Some generations have their Great Depressions, their Grassy Knolls, or their Great Wars… … well, ours has Final Fantasy. The 1991 classic Final Fantasy IV, notorious for Cecil, Rosa, and the Spoony Bard line, has just been retooled for the Nintendo DS. Even if you’ve seen it every one of the 20 times it was reiterated–from SNES to PS1 to GBA and back to PS1 again–you haven’t seen it quite like this before. Even if you’ve seen the recent remake of FFIII on DS, you STILL haven’t seen it like this before. It may appear from the CG intro and general polygonality that Square has settled on a new engine into which to pump all FF’s till the end of time, but no: Final Fantasy IV is enhanced by voice-acted cut scenes, rebalanced abilities, the option to equip the essences of your departed party members to existing ones, auto-battle, and–in a natural move for a DS game–multiplayer.

You know whether you’ve liked FFIV before, but you may never really know until you try the definitive version. At least that’s what Square Enix is telling me… oh come on. If you don’t play it, where are you going to say you were when FFIV came out?