Tangentially, I was talking with @YOLF and we were thinking that it's like... Really interesting how (again, similar to its namesake's FF1 role) the Dark Elf appears... completely unconnected to the broader plot of the game? He is a powerful fairy wizard who commands monsters and great sorcerous power, and he is completely uninvolved in Golbez's plans. He just stole the Earth Crystal for his own goals, to further his own quest for immortality, and, like-
The real punchline here is, what are the two chief visual design components of Golbez and Kain? Golbez is a XBoxhueg man fully clad in black metal armor he never takes off. Kain is a Dragoon who's entire fighting style is based on spears and armor.
They can't set foot in the Magnetic Cave. This joker, this one magical asshole, just temporarily hijacked the battle for the fate of the world by stealing a crystal someone else was supposed to steal and hiding it in a magic cave the main bad guys can't set foot in without getting clowned on by a cheat hax environmental hazard. Golbez and Kain can't beat this random asshole. This is like the Joker taking a brief stint interrupting a Darkseid vs Justice League plot that everybody has to take time to actually address somehow.
Sure, I assume Golbez was workshopping a means of sending the last two Elemental Lords to do the job, but it might not have worked, yeah? Better to just play it safe and going with Kain's suggestion to trick Cecil.
For one, brief moment in time, the Dark Elf proves to be a monumental pain in the real big bad's ass and to derail the whole plot, and I love him for that.
This is genuinely so funny. Though, FFIV feeling like a much more deliberately crafted story than FFI, I have to wonder if later you'll run into some kind of Elf settlement with an interaction that incidentally contextualizes the Dark Elf.
It would be pretty great if the hypothetical answer was just "this dude was simply the worst and warped himself with dark magic so we exiled him", though.
In the 3D remake, there's a special item in this club area that you can only get by paying that 10k gil. It's an Augment, which is basically a learnable extra skill.
Because the 3D remake devs are trolls, the Augment in the club is Gil Farmer, ie increases the gil you earn in battles. (It's also one of the "optional" Augments even for a completionist playthrough, because you can easily be completionist without having it.) So you pay the money, you get something that might (or might not) earn you that money back, and no other benefit or point. Well, apart from the cabaret dancing.
Let's not forget what they did with the place in FF4: The After Years, where there's no less than three different, increasingly expensive levels, each with its own elaborate dance.
And the second and third levels both have actual tangible rewards, because the devs for TAY were even bigger trolls than the DS version's devs.
We have defeated the Dark Elf and acquired the Earth Crystal. Now comes the unpleasant task of walking into an obvious trap that we have no choice but to walk into.
Before that, though, the first thing I do after clearing the Magnetic Cave is head back to Troia to check on Edward, because his intervention during the fight had severe 'final brave actions of a dying man' vibes.
Turns out no! He's completely fine! Well, I mean, he's still stuck in bed with grievous injuries, but he's not much worse than before.
With Edward's act of self-sacrificing courage, Tellah finally gets over the part of his grief that he is projecting onto him, and forgives him for the loss of his daughter. Before promising to commit some Golbez murder in both their names, because he's still Tellah.
"Anna," Edward says as the group gathers up to leave, promising to fight beside him again, "now i think I understand why you did what you did." Which is a touching character moment but really doesn't make his odds of long-term survival seem that much better!
We return to the Troia clerics, who immediately gather around us in cheers upon finding out we have the Crystal, only for a certain someone to crash the party:
This could pose something of a diplomatic problem, but thankfully the clerics are understanding and allow us to borrow the crystal for a while as thanks for saving the city, which… Lady, honestly, that's a bad plan. Also as thanks, they allow us entrance into that prison-turned-treasure-vault I mentioned earlier, which is full of goodies:
Upon entering the airship again, a cutscene immediately plays in which we are boarded by the Red Wings:
The hooded sprites are clearly indicating Kain's crew are monsters, but I am still unclear on what happened to Cecil's own men. Were they turned evil and transformed into these monsters, killed and replaced, or what?
Kain says that Rosa is held captive at the 'Tower of Zot,' whatever that is, and asks that Cecil come aboard his own ship so he might be taken there to do the trade. Cecil is thankfully not stupid enough to do this alone and takes the rest of the group with him, but he does willingly set foot on an enemy airship, abandoning his own airship and allowing himself to be taken to a location of his enemy's choosing, which… I mean I guess he doesn't have a choice but like, come on. At least put up some resistance!
