Fun change Rubicante has in the DS remake...he absorbs fire, and Inferno now hits himself. So now he has an attack that deals tons of party-wide damage AND heals himself by a buttload simultaneously.
Side note, Rubicante, or at least his title, also happens to be the namesake of one of the older, most well known in his heyday countdown makers on youtube. He got a job and retired from countdown making a while ago though.
As for Cid...yeah I got nothing. Really don't expect the guy who goes out pulling a Dr. Strangelove to SURVIVE.
He does not. What he ACTUALLY does is counter any Summon you use by casting Blizzara on himself. So if you use Shiva, you either get some bonus damage if you do it right, or he Bonus-heals himself if your timing is off.
Fun change Rubicante has in the DS remake...he absorbs fire, and Inferno now hits himself. So now he has an attack that deals tons of party-wide damage AND heals himself by a buttload simultaneously.
Yeah, your supposed to use defend when you opens his cloak as that signifies when he uses it. Remember back when I said that halves all damage taken to you?
I... didn't do that. Cecil was the only one alive after that attack, so I used a bomb fragment. (An item that casts Fire)
Why? Turns out Rubicante is serious about being an honourable foe. In both versions of the game, if you heal him with a fire spell, he will counter by casting Life on you're entire party.
LOL. I knew that Cid would survive in some weird corner because FF4 being FF4, but I did not remember him showing up again immediately and doing plot relevant stuff. Obviously makes my arguments earlier really stupid in retrospect.
This honestly kinda shatters me. The version of FF4 in my head had all the stupid miraculous survivals beyond the initial shipwreck stuff be some half-assed obviously last-minute additions I could just consider Non-canon.
What happens next is kinda cool but also honestly kinda hilarious - Edge (who, I will remind you, is called Edge) shouts "Shut up! I will show you the power of rage!" and instantly gets so pissed off he unlocks two whole new abilities.
I find it terribly amusing to see the ninja telling the fire powers guy about the power of ANGER while the fire guy is down on it, honestly. Very untraditional.
You know, it's funny, actually, because that first scene, the one with Cid's assistants installing the hook and brushing off Cecil's attempt at bearing the sad news to them? At the time it scans as a sad note that they believe in him so much they can't anticipate the sad truth and Cecil can't bring himself to tell them… But you combine that with the fact that when you visit Cid's daughter, she also has a line about how she's sure her dad is fine, and Cecil doesn't contradict her either, and suddenly it becomes clear that nobody outside the main party acknowledges Cid's death because the writers realized that it would have looked ridiculous if we went through several scenes of grieving at the tragic but heroic death of the engineer only for him to turn up alive one single dungeon run later. So Cecil is struck by selective muteness and can't tell them!
Edge deploys his ninjutsu powers (legally distinct from spells) against Rubicante, but the fiend is unfazed, criticizing his technique and telling him he's going to "show him how it's done" before promptly kicking his ass.
Yeah, I guess we were due for a womanizing/aggressively flirtatious character in the party at some point, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Amusingly though, he hasn't had three lines since deciding to join forces with us that Rydia is already having second thoughts about letting him in.
I will give him that, if you told me, "young ninja named Edge," this is literally, exactly the character I would be picturing. It's this guy. He's the platonic ideal of the ninja called Edge, complete with unnecessary but cool scarf hiding his mouth and white hair. He's lv 25 and the most fragile member of the party by far, which isn't ideal, but hopefully it'll even out over time.
Edge's special commands are "Ninjutsu," which opens up a menu of special techniques starting with Flame, which is a full-screen fire attack, and rapidly gaining Pin, which incapacitates enemies for one turn; and Steal, which, uh, steals stuff. In theory, anyway; every time I've tried using it I got a message that the enemy detected Edge and so the attempt failed.
Yeah... Edge sucks. I wish almost anyone else were in the party instead of him. His Steal command is worthless unless you're in a position to just leave it on autobattle for a while so he gets endless chances to proc, his ninjutsu is extremely weak and slow for how little he can actually cast it with his tiny MP pool, and he joins the party so weak that he's a genuine liability for a not insignificant stretch of time. I only stopped resenting his presence by pretty much the final dungeon, once he'd shot up a good 35 levels.
