I don't have as unambiguously positive feelings about it than I do about FF3
Yeah, that's the paradox of FFIV; in a ton of things it's superior to FFIII, but there are a few aspects where it doesn't measure up and, in those case, the higher quality of the surrounding game makes the low points stand out more. I think a part of it is the much greater focus on story, which I felt went overboard in a manner that compromised the rest of the game, while another part is that it didn't do enough with it.
This might not seem like it makes sense, but in brief, while the story is well written, it's still ultimately too simple to justify removing the flexible gameplay that was the key to FFIII replayability from the game. Now, it might seem like this makes no sense; that a linear story will obviously not offer any replay value to a game. This, however, isn't true. I could reference examples from Final Fantasy entries after IV, but that'd be spoilers, so I'll use a different game: the PS1 Metal Gear Solid - hopefully minor spoilers for that game aren't a bit deal.
Metal Gear Solid has a very well written story, but it is extremely linear; there is exactly one single, solitary thing the players can influence in the entire story, and it's so minor that it only changes one line, a five second long scene, and one character model before the final cutscene plays. However, that one thing is what determine which of the two endings of the game the player get; so, despite the story being almost entirely linear with very predefined situations, one single change alone gives the players a reason to replay. But that's not all of it; the story is also so complex that playing it with knowledge of all the twists provides a completely different but still satisfying experience. It's a perfect example of a game where the story itself offers replayability by itself, simply because of how it's structured.
FFIV has none of this; the story is interesting to play through exactly once, and once played, there's no reason for wanting to play it again. That would be fine if there was something else to offer replayability, such as the gameplay; a superior game would offer both (Metal Gear Solid's gameplay is also structured so that there's plenty of replay value in it), but for a game that sacrificed gameplay to make the story deeper, the story then really needed to do more than it did.
I already mentioned that I felt that locking the characters' classes reduced the depth of the gameplay, while acknowledging that having locked character classes helped with creating deeper characterization; however, in several cases I felt that didn't went far enough. Kain being a dragoon is really only important because it differentiates him from Cecil, but it doesn't otherwise give him any character depth the way Cecil's journey from Dark Knight to Paladin, Rydia's connection with the summons, Palom & Porom's connection, even Yang's monk discipline do. Rosa similarly is only a White Mage because the party need one, but it doesn't really inform her character in any way. So, overall, I would say that, while FFIV is a great game and greatly outstrips FFIII in many respects, especially the exploration aspect (having three different world map, and the scope of the game including a subterranean world and the moon, was truly an inspired move), ultimately, especially when the two game share the same weakness (a disappointing, subpar ending) I feel like it's not really possible to say that FFIV is better than FFIII.
Which brings me to my headcanon for making the ending more satisfying! I mentioned some aspects of this in a spoiler post in the past, but with the game over, I can finally expound on the theory in full. Now, this is not what the game intended, obviously; Zeromus' line about the evil in the heart of men makes it clear what the writers think the theme of the game to be, and Final Fantasy in general tends to be very direct with its plots. Subtlety is rare and surprising when it shows up, and it's generally a better idea to take the games at face value.
That disclaimer provided, my reading is as follow: no mind control of any sort happened in the game. This changes a lot of things, and is likely not the intended reading, as mentioned, but I think I can make a solid argument for it.
To start, we shall ignore any information provided by the sequel; Square always includes retcons in their sequels and remakes and spinoffs anyway (I'd say more, but that's spoilers, so I'll hold my peace for now), and we're going for a textual reading anyway, so the information from them is completely irrelevant to this reading. Which means we can easily ignore the "oh, Golbez was mind-controlled since he was a child" absurdity, and go with the reading FFIV actually suggests, that Golbez' threat was a very recent thing (since the King of Baron only recently changed his behavior, recently enough people had reasons to think he was just being a bit erratic), and that, when FuSoYa said "recently, Zemus reached him" he didn't mean "twenty years ago", he meant in the last year or so. If we ignore the mind-control for a moment, it would have been reasonable to assume that FuSoYa's warning about Zemus reaching Golbez are about manipulating him with lies; it'd be the natural assumption to make if we didn't have a pre-existing context of mind-control to rely upon.
So, in this reading, Zemus merely informed Golbez of the potential to use the Lunarian artifacts on Earth to reach the Moon, possibly without revealing the fact that he planned to destroy the world/exterminate all the humans, although that doesn't really matter that much. This, of course, would only work if Golbez had an actual reason for wanting to go to the moon; when we meet Golbez, we're never told why he wanted to go there, and any claim that it was "to acquire power" make no sense for either Golbez himself, nor for Zemus, who had his own plans of human extermination that had no real correlation with gaining power. Then, what was Golbez after, and why were Zemus' words about the possibility of leaving Earth and going to the Moon something that motivated him enough to go (entirely willingly and consciously) on a campaign of world conquest?
