🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 3

[simias]

Final Fantasy 4 Beginner Club W03

Week 03	2026-07-10T15:00:00Z
Previous week	🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 2
Next week	🐋 Final Fantasy 4 - Week 4
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

After reaching the summit of the 試練の山 and proving your worth.

週刊完璧主義通信

We have a similar situation as last week’s: this time we have forced encounters against a group of soldiers commanded by a Captain, and if you kill the soldiers the Captain will flee. If you want to defeat him, you have to kill him first:

More details

Last week we made new friends and managed to rescue Rosa, now we have to go to Fabul in order to warn them of the imminent Baronian invasion.

To get there we can board our trusty hovercraft and return towards Damacian and then continue to the East like when we went to the Antlion den, but this time continuing to the North until we reach a mountain pass. We have to abandon the vehicle here and continue by foot.

Once you’ve crossed the mountain pass, you have to walk for a little while on the world map towards the South East before reaching Fabul. There’s a shop and an inn inside, and also a Chocobo forest further to the East in the middle of mountains. Note that there’s a large area of the castle that you can access by walking around the staircase on the 2nd floor:

Once you’re ready to proceed with the main story, go talk with the king in the throne room. Once you regain control, go to the inn to rest. After that, when you’re ready to leave Fabul, just exit the castle and go to the boat docked on the North East.

After the boat ride, walk to the nearby town. Your objective is to talk to the 長老, but I recommend interacting with the various NPCs, there are some funny exchanges to be had (many of which I believe expire after you talk to the chief and get your next objective).

So it seems that we have to take a small detour by the 試練の山. If you have gil to spare, you can buy better gear for your spellcasters in town. You probably want to stock up on some tents too. High Potions are also for sale, that could prove useful. Your new party members may be a bit underleveled, consider grinding a bit around town to get them up to speed if you want.

When you feel ready, take the meandering past Eastwards until you reach the mountain:

Climb the mountain, make sure that you don’t miss the save point near the top. Prove your worth

If you want to return to the town to restock, you can make the trip back easier by using a Chocobo from the forest south of the Mountain:

If you struggle with the one-on-one fight in the room at the top the trick is that you must not attack him, only heal/defend and wait for the fight to end.

Once you have collected your reward, save and we’re done for this week! You can climb down the mountain if you want, or leave that for next week.

Map

Miscellaneous

chocobo

The chocobos are back, for the third time. I missed that there was a Chocobo forest on Week 1 right outside of Baron, so I’m only bringing it up now since there’s another one outside of Fabul.

It’s interesting how every game introduces something new: in FF2 the forests just let you grab a chocobo and ride it on the world map. In FF3 the fat chocobo was introduced, who would store items you didn’t need. in FF4 we have all of that again, plus white chocobos that heal your MPs:

We’ll see in future games that the devs will build upon this concept, adding more chocobo colors, each with specific skills.

Thanks to the larger base inventory, the fat chocobo is not as useful as he was in FF3, but you can still use his services if you want by using ギサールの野菜, as usual.

Spoilers for this week below:

A blast from the 8bit past

Beyond the chocobo forests, there are a lot of references to previous games this week. We have the Leviathan making an appearance, although this time he didn’t swallow us unlike in FF2. Instead he seems to behave more like FF3’s Nepto, preventing the Enterprise from reaching the next objective.

We also visit Missidia, a locale also lifted from FF2 where it’s the town of the mages. Apparently the devs intended for the town to tie even more directly to FF2:

According to the Settei Shiryuu Hen guide book, it was founded by the Sage Mingwu (alluding to Minwu from Final Fantasy II, who drifted ashore 500 years before the events of Final Fantasy IV, although this idea has seemingly since been discarded.

Then we have the 試練の山, which is reminiscent of FF1’s 試練の城 which we had to explore in order to prove our worth to the Dragon King Bahamut and ascend our Warriors of Light to their upgraded classes.

There’s also talk of a sealed, forbidden spell that can be used to defeat the big bad guy, although this time it’s Meteor, not Ultima like in FF2. Meteor made its first appearance in FF3 as one of the strongest black magic spells that you could only buy in Eureka.

The two mages that accompany Cecil to the mountain are called パロム and ポロム, which seems similar to the name of FF2’s pirate city パルム, but this may be a coincidence given that there’s no obvious thematic link there. By the way Parom and Porom are canonically 5 years old!