When Edge rushes to them and his mother says "thank heavens you're alright," it even seems likely - and then things take a sharp turn:
Jesus, what happened to them? These are some impressively fucked up designs by the series's usual standards - the mournful face of the Queen, as if forced to fight against her will, the moth-eaten look of the King's limbs with holes in them, the lack of any clear, singular model, instead each royal having been turned into a jamble of bizarre body parts… It all conveys that these monsters are Not Right.
This is a pretty hilarious dark turn and while not as elegant a marriage of story and gameplay as some of the other examples in the game, damn it's pretty rough that Edge's Cronenberg'd parents selfkill right in front of him.
Incidentally I heard that the original translation censored Hell to a much less snappy "come with us to the DARK WORLD". 4kids Yu-gi-oh "SENDING YOU TO THE SHADOW REALM" ass translation.
Rubicante absolutely delivers on the hype. He's probably the most difficult fight in the game so far. Functionally he's very simple; he has two states, "cloaked" and "uncloaked." When he's cloaked, all elemental damage he takes is turned into healing, and his two attacks are a weak physical attack and Fira, hitting the whole party for damage numbers of the kind you can see above. When he is decloaked, he is extra-vulnerable to Ice damage (which the game bizarrely represents by him casting Blizzara on himself), but he changes his attack to Inferno, an enormously powerful fire-type attack that can instantly kill Rosa, Edge or Rydia, and easily kill Cecil or Kain if they're not topped up. The Attack command will do normal damage regardless of state, but Rubicante will immediately react by casting Fira out of turn.
Cecil wielding Icebrand, Kain's Jump command and Edge's new Flood ability all do significant damage when used properly, although it can be tricky to time them correctly - Rubicante can phase-shift during the charge-up time after a command is entered, meaning the fight involves a lot of waiting for Rubicante to phase-shift and entering the next attack immediately to take advantage of the window. The MVP of the fight, however, is Rydia's Shiva Summon, which compounded with Rubi's ice weakness, hits him for 6k-7k damage every time. I am told that Edge's Steal command can force Rubicante to change cloak states, thus making it easier to control attack timing, but I haven't been able to make it work - all Steal attempts simply resulted in failure.
This is where the flaws in the ATB system really rear their ugly head even in a fight explicitly designed for the functions of the ATB system. Rubicante is, fundamentally, a very simple fight, so simple that the Guard Scorpion at the start of FF7 is essentially the same thing - attacks will be ineffective and get countered at the wrong time, so just wait those times out 4head. This becomes a real problem, however, when things like Kain's Jump and Rydia's Summons and Edge's Ninjutsu all have completely invisible, variable 'cast times' to them that you just have to intuit or get fucked. Rydia summoning Shiva, in particular, takes so long that I ended up in a vicious cycle of her taking so fucking long to cast it that despite entering the command while Rubicante was still in the middle of his vulnerable phase her slow ass finally finished once he had put his cloak up again, healing him for several turns worth of progress, and then by the time her ATB recharged he was well into his uncloaked phase again so trying to quickly exploit the vulnerability just made it happen again. You ultimately end up sitting there waiting for longer than you're actually fighting and engaging with Rubicante.
Rydia. Rydia please. That's not- Am I suppose to still treat her as a child? Did she get some particularly Kantian philosophy classes in the Land of Summons?
I don't know if I was extremely tired or just skipping through the dialogue too quickly or what but when I played through I swear to god I thought Cecil said this. To which I was like "Cecil you are complicit in warcrimes, shut up". Could you imagine though, Cecil finally converts to Paladin and he just turns into an insufferable born-again Christian.
Yes. Now you might be thinking "wait, but how, the walkway collapsed the first time the party escaped, Cid had to swoop down underneath and catch them in the Enterprise!" Yes. Yes it did. But I went back to check and you can simply walk straight back into the Tower of Babil unimpeded.
