As long as we're ranking preferences, might as well add my two cents.
V through IX are all legitimately great. It's hard for me to narrow it down too much after that because then I start going, "OK, I love VI but IX just has so many great little moments and the soundtrack is just :: emperor's new grove pic ::" and, "OK, I love IX but VI has opera floozies and sons of submariners and also Dancing Madly is without question Uematsu's greatest work" followed by, "OK, but V's job system is fantastic and it has hands down the best version of the chocobo theme in addition to some other very iconic tunes" etc etc etc.
I is great purely for replayability and nostalgia.
II is a hot mess for all the reasons that have been covered in this let's play.
III has the job system, which is cool.
IV is where I feel like they've finally figured things out but have yet to iron out the kinks that make V through IX great.
V makes the job system work. Lots of replayability, and you can get mauled to death by a killer squirrel.
VI has the best soundtrack out of any of the FFs. Aria de Mezzo Carattere was so good that Uematsu slapped a fresh coat of paint on it and called it Aerith's theme in VII. Also, you get to paint local wildlife.
VII has a great and memorable cast. It has a ton of cool minigames, it also has a ton of questionable minigames. You get to march in a parade, which is also, coincidentally, a minigame!
VIII is kind of the dark horse, because even if a lot of stuff is a bit weird they manage to pull it off in a very convincing way. Some of the cut scenes were super cool. Winner of "coolest moon."
IX embraces nostalgia for the earlier games, going back to fantasy with tech elements instead of tech with fantasy elements. Best overworld theme.
X...was very pretty? I can respect making a play by opening the game with death metal but in general I don't really care for the soundtrack.
XI was an MMO. I was hooked on WoW at the time and have not played.
XII was OK. Some of the tunes were good but a lot of it just isn't memorable. Contains a perfectly ordinary legendary sword.
XIII was generic. The overworld theme is a catchy bossa nova which is cool, but nowhere near as good as IX's chill flute and synth thing. Combat is good and you always feel engaged.
XIV is an MMO. I do not allow myself to play MMOs after having WoW suck up so much of my life. I hear it's good though and I like that they're leaning super hard into the nostalgia train.
XV I have not played. I heard it's very mediocre.
I is great purely for replayability and nostalgia.
II is a hot mess for all the reasons that have been covered in this let's play.
III has the job system, which is cool.
IV is where I feel like they've finally figured things out but have yet to iron out the kinks that make V through IX great.
I would personally have simply spoilered all description of the later games, to leave less room for self doubt, but I'm not the boss here and it's not my department.
Topics drift, so it's easy to wind up doing this sort of thing, that's I suppose why I tend to err on the side of posting less at all when I do know any spoilers. *shrug*. You do you, regardless.
massive massive props to final fantasy as a franchise for completely blowing Pokémon out of the water by having approximately 12 different mutually exclusive camps of genwunners who are willing to go to war at the drop of a hat lol
VI was my first mainline FF game, so I love it to death, and I still believe that the first half of it has the finest writing in the series. The World of Ruin after you get the Falcon is a bit of a flop, but I respect them for trying to do open world that early. It didn't work but I respect the attempt. It also has by far the best music in the series, with only IX coming close IMO. Relm's Theme, Aria Di Mezzo Carattere, and Dancing Mad are particular standouts, but the rest is pretty great too. There were many times as I played where I would stop to just listen.
VII is consistently good from beginning to end. It doesn't have anything which is specifically bad. Its peaks aren't as good as in VI or IX but there's a certain value in being reliably good. I absolutely understand why people list this as their favourite and why it has so many spinoffs and sequels and whatnot.
VIII I never finished because my copy had a horribly scratched disc two. I remember being annoyed at junctioning meaning I couldn't use magic without getting weaker and at enemy levels scaling to the party level. I also didn't like most of the party - notably Squall or Rinoa - but it's unfair to judge a character partway through their character development so that doesn't really count.
IX is like VII in that it's consistently good, but I like it more because Zidane is a great main character and the story is ultimately a lot more optimistic. The music has a lot of character to it, especially Steiner's theme. I don't like Amarant and I don't think they did enough with him to justify him being in the party, not when everyone else gets lots of character development, but that's ultimately a small gripe.
X is good, I like it a lot. I don't really have much to say about it, but I enjoyed it. I think the Tidus/Yuna plotline was well done.
XI is an MMO. I liked it back when I played MMOs, but they're bad for me so I won't go back.
