The Life Lessons of 'Final Fantasy IV'
…kill your inner narcissist, stop overthinking, and always carry a harp
I was four when Final Fantasy IV made its way to the Super Nintendo in 1991 —released in North America as Final Fantasy II because the true second and third installments had not yet been released outside of Japan. I was a little young to understand this sort of sprawling, dynamic fantasy world, even as I would secretly load my older brother’s save files and run around Castle Baron because I thought the music ruled --later life update, it still rules— and that Kain, the dragoon knight, looked fucking awesome.
As it turns out, Final Fantasy IV has plenty of life lessons to teach, regardless of your age, if only you are willing to look a bit below the surface. And by “look a bit below the surface,” I mean “let’s critically analyze a bunch of subtext that probably isn’t actually there, but sounds fancy.”
1. You Are Not the Center of the Universe
The needs of the protagonist being raised above the needs of everyone else in the story is a common practice in all forms of media, but sometimes RPGs are especially guilty of this behavior. Secondary stories aren't totally ignored, but side characters often seem too ready to drop what they are doing, follow some grand quest, and put their own desires to bed with little resistance: "Why yes, Mr. Protagonist, I would love to join your quest to save our princess. Let me just set this lifelong career commitment I’ve been working on for the last forty years over here in the garbage and we’ll get going!”
Final Fantasy IV undermines that storytelling practice. While there is unquestionably a primary, world-saving quest at the heart of the game, the playable party changes constantly. Whether it’s Kain’s betrayals and reconciliations, Palom and Porom’s petrification, Rydia’s journey to the Land of Summons, or any number of others, party members come and go as they please. Where many Japanese role-playing games continually add to the party as a game progresses, Final Fantasy IV pulls pieces in and out, creating a dynamic community of characters armed with strange conglomerates of abilities and a pretty substantial helping of tragedy.
This sounds an awful lot like life. And while I can’t say that I have lost any of my friends to sacrificial petrification, or because they left to go to a land of mythical monsters, I have lost loved ones to illness, been betrayed, and lost friends to their own life adventures that take them to galaxies far, far away.
That Final Fantasy IV was able to mirror this principle way back in the gaming world of 1991 is kind of astounding, especially when held up against the previous entries in the series. According to Takashi Tokita, game designer and scenario writer for Final Fantasy IV, this change was at least somewhat intentional:
"FFI was a system-focused game, while FFII was story driven with a focus on character growth, and FFIII was about enjoying all the various jobs available to you. In response to that, with FFIV we tried to figure out how best to use the job and battle system with the story and characters we had created...I think each character having their own job that we were already very familiar with allowed us to bring all these different elements together well. Having jobs already established for each character gave us the direction needed to bestow each of them their own role in the story."
2. You Have to Fight with What You Have
Overanalysis synthesizes semi-interesting ideas sometimes, but the usefulness of those ideas is more scattershot. The root of such overanalysis often stems from the fear of never feeling fully prepared for whatever situation you’re heading into. So you prepare. And then prepare some more. Paralysis by analysis.
Enter Edward Chris von Muir, the heir to the throne of Damcyan. But like so many of those burdened by the weight of crown and country before him, he wants little to do with ruling, preferring music and poetry to politics and war. He’s a lover, not a fighter, and because of that, he’s cautious to the point of cowardly.
Though he is able to muster courage when his love interest, Anna, is killed, and his castle of Damcyan destroyed by Golbez and the Red Wings (that probably needs to be a band name), he doesn’t really change. Does he train for years? Nope. Does he overanalyze? Nope. He just trots off to battle with a harp and weapons that miss about three-fourths of the time because he evidently has no idea how to use them.
3. Sometimes You're Most Valuable When You’re Not in the Fray
Final Fantasy IV teaches us that sometimes things work out better if we’re just not around once in a while. The battles in Final Fantasy IV are fast, largely due to it being the first game in the series to use the Active Time Battle (ATB) system. The basis of the system is that each character has a gauge and once that gauge is filled, they are able to perform an action. What's different here than in previous games is that time continues to tick away as you’re choosing your actions, resulting in enemies' gauges filling and refilling as you prattle away. This added layer of strategy requires the player to be quick, in addition to being thoughtful with their choice of actions.
As each character has a specific class, each has at least one unique ability. Kain, the dragoon knight, has what has become a stereotypical ability for his class across the series: Jump. This ability allows him to leap off the screen and after a short while come down and land on the target.
Though the ability itself is straightforward, one of the great secondary uses of it is to time it just right (or get lucky) so that when a particularly powerful enemy is about to decimate the party with some terrible calamity —like Bahamut and his “Nuke/Mega-Flare” ability, for instance— you execute the Jump ability, get Kain into the air, and thus make him invulnerable to said calamity. So, the next time you’re in such a (hopefully figurative) situation, maybe take a minute to take a step back. It might be the difference between victory and a (hopefully figurative) nuclear holocaust.
4. Your Biggest Enemy in Your Quest to Change is You
Once it is revealed by the Elder in Mysidia that Cecil must relinquish his Dark Knight powers and become a Paladin, Cecil is sent to Mount Ordeals. At the top of this mountain, he must literally face himself. Instead of duking it out with your doppelganger, the way to prove your worth as a Paladin is to accept your past darkness and not raise your sword against it. This is another way of saying you should use the “defend” option every turn instead of attacking in order to win.
Unlike some of the other above observations, this lesson might be one the developers actually intended. This sequence is about understanding that you can’t change the past and as you move forward, you have to be able to accept that past by leaving it be.
5. The People in Your Life Don’t Keep Getting Better
The aforementioned party member changes are more than just a lesson in anti-narcissism; they illustrate that just because your group of companions changes, it doesn’t mean your collective gets universally better. Tokita mentioned this practice as a means of story development in the same interview:
“We thought it might be interesting story-wise if the party members changed really flexibly, such as the excitement of Rydia suddenly joining in, or the loneliness you feel when Cecil is by himself. Those elements add so much to the game’s liveliness and pacing.”
Though the game does set you up with arguably the best party at the end (Cecil, Kain, Rosa, Rydia, Edge), there are plenty of moments where the party feels lacking and hamstrung. The party in the Tower of Zot (Cecil, Tellah, Yang, Cid) feels short on abilities, whereas in other places, the party, as Tokita mentioned, feels lonely.
Which is why the size of the party is perhaps more noticeable than the strength. When you have five characters, the choices feel endless; you have so many tools in your toolbox. But in other moments it’s just Cecil, or Cecil, Palom, and Porom; or Cecil and Kain. The choices are limited. The dynamics of how you operate as a player change with who is or isn’t there with you.
Sounds like life to me.
Originally published at Collider (September, 2021)