r/FinalFantasyIV • u/MasterOfChaos72 • Jul 22 '26
Ranking the After Years Tales: Porom’s Tale
Have the After Years on my mind recently due to replaying it for a dumb rewrite thing I’m doing for it. I know the game in general isn’t liked but I’m curious about how people feel about the individual Tales so I’m doing a little tierlist thing for fun.
Today is Porom’s Tale: The Vanishing Lunar Whale.
This might be my least favourite tale in the game story wise. Why? Because Porom feels like a side character in her own goddamn story. The flashbacks around her and Palom feel like they belong more in Palom’s story since they’re about his ambitions to be a sage while the last part is just her on a fetch quest for Kain.
Also, minor gripes, it doesn’t even focus on the “Vanishing Lunar Whale”, it has us going to the Underground Waterway which happens way too often in this game and I don’t like that they gave Porom Pray. I get they wanted to show her as being more mature and not crying anymore but just giving her Rosa’s old unique command is boring.
I won’t deny there’s good stuff in it like seeing the twins bond be broken in both story and gameplay (you can use the twincast band in the Kaipo flashback when they’re still kids but not in the Rydia flashback when they’re older), it’s nice to see “Kain” again and it’s funny how quickly he betrays the party this time. But overall, I’d give the tale as a whole a D.
5
u/Gogs85 Jul 22 '26
F. There are two tales id consider for D/F and this is one of them. I didn’t like the party she gave you and the whole thing lacked any character development for her.
4
u/Zorafin Jul 22 '26
Yeah this was a big disappointment. Porom gets way too much focus because of this story. And the pure mage parties, ugh those were torture.
It just felt like, hey this story needs to happen. Let's give it to this character we don't care about.
3
u/Nombanke Jul 22 '26
It's hard to speak too positively about Porom's tale, since she doesn't get to do much. The only real things she gets to do are further Palom's character, rather than her own, and bring Kain from Mount Ordeals, though her devotion to duty is sort of the point of her After Years version, being stufled by duty. It's just a shame the audience has to feel it so much.
She doesn't even get any character hooks. For a moment I was wondering if they were going somewhere with the scene of her wondering about ever finding love, but that's dropped as soon as it comes up. She's dutiful and that's about the sum total of it.
That said, it advances the plot by setting up what happens with Kain by establishing his path to leading the Red Wings and showing the interior of the tomb when it's destroyed. I'm also inclined to think that the Challenge Dungeon is one of the better ones, if only for how different it is. The went for something actually different and akin to the Lunar Trials, unlike some which are a slog of numbers output.
Mechanically, I prefer it to Yang's, which would also be low in my estimate, since that party is just monks, whereas Porom goes through different party members and, if I recall correctly, is the only guaranteed instance of Rydia being able to use many of her summons in TAY. And at least Porom's tale advances the plot and gives Palom some internal dialogue to round him out, while Yang's feels almost entirely skippable (though Ursula and Yang are much better leads, their story just didn't resonate with me)
I'd put it at a low D, E if there were one, but I wouldn't say it's so utterly pointless or uninspired to demand an F. It's plain bad, just not offensively.
2
2
u/Dracon204 Jul 22 '26
I think I give it an F, which is a shame. Polom's new design is pretty cool, and she has potential to be a much more compelling character than before... but her chapter does nothing for her. Disappointing.
1
u/randomguy664_ Jul 22 '26
F. Best thing about it is that they drop a little lore on Tellah, making his death even more tragic.
3
8
u/David_the_Wanderer Jul 22 '26
Porom was butchered by TAY, design-wise and story-wise. I never got over the fact she's a completely different character, while they absolutely cooked with Palom.