So I bought the iOS version of ffiii today, I bought the ds version back in the day, but Javing it on my iPhone seemed nice.
The game lags with even ds quality animation. Ugly as ds graphics too.
Just got the first crystal powers. I've got a long haul flight coming up do I plan to kill time with this then.
Ugh this really is my least favorite ff game. I don't like the chibi fem boy characters. DS graphics have not aged well either and I think the interface is really clunky. Even the music isn't as good as the remade ffii music.
I'll have to try the nes version at some point, but I don't know how much that will help.
Dissidia 012 was leagues above Dissidia 13. Simply because it's much more interesting to see the heroes coping with an unwinnable battle than the usual "Well we know they have to win at EVENTUALLY, duh."
What I really liked most was Scenario 000 in Duodecim. Any team I want, Chaos has literally roflstomped the entire pantheon of FF, and then comes the megaton
Cid Lufaine, the technical God of Everything is a MOOGLE
. Really, I liked all the backstory in that game, about the War of the Lufaine, about Chaos and Cosmos' origins, and the origin of the Warrior of Light.
Man, I still haven't gotten around to 000. How hard is it? I encountered Feral Chaos in the Labyrinth once and got beat down so hard that it kind of scared me away from 000.
Gosh, GAF. I had a great day (yesterday now) watching the Olympics, watching the Caribana parade, playing some Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, getting a run and some cycling in, and cooling down with some sorbet. Felt good, man.
Oh. Right, and playing FFIV SNES.
Previously on Final Fantasy IV, Batman rightfully punched the crap outta Michael Bolton. Today, Michael Bolton almost gets eaten, and then we find some beer.
I ended up going to Mt Hobs for a bit to grind Clair a little because I usually try to get her Virus before the Fabul bit finishes. Halfway through, I figured it didn’t matter too much so I quit around Level 21. I do this in every playthrough. It makes Antlion go down in one or two rounds. Oh yeah, we killed Bolton off because in this version, how much experience he gets doesn’t really matter and he’s keeping the party back when getting XP. So screw ‘im. Clair is more important than either Batman or Bolton right now.
Also, Virus’s sound effect is something I absolutely adore and I’m disappointed that they sorta modified it in later versions.
In order to recover HP/MP, we go to Damcyan’s ruins and recover with the Water of Life or whatever. I just call them magic pots. The NPCs don’t have a lot of important things to say, but either they’re the chancellors or the King’s/Prince’s right-hand-people, I can only suspect that they’re bums. Also, I like the SFX when you heal yourself.
I just realized something about the room Anna dies in. Do you notice the staircase in the screenshots of where Anna died? So, uh, did the Red Wings just blow the top of the castle clean off or something? There should be a Crystal Room, and there should be a throne room. How powerful were the weapons on the airships, anyway? D:
No, really. Where’s the rest of the castle? The airships can’t be that powerful.
Also, since the Water of Life cures all ailments and gets you back to perfect health, why didn’t we just use it on Anna when she was lying there dying on the floor? You have resources. Use them! Also, why didn’t we take that water to Rosa? I bet that’ll get the job done. Better yet, we could’ve used a Heal. I could keep going on here.
It’s just like that scene in FFVIII where for some reason they decided to use Draw – Cure in the desert prison, but it doesn’t work because there’s a magic forcefield or some crap like that. But in the previous scene they didn’t use the same technique when some guy was bleeding out of his carotid artery or something.
So these are our stats going into the Antlion Cave. All that grinding ended up chewing out a lot of my time on the clock.
You use the Hovercraft to get to the Antlion Cave. Also, I love how the cave is just called “Antlion”. My little kid mind sorta thought Cecil and co were in an actual Antlion’s remains until I realized that the tileset was the same as the Misty Cave’s and the Watery Pass’s. There’s also treasure in here, but we get a lot of Cures, Lifes, and money.
There’re a lot of caves in this game. Dungeon diversity wasn’t a thing in this game. It’s pretty boring now that I’m playing this as an adult, but I probably didn’t care when I was a kid.
Here we run into Creams. We ran into Jellies during the last dungeon, but because Abe was taking a swim in the water, I couldn’t capture it and say, “oh yeah, all the slimes are weak against whatever you’d relate to their colour.” So Jellies were red, and thus were weak against Fire. Creams are orange or yellow or something, so use Lit against them.
We also run into Weepers. Take them down with swords. Other enemies not captured are Red Caps (but we’ll run into more of those later), Turtles, and Basilisks. Since I still had Clair equipped with the Ice Rod, she’ll do some reasonable damage to Turtles if her attacks connect. Turtles are weak against Ice so use the Ice Rod to hit it with an Ice Spell, or if you’re leveled higher, hit it with Ice-1. An attack by Batman will kill it too. Basilisks have the ability to petrify you so get rid of it quickly.
So the Antlion Cave isn’t hard. Well. You can say that about most of the dungeons in this version.
Oh, did you notice that the battle background is hilariously the Watery Pass one? There are no underground rivers in this dungeon! Oh game, you so crazeh.
Along the way, Bolton gets his Charm Harp (Lamia Harp). It has a 30% chance of inflicting the enemy with Charm (so it’s more useful than the Dreamer Harp, imo). It has an 18 attack, and 40 accuracy. Better than the original Dreamer Harp. This is Bolton’s final weapon in this version.
You’ll see that the Sandworm was charmed and it attacked itself with Tornado for a measly 1 damage. So useful.
Man they make the invisible routes more obvious in this dungeon. This one isn’t all that useful, though, since it just gets you to the other side of the map and acts as an alternative path to the boss room.
Right, so this is how Save Points look in FFIV SNES. ONE BIG GIANT S. In other versions, it’s way less obvious, but I guess considering this version has tutorial rooms and characters breaking the fourth wall with advice on how to press your buttons correctly if you didn’t read the manual or anything, then I guess that’s why they made the cosmetic change.
This game really goes out of its way to assume you’re an idiot.
We’re not going to use a Tent here because we’re completely fine on the HP/MP part of it due to all the grinding. Antlion’s going down in 2-3 rounds of casting Chocobo anyway.
When I was little, I used to try to get around the map to see if I’d missed treasures.
The map just said that. The Antlion comes up from its burrow/sandpit in the ground and says hello with its pincers.
Bolton decides to be courageous now of all freaking times!
Bolton can participate in Olympic Tramampoline if he wanted to if he had those sorts of moves! Trabapoline.
Batman tells Clair that we have to save the little naïve loser otherwise he’d die. We wouldn’t want him throwing his life away, now would we?
Hi, this is Antlion. He isn’t tame at all. No shit. The FF series gave us, like, a million games to tell us that.
So, I believe this is the first boss battle in the game that introduces the concept of boss counters. If you hit the boss, s/he’ll counter you with an attack, and sometimes it isn’t even directed at the person who initiated the attack. So, like the second pic shows, don’t bother attacking physically. Parry. Even if you don’t parry, the Antlion doesn’t do a ton of damage.
Do what the third and fourth pics suggest and summon Chocobo over and over. He doesn’t counter that. Clair is the champ of this battle.
This isn’t the first time that Batman has said that monsters are more aggressive lately. He said that right at the beginning of the game. This implies that there’s something going on that makes monsters behave a little crazier.
Now this would matter if, in the future, this little plot were explicitly measured and explored in the game, but you’ll see that it isn’t really made explicit to the player at all. It’s probably due to the crystals (spoiler for the After Years:
this doesn’t seem to be the case as the Antlions don’t attack Edward in his chapter despite the crystals being stolen then
) or something else.
It’s kinda weird they’re finding a reason to make mention of it multiple times in this intro part because monsters aren’t the things that set this game’s plot into motion.
Hahaha. Batman forgot he had a girlfriend to cure.
I love how they bring up an items menu for this just to make this situation seem to matter. It really doesn’t matter what you pick other than the Sand Ruby because this will happen:
This game only recognizes one thing so let’s pick it.
Medicine doesn’t taste good unless it’s Amoxicillin or Dimetapp. This ain’t either, kiddo.
I don’t believe this. Well this sort of answers our questions from the previous entry, but how did she accomplish that? She probably knew of the Dragoon path or something because I don’t see this being bloody logical at all. There are no ports around here!
<Brief reminder that I’m playing Final Fantasy here>
Oh, right. Face value. Ok. So that might mean that Batman and Clair were lying unconscious for days, or maybe it took days to get to Kaipo. I don’t know. But that still doesn’t answer how Rosa got here.
Batman knows how lame Rosa is, so he skips to the plot right away. Good man.
Why didn’t the King just draft Steve Yzerman? Dude would’ve gotten things done without hurting people. Guess the King really doesn’t care. There’s probably something about Golbez he really likes. It’s just like how people don’t like CR7 due to his attitude, but he gets shit done sometimes.
(You could say that Batman/Cecil is the Lionel Messi to Golbez’s CR7. Heck, Kain could probably fit that bill too.)
If Golbez was behind this, then no wonder Batman was fired from his post so easily.
What the crap is a Tororia?
I sort of wish the kingdoms, outside of Troia Tororia (and maybe Damcyan cuz it’s gotta be really hot there), were more obvious in terms of how the crystals are distributed, but eh. Whatever.
