I am currently like halfway through the final dungeon with people in the mid 40s still on SFC. I don’t believe in grinding! 気合と根性で乗り切る！
Final Boss
Oh and yes, even I, the pro-est of gamers, died on the final boss. That cutscene is no joke. He basically slams you really hard and you need to be constantly keeping up with the damage. It’s not a complex fight; more like a test of your level and your willingness to finally use your elixirs, and a bit of luck.
Listening to the credits roll now.
Final boss strategy
I won on my 6th attempt. In the end I think the main difference maker was letting Rydia die early and never attempting to revive her. For whatever reason the game just does not want her to be useful in that fight. There were some little optimizations like slowing down the ATB, trying to Jump after the warning shake, and holding Rosa’s heals until after the Big Bang, but honestly the 4-person party made it all a lot more manageable. Once he started casting Meteor I knew the fight was over so I Arise’d Rydia, but she never even got a cast off before he was done.
Week 10
The last dungeon was a bit of a let-down after the fantastic Giant of Babel last week. Lots of annoying enemies and mini-bosses. I struggled mightily with the last boss, but I still enjoyed solving the puzzle well enough. I’m not generally a fan of bosses that are only hard because they turn off lots of core gameplay mechanics, so I wish they would’ve at least let Rydia do something. When I realized Zeromus was even counterattacking her for using Asura and throwing Spider’s Silk, I knew that the best use for my favorite character would be to keep the floor warm.
From a narrative perspective, having a twist villain behind the twist villain was pretty silly. They had built up the best villain in the series so far in Golbez, just let us fight him. Hell, have him transform into Zeromus if you need a crazy monstrous sprite. Overall though the story was still the best thing about this game, and I mostly enjoyed it from start to finish. Without question the best FF we’ve played so far, and the only one that I’d recommend to someone who doesn’t specifically have an interest in old JRPGs or a need to “complete” the series.
I finished this week in 4:18 for a final playtime of 30:13. Now to start pre-playing FF4:TAY. Unless I have an FF2-level bad reaction to it, I’ll post a home thread for it by the end of this weekend.
On a trivial note, what was up with all the extended sequences of NPCs hopping and twirling all over the screen? I don’t think it’s a spoiler because it happened pretty much every week so far. At first it was kinda cute but it just. kept. happening. They never had any unique sprite poses or anything, just the same little twirls over and over again. Did that bug anyone else or am I crazy?
Physical comedy within the limitations of 16bit hardware I presume.
Kind of makes sense for Edgy, being a shinobi and all that, but they overdid it a bit for sure.
Final dungeon Part 1
Just hit the first check point in the final dungeon and I swear almost all trap chests have gone like this:
Battle starts, fight, fight, cast, Rosa gets oneshot, party gets trashed/oneshot, Kain only one left standing finishing the job by jumping. There’s the trap chest with the blue dragon and red dragon and the other with two red dragon, they do a physical attack that literally does 1 damage to him (in the backrow) and a slightly more dangerous 熱線… Buuut they always seem to have a fixed pattern of alternating attacks so you just jump. He’s getting all the exp because so often the party is ending the battle face down on the floor. He’s level 58 and all others still haven’t hit 50 while I’m running out of phoenix downs to get them back up.
I spent all my money before entering on 風魔手裏剣 for Edge but the guy is usually the first to croak it, YOU BETTER GET TO USE THEM IN THE FINAL BATTLE MY BOY.
Worst case I guess I’ll reach the end of the dungeon, teleport out, dump the money I made on items and ran back in with encounters disabled.
The goblin that tricks you was funny.
I also discovered those giants can blow up. Not sure what triggers it. It got a Megaflare to the face so maybe if it takes a very large amount of damage in one hit?
I should probably switch Rosa to the backrow to make her less fragile but Kain being there untouchable because of his heavy armour and no damage penalty thanks to jump has saved my hide way too many times to switch places, and Rydia in the front row would simply explode.
Will see how the rest of the dungeon goes and experiment a bit.
You can have three people on the back row if you want.
Ok thought I’d finish today but this final dungeon is quite long if you’re thorough / actually fighting most things you come across. I got the masamune from the beginning of where the dungeon changes appearance so I’m pretty deep. I’ve been made to back out and refresh a few times so my party has at least hit the very low 50s now. Before I forget just want to note I had the most bizarre bug where ribbons could not be equipped at all. Seemingly just leaving the room I got them in fixed it; I was really confused as they showed as equippable but it just wouldn’t do anything.