Well, they put up none. What happens next isn't clear; we get an outside shot of both ships just going very far up into the sky, and then we appear there:
Did we teleport? Did we just skip the rest of the trip? I assume teleportation is at play here, considering that Cecil now has no idea where Kain is, demanding aloud to know where he is, and Kain answers - but only to act as MC and hand the mic to Golbez:
Tellah immediately answers by insulting him and demanding that he shows himself, and Golbez has a very intriguing answer - "In due time. You will yet come to understand my benevolence." Which suggests that whatever Golbez's plans are, he may be considering them to be for some kind of good? Either that, or he's just saying that he's being nice by not showing up to kill everyone just yet.
It's really interesting on the game's part that we're several hours into chasisng after this dude, and we still don't know what he's about. Cecil and his friends oppose Golbez because Golbez brings ruin and destruction wherever he goes, steals the Crystals the world needs for its balance, manipulates and kills their friends and relatives, so they have to oppose him, and they're naturally inclined to hate him - but they don't know why he's doing any of this, and neither do we.
In an earlier entry in the series, I might simply default to assuming that he's just after power for power's own sake and the game hasn't been very good at explaining it, but in FFIV's case it has earned more credits than this, and I actually find it an intriguing mystery - especially if things somehow connect with the new mystery of what is happening on the moon right now.
Golbez announces that Rosa stands with him at the top of the tower, and that Cecil need only make his way up to make the trade. "You had best hurry. We wouldn't want anything to happen to her," he says, the cad.
The tower, of course, is a dungeon. When Golbez is telling Cecil to make his way up, he's basically challenging him to make it past all his best minions and monsters doing their best to kill him. It's not a 'trade', really - Cecil has to risk life and limb fighting hordes of enemies just for the privilege to give Golbez what he wants in the first place. It's a bad deal if there ever was one, and it's only going to get worse.
I love these weirdo enemies.
Alongside the monsters, there are a number of soldier/knights/wizard packs, including the first female human opponents in the series (as opposed to classically female monsters like the lamia or gorgon). I wonder how this fits into Golbez's army being made up 'entirely of monsters.'
The Tower of Zot is interesting. It is the most overtly technological area in the game since - depending on how you count - either the NES version of the Floating Fortress or FF2's Dreadnought. But even the Dreadnought affected the aesthetic of, well, a dreadnought ship, with black iron plates and antiquated-seeming tubing.This is much more advanced; the walls of Zot evoke advanced electronics, wiring running through stainless steel walls, blinking lights. If I had to liken it to anything, it would be to say it brings to mind a gigantic server round. Whence this tower? Who built it, and to what end? We do not know - we don't even know where it is on the map. At the very least the Floating Fortress gave us the explanation of Lufenia, an ancient civilization, highly advanced for its time. But here, the technological environment is almost intrusive - in a good way! It's jarring, alien, fitting of the lair of the mysterious Golbez and his minions. I do wish we had a clearer explanation of how we arrived here, though.
…puzzlingly, looking at walkthrough footage of the 3D port of FFIV, it looks like that version made a decision similar to that of the FF1 Floating Fortress in post-NES port and made it… a brown stone temple? That's absolutely baffling to me. Were the devs worried about the aesthetic clashing with that of the rest of the game? The aesthetic clash is the point. It's the appeal. And this game already has airships!
The Tower of Zot isn't exactly easy. Even without the added handicap the Magnetic Cave put on us and with everyone back at full functionality, it's a step up in threat level. Tellah is running into his own limitations - the old geezer doesn't actually gain stats when he levels up. Only his HP increases. Which means that, while he was a wizard of unspeakable power ten levels ago, right ago he's a lot closer to level-appropriate for the enemies we're facing, and his low HP count makes him extremely vulnerable to being two-shot by any attack - he's a massive glass cannon. Cecil, Cid and Yang just aren't dealing all that much damage. Ultimately I end up relying on Ether to pay for Tellah Firaga-ing our way through encounters a lot of the time, and it gets dicy a few times.
And as if his past treachery weren't enough, Golbez throws an actual boss at us on the way up!
These three charming ladies are named Cindy, Mindy and Sandy, and are here to kill us and take our crystals with their so-called 'Delta Attack,' and…
I mean just look at them. This is just delightful.
Wait, am I beating up a child again? What the Christ, game? There has to be an end to your hunger for child abuse!