Mmh…

FACE/OFF

While the intended way to defeat the mirror 暗黒騎士 is through pacifism, in the Super Famicom versions the encounter isn’t scripted to be unwinnable, instead the Dark Knight is given a huge pool of HP to make it look like he can’t be defeated. With enough high potions it is possible to choose the path of violence instead…

In the original Japanese version, he has over 4500HP, making victory tedious but reasonably achievable. In the English release it was apparently boosted to over 65000HP, making it vastly harder. In the 3D version he seems to be completely invincible. Not sure about the Pixel Remaster.

Track of the week

Fabul’s theme:

[Video Soundtrack] Fabul [FINAL FANTASY IV]

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

[JupiterJesus]

@simias

We’ll see in future games that the devs will build upon this concept, adding more chocobo colors, each with specific skills.

Oh this game has another color, buddy. A token black guy.

[simias]

Final Fantasy would never.

[JupiterJesus]

Final Test

I definitely got my @$$ kicked on the “final” test. The Japanese text was flying by and I just figured it was generic battle text like you see all the time. I eventually bothered to actually read it after I died and got the clue I needed…

[simias]

It's time to d-d-d-duel

I didn’t get it because I thought 剣を収める meant “ready your sword” or something like that. When the combat didn’t seem to end I considered that I had to do something special, I even tried defending but I wasn’t patient enough to trigger the end condition. I had to look up a guide…

I guess now I won’t forget the correct nuance of 収…

[JupiterJesus]

Yeah I remembered that WK teaches 収める as “to store or put away” so it made sense to me.

[simias]

Yeah I think in my mind I associated the word/kanji with the idea of gathering stuff rather than putting stuff away.

[Sisthra]

Stopping point

Lmao as soon as I saw what the stopping point for this week was I was wondering what the reaction would be to this part.

[simias]

W3 impressions

The forced return to missidia was handled well I think, it’s completely unexpected since we were heading for Baron so I had an “uh oh” moment when I realized where we were. The bullying you get is quite fun too.

I didn’t expect that Cecil’s redemption arc would lead to a literal reclassing, but that’s neat. Maybe it’s a bit rushed? If this was a Trails game we would have to wait for at least 500h of random fetch quests to get here. The fight with the shadow self feels a bit cliché, but maybe not at the time? The slapstick interactions with scarmiglione were pretty good.

The sudden cutaway to Golbez talking with Rosa and Kain felt momentous as a storytelling device. It’s the first time we have something like that. Feels very cinematic.

I didn’t understand the Missidians blocking the path to Baron in order to protect themselves given that we flew there to pillage the Crystal.

[frequent4832]

Week 3

This week was definitely the hardest yet in both gameplay and Japanese. The return to Missidia was really well-handled. You could definitely feel how hated Cecil is. The callbacks to previous FFs were also very enjoyable. Felt like a little bit of a payoff for playing them all in order.

The climb up the mountain was pretty brutal. I never truly died, but I did pause halfway through スカルミリョーネ’s second phase so that I could check the wiki for his weaknesses because I was running low on MP restoratives and couldn’t afford to keep trying everything. The contractual boss immunity really bugged me this week. Libra, slow, aspir, all useless.

I was spoiled on Cecil’s class change by Dissidia, but it was still fun to see it play out. His new sprites are extremely cool looking.

By the way, this is what the pause screen in the PR looks like.

You’d think you could at least pause to read in-combat dialogue, but for some baffling reason, pausing also advances the dialogue. So that’s pretty annoying.

I finished this week in 3:27 for a total playtime of 7:45. Might’ve been slowed down a bit because I was watching SGDQ the whole time…

[simias]

Since the pace was seemingly well received last week I decided to go for another long section, that felt like a good stopping point.

I feel like this should be the upper limit from now on though, that should already be pretty hardcore for beginners.

[JupiterJesus]

Easily the longest section in the game, I think.

[JupiterJesus]

I guess I might as well leave it here for posterity’s sake, though I can’t discuss it. I officially finished my filthy pre-play yesterday afternoon, the game is fully transcribed and 99% translated.

