[personal profile] sirsystemerror
With 31:21 on the gameclock, Edward was ready to head into the Cave of Trials. Of all the bonus dungeons added in the remakes of Final Fantasy games, I think I like this one the best, although I can admit to not having played FF6 far enough to see how it works in practice. It exists unlike 3, it's not a tedious romp like 1 or 5, and it doesn't make assumptions about what weapons you had your characters specialize in like 2 PSP. It gives each of the characters a chance to shine, gives you some busted equipment and the opponents to unleash them on, and maintains a reasonable amount of difficulty and replay value.


Yang's trial wasn't hard at all. The lesser monks could barely touch Edward, and the same went for the Lunar Titan boss at the end of it. When I let him use his telegraphed Earthquake attack on Edward instead of hiding, it didn't even crack 1000 damage. He starts spamming Crush at the end, the same thing the Demon Wall uses when it gets close. Except now you can have instant death immunity.


Edward's trial is more interesting. You enter a parallel version of Damcyan Castle that has become frozen over.


You obtain the Requiem Harp within. Now this is a ridiculous weapon. The downside is that it imposes a penalty of 5 to all base stats. Otherwise? It's effective on giants and flan (!) and absorbs damage from anything it hits. Look at this madness! I would absolutely use this over the uberweapon in the Ruins if this was not restricted to the trial. The only enemies you can use them on are these things. After defeating them, they reappear, and you need to use the Sing command. This will cause a Requiem effect that will set their souls to rest. You do not need the Requiem Harp equipped for this either.


Sadly, I guess they couldn't have the bard be too supreme. Alas.


Lunar Shiva attacks with ice. Who knew? Remember what I said about Edward's equipment from the Cave of Trials though: it makes him weak to ice. So having them on actually makes him very weak in this fight. Protect Ring overrides this though, and s Edward had no problem with her attacks. She's still weak to fire as well, so Apollo's fiery song melted her in no time.


And this is the reward.

The Harmonious Ring has 15 Def/20 Eva/20 MDf/12MEv. While it confers no bonuses, it changes Edward's Sing to Chant. This causes it to instead cast Protect and Shell on all allies. Were this a later Final Fantasy game, this would be a miniature Mighty Guard. But in FF4, they simply raise the defense stats by a small amount, like a weaker version of the FOG spells from FF1. Still a good piece of equipment just for the raw stats once he has his ultimate armor.


That said, not everything about the Lunar Ruins is great. This floor is full of fixed encounters you have to break through. Or there's a teleporter maze with no encounters and no logic, just randomness. I got this last one all four times I went through the Ruins! Sheesh. Small consolation is that there's far worse in other games.


Cecil's trial is a Paladin test. The more tests you pass, the better of a weapon you receive at the end. If you use the Grimoire you receive after completing a trial, you can reenter it. Since I am not playing as Cecil, I gleefully swiped this Golden Apple to boost Edward's HP a little further. Lunar Odin is the boss at the end. You can instantly kill him by using an electric attack when he raises his sword after Haste. I did this the first and third time, but hid through the Zantetsukens the second time and fought him more legit.


And then the cave bridge maze map showed up. The floors in the Ruins are randomly drawn from a set between trials. I was hoping for this!

Behold, Loki's Lute. This weapon has 150 power and gives Edward a bonus of 15 to his Strength, Agility, and Stamina. Like Apollo's Harp, it is effective on dragons, effectively dealing 4x damage to them. It is also effective on machines, beasts, ghouls, giants, mages, and undead! This isn't every monster type in the game, and some are untyped, but it's still absolutely monstrous. Too bad randoms aren't really worth fighting for me anymore, but in a normal party? Yeah, this is when Edward becomes pretty damn good even at normal levels.


Here I am unleashing it against Ivan Ooze's palette swap. Which, I joke about this sprite because that's who it reminds me of, but this one looks like his 2P color in the Power Rangers Fighting Edition game on the SNES. That pretty much cemented it in my mind.


And the Vishnu Vest on the same trip! This piece of equipment has 30 Def/50 Eva/15 MDf/6 MEv. It gives resistance to fire, ice, lightning, holy, and darkness and a bonus of +10 to STR, AGI, and STA! The low magical evasion aside, this is an excellent piece of equipment that only makes the supreme bard even better.

As for the rest of the trials? Back in. The presence of Ifrit in Rydia's trial was why I stopped short there last time. Being the summon of fire, he takes 1 damage each time from Apollo's Harp thanks to having the immunity bit (same thing that causes Decil to deal 1 damage to undead). Loki's Lute kills him just fine, though. Actually, all of these summon minibosses were just a Hold Down A affair. They were big sacks of HP with little in the way of power.


The same held true for the Lunar Dragon that was the boss of the trial. It retains the gimmick of turning into mist, but the counter was nothing in the off-chance I messed it up. It's holy-elemental, but it doesn't cast the spell. The worst it did was not something to Edward but an occasional 9999 self heal. And all that did was set Edward back a bit. Unfortunately, it is not considered to be a dragon racially, so Edward's damage was only sufficient rather than absurd.


