As a continuation of of Final Fantasy IV - The After Years is a standalone game that is set a couple of decades after the events of Final Fantasy IV. Instead of being an entirely linear tale with a single protagonist, The After Years carries you through a series of chapters each focusing on individuals that make up the story.
Like the story-telling motifs of a novel progressing from a different character's view point each chapter, The After Years leverages this mode of storytelling to build various layers and to weave together disparate events into a cohesive narrative.
This is an interesting experiment (and dare I say, the inspiration for Octopath Traveller) - but it comes with one weakness that makes The After Years seem less focused on character development through combat. As you move from character to character and tale to tale - progress in your battle prowess seems to reset, and a new difficulty curve is introduced with each chapter.
This is similar to Final Fantasy IV - but without the constant upward grind, and forces you to make even more meaningful decisions about using the entirety of your inventory in each individual chapter - otherwise, there's no point wandering around collecting each item.
Balance is excellent, and after just two chapters, you get pretty used to the story-telling format of the game.
There's a lot of recycled assets in use throughout this game - the world map, monsters, the towns, the dungeons, and even the music makes this feel very familiar, but at the same time, probably not worth the full price of admission given the limited additional actual development that would've gone into the title.
There's of course, new combat mechanics, but they're buried down the tree of options you can elect to unleash in combat. The primary one is "Band" - where characters can work together with one another in order to decimate foes with powerful attacks.
There's also some mechanics that connect a character's combat strength to the cycles of the world's moon - which means you can use strategic rest breaks in order to ensure the maximum power of a certain combat style - be it melee, ranged, white, or black magic. This adds another layer of strategy, and if used correctly, ensures a massive advantage in combat.
While these additions increase the complexity of the game, if feels magical than the tale woven in Final Fantasy IV. While The After Years attempts to bring you closer to characters in more intimate journeys and quests, you do miss the interactions and dynamics between all the characters - leading to a sense that the story doesn't coalesce as masterfully as Final Fantasy IV.
As a result, you're left with a sour-ish taste in your mouth - beloved characters, and a beloved world, that just doesn't seem to have enough substance as the tales that established that very world you fell in love with the first time round.