Final Fantasy IV was actually titled Final Fantasy II when it debuted in the United States on the Super Nintendo in November 1991, an attempt at the time to maintain title continuity since it was technically the fourth in series overseas. Since 1991, it's been re-released for the PlayStation and Game Boy Advance and renamed Final Fantasy IV, more or less retaining its SNES pedigree. The Nintendo DS version constitutes the first comprehensive remake, a mostly visual 3-D overhaul with a couple new multiplayer minigames, a refined English translation and bits of voice acting to bolster the most important cutscenes.

The underlying gameplay, on the other hand, hasn't changed much at all. Players still maneuver Cecil and company around city and world maps, interacting with individuals but primarily fighting random battles with a bestiary of fantasy creatures. Final Fantasy IV was the first in the series to use the Active Time Battle (ATB) system whereby players input tactical melee and spell-casting commands in real time, a system so popular it's re-emerged (in one form or another) in nearly every Final Fantasy since. Each character has unique special abilities, and defeating enemies depends on properly executing basic melee slashes and kicks or casting "white" magic spells to heal or fortify the party and "black" magic variants such as "thunder," "fire," and "blizzard," which are most effective when matched against elementally susceptible enemies.

New in the DS version, special "augments" are scattered around the world or left by departing party members. They supplement a character's health and magic points or bestow special abilities limited in the original to a single class. Area maps now occupy the DS's lower screen, allowing you to alternatively navigate with the stylus. Completely explore a map and you'll receive special rewards like health and mana potions. One party member even gets a new Eidolon (from the Greek word for "apparition" or "double"—here a summonable creature that acts on behalf of the character) named Whyt, who can be trained in various touchscreen-based minigames, then loosed to fight local wireless battles against a friend, one on one.

First-class makeover

If you're not a fan of Final Fantasy, this review isn't for you. If you've already decided Final Fantasy is just the spoiled love child of a Wagnerian opera and an Aaron Spelling prime-time soap, you might as well ring that bell and do whatever the opposite of salivating is. That's because the only thing this remake accomplishes is to make a 17-year-old so-called Japanese-style RPG a lot prettier and dialogue like "I'm just a knight with no courage to disobey his Majesty" a little less hammy. If anything, the more realistic 3-D characters and cutscenes only amp the melodrama by visually reifying it.

For the rest of you, Final Fantasy IV will either be a wistful retread of the game that launched a thousand console RPGs in the early 1990s or a chance to experience a remarkably resilient tactical fantasy battle system for the first time. While the original lagged behind more complex computer RPGs of the day like Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988) and Ultima VI: The False Prophet (1990)—a couple of trailblazing epics now relegated to the history books—Final Fantasy IV's younger and more numerous console-based audience was easier to impress, eliciting misty-eyed references to the original as "one of the greatest video games of all time."

It wasn't—it still isn't—but don't let that stop you from picking up Final Fantasy IV for the DS, because it's still one of the best RPGs to cross the Nintendo DS's path since Square Enix's The World Ends With You earlier this year. No, the underlying gameplay doesn't amount to much more than banging through a thousand battles to loot and level up. You talk a little, explore a lot and occasionally adjourn at item shops to buy and sell weapons, armor and supporting items like potions and status effect remedies. It's all flash and circumstance on the event horizon of a vortex that spins out enemy after enemy you're supposed to deconstruct with tactical abilities and magic spells neither learned nor purchased but willfully bestowed upon you. Even the remake's new augment system only adds a nominal customization element to what at its nucleus remains a categorically deterministic experience.

It's also a grab bag of old-school tricks. Your path from one point to another is always lengthy and ridiculously crooked, ensuring the random battle generator scores plenty of hits. World exploration is less about exploring than inching down a fenced-off path, with areas that close behind you until halfway through the story, at which point you've covered enough of the map that poking around in the leftovers tends to feel like scavenging. And while this is more a commentary on the DS than the game itself, moving diagonally by depressing two sides of the d-pad feels pretty weird in 2008 after more than a decade of easily navigating 3-D environs with an analog thumb-stick.

But Final Fantasy fans need no reminding. They'll smile ear to ear at the new 3-D visuals and scraps of gratifying voice acting. They'll fiddle with the minigames and probably blow at least an hour or two drawing custom faces on their Eidolons before wading into one-on-one battles with a friend. And in the end, they'll just be grateful Square Enix was confident enough in this oldie to give it such an elaborate makeover.