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FF4 Unprecedented Crisis Part 1
Nov. 22nd, 2024 02:49 amSo let's port over a ROMhack playthrough I did. Unprecedented Crisis, a Final Fantasy IV hack. Why this one? Because I'm a sucker for alternate history, that's why. And this hack does have two of the things needed to make a ROMhack tolerable: it's not excessively hard, and it's still the same game at the core. Plus, it's fun to dominantly play through a game; though I have some varianting in mind for it later and after finishing this playthrough.
Because I got a power outage in the middle of this and for some reason did not Ctrl+S to save what I was doing, the start of this probably isn't going to be my best work. Then it happened again, but I did save it. But I'll try my best to get everything back up to speed anyway!
The good news is, the first few parts are almost identical to vanilla. So I don't really need to go over it too much in detail. There's new weapons and equipment, but the main thing to talk about is the differences with characters. Kain is basically the same as his original incarnation - he jumps and he wears armor. Cecil by contrast is quite different. He has his DarkWave ability in this hack, and he also has a Black Magic command! It's very small at the start, consisting of only Blind and Poison (now a Dark-elemental spell that inflicts HP leak), but it's something.
I did a trick called Mist Clip here, just to see if it would still work. This allows you to enter Mist from the right side, which oddly enough, exists and is properly coded You can then access the good items in here immediately. It really didn't affect too much in the end, but was fun to do. Humorously, even without the equipment, Rydia's defenses were still almost as high as Cecil's - 15 to his 16. With it, she exceeded it with 18, and a whole lot of Magic Defense on top of that. Also, worth noting - DK Cecil is no longer very limited in what he can equip. Funnily, you get sent straight to the final dungeon if you try this in later versions of the hack. Speedruns actually exploit this.
Also of note, there are now Serpent Roads in almost every town in the game. However, all of them are sealed off at Mysidia's end, preventing any sort of use of them.
Rydia has lost her White and Black Magic commands. Instead, she only has Summon and a new command called Help! This works similarly to Tellah's Recall command, except it's not completely useless like that is in this version. Instead of randomly using either weak magic he could use anyway, status spells, or rarely Bio, it has a 24/160 chance of using Mist Dragon, Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, or Titan, a 16/160 chance apiece of Leviathan or Odin, and a 8/160 chance of Bahamut. She still needs to pay the appropriate MP costs for each spell. And instead of learning spells with the story, she learns them by leveling up. She begins with Imp/Goblin, and learns a new one every fifth level.
Because of this and it just not being hard, there was simply no need to buy anything except for maybe a few consumables before heading into the next dungeon. I'd find some more stuff for Tellah along the way, Rydia was equipped already, and while the new Broad Sword was a stronger option for Cecil, he can't use DarkWave with it in-hand. And he'll be getting the Darkness Sword in the dungeon, too! 100GP saved by not buying it. The Waterway was as per usual, simple. The Fire Rod I got from Mist Clip came in handy for conserving Rydia's MP, as did an Ice Rod found in the cave itself. It also worked when I got owned by Toad.
Tellah is here of course. While he only has half as much MP, he has twice as many spells, including the second-tier Black Magic spells. He came in handy for wiping out groups of elementally-weak enemies. The only tricky group here were the 4 WaterHag/2 TinyMage groups. Mute didn't block the latter's Rasp/Osmose on being hit with magic; they were the only groups who weren't massacred.
In the cave beyond, there's a set of Mythril equipment that allows Cecil to push his defense up past the mages. Octomammoth was a funny fight. For whatever reason, his lightning weakness is gone. He's only weak to Dark, so the best option for Cecil and Tellah were to attack and use Poison respectively. When Rydia's Chocobo did less than 100 damage, I had her use Help! instead and see if I could get anything useful. The result of this was her pulling out Leviathan to massacre the octopus.
Not much to note about the Antlion Cave or Antlion itself - who also had the privilige of seeing Rydia roll the 16/160 for the sea serpent of death before it, for 2576 damage. A couple interesting things: you can't access the treasure room in Damcyan, as the guy never disappears when being spoken to.
Second, there's an interesting and sensible change here to account for the fact that Rydia can't use Black Magic anymore. Instead of being afraid to cast Fire to melt the ice, she's afraid to summon a Bomb to blow the ice up. She learns it all the same afterwards. The nighttime event with Edward is also skipped.