Right, so, that logic that's been discussed that the clumsy character deaths are there to make room in the roster made sense - like, they were a sensible read of the information we had so far - but it doesn't actually pan out, because not only is Cid not dead, unlike Desch he doesn't turn up at the end of the game - he shows up right now, like half an hour later.
You know, it's funny, actually, because that first scene, the one with Cid's assistants installing the hook and brushing off Cecil's attempt at bearing the sad news to them? At the time it scans as a sad note that they believe in him so much they can't anticipate the sad truth and Cecil can't bring himself to tell them… But you combine that with the fact that when you visit Cid's daughter, she also has a line about how she's sure her dad is fine, and Cecil doesn't contradict her either, and suddenly it becomes clear that nobody outside the main party acknowledges Cid's death because the writers realized that it would have looked ridiculous if we went through several scenes of grieving at the tragic but heroic death of the engineer only for him to turn up alive one single dungeon run later. So Cecil is struck by selective muteness and can't tell them!
Literally all they had to do is have Cid stay behind with the dwarves to work on figuring out how to make an airship that can safely fly over lava. That's all they had to do. But no, Cid had to jump into a volcano with a giant cartoon bomb strapped to his back and explode, launching his burning corpse straight into a lake of magma, then say "nah I'm built different".
There is then a weird death fakeout scene - Cid is back in bed, saying now the Falcon can fly over anything, and then falls silent. A sad music starts to play, Kain calling out Cid's name in fear, as if the old man had expended one last burst of strength to do the work needed of him and his body had simply given up…
And he's fine, just exhausted. Every is relieved and thanks Cid and tells him to rest, and we head back out.
On the one hand, it is pretty funny how the music starts playing and Kain is like "Cid...!" and then he starts snoring. On the other, the game is once again taking the piss, and it does not have legs to stand on to do that after what it's already pulled and will pull.
It looks like the path to the Land of Summons is actually already open? I could potentially make my way through it and get access to high-tier summons somewhat ahead of time? Judging from an initial encounter, the place might be too difficult for me to make my way through at this level… But if I could, maybe that might be an early advantage 🤔
Fun fact - those orange spots on the floor are actually boiling hot magma that will burn your party to death by degrees with every step. You have to go into the magic menu on Rosa and have her cast Fly on the party so that they hover harmlessly over it, which incidentally also makes spells like Quake which some enemies in this dungeon use miss entirely. It's conceptually a neat gimmick!
Unfortunately you have to cast it every single time you zone into a new floor because the buff is erased during loading transitions.
Also the dungeon is a maze where you will have to go up and down and up and down again multiple times per floor, even more if you're trying to get the loot.
Also-also, once you're practically at the actual end of the game, maybe the flag is having all summons or something, you have to do this cave again because there are like three to six Hidden Items only available in the land of summons long after you'd have any reason to return there, which you couldn't pick up on your first visit because fuck you.
Did I mention that there is a second, optional cave dungeon with this same gimmick up to the northwest you can visit? And it's even longer and more confusing? And you have to run it twice for a sidequest? It's very obnoxious and the summon you get from it is extremely underwhelming for what you had to go through to get it! You should still do it anyway even if you don't do the full sidequest that requires a second trip, trust me, you'll find something at the bottom that is extremely funny.
Yeah... Edge sucks. I wish almost anyone else were in the party instead of him. His Steal command is worthless unless you're in a position to just leave it on autobattle for a while so he gets endless chances to proc, his ninjutsu is extremely weak and slow for how little he can actually cast it with his tiny MP pool, and he joins the party so weak that he's a genuine liability for a not insignificant stretch of time. I only stopped resenting his presence by pretty much the final dungeon, once he'd shot up a good 35 levels.
I think I ended up just sticking Edge in the back row and using him to yeet shurikens as his default attack for battles I actually care about. Other than that, I set his autobattle command to Steal, and marvelled at how low a probability it evidently had.
Fun fact - those orange spots on the floor are actually boiling hot magma that will burn your party to death by degrees with every step. You have to go into the magic menu on Rosa and have her cast Fly on the party so that they hover harmlessly over it, which incidentally also makes spells like Quake which some enemies in this dungeon use miss entirely. It's conceptually a neat gimmick!
