Episode Details

Development:

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light, known as Final Fantasy Gaiden in Japan, is a Role Playing Game developed by Matrix Software and published by Square Enix on October 29, 2009 in Japan, and October 5th, 2010 in the States. You may remember Matrix Software from their IOS ports of Final Fantasy II, IV, V, VI, After Years, and even Dragon Quest V. This is the second Final Fantasy game to wield the Gaiden, or spinoff title, in Japan; The other being the aforereviewed Final Fantasy Adventure. The game's directors were Takashi Tokita and Hiroaki Yabuta. Tokita you may remember as the director of Chrono Trigger and Parasite Eve. He also worked as lead designer for Final Fantasy IV. The game was produced by Tomoya Asano, the lead artist was Akihiko Yoshida; Yoshida worked on background art and main character design for the Ivalice games, where Mizuta worked on FFXI with Uematsu, and that god awful Parasite Eve 2. The development team had begun to consider a sequel to this game, and that's why we're going to play Bravely Default; which is what that "sequel" eventually became. The entire game was meant to be a throwback to the original titles in the Final Fantasy series, and you can definitely tell. The game featured an interesting storybook style art design, similar to Chocobo's Tales, and also features a pretty bitchin version of the job system from FF III and V. The development team looked to DQ games, and other popular NES era RPG's for inspiration as well as previous FF titles.

Plot:

The game starts out in the city of Horne with our main hero Brandt. Brandt is presenting himself to the king to enter manhood, and discovers that the Princess, Aire, has been taken by the Witch of the North, named Louhi. Along the way, Brandt meets up with his moody friend Jusqua and the princess' personal bodyguard, and savior of us all, Yunita. Together they journey to the witche's house, and eventually slay Louhi. When we trudge back to Horne, we find that the entire town has been turned to stone by some curse, and the king is missing. This is when our little fellowshiop breaks for the time being. Brandt and Yunita try to restore Horne's villagers, while Jusqua and Aire flee to Liberte, a seafaring town. Brandt and Yunita meet a fellow named Krinjh in a nearby desert, who leads them to the magic kingdom of Guera. The King of Guera asks them to deal with the fucking Sandman, since Spiderman is busy, and you agree. But of course, he annihalates you, because you need water spells and the LEADER ORDERS A FUCKING FREEZE ON WATER SPELL SALES! Anyway, you win the fight, but the sand creature is revealed to be Araidne, who Krinjh runs away with. Aire meets up with a fairy named Lilibelle, and gets turned into a cat. Aire leaves Jusqua's grumpy ass behind, and finds Brandt, who also left Yunita behind for some reason… Anyway, they head to Arbor forest, where the Queen of the forest turns Brandt into a plant, because she doesn't trust humans after the events of Ferngully 1, and dare I say 2. Aire then teams up with a mouse named Tortehhhh to find an Animal Staff in order to turn Brandt into a dog, thus making him more trustworthy. But before we get this taken care of, we must defeat Arbaroc; the guardian of Arbor. We knock him out, and the Queen of Arbor turns the Animal Staff into the Transformation Staff, which allows us to go transspecial with a mere three menu clicks. We then first learn of Rolan, who searches for the Dark Towe…. Wait, no. He's just a dude from Spelvia who may know how to help Horne. The two animals Aire and Brandt climb the great tree of the arbor and leap to the super FF-esque floating island of Spelvia, but Aire is the only one who makes it across. Jusqua finds a regular cat, who he mistakes for Aire somehow, and travels to Urbeth; finding Yunita and a sorcerer who claims to be able to lift the curse from "Aire". We earn some dough by completing some quests for the locals, and then we fi