Since I haven't seen anyone else comment on this (and I've never played the game, so this is purely on looks rather than a spoiler), I couldn't help but notice the giant crescent shaped blade(?) hanging from the top of the "pole", so my first thought on seeing this was "overly dramatic fantasy guillotine".
Too busy to write a full post but I would just to make a comment about the guillotine pole Rosa is tied up to. In the original 'FF2' version for the SNES, the blade was changed to a big metal ball.
Don't think about how it would be way worse for Rosa's tiny frail White Mage body to be instantly pulverised beneath a two-ton lead boulder than be decapitated by a pendulum blade, sharp things are scary.
Wouldn't it be funny if, upon his return to Baron, no one recognizes Cecil because he's been in that armor so long they all forgot what his face looks like?
This game is why I still find it incredibly weird that FFXIV turned Dark Knight into a tank job. My initial impression was that it was about sacrificing your own health for power with no ability to protect others at all, so it not being a dps was pretty confusing even if FFXIV's version is coherent in itself.
Here, I think this is the one you're referring to (Spoilered to protect the eyes of those sane enough not to look)
Say what you will about Amano's style, but it stands the test of time a lot better
edit: Although if this was supposed to be a picture of a pair of middle-aged conman hobbits suffering from male pattern baldness it'd be perfect, its just as a picture of heroic cute children that it fails horrifically
Yeah that was my experience too. This is why I was desperately begging you on my hands and knees to figure out how to reorder the party properly or else Tellah would be immediately beaten to death in Philladelphia every time you get in a fight. This is one of FF4's patented "I get it, I ain't laughing but I get it" moments, with Cecil being forced to lean on his friends to overcome the mountain's trials and do what he can to protect them with his unsuited Dark Knight kit to create contrast for when he becomes a Paladin... except giving me three squishy mages to babysit and a clunky barely-functional row system to slot them into and an ATB system where taking one micron longer to decide on a command than I could've leads to one of the mages folding to 1d4 sneeze damage is just taking the piss.
I wonder why both Lich and Scarmiglione have been associated with undeath. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be because of burial - the Fiend/Elemental Lord of Earth lays claims to all that is within the ground, and that includes the dead answering his command. It's a really compelling association, but one I've rarely seen in other media; usually death/undeath is treated as its own domain separated from the earth.
These Skullnants have the power to cast Drain, inflicting low damage to heal themselves, and Scarmiglione can order them to "Tear them apart!" to give all his minions a second attack in a turn. On top of that, they're from the zombie family, so they're immune to Cecil's basic attack.
Not immune to a Twincast Pyro, though, which wipes out the zombies in short order while inflicting heavy damage on Scarmi, who is now exposed to Cecil's attack, and is very much not an undead himself.
The Scarmiglione fight, conversely, is much better suited as a microcosm of the intended narrative at play. Scarmiglione is screened by several zombies that Cecil and his Darkness attack are powerless against. The zombies will rip the mages to shreds in seconds if they get the chance. The mages can clear out the zombies for Cecil, allowing him to then say "whoah mamma mia cunt" and get Scarmiglione banned from Twitter for the crime of being Italian.
Granted, the back attack is a nasty surprise. If you forgot, it means rows are reversed. Palom and Porom are now in the front row taking full damage, and Cecil is in the back row dealing half damage. A nasty situation to be in, and to top it off, his attacks inflict status effects like Poison.
Unfortunately for Scarmiglione, I've realized at this point that since Tellah is useless on the offense but good on the defense (he has Cura) and that Twincast's MP cost is not so high that I can't spam it for one entire battle, he is eating Pyros to the face every turn while Cecil keeps doing way more damage than I expected from the back row, and the fiend is dealt with in short order.
Oh my god you fucking himbo, you seriously let Scarmiglione beat a pair of toddlers to death while Cecil tried to Mr. Fantastic his arms an extra 5 feet to keep contributing, all because you wouldn't sacrifice one turn to flip the front and back rows??? This is child abuse, you'll be hearing from the state department very soon.
And Cecil's dark sword and armor are exchanged - magically - for the gold-white hue of a Paladin, taking what I'm pretty sure are direct cues from Amano's design for the WW1 Warrior of Light - long blue-white hair, cape, the style of armor… A warrior of light stands before us renewed, but before he can truly complete his transformation, he must face one final challenge.
