Certainly impressive, this was definitely a step-up for the franchise in every sense.

This game was by far the most narratively impressive by now, it's not a story about light bearers saving the world initially, it's mostly about redemption, the game starts with the main character Cecil raiding a town by orders of his king. He's not a goodie-goodie, but he's complex he is always questioning himself and his actions, this gives a lot of complexity to this character and by extension the people that he interacts with, for instance, later in the game you go back to the town you raided, and the survivors there treat you with disgust. The NPCs really give life to this game, as well as the boss fights

I'll admit it, I was kinda bored and irritated on the dark elf dungeon, with that magnetic field, it was a slog, but in the end it was worth it, because of the boss fight itself and Edward playing his harp through the fight, it was an incredible sequence, and speaking of bosses, I really liked Rubicante and how he always healed my entire party before the fights lol.

But by far the best sequence of the game was the Giant of Babil, out of nowhere you have to deal with this colossus and you do it from inside out, you enter in the giant through the mouth and have to reach it's CPU to defeat him, it's a really fun dungeon and with an extraordinary soundtrack to complement it. (btw my highlights for ff4 were: Welcome to Our Town!, Hey, Cid!, Mystic Mysidia, The Land of Summons, The Lunarians, Within the Giant. Lots of bangers and zingers in this one)

Initially I thought that the story went to a lot of different places quickly and in a confusing way, but looking in retrospect it was a good pace, and the reveals near the end of the game makes the story all the more interesting. Counting with some tense and heavy moments like Edge's parents killing themselves after seeing that they lost their humanity, or lighthearted and fun moments like with Palom and Porom or Cid.

But after all I do have some petty complaints about this game, starting with the sacrifices, like, almost every character that crosses your path and enter your party sacrifices themselves to help you, really noble, but they for some reason always come back intact, the worst offender of all was Cid, bro genuinely jumped off the airship strapped with bombs over a lava ocean just to come back later in the hospital, and no one even questions how in the fuck he's alive, there were some boring moments in the game sure, but none that made me rage. Other than that I thought the final boss fight was underwhelming and that's it I think.