OH HAI Podcast Listeners and welcome back to the Giraffe Feels Podcast. If you have not heard our first three episodes yet, please check them out. They were about Castlevania III, Mega Man 2, a mix of my favorite overworld themes and an episode about how I created gaming narratives as a child. Please get in touch if you like the podcast or have ideas or comments. Social media coordinates can be found at the end of the episode. Listeners can also email the podcast at giraffexofeels@gmail.com Also we are now on iTunes!, Stitcher, and Google Play. There should be a link in the show notes if you want to subscribe. Please rate the podcast and give it a review too. 

This episode is about Final Fantasy 4. Final Fantasy 4 may, perhaps, be my favorite video game of all time. It is probably also my favorite soundtrack. I have gone through this game a number of times and always found it be just as good as I remember. Final Fantasy 4 is also part of my memory of y2k for reasons both awesome and sad. 

I recently did a playthrough which delayed the release of this game. I put so much of my free time into wrapping up the game that I kind of forgot to prep an episode! Um, sorry. The transition from the good, but dull, first Final Fantasy game in America was stunning. Final Fantasy 4 had a better storyline, action, and music than pretty much anything I played before it. This was a real gamechanger for my interest in RPGs moving forward and deeply influenced my personal tastes. Looking back at it now, I see a lot of paraleels between the plot of this game and a lot of my youthful views about morality and what makes a good story. 

Final Fantasy 4 came out in late 1991. I rented it at some point the next spring or maybe early in the summer 1992 and actually blew through a lot of it. I was very surprised by how quickly I could move through the game and beat it after going back to the store two more times during the next week to renew it. I'm sure I stopped at some point to grind, but I just remember feeling pretty confident through most of it with the help of a friend. When I got to college, I got way into retro gaming. The early days of eBay made it very easy to score a ton of NES, SNES, and Genesis games for pennies. In the fall of 1999 I was playing through Final Fantasy 4 at night for a few hours before going to bed. By the time the holidays came, I was pretty close to the end of the game. The person I was dating at the time was home visiting family. We had a good relationship, but it definitely meant a lot more to me than it did to them. We had spoken on the phone during the week after Christmas and planned to spend y2k together online probably on AOL Instant Messenger or ICQ or whatever. As the night went on, they were a no show. I called their parents house and whoever answer, I think a younger brother, said they had gone out with friends. Oh. I felt pretty dejected as the ball dropped, our computers didn't fail, and life went on. After sulking for a little bit, I turned on my SNES and decided to make a run towards the end. Around the time that the sun was coming up, I got to Zeromus and defeated him on the first try. I fell asleep a little while later with some talking heads on MSNBC talking in the background about how great the new millenium would be. 

What always deeply moves me about Final Fantasy 4 is the plot, which was fairly sophisticated for the time period. Cecil's discussions of justice and morality as he fights against his own darkness are thoughtful and remind me of some aspects of our modern political discourse. The parallel of the brainwashing of Golbez and the manipulations of Cecil when he was a Dark Knight are well done. Tella loses himself in his hatred during his quest to avenge his daughter. The relationship between Cecil and Rosa could probably use more narrative, but I like it. Like many others, I definitely crushed on her growing up. It definitely caught my eye that they were married already and obviously a bit older. They seemed like real adults and now more than ever that is refreshing. The soundtrack to this game is one of my favorites. There are so many classics from Golbez's operatic theme to the overworld theme, to my favorite version of the classic battle theme. And don't forget the creepy, Earthboundesque, theme for the moon's surface. 

I played through Final Fantasy 4 this summer for a bit each night. This game has held up so well. The difficulty seemed to be "just right" for the most part. I only really had to stop to grind twice, once to make sure Rosa had a certain spell before entering a cave in the underworld and then near the end on the moon to shore up each character a bit before defeating some of the bosses that give you end of game weapons. This play through the amount of dead or near dead characters did seem like a bit of a blemish on the plot. The soundtrack to this game hums along in my mind for days after I play this game. Like the SNES version of Sim City that I mentioned a few episodes ago, I listen to this soundtrack a lot in my office while doing work. It took me a bunch of tries to defeat Zeromus. I think this might be one of the hardest boss battles I have ever played. The battle is pretty random and brutal. I finally lucked out and was able to keep everyone alive, using Cain to keep everyone up with Phoenix Downs since his jumping isn't that effective in this battle while Rosa healed, and then blast away at it with Cecil, Edge, and Rydia. I love the final dungeon before you reach it for all of its random nooks and hidden rooms. I just began a playthrough of Final Fantasy 5 to follow up on Final Fantasy 4. We will definitely have an episode about it eventually. Stay tuned for our next episode. Now that the school year is back in session, regular episode posting at a twice monthly rate should resume. 

Again, the Giraffe Feels podcast is written, edited, produced, and performed by William Wend. You can follow me on Twitter @wpwend. Giraffefeelspod is the user name to follow on Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. We have a Youtube page that is linked on the website. Subscribe via RSS, Soundcloud, or on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher. Links are on the website. Make sure you rate and review the podcast.

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