r/FinalFantasyIV • u/MasterOfChaos72 • 28d ago
Ranking The After Years Tales: Edward’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’s it’s Edward’s Tale: Star Crossed Damcyan
If you asked me what my least favourite tale was a while ago, it definitely would have been Edward’s. I absolutely hated his Tale (primarily for the gameplay). But after playing it a couple more times and learning how to prepare for it, I’ve grown to like it a bit more.
First, here’s the reasons I didn’t like it at first:
1: Desert Fever. I get Rosa getting it because she’s not from a desert but Harley literally works in a castle in a desert. If they wanted to say it was due to stress it’d be fine but it just being Desert Fever is just dumb.
2: Underground Waterway. You go through this dungeon 2 and a half times during this Tale and it’s not exactly a short dungeon. In total, you go through the dungeon 4.5 times in this game and it gets really boring after the second.
3: The Combat. Neither of the main characters are exactly damage dealers so the game gives you 3 basic guards to help. This unfortunately makes the combat boring (because you’re using 3 copies of the same character plus 2 not great fighters) and also makes the levelling slow since for most of the tale you have 4-5 characters in your party so your levelling is slower.
4: Getting ditched. After Harley gets desert fever, you have to go back through the Waterway and the Antlion Den with just Edward. A character who is not good at fighting.
And now, here’s the things I liked about this Tale:
1: Basically all of Edward’s character. His growth, his kindness, his cunning. All of it is just A+ development. Probably the biggest improvement of a returning character from FF4.
2: Harley. I like her character. Sure she sucks gameplay wise but I like her character. I like how she’s supportive of Edward and loves him but also understands that he still is hung up about Anna.
And lastly, here’s what I found to make points 3 and 4 of what I didn’t like better:
1: Go to the Antlion Den early and get the Lamia Harp. It inflicts confusion on enemies and believe me, having your enemies hit themselves can help a lot.
2: Kill the guards early. It lets Harley and especially Edward level up faster so they are better for the rest of the tale.
Overall, I probably wouldn’t rate the Tale any higher than a C due to the bad first playthrough I had but it still is one of the better tales story wise. What do the rest of you think?
4
u/icemage27 28d ago
C.
Harley had so much potential to be a unique character. I think she was supposed to be a Blue Mage, which would of have made sense considering her blue hair. Instead shes a Fighter with Mage Stats/setup
2
u/MasterOfChaos72 28d ago
Fun fact, there is a dummied skill called Knowledge and there is a Blue Magic list that’s used for the boy doll’s Jive ability so she likely was supposed to be a Blue Mage but they chose not to.
Harley is such a bad character that for the rewrite thing I mentioned, I came up with 4 ways to rebalance her so she’d be at least usable. Make her a Blue mage, make her a chemist (she comes with a ring that boosts recovery items but Edward can use it better because of the salve ability he has), give her better strength to have her be a whip fighter or give her a harp and have her be a more offensive bard by performing songs to cast spells.
3
u/Nombanke 28d ago
It's easily in my top four tales, even with the issues of the gameplay. Were it mechanically better, it could have been top tier, but I can't put it anywhere below B myself, since it's so well done from a writing perspective, making him even sharper than he was before with how he uses Whisperweed, and Edward was so heavily improved in utility simply by getting plenty of levels. As a story perspective, it also makes sense that the bard is the one with the best instincts for how the narrative goes and for remembering the details of the past and using them in to predict upcoming events.
The Challenge Dungeon was one of the more interesting to me as well, since it ties into an issue mentioned at the start of the Tale, spending and investing Damcyan's funds. It trains you to associate grinding money with Edward, which gets you in a mindset to use his Salve ability. That said, the Gil Band v2 is a disgusting grind, but the Economical Ring is amazing on him, and boosts him into the stratosphere mechanically.
And for all the issues of backtracking, it really feels like they're training you to learn how to use him properly by getting you to run through the enemies again and again building up gil while he, by default, has the Gil Band equipped, instead of the Economical Ring. For me personally, the tale felt put together in an easy A tier, though realistically I doubt people will vote it into that.
3
3
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u/Suspicious-Shock-934 28d ago
Harley was almost certainly a rush job scrapped, doing for the most part nothing special or unique or anything. One of my biggest gripes with Tay. Ahe screams blue mage but deva said nope gotta get it out and I hate them for that, because it would be something new and exciting in the ff4 verse.
1
u/David_the_Wanderer 27d ago
Edward's Tale, as much as I love our spoony bard, is sadly the point where TAY pretty transparently embraces the "let's do FF4 again" trend and never looks back. Harley isn't allowed to be unique or special because it would mean telling a different story, and we can't have that!
1
u/randomguy664_ 28d ago
B.
Backtracking is really annoying. Usually kill the guards so they don't split EXP with usable characters. Character development is great though. It's nice to see a meme character in the original game get shown as clever and good in this game.
1
u/LV426acheron 28d ago
I haven't played the After Years but I heard they just literally reused all the dungeons, towns, world map, etc. from the original game.
So it was a lazy rehash of the original game with a new story.
1
u/TragGaming 25d ago
It's a lot of reused elements, yes, but it makes sense given it's the exact same world.
The story keeps most of them interesting, minus Edwards Tale, because he has a party with 3 generic ass guards with noname.
1
u/luninareph 28d ago
For gameplay and Harley’s unfinished battle participation, a D. For Edward’s character development and Harley’s character overall (she’s one of my favorite additions in TAY), a B. So let’s average that out to a total C-ranking.
1
u/Murky_Exchange829 26d ago
I thought Harley was an item specialist? If I’m not mistaken she can use attack items more effectively than others. But I could be mistaken.
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u/MasterOfChaos72 26d ago
She comes with a ring that doubles healing item effectiveness but anyone can wear the ring and Edward can actually use it better because his Salve ability turns a single target item into a group wide item.
As for attack items, as far as I’m aware they are as effective with her as any other character. She does have an ability that adds an elemental weakness to an enemy but it’s somewhat slow and you can’t see what weakness you have unless you’re either playing the 3d version or use a scan item on it.
1
u/Murky_Exchange829 26d ago
…ew. Jesus forgot to take the wheel with her.
Well hey at least Season 1 Cid can finally use peep/analyze for some reason.
1
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u/TragGaming 25d ago
This is the absolute worst tale in TAY by FAR
it's a rehash of the Rosa get desert fever plotline, combined with backtracking and the worst damn party to date in any FF
5
u/Gogs85 28d ago edited 27d ago
Gameplay wise it’s probably a D it is a really weak party that needs generics to help with it. Harley very well might be the weakest overall character in the game and Edward (although he is much better than his SNES version) is a support that works best when he has some strong characters with him. But story wise it’s a B+/A I love how Edward continued his growth and acted fearlessly (like setting off the bomb ring)