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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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Speaking of Golbez, you gotta give him kudos for fighting the class stereotypes and speccing into heavy armor while being a mage.
 
Time to talk about 2 more 3-D changes.

The hand thing never happens in the 3-D version. Golbez collapses from the fight near the Crystal, so he just gets up, swipes it and disappears.

As for the fight, Golbez adds one more trick in the 3D version of the fight: Barrier Change. Yep, he shifts his weakness around like a certain skeleton from FF3.
 
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Connelly said:
PFFT. Wtf, i don't remember the eruption in older versions being such a FUCK YOU to life on earth as we know it.
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Yeah, I recall previous versions being just a bit of rumbling, a bit of dust flashing around the mountains, and then suddenly hole.

This giant column of erupting flame is way more of an escalation than I expected.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
Finally caught up!


How are you so bad at party lineup. It's literally painful for me to see you stick a physical dps in the backline like this. Have mercy, please :V
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To be fair, at that point in the game you have 4 physical DPS characters, and I'm pretty sure this bit basically goes straight from "Cid leaves the party" to "fighting time bitch!" And iirc FF4 has this thing where you just like... always have 3 slots and 2 slots you swap between front and back.

If you know in advance Cid is about to bail, then yeah you'll just make sure he has the back row slot but otherwise you can end up with silly things like this (though honestly Kain might be the best backrow option of the four? I want to say Jump ignores your row, and... what *else* are you ever doing with Kain.)
 
Omicron said:
I love this plan because it has "Fuck you" written all over it. While Golbez is making his play for the final crystal, at the far end of the map, we're taking all our forces and attacking the place he's been storing every other crystal at while he's gone, so that when he comes back holding the final crystal, thinking his victory safe in his hands, he finds out he's been completely defeated while he wasn't even looking. We're angling for that scene in the Namek Arc of DBZ where Vegeta thinks he's got all (or most?) of the Dragon Balls and is bringing the last ones back home only to find out that while he had his back turned, the weakling earthlings just swooped in and stole his entire stash.
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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE93ChQ4raE
 
Following the update, I listened to the dolls' and to Golbez's theme from IV,
And I have to say - I really like how XIV updated them. Especially Golbez's theme, which didn't fell into the standard "just make it orchestral" trap (especially love the percussion)
 
I was quasi-spoiled on this part due to the Worm/FF crossover fanfic Hair of Green, Beasts Unseen on Spacebattles, since "aged up green haired girl taken by giant sea monster reappears to save the day and literally rips the giant baddie apart" is a big scene there.

I only just realized though that in that the names that aged-up Rydia!Taylor used to refer to the Endbringers to avoid confusion ("No, not that Leviathan, the other Leviathan) were the names of the Elemental Lords.
 
McFluffles said:
To be fair, at that point in the game you have 4 physical DPS characters, and I'm pretty sure this bit basically goes straight from "Cid leaves the party" to "fighting time bitch!" And iirc FF4 has this thing where you just like... always have 3 slots and 2 slots you swap between front and back.

If you know in advance Cid is about to bail, then yeah you'll just make sure he has the back row slot but otherwise you can end up with silly things like this (though honestly Kain might be the best backrow option of the four? I want to say Jump ignores your row, and... what *else* are you ever doing with Kain.)
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I rarely bothered with jump during random battles so I always stuck Kain in the front at this point. I always found Cid to be the least useful of the four physical attackers and IIR was the least tanky of them so I just stuck him in the back as a side healer.
 
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Yaminator said:
He's read ahead. He's playing D&D 5e while Cecil is still stuck trying to hit THAC0. My man took one level of artificer for the armor and shield proficiency and has been pumping wizard ever since
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Alternatively, he's still back in 1e where fighter/mages can just wear whatever armour they want and is laughing at Cecil's attempts to deal with the 2e magic item restrictions for paladins.
 
FunkyEntropy said:
I rarely bothered with jump during random battles so I always stuck Kain in the front at this point. I always found Cid to be the least useful of the four physical attackers and IIR was the least tanking of them so I just stuck him in the back as a side healer.
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The Gaia Hammer (you get it before Rosa, I think) casts Quake when you use it as an item, so there's absolutely no reason to have Cid in the front row. He doesn't need to be a front liner to pound sand. :V

And yeah, I also rarely bother with Kain's jump because it's not as responsible as it could be, meaning it sometimes a waste of dps during trash.

Which I wonder. I don't remember the SNES version, but at least in the GBA one the special character commands (Jump, Kick, Twincast....) take far too long to cast compared to just attacking or using magic, that you can have the other characters do three, four and even five actions before ie Yang does his kick, so they're strategically null. Aren't you getting a similar feeling in PR, Omicron?
 
OK, ignoramus here has to ask. What's with the doll hate? Is it a really hard fight in 14? The song is fantastic.
 
Calcabrinas aren't that creepy, to be honest - they have a good design but lack the fundamental principle of horror.

That is to say, you can still beat the stuffing out of them, so how creepy are they really?
 
It's still plenty creepy if you don't know it's coming. Murderous people-sized dolls with creepy music that then combine into a giant doll which turns you into a doll. Stuff of nightmares.

