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I hate to burden all of you with two news updates in a single morning, but this news tidbit was too juicy to ignore. 1up.com has released a final preview of Final Fantasy IV Advance, detailing the new dungeons and returning characters. I'll cover their preview to the best of my ability, saving you all the trouble of reading the 1up article yourselves.

To refresh your memory, FF IV Advance provides improved graphical textures, new menu portraits, and a refined translation compared to any previous version of the game, plus adds two new optional dungeons and a means for replacing characters in and out of your party. The game's difficulty is the same as it was in the original Japanese "Hardtype." For better or for worse, several spell names have changed, using the ara and aga suffixes rather than the oldschool numerals and changing Meteo to Meteor (I personally find that last edit disgraceful).

After defeating the Giant of Babil, you can replace Kain, Rosa, Rydia, or Edge with Palom, Porom, Cid, Edward, or Yang, each of whom was in your party sometime earlier in the story. Each of the five returning characters have had adjusted stats to make them useful in the new lategame. Cid "is a total hoss", featuring superior HP and Defense compared to other characters and Edward, while as frail as ever, is adept at inflicting status effects with his harps (far more so now than on the SNES). After re-recruiting these five characters, your party can return to Mount Ordeals for a short but intense 8-floor dungeon whose end features five new powerful weapons, one for each of your returning characters. Yang's weapon is the holy-elemental Hand of the Gods, Cid's is the randomly-Thundaga-casting Thor's Hammer, Edward's is called Apollo's Harp, Palom's the Triton's Dagger, and Porom's the Seraphim Mace.

If that wasn't enough for you, there is still another optional endgame dungeon, The Lunar Ruins found on the Moon. Once you've beaten the game, this new dungeon is unlocked, featuring nine special sealed gates, one corresponding to each character, with Palom and Porom sharing the same gate. In each gate, you'll first need to endure a brutal dungeon that makes the Path to the Core "look like a cakewalk." The early levels of the Lunar Ruins feature monsters that we're already familliar with, like Behemoths, Minds, and Wicked Faces from the final dungeon, but the lower levels include new monsters that are more difficult than any random encounter in the game. At the end of each of the sealed gate dungeons, you'll need to take the associated character along for a special trial - these trials range from Yang taking on dozens of powerful Monks to an airship-flying minigame for Cid. At the end of each set of trials we fight a beefed-up Lunar version of one of Rydia's summons, with HP ranging from 90,000 to more than 120,000. Beating each Lunar Summon will net you a new powerful piece of equipment and a special item called a Grimoire. Getting all nine Grimoires will unlock the game's ultimate challenge - "an unbelievably difficult fight that should make aficionados of FFIV trivia particularly happy."

So that's the game. This seems to be very similar and at the same time very different from the Dawn of Souls remake - there are a great deal of new features but instead of dumbing down the gameplay experience, it's more hardcore than ever. All of the information I've provided is derived from Gamespot's screenshots archive and 1up's detailed preview linked in the first paragraph. Final Fantasy IV Advance is released December 12th, 2005 in the US.

New scans of FFIV Advance have shed some light on details that everyone has been drooling for.

Character switching is done in the Mysidian tower, which most of you will remember from getting the Big Whale. All of the characters that gather there are available to join your party, you simply talk to them and decide which character to switch them out with.

The new dungeon is going to be a total length of fifty floors, and will be host to the ultimate weapons for the newly playable characters. The main purpose of the dungeon is to power up your characters so that they aren't lacking behind the others massively. Of note, each ultimate weapon is guarded by a special boss, unique to the GBA version.

Source: RPGamer

So I guess this clears up some of the rumors and questions people have been having. I know several people, myself included, were worrying about the characters being massively underpowered. I hear high level Edward is a pretty decent character, so I have to wonder about a well equipped version of him.

The first real batch of FFIV Advance screenshots has snaked it's way onto the internet, along with a video of actual gameplay.

You can view the screenshots here

Looks pretty sweet, although i'm not sure if I like Yang's new menu picture, personally.

As reported by a recent article in Shonen Jump magazine regarding the Game Boy Advance port of Final Fantasy IV, the game will indeed, for the most part, remain largely unchanged from its original Super Nintendo form. As indicated by early images of the game, graphical improvements have been made as well as the addition of character portraits inside dialogue boxes.

Nintendo and Square Enix reportedly display interest in porting more Final Fantasy titles to the Game Boy Advance in the near future as part of their "Final Fantasy Series Port Project", although no official announcements have been made.

Final Fantasy IV for the GBA will be in North American stores on December 12th, 2005. Japan has yet to receive a specific release date, but sources confirm it will be available sometime in Winter 2005.

Source: RPGamer