the overarching problems in the world. While this sometimes makes the game feel a little schizophrenic, it serves as a decent way to tell multiple stories from different perspectives. These heroes are not just extra heads on a heroic hydra that wanders around the wilderness looking for trouble. Each has a role to play in the world, solo and as a group. The drawback to this is that players will feel like they are starting over multiple times. This is particularly true in the early part of the game when the story shifts from one adventure to another. The new focus of the story tends to be ill equipped, lacking in level and unprepared for the harshness of the world.

All things considered, this is a Final Fantasy game that expects you to pray at the altar of grind. 4 Heroes embraces the goddess of grind unapologetically, but throws in enough changes to the system to create something that’s worth experiencing.