Wait, there's not even a real boss fight, just a boring wall, before Golbez just ignores everything you've done and says 'lol owned'?
This whole stretch (Tower of Babil to getting the moonship) has been exceptionally weak story-wise, I've gotta say. Very disappointing compared to the preceding stuff.
It's not the best. It makes up for it in my own experience because it opens up optional late-game areas with challenge, the Frying Pan Sidequest is genuinely funny even if it comes out of a frustrating story development, getting high-tier summons and high-end gear is pretty fun, so the game is getting better even as the story is faltering, and then it picks up again once you actually get the spaceship and get to the moon, which is a genuinely hype moment. But there are a lot of rough edges in the process.
Hey you can make that work, just gotta do it X-com style. Keep him in the back, unarmed and restrained, and use him as a black hole for any psychic attacks.
Yeah, one of the biggest problems that FF4 had with its story was that it kept setting the Armageddon clock back.
Golbez got the four crystals he needed? There's 8.
Golbez already has two of them, quick defend the last two!
Golbez got them? He needs to get into the moon to actualize his plan!
Yeah I was vaguely pop-culture osmosis aware Kain was gonna be mind whammied again but this just seems like...
Beyond it being A Way to get the last crystal to Golbez, what's the point? Why this?
Like, whether I try to look at it more thematically (what, is this saying 'your best friend will always betray you trust no one not even yourself', but then what about all the stuff with Tellah insisting we need to rely on our friends etc??) or more mechanically... like, the latter is where I tend to focus, and the first time Kain breaks free he makes it clear he was not completely without free will under the mind control, that Golbez was able to make him do these things because, to some extent, they were things he did want to do himself.
So he's attracted to Rosa and Cecil is in a relationship with Rosa, so Golbez is able to in part just leverage that fact so Kain makes the efforts to Make The Girl His and Eliminate The Competition and yadda. Okay, this is Kain's own emotional weakness coming to the fore (and then he feels shame about it and yadda).
But then Golbez being a bit weakened and right there Kain is able to break free, only Golbez gets to now just suddenly assume direct control? Leaving aside everyone else's non-response, what, was Kain so hyped to See The Moon that that's what Golbez exploited? That seems strange, especially with no like, dialogue to suggest he had any such interest.
Instead it just kinda happens, with no apparent connection to the story wanting us to take away anything about Kain as a person, or any connection to an actual list of limits on Golbez's powers. Nobody has suggested that mind control makes one permanently easier to take control of or whatever. The heroes get blindsided by it because... well, it literally happens for no reason but to advance us to the next plot station, it seems.
I dunno maybe later plot beats will address this but I'm skeptical.
But then Golbez being a bit weakened and right there Kain is able to break free, only Golbez gets to now just suddenly assume direct control? Leaving aside everyone else's non-response, what, was Kain so hyped to See The Moon that that's what Golbez exploited? That seems strange, especially with no like, dialogue to suggest he had any such interest.
Eight crystals are necessary to open the path to the moon, and it would be a massive letdown if we never went to the moon after it's been hyped up, which means the eight crystals have to be gathered, which means we have to fail.
I always took it as Kain never actually having been free of the mind control in the first place. Golbez inserted him into the party as a failsafe - Kain thought he was free and in complete control again, but really he was a Manchurian candidate.
I always took it as Kain never actually having been free of the mind control in the first place. Golbez inserted him into the party as a failsafe - Kain thought he was free and in complete control again, but really he was a Manchurian candidate.
It's a plausible reading of the text and I considered mentioning it, but the problem with it beyond being purely speculative (since neither Golbez nor Kain make any indication of that being the case, at least so far), is that it makes Tellah's fight with Golbez, the one that heroic death in the game that actually, unambiguously works narratively and emotionally (I hesitate to call it a 'sacrifice' since it's something he head into fully cognizant of and actively rejecting attempts to keep him from doing it), into a sucker move that Golbez took clever advantage of to fuck the protagonists over. Which, I could see that being the intent, what with Golbez being the all-powerful antagonist and so on, but I think Tellah deserves that win, partial though it may be, and twisting it into a Just As Planned by Golbez leaves a sour taste in my mouth.