Well, nothing for it, then. The 'Delta Attack' is a simple pattern the sisters are using on every turn: First, Sandy (the small one) casts Reflect on Cindy (the middle one), then Mindy (the tall one) casts an offensive spell on Cindy, which bounces off the reflect and lands on one of my own characters.
Functionally the effect is almost the same as just casting the spell at me, but that's just… a really cool and flavorful way to do it? They're playing magical volley ball! It's called 'Delta Attack' because they form a triangle bouncing spells of each other and onto my characters! I love it!
Since this pattern repeats every turn, this means that Sandy's Reflect soon starts bouncing off Cindy and landing on my characters as well, which poses the usual problem with healing… But also means I can play volley ball right back at them by doing my own Delta Attacks.
I love this fight.
My first instinct, naturally, is that since Cindy is passive (only reflecting spells), I should concentrate my attacks on Sandy and Mindy, who actually cast spells. And indeed, I soon have them destroyed - which proves a mistake; Cindy knows a version of Full Life that can affect both sisters, immediately resetting all my efforts. Instead, the smart play is to target Cindy first; as soon as she's down, Mindy's spell goes haywire, still targeting her own side - but a random character on that side who doesn't have reflect, causing her to friendly fire at Sandy, making the battle that much easier. The two remaining sisters shift to low level offensive spells, but at this point they are easily dealt with, and victory is ours.
With the Magus Sisters defeated, the way to Golbez is clear. Time to see how he's planning on screwing us over.
Cecil demands to see Rosa, Golbez demands he be handed the crystal first, and while this standoff could potentially drag on, he elects to cut it short by threatening to immediately kill Rosa if he doesn't get the crystal. Lacking either similar leverage or the callousness to call his bluff (Kain is right here; one can presume he would take issue with murdering the girl he's clearly into), Cecil does so. As for Golbez's answer…
We knew all along Golbez had no intention of honoring the terms of the deal, but the way he's doing it is impressively cheeky. Blatantly lying and pretending he has no idea who the girl he was talking about five seconds ago is doesn't meaningfully change the way this exchange is going, but it does maximize the 'being a dick about it' meter. I'm impressed. Obviously, the player party isn't, and starts shouting at him, to which:
Oh yeah baby. This is it. I've been waiting days for this. We're doing it. The Meteor Showdown. Tellah does just as he always said he would - step forward without anyone else to back him, going all out for one final act of revenge. Golbez's sprite stands tall, imposing - is he a Dark Knight himself, I wonder? Something close to it, perhaps; Tellah is before him, small. We don't control him - the entire fight happens as a cutscene, Tellah unleashing his mightiest spells one by one. Bio, Firaga, Thundaga… All do over a thousand damage, yet Golbez shrugs them off easily.
In his arrogance, Golbez does not strike back, merely allowing the frail old sage to cast spell after spell to glory in his own invincibility. This nearly proves his undoing.
Fuck the hell yes.
Arrogant villains laughing at their foes only to find themselves shooting 'N-NANI?!?' as the sacrificial final move of their foe overtakes them is such good stuff, I could it eat it up for days. Golbez, of course, isn't dead - the main villain of the game proves rather more resilient. But he's clearly suffered a real injury, his hold over Kain (proven now to have been some kind of mind control) is broken, and he has been pushed to retreat. This is a victory - but Cecil, in anger, attempts to strike at the fleeing Golbez, and gets struck by lightning for his trouble.
But, just as Golbez approaches ready to finish his wounded foe, something happens.
What happened there, I can't even begin to guess, but it was clearly out of Golbez's control. He didn't choose to spare Cecil - something came over him, and he pulled back, and resumed fleeing. For obvious reasons, the group doesn't bother to pursue him.
The heroes gather around Tellah, asking him if he's hurt - but it's more than that.
The group calls out to Tellah, pleading for him to hold it together, to get up, but it is a lost cause. Having exhausted himself casting Meteor, Tellah, in his last moments, gains clarity enough to see that he had been misled by his anger. Could he have won, had he stood with his new allies and fought Golbez as one, without hatred clouding his judgement? It's hard to tell. Even now - even with this realization dawning on him - Tellah can't help but ask the others to avenge his daughter for him, one last hope for vengeance. But, in the end, he dies not alone at the end of Golbez's sword, but surrounded by people who care about him. His was a tragic fate, yet one that brought aid and succor to others, even if he didn't see it himself.