My theory is, Golbez wanted to return to his people's land. Despite being an half-blood, he identified as Lunarian; this could be easily facilitated if it was humans who killed KluYa - we don't know how KluYa died or what happened to him and his wife, since we're ignoring the retcon about his past, so I hold that it's perfectly valid to have them die at the hands of humans and Golbez then decide that humans are non-people. This explains why he's so cavalier about slaughtering them, since he considers himself different and superior to them. He wanted to go back and live with his people on the Moon, perhaps unaware that they were asleep, and when Zemus provided him with a mean to do so, he went for it, uncaring that he had to slaughter a few lesser beings to accomplish the goal. And that's why he stops when faced with FuSoYa; his father brother, a fellow Lunarian, revealing that Zemus never had any intention to bring Golbez to the moon and rather intended to kill him, and at the same time providing Golbez with a means to finally leave Earth - well, once that happens, he has no reason to keep fighting his own brother (whom he spared once already, after he recognized him - possibly something prompted by the spirit of KluYa that Cecil is carrying with himself after passing the Paladin trials) or waging a war of extermination. He just need to get rid of Zemus, and he'll be able to live with his people, and he cares little enough about Earth's fate that, if Cecil wants it for himself, he can leave it to him.
So, what about the mind control then? Well, the only source of any claims of mind control in the game is actually Golbez himself; he's the one who says "oh, that hit has broken my control of Kain", and on the moon, when FuSoYa says "Zemus can reach with his mind to Earth and manipulate people", it's Cecil who says "so Zemus is controlling Golbez then?", to which FuSoYa merely agrees. And while the game likely intend this to be confirmation, it can also be read as FuSoYa merely failing to correct Cecil, either because he trusts Cecil about mind-control going on and thus blames that on Zemus as well, or to manipulate him into forgiving Golbez. Why would FuSoYa want Cecil to spare Golbez? Because, as mentioned, the prophecy could also be intended to refer to Golbez, and if FuSoYa believed it did, he would have motive to want Golbez alive. This works especially well with FuSoYa handing the anti-Zemus crystal to Golbez instead of using it himself, but a more benevolent interpretation is that both are true; FuSoYa believes Golbez to be the chosen one, so when Cecil says he thinks Golbez has been mind controlled, he believes it, because why else would the chosen one go along with Zemus' plans?
With this headcanon, we then know why the Moon, which was no moon but actually a space station housing the Lunarians (Final Fantasy never lets a Star Wars reference pass unremarked, after all), leaves at the end; because Golbez might have stopped destroying Earth since he didn't want to fight Cecil to do so, but it's still populated by the humans who killed KluYa, and he wants nothing to do with them anymore, so he persuaded FuSoYa to leave. After all, Golbez is very persuasive; he persuaded Kain to betray Cecil and work with him.
Naturally, if no mind control ever existed, then it means that Kain was always acting of his own free will; that when he said at the beginning of the game to Cecil "well, we just kill the child", and then went "ah, I was just kidding" when Cecil disagreed, that was about as honest as it is when somebody says "I was just joking" after making a comment that generates outrage from their audience. That he pretended to be under mind-control the first time because Golbez wanted an inside man in Cecil's team who could betray them at the opportune time, and once Golbez simply dropped him, he kept up the pretense of having been mind controlled twice because he knew that Cecil would believe it and it would earn him forgiveness he didn't actually deserve. It's also why he's not at the coronation at the end, because he knows that he doesn't deserve the forgiveness he's been given, since he was never mind controlled at all, and after Golbez left him behind with nary a word, he's decided that trying to atone is the only path forward that he has left to actually, finally become a decent person.
I won't deny that this headcanon is mostly a way for me to justify my dislike of Kain, but I feel like it's one that is, if not supported by the text, at least not in direct contradiction of it; I just think it's more fitting for the character named after the biblical first traitor to
actually be a traitor, and the story is more interesting if Cecil's goodness, the thing that allowed him to save the world, is shown to not be completely without drawback.
Of course, this interpretation does implies that, ultimately, Golbez won, in that he got what he wanted and wasn't punished at all for his misdeeds, but I can live with a magnificent bastard like him succeeding, if he does so by giving up on his Earth-destroying plans. It feels fitting. And, dare I say it, it provides the villain (villains, if we count Kain deciding to redeem himself) with some character development, in that he only achieved his goal when he stops killing innocent people to do so, which seems like a very net plus to me.
Ultimately, I feel that this interpretation allows a few things to make more sense, and makes both Golbez and Kain fully culpable for their actions, and only weaseling out of the consequences due to Cecil's inherent goodness making him extremely prone to be tricked. It fits the characters much better, and it explains why Zemus couldn't control other members of the team (Kain and Edge in the final fight, or Tellah at any point), and why throughout the game people kept remarking on "so you weren't mind controlled" multiple times. In the end, however, this is just my own opinion, so everybody can make of it what they want.
There's some jank with the interaction this game has with levels, stealing, and the equipment system you can get up to, but you kind of have to know a bunch of deeply obscure information to make that exploitable. If you're an ultra-expert in the games overcomplicated mechanics you can minmax and become ridiculous, but you have to have encyclopaedic knowledge to really do that.
It's not just stealing; everything in FFVIII is like that. You know any one aspect of the system in enough detail, and you can use that one aspect of the game alone to shatter the rest into a million pieces, but if you don't know, then you have to flounder about and hope you're not about to shot yourself in the foot. It's not a well balanced game at all, but that constant swing between the two is a very unique feel, which I find extremely enjoyable.
