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First of all, the font looks terrible, but it's not the main problem. Not even the swearing and pop culture references are that bad to ruin the game, but the translation errors (for example, magnetism is called gravity), and the awful "jokes" (the worst one its about Palom showing his "fire rod" to a girl) which was NOT in the original game's script, make this translation even worst than the FF II USA version.

I don't underestimate the hard work done by J2E, but they really went out of their way to screw up this translation.

The US version of FF4 suffers from a title screen that says FF2 and it has easier monster stats. It also has every path visible and no hidden passages. But I didn't want to play an easier game; I wanted to play the original. If you're looking to play the original FF4 from Japan you'll be pleased with this translation.

I played this a long time ago when the translation was considered new, and thought to myself: "oh wow! This is an improvement over the original translation!" Years later, I was wrong. The script was changed considerably, and added a lot of swearing that was not in the Japanese version. Granted, there was swearing in the original script, but it never went past "damn".

Then there's the main gripe of this translation, and that is adding early 2000s pop culture, which by now is dated. It doesn't fit in with the game, and it's another reason why this translation has not aged well at all. Moreover, why does Golbez sound like Kefka? Golbez is supposed to be a stoic and overbearing character, not some cackling fiend with one-liners.

Overall, I cannot recommend this translation. J2E did some good translations, and this was not one of them.

My inner child was not amused.

Remember how the original game's script is kind of lame at times? This translation is 10 times worse most of the time.

On top of that the main font you see outside of the item messages is HUGE AS FUCK. That one might be a personal gripe as I had thought the same about the original US release before playing this.

If you're still reading this: Just go play Namingway Edition or Project II. Namingway is as close to a high quality interpretation of the JPN version that you'll ever probably see, and Project II is an epic cleaning up of the US script. Take your pick, as either one's a thousand times better than this.

I am afraid you'll have to reject this Final Fantasy IV hack since the script in this translation is just as retarded than the American version. If you're looking for a better translation of Final Fantasy IV, look somewhere else!

This translation looks good at first, with great hacking and extending Monster and Spell names, but the script is terrible. Let me tell you of its flaws

• Badly ageing pop culture references (Palom says "I think William Shatner is more convincing than you." when he tells Cecil that Beigan is a monster, there are also references to Austin Powers, the Backstreet Boys and Pulp Fiction that weren't there in the Japanese version. This screams out "early 2000s".)

• Swearing is used way too often. (Yang calls Cain a son of a bitch. The Japanese text is more like "Why you...", Cain says to Cecil "So you really are worried about your little whore?", and more.)

• Some names and concepts are completely wrong. (Golbeza is called Golbeze, Corio is called Corillo, the Fire, Blizzard and Thunder spells are still called Fire, Ice and Bolt, and magnatism is repeatedly called gravity in the Magnetic Cave.)

• Sometimes, the translation is way too loose, with flowered up scripts and insults that weren't there, and other times it feels like a lazy retread of the SNES FF2 version.

So just skip this one and go check out Project II, Namingway Edition, or FF4: J2Evisceration.

I have nothing against J2E. Their other translations like Violinist of Hamelin, Nadia and Super Puyo Puyo 2 are pretty good. I just wish they didn't screw this one up.

Back when this retranslation was released I was really excited, finally we could experience the original "Final Fantasy IV" in english and on the SNES.

I didn't play the whole game with this hack, but I did quite a few hours, until reaching Mystidia.

The first problem I had is that the textboxes are too wide, they are even wider than the screen itself, making part of them hidden on real hardware (PAL console). The command boxes in combat are also much wider than in the original game, which is weird, but not quite as bothersome.

I do not like very much the 8x16 font that they used very much, as this is not faithful with the original, but this is purely personal tastes.

It was however easy to overlook those smalls problems and enjoy this "retranslation", until the real problem until this retranslation has been revealed, much more recently, thanks to Tomato, webmaster of "Legend of Localisations", that took an extremely detailed analysis of multiples verisons of FF4, including this one. I must thank him very much for revealing the truth.

This retanslation is just a big fat lie : This wasn't even a retranslation in the first part. They took the original (translated) scripts, added a lot of insults, bad mouthing, bad talk and swearing to give it this "uncensored" feel, and added some lines randomy to characters, to give this "wow and we didn't even know that" feel.

The idea of this retranslation was to make people believe that Square purposely censored the game a lot, and removed storyline elements. And this worked well, until the revelation of Tomato. It is true that there *is* censorship and some lines that were taken out, but this retranslation does not add *them* back, it adds other lines in, making the result even less faithful with the original.

Again thank you very much Tomato and no thanks for J2E, you lied us for over 10 years, congratulations for tricking everyone, but now the joke is over.