In the 3D version, the "magma" is instead just poison tiles, for both the Land Of Summons and the mentioned northwest cave, which kind of reduces the environment variety a bit. Also since the 3D version doesn't use tile-by-tile movement, it's much trickier to figure out safe routes through the bad tiles, and so there's even less reason to attempt to save MP by seeking out safe routes, rather than casting Float and eating the MP cost.
Also in the 3D version there's a sidequest that will involve you going to the Land Of Summons several times back and forth. On the one hand, the game is nice enough to provide you with a fast-travel option for the purpose of that sidequest. On the other hand, that fast-travel option is limited to once per stage of the sidequest completed.
Yeah... Edge sucks. I wish almost anyone else were in the party instead of him. His Steal command is worthless unless you're in a position to just leave it on autobattle for a while so he gets endless chances to proc, his ninjutsu is extremely weak and slow for how little he can actually cast it with his tiny MP pool, and he joins the party so weak that he's a genuine liability for a not insignificant stretch of time. I only stopped resenting his presence by pretty much the final dungeon, once he'd shot up a good 35 levels.
TWENTY PAGES
TWENTY
PAGES
OF CATCH UP
JUST TO GET TO FFIV
AND I STILL GOT MORE TO GO
Well okay maybe it's fifteen pages, but that number ain't quite as big or round as twenty...
I was very tempted to just skip to FFIV but was like "and miss all the fun commentary? Nah. GOTAA BINGE". Before I get into reading that though...random comments from me!
Half of which are missing because I forgot to save it and don't feel like reading backwards to figure out what I had wanted to say the first time.
Looking it up, the 'makenshi' in question is 魔剣士. 魔 can apparently mean both 'demon' and 'magic', so it's probably a pun of some sort on the variable meaning of the 'ma' part. (This is incredibly common in Japanese. They love their puns on homophones.) For context, that's the same character - and the same 'ma' - used in 第六天魔王, dairokutenmaou, Demon King of the Sixth Heaven, a title commonly attributed to Oda Nobunaga.
A better translation than Dark Knight would probably be Hexblade, in this context. Apparently the same phrase is translated as 'Warmage' in later games.
So basically Dark Knights in FFIII are not the Dark Knights of other FF games, which is why they have White Mage spells.
This is making me remember the whole thing with Vaati in Minish Cap and that they made him demon. Or something. Looking it up quickly, I just realized I don't have proper memory of the exact words and circumstances of the translation other than "the original Japanese word could mean either magic or demon".
Personally, if I were writing an FF3 remake? I'd have scrapped the other three Warriors of Light entirely. Instead there's just the one good-hearted orphan - which the original game basically treats the party as anyway - and the other three party members are phantom clones summoned whenever a fight starts.
honestly this whole xande thing is making my urge to write a fic about an underutilized/disappointing character and attempt to do something with them rise
In my experience, your 'favourite Final Fantasy' tends to be the first one you played as a kid, when you were too young to critically analyse it or pick out all the problems and were just amazed at this strange new genre you'd just discovered and the fact games had, like, a cool story and characters and holy shit did you see the size of that guy's sword?
Well the first ones I played were 1 and 2, and while i enjoyed 2 on replay, the one I can say would be my favorite would 6 (no surprise there...), though probably not as strongly as some people who love 6. But I have a soft spot for 4 because of its cast, and that was the first FF I beat.
The Dark Crystals serving as resting points is mechanically extremely convenient, but also it's just such a powerful way of making you feel like… Yeah, these are your allies. Yeah, this dark and foreboding world trusts in you, and will have your back. Yeah, even here, at the end of all things, where the Shrine of Chaos had only Fiends and Pandaemonium only demons, here you have friends.
Man, I don't know why, but I really like that fact.
Maybe it's cause I'm always a sucker for both the forces of light and dark working together to save the world in stories. I just like the thought of two "opposing" forces working together, especially something usually seen as hated enemies like light and dark.