Pouty McPout-Pout laments that his kingdom’s crystal is gone because the Red Wings tore off his castle’s roof. And we get a round of introductions.
Clair finally asks Rosa if she’s okay (in other versions, she says, “Hi”, and Rosa says hi back). I think this one’s sorta better.
How does she know that they’re going in an explicit order? She wouldn’t be privy to that sort of thing, would she? How high is her rank? Is she part of the military? Does any of this crap get answered at all? Politics? This game would’ve been cool if it had more politics. This should’ve just been a SNES port of FFII, the real one.
Anyway, apparently Golbez is just as good as Sega when it comes to covering stuff up so it doesn’t get leaked.
Also, I think Rosa might be coughing up a lung. Batman tells her to rest and that he, Clair, Bolton will go to Fabul instead. Bolton notes that the trail is blocked by ice. Well, we went there so that certainly fits in.
She’s dying. It must be karma for being a character I don’t like much.
And leave the kid alone. If I levelled her up to Lv 42 or something she’d get Fire 3. We’d be super-solid.
Just cuz you’re a white wizard doesn’t mean I’ll use you often. Man, I wish I were playing the GBA version at the moment cuz I kicked her out of the party the first chance I got. Rosa practically clings to Batman like a lost puppy and Batman clearly doesn’t want to have anything to do with her in this version. Bolton kind of points out that Rosa’s useful because Clair only has Cure-1 and he was stripped of his Salve skills.
By the by, this sort of conversation comes up in this game again and again. It’s almost like Cloud telling Aeris that she shouldn’t tag along because it’s too dangerous.
And just when you think you could start playing again…
How is everyone staying in that house when it only has one bed?! Dfjsljsljglsgjs. Wouldn’t Bolton get the luxury suite at the inn or something because everyone knows that he’s the Prince of Damcyan or something?
I like how this scene is directed. The colour used for making everything night is pretty cool, you have synth sounds for crickets, and there’s no music until Bolton starts playing his harp.
They really did a lot of neat stuff at the beginning of this game. Shame it sort of starts to fall apart around the time I lose interest in the game altogether.
While Bolton is grieving his loss, a monster shows up outta nowhere! He’s violating the “No Monsters within City Limits!” rule. We have to stop him.
It’s just a WaterHag. Bolton’s at a high enough level to take it out in a few hits. But no, this is some sort of mutant WaterHag that has higher HP for reasons unknown. We should probably use the Hide function.
Gosh, even in death Anna’s showing up to save Bolton’s ass.
After we hit it again, Anna gives Bolton another pep talk, then disappears. We hit it again and for some reason get 800 XP. By the way, you can die during this.
After the battle, Anna shows up yet again to continue giving Bolton advice because he doesn’t know how solve things on his own. Bolton whines about how Anna left him alone even though he hasn’t been whining for the entire trip since what happened.
How does Anna even know Golbez’s plans, anyway? Isn’t she dead?
Did we not tell Clair to perform The Sending?! No wonder the monster showed up here!
Dude. She just told you.
We talk to the old couple before leaving their home. I don’t know what we’ll do if we ever come back to Kaipo because the story never tells us to come back, but alright. And the older lady didn’t realize Batman was the Batman that Rosa was talking about until now, clearly.
We’ve just got a new party member so let’s check her out. First let’s arrange our party a little more. We have more people to put in the back row so we have to shuffle Batman around. Please notice how low Rosa’s start level is. I thought she was the cream of the crop from what the Baronians were saying.
Her Will stat is so much higher than everyone else’s for good reason. Rosa has a few White Magic spells as expected of a White Wizard. Considering this version calls her a Wizard, and since she seems to be a high rank, she should have more spells than that. Peep is FFII US’s version of Scan (they could easily have called it Scan here and I don’t see why they didn’t). Slow reduces enemies’ speed and it pretty much affects everything. You don’t need to use it in this version much, but it’s very helpful to have.
There are also several White Magic spells missing in this version, but I’ll talk about that at a later time.
She comes armed with a bow and arrows. In this version, arrows are finite, so you have to keep some on-hand at all times.
Oh, uh. I’m gonna change Rosa’s name to Beer. I hope that’s alright with people. I don’t care for her much, so she gets a generic beverage name. I don’t care enough to name her after a brand. I don’t like beer that much.
I was originally going to name her “Popcorn”, “Mushroom” or “Pumpkin”, but that’s more than six letters. (Welcome to the era when my cousin and I used to substitute food names for character names when we played 2P or RPGs together.)
Based on her class description, Beer is the cure for everything: she’s the party’s White Mage. White Wizard. She’ll have a full set of White magic spells by the end of the game, including Holy White. She also has another command called “Aim”. This is what those arrows were for. Aim will ensure that Beer will hit the enemy with her arrows 100% of the time. It doesn’t always ensure a crit, and it doesn’t always hit harder. Its most obvious function is to improve accuracy. This version ditches her Pray command either because they found it useless or it’s because of censorship.
It’s just too bad that you’ll mostly be dealing offensive damage with everyone else except her, so it isn’t really worth it to use it sometimes unless you’re fighting flying enemies. She doesn’t really add that much outside of being solely a white mage. Her archer skills aren’t that awesome because Aim ensures a hit and maybe powers the hit up a little (but in this version, arrows are finite). Even if she had a !Barehanded skill or something like that, she still wouldn’t be very good. If we really want to, though, we could use Aim in this version to retaliate against some bosses who counter because Aim doesn’t count as a physical.
It makes me wonder if she wanted to be an archer/Ranger originally and then she fell so hard for Batman that she took up White Magic as her primary class. It’s sorta silly; Rosa could have been a decent character if she had some sort of internal struggle like that (even if the motivation is really stupid).
If you're playing the SNES version, do you really need to grind like this? I usually just run from all my battles, and it's almost never a problem fighting. You don't need much money because you never really need to buy anything. All your party members come and go so much, and Cecil starts over part way through the game, so it seems unecessary to level anyone. I normally just do the mecha dragon level with fusoya at the end and maybe a very small amount after getting paladin but dont do anything else.
You don't at all in the SNES version, but I hate running away from battles in any RPG, so I end up fighting everything.
I started doing this out of habit since I did it in the DS, GBA, and PSP versions when I played through them (heck, you don't even need to do it in any other version outside of the DS version since FFIV is an easy game). I just like getting as many spells as I can for some people as quickly as possible. I should've killed off Cecil since my intention was to get Virus for Rydia and Cecil's levels as a Dark Knight don't matter at all. But I figured Rydia needed the extra defense.
I don't even level up FuSoYa at the end even though he gets more MP past Lv 70. It's not very worth it.
That's kind of why I like the GBA/PSP versions since I can play around with everyone in terms of constructing a party, seeing what their stats are towards the end, and I get some extra dungeons out of it. But you don't get the difficulty that the DS version provides.
Agreed. Plus it felt more like youwere actually playing the story, since there was a world map to run around and (in a limited fashion) interact with.
Man, I still haven't gotten around to 000. How hard is it? I encountered Feral Chaos in the Labyrinth once and got beat down so hard that it kind of scared me away from 000.
Feral Chaos' final form is actually easier than Jade Chaos, who you meet partway through 000. This is because when you fight Jade Chaos, you're likely still using crappy pre-Lufenian equipment. When you fight Feral Chaos, even though he has 100k+ HP, he's easier, because you finally have better equipment for your party.
A few tips for the fight:
Yuna, specifically Bahamut >>>>>>> Feral Chaos. MegaFlare is something he simply cannot avoid. The arena is too small, and MegaFlare tends to murder him. Lightning's Thunderfall, Terra's Meltdown, Kuja's Ultima and Golbez' Genesis Rock are all likewise useful, but MegaFlare is best because, when combined with Iai Strike, it becomes nightmare fuel. It inflicts many small hits, and your Lv.1 Iai build will cut through Chaos like paper, plus MegaFlare pushes Chaos back, so he can't get close to you.
In general, Yuna's just a really good character. For instance, levels like Crystal Tower and Lunar Surface are dominated by her, because she can step behind the large obstacles and summon Valefor to hit anyone on the other side.
The trick to Feral Chaos, though, is just to hide up as high as you can and spam HP attacks. Don't bother building up Brave in that fight. Just hit him as many times as you can before he hits you. And watch out for Via Dolorosa. That move is pretty ridiculous.
You don't at all in the SNES version, but I hate running away from battles in any RPG, so I end up fighting everything.
I started doing this out of habit since I did it in the DS, GBA, and PSP versions when I played through them (heck, you don't even need to do it in any other version outside of the DS version since FFIV is an easy game). I just like getting as many spells as I can for some people as quickly as possible. I should've killed off Cecil since my intention was to get Virus for Rydia and Cecil's levels as a Dark Knight don't matter at all. But I figured Rydia needed the extra defense.
I don't even level up FuSoYa at the end even though he gets more MP past Lv 70. It's not very worth it.
That's kind of why I like the GBA/PSP versions since I can play around with everyone in terms of constructing a party, seeing what their stats are towards the end, and I get some extra dungeons out of it. But you don't get the difficulty that the DS version provides.