Alternate explanation: Tellah shook Golbez so badly that he wasn't able to reassert mindcontrol over Kain and the next time you ran into him he was so overconfident he didn't even bother trying to mind control Kain before Rydia beat him up too badly to make it work.
Now he's had some time to rest and recuperate and is not taking chances.
Honestly I always took it as Golbez waiting for that crystal opportunity, both because then he wouldn't have to actually do the hard work to get the last crystal and also because he's a drama queen so having Kain turn on them right then and there is the most hilarious option in his mind. Maybe with a side of what SolipsistSerpent said, where he didn't have the opening/power to reassert control until around the time you hit up the sealed cavern.
.Cid asks Edge to look after Rosa and Rydia, which is a little weird and which I choose to interpret as Cid trying to get him to focus on protecting the girls instead of hitting on them with all the grace and seductive appeal of the thirstiest teenagers on earth.
Yeah, gotta agree there; Edge certainly reads like he's 16, not 26. And Cecil reads to me like he's 30, not 20. I imagine there is some sort of official source for these numbers, but even in that case I'd still be willing to headcanon that the official source misplaced ten of Cecil's years on Edge by mistake. Rosa feels way too assertive to be under 20, as well. Although, of course, that might just be fantasy anime convention, where everybody above 20 is considered old, and anybody above 30 is a grizzled veteran of some sort.
At around where I played the first bunch of Ace Attorney games I decided that, as far as I am concerned, Japan has officially lost the privilege of being able declare how old people are. This is business as usual.
According to the first wiki I found, the citation for Edge's age comes from Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1 (ISBN 9784757537699), p.165. 26 years old.
E: And, in fairness, his old official artwork pretty legitimately looks a bit older than Cecil or Rosa. Characterization, now, well. Of surprisingly unskeevy note, Rydia post time-shenanigans is 24, so he's at least hitting on someone about the same age!
E2: wait, no, that was after years, where edge is 43, nevermind, I spoke too soon
I can sorta see Cecil and Rosa (and presumably Kain?) being 19/20ish; that's about the age a lot of people first start questioning what the fuck they thought they were doing as a teenager and repudiating earlier positions they held. It also explains why Cecil's so inept at anything but fighting.
Edge cannot possibly be older than like 14-16 though.
According to the first wiki I found, the citation for Edge's age comes from Final Fantasy Ultimania Archive Volume 1 (ISBN 9784757537699), p.165. 26 years old.
Checking the wiki, that dates to the 25th anniversary, 2012, decades after IV itself.
Meaning its possible (albeit wholly speculative) that ages in it were selected not so much to make sense in IV but to justify everybody being the ages they wanted to portray them as in the 17-years-later sequel released several years prior to said Ultimania.
That is, that they wanted him to be older and wiser in the sequel (I honestly can't remember if they succeeded at such or not) and decided that a 43-year-old Edge fit the sequel's needs better than the 33-year-old Edge they'd get if they chose ages that made sense for the original. That'd also explain Cecil and Rosa being 19 rather than the 30 they should be - they wanted Cecil and Rosa to be about the same age but wanted Rosa to still be hot in the sequel and felt that wouldn't be fitting for a 47-year-old but would for 36.
I'd just ignore the numbers, go with what makes sense, and say Rosa ages fantastically and Edge ages like crap, myself.
That's not really an excuse here - Edward, also a prince and notoriously a spoony bard, is apparently 24 and he's, like, orders of magnitude more mature than Edge and is in a very similar situation to Ninja Boy.
Edward has the benefit of starting as a bawling human mess, and then undergoing a character arc that helps him quickly regain focus and courage. All while being likable. Edge... doesn't. He starts as a reckless playboy and never quite changes. Even if the sequel works on him, it doesn't changes the fact that he's a static 2D character here.
Now is the time for the big anticlimax, as we head right back to earth for some unfinished business. Don't worry, it shouldn't take long.
First on our list: Do as Edward suggested (smart boy, that one), and go tell Yang's wife that we delivered her message and her, hm, frying pan.
And the reward for doing this whole-as sidequest with two trips through the hellish Sylph Cave is…
A Knife.
As in it's an item literally called "Knife." Probably an actual kitchen knife she just grabbed from her counter.
