:B: - Final Fantasy IV

I've decided to call it a day with Final Fantasy IV. I have to admit, I began to like it again once it was clear I was almost finished. I got through the final dungeon without much difficulty (although I did give the bonus bosses a miss) but was dismayed to find out that I got absolutely pasted. This was at roughly 13 hours. I decided to level up.

I also went around and got a couple summons for Rydia, too, now that I was a higher level and completely breezed through Asura, Leviathon and Bahamut. It was almost fun! But after two hours, and gaining 10 levels I attempted Zeromus again.

And got smushed. Again.

I am not happy. I do not wish to grind out another 10 levels to maybe be able to scrape a win. It's a pretty cheap way to get longevity out of your game to make the final boss so much higher in difficulty than anything else. I know it's meant to be a challenge, but at level 53 I get destroyed within three turns. I think I even prefer how Final Fantasy X did it, with a final battle you can't even lose, and that was massively underwhelming.

It's a shame. If the ending hadn't been so grindy I would've happily beaten it and given it a 4/5, but as it is I can't happily give it above a 3/5. I wanted to beat this, I really did, but I can't forgive enforced level-grinding just before the end in a game I've breezed through up until that point.

Final Fantasy IV: Saying Goodbye to Suspension of Disbelief

I've been fighting with FF4 recently. I like the gameplay, mostly. I like the character interaction, mostly. But I'm having difficulty reconciling my like of those with my hate of annoying battles and the incredibly hackneyed story.

Right now, my guys are on the moon, Cecil just found out he's the son of a guy from the moon, and Golbez is being controlled by some moon dude so he can get the crystals and destroy the world. I'm not sure why he would even want to destroy the world. I've kind of stopped paying attention. How long is left? I'm not sure I can be bothered, to be honest.

The other half of my hate is annoying battles. I was in the Sealed Cave to retrieve it's crystal, and everywhere were doors. That turned into trap doors and that I had to battle. Which often summoned a powerful monster and skedaddled. My characters rarely came out of these battles with everyone alive, and there were about 20 of them in this damn cave.

It's a shame, because I was really enjoying it before everything my characters did turned out to be one step behind and failed at everything. I've been betrayed multiple times, several of my characters have sacrificed their lives to save the rest after we fucked up, and I just don't feel like I'm making any progress at all.

Final Fantasy IV - Glitcherrific

I've been playing Final Fantasy IV a bit more, and am getting on a bit with it. I've now been tasked with getting the Earth Crystal back from the Dark Elf, so that I can borrow (steal) it to get Rosa back. I've run into a bit of an issue. As far as I can tell, the first battle against him is unwinnable, as he does 9999 damage apiece. I confirmed this on the internets, and apparently Edward is supposed to appear and play some tune which lets you use metal.

Not so much. I got to him, was gobsmacked at the amount of damage he did, all my dudes died and I got booted back to the main menu. Is there something I'm missing here? Is there a trigger I haven't tripped? Help a gamer out here!

Final Fantasy IV: Easiest level-grinding EVAR

I've been slowly chipping away at Final Fantasy IV on my busrides to work, and I'm still having fun. I'm up to the bit where Cecil has just become the world most flamboyant Paladin. At one point during the fight with Scarmiglione I accidentally mashed the select button and a most wonderful thing happened. My dudes went on 'Auto' mode, which means they fight by themselves and I don't have to mash 'X'.

While, admittedly, this wasn't any use for me during the boss battle, it was of great use after Cecil shed his Dark Knight trappings and became a sap. He starts off at level 1 as a Paladin, so wanted a bit of training up. I went to the bottom of the Mount of Ordeals, switched on Auto, and preceded to destroy a lot of zombies for fun and profit. He's now level 18, and I have all the best equipment sold in Mysidia.

I suspect this will come in handy a lot later when the difficulty ramps up and I have to grind out some levels. This is my least favourite part of JRPGs, having to take some time out to mash on weaker monsters so you can mash on the stronger monsters, so being able to press left and right occasionally to get into random battles and not have to press buttons repeatedly suits me perfectly. More level-based games should have this - well, ones in this genre anyway. I'm not sure it would suit Western or Strategy RPGs much, but the ability to just set and forget for linear turn-based RPGs is, to me, the holy grail.

Final Fantasy IV: Better Than Child of Eden

At least as far as price goes, anyway. A couple weeks ago, I walked into my local Gamestation with the intent of buying Child of Eden, but the price blew the steam out of my sails. 40 of my english pounds for a pretty shoot-'em-up was more than I could possibly justify, so I poked around and found myself taking Final Fantasy IV: Complete to the counter, much to my surprise. I've never been much of a Final Fantasy person, Breath of Fire is my JRPG of choice, but I'm always open to trying something I've never played before.

It's not the first Final Fantasy I've played, or even the first 2D one, those accolades belong to 7 and 1 respectively, it is, however, the only one I hadn't played up until that point. I was happy to discover that the story involves crystals, which every one up until 5 has. The ones which don't have a completely different feel - more serious, more epic. Which has its place, but I like a more friendly feel in my Japanese turn-based story adventures.

Anyway, long story short, you are Cecil, the worst Dark Knight ever, the Dark Knight with a conscience, who's having second thoughts about slaughtering innocent people to get the crystals for his King. The King realises this, promptly demotes him and sends him on a quest which ends up with him murdering a village of summoners by accident. Whoops! He saves a little girl, meets an old guy, finds old guy's daughter, who promptly dies, and goes on a journey to save the next crystal from capture, but not before curing his love interest's desert fever. Quite the adventure for two hours in.

The story is happening rather quickly. In two hours, two out of four of the world's crystals are in the hands of the corrupted King, and I am racing to save the third (which will undoubtedly fail, where would the story be otherwise?). I am wondering where the story has to go after he has all the crystals, but I guess I've got to play more to find out!

A brief comment on the sound. I'm not sure what it is about the music, but it hits my nostalgia brain cells hard. Which is strange, because I didn't play a FF game until I was almost 14, on the Playstation 1. Is it something about the SNES-ish sounds? I did spend a large amount of my youth on one of those things. Something to muse upon until next time, I guess.