XII is fun from a pure gameplay perspective, but the story is forgettable, Vaan had no business being the main character when the story was about Ashe and (to a much lesser extent) Bosch, and Penelo had no part in the story other than to exasperatedly say "Oh, Vaan" when he says something stupid. When there's only six playable characters and a third of them are irrelevant, that's a problem.
XIII is a goddamned corridor simulator for, like, twenty hours, and the story isn't anything near good enough to make up for it.
On a different topic, having finished FFI I have moved to II and... it's just really not fun? It's exactly the wrong mix of obfuscated mechanics and punishment for the mildest deviation from the rails to make me absolutely not enjoy playing it. There are a handful of noted improvements - poison being a temporary thing being the biggest - but they're bogged down by so many negatives I really can't stand it. As I am not Omicron, and so have not committed myself to the insanity of playing all the games, I think I'll be skipping this one and moving right to III.
On a different topic, having finished FFI I have moved to II and... it's just really not fun? It's exactly the wrong mix of obfuscated mechanics and punishment for the mildest deviation from the rails to make me absolutely not enjoy playing it. There are a handful of noted improvements - poison being a temporary thing being the biggest - but they're bogged down by so many negatives I really can't stand it. As I am not Omicron, and so have not committed myself to the insanity of playing all the games, I think I'll be skipping this one and moving right to III.
Not a bad idea tbh. I mean, I have a soft spot for FFII because Dawn of Souls was one of my earliest Final Fantasy games so I played the hell out of both the first two games, but, well. If you lined up all the FF games I've played and said "choose the objectively worst one" I'd pick FFII without a doubt, it's a janky mess of mechanics that barely work as intended where the optimal way to play is things like "smack all your own party members to increase max HP while a bunch of goblins look on in horror" or "spend 20 turns in battle dual-wielding shields then swap to actual weapons so those get all the weapon EXP instead".
Or in other words, like I feel about a lot of NES games compared to their SNES counterparts: an interesting, historical part of gaming history, buuuut often not nearly as worth the playtime as just jumping into the SNES games where they had the experience and the console power to get things right.
It's funny to see all the Edge hate because it's very true, he's very much just this kind of late-coming character who doesn't get anywhere near the depth of the others and is often annoying and condescending.
But then you get to the sequel, The After Years, and Edge becomes one of the best characters in it. He's grown up, he's learned responsibility, he's become a solid ruler and is trying to do his best for his people as the world faces a new and terrifying threat. And he gets some decent character moments involving Rubicante's spirit encouraging him, and during the forced fight (the new threat has revived and enslaved the Elemental Lords) if you bring Edge he and Rubicante can even do a one-on-one fight that's challenging but interesting.
Though he has failed in one respect; he hasn't given Eblan an heir. He's never married. Because there's only one woman in the world he wants (as the ending of FFIV proper also shows) and she's not returned his interest. And he's become too mature and self-conscious about things to admit it fully to her. Though the ending of TAY does give Edge a glimmer of hope for reciprocation.
The devs had fun with it too, as one of the "duo" abilities in TAY requires Rydia to be equipped with a bow and arrow, and it literally depicts Edge proejcting a heart at her, just for her to shoot it with a flurry of arrows, knocking poor Edge down and hitting all enemies on the screen for damage.
What's also really funny is that in TAY it's Palom who now acts like Edge did, just with more sullenness and such, and Edge is self-aware enough to recognize and lament it!
I now have an urge to hunt for and find the PSP and see if my games and memory cards are intact for it, so I can replay this game on PSP.
It's funny to see all the Edge hate because it's very true, he's very much just this kind of late-coming character who doesn't get anywhere near the depth of the others and is often annoying and condescending.
But then you get to the sequel, The After Years, and Edge becomes one of the best characters in it. He's grown up, he's learned responsibility, he's become a solid ruler and is trying to do his best for his people as the world faces a new and terrifying threat. And he gets some decent character moments involving Rubicante's spirit encouraging him, and during the forced fight (the new threat has revived and enslaved the Elemental Lords) if you bring Edge he and Rubicante can even do a one-on-one fight that's challenging but interesting.
Though he has failed in one respect; he hasn't given Eblan an heir. He's never married. Because there's only one woman in the world he wants (as the ending of FFIV proper also shows) and she's not returned his interest. And he's become too mature and self-conscious about things to admit it fully to her. Though the ending of TAY does give Edge a glimmer of hope for reciprocation.