Does the PSP version do the GBA version's 10 member party for the endgame? I liked that most. If FF4 came out with THAT AND Augments, it would be a really solid RPG.
For now, though, I'm stuck sacrificing virgins to the RNG Gods in the hopes of gaining those tails in The After Years.
After a brief respite I have returned to the land of...wherever the hell FF4 takes place.
Upon glancing at my surroundings and seeing a ship just sitting there I figured out that this was my next destination. And so we set sail, got obliterated by a sea monster because clearly I was getting to used to this character lineup and it was time for another shake up.
So after arriving in a mage filled town and being zapped into a toad and erotically danced into a pig (standard fare for these mage towns i'm sure) I get blessed with two new exciting characters! more mages, okay so that's not very exciting at all, I just want another guy like Kain who can crack heads without relying on MP.
Speaking of Kain he's meanwhile standing guard over a restless Rosa whose sprite wont stop squirming, that heel turn didn't lead to that great of a push after all.
So yeah upon setting off on a paladin pilgrimage I was besieged by some bloody annoying big bird and his cronies in the overworld with a back attack and sent scurrying back to town, the enemies are all over the place in difficulty and number in this game, it's kind of annoying. The mountain area was like an magic attack exclusive club, sucks for Cecil, I can't say I enjoyed that at all and in addition to already having mages i'm returned another mage in Tellah, freaking mage brigade in this party.
Upon reaching the top and besting the fiend boss by powering up the male twins magic power and just flaming it to hell I am blessed with the paladin transformation where upon I sacrifice the useful mult-hit move and cool dark armour for a more effeminate look and a basic cure spell, well i'm sure this balances out in my favour later on. Interesting way to win the fight against Dark Cecil by simply removing your sword, unfortunately I first tried defending, then just healing, then seeing what cover did before finally remembering that you could deal with equipment mid battle.
I'm kind of feeling a bit ho-hum with this game so far, encounter rate is all over the place and i'm not feeling much level based progression with all the character switching and even being bumped back down to level 1, I haven't needed to grind at least but enemies much like their encounter rates can be inconsistent so i'm not sure how to best handle my level in this one.
You've hit the part where I begin to think the game is really boring. After Cecil class changes to a Paladin, the game goes straight downhill for me.
btw, when you were a Dark Knight, you could hit Zus with the Death Sword and instakill them. Now that you're a Paladin you can't do that, but it was a nice way of killing them off quickly.
I think you might like FFV Advance a little better but that version's sorta inaccessible and SE hasn't put the Advance version on the eShop, which I feel is the best version due to the localization and extra jobs. But the dialogue is much better and you get to see Gilgamesh in action.
Does the PSP version do the GBA version's 10 member party for the endgame? I liked that most. If FF4 came out with THAT AND Augments, it would be a really solid RPG.
For now, though, I'm stuck sacrificing virgins to the RNG Gods in the hopes of gaining those tails in The After Years.
Yup. It has the party-swap and the Lunar Ruins postgame dungeon. That's why I kinda like that version a lot because I like switching up my characters. The original game making your party the same most of the time gets really damn boring.
As for TAY's RNG, it's definitely a pain in the butt but I think it's worth it. I spent more time in some chapters than I wanted to (ex: Mythril Nut, the summons, the tails, etc.).
Straight Downhill you say, if only you meant it like fast paced and intense!
Ah GBA games, I can't trust them anymore, it's like counterfeit city which is a shame.
I'd like to say 5 would surely be next in line for a remake after 3 and 4 got DS versions but that's probably just wishful thinking.
Wait why is there a talking bookshelf? I smell shenanigans.
Yeah, the only reason i do the grinding with fusoya is because you need someone with the weak spell, and he's the only one if your characters are low leveled. It's also fun having weak ass rydia one shot mecha dragons with her crappy whip.
Anyway, I love speed running FFIV. It's really pretty fun and is a bit challenging actually. Red Scarlet introduced me to it ages ago.
I was thinking of doing another playthrough of FF9, and I was wondering if, just like my FF7 playthrough, any GAFers wanted to be named after the party.
Except Zidane of course. Someone tried to call Cloud last time and I laughed in their face.
I was thinking of doing another playthrough of FF9, and I was wondering if, just like my FF7 playthrough, any GAFers wanted to be named after the party.
Except Zidane of course. Someone tried to call Cloud last time and I laughed in their face.
Straight Downhill you say, if only you meant it like fast paced and intense!
Ah GBA games, I can't trust them anymore, it's like counterfeit city which is a shame.
I'd like to say 5 would surely be next in line for a remake after 3 and 4 got DS versions but that's probably just wishful thinking.
Wait why is there a talking bookshelf? I smell shenanigans.
This game's motto isn't "gotta go fast". I'm pretty sure that by the time I get there, I'll stop caring about party growth and just try to get through the game. The versions of FFIV that aren't the DS version doesn't let you play around with what your characters can do, so they end up feeling a bit meh compared to some other games.
You could always play the PSN version of FF5, but that version isn't very great. The localization is certainly not as good. There's a talking bookshelf because it's Final Fantasy V. Final Fantasy V is smrt.
Yeah, the only reason i do the grinding with fusoya is because you need someone with the weak spell, and he's the only one if your characters are low leveled. It's also fun having weak ass rydia one shot mecha dragons with her crappy whip.
Anyway, I love speed running FFIV. It's really pretty fun and is a bit challenging actually. Red Scarlet introduced me to it ages ago.
I end up killing off half the party to get Rydia to level up faster so she can get Weak/Tornado, actually. Then anyone can waggle a stick and it'll kill the thing. I was planning on levelling Palom and Porom up kind of high during this playthrough, but I'm not sure if I'll do that. They aren't as strong as Rydia and Rosa, aren't going to make a difference in this version, and Palom doesn't get Bluff in this.
Scarlet's speedruns and difficulty vids are amazing. Man, I can't do what she does, lol. Takes a lot of work and time to go through and figure stuff out and do it right for a speedrun. Though for myself, I sometimes find that speedrunning RPGs isn't as fun as speedrunning Sonic or other platformers (Sonic 2/3&K speedruns are usually what I go for, for example). I usually like standing around, looking and listening to stuff, or fighting every enemy that comes at me, so I end up taking my sweet time (like, the only time I've probably done it with in this series was for FFVII (saving avoids random encounters, for example); I usually do it with Suikoden I where you have to get a holy rune from the first mosquito-- I can only manage 6:19 or so with the holy rune + bribing out of boss battles with the bribe glitch + Champ rune + lack of recruiting, but I don't have a lot of fun doing it).
Capturing, re-capturing, planning on when to start messing around with glitches, and taking time to talk to NPCs for clever stuff to say about it eats up a lot of time for speedrunning this game, so this playthrough is certainly going to take long.
I was thinking of doing another playthrough of FF9, and I was wondering if, just like my FF7 playthrough, any GAFers wanted to be named after the party.
Vivi, Quina, and Steiner are the characters that I make sure to have room for. Dagger/Eiko (depending on where I am/what I'm fighting) are also used if I don't feel like having Quina heal. Freya gets used mainly in the beginning half of the game, then I don't really put all that much time into her until around Disc 3 when I want to kill Ozma since Dragon's Crest(?) is another source of 9999 damage. Amarant...well, he's the cheerleader.
I'll probably start the playthrough sometime this week.
Played through some more Dissidia. Still on the 012 Story, but I'm on Kain's chapter now.
He's actually not bad to use and it feels SO GOOD land a Jump on an enemy.
Had some trouble on the chapter before that with Lightning vs the Warrior of Light.
Took me a good day before I managed to get smart and whoop him.
I really like the amount of detail they went into with the characters. Like The Emperor using Flare brings up a black box with white text (a la the original game), and Kuja using (insert attack) brings up a grey box like a move going off in FFIX.
And I really like some of the battle track remixes.
FF4 TAY: Started Rydia's chapter. I KNOW I should be wasting my life RNGing for the damn tails, but I just can't. The game is so damn hard, especially that unforgiving final dungeon, but I just don't have the time to sit there on my Wii and build up forever and such. I dunno.
FF Type-0: I've finished the chapter "Weapons of Mass Destruction." I think this game's design for
Omega
is one of my favorite. The Magitek in this game is just really nice. I love that in Cid Aulstyne's chamber there's two Magitek Suits that look like the ones in FF6. Also, the battle at Togoreth Fortress is kinda neat, with
Zhuyu and Nimbus basically leaving it one big crater
. At this point, I think Class Zero is really Rubrum's WMD, and not
Alexander
because I can take out freaking level ??? monsters with ease now.
My party, for the interested, consists of Jack, Seven, and Trey. Jack is the strongest character in the game, capable of dealing max damage a hit. Every hit. The game tries to balance this out by making him incredibly, slow, as in, he moves at a snail's pace, has the worst dodge, and his swings, while powerful, tend to take a long time before he can strike again. This ceases to be a problem once you get his flurry skill, because now it's a simple tap of the O button and he deals somewhere around 5 hits per use. So in a matter of seconds, he can deal 9999 x 5 damage. He's always been and always will be a game breaker.