My immediate assumption is that this is a joke reward, which fits the humorous tone of the questline, and which I don't mind because the real reward was the Sylph summon. 'Knife' is the name of the lowest tier of dagger in the previous games, literally the weakest weapon, and Yang's wife is gifting one to you at the end of one of the toughest sidequests in the game, haha, funny.
Except no. Because Yang's wife's kitchen knives clearly follow the same rules as her all-powerful non-stick frying pan.
+255 is the highest Attack bonus I've ever seen in these games. Someone can correct me if I'm mistaken, but I'm pretty sure it's one of these, '256 values cause messy things to happen because of byte numbers in older software, so +255 is the maximum practical value for any stat' things?
Unfortunately it's not a weapon I can equip. It can, however, be used by Edge's Throw command - which consumes some rare equipment to inflict heavy damage. I imagine this one, specifically, will inflict the maximum 9,999 damage… Once. Hrm.
I actually haven't been using the Throw command at all this entire time. There just… aren't that many items to use it with? I have so far found exactly one Shuriken and one Fuma Shuriken (the stronger version), and additionally I can use it with a few rare swords. It gives me strong Consumable Anxiety. I do think there may be an opportunity to use it soon, though.
Alright, now that this is done…
We're heading back to Castle Baron to meet with the ghost(?) of the King, just as he asked us to once we had found our way to the Land of Summons.
…Odin???
Okay, that's fascinating.
We know magic can turn people into monsters. We know that sometimes, such a transformation can be voluntary (Baigan), and it's a pretty easy guess that sometimes it can be forced onto others (at the very least I doubt Scarmiglione's undead are their of their own free will). We know that there is a Land of Summons where monsters live in peace. We also know that Odin already existed - Odin is mentioned in the LoS library as a known being, a powerful entity that was defeated once. And now, the King of Baron has become Odin.
So my theory is that we are in a situation where like… A number of Summons exist as 'ideas,' as templates or mantles, if you will. There's no 'true Odin,' but different people (or their ghosts, I guess) may, at times, assume the mantle of Odin, and become Odin in that time. I strongly doubt Golbez did this of his own will; if he thought he could turn the King of Golbez into a powerful monster under his control, he would have just done that, instead of playing games with Cagnazzo. No - the most likely explanation, given what he told us previously, is that Leviathan himself endowed him with this power. To what end? I'm not sure. At this point I don't think Leviathan has a vested interest in playing chess against Golbez; I think mostly he just cares about Rydia, and is helping out because he likes her, and if he's responsible for the King's ascent to 'eternal power,' it was out of whim rather than a grand plan.
So.
Odin.
Odin's normal attack deals around a thousand damage, which is onerous but which Rosa could keep up on her own, but that doesn't really matter. What matters is this: after one or two attacks, Odin's sprite raises his sword. This signals an extremely short time window; once that window has passed, Odin uses Zantetsuken, hitting the entire party for the kind of damage you can see above, easily killing everyone in a single move.
I try casting Protect. I try having everyone use the Defend command to brace for it. Nothing helps. If Odin uses Zantetsuken, it's a party wipe.
This means that, in order to win, I have to kill Odin before he gets to use that move. Which, again, he uses on Round 2, Round 3 at the very latest and I don't like relying on luck. Now, luckily, I know Odin has a lightning weakness - and thanks to my consumable Bestiary items, I know he has 20,000 HP.
So.
Rydia is lv… 44, I think, at that point. Recently, she learned Blizzaga (the Tier 3 Ice spell, for those who struggle with the naming convention), and even more recently, Firaga. Which means that I am pretty sure she's at most one level away from learning Thundaga. And as it happens, the Sylph Cave still has some loot that I haven't bothered getting yet because it involves more hidden wall games.
Well, the game just gave me a reason to head back.
Oh hey, it's that incredibly high-value damage item from the opening cutscene, back at last!
One Sylph Cave run later. Mission accomplished.
It's time to win a quickdraw duel against the shortest Enrage timer I've ever seen. The strategy is simple: Cecil attacks with Excalibur. Rosa uses a Rage of the Gods consumable that casts Thundara. Edge uses Blitz, his own Lightning-aspected move. And Rydia casts Thundara.
Boom shaka-waka.
