After playing the DW1, and the original FF1 carts and a couple other RPG's (ultima:exodus, etc)....

FF4 wasn't terribly difficult. I don't see why anyone would ever want to play it in an 'easy' mode. It's already easy enough as is. You can *run* from everything up until Mysidia for god's sake (several hours of 'game play').

If you do fight every fight (like you should), then money is generally not an issue, and if you pay attention to what items do in combat (ie: that first rod you get does 30 damage... handy when ya don't wanna use magic), you shouldn't have any issues with stuff.

Looking for secrets will generally get you alot of the items you need, too.

Spending maybe 15-20min to level in an area that seems impossibly hard doesn't hurt, either.

The only difficult fights I remember in the game were Asura and the Behemoths (until realizing they mostly 'retaliate' instead of attack). I *once* had issues with the infernal dolls, but shrug.

Waiting until the end of the game in order to buy ethers is fine.... use tents and inns often and you should almost never run out of MP... i might use 3 ethers up until the moon. so you should have alot left over.

I think alot of people's problem is that they treat RPG's alot like they treat FF7 and later games .... a whole lot of dialog with 'this weird fighting stuff' in between.... so they don't do what normal RPG playlers would call 'common sense' by saving often and using inns and such. Anyone who mentions the ultimate weapons on response to this post is only prooving my point, btw.