Trey I use because he can charge his ranged attacks to make them stronger than King's, Ace's, or Cater's. This was useful on early playthroughs and lead to his supplanting Jack as my main RTS character because it made Trey able to slaughter Dragons, Airships, and Magitek which otherwise posed problems to conquest. His greatest weakness is that, like Jack, he's kind of slow, and has trouble hitting moving targets, which no other ranged character has to deal with.
Seven I bring along because she is my waifu. Or, um, because she balances out Jack and Trey. She's fast, she's agile, and can hit enemies up close or at a distance. And she has cute bike shorts on.
Honorable mentions go to Ace, Machina, and Queen. Ace is God. He might not hit as hard as Jack, but he doesn't need to because he hits about a thousand times faster. Spamming his cards and teleport pretty much renders the player an untouchable force which most bosses will never cope with. Queen's sword is the fastest in the game, and does decent damage. Also, she has sexy librarian glasses. And Machina is a total freakin' rockstar from Mars in fights where you need to abuse Kill Sights. He has a solo fight near the end of the second playthrough which his Drill Sword tech just slaughters. That whole mission made me love him.
And I broke down and decided to play Final Fantasy 5, even though I had hoped to finish TAY first. I'm not doing the 4 Job Fiesta though, because I am chicken. I've reached Carwen. Bartz is building up Blue Mage/Knight, Lenna is White Mage/Thief, Galuf is White Mage/ Black Mage, and Faris is Monk/Knight.
Escaped the Feymarch in The After Years, and now I'm stuck with Luca, who is not as cool as another engineer by the same name (Lucia of Chrono Cross, ayuk!). In fact, Luca's design is probably THE design I hate in this game. It's just hideous. Also, I thought dwarf women had beards?
In 5, I'm still in Carwen, building up. I'll be going up the mountain soon to develop Lenna's character. It's a shame that Krile will feel compelled to copy it in the future. Have I mentioned I hate Krile? I hate her. She exist basically as the perfect Mary Sue of the game, and lacks any and all originality period.
Is Bartz a great swordsman, trained by a legendary warrior, capable of facing the likes of Kelgar on his own? KRILE HANDS HIM HIS ASS. Are Lenna and Faris princesses? SO IS KRILE! Is Lenna associated with dragons heavily? KRILE GETS ONE TOO AND OH SHE RIDES IT IN THE END, NOT LENNA. Does Faris have a special relationship with an animal only she understands? KRILE IS THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN SPEAK MOOGLE. TELEPATHICALLY. Is Bartz the child of a legendary Dawn Warrior? SO IS KRILE. Bitch goes so far as to steal the ending from Bartz. UGHUGHUGH. She's lucky that Red Sephiroth exists, because if he didn't, there'd be nothing stopping her from being the most creatively bankrupt character in the series.
In Type-0, we're having lunch with Queen Andoria! What the hell is with the women of Concordia looking roughly half their age or less? Creeeeeeepy. This is also one of my favorite parts because
Aria comes out of her shell, Milites suffers a brief moment of apparent weakness, and stuff goes horribly awry, leading to the Cabin, which is probably my favorite part of the game.
. Jack is leading the pack at level 95. Need to just grind him the rest of the way and assault the Tower of Babil, er, Agito.
PS1 version retains a bit of difficulty and has Normal and Easy Mode. You also get FFII with Origins! Normal Mode is sorta close to the original game with Spell Charges and all that mess.
PSP version looks much better, but it's like Origins Easy Mode++. Also, instead of Spell Charges, spells cost actual MP now. And a whole bunch of other extra stuff (extras from the GBA version + all-new stuff). Difficulty kinda flies out the window for the Main Game though.
Played through some more Dissidia. Still on the 012 Story, but I'm on Kain's chapter now.
He's actually not bad to use and it feels SO GOOD land a Jump on an enemy.
Had some trouble on the chapter before that with Lightning vs the Warrior of Light.
Took me a good day before I managed to get smart and whoop him.
I really like the amount of detail they went into with the characters. Like The Emperor using Flare brings up a black box with white text (a la the original game), and Kuja using (insert attack) brings up a grey box like a move going off in FFIX.
And I really like some of the battle track remixes.
This is what I really love about Dissidia. There's so many nice little nods like this for fans of the series that really help bring out aspects of each character's personality or the events that they went through in their original game.
So I finished the Slyph cave in TAY and got a Dancing Dagger. Waiting till I have the Battle Axe so I can get a Tomahawk so I can RNG for Cockatrice. Was building up in Kain's Challenge Dungeon, almost to the save point when a Thunder Dragon appeared and decided to remind me why Final Fantasy IV, The After Years, is the most bullcrap hard game in the series. Stuff like this is what drives me to cheat. Also, I never get regular or preemptive strikes. It's ALWAYS surprise or back attack. ALWAYS.
Got the Elven cape from the basement of Walse Castle. Only after that did I realize I'd run from like, ten fights and ruined the Brave Blade completely. Chicken Knife again, I guess! Finally learned the !Blue ability. Even though all I have is Goblin Punch. At this point, though, I'm just gonna stay on four cardinal classes and remain that way until I reach the Water Crystal, because the AP gain makes grinding not worth my time.
In Type-0 we've made it to the Cabin! This is my favorite part of the game. I just love the whole scene and it's atmosphere. It's like the mid-season episode where everything goes wrong. The alternate mission before it doesn't make much sense, but that's par for the course with the alternate missions. Very few of them match up with the cutscenes that follow them. I assume this is because the alternate missions are meant to show other events that happened during the time before the cutscene. Whatever the case, Jack is now strong enough that I can ALMOST fight the level 99 horrors that stalk the world map. Soon I'll be ready to storm Agito Tower, for which I know not whether there is a reward. For 3rd time players, this is also your first chance to fight
Eight Armed Gilgamesh!
. He's not THAT strong, once you learn his patterns, but if you aren't paying attention, things can quickly go south.
Yup. It has the party-swap and the Lunar Ruins postgame dungeon. That's why I kinda like that version a lot because I like switching up my characters. The original game making your party the same most of the time gets really damn boring.
As for TAY's RNG, it's definitely a pain in the butt but I think it's worth it. I spent more time in some chapters than I wanted to (ex: Mythril Nut, the summons, the tails, etc.).
I really liked the Lunar Trials and party switching, but the augment system felt better overall. Cecil as a Paladin + Darkness is something that, once I did, I could never ever go back. Darkness + Focusx3 + Limit Break for 90k damage was hilarious. Proto-Babil was still a pain in the ass. I hate it when Final Fantasy decides that "Challenge" or "Difficulty" means "Every damn attack instantly kills you." Like, Golbez was a total badass for having an instakill move in Black Fang, but playing the DS version and TAY and seeing all these goddamn enemies SPAMMING Black Fang, Ninth Dimension, and Object 199 just kinda kills the fun in the game for me.
My major problems with the RNGs are these: 1) I have to go to school in a month, and the Wii stays home. I just don't have the time to do this. 2) The game's difficulty is obscene without leveling up a bunch, which is time consuming without things like the Red Ring, which you only get from the RNGs. 3)They take waaaay too much preparation. Like, I need to know Bio BEFORE surfacing in Rydia's Tale. You have to be level 40 to get the Cockatrice summon! The best fights you can do in the underworld give 700 EXP. The FAQ is all "Time to get = 5 minutes!" but never mentions the ten years you'll spend grinding levels to meet the requirements.
As to my update: TAY I can finish the stupid Sealed Cave any time I want, but there's no point in doing it for another WEEK because Rydia needs to be level 40 so I can collect my Cockatrice and Bomb summons before I go up. At least on the surface I'd have access to the Challenge dungeon. Also, Brina + Clown's Clothes + Dancing Dagger is the best thing in the chapter. She gets two turns to Rydia's one, and basically slaughters the enemy. It's the first time I've felt like I've had a character match the foe's pace without using Haste/Slow.
V I finished Karnak and got the three new Jobs: Ninja, Tamer, and Geomancer. I forgot how many shards the game kept back from you. That Mimic Shard in particular is heartbreaking. Not that Mimes would be THAT useful at this point in the game, I suppose. Meanwhile, Bartz as a Mystic Knight is a dream come true. A question, though: In the first Dissidia, Bartz' EX Burst is !SpellBlade-!RapidFire-DualWield, and he's a Mime. I didn't think Mimes could use every weapon in the game, though, so wouldn't this combo be more useful on a Freelancer than Master Mime? Except Freelancers only get 2 slots, and not 3. So does DualWield become an innate for the Freelancer, akin to Counter, or does it enable a Mime to wield weapons beyond a Mime's usual scope?
Type-0 I finished the First Battle of Juddecca, which, while now laughably easy, was once a ball-bustingly tough match. The problem is that, in later battles, Milites waits for Suzaku to be near victory before deploying its best units. These include flying Magitek, Airships, Magitek Armor (ground) and one very large Scorpion Magitek. Whatever the case, the Great Wall of Judecca has fallen to Suzaku's forces, and I hope that at this point High Commander Cid is beginning to sweat, because now the invasion has ended, and Suzaku is taking up the offensive. Rem also met the Disney Princess and Most Attractive Woman in the Game, Suzaku Type-B L'Cie Caetuna (pronounced Setsuna). Lady's dress is nothing short of costume porn. Of all the L'Cie, she is probably my favorite. Where the others are almost all terrifying soldiers (with the exception of Celestia), Caetuna is just a woman in a pretty dress. Until the Battle of the Big Bridge, anyway . . .