The party steps forward, ready to face this new foe, but Cecil tells them to stand back, for this is his battle, and one he must fight alone to atone for his wrongs.
Shadow Cecil: "I AM A SHADOW, THE TRUE SELF! YOU LIKE MEN!"
Cecil: "NO!!!"
Shadow Cecil: "YOU WANT TO MAKE OUT WITH KAIN!"
Cecil: "NO, LEAVE ME BE, SPECTRE OF HOMOSEXUAL IDEATION!"
Ooooh yeah that's the good stuff. What's there to say? Seeking atonement, Paladin!Cecil must face the shadow of his former crimes in the form of his past self as a Dark Knight. And that Dark Knight isn't shy about drawing on their terrible power, casting Darkness every turn. Cecil's attacks deal about the same damage as the Dark Knight's Darkness, and while he can cast Cure on himself, it doesn't outpace the DRK's damage. It seems a battle that could go down to the wire… Until…
Oh my god. Of course. The mark of a true Paladin isn't that it can kill stuff even harder than a Dark Knight could. That would be literally the opposite of the intended lesson. A paladin protects. That is the whole point. And you can't kil your past. You can't stab your sins in the face and make them go away. Cecil can atone for his crimes, but ultimately it's up to others to forgive him or not. He can't make the Dark Knight vanish. He can't kill it. He must sheathe his sword and allow that shadow to exist.
I like how this pretty much established a whole new storytelling trope in gaming, but so many games are too cowardly to really commit to it. Fallen Order springs to mind, where the protagonist has to face off against a Force spectre of his dead master who already clowned on him once, but you're first forced to do your new special move on him, and then a gigantic fucking prompt appears in the middle of your screen saying 'PRESS LEFT ON THE D-PAD TO SHEATH YOUR LIGHTSABER' in case you didn't get the extremely unsubtle vibes. Here at least Cecil is getting instruction from a diagetic source, and you have to connect the advice to sheathe your sword with 'okay just use the Defend command', and then take a bunch of extra damage that might spook you while the Dark Knight is still running out of gas, with the added gameplay connection of 'oh right Darkness uses up his HP, I can just outlast him'.
Honestly wild how a SNES game from 1991 can somehow still naenae on some modern AAA games in storytelling.
The mirror shows him his reflection as a Dark Knight this is so good. Cecil begs the spirit not to go, but it changes into Cecil's true reflection, and only then does the game chime in to say "Cecil has become a paladin."
Considering the obvious Star Wars inspiration that, while not 'a ripoff' clearly permeates the fibre of Final Fantasy's being on a particularly noteworthy level, it's wild how much this reads like "what if you went into the Force cave on Dagobah but didn't fuck up". Rather than attacking the spectre of darkness and receiving only a foreboding omen of his own possible end, Cecil learns temperence and gains power greater than darkness.
So anyway Riku Kingdomhearts needs to meet some Final Fantasy 4 characters in the next game or I'm driving to Nomura's house and clubbing him-
Also, he's lv 1. His entire class progression has reset. But this class starts with an astounding 600 HP, much higher than he had as a lv 20+ Dark Knight. Darkness is gone, of course - Cecil's Commands are now Attack, White Magic and "Cover" - he is basically as if the FF1 Knight and FF3 Knight did the fusion dance. His only spell right now is Cure, but as he goes down the mountain and fights random mob and rapidly gains levels, he learns Sight and Scan, and will hopefully learn more. Cover, though, is perhaps even more important - now Cecil actually has the ability to shield other party members from blows. As a paladin, he has now gained the ability to protect, and not just kill - and he must learn again how to fight with these new skills.
People keep saying that, but I have tried to exactly this for the past three hours since Rosa showed up in the game and I've had to deal with a one-warrior three-mage party, and it doesn't work. I've shuffled the row order every which way but no matter what, it insists on having 2 characters in the front row and 2 characters in the back row no matter what. If there's a way to do what you are suggesting, it's incredibly non obvious.
...
Wait, gimme a minute.
...
