Increased difficulty over SNES version make this one hard to take
I have two major gripes with this version, however.
The first (and most major) is the difficulty. I am used to the SNES version, which in my opinion had the right level of difficulty. As long as you fought all of the random battles along the way and reserved running only for desperate situations, you could play through the whole game without too much difficulty. That's not to say you would never be bested by a boss or even a random encounter, but a second try would usually find you successful, as long as you knew the right strategy. In this version, I found myself fighting the same boss battles 4 or 5 times before wandering around to earn more experience points to give myself at least a chance at winning. Now before going on, let me say I have no problem with "level grinding" per se, and I gladly do it in other RPGs. My problem with this in FFIV is the fact that characters join and leave your party so often, in some cases never to return, that it seems a terrible waste of time. Why spend an hour or two increasing the level of a character you know will be permanently leaving the party after the next boss battle (or even worse, before the next boss battle)? Another frustrating aspect to the difficulty is the fact that when you have to replay the same boss battle a dozen times, you have to watch the same cut-scene and go through the same dialogue a dozen times, which slows down game play and can make a person disenchanted with this version of the game.
The other problem I have with this version is relatively minor, but still bothersome. The reworked 3D graphics are nice but they aren't wonderful. The character designs are slightly childish and cartoon looking. This is ok, but the problem comes at the beginning of the game. I sit and watch several minutes of amazing full motion animation featuring most of the characters in the game. In this animation, the character designs are awesome. After this, the actual game graphics (which aren't bad in and of themselves) are disappointing. I enjoy the opening video, but it would have been better if it had been left out. You can't show someone a steak then feed them meatloaf.
Other than these two issues, the game comes through as still being an excellent RPG. I would have liked to see it possible to enter commands using the touch screen instead of the directional pad, but the controls work pretty well the way they are. This version of the game is definitely recommended to all RPG fans, whether or not you are familiar with earlier versions. Just don't expect to win every boss fight (or any boss fight, for that matter) on your first try, and don't be too disappointed when the game itself falls short of the opening animation, and you should really enjoy it.