Today, we’re going to Mt. Hobs fo’ reals this time. This entry’s gonna be short because I had originally intended to include both the Mt. Hobs section and the Fabul section, but I captured way too much stuff in the Fabul section and I ended up putting some Mt. Ordeals stuff in the same folder, so… you get this really substandard section here so I can sort this out.
We’re going to teach a little girl how to burn things.
The beer is egging Clair on. Both Batman and Bolton should know better.
She’s seven, guys, with little magical training to boot, PTSD, and she barely ever talks whenever you interact with her or even during dialogue scenes. But, hey, let’s tell her to suck it up or else the lives of an entire kingdom will be her fault.
Fuck you for being afraid of fire, Clair. People are gonna die because of you. (But seriously, she has to learn it sometime cuz I need to take down skeletons in groups, but doing it in this way doesn’t really help her trauma.)
Also, mmm, ellipses. Give them to meeeee.
LOL, she doesn’t even give a shit. Back to her old ellipsey self.
So now we finally have a full Tier-1 spellset. We can kill zombie/skeleton groups with ease now. (oh, btw, we’re killing off a few people for some precious EXP).
Skeltons pose very little threat outside of physicals, but since they like to come at you in groups, it’s best to take them out with Fire-All. Sometimes they come with enemies called Spirits which absorb fire, so take the Skeltons out first with Fire, then wreck the Spirits.
We also fight Cockatrices and Gargoyles in here, but they can go down really really easily at this point. Remember that Cockatrices can cast petrify on you so get rid of them quick. No, you cannot get the summon spell legit in this version. It was dummied out. So don’t bother wasting your time here.
Oh, shit’s going down, son. (A KARATE FIGHTER.) Naw, we’re not calling him a Monk. He’s a karate fighter in this version. Monks are boring.
When I was little I thought that the Karate Man was sneezing, but he really isn’t. I didn’t realize it until I started watching martial arts/martial arts films when I was growing up. Check out this Bruce Lee clip. He’s saying “acho!”, not “achoo” like a sneeze.
You cannot control anything in this battle. He takes on Red Cap.s. They are harmless little creatures who can just attack and they’re simply stronger than regular Imps. But you can pretty much oneshot them anyway. Karate Man decides to take them out in the most inefficient way.
The Karate Man who isn’t going to be named Yang in a bit the next entry has several attacks: Fight, Kick, and Item. Kick allows the Karate Man to strike all opponents simultaneously, but it seems to do one-half of the damage you would normally deal if you select the Fight command.
This version does not have his two other commands: Focus and Brace. Focus allows the Karate Man to store energy for a round, and then attack with twice the power. In FF4A and FF4CC, he can equip the Discipline Armband to change Focus into Deadly (attack 3x). Brace reduces damage he would take from enemies, moreso than the Parry command.
In the DS version, a few of these attacks work differently. Focus allows the Karate Man to charge energy to enhance either his Kick or Attack, and you can stack it for up to three times. Kick in the DS version would take on the elemental/neg stat properties of the equipped claws, and it has a higher power than the original version.
That’s why I feel that in this version, Yang is kind of suck.
Back to the game. When the Karate Man gives the final blow to the final Imp Cap, a bomb approaches him! We decide to help out.
It’s entirely possible to defeat it here and in its crazy state if I had levelled up Clair a little more to get more spells, but I decided to not do that. Just use Chocobo, and have everyone physically attack. The Mom Bomb is weak against Darkness, so have Batman do his thing. Don’t use fire, obviously. Beer can totally sit this out unless you feel like wasting arrows because I don’t need healing at all. Thus she’s going to cast Slow. Cuz everything’s weak against Slow.
It switches to its second form whenever you deal 1500 damage or something. Because I didn’t level Clair or Beer enough (in fact, why would I at this point?), I cannot take advantage of the Second Form Glitch.
The “Second Form Glitch” is where you can stop bosses from going to their second forms in a fight. Boss transformations work based on a counter system, so it counts down whenever a player initiates an action that will force it to go to a second form. But this counter will never ever trigger if you use a spell that is reflected on a character (so cast Reflect/Wall on someone and use an offensive spell on him/her). The attack will register as hitting the character, but not register as hitting the enemy with regards to that specific counter (obviously it’ll take HP off). Thus taking advantage of this will prevent the boss from switching forms mid-battle.
I’ll demonstrate this later on in this playthrough because you can use it against a few bosses. This does not, as far as I know, work in the NA version of FF4A.
So the Mom Bomb explodes and we’re left with six easy as hell bombs to deal with. Easy peasy. Bolton can confuse them and they’ll help you out by killing their own kind.
That’s not your name. But hey, you’re from Fabul? How convenient! We need to go there because stuff’s happening and we should tell your king and stuff. Well, they explain that someone named Golbez is using Baron to get the elemental crystals (and I’m very positive that the Karate Man doesn’t know who Golbez is at all so I don’t know why they’re being so vague with that). Then he figures that they’re going to be after Fabul’s Air Crystal as well.
Bolton comes off like a reject from Clueless right here. Seriously, read it like you would hear someone from Clueless read it (mostly referring the girls here). There you go. Or for those who weren’t around in the 1990s, think of how Gretchen Weiners in Mean Girls speaks.
Why would you do that? What tactical/sensible purpose could that serve? Surely by now someone would have heard about the air raid on Damcyan since it would have taken us days to get here, even by hovercraft. You couldn’t have been stupid enough to have left a castle nearly unmanned or supported by novices and rookies. Really? Really?!
Beer surmises that Golbez must’ve sent the monsters to distract them / kill them while he attacked Fabul.
I can’t believe he said that shit. Oh my god. And he keeps bringing it up almost every single time he has to talk about Clair. This has to be some of the worst and most tactless things that have ever come out of his mouth.
I know you’re on a quest for redemption, but you’re laying it on a little thick here, eh?
Anyway, after a little bit of the Karate Man saying that we have our reasons, he has his, asking for help, and telling us where Fabul is even though it’s a straight line to get there anyway,
Hooray, we now have a Karate Man. We’re not going to be able to name him for a while cuz I’m not going to climb back down this mountain just to go to Kaipo to rename him.
Right, so now we have a full party. This is one of my favourite parties in Final Fantasy IV. I love the colour palette (one person for every colour!), and everyone has a job to fulfill. Yes, even Bolton (well, in FF4A/CC/DS anyway).
Karate Man comes with one claw, and one piece of armour. We can remedy that because we’ve been carrying around a buncha extra stuff anyway. Karate Man has naturally high HP and strength, so that’s why having the bestest equipment sometimes isn’t an issue. However, there is a bug which prevents his HP from getting to 9999 or increased after Level 60. You only noticed it in FF4A because he came back into your party with the party swap at the end. This bug is fixed in FF4A EU.
But since I’m not playing FF4A, we can just kill people off without caring much.
That’s much better. By the way, with regards to Red Bones, we don’t start encountering more of them until the next undead mountain. They’re more of an uncommon encounter here. They just have higher stats than your average Skelton, but they’re pretty much weak against the same things.
We’re outside the mountain now. You encounter mostly Red Caps and Needlers, but neither pose much threat. (This is me trying to remember whether or not I took a cap of that bit or not. Probably not.) Needlers are stronger palette swaps of SwordRats.
This Chocobo’s Forest is very close to Fabul. It’s pretty much the same layout as almost all the other Chocobo’s Forests. Which means…
More like, “It smells like bird’s poop.” This is where you’ll use the Carrot item. This big guy pops out of nowhere.
The BIG Chocobo. Played FF3? You know what’s in store here: the guy will eat your items and store them in one of his gizzards until you want it again and he’ll cough it back up.
For free.
You need to take advantage of his offers or else you’ll have to pitch some of the stuff you’ve been holding onto. And if you’re like me and unequipping people before they leave, you’ll definitely need the extra storage space.
Take, for example, Beer. We’re gonna put her stuff into storage.
Aw, I like Fabul’s overworld design. It has a moat and everything.
Next Time: The climax of Batman's Story, which is also the best part of the entire game. Yes. This game peaks early.
V I finished Karnak and got the three new Jobs: Ninja, Tamer, and Geomancer. I forgot how many shards the game kept back from you. That Mimic Shard in particular is heartbreaking. Not that Mimes would be THAT useful at this point in the game, I suppose. Meanwhile, Bartz as a Mystic Knight is a dream come true. A question, though: In the first Dissidia, Bartz' EX Burst is !SpellBlade-!RapidFire-DualWield, and he's a Mime. I didn't think Mimes could use every weapon in the game, though, so wouldn't this combo be more useful on a Freelancer than Master Mime? Except Freelancers only get 2 slots, and not 3. So does DualWield become an innate for the Freelancer, akin to Counter, or does it enable a Mime to wield weapons beyond a Mime's usual scope?