The devs had fun with it too, as one of the "duo" abilities in TAY requires Rydia to be equipped with a bow and arrow, and it literally depicts Edge proejcting a heart at her, just for her to shoot it with a flurry of arrows, knocking poor Edge down and hitting all enemies on the screen for damage.
What's also really funny is that in TAY it's Palom who now acts like Edge did, just with more sullenness and such, and Edge is self-aware enough to recognize and lament it!
I now have an urge to hunt for and find the PSP and see if my games and memory cards are intact for it, so I can replay this game on PSP.
Eh, I don't. I love the characterization and designs, but the actual game portion and plot outside the characterization and the bands is almost entirely an inferior copy of the original.
That's the 3D version IIRC, the one based on similar graphics to the FFIV DS re-release. TBH, I greatly prefer the gorgeous sprites of the PSP version.
Eh, I don't. I love the characterization and designs, but the actual game portion and plot outside the characterization and the bands is almost entirely an inferior copy of the original.
I meant I want to replay FFIV on PSP. The PR isn't bad - I'm up to the magnetic cave on it - but the 20th anniversary PSP edition is just frickin' gorgeous.
Though I did fairly enjoy TAY when I played it, even if, yeah, they got a bit too derivative in terms of "history repeating". The story does better when they try to follow other themes.
Plus Edward gets to be an absolute boss in a few of the segments, like recognizing right away he'd been given the carnelian signet - the bomb ring/package - and holding onto it until he could use it against an enemy.
Plus I laughed at having to get Sheila to give us a spatula and frying pan to wake up Yang and Jasmine in Kaipo.
Alright. Let's take a shot at the Cave of Summons, and see how hard it actually is.
This is the result of our very first encounter with random mobs. We're off to a great start.
Another one, after a full recovery from everyone. Rydia's summons deal immense damage, but are slow to cast, and don't one-shot anything by themselves. Meanwhile, the opponents are highly dangerous. These 'Mini Satanas' here are especially dangerous; they can paralyze a character after you entered a Command but before its charge time elapses, causing that character to be completely incapacitated until someone helps them with a spell or status item. This means that on the first turn of battle, the Satans can stunlock my best two damage dealers, meaning I no longer have the DPS to kill them before they act again, meaning I wipe.
Case in point: this party of four Mini Satanas wiped my entire party with such ruthless efficiency I couldn't kill a single one of them.
So what I do is I head out to the dwarven town nearby, where I buy enough Diamond Equipment to outfit my entire party in better armor and better weapons. This is an impulse purchase, and short-sighted; in total this pantry raid costs my entire savings from the whole game, and I'm going to be using some of these items for all of half an hour. I'm hoping it pays off in a bigger way with the final prize, though.
For instance, this two-handed poison axe I find in the cave is a huge improvement on Cecil's attack power… Although I am not actually sure it makes up for the loss in defense from not having a shield?
I also finally use some extremely rare items I've been hoarding for a while; two Silver Apples, each of which increase a character's HP by 50 (they go to Cecil, since he has a mechanic to take damage meant for someone else), and a Soma Drop, which increases MP by 10 (it goes to Rydia, seeing as Rosa rarely runs out of magic juice). With all that in store, we head back and fight a long, grueling battle through three levels of high-powered monsters.
These lava tiles are also a funny trick the game is playing on us. Because they don't deal 1 damage per tick like the FF1 did, or howevermuch those from the other games dealt. No, they deal around 100 damage per step. Which means all it takes is a few seconds waddling through magma for the entire party to be in red HP and wiped by their next combat encounter before I even realize what's going on.
Thankfully, Rosa has a spell called 'Float,' which can apply to the whole party and allows them to levitate over the lava. However, Float ends whenever we change to a different screen, meaning I have to remember to reapply it immediately or eat another several hundred damage.
It's not a fun time.There are plenty of KOs, many status effects to heal, some rare Ether has to be spent…
But in the end, we find a teleporter at the very bottom of the cave, and it takes us there:
We made it!
…
Okay, so, when people told me that in other localizations this was called the 'Feymarch,' I was expecting, like, some D&D Feywild-style unicorn glade shit. At the very least some Pandemonium-style place that got high on crystals. I would expect, at the very least, a single tree.
