Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light Gets E3 Trailer

OMG this is the best FF game on the ds.

Looks sweet. Might get it...

Jeez, it looks like someone mashed Looksley's Lineup with Final Fantasy

To TLink9 - How would you know? FFIV on DS was amazing.

Looks the way I wanted Nostalgia to be. Can't wait!

Meh. I wish they'd go back to the FF7-9 visual style for the DS games, with beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds instead of blocky polygonal ones. Given the power of the system, that would make much more sense, and would allow your character models to look decent, since you'd be saving all that horsepower that it's wasting on the mediocre environments.

Exactly wario. I'm preferring the more advance visual style compared to this overly-simplistic style. And I'm not even a FF fan!

Loving the art style for this game!

Im excited for it. As far as artistic design, ill go either way, as long as the gameplay is SOLID !!

They'll be giving us hands-on time with this at the Square-Enix booth. I can't wait to play this one.

@corbs will you guys post any impressions??

That looks... awesome

I don't like the old Final Fantasy games there so boring, I prefer the older "tales" series games to the FF games,

Definitely odd. I'll be posting hands-on impressions each day of E3.

@Warioswoods: DS game carts can't hold enough data for that to be an option, as I understand it. Consider that FFVII was three CD's, while VIII and IX were each four. I seem to recall Squenix saying they'd packed the largest DS card available, 1 gig, full with FFIV. Definitely no room for anything but blockiness.

What's this "Action Point Battle System" thing all about, though? I thought they said this was supposed to be old school turn-based. I'll be majorly disappointed if they screw that up like most people do nowadays.

@Stuffgamer1

Partly true, I'm guessing, but still not fully convincing; the reason those games took up so many CDs was the cinematic sequences, which were easily 95%+ of the game data. With no FMVs, I find it hard to believe that they couldn't have pre-rendered backdrops on the 1gig DS cart; we're just talking about still images after all.

My theory is that it's considered too expensive to hire artists to create lush 2D backdrops; 3D environments of the sort here are an entirely different kind of thing, without the same demands for detail, composition, lighting, etc. It's a lost art. 2D painted images would have looked much better on the Tales of Monkey Island games as well, but 3D was surely cheaper to work with, much like a traditional hand-drawn film is actually more expensive than most 3D films (except Pixar, who take it to another level entirely).

I just pre-ordered this game this afternoon! I can't wait until Xmas!

@Stuffgamer1

The Points system only affects your magic, iirc. The battle system is still old-school turn-based.

The graphics look like the cell shaded Zelda games. Looks like I'll have to get this one later.

@Stuff: if the PSN FF7 file size is any indication, the game is 1.6 GB worth of data, which is .6 over the maximum storage capacity for the system, it would seem. You guys seem to forget that with cartridges come unfortunate storage drawbacks.

@WildPidgeyAppears

No, the point is that the FMV sequences on FF7 are what take up nearly all of its space. I know this from opening up the contents of those CDs on my computer way back when I would use software to rip the FMVs out directly from the disc. Without those, there is little excuse for pre-rendered backgrounds not fitting the storage. In fact, they'd take up even less space than in comparison with something like FF7, because the resolution of the stored images would be lower for the DS screens.

Now, some may indeed prefer the 3D look for perfectly valid reasons, but I'm just saying that it doesn't add up to say that they couldn't use 2D pre-rendered or hand-drawn backdrops like those in FF7-9 for any technical reasons. I felt that the series took a misstep by abandoning that style and going with blocky 3D for the DS, when the games could have given us beautiful, detailed backgrounds instead of (what I see to be) mediocre 3D spaces with only the smallest fraction of the detail you'd get via the other route.

@Stuffgamer1

No fear, it is indeed turn-based: enter menu commands, everyone gets one action per round.

The action points system is very interesting. Each character can store up to 5 action points. You can fight or use an item for no net cost. Spells and other abilities use up points. (There's no MP or other such resources.) You can do nothing for a round to gain 2 points. From what I hear, the system leads to battles having interesting puzzle-like qualities.

This looks awesome and I'm loving the art style.

It looks like FF3 on the DS.
Square Enix wants to go back to there roots of how they first started making FF, and I like the sound of that.

it looks cool but i've never played a FF game/rpg
Except for Chrono trigger on DS

Regardless of artistic/technical details, I look forward to this. I'm glad the Job system lives on in the traditional-style series and not just in Tactics entries. The game should be good, as portable Square games rarely disappoint.