So the Final Fantasy 4 Pixel Remaster is out and I thought I’d give it a look and see if it maintains the same level of quality that the first three did – do check out on my review on those three if you have not already.

Alright, so visually, I think this is actually the best-looking of the bunch released thus far. It’s not too much a difference, but you can tell that this was originally an SNES game and not an NES game like the original three. It’s a nice facelift to the original SNES game and I much prefer the Pixel Remaster’s “staying true to the original” approach over the way more stylized PSP version.

The same font is here, but you can use the same fixes for the first three to change that here. I personally don’t dislike the font as much as others, so I just left it the same. And while I did get a funky screen tearing stutter when playing in borderless windowed, switching to fullscreen fixed this entirely. Would have been nice to see Square Enix fix that before launch (they apparently patched it in the first three already), but it’s an easy fix regardless.

As for the game itself – I have not actually played this Final Fantasy before, so it was kinda cool to see where the whole “active time battle” system started. That and this one is FAR more story-focused than the previous three, which was also a nice change of pace. Again, it’s not anything too complex, but it’s nice enough for a retro JRPG and I’m looking forward to seeing how it develops.

Difficulty-wise, it maintains that same “easier”, but not overly easy approach as the first three. Auto-battle makes grinding and random encounters much less annoying and it adapts well to the action time battle system, no complaints there.

But really, there’s not much else to say. I enjoyed how the Pixel Remasters have streamlined the classic Final Fantasy experience and that is no different here with 4. It looks great, plays well, has a nice soundtrack, and is the perfect opportunity to play a modernized Final Fantasy 4 while staying true to the original’s design. I’ve enjoyed my time with it thus far and hope that they maintain this same level of quality with the next two releases.

Final Fantasy 4 Pixel Remaster retails for $18 USD on Steam, but you can get an official Steam key for 20% off using my Green Man Gaming partner link. An even higher discount is available for loyalty members – mine is 36% off, for example. It’s also available on iOS and Android.

I was provided a review copy of the game in order to write these impressions. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.