But no. The Feymarch is a construct of wood and iron, a town connected by railing and scaffolding, floating in a black void. It is populated entirely by monsters - most take the generic 'robe with spooky eyes' form that monsters who lack an overworld sprite have always had, and could be anything, but the presence of these Bombs (who have overworld sprites because the game needed them for the Mist cutscene) and these Chocobos strongly suggest that we're meant to treat this world as inhabited by all sorts of different monster types the game doesn't have the sprite budget for:
Look at it. It's a shopkeeper. So responsible! So cute!
Also, everyone here knows Rydia and is on friendly terms with her:
So…
What is really striking to me about this place is the artificiality of it. These summons have an ordered, hierarchical society (they are ruled by 'Queen Asura and the King of Summons,' although we don't know what that monarchy means in practice), shops, taverns, and social hang-outs, and they generally just go around living their lives as people in their little pocket dimension. But that world doesn't even have ground. It's not even built on a hunk of rock floating in the void. It's all constructed - by whose hands we do not know.
If the dwelling place of the summons is artificial, might this mean they, too, are artificial? Constructed spirits, with a home made for them? Perhaps by the same civilization which built Zot and Babel? Wild speculation at this stage, of course. But I wonder what the alternatives are - that they built this place themselves and retreated into it, leaving the world which they once inhabited as its natural denizens?
Several of these 'summons' (Eidolons, in other localizations, I am told) are what we would know as 'monsters,' that much is clear. They are, however, clearly sentient in a way not many monsters we've met are. So… what gives? Is Golbez's power drawing on echoes or reflections of the beings dwelling in the LoS? Or are these two things unrelated?
At the same time, this line makes it clear that at least some 'monsters' are summons having a wild night on the town:
Interestingly, it seems that the Land of Summons is blocked from the land of humans (and dwarves) in much the same way as in the reverse direction - one of the denizens says that 'only those with great physical and mental strength may enter the cave that leads to the world of humans.' Does this mean all the monsters in the cave are there as deliberate gatekeepers? Also, someone asks me how Ifrit's doing, which is pretty funny, although it does make me wish we could actually talk to the summons since they're ostensibly people.
The LoS has a bunch of chests in it, one of which includes this interesting item:
So I'm guessing I'll grab the adamantite once I'm out of here.
Now, what is there to do in the Land of Summons? Well…
There's a library here, whose bookshelves contain some basic knowledge about a number of summons, as well as Queen Asura and her husband:
So it looks like we're going to want an audience with Leviathan, and in order to do that, we'll need to defeat his wife, hopefully earning both of them as summons in the process, which would, along with the adamantite, significantly boost our power at this stage of the game.
There's also other interesting information:
Odin exists in this world; the book informs us that "his only defeat occurred when his blade was struck by a bolt of lightning," likely indicating his weakness.
The Sylphs, who dwell in that other cave up in the northwest of the Underworld, can also combine to form a powerful summon (I tried to go there before the Cave of Summon and got instantly annihilated).
"In the ancient sky, the two moons were one," likely hinting at the artificial nature of one of the two moon, I imagine the one with activity on it.
"The God of Summons created us and watches over us from afar, never having known defeat. Perhaps the only way to defeat him is to reflect his strength back at him." If Leviathan is the ruler of the land of summons, and Odin also exists and has only been defeated once, then I am going to go out on a limb and say the undefeated 'God of Summons' is Bahamut.
"Long, long ago, a giant whale descended to Earth from the moon. Presently, it is in a deep sleep within the dragon."
…
…I'm sorry, what? I was with you the whole way until, like, just now. Whale? Asleep? Inside dragon? What?
Well, never mind that. Let's move on.
Kind of an asshole move if you ask me. You could just decide to help! Isn't this, like, basically your foster daughter?
Well, if that's what it takes, very well. I rest at the inn, save in a safe room, and come back to challenge Queen Asura.
I appear to have… forgotten to take any pictures of this fight?
Ah, well. Asura's a bit of an odd duck; I'm sure if I fought her a second time with full knowledge of how she's designed, it would be an easy fight, but figuring it out in the heat of the moment is a lot more painful. It's true of many of these bosses; most FFIV bosses are a 'problem' with a specific 'solution,' and as long as you know the problem and the solution they aren't hard, but if you're coming at them blind they're painful to figure out.