So let's talk about the two new members. Edward is much better than in vanilla. Split is actually viable now, healing around 60-90 HP per use. This is actually the first instance of mass healing you get access to. His Sing command is no longer random, with him being able to use unique song magic. The two he begins with are Defense and Speed, which cast Protect and Haste on all party members respectively. In the Antlion Cave, he learns the Allure song, which attempts to inflict confusion on all enemies. Good for locking down foes, and better than using his weakish harps in the cave.
Rosa's function has significantly changed. Her new class is Archer; she has lost most of her White Magic. What she does have and learn is time magic orientated. Her class ability is Charge, which functions identically to Yang's similar command in vanilla. Furthermore, her Fight command acts as Aim, so there's no need to stress over having to scroll down to the command every single time.
But yes, boom! And a snappy comment to go along with it.
Yang got a pretty significant nerf. Claws, which allowed him to tie elements or racial damage to his attack, are no more. In exchange, he received the Chakra ability, but this is complete garbage. The problems with it are twofold. First, it can only target Yang himself. Second, it heals 1/3 of his current HP. Not maximum, current. So those times you would want to use it - when Yang is low on HP - it's completely useless!
Not much to say about MomBomb. The autobattle sequence with Yang before it doesn't happen, with him kiling those in the cutscene too. The little bombs are easily cleaned up between DarkWave, Kick, and Rydia's Shiva. One of the big changes on the mountain are the Cocatrices, which now actually can petrify you. Edward's Allure song helped stop them before they could get going.
The Fabul battles are easy. The enemies do resist Dark, so I have Cecil use a Mythril Sword I picked up on Mt. Hobs when they're not in use. DarkWave and Kick decimate the ImpCap/Weeper/Waterhag groups, and would even dent the soldiers badly if not for the fact that I want to kill the Generals every time for the extra experience, which isn't a problem.
Small changes throughout it: Rosa and Rydia now show up instead of a generic guard, and Rydia uses a Phoenix Down at the end.
HACK NAMEDROP HYPE. Oddly, you're thrown directly onto the ship after this scene, where you get the Ancient Sword instead of the Deathbringer.
Um. There's something different about this boat ride, but I can't put my finger on it...
So yes, the hypothetical we're dealing with here is, "What if Leviathan never attacked the ship on the way to Baron?" So now we're in Baron with Dark Knight Cecil, Yang, Edward, and Child Rydia. Unlike getting here normally, you can't go to Mist.
But you still need to beat up some guards to get in. Ridiculously easy, of course. The shops offer up another defensive upgrade for Cecil, which I happily snap up to at least do something with my hardearned cash.
The Old Waterway is quite dangerous, with enemies stronger than your party showing up. Edward's Life song that he learned here restores 1/5 Max HP; I generally found Split to be better. At least at the end of it, a special guest comes in from EasyType: the Coral Sword!
You break Cid out of jail by using the Baron Key. I give him Cecil's old Mythril Gear. He has a special skill called Rage that sees him inflicts Berserk on himself.
Cagnazzo is recognizable in pattern, but the fight plays out somewhat differently. You can't startle him out of using electricity (though your only way to would be Rydia with Ramuh or the Thunder Staff and Lit-Bolts, which reminds me, those are now droppable items, along with FireBombs and the new Ice-Balls), so you will have to take them from time to time. But he will eventually lower the water himself. He's weak to ice and electricity without any switching depending on his state. ColdDust and JudgBolt are just as strong as each other here, worth noting, and HellFire for that matter.
He still goes into his shell at the end for increased defenses/evasion. Of course, some attacks deal damage regardless of defenses!
You get the Water Crystal after facing him. But wait, what happened to the guy you fight before him?
Well, because you got here sooner, Baigan was not corrupted by Golbez. He knew about the King being a monster, but he couldn't take action against the sorcerer and Baron's forces. Cecil confronts him about this, but sympathizes with his explantion. Baigan watches over the kingdom in the meantime. Also, the Enterprise has yet to be built here. And the kingdom's boats are useless. So how are we going to get to Troia to protect the last crystal?
With the help of Summonloli leading us to a new dungeon!
At Mist when I'm supposed to be in Mist, I buy defensive upgrades for Edward, which was pretty overdue. The new stuff isn't that much worse for Cid either, so I make the switchover for him, giving him much more magic defense. Yang remains with the strength boosting equipment I picked up in Fabul. Rydia of course, already has stuff from here from before.
A short ways into the next dungeon, Edward becomes a highly valuable asset offensively. The Fairy Harp is like all fairy equipment: extremely strong against giants. Ogres pollute the first screen of this dungeon, so this is a very good weapon. Rydia's Bomb spell was of use here, since most of the threats were smaller groups of enemies with a lot of health, and it charges faster than the elemental spells, too.