Not helped that it's sandwiched between the Anti-tower dungeon, which has the sort of unnerving feeling you can only get from a Disney-style castle where everything is trying to kill you, and one of the most important and hard hitting cutscenes in the game. Makes the entire sequence very memorable, including the creepy-ass doll boss.
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Speaking of Golbez, you gotta give him kudos for fighting the class stereotypes and speccing into heavy armor while being a mage.
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Random note but this got me thinking about spell animation. The Thunder line of spells traditionally has had an animation of lightning bolts falling from the sky. But that's just a default animation, it doesn't necessarily represent all the ways the spells manifest in the game. FF4 has mechanical spells being used in narrative moments as one of its big ludonarrative integration breakthroughs; when Golbez is seen in cutscene zapping people with lightning bolts from his hands, I'm pretty sure he's just meant to be using Thundara - espcially as he loves spamming that very same spell when you actually fight him. It's the most natural read of the scene, it fits with his Palpatine vibe, it fits his mechanical behavior in combat.

But I think some wires got crossed in the 3D port because of Thundara's 'from the sky' animation, and in trying to translate Golbez to higher fidelity animation they went 'well that can't be it that's not how the spell works' and decided to give him a whole new magical attack that does spooky red beams of evil. Which looks cool, but from the footage I've seen it doesn't actually exist in combat?

Just have him do lightning with the lightning spells, it's the naturalistic read on that scene.
crankers said:
Time to talk about 2 more 3-D changes.

The hand thing never happens in the 3-D version. Golbez collapses from the fights near the Crystal, so he just gets up, swipes it and disappears.

As for the fight, Golbez adds one more trick in the 3D version of the fight: Barrier Change. Yep, he shifts his weakness around like a certain skeleton from FF3.
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See, I think that's a change for the worse. Golbez turning into the Thing is just instantly iconic.

The 3D version of the fight does sound interesting, though. If anything Golbez was a little easy.

FunkyEntropy said:
Finally caught up!


How are you so bad at party lineup. It's literally painful for me to see you stick a physical dps in the backline like this. Have mercy, please :V
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The alternative is having a hole in my party and that's just not aesthetic, sorry.

FunkyEntropy said:
I rarely bothered with jump during random battles so I always stuck Kain in the front at this point. I always found Cid to be the least useful of the four physical attackers and IIR was the least tanky of them so I just stuck him in the back as a side healer.
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Cid with the Gaia Hammer actually gets some hefty damage bonuses against some enemies that made him my most powerful attacker in a n umber of random encounters during the Tower of Zot, oddly enough.

Connelly said:
Which I wonder. I don't remember the SNES version, but at least in the GBA one the special character commands (Jump, Kick, Twincast....) take far too long to cast compared to just attacking or using magic, that you can have the other characters do three, four and even five actions before ie Yang does his kick, so they're strategically null. Aren't you getting a similar feeling in PR, Omicron?
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Ish? I have no sense of rhythm whatsoever, it's very hard for me to keep track of the relative speed of actions compared to each other. Jump at least gets bonus damage and gives Kain temporary immunity for its lowered speed, so it's fine, except that sometimes it appears to randomly not land? I'm not sure if I'm seeing right. Yang's Kick is slow but not that slow. The actions for which I really feel the weight of the added cast time are mostly spells - it's a good thing that magic damage has been massively ramped up compared to previous game because sometimes it's just painful waiting for Tellah or Rydia to actually do their actions.

Warclam said:
OK, ignoramus here has to ask. What's with the doll hate? Is it a really hard fight in 14? The song is fantastic.
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The FF4 dolls are fine, but the FFXIV have a notorious reputation as almost bizarrely creepy compared to the usual fare of the game, as well as coming at the tail end of a dungeon that, as @Tylonius says, has the vibe of a murder-themed version of a Disney castle, and their second phase transformation is grotesque in a slightly unsettling way. Plus, it's an MMO boss, so the entire time you're contemplating its creepiness it's trying to kill you.

Bad vibes, basically.
 
The Golbez fight being so easy when one single properly trained Summoner showed up to break him in two shows exactly why he wanted the village of mist to be destroyed by a surprise bomb delivery
 
Cirina said:
The Golbez fight being so easy when one single properly trained Summoner showed up to break him in two shows exactly why he wanted the village of mist to be destroyed by a surprise bomb delivery
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You know, with that Shadow Dragon trick he pulled, he's technically a summoner himself 🤔
 
It's hilarious to experience Calcobrina in the reverse order with Omicron here. For us childhood FFIV/IIUS players, the end of the Antitower was basically "FUCK NO NOT THEM AAAAAAGH!" nostalgia. The music doesn't help...

Especially since this fight can be very hard if you're not properly leveled for it (since Rydia, as I recall, scales to your level too) and the dolls' confusion ability makes fighting them extra fucking annoying and usually not leaving you well off for the harder Golbez fight. Altogether, good reason for us OG FFIV fans to have nightmares of those fucking dolls.

Though fun fact, at least in the original US version, if you're quick enough on your feet and time it just right, Kain can survive the shadow dragon black fang attacks by jumping. Note that it has to be both missing the ice bind and the fang attacks, if he lands before the prompt for Cecil, the dragon gets to kill him anyway.

Also, Rydia is fucking awesome, and was always fucking awesome. I remember the night when I first did this part. I knew she came back (as mentioned I'd rented the game before with later saves and she was in my party) but seeing how was just special. Mist dragon to the face, bitches, Rydia is in the HIZZ-OUSE and Golbez is due an ass-whuppin'.
 
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Omicron said:
You know, with that Shadow Dragon trick he pulled, he's technically a summoner himself 🤔
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SerGregness said:
Missed fuckin' opportunity Omicron.

He's something of a summoner himself.
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View: https://www.reddit.com/r/FFRecordKeeper/comments/a4pdlk/final_fantasy_4_golbez_shadow_dragon_mist_dragon/

"Oh? You are approaching me?"
*crack* "No, I can whip you to death just fine from the back row."
"What the FUCK"
 
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