Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 9 - Final Fantasy IV

(+) Yeah! (+)

Outer Wilds came first by a lot. Todays game is one that should get some interesting votes and discussion if past times it came up are any indication, Final Fantasy IV. How would you rate the story on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest?
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Previous Results:
Outer Wilds - 9.85 (17 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.58 (12 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.55 (21 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.3 (43 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.09 (32 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.61 (14 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.43 (22 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.45 (10 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name> <rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome.

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1
Absolute dogshit
One of the worst stories in a video game I have ever seen
Characters sacrifice themselves for no reason and then come back for no reason
Plot twists coming from the ass of the writers
Suddenly your best friend betrays you because he is being controlled by the big bad. But then turns out the big bad is controlled by a even bigger bad...from the moon
Like what the fuck

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5

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7/10

Don't really have much to say about this one.
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6

6. Would rank several FF stories higher.
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2/10

There are extremely few RPGs Ive played with stories worse than FF4. I know it gets credited as one of the first RPGs actually trying to develop a cast of characters and whatnot, but its just fucking terrible

8

I really like the story of FFIV. It has a very classic feel to it. Cliche yes but it is the game that put JRPGs story on the map and the father to all the tropes for the better.

7/10

I treat the plot with kid gloves a bit due to its historical context. it's generic low fantasy and the twists and sacrifices are proto-Joss-Whedon-esque, but at its time it was better than average.

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6/10

It was fine for the time, and I don't feel like punishing it for being released during a time when gaming stories were primitive.

All the fake sacrifices and Kain's revolving door between face/heel were pretty annoying though.

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Outer Wilds: 10
Metal Gear Solid 2: 8.5
Fallout 4: 6
Final Fantasy IV: 7

FF4 is the definitive JRPG narrative codifier, meaning it's equally important and archaic. I think 7/10 means an effective if not exceptional narrative to me, and FF4 is pretty much my dividing line between good and okay.

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Super solid for its time, and still paced really well.

7

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Lightning Strikes posted...

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them

Oh cool
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8

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4

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6

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I'm not giving this one a pass because it was from the 90s, people have been telling stories for as long as we've had language. And most of them are better than this. 4/10

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4

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Final Fantasy X = 9
Uncharted 1 = 7

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Uncharted: Drake's Fortune - 6/10
Final Fantasy IV - 6/10

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7
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7 sounds right, as others have said it's paced well and they manage to combine gameplay and narrative very nicely in a way that few others in the genre do (I'm thinking of Cecil coming up that mountain of undead monsters and then on the way back down being super effective against them all, or Tellah not having the MP for Meteor etc). There's also some classic scenes that absolutely deserve credit (like Rydia's return), and most of the cast is affable. The revolving party also works well and keeps things fresh.

That said,

Leonhart4 posted...

All the fake sacrifices and Kain's revolving door between face/heel were pretty annoying though.

I agree with this 100%.

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5

It's not exactly that FFIV deserves slack because it's old. It's a transitional game between D&D-style RPG quests, like the first Final Fantasy, whose weird time-travel twists made an otherwise generic fantasy story fun to discover for a player, and the more character-driven storytelling that would go on to become near-universal to RPGs. FFIV's own twists would be unacceptable in a more traditional medium because they're so whacky and lack any kind of foreshadowing, but for a video game they do kind of serve to create an exciting adventure. I think the bigger problem with the game is that it just lacks strong characterization and only has a handful of memorable moments in a 20-30 hour narrative. Cecil confronting his dark side, Rydia's return, and arguably Tellah vs. Golbez are strong scenes, but the characters are one-dimensional and the plot is generic when it's not being ridiculous. The game is bridging two different approaches to storytelling but it's only successful at the first one.

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Oh I am not sure what the rules for nominations are
Can I nominate more than one game in a day? well whatever i'll just nominate one for one

Starcraft II

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Brayze_II posted...

I'm not giving this one a pass because it was from the 90s, people have been telling stories for as long as we've had language. And most of them are better than this. 4/10

I'm sticking to comparing VG stories against each other because of the inherent limitations. But I agree that most would get much lower scores if I didn't.

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Brayze_II posted...

I'm not giving this one a pass because it was from the 90s, people have been telling stories for as long as we've had language. And most of them are better than this.

I mean, yeah, but stories haven't had to work within the confines of the gaming medium until then, and that kinda does matter

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5

Other people have basically summed up my thoughts in more detail. Groundbreaking game story for its time, nothing special compared to modern games or other fantasy stories, kind of annoying but still enough of a fun time in a pulpy way. No strong feelings one way or the other.

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FFIV may have been the largest in scope then but other games told stories better, Link to the Past for instance even though the story is not as ambitious the storytelling is much better.

Anyway, FFIV has a lot of good and bad. I dont think age or the medium at the time should be held against it because we have seen this story get told again with better production values and an improved script multiple times yet the issues are the same. There is no saving that ending, which here should be taken to mean everything from the first utterance of the term lunar whale. However, Cecils story is quite compelling and there are real highpoints, so I will give it a 5.

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4

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I feel like my problem with "classics" video games are mostly because I played them like 10-15 years after they came out as I never had a SNES
So while most players played FFIV at the years 1992-1995 I played it only after it came out for the GBA in 2005
And this is 3 years after I played and loved the hell out of Golden Sun and The Lost Age, so my standards for a story in RPG were kinda higher than people had in 1992

But I also loved FFVI story when I first played it on the GBA so I dunno

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Anybody else?

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