They have some nice drops, too. I end up with two of these for free. They're better than the headwear Cecil and Cid were using, so I make a swapover.
The battle against Scarmiglione is moved to here. He only hisses as you walk near the bridge, and it's Yang who senses him here. He himself only has 3000HP. Rydia was one level away from learning Ifrit, so I got her that level, and had her instantly wipe them out. Instead of Bolt, he counters everything you do with Calcify to inflict gradual petrification. My party was in absolutely dreadful shape by the end, like shown here but with Cid 3/4ths of the way there, but no one was fully petrified. Edward did kick it though, due to a Bio spell.
The undead form is also much nastier. Instead of just attacking, he throws in spells, including an opening Quake. Thankfully, Rydia can do her thing with Ifrit. Yang was instantly petrified here, and stayed that way because I selected Phoenix Down instead of Remedy, but this was by no means insanely hard! The physicals did 1 damage to Rydia and Edward, and not much more to those in the front row. They could inflict Curse (halves attack and defense), but still negliable. Also, if you're wondering about the weird way the numbers look, I was trying out a quickstrat for image splicing. Though it works fine on the GBA version, it doesn't so much on the SNES version.
Cutscene! Mysidia learns of the false king, and sends a group - including Palom and Porom - on a diplomatic mission. Then they get attacked by a sea monster just like you do in vanilla, before the twins Warp away. As a random note, despite using the same graphics, this is supposed to be a random sea monster and not Leviathan at all.
It's important to know about this obscure Chocobo Forest if you want to advance. I knew about it, though had trouble finding it. Troia itself has the elemental arrows for sale, but otherwise, nothing too much. In the castle...
Shit goes down. The Red Wings attack, and Golbez is all "going somewhere?" and arrives to personally lay the smackdown on us in a cutscene, with help of the Shadow Dragon. But then Tellah is like "going somewhere?" to him, and attacks.
And because you can't have FF4 without this scene, Tellah's rage unlocks the ultimate spell, and he casts Meteo on Golbez.
Inversion of circumstances. Edward leaves us to stay by the side of a bedridden Tellah in Troia. But Tellah lives! He vows to learn every spell ever and defeat Golbez. Also, the Crystal of Earth hasn't been stolen by the Dark Elf. The Clerics give us it to hold on to, so that Troian lives are not endangered by a second attempt at an invasion.
Tune in next time to watch this hack start to fall apart at the seams!
Next | Index
Because I got a power outage in the middle of this and for some reason did not Ctrl+S to save what I was doing, the start of this probably isn't going to be my best work. Then it happened again, but I did save it. But I'll try my best to get everything back up to speed anyway!
The good news is, the first few parts are almost identical to vanilla. So I don't really need to go over it too much in detail. There's new weapons and equipment, but the main thing to talk about is the differences with characters. Kain is basically the same as his original incarnation - he jumps and he wears armor. Cecil by contrast is quite different. He has his DarkWave ability in this hack, and he also has a Black Magic command! It's very small at the start, consisting of only Blind and Poison (now a Dark-elemental spell that inflicts HP leak), but it's something.
I did a trick called Mist Clip here, just to see if it would still work. This allows you to enter Mist from the right side, which oddly enough, exists and is properly coded You can then access the good items in here immediately. It really didn't affect too much in the end, but was fun to do. Humorously, even without the equipment, Rydia's defenses were still almost as high as Cecil's - 15 to his 16. With it, she exceeded it with 18, and a whole lot of Magic Defense on top of that. Also, worth noting - DK Cecil is no longer very limited in what he can equip. Funnily, you get sent straight to the final dungeon if you try this in later versions of the hack. Speedruns actually exploit this.
Also of note, there are now Serpent Roads in almost every town in the game. However, all of them are sealed off at Mysidia's end, preventing any sort of use of them.
Rydia has lost her White and Black Magic commands. Instead, she only has Summon and a new command called Help! This works similarly to Tellah's Recall command, except it's not completely useless like that is in this version. Instead of randomly using either weak magic he could use anyway, status spells, or rarely Bio, it has a 24/160 chance of using Mist Dragon, Shiva, Ifrit, Ramuh, or Titan, a 16/160 chance apiece of Leviathan or Odin, and a 8/160 chance of Bahamut. She still needs to pay the appropriate MP costs for each spell. And instead of learning spells with the story, she learns them by leveling up. She begins with Imp/Goblin, and learns a new one every fifth level.
