Final Fantasy IV: Difficulty

Final Fantasy IV was the first RPG I'd ever played. I can remember renting it from Midnight Video over and over again without completing it. Partly this was because we tended to rent games only on weekends, partly this was because my brother and I had to share the SNES (and refused to play off the same saved game), and partly this was because the game was hard. I can remember dying over and over to most of the boss fights. Mist Dragon. Mombomb. Milon Z. Kainazzo. The Magus Sisters (well, they rarely killed me, but I remember having to fight them for an awfully long time because they kept healing and rezzing). Valvalis. Golbez. Rubicant. The Wall. The Four Fiends. I'd include the AI thing after the four fiends but I practically never managed to beat the Four Fiends. 

This time through I'm marveling at how easy it is. I just plowed through the underground stuff the first time you get there and was astonished at how easy Golbez was. The timing worked out in my favour (Kain was in the air when he paralyzed the party) so I got to have an extra character alive but I very quickly used life potions on the two dead people and healed to full while clocking him with my beaters. It definitely helps that I don't have to think about what actions I should be taking. I know the scripts in the fights (stop attacking Mist Dragon before he turns to mist to avoid his counter-attacks for example) and I know what spells actually do relevant things. But some fights are just dying before I even have to deal with the script. Kainazzo flat out died without withdrawing into his shell or casting his wave spell. The Magus Sisters didn't cast a raise spell. I expect The Four Fiends will be easy when I get to them because I know to level up enough to have the rank 3 damage spells. I know to chug ethers on FuSoYa so he can keep blasting. 

Maybe I was just really bad when I was a kid. I hadn't honed my 'get ALL the treasures and level up like mad' senses enough? Apparently they did raise the difficulty on some of the fights in the DS version so I'm looking forward to that when I get around to playing the game there...