For me, the continue arrow only shows up randomly. There just doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. Has anybody figured out why it doesn't appear or has anybody found a way to make it consistently show up?

I never paid attention but maybe it appears if the text is coded into one box but doesn't fit, as a wild guess? I bet swapping the wider Japanese font in place of the thinner default English one could do that. Again, I'm just guessing.

The arrow appears if the current character talking has another line to say immediately after! Not necessarily if all the text will fit in the same box, but just if that same character is going to speak right after.

Originally posted by Liam:

The arrow appears if the current character talking has another line to say immediately after! Not necessarily if all the text will fit in the same box, but just if that same character is going to speak right after.

This appears to be the correct answer.

For whatever reason, I seem to remember there being continue arrows even in the original SNES release, but going back and looking it appears that continue icons were not added until the GBA and PSP remakes.

I never considered that. It's an interesting detail that was totally lost on me.

To be honest, I never noticed there was a continue arrow. I saw the topic and I thought I was on the wrong forum.

I never actually noticed it either, until I saw this thread and then purposely looked out for it, trying to see what might trigger it, lol.

I think a large part of that is thanks to just how concise FF4 is with its dialogue, and it never lingers on one scene for too long. Characters just have fast, snappy back and forths and then you're back in the action. So it's rarer for one character to monologue sometimes.