Covington (Day 214)

I am (hopefully) closing in on the home stretch of 4 Heroes of Light. It's not a terrible game but it is so riddled with flaws and design decisions that I personally disagree with that it can be a little stressful to play. There's a skeleton of a game underneath the surface that I really enjoy, but in a way there's not enough flesh on that skeleton's bones.

There are too many ways in which choice is taken away from the player in this game, from the smart-targeting to the lack of customization options. I likened the job system of 4 Heroes of Light to a toolkit, and that's true to a certain extent--but it's not what I'm looking for in this kind of game. I really enjoy the aspect of experimenting with different job classes, but I'd also like to be able to retain certain skills I learned even as I move on to stronger jobs. I refuse to believe the developers wouldn't realize that was a feature most gamers would enjoy--especially fans of Final Fantasy V and Tactics.

Too many classes also just seem a tad vanilla or strangely uninspired. There's a job that has abilities centered around the amount of time you've been playing the game. The longer you've played, the more damage your abilities do. This is a really silly concept to me that has no place in a game like this. There's another job (Monk) that grows in power by dying repeatedly in combat. This encourages a ridiculously counterintuitive gameplay pattern. I have no idea what they were thinking there.

In other cases, they've put their own spin on traditional job classes. Mystic Knights in Final Fantasy V were awesome because they literally cast elemental spells while attacking with a sword simultaneously. The Spell Fencer in this game dumbs that down and simply turns them into a class capable of changing the element of their physical attacks. Their tier two ability is literally just a stronger version of this skill. Not until you've mastered the class do you have something similar to what we had in FFV.

Other Final Fantasy mainstays like summons, Ultima, Flare, Holy--none of those are anywhere in sight. When it comes down to it, 4 Heroes of Light is a very loose spin-off indeed. From what I've heard, Bravely Default adheres more closely to the Final Fantasy tradition despite not bearing the series' name in its title. I can't wait to play it--but I'm definitely going to finish this game first. I've made it pretty far into it--and like I said, it's not that bad.