In Asura's case, every time you hurt her, she plays an animation of changing to one of of her three faces, then counters with a heavily-damaging physical attack. Other than this, she doesn't have any offensive moves. In theory this would make it an easy fight, but she does use her actions to self-cast Protect, layering it basically indefinitely, as well as Curaga, easily erasing much of the progress you've made damaging her. So there is a careful balance to maintain between protecting and healing your own party from her counters while laying on as much damage as possible before her defenses climb too high.
Or you can cast Reflect so her healing and protective spells bounce off her onto your party. That should solve the entire encounter and make it trivial. Too bad I didn't work this out during the battle, too busy keeping my characters alive while trying to race her Protect/Curaga casts. The result is a fight that is much more painful than it could have been:
This is the first time in FFIV I manage a win by the skin of my teeth with most of the party dead this way - although somehow it seems fitting that it's Cecil and Rydia pulling it off, seeing as their being alone together feels like the point where the story of FFIV really started? They just kind of feel like a natural team, beefy paladin and destructive mage (although in this picture I buffed Cecil with Berserk, which I then discovered disables his passive protect reaction, which is narratively fitting but mechanically inconvenient).
But, hey. I have 22 save slots. How about we just save that win, reload, and do it properly? This will be easymode.
So, the first thing I do is cast Reflect on Asura. This causes her Protect and Curaga casts to bounce onto my team. This still leaves the powerful physical attacks that she responds to my attacks (up to five times per turn!), but I have Rosa on healing duty, plenty of Hi-Potion, and most importantly, on any turn on which I don't attack her, she's completely passive, meaning I can freely heal my whole party.
Now, of course, there's a slight inconvenience in that Rydia is now useless, since her spells bounce off Asura's Reflect. No problem! I just cast Reflect on Rydia, and have her bounce her own spells off herself. That way, I can sustain maximum damage against Asura, which…
Hrm.
Well, I have basically unlimited healing, which-
What do you mean, Rosa has 6 MP left? But I only have 8 Ethers and you can't purchase them in stores! These are incredibly precious! Okay, fine, we'll just throw in a couple - what do you mean I can't just omnicast Curaja because Rydia will bounce her heal back to Asura -
What do you mean, Reflect as a time limit and Asura is back to casting Curaga at herself???
Alright, well, we have Bestiaries, which are consumable items that cast a special version of Scan that actually does work on bosses. Let's check how good we did on this run.
She still has fully a third of her max HP.
Let this be a lesson to you, children: between a fight in which you don't understand the boss's gimmick but you are on the ball making the correct moves as they arise and adapting to circumstances and changing your strategy based on new data, and a fight in which you go in thinking having the gimmick figured out means the battle will take care of itself and you get sloppy in managing the turn-by-turn specifics, you will do worse in the latter fight 9 times out of 10.
[goes to make tournedos before finishing this update]
[twenty minutes later]
WAIT A MINUTE, SUMMONS IGNORE REFLECTS, I COULD HAVE JUST HAVE RYDIA USE SUMMONS THAT SECOND TIME INSTEAD OF PLAYING REFLECT GAMES TO MAKE BIO WORK, I USED SUMMONS IN THE FIRST FIGHT-
Well. Nevermind. We have a save in which we won, that'll have to be enough.
At least she's a good sport about it.
Asura is the first support summon we've found in this game and, frustratingly, is a return to 'random summon effects'; upon being summoned, she can either cast Protect, Curaga or Life on the whole party. This makes it very hard to gauge if summoning her will actually be useful - but at least it means Rydia has some support ability now.
A quick trip by the inn, a new save, and it's time to confront the lord of the land.
Weirdly enough, Leviathan is way easier. You can see above that he has two states, head back/mouth closed and head forward/mouth open; in the latter state he will use Tidal Wave, hitting the whole party for varying damage (in one instance he deals as much as 355 dmg to Rosa but only 55 dmg to Cecil), while in the former he will cast Blizzara on one party member for stronger, but still manageable damage. As it turns out, Leviathan does not absorb ice damage, which, given his predictable pattern and only two attacks, means I have Rosa cast Reflect on everyone. Now Leviathan's single-target state only ends in damage for himself, and his Tidal Wave doesn't do any damage that an omnicast Curaga or Curaja can't handle. Throw in some Ramu summons for lightning damage and have Edge use Blitz, and it's an easy homerun.
We did it! We beat the King and Queen of the Land of Summons and unlocked the optional (?) high-tier summons for Rydia! And we got a whole bunch of levels and new gear in the process!
