FF4 Playable Golbez Part III

Let's take a look at the man in black's stats to start out with. Lowish AGI and WIL comparatively, but good STR, VIT, and WIS - some of which is boosted by equipment. He had all of the damaging black spells except for Flare and Meteor, which he would be learning. As for equipment, he came in with a full set of Genji Gear and a Midnight Sword: 115 power and 75% hit, and boosted WIS by 3. He could use other swords beside Dark ones. Speaking of, the Deathbringer was off-limits even though the others could be used.


Besides Black Magic, Golbez has two commands. The first of these is Dark(Wave), the same as Dark Knight Cecil's. At this point, it wasn't that great. The other is Pressure, which attempts to inflict paralysis on all enemies. Earlier versions of the hack apparently gave him Taunt, another one of his abilities from The After Years, but the hack maker felt it was underwhelming, so it was replaced with Dark.


I defeated Odin without incident. But that's just the problem with this hack. Golbez only becomes playable at the very end. I mean, it was the most sensible spot for it if not the only sensible one. But still, I was only going to get to play with him for the final dungeon.


I picked up the Excalibur and found this Sylph selling items. CallShop was a new one. It allowed me to buy X-Potions, HiEthers, Elixirs, Cottages, Whistles, Sirens, CallShops, or Artemis Arrows at will. Supposedly there's Perseus Arrows in the game, but I never ran into them. They're supposedly in "Eblan Items", wherever that is. Probably some weird spot I never checked.


During the trip down the Subterrane, I acquired various pieces of Ebony equipment for Golbez. The gauntlets resist the three basic elements and gives +5 to STR, AGI, and WIS as well as resisting attacks from zombies. The armor resists poison, gives +5 to WIS and WIL, and resists spirits and zombies. The helmet also resists the three basic elements and gives +3 to WIS and WIL. And the shield? +3 to WIS/WIL, resists blind, mute, pig, mini, frog, and berserk.


The Ebony Sword was guarded by the White Dragon, replacing the Murasame. I thought he might be able to do heavy damage to the boss - it absorbs Holy and is therefore weak to Dark because of a quirk in FF4's coding; much like Fire and Ice, except only on the SNES version. But turns out that Golbez' dark swords aren't dark-elemental.


There was a new boss to fight. The Shadow Dragon was in a random chest guarding the Dragoon Lance. All it ever did was Demolish, so I could simply outrace it with Phoenix Downs. The formerly rare weapon helped against some of the dragons down here. The Dragon Whip was also in a different chest.


A Hummingway near the save point allowed for a quick return to the Lunar Whale. There was also a shop near Wyvern.


I beat Plague with the timer on 00. It strangely dropped a DarkMttr item. I could use these in battle, but they otherwise had just as little effect as they did in the original game.


Lunarsaurs only go berserk if you fight them, so I just used magic and jump attacks.


Finally, I got one of these. The hack changes these to be the uncommon and rare drops as well, so it's not that ridiculous to get anymore. Unfortunately, it was also nerfed and doesn't give as much defense. It's also worth noting Pink Puffs can be dangerous, but the hack lets you gain immunity to their berserking, which helps. Oh yes, and don't try to stock up. No matter how many tails you have, the guy takes them all and only gives you one Adamant Armor.

With Golbez and Cecil having excellent armor, they were lower priority. So I decided to give it to Rosa. Making your healer tankier is always better. I passed the Minerva to Rydia in turn. In this hack, it gives +15 to all stats, resists paralyze, and gives resistance to some enemies. The most important thing about the Adamant? Don't go back on your choice. Because of more SNES bugs, the elemental resistances turn into weaknesses after it's removed. In turn, I gave her Ribbon to Kain instead.

There was also an Artemis Bow available for claiming. More rare stuff made not so rare.


Uh oh. This is definitely not Ogopogo.


This was the Darkside. It had 65535 HP at least (might've regenerated) and cast a barrage of high-powered magic. Golbez couldn't do more than 1 point of damage with his physical attacks. He'd learned Flare though, so I had him use that. This was legitimately more dangerous than Zeromus, sheesh.


I only barely won: even with Adamant, Rosa got wiped out by a Flare for over 6000 damage. Rydia was the last one standing. She moved and used Bahamut, finishing it off.


Golbez's memories completely return after the battle, and whatever this is talks to him before giving him the Dark Eternal sword. Simply called Eternal in the menu, it had high stats and that's about it.


Ogopogo was instead moved to the second crystal floor, guarding a second Minerva. If I knew that was there, I would've given the Adamant to Golbez instead.


Edge gets to use Meteor. Instead, he gets mocked for being a mere human of the Blue Planet.


One change in the revival sequence: you get different things rather than just energy from the various characters. Unfortunately despite the text, Golbez can't use the Crystal.


There was really nothing to Big Z. Golbez and Rydia nuke him, Cecil attacks, Kain jumps, Rosa heals. His Big Bangs kept getting nerfed by the spells due to another quirk.


Smooth clean win.

Rydia insults Edge again after with the usual line. Inconsistent writing or tsundereshit. You be the judge. It still ends with Golbez deciding to go with Fusoya, feeling he cannot return to the planet. And the rest of the ending is the same.

Well. What's my verdict here? It was okay. I wouldn't call this hack incredible, but it's not bad either. That RydiaxEdge stuff was annoying, but most of the rest of the rewrites were fine. Really, this is sort of a problem with FF4's plot structure not being conducive to letting Golbez join at any point except the last minute. You'd have to like, rewrite it entirely for him to break out early and them have Zemus or someone become the active threat instead for him to be around sooner, or have used the GBA version so there's a postgame instead.

Very mixed feelings about the balance changes. Personally feel they shouldn't have been a part of the hack, but at least they didn't go out of control hard mode and weren't too noticeable unless you were combing the data like I was. Some of it was definitely questionable in any case, like how Shadow summon is technically a worse Death. That said, I liked the new equipment and making it so there are no rare drop items. Definitely the worst part of FF4, especially given how few of them are worth it. Well, mostly: there's a new one, unless I didn't find the fixed locations. Onion Sword drops from Breath and Mind (aka the last room of the game before the final boss) at slots rare/ultra rare. It has 200 power, boosts all stats by 10, casts Pyro when used as an item, and can only be used by Decil (?!), Pecil, Kain, and Golbez. Not too big a difference maker.

All in all, I was kind of underwhelmed here. But hey, wanted to do this forever, and I finished it. Hopefully, it was an entertaining enough read!

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