It's time to wake up Kain.
A hole in all their hearts, and in my party comp. God knows when we'll find someone with dual magic capability again.
What Kain does in answer to Cecil's reassurance is very interesting - he refuses to be absolved of blame for his actions. He explains that he was not wholly in Golbez's control; that part of him was still awake, and that part still stood by and watched as Rosa was hurt. That he 'tried to keep her close at any cost'. He likely never would have sided with Golbez without the spell - but to the extent that he did, he did not give it all the resistance that he could have. It's… as far as things go… probably better than either "Kain was mind controlled the whole time and has 0 responsibility" or "Kain was a raging incel." He's still labouring under genuine guilt and, as part of acknowledging that guilt, he has to admit to being in love with a woman who doesn't love him.
I would probably still rather do without the unrequited love vibe but like, whatever. I can take it.
Conveniently, his mention of Rosa is when everyone remembers that she exists and is the reason they were heading there in the first place! Oops!
Yep, turns out that big contraption she was tied to was in fact a guillotine, and Cecil only saves her by mere second. How considerate of the machine to wait for Kain and Cecil to have a heart to heart before turning on.
Rosa and Cecil share a heartfelt embrace (and I'm using 'embrace' because I find it hard to tell whether this is merely a hug or if they are doing the Big Dramatic Kiss) while Kain turns away in mournful solitude.
That sentence trails off and is never completed, but the 'I love you' is implicit. Kain apologizes to Rosa for his actions, and she forgives him, asking him to fight alongside them once more. He feels he doesn't deserve the honor, and Cecil has a moment of thoughtful silence before approaching Kain and telling him they need him more than ever.
Kain and Rosa are back in the party! Which means I now have one white mage and four physical attackers. If I had to put down bets, I'd say either Cid or Yang isn't long for this world - this isn't like I've been spoiled on it or anything, but I would bet the odds of Rydia turning up alive and well to fill in a second mage slot are fairly high, and the game is going to need to make room. Sorry if that's too meta, but it's hard not to be in these circumstances. Also, Rosa is lv 28 and Kain is lv 30, making him the highest-level party member by a fair stretch, so I suspect I may have been undeleveled for this dungeon.
But of course! This kind of moment of reaffirmed friendship and fully-filled party slots is exactly what the enemy would choose to attack!
Kain takes the front seat in this brief exchange - saying that he has come to his senses and grown sick of dealing with 'animals like you'; Barbariccia mocks him as a 'snotty little wretch' and claims that without the old man and his Meteor, he stands no chance against her. Kain, though appears confident, for reasons that will soon become obvious:
Horny design, sure, but kinda... blandly so? Like yeah, you gave a woman green hair and put her in a bikini. Great job. C+, do something weirder next time.
Barbariccia is not my favorite fight, in part because its gimmick feels very story-mandated and mostly serves to drag the fight out. Every turn, she alternates between a normal form and a tornado form; in tornado form, only jumping attacks can damage her, which means Kain. She uses the same two attacks every turn: Tornado brings a character to single-digit HP, while Ray targets another character with standard damage and 'gradual petrification,' a status effect introduced in FF3 which causes a character to begin to petrify and only actually completes if hit several times.
So have Kain spam Jump, have Yang use Focus to 'skip' hurricane turns and hit for double damage on standard turns, have Cecil use Protect on hurricane turns and standard attacks on normal turns, have Rosa buff and heal the party and Cid is also there I guess. The big challenge here is for Rosa to be on point with healing Tornado victims so they're healed to full before Ray can hit and KO them.
It's conceptually interesting but I just didn't enjoy this fight very much. You can get a look at how a partially-petrified party looks at at the end of it though - because Ray's targeting is random, Barbariccia never ended up inflicting enough stacks to fully petrify anyone.
Every Elemental Lord so far has left us with a deadly 'parting gift,' which is a neat touch I appreciate as far as making them feel more threatening in the narrative than only existing as combat bosses. In Barbariccia's case, her plan is elegant in its simplicity - collapse the tower and kill everyone. Given that we are at the top, there is no obvious escape.
That is, until the game pulls another of these gameplay-story integration moments I love so much, and has one of the characters use the exact spell which would make perfect sense to use to solve the issue at hand
Rosa, you minx. You reached for the first place that came to your mind to teleport out of a collapsing tower, and your first thought was Cecil's bedroom? Girl, I get that you had this whole 'woe is me I am the Dark Knight and cannot love' thing going and then he turned into a literal knight in shining armor who also revealed himself to be a total twink, but, like, contain your thirst.