I'm gonna be real with you, summons have a special place in my heart as a gameplay/story concept. It's like… The idea that there are powerful, near-divine entity in this world, and if you show up, and beat them up in a fight, they will say "You, you're cool, I'm your pal now," and later when you show up to a showdown with the bad guy you can go "Check out my new friend," and then blast them with Mega Flare. I love it. It's one of my favorite things in RPG.
Well, we've completed the Land of Summons sidequest. But, seeing as the dwarves hinted at the presence of Sylphs in the underworld, and the library indicated they might themselves act as a summon… Why not do a full round up and find the Sylph Cave before moving on with the plot?
Despite looking like a simple palette swap of the Cave of Summons (with toxic puddles instead of lava), the Sylph Cave is much harder, for one simple reason - it might as well have been called the Cave of Status Effects. Here's a typical Sylph Cave encounter:
The Bog Witch always comes with a pack of Tiny Toads ( either three or six), and her main command is "Ribbit," which causes all her frogs to immediately respond by casting Toad on a random party member. You can try to kill all the toads before she can command them, or you can try to kill the witch before she can get out more than one Ribbit, but either way at least one Toad spell is probably getting through, and in the worst case scenario you might have most of the party toadified and taking maximized damage before you can do anything about the situation.
She is, by comparison, a gentle soul. Much worse are these:
Malboros are back with their trademark Bad Breath, inflicting a random assortment of status effects like Pig, Toad, Blind, Confused, Sleep, and Mini, all at once. It's common for a Malboro pack to open by incapacitating two party members with stacked status effects, and then you have to choose between trying to kill the Malboros with your remaining party members before they can use more Bad Breaths or trying to cure the status effects to get your group back to full effectiveness, and there's no good choice. They're always a painful fight. They also come in mixed parties with other monsters such as Soul-type monsters that I assume still absorb magic and inflict status effects. Typical victory in Sylph Cave:
⅗ of the group are toads, ⅖ are Blind, and 1 of them is silenced. This is just your average encounter down there. It's hell.
To top it off, the Sylph Cave is a much less straightforward environment than the Cave of Summons, being instead a maze that requires you to go up and down levels and find hidden pathways to get to the chests. There's some good loot in there - Elixir, Ether, an Elven Bow - but it's a huge pain to navigate and requires constant recast of Float. Thankfully, it has one redeeming quality in the form of a Save Point on the second floor where you can rest, which is a massive relief.
Edge also learns Smoke, an ability which allows the entire group to automatically escape a fight, which is incredibly welcome because I still haven't figured out the Escape command in this game's interface.
And in the end… After all this effort…
We find the Sylphs' home.
A simple, unassuming house (in the same architectural style as the Land of Summons) at the bottom of the swamp.
The Sylphs are as you would expect, fairy creatures, although they are none too please to see us trespass.
I wasn't expecting such outright rejection, but I guess we did go to tremendous lengths to intrude on the privacy they're clearly seeking in such an isolated-
Wait.
Wait a second.
Pan left.
Zoom in.
Enhance.
WHAT-
I'M SORRY???
DOES ANYONE EVER ACTUALLY DIE IN THIS GODDAMNED GAME
In the DS version, instead of calling it the God of Summons, it's the Father of Summons, which between the fact that he's their "father" and that he lives elsewhere certainly would support your artificiality theory, definitely for their home and possibly for them as well
Out of interest, does Rosa have the "Pray" command? I know it was removed in the SNES Easy Type, and put back in the 3D remake, but I don't know if the Pixel Remaster has it.
It's basically just a free minor heal for HP and MP for the entire party, with a chance to fail and do nothing on Rosa's turn, but I found it quite useful for the mindless grind sessions. It can also help with Reflect-heavy fights, since it goes through Reflect.
Interestingly, it seems that the Land of Summons is blocked from the land of humans (and dwarves) in much the same way as in the reverse direction - one of the denizens says that 'only those with great physical and mental strength may enter the cave that leads to the world of humans.' Does this mean all the monsters in the cave are there as deliberate gatekeepers? Also, someone asks me how Ifrit's doing, which is pretty funny, although it does make me wish we could actually talk to the summons since they're ostensibly people.
I've always wondered about the metaphysics of the Land of Summons. According to Rydia, time passes faster there than in the overworld (and Underworld), so presumably when the party is descending the caves into the place where the people live, they're going through some kind of time dilation?