Also wow Plague was hand designed to not be 乗り切る’d by any amount of 気合 and 根性 but after going at that fight 5 or more times and learning / correctly pulling off chain revives to keep resetting the death counter we finally just barely did it. Surely I will not be getting punished for having brought about 10 phoenix downs and running through half of them by now.
Plague
I somehow managed to kill it with the counter around 3/4 iirc, no idea how.
Final boss
Did the good old “accidentally triggered the cutscene” and got wiped. I really don’t want to sit through that cutscene with too many failed attempts so I will camp by the save point and shamelessly grind levels by abusing the PR boosts until I’m high enough. Hopefully. At least I learned that you actually have to physically use the crystal at the start, because I wasted a shruriken before understanding what I needed to do lol
Throwing weapons
I went back to Fabul to check up on Yan’s wife and she gave me nothing. So either I already did it last week and completely forgot or… I didn’t get it?
Completely forgot about that functionality of switching the rows, will check it out!
Mrs. Yan
AFAIK you have to do the whole sidequest while Yan’s recuperating, before he shows up in the tank to fight the Giant. The 包丁 is permanently missed if you didn’t do it then.
Plague
You know I was really wondering if there are any version changes that impact this fight because when I briefly looked it up people were citing damage amounts you should be doing that were, like, twice what my characters put out. And at least one claimed that was for my lowish end level, but I dunno. I have the best equipment on everyone because it’s what’s in this dungeon so beyond pure levels I can’t imagine why else our damage output would be so much lower. Your Kain is above mine but if your others weren’t 50 when you made the first post we’re close enough. Kinda seems like something is different.
Edit: Huh I just looked up a video in pixel remaster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aLO7BkQ5Vo
I assume higher level lets people act quicker but the main thing that’s crazy to me here is that the amount of turns they get here, while at 09 still, would be enough for my party to be about dying by that point. I also wonder if battle speed impacts how much doom counts or if that kinda lets you break it…
Reply
I woke him up in the Sylph cave and got the sylph summon so I’m sure I did it. In my inventory I still have the 愛のpan in my key items but when I speak to her I can’t give it back to get the 包丁. No idea if I missed some other trigger.
プレイグ
I managed to beat him first try on SFC. I don’t remember my level but you can compare HP totals I suppose (ignore Lydia’s, she’s on steroids apples):
As you can see I got really lucky though… I think I defeated him with my last possible action. At least there’s a save point right before, the devs weren’t sadistic.
包丁
Yeah I think you need to do the full quest before the Giant of Babil. It’s not very logical…
包丁
Ah, that explains it then. A bit dumb, but oh well…
Oh right, I noticed that early on back when I was playing both versions side by side: the battle engine of the PR is clearly tweaked to be a lot more reactive and chain actions faster, which often doesn’t make a huge difference (and can actually make some fights a bit more tense if you don’t want to waste time with the ATB running) but I think it may completely break this particular time-sensitive boss.
I can’t be sure though, I stopped by PR playthrough around week 4 because I was traveling without my Switch.
Final boss take 2
Grinded up to level 70 minimum and still got absolutely demolished ooof, will try to apply Shell instead of protect first turn, maybe that helps.
I’m doing good damage but just one real healer (Cecil doesn’t count lmao sorry bro) is really rough. Maybe I really need to have someone hit the floor so the heals hit for more and it’s easier to keep people topped off. Will have to try. (But maybe let’s grind idk five more levels)
First try!
The enemies in the crystal section at the end seemed annoying so I decide to just run from every fight and dive in to the final boss to give it a go and see just how scary it’d be. Turns out we won! Everyone was in the low 50s. I did at least learn from this thread to already know Lydia was a lost cause so I wasn’t getting punished for using magic and my cures were more focused, everyone else stayed alive ok. Since this game is all about ATB, while the final boss strategy is pretty simply doing damage and healing off a lot, I liked that there was kind of a timing element, when I had the feeling the boss was about to use its big move there were moments I delayed Rosa’s turn a little and I was generally working around the time moves would happen.
Final dungeon was fun for being such a big gauntlet full of optional bosses and meaningful equipment goodies. Bit of a shame that even on the moon we spent most of that time in a cave, but so be it. I’ll work on a little review of backloggd later and post here for my overall thoughts on the game, but I did like 4! It’s got its disappointing aspects here and there but I was pretty consistently smooth and enjoyable with lots of charming stuff along the way.