Lunar Asura in Rosa's Trial was absolutely pathetic. She has a much more intricate version of her earthly form that I went over in Rosa's own report. In brief though, I simply had to avoid triggering her Restore or Globe 199 counters. Which, are only triggered when she's hit with magic. The easiest way for any physical attacker to do the fight is to wait until her face turns red and she casts Toad, physically attack her and she'll cast Mini, then she'll get another turn and use Toad again. Repeat until dead. For extra humiliation, I attacked her when her face was white instead. This triggers physical counters (barely hit or hurt) and Curaga castings (didn't heal enough).

Lunar Ifrit uses fire moves, and again, I needed to wait until getting Loki's Lute to take him on. He's most notable because his attacks get weaker as he does. Like instead of charging up for Flame, a maxHP% damage attack, he uses Flamethrower. Which is nothing even to the average party. I swear they got the script backwards.


And while it didn't show up last trek, now it was time for the superboss! It is indeed considered a dragon, so Loki's Lute was belting out 9999 damage each time. If Brach is attacked when counting down to Mega Flare, he goes a little crazy and starts reflecting sets of three powerful magics off a wall he throws on himself. Sometimes he casts Globe 199 too. So I didn't do that and just had Edward hide. The biggest threat were his Scorches, which did insane damage even through Vishun's resistances. Sometimes Edward could survive, sometimes he would take 9999 damage. But unfortunately for the big lizard, Edward could just hide behind those though. I threw on a Silk and Sandals to make things faster; there's an opening to attack between the two Scorches.

The reward is the Hero's Shield. 20 Def/55 Eva/20 MDf/15 MEv, +15 to all stats, and the absorb flag, which turns elemental resistances into absorption. Like, the Vishnu Vest's. Of course it's a shield, so Edward can't actually use it with a harp since it's two handed.


But he can use it with the Assassin's Dagger, a weapon that can be purchased on one of the town floors in the Ruins. This weapon is okay, mostly notable for being able to deal instant death to enemies. This cuts off access to Sing/Chant and Edward has to be in the front row, but with the Vishnu Vest, he has 99% evasion. Is it better or worse? Depends on the situation. Assassin's Dagger is weaker than Loki's Lute, but both shred random encounters in their own way. The Lunar Ruins bosses have no racial weaknesses and certainly aren't going to be instantly killed (by this weapon at least).


But against bosses that use elements? Yeah, I could just hold A here. I couldn't for Lunar Leviathan, but that just meant healing. I mean, you make so much money down here and Edward has nothing to spend it on but Elixirs. It even works on Brach's Scorches, so in a casual playthrough, you can snowball a lot more Hero's Shields after winning one.

The last boss to deal with was Kain's Lunar Bahamut. This is a gimmick fight in which the solo Dragoon is supposed to jump over the Megaflares. Hide worked just as well. As did having absurd stats that neutered it.


Which just left the final boss of the Ruins. Zeromus EG follows this pattern: Big Bang -> Toad+Mini -> Whirl -> Flare -> Drain+Drain -> Osmose+Osmose -> Earthquake+Lightning+Flame. The biggest threat is the combination of HP leak from Big Bang to HP critical through Whirl. Most of my solos had to use the Grimoires you get from beating the Lunar Summons, which inflict crippling statuses onto him. Hey, did you notice he has no Black Hole in this phase? Edward could destroy him by wearing the Hero's Shield since it turned the elemental moves into massive healing. With the Loki's Lute, this was slower. But with too many Elixirs, Edward was unkillable by damage.

Later on, EG will go Tidal Wave+Tornado -> A bunch of physicals -> A bunch more physicals -> Fira+Blizzara+Thundara -> Black Hole. For a desperation phase, this is actually weaker, especially with high evasion. He also counters damage with Absorb, which doesn't absorb anything but does heal his HP. As long as you can outdamage the healing, which Edward could indeed do - he was doing around 4000 damage at worst and EG was healing for around 3000, less he was damaged, there's no problem.


And that was that.

Edward finished the postgame with 40:05 on the timer. It's the natural consequence of lacking massive damage some of my others were able to pump out. He only got good at the very end of the game, which to be fair, is when you're supposed to get him again. Still, that equipment and especially postgame equipment does a lot for the bard's usability. It's kind of funny in a way that Advance Edward still doesn't conform to what a Bard was later established as. In a normal playthrough, he's a glass cannon. Then he takes elements of the Onion Knight or Freelancer class in how he's a late bloomer. His support is basically nonexistent. This actually applies in After Years too: his songs are random and unreliable, but he still has Loki's Lute and Salve can be used with any healing item making him a godlike healer.

He was a fun character to play overall, and one of the ones I was most looking forward to - ironic that it took me so long to get around to it, though. That's 6/12 characters I've played a solo of with FF4. But I think it's time I personally do the only solo you can do without cheats or codes. Maybe with a twist or two to go along with it. Look forward to it in the indeterminate future.

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