The famous broken combination in FFV (Spellblade Dual-wield Rapid Fire) can only be done by a freelancer (2 ability slots + dual-wield as innate) or a mime (3 ability slots). Generally, it's more useful for a freelancer, but mimes can still use the chicken knife. I don't believe dual-wield grants the use of any weapons.
My major problems with the RNGs are these: 1) I have to go to school in a month, and the Wii stays home. I just don't have the time to do this. 2) The game's difficulty is obscene without leveling up a bunch, which is time consuming without things like the Red Ring, which you only get from the RNGs. 3)They take waaaay too much preparation. Like, I need to know Bio BEFORE surfacing in Rydia's Tale. You have to be level 40 to get the Cockatrice summon! The best fights you can do in the underworld give 700 EXP. The FAQ is all "Time to get = 5 minutes!" but never mentions the ten years you'll spend grinding levels to meet the requirements.
I know. I don't have time to do all that garbage just for a perfect game cuz I have other things to do like studying, writing reports, or playing other things. I mean, I get that it's entirely optional, but it's a pain in the ass to put the time aside and get it done if you want to be a completionist about it (which is what made me stop playing TAY the first time; and it was in Rydia's Story too!).
Besides, you'd wanna progress through the story anyway as quick as you can. Half the time when I do materials grinding like that, I sorta forget what what I'm doing in the main game and I get really bored. Like, at least FF13 put that stuff at the end even if it was irritating.
The famous broken combination in FFV (Spellblade Dual-wield Rapid Fire) can only be done by a freelancer (2 ability slots + dual-wield as innate) or a mime (3 ability slots). Generally, it's more useful for a freelancer, but mimes can still use the chicken knife. I don't believe dual-wield grants the use of any weapons.
I'm ashamed to admit I don't think I've ever done this whole combination. I always did Dual-Wield Rapid-Fire, but I never once thought to add Spell Blade.
Guess I know which classes to prioritize on Bartz now!
I'm ashamed to admit I don't think I've ever done this whole combination. I always did Dual-Wield Rapid-Fire, but I never once thought to add Spell Blade.
Guess I know which classes to prioritize on Bartz now!
Oh boy, you guys seem super-prepared. Also, the dialogue’s kind of like “Welcome to Corneria!” in that the monks beside each other say the same thing.
But first, shopping!
Hey look, we can finally start spending our money now. Karate Man can get a few new claws, and Batman can get some new armour; now he can truly be one with the darkness.
With regards to the Karate Man’s claws, there are a few things to bear in mind. The first thing to always always note in this game is that the game priorities enemy weakness before it ever will prioritize enemy strengths. So, if you have a character with a weapon equipped on each hand, with one weapon being Thunder elemental and the other Ice elemental, and you’re fighting a monster that absorbs Ice but weak against Thunder, you’ll still deal more damage since you have a Thunder elemental equipped.
In other Final Fantasy games, this won’t work because each hit counts as an individual hit, so if you hit the Ice-absorbing enemy with Thunder, then Ice, it’ll take double damage with Thunder, but will absorb the Ice attack. This is not the case in Final Fantasy IV.
All of the dual-wielding party members’ attack bonuses will go towards one attack, so the attack will count as both Thunder and Ice. The game will take the attack that’s the most effective and that will turn the game into your favour. Thunder attacks will be doubled, but the Ice property will be ignored since it is not beneficial to you.
But if you had equipped Fire/Ice Claws instead, the monster will still absorb the damage because you don’t have anything to counter it with outside of a neutral element which is less effective. It will only consider the extremes.
This also means that you can’t equip two Fireclaws, two Iceclaws, two Thunderclaws, etc. to take advantage of a 4x damage setup. You only have one attack on you, not two.
Equipping claws will also be beneficial as opposed to leaving him barehanded because we need the extra % the claws add to your accuracy and base attack.
So that’s why we’re going to purchase the Ice Claw and the Thunder Claw + Batman’s equipment.
So it’s the maternity ward. Hey, look it’s a Namingway!
We’re gonna name the Karate Man “Donnie”. Does that sound like a dumb name to you? Well it shouldn’t.
If you don’t know who Donnie Yen is, you’re doing it wrong. Look at this guy. Check out Ip Man 1 and 2. Do what’s right.
A floor up, we meet…
Donnie’s wife is amazing. Best NPC in the game. I like how she’s handled here better rather than having the southern accent she did in later versions. She isn’t just sweet and gentle, she’s as rough as Donnie is, and every bit as Karate Man as he is! She can even do damage with spoons, dude.
Also, I think she’s being sarcastic with that ‘thanks’ bit. Obviously Donnie Yen didn’t need our help.
And apparently Donnie's a bit of a rapper on the side. He's totally rapping his introduction to his wife.
You bloody slacker. You’re the reason why we don’t have a good army. Sleeping all day and chasing women everywhere.
This kid will be a good Karate when they grow up.
Her method of dancing is amazing.
I bet that’s a joke. They won’t let us do that here since there’s also an Inn in the castle.
Best Kingdom. Best King ever. Let’s meet him!
KING! He doesn’t have a name, unless he’s that gun-toting (best) Type-0 character from both Type-0 demos and that’s his name.
Pretty sure that Bolton probably hides whenever any of the world’s royalty try to meet up. That’s probably why King doesn’t know him.
Batman tells King something along the lines of “GOTTA GO FAST”, and King whines that he’s the faker known as Shadow the Hedgehog so he shouldn’t believe anything coming out of Batman’s mouth.
Bolton, as usual, is good at saying stuff during plot sequences. He says “HI! :3” and King recognizes him.
You can answer Yes/No here. If you answer “No”, he says that he can’t force you and even if you leave the castle, nothing happens. So we’re gonna say yes.
Girls can’t fight, didn’t you know?
I’d much rather take the little kid who can burn stuff, fire lightning bolts, and summon giant birds over both the Karate and the Bard, but whatever. Beer can stay put until the victory party. In the version, Batman doesn’t tell Clair to take care of Beer. Shame.
Next comes my favourite bit of the game. Then it’s all downhill from here. Do you see how badass this is? Do you see it? You won’t get anything that looks as cool ever again in this game. It’s silent, and then you hear this one monk scatter across the screen to warn you.
Donnie being a badass. Even freaking Bolton of all people is being courageous. He’s voluntarily fighting here with you! All of these enemies can go down in a few hits, and they don’t do much damage to you.
Next we get assaulted by the Red Wings!
Half of the time they’re not even hitting you, but the Karate Men seemed to have built such a strong fortress here. I think we’re strong enough to fight against the Airships cuz we’ve got a ton of KARATE on our side, but whatever. Batman’s a sissy.
The enemies drive us back into the shopping area. Donnie feels all guilty, but he doesn’t have to. It’s about time something interesting happened in this game. Seriously. This is awesome.
They throw a ton of stuff at us that we’re strong against. We already know that Bolton can oneshot WaterHags.
Oh crap, they’re going to raid our shops!
Aaaaaaaannnnnd?
OH YES.
We’ve been smashing enemies into wine the entire time, but this makes it even more aggressive and cooler.
I’ll have to say that it’s been Bolton who’s been signalling for us to retreat for the entire ambush.
Really, Fabul needs better tacticians. Despite being super-fortified and being able to fend off some really generic enemies, the very first mistake was sending every single competent soldier out on training simultaneously, leaving the rookies alone.
Though the rookies seem to be doing okay so far.
Batman asks where the crystal is, and Donnie says it’s upstairs. But the guy who was supposed to lock the door has other plans…
Traitorous scum! Seize him!
(He’s just a meaningless gargoyle and we can kill those in one hit now.)
I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Let’s lock the damn door instead. This is Final Fantasy IV so no one is going to listen to logic here.
BOLTON, YOU FOOL. Bolton gets attacked by a General and his guards and we save him easily.
All of this just because Bolton can't tie his shoelaces.
Check this last stand out. It’s so awesome. We wait for the next enemy, but instead we see a familiar face.
Must’ve taken that Secret Dragoon Path.
Tommy’s just turned heel! This could cut such an awesome promo. Think of the awesome music they could use.
No, don’t make me Mode 7 out!
Because I named Tommy after the Green Ranger, and because this is probably the best part of the game and it all goes downhill from here, I think we should play something super-fitting.
Tommy doesn’t give a crap. He knows he’s more powerful than Batman and laughs in his face. If he had a talking sword, and an awesome dagger that could call on a Dragon(zord), he’d probably use them right now. Instead, he has to taunt and jump on Batman’s head.
Unless you’re a crazy person who really really really wants to beat him, you probably won’t put forth the effort to beat Kain. The game will pretend that you lost anyway if you do win.
I should’ve named everyone in this playthrough “Golbez” instead. That dialogue box would’ve been great.
I don’t like Golbez’s motivations as a villain all that much, but I do like his style. Golbez does whatever he wants to get whatever he wants. We didn’t have asshole villains like this often back then, so Golbez back then was what you’d probably call ‘refreshing and new’. Golbez at least had more than one dimension.
I like how he only addresses Batman and Tommy in this scene. He doesn’t care about anyone else.
Oh, hey, an opportunity. I wonder what Golbez is going to do with it.
