Final Fantasy IV

Posted: March 15, 2011 | Author: flomu | Filed under: Uncategorized |1 Comment »

So I finished Final Fantasy IV the other day (GBA version).  It was, on the whole, a great game.  I’m going to spend this post talking about some tiny details and plot moments of the game that only people who’ve played the game will recognize (so if haven’t played the game before, go do so, and don’t read this!).

The most annoying monster of the game award goes to…. WICKED MASK!

I don’t know how Square Enix came up with such an annoying and difficult monster to pester the player in the last moments before facing Zemus.  I mean, the Lunar Subterrane was tough to begin with, what with the Gold Dragons that retaliate by immobilizing your party (and I hear the DS version makes it impossible).  Then in the final three or so maps, you get Red Dragons whose sprites are so big, they overlap, Zemus’s Minds that can only be damaged by magic attacks, and these stupid creatures that cast Reflect on both themselves and your party.  It’s such a pain trying to heal your party when you have to bounce Curagas off of the Wicked Mask and back onto a random member of the party.  What’s worse, they seem to have Haste on automatically and chain-cast Holy, Bio, and Flare while you’re just still trying to bounce Curagas around.

The dumbest boss award goes to… PLAGUE!  and in general, Ahrimans/Ahrimen(?)

In most RPGs, there’s always one monster whose sole purpose is to cast Death or Doom or something of the sort on the party.  In FFIV, it’s Plague.  He casts Doom on the entire party, and then Hastes everybody up so the ten-turn counter goes down quickly.  It’s a really great concept, and I was genuinely scared that I might get wiped out… but then Plague died.  It turns out that Plague has only 33,333 health, almost 4,000 less than the 37k health of the Wicked Mask above.  That means that it’s really, really easy to kill Plague before the timer runs out.  You could start the fight, go on a picnic, and come back and kill Plague with plenty of time to spare.

Where is the Tower of Zot? I thought for the longest time that the huge thing sticking out of a crater in the middle of nowhere (above picture) was it, but that turns out to be the Tower of Babil.  I did a little searching online, and it turns out that the Tower of Zot, the main base of operations for Golbez and the other bad guys, is not even on the world map.  Apparently, it’s floating in the sky because Zemus and/or Golbez was retarded and thought that a floating tower would be the coolest thing ever.

On a somewhat related note, why can’t you fly into the hole around the Tower of Babil to get underground?  It’s certainly big enough to fit the Enterprise – heck, it could fit the Lunar Whale!  It seems odd that nobody knew there was an underground world when there’s a huge, gaping hole with an equally huge tower jutting out from it.

Most Pointless Sacrifice: Yang’s Pointless Sacrifice

After you defeat Dr. Lugae and Barnabas, you get the key to stopping the cannons, but the goblins decide to blow everything up!  You’re about to walk out of the room and teleport away from the sure destruction when BAM!  Yang comes out, shoves Cecil outside, and stays inside the exploding room.

I don’t see what Yang was trying to do or could’ve done in there besides bang his fists on the panels until they blew up in his face, since he’s no Black Mage.  Besides, was there really a reason for Yang to even stay inside?  The room exploded and the party, just on the other side of the door, was unharmed.

There are shittons of Rydia pictures out there.  I liked her the most out of all the characters, but I didn’t expect to see so much fanart of her.  A lot of it’s quite good, too.

In order to end this post, I’ll just give a nod to the Dev Team Office, one of the best easter eggs I’ve seen.  The secret Lali-Ho Pub isn’t that hard to find, but imagine my surprise when I found a secret path in an already secret area!  I loved the “monster” encounters in the Dev Team Office, especially the staff member whose sprite was a recolored orge.

The best part is the porn magazine you can find in the bookshelves.  If you use it, Cecil looks around, the screen turns pink, and Cecil says “Now this is what I call great literature!”

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