sirsystemerror | Recent Entries

According to Ozmo in an interview, the Blue Mage was one of the most obvious picks for a new job to add to Final Fantasy Renaissance. These wielders of monster abilities have appeared in various forms throughout the series from 5-11, with more sporadic appearances later like in Stranger of Paradise and in various side-games. It was one of the jobs I was most looking forward to playing, having saved it for my second casual. It ended up disappointing, I hate to say it. Hopefully, this solo report will at least be fun and interesting! It was one I wanted to do anyway for a while.

I was tempted to name this solo after the Lone Ranger, but I decided on Shanoa instead. Hailing from the Castlevania series, she dresses in blue and uses abilities obtained from monsters. Felt like a neat place to reach into.

Blue Mage is very similar to Red Mage in terms of equipment, with both having a good equipment draw (including Chain). They are also similar statistically, although Blue is guaranteed an INT growth on every level up and has higher averages. Considering INT boosts spell damage by (INT÷2)% and adds (INT×2.5) to spell accuracy, getting a point of it every level is a very good thing.

Also, fair warning: don't expect to see classic Blue Mage spells in their skillset like White Wind, Goblin Punch, or Mighty Guard. There are 26 enemy skills in vanilla Final Fantasy 1 and the FFR Blue Mage gets 24 of them spread across their eight levels of magic, for better or worse design. The only two unavailable to them are INK and TORNADO.

Because most of the enemy spells only show up later in the game, FFR scatters these "trainers" throughout the game to give your Blue Mages the opportunity to learn magic much sooner. A good bit of design sense for the most part. The monsters will ambush you and immediately use their spell. There's one in a very dumb location, but I'll get to that one when it's relevant.

This was not a carbon copy of the regular enemy CEREBUS. It had 96HP compared to the standard's 192, and less stats in general. It seemed a lot less likely to use SCORCH later in the battle. I had to get Shanoa to level 2 and have her chug some HEAL potions during the battle to survive this, but with that, she obtained her first spell.

Now, there is one big flaw with FFR's spell learning that I should mention before going any further: there is an element of luck involved. See, you only have a CHANCE to learn a spell. This is apparently lifted from FF11 (a favorite of Ozmo's) and is extremely stupid. No other game in the series puts Blue Magic learning up to a coinflip, for very good reason. The only ways to improve your odds are by leveling up or by using their LIMIT after promotion. Hopefully, Shanoa being a solo character would prevent this from being a frustration, and being the only target helps too. It's only a minor annoyance for these trainer battles, but there are some spells which you can only learn from random encounters.

There! First spell learned! SCORCH is as basic a spell as they come, and the first of five fire-elemental AoEs in the game. It has a base effectivity of 14. As a point of comparison, the FIRE spell has 20. So it's weaker, but hits everything. It would be good enough in the Marsh Cave at least.

There was a second spell to pick up that was too difficult as-is: the guard near the Mystic Key locked rooms had a NITEMARE. Again, this only had 100HP. It was much more difficult to beat for far less, though: it still got 3-hits which could easily destroy Shanoa. Not only that, but the spell it uses is SNORTING, a single target spell that inflicts darkness. Darkness is not a good status in FF1. It increases accuracy and helps the Dark Knight in FFR, but it wouldn't have a big effect. I was just at the point where it was enough to cause problems though, and unlike CEREBUS, the NITEMARE could use SNORTING in the battle.

It took a few attempts to make it over to Pravoka. Once I was there, though? Area of effect spells are not something you would normally have access to in vanilla FF1 at this point. Some classes in FFR do, and Blue Mage being one of them, Shanoa ended it on the first turn. Even if it weren't for this, Chain made all their attacks deal 1 damage.

Now, there were two L2 spells I could access at this point. A man in Pravoka offered to let me fight a BigEYE for the FLASH spell - hey, I guess there's a familiar one here after all. As you might expect, it inflicts darkness on all enemies. It had 101HP. Shanoa could actually defeat it because it didn't hit hard, but I wanted to keep the spell menu sorted.

Meanwhile, over in the Dwarves' Cave, there was an AGAMA with HEAT available. This one has 148HP, and unfortunately, it had a small chance to use HEAT afterwards. Shanoa couldn't win this. Not yet.

So it was time for a Silver Sword grind. KYZOKUs were the target, of course. This would also gain some levels, which would help out.

While trying to reset for stats on level 7 - the game was being unusually stubborn to give me a 1/4 STR gain - Shanoa ran into a lone OddEYE on the ocean. I immediately took advantage: I had her cast SCORCH for little damage, and as I hoped, it used GAZE! This paralyzed her, and once she recovered, she knocked it down. Another one learned!

GAZE cannot be learned through an NPC trainer. It is a L1 status-elemental spell that inflicts paralysis on one target with a +0 accuracy modifier. Compare to HOLD at L3, which has +64 accuracy. It's worse, but at a lower level and paralysis is deadly no matter where it comes from.

The proper level came shortly after that, and Shanoa got her sword.

What a difference, and sheesh! Calm down! This easily got her the spell. HEAT's base effectivity is 24. I beat the NITEMARE for its spell. I doubted I would ever use SNORTING, but it's the completionism that counts. I forgot about FLASH for a while.x

Elfland had even more NPC monsters to fight. The elf near the magic shops brought out a R.HYDRA with 91HP. Its CREMATE has a base power of 48. Compare it to the L3 FIR2 which has 60, and this is a little sad. It can still get the job done, however. It hurt Shanoa bad, especially considering it used it again in the battle, but two swings from the Silver Sword brought it down.