Also that would imply every time the party goes back up to handle the next bit of plot, years pass in the Land of Summons. As did presumably happen when Leviathan popped up to sink the ship from Fabul.
Odin exists in this world; the book informs us that "his only defeat occurred when his blade was struck by a bolt of lightning," likely indicating his weakness.
I was waiting for this update to ask a question I've been wondering for a while: in earlier Final Fantasy games when you encountered Odin, did he also have the Lightning weakness? I'm curious if the association of Odin with Lightning (which continues into FFXIV, since the Odin FATE appears during a special "Tension" thunderstorm weather) was always there, or if FFIV was the first to codify it.
Edge also learns Smoke, an ability which allows the entire group to automatically escape a fight, which is incredibly welcome because I still haven't figured out the Escape command in this game's interface.
Welp, said command uh... isn't going to change for the entirety of the ATB system (that is all the way until FF10 goes back to a turn based variant), so should prooooobably get this figured out? On controllers at least it's holding L and R at the same time, no idea on keyboard but might just be holding whatever two keys are equivalent.
Welcome to FFIV Fakeout Deaths; there's a reason it's the most famous for it.
I mean seriously, so far we have:
-Kain showing up again just fine after Mist
-Edward, Yang, and Rydia all totally fine after Leviathan beats up your boat
-Cid blows himself up and is just totes okay 20 minutes later (and then has another cheeky fakeout death so you know they're just taking the piss)
-Yang blows himself up to destroy some cannons and now whoops he's just laying around in Sylph territory for some reason
FFIV is a fun game, as the series first really hitting its stride in terms of "Final Fantasy game with serious plot and developed characters", but the fakeout deaths is probably one of the worst aspects of said story. As you've noted with Cid, it eventually reaches a point where you're just like "yeah whatever see you later bozo" whenever someone "dies".
Odin was introduced in FFIII, so this is only his second appearance in the series. In FFIII he wasn't weak to lightning, but was found at the end of an underwater dungeon where every single random encounter was weak to lightning, so... it might be a reference? No idea, honestly.
With Yang, the question is, did he survive an explosion strong enough to fling him hundreds of miles, survive landing after being flung that far, then fight his way through a dungeon tough enough to challenge five party members in search of somebody to help him before collapsing? Or did he survive a more modest explosion (and merely a fall from hundreds of meters in the air without a lateral component) then swim across hundreds of miles of lava before fighting his way through a dungeon tough enough to challenge five party members in search of somebody to help him before collapsing?
So quick question, did you find the hidden treasure in the land of summons? There's a tile in one of your screenshots that looks a bit off and leads to an otherwise inaccessible platform with a bunch of treasure chests in it, including I think a really good upgrade for Rosa.
Out of interest, does Rosa have the "Pray" command? I know it was removed in the SNES Easy Type, and put back in the 3D remake, but I don't know if the Pixel Remaster has it.
It's basically just a free minor heal for HP and MP for the entire party, with a chance to fail and do nothing on Rosa's turn, but I found it quite useful for the mindless grind sessions. It can also help with Reflect-heavy fights, since it goes through Reflect.
She does, but the heal is very weak (like ~150 for each member) and I hate using powers that might randomly work or not (which actually causes me to underuse status effect abilities, I can't help it, whiffing costly effects just feels too bad), so I haven't been using it.
Learning that it also regenerates some MP changes the calculus, though. Those are difficult to recover outside of inns. I might make more use of it in the future.
I was waiting for this update to ask a question I've been wondering for a while: in earlier Final Fantasy games when you encountered Odin, did he also have the Lightning weakness? I'm curious if the association of Odin with Lightning (which continues into FFXIV, since the Odin FATE appears during a special "Tension" thunderstorm weather) was always there, or if FFIV was the first to codify it.
With Yang, the question is, did he survive an explosion strong enough to fling him hundreds of miles, survive landing after being flung that far, then fight his way through a dungeon tough enough to challenge five party members in search of somebody to help him before collapsing? Or did he survive a more modest explosion (and merely a fall from hundreds of meters in the air without a lateral component) then swim across hundreds of miles of lava before fighting his way through a dungeon tough enough to challenge five party members in search of somebody to help him before collapsing?
The cannons' explosions conflated in such a high density of energy that it tore a hole through reality, creating a warp corridor that teleported the unconscious Yang to the Sylphs' doorstep.