We did it, baby. I mean, let's be real, it's Odin, who's like… got a 50% chance of killing any single non-boss enemy when summoned… for about the same price as I could summon Leviathan and actually kill everyone instead… but as far as bragging rights go, he's not bad.
The spirit of the King of Baron, now become one of the most powerful summons spoken of in legend, joining with us for our final journey, is pretty cool. I do wish the King's relationship to Cecil was explored more, though - these don't strike me as having a particularly close relationship in their sparse dialogue, although it's notable that Cecil always addresses the King with utmost respect.
Alright. Now that we got all that business taken care of, it's time to go back…
TO THE MOOOOOOON
Look at that field of stars over the horizon. Gorgeous design.
They really did reveal a whole new region map for this. Admittedly it's a small one.
The giant crystal structure at the center of the moon is our obvious destination, however getting there won't be so simple. Don't be fooled by the moon's tricks - in terms of actual locations it's very sparse. Most of these grey dots are the entrances and exits of tunnels. You see, the lunar plain is strewn with craters and debris; the Lunar Whale can only land on those flat grey mesas. From there, we have to climb down where we can, then navigate the lunar plain. Because of the number of boulders and crags in the way, the central plains are a maze, requiring us to instead go through mountain tunnels:
As for the enemies we fight, they are… interesting.
Love that background.
The Abyss Worms are a recurring foe and the kind of thing I would expect on the moon. The giant, hostile single-cell organisms? That's pretty wild. But interesting; it gives the moon a… sciency vibe, but not just that; it makes it looks like much of its wildlife is 'basal', extremely simple forms of life blown up to enormous size, almost as if the moon were some kind of primordial basin.
Interestingly, these enemy types are testament to when the game was released. Today, we use the three-domain system to classify biological life, wherein the three domains of life are archaea, bacteria and eukarya. However, that domain was only introduced in 1990, and FFIV was released in 1991; the devs of the game would have been familiar with the earlier "two-empire" system, in which archaea and bacteria were grouped together and categorized as prokaryotes. The game doesn't have an Archaea or Bacteria enemy, but it does have Eukaryote and Prokaryote, representing the two basic domains encompassing all of life.
I just think that's neat.
Anyway, a couple of detours through some new tunnels, and we arrive at the Crystal Palace at the center of the moon, where… Well, let's see.
Forgot to take a shot of the outside, sorry.
The moon is haunted???
It's time for the late game Deep Lore and Recontextualization, and oh boy, it's a doozy. None of it is super new, but some of it is stuff I couldn't have simply guessed except taking wild shots at random and happening to be correct.
First of all, it always feels weird to have a fantasy setting explicitly use the real world solar system. 'A small planet between Mars and Jupiter' is interesting though - there is no such planet in our solar system, and FuSoYa does not give it a name, suggesting that the people of FFIV's earth know about Mars and Jupiter, but not about this mystery planet; in our reality, that space is occupied by the Asteroid Belt, remnants of protoplanet which, torn by the powerful gravity of Jupiter, could never accrete into an actual planet. It would seem that in this universe, this planet did successfully form and house life… Or rather, I should say, in FFIV's setting, the origin of the Asteroid Belt is that it was a successful planet, until its destruction caused it to scatter and turn into the Asteroid Belt, thereby explaining why it has no name in the current age, as it was never observed by modern humans.
As FuSoYa tells it, the lunarians were "in the midst of evolving" (what this means is unclear), and as such decided to build an artificial moon capable of housing life, "where they could sleep a long slumber." Most of the lunarians believe that peaceful coexistence with earthlings is possible, once the earthlings have reached "the right level of evolution," and as such they are willing to slumber until such a time as their levels of evolution converge and they are able to treat it as equal - which, even by benevolent alien standards in sci-fi, is shockingly chill; you have 'patron' aliens who act as generous mentors to a fledgling humanity, you have 'watcher' aliens who hold to a politic of observation and non-intervention until the humans are 'ready,' but I don't think I've ever seen an alien species willing to outright peace out into dreamland until the conditions are perfect for a meeting in which there is no chance of them exploiting a less-developed species.
Unfortunately that was not an unanimous decision.
Yeah, I was right. Golbez is not the master of his own fate. He is being misled by a greater, more powerful evil, who is using his lust for power to advance his own agenda - the extermination of humanity and the lunaforming of Earth into a place where Lunarians can live without having to worry about 'peaceful coexistence' with an inferior species.