Because of this and it just not being hard, there was simply no need to buy anything except for maybe a few consumables before heading into the next dungeon. I'd find some more stuff for Tellah along the way, Rydia was equipped already, and while the new Broad Sword was a stronger option for Cecil, he can't use DarkWave with it in-hand. And he'll be getting the Darkness Sword in the dungeon, too! 100GP saved by not buying it. The Waterway was as per usual, simple. The Fire Rod I got from Mist Clip came in handy for conserving Rydia's MP, as did an Ice Rod found in the cave itself. It also worked when I got owned by Toad.
Tellah is here of course. While he only has half as much MP, he has twice as many spells, including the second-tier Black Magic spells. He came in handy for wiping out groups of elementally-weak enemies. The only tricky group here were the 4 WaterHag/2 TinyMage groups. Mute didn't block the latter's Rasp/Osmose on being hit with magic; they were the only groups who weren't massacred.
In the cave beyond, there's a set of Mythril equipment that allows Cecil to push his defense up past the mages. Octomammoth was a funny fight. For whatever reason, his lightning weakness is gone. He's only weak to Dark, so the best option for Cecil and Tellah were to attack and use Poison respectively. When Rydia's Chocobo did less than 100 damage, I had her use Help! instead and see if I could get anything useful. The result of this was her pulling out Leviathan to massacre the octopus.
Not much to note about the Antlion Cave or Antlion itself - who also had the privilige of seeing Rydia roll the 16/160 for the sea serpent of death before it, for 2576 damage. A couple interesting things: you can't access the treasure room in Damcyan, as the guy never disappears when being spoken to.
Second, there's an interesting and sensible change here to account for the fact that Rydia can't use Black Magic anymore. Instead of being afraid to cast Fire to melt the ice, she's afraid to summon a Bomb to blow the ice up. She learns it all the same afterwards. The nighttime event with Edward is also skipped.
So let's talk about the two new members. Edward is much better than in vanilla. Split is actually viable now, healing around 60-90 HP per use. This is actually the first instance of mass healing you get access to. His Sing command is no longer random, with him being able to use unique song magic. The two he begins with are Defense and Speed, which cast Protect and Haste on all party members respectively. In the Antlion Cave, he learns the Allure song, which attempts to inflict confusion on all enemies. Good for locking down foes, and better than using his weakish harps in the cave.
Rosa's function has significantly changed. Her new class is Archer; she has lost most of her White Magic. What she does have and learn is time magic orientated. Her class ability is Charge, which functions identically to Yang's similar command in vanilla. Furthermore, her Fight command acts as Aim, so there's no need to stress over having to scroll down to the command every single time.
But yes, boom! And a snappy comment to go along with it.
Yang got a pretty significant nerf. Claws, which allowed him to tie elements or racial damage to his attack, are no more. In exchange, he received the Chakra ability, but this is complete garbage. The problems with it are twofold. First, it can only target Yang himself. Second, it heals 1/3 of his current HP. Not maximum, current. So those times you would want to use it - when Yang is low on HP - it's completely useless!
Not much to say about MomBomb. The autobattle sequence with Yang before it doesn't happen, with him kiling those in the cutscene too. The little bombs are easily cleaned up between DarkWave, Kick, and Rydia's Shiva. One of the big changes on the mountain are the Cocatrices, which now actually can petrify you. Edward's Allure song helped stop them before they could get going.
The Fabul battles are easy. The enemies do resist Dark, so I have Cecil use a Mythril Sword I picked up on Mt. Hobs when they're not in use. DarkWave and Kick decimate the ImpCap/Weeper/Waterhag groups, and would even dent the soldiers badly if not for the fact that I want to kill the Generals every time for the extra experience, which isn't a problem.
Small changes throughout it: Rosa and Rydia now show up instead of a generic guard, and Rydia uses a Phoenix Down at the end.
HACK NAMEDROP HYPE. Oddly, you're thrown directly onto the ship after this scene, where you get the Ancient Sword instead of the Deathbringer.
Um. There's something different about this boat ride, but I can't put my finger on it...
So yes, the hypothetical we're dealing with here is, "What if Leviathan never attacked the ship on the way to Baron?" So now we're in Baron with Dark Knight Cecil, Yang, Edward, and Child Rydia. Unlike getting here normally, you can't go to Mist.
But you still need to beat up some guards to get in. Ridiculously easy, of course. The shops offer up another defensive upgrade for Cecil, which I happily snap up to at least do something with my hardearned cash.
