🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 10

[simias]

Final Fantasy 4 Beginner Club W10

Week 10	2026-08-28T15:00:00Z
Previous week	🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 9
Home Threads	FFBC / FF4BC

Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

Final Fantasy IV script

Please be extra-mindful of spoilers, as these games become more and more plot-driven it’s important to avoid revealing even minor details of future events, characters and locations. If you’re not sure if something is spoilery or not, better just throws it in a [spoiler] just in case.

Stopping point

Finish the game.

More details

Let’s start by tidying up the remaining optional content:

斬鉄剣〔任意〕

You need to have collected Ashura and Leviathan in 幻獣の町 to be able to do this.

Return to Baron and explore the basement of the tower to the North-East:

You’ll get to fight a boss and, should you be victorious, get a new summon!

Underground farewell 〔任意〕

Before our final trip to the moon, we can visit the land of the dwarves one last time:

• The 鍛冶屋のククロ (who forged Excalibur for us) will now sell some rare arrows and shurikens.
• You can visit the fairies in the シルフの洞窟 once again and find the 奥義の書 on a bookshelf:

It’s a consumable item that summons a random 幻獣.

Overground farewell 〔任意〕

You can visit Missidia one last time to talk to your friends before the final challenge. In some versions of the game you can pick which party member you want to take with you.

The moon

Time to end this. First return to the moon and traverse the caves once more to reach the 月の民の館. There, go behind the altar where the Crystal was located to reach the 2nd level of the temple.

Once there you’ll get some infodump from a circle of じいさん Crystals. The objective is set: we need to reach the core of the moon in order to stop Zemus. Step on the center tile to open the path forward.

The dungeon below is filled with teleporters, stairs and hidden paths. There are a few optional bosses guarding endgame gear. You can find maps here if you want: 【FF4】月の地下渓谷｜エリア情報・マップ・入手アイテム｜FF4ピクセルリマスター攻略@じんそく

Remember that you can use Lydia’s デジョン or Rosa’s テレポ to leave the dungeon and rest using the two magic altars on the first floor of the 月の民の館.

After defeating the final boss, the ending cutscene is unfortunately unpausable normally. If you want to peruse it at your leisure, here’s a video from the Pixel Remaster version: https://youtu.be/xZ_7gmBCNpM

Map

Miscellaneous

The lost summons

You may be surprised to learn that you’re probably still missing a bunch of summons by now. There are a bunch of minor invocations that can be learned only by getting (often rare) drops from the corresponding enemies:

• Goblin
• Cockatrice
• Bomb
• Mindflayer

Then again the only summons worth using by the end of the game are Bahamut and Asura, so you’re not missing much.

Spoilers for this week below:

The pudding's tail

In level B5 of the underground lunar dungeon there’s a specific room with a single treasure chest containing an 赤い牙:

This room is special, because you can encounter groups of プリンプリンセス enemies:

At a glance they seem to be a joke enemy, but in practice they’re extremely valuable because they have a low chance of dropping a Pink Tail (a 0.39% chance in the original version apparently, but much higher in the Pixel Remaster). This Pink Tail can then be traded for the Adamantite Armor, the strongest armor in the game (you trade it to the same NPC who exchanged the Rat’s Tail for the Adamantite).

The most convenient way of farming the プリンプリンセス is to use an Alarm item to trigger the fight in this room. In some versions you can purchase an unlimited amount of this item, so it’s relatively convenient to farm, but in the original version you can only farm the Alarm from the Sentinels in the Giant of Babil, so it’s a lot more tedious.

By the way, in English the プリンプリンセス are the Flan Princesses, so the pun is lost in translation.

Track of the week

巨人のダンジョン

Participation

• I’m playing along
• I will catch up later
• I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
• I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion

The FF club awards

The patented endgame polls are here:

polls

What did you think of the pacing of this club?

• I played at my own pace and didn’t attempt to stay in sync with the club
• I wanted to keep up with the club but external circumstances prevented me from doing so
• It was too fast for me, I fell behind
• It was challenging but I managed to keep up
• It was fine
• I could have gone a bit faster but I didn’t mind
• It felt slow but I still followed along
• It was too slow and I ended up filthy preplaying

What’s your experience with playing games in Japanese?

• This is the first time I play a game in Japanese
• I have played a few (≤3) games in Japanese
• I have played a bunch of games in Japanese

How difficult was it for you to play this game in Japanese?

• Very hard
• Quite hard
• Somewhat challenging
• Easy
• Trivial

How useful was the spreadsheet for you?

• What spreadsheet? (Didn’t use it at all)
• I used it a bit but I could easily do without it
• I could have played without it, but it would have been significantly harder
• I don’t think I would have made it without the spreadsheet

How would you rate this game?

• Great
• Good
• Underwhelming
• Bad

Now the fun stuff

Note that you don’t have to rank every entry every time if you don’t want to, you can just rank the top entries and ignore the others.

Favourite vehicle

• Hovercraft
• The Enterprise
• The Falcon
• The Whale

Favourite enemy sprite

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Favourite boss

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Favourite Party Member

• Cecil (Dark Knight)
• Cecil (Paladin)
• Kain
• Lydia
• Tera
• Gilbart
• Rosa
• Yan
• Parom
• Porom
• Cid
• Edgy
• Fusuya

Best Final Fantasy so far

• Final Fantasy 1
• Final Fantasy 2
• Final Fantasy 3
• Final Fantasy 4

[Akashelia]

@simias

The patented endgame polls are here:

But what if there is a cool monster in week 10 I want to nominate? For example a pink one?