This is unrelated to anything, but one of the most common random encounters in the Dark World are ninjas. Just… ninjas. Someone please come up with a lore explanation to this for me.
*literally everyone thought the same thing in terms of responses; or rather similar theme*
--damn it. Never mind...
...
Ah screw it.
"But of course they are in the Dark World! The dark is the home of the ninja! The realm of which the shadow they draw power from! It is but a reasonable outcome that you should encounter such children of the night in this world of dark!"
It'a definitely a lot better than I thought it'd be. Almost wish I played it myself. But then again, kind of like with 1, I enjoyed this because of your commentary, so I think I'll put off playing 3 for the foreseable future.
For now though...
I finally get to read you play Final Fantasy IV. YES
This becomes a real problem, however, when things like Kain's Jump and Rydia's Summons and Edge's Ninjutsu all have completely invisible, variable 'cast times' to them that you just have to intuit or get fucked.
Something amusing for me is that , at least the DS version, is pronuncing the mad doctor as "Lüge" , not to much of a jump from "Lugae" , but which now also makes this a meaningfull name, is he is now " Dr. Lie" , and considering his lies so far he is one after all with the parents starting out lying and all that.
Rubicante is the other of the Four Fiends (alongside Cagnazzo) who has the animal theming you'd expect. He's pretty clearly patterned off a bird theme here. It's just very weird that they'd do it for one half of the Four Fiends but not the other half.
The protagonist, Cecil, is a Dark Knight who, despite being a decent person, is working for an Evil Kingdom. His initial arc in the story is coming to acknowledge that he's working for the bad guys, and changing sides. There is a guy called Golbez, who is a big dude in armor, and whom I can only assume is Cecil's evil king that he turns against. At some point, Golbez involves the Four Fiends of this game, who all have weirdly Italian names. Partway through the game, Cecil turns from a Dark Knight into a Paladin. Also, they go to the moon, which I didn't know and accidentally spoiled myself on trying to look up something unrelated during the writing of this review, so.
Huh. That's...a lot less than I thought you'd know.
Certainly less than I did. Partially because I actually played some of Dissidia before I played IV whenever my cousin brought over their PSP.
But if I say more on what I knew, I'll spoil. So moving on!
I'm glad you're liking how different the game started out, already having not only a fleshed out character and setting (well one kingdom in said setting) compared to the previous games, but one who's a big deal.
Minor error but thought you'd like to know you forgot a space.
Glad you like the impression Kain gives. He was one of the characters I already knew going in. Because COME ON, he's a dragoon. This man was what made wanna try out the game when I was younger!
I, however, hadn't reached far into FF2.
So imagine my immense disappointment when I found out dragoon did not mean "knight who has/rides a dragon" or "knight that turns into a dragon".
Yeah I was mixed on him as a kid.
Like how you noted that no we got an instance of us knowing something bad's gonna happen but our protagonist/characters don't. Not to this extent at the very least.
Also, one thing of note that's not going to be in screenshots as I try to save space - Cecil makes a lot of use of ellipses, which is new to this game. What I mean is, he has dialogue boxes that just read "...," signaling that he is silent but in, like, a meaningful way. That he's thinking, or in doubt, or doesn't know what to say.
I admittedly am disliking Rosa's design immediately, having only tangential existing familiarity with FF4, because where you could tell Minwu was a white mage at a glance even if he had a unique specific design, Rosa just doesn't have an at a glance white mage design. Not just being distinct, but feels like she'd be out of place in a crowd of white mages.
...you know, I never realized it was that skimpy, because I only ever saw the sprite, and so my mind conjured that her clothes were like one character Celes from FFVI.
Eh, FFIV isn't really that crazy - outside of a few sci-fi trappings that are part of the series DNA, it's very much a classical fantasy story with very little originality (which is fine, because the sci-fi parts provide it with just enough originality to stand out as unique). Just, you know, executed to the very highest level of competence than a story can be, and incredible craftsmanship.
The actually crazy titles in the Final Fantasy series have yet to come.
