Final Fantasy IV PS1 Walkthrough
Starting Point
Welcome to my walkthrough of Final Fantasy IV! This guide is for the English-language PlayStation version released in North America as part of Final Fantasy Chronicles. If you’re playing another version, some names, items, and strategies may be different. There are quite a few versions of this game, so if your treasure chest doesn’t have what the walkthrough says, you’re probably playing a different version. The general zeitgeist of the game shouldn’t change too much, though.
Walkthrough Notes
As with any walkthrough, this document contains spoilers. What I’ve tried to do is give you the information you need where you need it, without requiring you to read the entire game in advance. I’ll point out treasure, hidden passages, useful equipment, and things you might want to do before moving on. Some of those warnings necessarily give away a little of what’s coming.
If you’d rather discover things yourself, save before exploring an area, then come back and see what you missed. If you want to get everything and don’t mind the spoilers, follow along as you play. Either way, take some time to talk to people and poke around. There’s more to these towns than the shortest path between the inn and the next quest.
I’ll use the characters’ default names throughout the guide. You can call them whatever you like, but you’ll have to keep track of who’s who.
A Word About Leveling Up
This game has you switching characters as you go. That makes leveling up somewhat less attractive, unless you’re going for a specific magic or skill that you want for a particular boss fight.
If you’ve read my other walkthroughs, you probably know I like my boss battles thoroughly and utterly won. My philosophy is that grinding isn’t an expense; it’s an investment that I’d like to pay off with a boss having a very bad day. :)
That being said, you need to reach every level I mention. I spend a fair amount of each playthrough experimenting, and eventually took the whole final party to level 99. But don’t feel like you have to do that slog.
Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me Starting Out
- Keep more than one save. Save before heading somewhere new, and don’t overwrite your only earlier save just because you’ve reached the next save point. Having somewhere to go back to is much nicer than discovering you needed it an hour ago. Note that the Memo slot isn’t a substitute for a durable save through a full system restart.
- Leave room for treasure. Your inventory isn’t bottomless, and after a couple of chapters it can become frustratingly limited. Use the Item menu’s Sort (keep scrolling to the very bottom) to combine compatible stacks (e.g., you can buy arrows in packs of 10 - if you do this 5 times you’ll have 5 packs of 10 until you use Sort to make a single pack of 50. No, I don’t know why.) Leave a multiple empty slots before exploring. We’ll get to storage later. Finding a nice new item is less exciting when you have to throw something away to pick it up.
- Check more than chests. Pots, bookshelves, and suspicious-looking walls are worth investigating. I’ll point out the useful ones as we go.
- Read the equipment advice before shopping. A bigger Attack number isn’t the whole story, and buying one of everything gets expensive - both in Gil and space. I’ll call out useful purchases and explain when something you already own will do the job.
Emulator Note: Saves and Save States
If you’re playing on an emulator, save states are handy for trying something without committing to the result. Keep ordinary in-game saves too, though. I also like to keep a separate state before a boss or major scene instead of repeatedly overwriting the same one. And make sure you know which key saves and which key loads. Ask me how I know. >.> I usually like to use a regular memory-card save whenever I can as well as any emulator snapshot.
For reference, the North American Final Fantasy Chronicles disc used for this guide is SLUS-01360. If your emulator reports a different game ID, check which release you’re playing before relying on version-specific instructions.
Ready? Start a new game, enjoy the opening, and head over to Opening and Baron Castle. Let’s see what we’ve gotten ourselves into.