[simias]

Who do you have in mind? It’s early enough that I can amend the poll.

[Akashelia]

Well I haven’t played week 10 yet

[simias]

[simias]

Congrats to all those who made it here!

W10 and general game review

This final dungeon was a bit underwhelming. The only visually interesting thing was the moon’s core visible in the background in the very last levels, but beyond that it was just some cave. And no unique music track! I like the Red Wing theme but why reuse it here? And then it reuses the Giant of Babil theme (which I picked as track of the week) and it’s a great one, but the lack of a dedicated music track disappointing given the standards set by the Famicom games. FF3 had three unique tracks for the final dungeon! And FF2’s final dungeon is easily the best in the entire game, with a legendary score: https://youtu.be/GANINrVaM-g

At least there were some creative enemy encounters. I especially like the Goblin who tries to trick you by casting libra on itself.

The Zeromus encounter is extremely cool looking. It’s just annoying that we know so little about him. He’s very angery rawr >:(. He’s so buttmad that it makes him immortal, apparently. What led him to this? Who knows.

This is something that many other FF games do (FF3 had a similar thing with the Cloud of Darkness) and I never quite like it: they set up an antagonist with a lot of characterization and screen time (here Golbez, in FF3 Zande) but end up dispatching them partway through the game and introduce a new, much less developed antagonist. I think it’s meant as a twist and an escalation (the new bad guy is even stronger than the previous bad guy!) but I never enjoy it. I don’t know who Zemus is. I don’t care about Zemus. He’s got cool sprites tho.

They also did the FF3 thing where you lose to the final boss but your friends come together to revive you and give you a 2nd chance. It’s cute. I think it made a little more sense in FF3 with Une and Doga but whatever, it’s an excuse to bring the team back together.

Mechanically the boss is really relentless. I think it’s the first time I don’t first-try a final boss in this club. At least it gives you an excuse to go all out and pop those elixirs.

The ending is also very similar to FF3. Nothing really stands out, except perhaps Kain’s bittersweet ending. The rest is just a very expected happy ending. Golbez flying away with the moon is pretty goofy.

Overall I think the game started very strong, I found the mid part a bit sluggish and the end was cool but a bit rushed. In a sense I feel like I’m being unfair because this is still vastly better than the Famicom games, there’s absolutely no contest here, but I think that because it feels so much closer to what I expect from a good JRPG I’m more easily frustrated by the shortcomings.

[frequent4832]

I pre-played everything but the last boss but I’m still calling it “playing along.”

Music choice

Huge unforced error to reuse “The Red Wings” for 7 straight floors of the final dungeon. I’m so sick of that song.

[frequent4832]

Walkthrough suggestion

Before heading to the final battle on the moon, I’d also recommend going to the Tower of Prayer in Mysidia. You can talk to all your former party members, confirm that none of them died again while you weren’t looking, and in some versions (not the PR or OG) apparently swap some of them into your active party.

[simias]

Oh that’s neat, I didn’t think to check that.

[seanblue]

How short is this week if I just do the main quest? I don’t really see a point in getting Odin since I’m not going for 100%.

[simias]

Odin is a really minor detour, just a boss fight basically.

The rest of this week is just the final dungeon. If you don’t bother finding the optional bosses and just run to the final boss I think it can be done fairly quickly, although the final boss is no joke so it may be worth getting the optional loot and XP.

[frequent4832]

I’ve died 3 times on the final boss so far around level 60 and it has a loooong cutscene before each attempt. If you really want to blast through I’d turn on EXP boost throughout the dungeon so you’re overleveled for it.

[Sisthra]

Damm. I haven’t even hit 50 with all characters I think, I may do that, thanks for the tip.
I think this final boss was infamously difficult on the snes

[frequent4832]

I started this week around 50 too and never used any boosts, there’s just a ton of exp in the dungeon.

[Akashelia]

I’m level 80 and will do some grinding for some particular item. I guess I might find out if you can get over level 99.

[simias]

Final Boss

I beat the final boss at level 50 on the SNES, but it took me several attempts and some luck with the AI script.

Don’t forget to throw the kitchen knife (that should be a guaranteed 9999 hit) and shurikens.

In the end Shadow the Edgelord didn’t make it though:

[Sisthra]

Final Dungeon music

@simias

And no unique music track! I like the Red Wing theme but why reuse it here?

It’s kinda hilarious that you accidentally spoiled the final dungeon’s theme in Week 1. It’s a baffling choice for sure.
It was used also in Cecil’s trail so maybe it’s meant to be more of a general theme of his than the Red Wings…? But then why use it in the final dungeon? I guess that’s the reason I couldn’t remember what the final dungeon sounded like at all, ahah

[simias]

Final Dungeon Music

Yeah I think it’s sort of Cecil’s theme, and it’s meant as a throwback I guess. “Look how far we’ve come since we were committing war crimes in Missidia”.

It’s definitely a cool theme but it’s very out of place here IMO. At least the Giant of Babil music fits the vibe a lot better, but then they should have used a different track for the Giant and kept this one fresh for the final levels.

It’s kind of wild that this is maybe the one single area where this game is a clear downgrade from the Famicom entries.

Even the final boss music, while unique, is kind of whatever: https://youtu.be/0Ong5k7NAbQ

Especially when we know that Uematsu will give us some legendary final boss tracks in the future!

[seanblue]

Oof, I don’t think I’m even level 50 yet.

[JupiterJesus]

A couple of the optional pseudo-boss monsters in the final dungeon are dang near as hard as the final boss.

If nothing else, this final dungeon is superior to all others because it has goddamn checkpoints.