Final Fantasy IV

Final Fantasy IV was the last major stop of the series on the WonderSwan Color, and at the same time the most ambitious effort Square brought to this console. The story of the Dark Knight Cecil, who defies his king's orders and seeks a way to make peace with his own past, ranks among the strongest narratives of the sixteen-bit era. The player travels across an entire world, from desert kingdoms through the underground realm of the dwarves all the way to the Moon, and the party keeps changing throughout: characters arrive, leave, sacrifice themselves, and return, so tactics have to adapt to practically every chapter.

The battle system is built on ATB, meaning flowing gauges that determine who gets a turn and when. That's exactly what makes the fights tense, since time keeps running while you think through the menus, and strong bosses punish hesitation. The WonderSwan Color version is based on the Japanese original and adds new graphics, recolored environments, and slightly refined menus; character sprites were redrawn in a more detailed style, and the battle scenes look downright good on the small screen. The sound is naturally limited by the console's capabilities, but pieces like Golbez's theme or the airship hymn still hold onto their atmosphere even in this form.

At the time, it was proof that a handheld console could handle a full-fledged, major JRPG without trimmed-down content, and for WonderSwan owners it was one of the main reasons to buy the device. The fourth game's influence on the genre is hard to overstate: it established a storytelling style where characters have their own motivations and fixed roles within the party instead of freely assignable classes, and most Japanese RPGs of the nineties followed in that direction afterward. Today it plays surprisingly briskly, since the pace is fast, the dungeons aren't needlessly long, and the story never stalls. If someone wants to play just one single game on the WonderSwan, this is a serious contender.