This is…
By the far the most coherent and well-laid out villainous motivation in a Final Fantasy big bad so far. Chaos explained his deal at the 11th hour and it involved weird time loop shenanigans and acausal relationships, the Emperor was just 'want power, get power' with zero depth, Xande was, well, we've talked about Xande. But this Zemus is both straightforward and, while not complex, a character who follows from his premise. The Lunarians lost their home planet, and the whole species is willing to undergo some honestly pretty self-abnegating sacrifice of waiting hundreds, maybe thousands of years for humanity to be ready to meet them, and he's decided to take it upon himself to make the home for his species that they're not ready to claim for themselves. After all, once he's razed the earth of all its current life and turned it into a home for Lunarians, what are they gonna do? Say "thanks, but we can't accept that planet even though it's too late to undo the destruction you've waged and no one benefits from not taking what's now offered to us, so we're just gonna sleep forever instead?" I mean, they might, but for a selfish actor that might be difficult to conceive.
And everyone's asleep anyway, so who's gonna stop him?
It's a coherent plan and it even has the slightest hint of 'I'm doing this for other people, not just myself' to make it, while not sympathetic, more than just naked power thirst.
And it turns out that I was only partially correct about other stuff. The Lunar Whale, Zot, Babel, they all seem to be Lunarian technology… but they're not coming from the Lunarians as a species. They're coming from one dude.
Right, so, when FuSoYa says 'many years ago,' given how the Lunar Whale was shrouded in legend, I'm guessing he means on a civilizational scale, and the Lunarians are effectively immortal. That does not explain how he would have built the Zot or Babel singlehandedly - I clearly don't have the full picture, but…
…you know, there's a meta-twist on the franchise here. We've been chasing after elemental crystals this whole time, but for the first time, it turns out they aren't an innate part of the world required for it to function. Which probably explains why, aside from the general recrudescence in monster activity (that is actually due to Zemus's influence) and the future threat of Troia returning to a desert (which rather suggests that its crystal used to just not be there and was relatively recent on a historical scale), Golbez's theft of the crystal hasn't caused any FF1/FF3 world-scale disaster yet. They're just helpful, not required, for the world to be in balance. Because they are in fact Lunarian energy tech. And he's going to use them to power a 'Giant of Babel' and do… something.
*squints*
Wait, Golbez isn't here, is he?
Was the Tower of Babel even actually a space elevator/teleporter, or was Golbez's whole thing about a legend telling him to gather the crystals to find the moon a lure to cause him to bring about the world's demise? (I'm going to assume it wasn't and Golbez will in fact show up on the moon; it seems like it'd just be a weird twist.)
Oh yeah and also Cecil is a half-Lunarian. That also happened. FuSoYa explains that the voice Cecil heard, as well as his transformation into a Paladin, were in fact him receiving power from the soul of his father in order to stop Zemus. The destiny that had been alluded to by other people was this - to stop Zemus and secure a peaceful future for both humanity and the Lunarians. Now, FuSoYa says, it's time for Cecil to go to the Tower of Babel once more and stop Zemus's plans. When the group asks how they are supposed to get past the forcefield, FuSoYa explains…
…well, he explains the real reason Kain just got mind-controlled and snatched away from the group.
To make place for our new fifth party member, Lunarian FuSoYa.
Lv 50 is very respectable (my highest main character is Cecil at lv 48, everyone else is below), and would be even moreso if I'd headed to the moon faster than I did and had been a few levels behind. FuSoYa is effectively a Sage like Tellah, with complete lists of White and Black Magic both, plus a 'Regen' command whose purpose is mysterious to me.
Also?
He knows fucking Meteor.
He's like if Tellah had come back from the dead turbocharged, and I respect him for that. I am also not sure how long he's going to make it. Also I'll need to remember to fix my party order next time I boot up the game so he isn't in the front row, that's just how he landed by default.