I’m technically missing the translations for some items that are rare drops, because I’m not about to farm them just to get their Japanese names, and it’s against my own made-up rules to look up the name since I didn’t personally see it in the game. If anyone else happens to find any of these items and, against all odds, sees this and remembers that I asked, go ahead and add them! They’re marked as red in the Items tab.

[coraldragonstar]

Week 3

So…I don’t particularly like Fabul’s king. I mean, we offer our help, he refuses first before changing his mind…and then promptly orders half our party to stay out of the fight? No healing, no black magic spells (both of which would come in handy during the defense), and to make it even more irritating, it’s our two female characters instead of our weakest one (Gilbert). The sexism is not unexpected, but still.

I like that Kain at least seems to have some hesitation when it comes to his betrayal (unlike Leonhart from FF2), though I don’t remember at all how the final payoff of that goes. It is nice to have some mysteries to look forward to, even on a game I’ve played before.

I did remember the return to Mysidia and the solution to the test…but for some reason I hadn’t realized it was going to happen so soon. Not sure if we’re going faster than I thought, or if the lack of my usual grinding sessions every time I get a new character is just making it seem that way. (I actually like grinding, so I may start doing that again even if it doesn’t seem altogether necessary so far.)

Language spreadsheet questions: I’ve been using it to check my understanding of things by reading through after I finish playing the week’s content (thank you to @JupiterJesus and anyone else working on it!). I’m confused about two of the translations in the conversation when we meet up with Tellah this week, though.

First, Tellah asks if our missing party members died and Cecil responds, “ええ……”. I feel like I’ve heard that in anime regularly as a casual way to say ‘Yes’, with the ellipse giving some level of uncertainty about it. The spreadsheet says he responded No, though. Am I misremembering my anime dialog here?

And second, isn’t 恋人 ‘lover’ or ‘girlfriend’? I read that line as Palom teasing Cecil about Rosa, not calling someone eccentric. But now I don’t know if I misread which kanji it was…

[JupiterJesus]

@coraldragonstar

恋人

Yes, you’re right! I regularly got that one wrong in WK reviews, because it looks just like 変人! So, just a misreading of something I thought was so obvious I didn’t yomitan over it to be sure. In this case, the correct translation should be "That must be his girlfriend!". You know, with proper pronoun use, this never would have even been confused. There’s a reason other languages are filled with redundancy, in case you misread or mishear part of the sentence…

You’re right that ええ means yes, not no (I probably misread it as いいえ), but can also just be like “hmmm, eeehhh…” In context, though…the characters referenced did not die, and he certainly couldn’t be certain enough about what happened to say “Yes”. So it’s more like the second meaning, I think. But it could be the first meaning, maybe…

BTW, earlier in the spreadsheet he says ええ and I translated it as Yes (line 72). That one gets an exclamation point, so it’s way more obvious what he means.

[seanblue]

I just started and got into a random encounter with some skeletons. Somehow Rosa does 600 damage against them, but she and Gilbert take a ton of damage and nearly died in a few hits. I think I need to stock up on some potions…

[simias]

Healing spells deal damages to the undead too, you can use white mages for offense. I don’t know if it’s particularly useful with this week’s party though…

[seanblue]

Ohh, yeah I had the 聖なる arrows equipped, so that makes sense.

I also got destroyed by the bombs. Two party members KOed and low HP for two others.

[seanblue]

Notes for the week

• I didn’t realize how powerful Rosa’s pray command was. 100+ HP restored for all members is crazy.
• In the status menu, Gilbert’s job is 王族, which is weird but funny.
• Today I learned that you can change which character is shown while walking around.
• Old games are so funny with how “small” they are. You can walk from one continent to another. And you enter a castle, but there are like 6 rooms, one the king’s and one your new party member’s.
• I also opted not to pay half my gil for new equipment for Cecil. Let’s hope I don’t regret it.
• The twins are pretty funny. I don’t remember much about them from my first playthrough.
• I also really like Cecil’s characterization so far. Like he seems like a real person with real motives, which isn’t something you can always expect in older games.
• The amount of gil given out every battle is wild. I wonder if this was changed in the pixel remaster or if it’s always been that high. I’m getting ~600-800 gil per battle on the mountain.

[simias]

reply

No the mountain is a good grinding spot in all versions, both for gil and XP. It could be bad balancing, or it could be in order to let you bring born-again Cecil up to speed quicker since he restarts from level 1 and without armor.