The Old Waterway is quite dangerous, with enemies stronger than your party showing up. Edward's Life song that he learned here restores 1/5 Max HP; I generally found Split to be better. At least at the end of it, a special guest comes in from EasyType: the Coral Sword!
You break Cid out of jail by using the Baron Key. I give him Cecil's old Mythril Gear. He has a special skill called Rage that sees him inflicts Berserk on himself.
Cagnazzo is recognizable in pattern, but the fight plays out somewhat differently. You can't startle him out of using electricity (though your only way to would be Rydia with Ramuh or the Thunder Staff and Lit-Bolts, which reminds me, those are now droppable items, along with FireBombs and the new Ice-Balls), so you will have to take them from time to time. But he will eventually lower the water himself. He's weak to ice and electricity without any switching depending on his state. ColdDust and JudgBolt are just as strong as each other here, worth noting, and HellFire for that matter.
He still goes into his shell at the end for increased defenses/evasion. Of course, some attacks deal damage regardless of defenses!
You get the Water Crystal after facing him. But wait, what happened to the guy you fight before him?
Well, because you got here sooner, Baigan was not corrupted by Golbez. He knew about the King being a monster, but he couldn't take action against the sorcerer and Baron's forces. Cecil confronts him about this, but sympathizes with his explantion. Baigan watches over the kingdom in the meantime. Also, the Enterprise has yet to be built here. And the kingdom's boats are useless. So how are we going to get to Troia to protect the last crystal?
With the help of Summonloli leading us to a new dungeon!
At Mist when I'm supposed to be in Mist, I buy defensive upgrades for Edward, which was pretty overdue. The new stuff isn't that much worse for Cid either, so I make the switchover for him, giving him much more magic defense. Yang remains with the strength boosting equipment I picked up in Fabul. Rydia of course, already has stuff from here from before.
A short ways into the next dungeon, Edward becomes a highly valuable asset offensively. The Fairy Harp is like all fairy equipment: extremely strong against giants. Ogres pollute the first screen of this dungeon, so this is a very good weapon. Rydia's Bomb spell was of use here, since most of the threats were smaller groups of enemies with a lot of health, and it charges faster than the elemental spells, too.
They have some nice drops, too. I end up with two of these for free. They're better than the headwear Cecil and Cid were using, so I make a swapover.
The battle against Scarmiglione is moved to here. He only hisses as you walk near the bridge, and it's Yang who senses him here. He himself only has 3000HP. Rydia was one level away from learning Ifrit, so I got her that level, and had her instantly wipe them out. Instead of Bolt, he counters everything you do with Calcify to inflict gradual petrification. My party was in absolutely dreadful shape by the end, like shown here but with Cid 3/4ths of the way there, but no one was fully petrified. Edward did kick it though, due to a Bio spell.
The undead form is also much nastier. Instead of just attacking, he throws in spells, including an opening Quake. Thankfully, Rydia can do her thing with Ifrit. Yang was instantly petrified here, and stayed that way because I selected Phoenix Down instead of Remedy, but this was by no means insanely hard! The physicals did 1 damage to Rydia and Edward, and not much more to those in the front row. They could inflict Curse (halves attack and defense), but still negliable. Also, if you're wondering about the weird way the numbers look, I was trying out a quickstrat for image splicing. Though it works fine on the GBA version, it doesn't so much on the SNES version.
Cutscene! Mysidia learns of the false king, and sends a group - including Palom and Porom - on a diplomatic mission. Then they get attacked by a sea monster just like you do in vanilla, before the twins Warp away. As a random note, despite using the same graphics, this is supposed to be a random sea monster and not Leviathan at all.
It's important to know about this obscure Chocobo Forest if you want to advance. I knew about it, though had trouble finding it. Troia itself has the elemental arrows for sale, but otherwise, nothing too much. In the castle...
Shit goes down. The Red Wings attack, and Golbez is all "going somewhere?" and arrives to personally lay the smackdown on us in a cutscene, with help of the Shadow Dragon. But then Tellah is like "going somewhere?" to him, and attacks.
And because you can't have FF4 without this scene, Tellah's rage unlocks the ultimate spell, and he casts Meteo on Golbez.
Inversion of circumstances. Edward leaves us to stay by the side of a bedridden Tellah in Troia. But Tellah lives! He vows to learn every spell ever and defeat Golbez. Also, the Crystal of Earth hasn't been stolen by the Dark Elf. The Clerics give us it to hold on to, so that Troian lives are not endangered by a second attempt at an invasion.
Tune in next time to watch this hack start to fall apart at the seams!
Next | Index