That was a lot of story developments. We'll be done shortly, but first, a couple of things…
FFIV continues the tradition of the crystals being sentient and friendly (perhaps these specifically might be more likened to a kind of monitoring AI), and these explain that all their power is used to keep Zemus sealed - but that Zemus responded in kind by laying a seal of his own to present access to his body, meaning that while he is maintained in a forced sleep, he also can't be accessed and killed while asleep. Meanwhile, "the strength of his will intensifies," and his mind reaches out across the expanse of space to influence such villains as Golbez, his pawn.
Yeah, this is cool. I was anticipating a Greater Evil, and so far, even as an off-screen presence, Zemus is delivering. We can work with this.
Now, before we head back to Earth, I'm going to just, you know, look around, yeah? There are a few other spots on the Moon that I haven't explored yet, and while they seem optional, I'm sure they might contain some interesting goodies. Let's head, say, southeast of the map, and see what's there…
Oh, baby.
Yeah, I'm glad I did all that incidental powerleveling in the course of also grabbing all that extra gear and summons.
I feel like I'm about to need it.
And also? I feel like I'm starting to have a working theory as to the exact nature of Summons.
So, fun fact: In the SNES version they decided for one reason or another (wouldn't be surprised if it was a call from Nintendo, they made the occasional really baffling demand back in the day) that having Yang's wife give you a knife wouldn't fly.
Instead, she gives you a spoon. And it's still the strongest thrown weapon in the game.
It's time to win a quickdraw duel against the shortest Enrage timer I've ever seen. The strategy is simple: Cecil attacks with Excalibur. Rosa uses a Rage of the Gods consumable that casts Thundara. Edge uses Blitz, his own Lightning-aspected move. And Rydia casts Thundara.
You did it Omi, you found a way to have an iaijutsu duel in a turn-based JRPG.
Also I don't remember when and how I fought Odin myself but I remember him going down so embarrassingly easy even without specific prep that I never even found out that his Zantetsuken timer is apparently hilariously short. I must've left it even later than you so I had Kain back.
Interestingly, these enemy types are testament to when the game was released. Today, we use the three-domain system to classify biological life, wherein the three domains of life are archaea, bacteria and eukarya. However, that domain was only introduced in 1990, and FFIV was released in 1991; the devs of the game would have been familiar with the earlier "two-empire" system, in which archaea and bacteria were grouped together and categorized as prokaryotes. The game doesn't have an Archaea or Bacteria enemy, but it does have Eukaryote and Prokaryote, representing the two basic domains encompassing all of life.
Damn, I do think that's neat. I just looked at those enemies and went "wow cool goo creature" and moved on, inasmuch as I looked at anything while grinding for 100% bestiary completion.
To make place for our new fifth party member, Lunarian FuSoYa.
Lv 50 is very respectable (my highest main character is Cecil at lv 48, everyone else is below), and would be even moreso if I'd headed to the moon faster than I did and had been a few levels behind. FuSoYa is effectively a Sage like Tellah, with complete lists of White and Black Magic both, plus a 'Regen' command whose purpose is mysterious to me.
Also?
He knows fucking Meteor.
He's like if Tellah had come back from the dead turbocharged, and I respect him for that. I am also not sure how long he's going to make it. Also I'll need to remember to fix my party order next time I boot up the game so he isn't in the front row, that's just how he landed by default.
1) Look at that MP. It's higher than Tellah's locked 90, but still extremely underwhelming compared to the vast mana pools Rydia and Rosa get - and just like Tellah, it's not going up any time soon. Nor will any of his stats but HP come to mention it.
2) Meteor... sucks. It has the longest hidden cast-time of any command in the game, eclipsing even Rydia's summons, costs a truly exorbitant amount of MP, and deals kinda subpar damage in the process. I only used it once, and then never again.
and, funniest of all, 3) Rydia learning Meteor at level 60 with a whopping 405 MP and also able to summon Bahamut: "THE FUTURE IS NOW, OLD MAN"
I wound up with a pretty dim view of Fusoya after actually having him in my party for a little bit and having to deal with being back at babysitting three full casters with just Cecil and... Edge... who I believe at this point in the game still hasn't caught up in effectiveness to the others enough to counterbalance his shocking fragility.
EDIT: I just checked the game data on the wiki - you know who else knows Meteor at level 50? Palom. And he'd have over double Fusoya's MP pool by that point if he wasn't currently doing his best impression of a lawn gnome. This Lunarian sage is getting bodied in the QRTs rn.