He seizes it with ease! He’s stealing Batman’s Beer and he’s going to give it to Tommy instead. You do not mess with a person’s beverage of choice. But he’s like the game’s Rex Banner so we have to give him extra points. He takes the crystal, he beats up Donnie and Bolton with a mere fraction of his power, he takes Batman’s beer, and he has Tommy under his spell?
And it doesn’t seem like he needs the Red Wings to accomplish all of this? Yet he had them and some of his monsters infiltrate the ranks to make his job even easier?
Dude, I think Golbez won the game. I wanna play as him instead.
He calls that ‘narrow’. :lol
I think he’s going through withdrawal. So soon? Sheesh.
Oh, by the way, there’s a child in the room. She didn’t say a single thing, and everyone ended up ignoring that she existed. I wonder what she’s gonna do.
I bet this is the sole reason why they give her White Magic at the beginning of the game and then take it away.
I'm ashamed to admit I don't think I've ever done this whole combination. I always did Dual-Wield Rapid-Fire, but I never once thought to add Spell Blade.
Guess I know which classes to prioritize on Bartz now!
I remember abusing the hell out of it for the FFV GBA extra bosses. Those guys don't fuck around, and some actually have a pattern to their weaknesses. (Like Omega mk.II switches between Ice, Fire, and Thunder weaknesses in some order.)
Although some of said bosses are assholes since they love to use dummy targets (a la NeoExdeath) making Rapid Fire kinda meh in some fights.
Chapter 9 was a real grind. Scenery was nice and all, but was it necessary to have that many battles? Especially since they were mostly the same setup? I think it took me 4 or 5 hours with a little bit of AFKing in there. It all started feeling really repetitive and pointless. But then I have nearly 90,000 gil in credit chips. So there's that.
Barthandelus won a couple of times. Mostly off that special attack. Read some stuff online about beating him that seemed overly complicated. Instead I buffed up, went Rav / Com / Rav and used potions to heal. Beat him and managed 5 stars too. Hooray.
Chapter 10 seems a nice change of pace so far. Trying to figure out a party setup I like. Ideally I want to use Lightning, Vanille and either Sazh or Fang. Is having two commandos in the party pointless?
So far I'm using Lightning / Sazh / Vanile.
Com / Syn / Rav *
Com / Rav / Med
Com / Rav / Rav.
How should Lightning, Vanille, Fang go? Seems like Lightning would need to be Rav with Fang around, but her magic is pretty low compared to her strength.
Since I had a lot of components laying around, I tried out the upgrade system with the Gladius. Using items I had a lot of (assuming they'll be easy to replace) I got it up to lvl 10 without much fuss. The jump to 70 strength seems more noticable than the upgrades from the crys-grid. Wouldn't mind doing this more characters, but i'll heed the advice to wait for chapter 11 since I'm presumably close.
Loremaster has to be one of the easiest gold trophies I've ever earned. Didn't even know it was a thing. I've been scanning stuff out of habit.
I tried starting my replay of FF9 so I could include pictures with it, but the snapshot plugin that was suggested to be used with CFW doesn't play nice with FF9, and it locks up the game each time I use it. So...I guess I can't use screenshots with the game like I wanted to. I'm gonna have to do this like how I did with my FF7 walkthrough: text-only, baby.
I know. I don't have time to do all that garbage just for a perfect game cuz I have other things to do like studying, writing reports, or playing other things. I mean, I get that it's entirely optional, but it's a pain in the ass to put the time aside and get it done if you want to be a completionist about it (which is what made me stop playing TAY the first time; and it was in Rydia's Story too!).
Besides, you'd wanna progress through the story anyway as quick as you can. Half the time when I do materials grinding like that, I sorta forget what what I'm doing in the main game and I get really bored. Like, at least FF13 put that stuff at the end even if it was irritating.
The way I see it now, Rydia's tale is the hurdle. I mean, Yang's tale is the only essential tails collecting, since he's got the Red Tails which can make grinding better. But Rydia's Tale is the one with all the stuff to get. Four summons, a tail and a bolt/nut. Once I'm past Rydia's tale, I'll breeze through the game. It's likely that's not going to happen till I come home for winter break.
In terms of FFV, I made it to Galuf's world. Which also means I met Krile, and she's already started pulling bullcrap. Freaking, let's talk about that. Everybody else lands their meteor with some level of danger involved. The werewolf gets attacked and Galuf LOSES HIS MEMORY. But Krile, who can't be more than fifteen, lands her daggum meteor EXACTLY where the party is. The meteor is visible even after Gohn crashes, meaning that either it LANDED on Gohn, or the crashing city just missed it (suck it, XIII-2, Gohn didn't even kick up enough dirt to be seen from Jachol) and Krile beamed her ass up to the city in seconds, which makes no sense, since the damn thing was so high our airship needed adamantium coating to get there. But she's KRILE and EVERYBODY LOVES HER so the obvious answer is CHOCOBOS GENTLY LIFTED HER TO THE CITY and the monsters all high fived her as she went by. Oh, then she beats Tycoon with a single spell.
Just to be clear what's wrong with that: Nobody can use magic until AFTER they get the Crystals. Sure, it's sold all over two different worlds, but none of your party can use magic, not even Galuf. But Krile can, because she's KRILE. Then she uses a single Thunder spell to knock Tycoon flat on his ass. The guy is possessed by EXDEATH, who took four dawn warriors to stop last time, and is at 75% power for the moment. But she's Krile, so she does it. She'll soon beat the crap out of accomplished swordsman Bartz, fly a dragon better than Lenna, kill her pappy, become captain of a pirate band and get into Dissidia as she quotes Loveless and is actually Jenova's mother (half) because freaking she's Krile.
Finished the 012 Story of Dissidia. I'll just give a quick overview of what happened.
Prologue: So aside from being stuck in a seemingly endless loop of war, our Heroes have to contend with these annoying little Manikins, which are basically crystallized clones of all the characters. This wouldn't be so bad, except they're crazy relentless and they're just goddamn EVERYWHERE. They can't catch a break really. Needless to say, the villains are having a jolly good time because they don't have to do crap to win now.
Chapter 1: You get Lightning here. She plays alright, though I'm not a big fan of Paradigm Shift. After getting split up from her little group, she wanders around a bit until she finds Kain, who just "killed" Bartz (they refer to it as being put to sleep...more on that in a bit). Needless to say, they fight, but Kain ends up running off, leaving Lightning betrayed and pissed.
Chapter 2: You get control of Vaan here. He has some nifty moves, but that's about it. Story-wise, not much happens. He finds Terra, who's under Kefka's control, and manages to help free her. That's about the last you see of her for this story. (As far as I know.)
Chapter 3: Laguna time! I liked playing as him. The only thing of note that happens here is that Laguna fights the Cloud of Darkness and she ends up telling him about the gate that the Manikins are spawning from. Of course, she also says that going after the gate pretty much leads to certain doom. Laguna eventually meets back up with Vaan.
Chapter 4: You get to use Yuna for this chapter. Lots of great moves and coverage, so she was a favorite for this chapter and the last. Anywho, she's traveling with Jecht when they meet up with a brainwashed Tidus, who's lost most of his memories (and shirtless...yeah). Some sheannigans ensue, and The Emperor makes an appearance and Flares Tidus's ass to death. So you fight him, and during that whole mess, Jecht sacrifices his lifeforce to Tidus, trying to save him. Anywho, that all backfires, since The Emperor ends up kidnapping poor Jecht, leaving a near-dead Tidus with Yuna. (Basically, nothing good came of this. At all.)
Chapter 5: Lightning time again! She heads back to Cosmos, where we find out the Warrior of Light is in league with Kain. They figured with the Manikins on the loose, they simply can't win no matter what due to their overwhelming numbers, so they decide to put their allies to sleep, in hopes that they can become stronger in the next battle (aka cycle). Needless to say, Lightning is pissed and we battle the Warrior of Light. That was a ridiculously hard fight too, BTW.
Chapter 6: Kain time! Here we find out that Kain learned all this stuff about the Cycles and Manikins from Golbez. Basically saying that they'll be resurrected for the next cycle if they lose the battle, and losing their memories in the process. (Stuff that happens to be true for the most part.) Exdeath is the boss for this chapter, and he's pretty annoying. AI Exdeath doesn't screw around. *Blocks Everything*
Chapter 7: You get Tifa for this chapter. I liked playing as her as well. Likes to get up in people's business and smack 'em. Basically, she happens upon Kain and decides to ally with him, since she can't believe that he's truly a traitor. That's about it really.
Epilogue: For this chapter, you get a full party of five (Yuna, Laguna, Lightning, Vaan, and Tifa). This is the first chapter where you actually start fighting enemy parties.
Everyone meets back up and kinda figures out what was going on. So the party decides to hunt and take down the Void gate the Manikins are spawning from, based off Laguna's limited info.
Eventually, the party reaches the Void Rift gate, but get ambushed by the remaining villains. Basically, the boss fight here is a round-robin tournament vs the bosses from the previous chapters all jacked up. The last fight in particular was pretty rough since it pits you against a Lv39 Garland (my party's average levels were around 18-19).
