>>12532914
Playstation release should be fine if you're incabable of playing the Super Famicom version.

>>12532914
>the original JP has a bunch of battle mechanics that were entirely removed in the US version.

Yeah this is the one old Final Fantasy game that I can't fully defend the original English localization of. The official SNES version didn't destroy the game or anything, not at all; most of the stuff it ripped out wasn't very significant. But at least a little bit of it was. I don't know any specific fan translations to recommend though. I'd probably figure that as long as the translation hack didn't stuff in any disgusting pop culture reference jokes or stupid "QoL" changes, it'd likely be good enough. This isn't the deepest of stories after all

>>12534859
>load times
>bitcrushed sound effects and worse music
Nah.
...at least, that was my experience with FF5 on PS1 so I'm assuming FF4 is the same.

>>12534910
5 on PS1 is notoriously bad. 4 is fine. Disc based media still has a bit longer loads than original super famicom but it's fine.

>>12532914
You have several choices, but none of them are ideal.

You could just go ahead and play the SNES original, but as you point out, it removes and changes quite a few things. Now, most of the changes aren't super significant, and many of the things that were removed were actually rather superfluous and you'll likely not miss them (looking at you, Rosa's Pray and Porom's Cry commands). There were some pretty cool things that were unfortunately taken out, though, such as the hidden Developer's Room. Some changes make the game somewhat easier, such as easy access to cheap Remedy item. There's also some censorship, but I don't think this is necessarily the biggest of deals. The worst thing about it, though, is the translation. It's frankly pretty bad, and aside from giving us the spoony bard meme, it's not even particularly memorable the way FF6 or FF7's were. About the best I can say about this version is that it's perfectly playable. You'll still largely get all the story beats, and most of the core gameplay is there.

If you absolutely want something as close to the SFC original in English, though, the PS1 version is not a terrible way to go about it. It has everything from the SFC original, and the translation is much better (not perfect, though, but still). However, it's been a very long time since I played through it, so I cannot recall if >>12534910's concerns are valid with the possible exception of load times. IIRC saving is actually kinda slow, but in-game there's no load times the way there is in FF5/6 for PS1. But yeah, I cannot speak to the audio quality. Might be that's a concern.

cont.

>>12532914
Play the GBA version; it has a legible script and prettier backgrounds

>>12534950
>worse looking backgrounds
>fucked up ATB
no

>>12534947
And then there's the fan translations. This one's a bit of a shitshow. There's the old J2E translation, which I've admittedly not played but is apparently kind of jarring, full of swearing and pop culture references, but it's pretty much the only game in town if you want to play the actual, otherwise-unadultered SFC game in English. There's some addendums that aim to improve it, but I cannot speak as to how much better it is with those.

Beyond that, there's a few "relocalization" hacks, such as Namingway Edition and Project II. Frankly, I don't trust these, as the people behind them don't really speak Japanese, and so did no actual translation work of their own. All they did, AFAIK, is take bits and pieces from other translations (including the DS version, which has additional story details not found in the original) and mix them into something that looks good to them. They're also pretty weird in that they're not actually even hacks of the SFC game, but the SNES FF2, so they have to go and modify the game and add all the missing stuff back in to make it closer to the SFC game rather than work off of the version that already has everything intact. Notably, they're also not vanilla experiences, often bundling in bugfixes and QoL features such as dashing. I've not played NWE, but I've experience with the Project II script through playing Ultima Edition, and I can't say I care for some of the script additions that were not in the original.

So yeah, pick your poison.

>>12534959
On top of
>screen crunch
>washed out colors
>significantly worse music
yeah no thanks

>>12534976
>full of swearing
Oh, so that's why one of those romhacks I saw mentioned that it "removed all swearing".
Yeah I don't really care TOO much about the translation, I mostly just want the original game intact without any of the removals from the US SNES version.

Watching some footage of the PS1 version, the music sounds just about perfect, but it seems to suffer from the exact same "bitcrushed sound effects" problem that FF5 has. All the sound effects are just noticeably lower quality than the SNES.

>>12535064
Screen crunch is not an issue in a turn-based game.

>>12532914
Use the Namingway Edition romhack. It restores everything to the way it was in the Japanese version while updating the translation, fixing bugs and adding a few nice QOL features without ruining the feel of the original game.

Is Final Fantasy series worth playing if I enjoy Dragon Quest?

>>12540072
If you want to play some Final Fantasy games too, then yes. If not, then no.