The heroes are saved. All but one of the Elemental Lords are slain. Yet it seems hopeless - after all, Golbez has finally got his hands on the final crystal. Which is where Kain, whom Golbez carelessly revealed his plans around thinking he'd never have to worry about him breaking his spell, which means he can now reveal to us, if not the true nature of his goals, at least the means by which he intends to pursue them.
And the answer may surprise you…
…in the next update. If you've already played the game you know what's up, but there's a hefty dialogue chunk there that drops some big reveals on us and, frankly, it's 4am and I want to post this update and go to bed. Those who have not played FFIV must need live in suspense; I will get to it at the beginning of the next update.
That guillotine was absolutely rigged so that it would come down after the next person came though that door, just so they could watch. Golbez was probably planning on sending Kain in to do it after he killed his friends, just for the drama.
The Tower of Zot and the Magus sisters are the latest in a line of concepts shared by FFIV and FFXIV. A very long line so far, and one that will continue to grow. And I for one am sick of it.
How dare these devs blatantly steal so much content from the Critically Acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, with an expanded Free Trial which you can...
How much of the game map has been explored now, I wonder? I think Omicron has been almost everywhere barring the moon and underground lava land by now, so he's due for a new traversal method pretty soon. And also a party member dying again, going off his musings.
Also, Rosa is lv 28 and Kain is lv 30, making him the highest-level party member by a fair stretch, so I suspect I may have been undeleveled for this dungeon.
Yeah, I know it's not my place to tell you how to play the game but if boss fights are going 'the boss used one attack and then I needed to cast Curaga' you are probably not grinding enough, one thing that's pretty much universal with JRPG's is the grinding.
If anime and video games have taught me anything, it's that you have an infinitely long time to resolve emotional conflicts and quandaries before the deathtrap/hostage situation/what have you need to be dealt with.
Yeah, I know it's not my place to tell you how to play the game but if boss fights are going 'the boss used one attack and then I needed to cast Curaga' you are probably not grinding enough, one thing that's pretty much universal with JRPG's is the grinding.
Well, it certainly depends on which JRPG, but yeah SNES-age ones tend to be pretty bad about keeping the game balance at an even "you can just sort of play straight through" and expect either hours of grinding, doing every single sidequest, or just never ever skipping a single fight to keep on par. FFIV in particular can be an issue because it lacks the party customization that takes off in FFV onwards meaning you can't just go "yeah I'm underleveled buuuut what if I gave all my characters the option to attack 8 times a turn though".
Rosa, you minx. You reached for the first place that came to your mind to teleport out of a collapsing tower, and your first thought was Cecil's bedroom? Girl, I get that you had this whole 'woe is me I am the Dark Knight and cannot love' thing going and then he turned into a literal knight in shining armor who also revealed himself to be a total twink, but, like, contain your thirst.
Yeah, I know it's not my place to tell you how to play the game but if boss fights are going 'the boss used one attack and then I needed to cast Curaga' you are probably not grinding enough, one thing that's pretty much universal with JRPG's is the grinding.
You can grind to level 99 and wear the best defensive armour available at that point in the game and Barbaricca will still require you to cast Curaga (or rather, just some form of passable healing), because Barbaricca uses Tornado, a spell that is hardcoded to bring you into single-digit HP regardless of your stats.
The Magus Sisters proved a much less bothersome boss fight in the same dungeon, for reference.
Wow, FFIV hasn't just stepped up the character writing but is also doing more to integrate it into the gameplay through clever use of the mechanics. It's cool to watch these games get more complex through the series' history.
I don't know, Minwu made it most of the way through the game before he lost his fight against a door. Then again, Tellah was far more present than the ripped White Mage ever was.
Incidentally, that guillotine was replaced with a giant steel ball in the English SNES version because Nintendo at the time was extremely squeamish about allowing "realistic" violence on their systems. It's not as noticeable as, say, SNES Mortal Kombat, but it's still an interesting example of the policy in action.
Incidentally, that guillotine was replaced with a giant steel ball in the English SNES version because Nintendo at the time was extremely squeamish about allowing "realistic" violence on their systems. It's not as noticeable as, say, SNES Mortal Kombat, but it's still an interesting example of the policy in action.
