Final Fantasy IV: The After Years: Palom’s Chapter tells the story of Palom, black mage prodigy of Mysidia who is training Leonora, a young girl training to be the newest Epopt, the council of eight priestesses who rule the kingdom of Troia.  Of course, in the course of their training mission, everything goes to crap and they are forced to deal with it.

This chapter was one of the more difficult ones, largely due to the fact that your party consists of two mages.  As a result of this, physical attacks are meaningless, and Palom is forced to carry the majority of the weight for the pair, since Leonora only has about nine black magic spells, and of the ones she does have, she does maybe one third of the damage, so she’s better of just defending and healing while Palom does all the work.  Also, this chapter’s one town does not sell ethers, which makes for a very difficult game since there are only about 8 scattered throughout the chapter.  I found myself running a lot simply to preserve mana.

However, there was some good here.  The dynamic between Palom and Leonora was explored quite well, as well as providing an excellent depiction of a neutral kingdom responding to a global war.  Also, while this chapter is quite hard, Square-Enix was obviously aware of it, because they do make an active attempt to mitigate some of the difficulty by scattering pots throughout the dungeons which refill your health and mana.

In conclusion, I would say this chapter is definitely worth picking up.  It’s difficult, but it’s a fun ride.

	System:	Nintendo Wii
	Genre:	RPG
	Experience:	Finished the chapter

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