With this, it’s 74 games played in Japanese!
Ultimately what I’m saying isn’t too different from anything I’ve brought up here at various times. The gameplay is limited in meaningful ways and most story qualms you all mentioned (certain off screen things that shouldn’t happen offscreen and anticlimactic outcomes) are very accurate. On the whole the game just has great vibes and is very enjoyable nonetheless, 4/5. I liked it the whole time, every week was fun in some way, and it’s my favorite so far. Unironically the aesthetic limits and very pointedly “too many caves” is what bugs me the most.
Final Boss Take 3
All right, did it without too many problems after realizing a crucial detail: ゼロムス counters Rydia’s summons by casting a party wide Bio that absolutely wrecks the party when followed up by Big Bang, but if you use black magic he counters with a single target Flare which is easier to deal with. Also using black magic seems to weaken the following Big Bang? I did two tries both at level 70 and after I switched from Bahamuth to bombarding him with Flares he was doing 1200 HP instead of 2000 plus. Could have been just an impression.
Anyway, this way I managed to do it without anyone dying. And apparently, slow works on him lol. Or at least the item does.
And that’s it!
Credits and general thoughts
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed replaying this game after all this time, I found myself really getting engrossed in the adventures of our party and especially every character’s evolution. Some sadly get less focus than others, like Yan who doesn’t exactly have a character arc, but others more than make up for it. As I already said in past weeks ギルバート’s narrative arc especially grew on me. Maybe it’s because I’m replaying these games almost two decades older, but the game’s message that it’s ok if ギルバート never becomes a badass fighter because he found his own (crucial) way of helping really struck me.
As has always done Cecil’s trial or Kain’s internal struggles with his brainwashing/jealousy which I’ve always found really interesting. One detail for example that I noticed replaying is that during Fabul’s assault when Kain first reappears and wrecks everyone, he is acting all dark and edgy and going all “I’m going to put you out of your misery”, but the instant Rosa runs in, the first thing he says is something like “Don’t look at me!”, which seems pretty random, but I like to think is meant to show Kain briefly snapping out of his mind control and being ashamed of what he’s doing in front of Rosa.
And the game is really full of little subtle things like these which give it really so much charm! The game was limited by its hardware but the story it managed to tell if you dig a bit deeper and look past those limitations is really charming. Lots and lots of cool moments and parallels: from the old sage literally using up his life to try and accomplish his quest of revenge, to two small child geniuses sacrificing theirs to save the adults. (But yeah, I’m also REALLY salty there was no sidequest to save the twins ourselves. Wonder if it was planned but they ran out of time?)
And the cherry on top is that the characters are reflected perfectly by the gameplay. テラ’s entire character progression from being locked at 90 MP to losing stats as he grows to show his age is still one of the most unique integration of gameplay and story I’ve seen in an JRPGS. I noticed that even the core gameplay of the “Love triangle” (more like unilateral love triangle I think) between Cecil, Rosa and Kain is reflective of their classes.
Rosa explicitly says she became a white mage to help Cecil. Cecil was a dark Knight at the time, constantly hurting himself by using あんこくwhile fighting. Of course she would spend a lot of time with him constantly healing his wounds, leading to their relationship already being established at the start of the game!
Meanwhile Kain is a Dragoon, and since he’s always jumping, he’s either not getting hit at all or you practically can’t heal him unless you have him consciously spend a couple turns on the ground/time it correctly. (And in the back row, he’s not even getting hit for much damage anyway)
Of course Rosa would never notice the guy was in love with her! Even their gameplay mechanics barely interact!
I think than more than a superficial “What’s important is what’s inside” message with the whole Dark Knight/Paladin thing, the true theme of the game is forgiveness, and the ability to let things go and grow past them. Not forget them, but accept them.
Cecil forgives himself for the acts he committed at the start of the game, he forgives Kain, and in the end forgives Golbez.
You could argue that the final boss is ゼロムス exactly because, as the embodiment of this guy’s eternal hatred and rage, it represents the inability to move on.
And most importantly, King Giotto forgives our absolutely embarrassing conga line of failures in defending those crystals lmao.
I’m going to post a couple more things (the obligatory “What’s going on in the Dissidia spinoff” post) later on!
Big Bang
From reading online, it seems that he raises his magic stat for the next spell when he shakes to warn you a Big Bang is coming. If you get him to cast a different spell first, that spell gets the boost instead of Big Bang. I didn’t put it into practice though so I may not have the details exactly right.