@Omicron , I was wondering if, even now that the game isn't over yet, you feel like it's already earned its reputation for pointless sacrifices, which you mentioned you were aware before it began, or if it hasn't yet? And, in either case, did you expect the root for that reputation to manifest in the way it did, or were you expecting something different? I'd be curious to hear your take.
None of the games so far have beaten the craziness of I's act five 'oh BTW you are forwards-in-time-displaced heroes from the hypertech past civilisation and also you're going to go back in time again to end things by defeating your traitorous fifth companion and also erase the knowledge of you ever existing good job'.
@Omicron , I was wondering if, even now that the game isn't over yet, you feel like it's already earned its reputation for pointless sacrifices, which you mentioned you were aware before it began, or if it hasn't yet? And, in either case, did you expect the root for that reputation to manifest in the way it did, or were you expecting something different? I'd be curious to hear your take.
The main problem IMO is Yang and Cid having dramatic sacrifice moments that comes right on each other's heels, feel poorly justified by the narrative, and are immediately undermined by Cid turning up alive. If they were more spaced out and slightly better integrated into the story, or if they only had one of them do a better-justified sacrifice instead of both, it would land a lot better. As it stands it's kind of taking me out of it. I didn't really have any particular expectation, but it's still a little disappointing.
I never liked Edge. I find him obnoxious even at his "best", and we already had several children before him.
Besides, for some reason his characterization and his "I improve, BY RAGING, and everything is fine! Oh. Hey mama" thing bothers me, both on a thematic level and in contrast to the other characters. Sure, he doesn't have to be like the others, but it feels like he's pissing on the thesis of everyone else and the game at large, and doing a celebration dance while doing so.
Yeah... Edge sucks. I wish almost anyone else were in the party instead of him. His Steal command is worthless unless you're in a position to just leave it on autobattle for a while so he gets endless chances to proc, his ninjutsu is extremely weak and slow for how little he can actually cast it with his tiny MP pool, and he joins the party so weak that he's a genuine liability for a not insignificant stretch of time. I only stopped resenting his presence by pretty much the final dungeon, once he'd shot up a good 35 levels.
When he dies, I'm usually tempted to let him tanking the floor, thinking "but is he really that important for the plot anyway? Really? Really really?" Yes, even during the end of the game.
He's just that bad. And the very fact that he has fanboys confuse me.
Didn't they show up already in previous dungeons? I remember learning fast to cheese them by Stop'ing their asses before the first go at the tower of babel, and then having Cecil go medieval with the Giantslayersomething? from a chest in there.
Yeah, that's it, that's my take. The summons are hardcore Kantians. Morality does not change according to circumstances. If you lie to protect someone's life, Leviathan is disappointed in your weak moral fiber. That's canon now.
This is what I would describe as inelegant writing, rather than generically 'bad.' It's just kind of clumsy and awkward and groaning under the stress of internal contradictions.
Literally all they had to do is have Cid stay behind with the dwarves to work on figuring out how to make an airship that can safely fly over lava. That's all they had to do. But no, Cid had to jump into a volcano with a giant cartoon bomb strapped to his back and explode, launching his burning corpse straight into a lake of magma, then say "nah I'm built different".
He is, yeah - second worst character in the game, easily. The rest of the FFIV cast is amazing, but Edge is annoying.
The reason he has fanboys is quite easy to figure out, however; it's because he's annoying. To a certain subset of the target audience, he's them, their ideal role model of what they want to be. Cool, suave and blazing their own path in their own way... only in their own head, of course. In reality the "coolness" is overdone, the "playboy vibes" aspect come off as light harassment, and the "independent streak" is really just selfishness, but to people who have those traits, he's their representative in the game. A lot of media likes to cater to this specific demographic for whatever reason, and Edge isn't even the only example of the trope in the Final Fantasy series - but we'll talk of the rest when they come up. For now, I'll stop myself by saying that, sadly, Edge's existence, and that of other characters like him, is unlikely to be something that ever goes away.
Of course, this all is my opinion; maybe I'm wrong about it, but it's just what comes across to me as the reason for the existence of such a character.