This is stupid. The game is stupid for doing it that way. And none of you have explained how it worked properly >:C
Here, I think this is the one you're referring to (Spoilered to protect the eyes of those sane enough not to look)
Say what you will about Amano's style, but it stands the test of time a lot better
edit: Although if this was supposed to be a picture of a pair of middle-aged conman hobbits suffering from male pattern baldness it'd be perfect, its just as a picture of heroic cute children that it fails horrifically
I like how this pretty much established a whole new storytelling trope in gaming, but so many games are too cowardly to really commit to it. Fallen Order springs to mind, where the protagonist has to face off against a Force spectre of his dead master who already clowned on him once, but you're first forced to do your new special move on him, and then a gigantic fucking prompt appears in the middle of your screen saying 'PRESS LEFT ON THE D-PAD TO SHEATH YOUR LIGHTSABER' in case you didn't get the extremely unsubtle vibes. Here at least Cecil is getting instruction from a diagetic source, and you have to connect the advice to sheathe your sword with 'okay just use the Defend command', and then take a bunch of extra damage that might spook you while the Dark Knight is still running out of gas, with the added gameplay connection of 'oh right Darkness uses up his HP, I can just outlast him'.
I think the only other place I remember seeing something similar so well done was Undertale. Not neccessarily the "fight your inner darkness part" but the "get the moral win by not fighting and it being hard because you are taking damage the whole time and the attack command is right there" part.
I mean, Chaos!Garland ripping himself free of the void of non-existence after his timeline was deleted and rebranding himself would be a pretty incredible twist to explain how he showed up out of nowhere with incredible amounts of power and deep interest and knowledge of the crystals.
This is interesting to me, because I think we're reaching the point where I lost interest in this game. There's a few things left that I remember but haven't happened yet, but we're almost there. So new content for me!
Post#2: Holy Shit! I don't know the game story but I know a green haired girl is part of the main characters. So the player meet a future party member by killing her mother, destroying her village, and then getting into a battle with her.... No wonder this game famous now. If the intro was touching, this is a roller coaster. And for this once, me being spoiled on future plot (that the girl will be part of the party) didn't lessen the impact of a scene, because having some inkling what will come in the future between this characters only adds to the impact of this meeting scene.
Post#3: You know, partly because of that 'Nezuko style' comment I can see the anime of the scenes at the inn playing in my head.
Funny thing, my media player decided to play Pandemonium theme from FF2 midway reading this post.
Post#4: Ouch, that pyrophobia hit, and all the more so knowing that you, the player, is the one responsible for it. And the follow up when Rydia cast fire is bittersweet heartwarming.
Falling from the bridge is a convenient means of disposing of the fiend without having to answer the question of what "my true strength lies in death" means and whether he might have been able to come back from that defeat. Dead or not, he's at the bottom of the mountain now.
Smelling rotten, smelling rotten,
Poison gas, spreading a putrid stench.
Zombie, zombie,
Underlings are all falling apart.
Falling off the bridge, back attack,
Special scenes, none in particular."
Anyway, other things...
Learning spells based on level is a thing that bites a lot of first-time players in the arse. This battle is an example of that. If Palom was leveled enough to learn Fira, two casts of Bluff and then using it would do very respectable damage, freeing Porom to do other things.
Sure, I'm not sure if it still applies to the PR version. Maybe if it ever comes to the Switch I'll test it.
... would linking that be considered spoilers, now that I think about it? Like, someone needs to eventually because it's one of the best things that's come out of FFIV's remixes, but it does mention characters that haven't been seen yet (and some fairly major plot points, now that I actually look at a translation... been listening to that thing since it officially released and this is the first time I've bothered to see what they're saying, ha). So long as you don't look at the english lyrics or understand japanese it'd be fine
... would linking that be considered spoilers, now that I think about it? Like, someone needs to eventually because it's one of the best things that's come out of FFIV's remixes, but it does mention characters that haven't been seen yet (and some fairly major plot points, now that I actually look at a translation... been listening to that thing since it officially released and this is the first time I've bothered to see what they're saying, ha). So long as you don't look at the english lyrics or understand japanese it'd be fine
As far as I know, the earliest "fight shadow of yourself, sheathe sword to progress" was actually all the way back on the NES: the original Prince of Persia game back in 1989. Of course, there was a bit of an issue in that you had to sheathe your sword with a button, and that fight was the only reason you'd ever use it...hope you read the manual?
That's probably why those moments nowadays often come with extremely un-diegetic prompts, because manuals died a long time ago now.
