The 4 heroes of angst

It’s a bit different I have to say. The 4 Heroes of light feels like an older game, most comparable with Final Fantasy III. Four youths come together, and discover that they are the four heroes of light destined to fight evil. However, instead of sticking together throughout the game, the heroes instantly split up. Not by some natural disaster, but by personal differences. They’re always leaving each other behind and going off on their own. Which fits in with the story of “blossoming friendship and bonds of trust”.

Their mood also comes through in the battle system. As you fight, depending on how the battles going, your team will either feel psyched up, or depressed. Psyched up characters get a stat boost, and attack in tandem with other characters in a good mood to pull of powerful combo attacks. However, depressed characters will get a stat reduction, and will stay like that for a while. Making it hard for you to win unless you fight better.

The battle system is different to other Final Fantasy’s. Each turn, you get one action point (AP) Which is used to attack. Attacks, items and basic abilities cost one AP to use, while magic can cost two. You can also use boost where you spend a turn doing nothing, but gain more AP. The old job system has also received a makeover in the form of crowns. Wearing different crowns gives you access to different abilities and traits. Black and white mages will find have reduced AP cost’s for their magic’s, while bards can sing stat boosting songs. Each crown can be upgraded 3 times with use of gems.

Gems are dropped after every battle. However, they are also your main source of income, as monsters don’t drop gil. So you have to decide whether getting better equipment or more abilities is the priority.

A big issue is the item system. You only get 15 item slots per character. 4 of these slots will be taken up with equipment, and then more will be taken up with spell books. Leaving very little room for potions or phoenix downs. There is a storage system, but you can only access this in towns, and there’s no way of sending things there out in the open, so if your hunting for items, you have to leave space, making things very restricted.

This however adds some challenge to the game.  Most standard foes are tough to beat unless you have the right equipment, and the elemental system is more pronounced than in other games. Knowing where you’re going and what you’re about to fight is very important, and you may die the first time because you didn’t have the right elemental protection.

Overall, the game is great. The graphical style (dubbed “storybook” style) has great charm and fits nicely on the DS’s graphical system. The game never gets too tedious and has enough to keep people going for a while. Get this if you enjoy the side Final Fantasy games.