After that mess, the party attempts to close the Gate, while the Warrior of Light tries to fight off a legion of manikins attempting to defeat Cosmos. After hours of sitting around pouting and looking sad, Cosmos sacrifices herself to save her minions and is defeated, ending the cycle. (As we learn in a Report shortly after, this should've messed up a lot of stuff, since her dying before her minions should've killed ALL of them.)
But for whatever reason, the powers that be decide to resurrect everybody and begin the next cycle anew, leading up to the 013 story.
CorvoSol, I didn't get how you felt about Krile. Do you like her, or not?
CorvoSol said:
The way I see it now, Rydia's tale is the hurdle. I mean, Yang's tale is the only essential tails collecting, since he's got the Red Tails which can make grinding better. But Rydia's Tale is the one with all the stuff to get. Four summons, a tail and a bolt/nut. Once I'm past Rydia's tale, I'll breeze through the game. It's likely that's not going to happen till I come home for winter break.
If it makes you feel better, I *think* you can find the Cockatrice summon in the last chapter and use the RNG exploit to get it. But it super-sucks that they threw *everything* in that chapter. It's a pain to go through. The bolts/nuts were especially bad for me.
That is one thing I absolutely abhor about playing The After Years: if I want to be a completionist, I have to go nuts with that RNG stuff.
This is one of my favourite posts in this thread. Thank you.
Professor Beef said:
I tried starting my replay of FF9 so I could include pictures with it, but the snapshot plugin that was suggested to be used with CFW doesn't play nice with FF9, and it locks up the game each time I use it. So...I guess I can't use screenshots with the game like I wanted to. I'm gonna have to do this like how I did with my FF7 walkthrough: text-only, baby.
I don't think I'm passionate enough about this game enough to do any of the extra stuff, especially since I stripped almost everyone before they left my party. (whoops) Of the two other games I've finished*, I'd put this one below FF1 PSP and above FF3 DS. I'll probably sell it off and play my fiancé's copy of Origins if I ever feel the need to return to FF2.
*...okay technically not done with FF3 DS yet
Also: thoughts on the ending.
BYE FOREVER ASSHOLE, GOOD RIDDANCE
I hope Hilda and Gordon secretly have you hunted down and killed for the whole "being an unapologetic war criminal" thing ❤
CorvoSol, I didn't get how you felt about Krile. Do you like her, or not?
If it makes you feel better, I *think* you can find the Cockatrice summon in the last chapter and use the RNG exploit to get it. But it super-sucks that they threw *everything* in that chapter. It's a pain to go through. The bolts/nuts were especially bad for me.
That is one thing I absolutely abhor about playing The After Years: if I want to be a completionist, I have to go nuts with that RNG stuff.
Krile forms an unholy foursome of characters I loathe in the Final Fantasy series. The other three being Genesis Rhapsodis, Snow Villiers, and Cosmos. I hate Krile and Genesis for being the most shameless of Mary Sues in the series, Snow I can't stand mostly because he's a tool (I've soften up towards him mostly because in XIII-2 Hope surpassed him in idiot levels). Cosmos, on the other hand, is very love/hate. She's a manipulative, negligent monster, who the cast faun over for no good reason at all (Ultimecia impersonates her and Squall NEVER realizes it. Ultimecia, an axe crazy sorceress, can pass herself off as an allegedly good Goddess), but on the other hand, she's such a Freudian Field Day that I love her to bits.
Here is a woman who all four of the leading men (Cid Lufaine, Chaos, Garland, and the Warrior of Light) love, because she resembles the first's wife, the second's mother, and the princess of the third and fourth.
The only people in Final Fantasy who I will admit are worse than them, though, are Team NORA. Collectively, Team NORA is the worst Final Fantasy Character of all time. Every moment they are on screen, I want to punch the screen. And I liked XIII and its cast. But NORA? UUUUUUUGHH.
Speaking of The After Years, I swear every time I think I'm FINALLY ready to do that damn Cockatrice RNG and move on with my life, the game laughs at me again. The FAQ says you need Bio and INT of 45. You learn Bio at 32, so I went and tried it, but no luck. I need the INT of 45. At level 35 I'd been steadily gaining 1 INT per level for awhile, and assumed that I'd make 45 at 36, since I had 44 INT. NO YOU LURN DRAIN INSTEAD.
By the way? Drain is officially my most hated spell of the SNES era. It is one of the ONLY spells you can never get higher than a 1% learn rate for in FF6, and so that means that if you want 100% spells on everyone, good luck. I hate you Drain, you ruined my life!
Anyway, I now need 22000 EXP to get to level 37. I KNOW I have to reach 45 INT somewhere between 37 and 40 because 40 is the chapter cap. You only earn, on average, 500 EXP a fight in the Sealed Cave, which is the best place for EXP in the lowerworld part of Rydia's chapter. I went into this cave at about level 20, I think. It's funny, because I think that AFTER leaving the lowerworld, you can pretty much end her chapter whenever you want.
Last playthrough, I had Cecil/Ceodore/Rosa/Kain/Golbez as my final party. This time around, though, I am NOT taking Ceodore into the final dungeon. Screw him. Kid is a total waste of time and effort. I mean, sure, he's faster than Cid, but that's about it. Kain and Cecil hit harder than he does, and Rosa has better white magic. I'm taking Rydia in his place because, even though Palom is the better black Mage, I'm putting hella efforts into Rydia, so I will be taking her. I'm also taking Golbez because GOLBEZ. So my final party will be the same as it was in the end of FF4, except I shall be substituting the inferior Edgeypoo with GOLBEZ THE MANLIEST MAN OF ALL MANDOM.
And in case anybody cares to refute that claim, Edge was pretty useless in the DS version (I had Kain, Cecil, and Rydia doing 90k damage. What was Edge even there for?) and Golbez is the only man out of all FF4's reps in Dissidia who isn't wearing makeup. Kain paints his nails and Cecil wears blue lipstick. Why are Baronian men so Faaaaabulous? Nevermind the fact that the DS version's artwork for Edward is downright a woman, and I think Edge has earrings on.
Golbez, on the other hand, is so manly he goes into battle in a towel and bathrobe. Just like the Cloud of Darkness. Kinda.
A big WTF at the opening chapter 11 movie. Of all the things to use like that, a chocobo? Really? Screw you, too, Square. The bit with the Adamantoise didn't help. Meh. Liking chapter 11 beyond that.
In terms of FFV, I made it to Galuf's world. Which also means I met Krile, and she's already started pulling bullcrap. Freaking, let's talk about that. Everybody else lands their meteor with some level of danger involved. The werewolf gets attacked and Galuf LOSES HIS MEMORY. But Krile, who can't be more than fifteen, lands her daggum meteor EXACTLY where the party is. The meteor is visible even after Gohn crashes, meaning that either it LANDED on Gohn, or the crashing city just missed it (suck it, XIII-2, Gohn didn't even kick up enough dirt to be seen from Jachol) and Krile beamed her ass up to the city in seconds, which makes no sense, since the damn thing was so high our airship needed adamantium coating to get there. But she's KRILE and EVERYBODY LOVES HER so the obvious answer is CHOCOBOS GENTLY LIFTED HER TO THE CITY and the monsters all high fived her as she went by. Oh, then she beats Tycoon with a single spell.
Just to be clear what's wrong with that: Nobody can use magic until AFTER they get the Crystals. Sure, it's sold all over two different worlds, but none of your party can use magic, not even Galuf. But Krile can, because she's KRILE. Then she uses a single Thunder spell to knock Tycoon flat on his ass. The guy is possessed by EXDEATH, who took four dawn warriors to stop last time, and is at 75% power for the moment. But she's Krile, so she does it. She'll soon beat the crap out of accomplished swordsman Bartz, fly a dragon better than Lenna, kill her pappy, become captain of a pirate band and get into Dissidia as she quotes Loveless and is actually Jenova's mother (half) because freaking she's Krile.
Yeah, there's an awful lot of plot convenience there. Never really thought about it before, but you bring up some interesting points.
Then again, a lot of people do treat her as special since she can talk to Chocobos and Wyverns (Hiryuu).
She only uses low-level magic in those scenes though, so it's not completely outside the realm of possibility of her actually knowing it. (Whether it's as strong as shown is a different matter entirely.)
As far as the meteor stuff goes, it had to have landed on the city itself (the only reason you'd see it later is that it fell with the city, but didn't break on impact for some reason; more plot shenanigans).
Can't argue anything else though. I got nothing. I try not to think too hard about FFV's plot.
Golbez is the only man out of all FF4's reps in Dissidia who isn't wearing makeup. Kain paints his nails and Cecil wears blue lipstick. Why are Baronian men so Faaaaabulous? Nevermind the fact that the DS version's artwork for Edward is downright a woman, and I think Edge has earrings on.
Yeah, I hate the reimagining of the characters. or should i say i hate the original artwork? Whatever their avatar pictures looked like in the snes version looked great, and then they made it look terrible.
I haven't had a chance to play FF9 in a few weeks I'm hoping to be able to play sometime this week though and get back on track. I was on Disc 3 in the Desert Palace I had: Eiko, Vivi, Garnet and Amarat as my party in there. I felt very underwhelming. I'm one to just auto-attack my way to victory when going through dungeons.