The Elf Castle had two more. Someone throwing out an EYE might seem scary, but all it uses is STARE. Few FF1 players have likely seen this: it's used exclusively by EYE, and only after GLANCE, SQUINT, and GAZE in its skill script. For something that requires you to drag out a fight against the thing, it's nothing special. 34 base power and non-elemental. It's hard to find a use for this: there are enemies who resist most elements, yes, but that's what the Blue Mage's sword skills are for.

I had to gain another level before going to my next destination: there was one more in the castle, but there was no problem with letting this one sit, permanently if need be. Because that destination was the Peninsula of Power!

FrWOLFs FROST is identical to CREMATE in power, just in the ice element instead. There is also no NPC that uses one, so I may as well grab it now because I can! CREMATE blasted the dogs away. My winning run was pretty sick: two of them survived, so it was down to turn order. One moved...and missed! Shanoa finished them off from there and got her shiny new spell.

That nearly got her another level. And on the way back, she hit 1 to the next level exactly. With that, I couldn't help but do a bit of flexing by gaining that level from the second NPC trainer in the Elf Castle. He carried a MANTICOR. These battles always give 1GP and 1XP.

I normally hesitate to call anything useless. Even things like FEAR have their purpose in weird variants. But STINGER really pushes the line. It targets all enemies and inflicts poison. In NES FF1, poison damage is not percentage-based. It instead deals 2 damage per turn. This spell is also L3! This is absolutely not worth it! I didn't even write its HP down, I think it was eighty something?

One more was available, in the Northwest Castle. It was the first of the Dragon Sages, just a flashy title for the ones who carry around dragons. Unlike some of the previous enemies, this one is indeed an unnerfed Frost D: as far as I can tell, it had 200HP exactly the same. Taking on an enemy from the midgame was going to be tricky. But I had a plan for this one.

They are not immune to the status element. Once I landed a GAZE, that was it. A few swings brought it down. And better yet, Shanoa learned its spell on the first try!

If you were worrying that Blue Magic is simply worse versions of Black Magic, let BLIZZARD ease your fears. It is L4 and has a base power of 100! ICE2 only has 80. This is a fantastic spell when the enemies don't resist it.

That was everything I could do before the Marsh Cave except maybe grind a bit more for it if I wanted. I was going to anyway for the Earth Cave just to help against the legions of the damned in there, and I'd be leveling on the Peninsula. But I decided I'd try to make it through before that. I got Shanoa to level 11 since she was close enough to it, and went in.

The first go was one of the strangest Marsh Caves I've ever had. I ran into four BONE/CRAWL groups, and Shanoa survived three of them (including once when the CRAWL got to attack). The last one finally got her, unfortunately. The second attempt ended at the WIZARDs. The third somehow died to spiders and slimes. I was fighting throughout the cave, because this was a character who could get stuff done.

The strategy against the WIZARDs was to use BLIZZARD. They may resist the ice element, but it's strong enough to take chunks out of them anyway, potentially enough to do it in two blasts.

The way out was very quiet. I was actually hoping to encounter some stunning undead: this was one character where I wasn't as worried about them. If Shanoa went first, she would simply end them with CREMATE. But it was all GARGOYLEs and other stuff that were easy to beat. Some finally did appear on B1, but it was on a chance to strike first. I went for the guaranteed RUN instead of the guaranteed kill for some reason.

ASTOS one-shot Shanoa the first go at the battle. She one-shot him the second time around. Fair is fair.

I didn't bother going back to the Marsh Cave for the Silver Bracelet. Sometimes I'll try if the character needs the money or in party setups, but that Silver Sword was otherwise the last piece of equipment that Shanoa needed to spend money on. She wasn't going to be buying her magic, just items and the BOTTLE.

Melmond had two new NPC trainers: one with a PERILISK and one with a SAURIA. They appeared to have standard stats. Both used an instant kill move that were the remaining L4 spells: SQUINT and GLANCE respectively. The former is death-elemental KO, the latter is stone-elemental petrify. After a lot of resets to resist the instant death, I got the first of these then used it after more resets to get the second. Note that in FF1, Poison and Stone were one and the same. They've been disentangled in FFR, but this only affects two enemies: CARBUNCLE (weak to death and not poison) and COCTRICE (resists stone but not poison). So, basically irrelevant.

If it's between the two, GLANCE is preferred due to its +5 accuracy bonus. And uh, it's actually always going to be GLANCE: almost everything that resists one resists the other. The things that only SQUINT works on are COCTRICE, Frost D, WIZARD, and both KARYs.

Something entirely new was waiting for me in Crescent Lake. ZoneEATER cast SWIRL, a spell that was originally non-elemental and exclusive to CHAOS. In FFR, it has the new water element and the same 128 base power. It was weak to the time element, which I had no means to exploit. So instead, I just one-shot it with GLANCE.

Oh, wow! I wasn't expecting that! There's another NPC trainer in Crescent who owns a PHANTOM. Its GLARE is yet another instant death attack, this one in the time element. In the original game, it existed solely to be resisted by CHAOS: nothing else did. A small handful of extra ones in FFR also do, but they're class exclusive. You can one shot anything else as long as you beat a magic defense roll. I was just fooling around trying to beat it with CREMATE and fully expecting to demonstrate the infamous "Needs more data" message that tells you when you fail the ability learn. But Shanoa learned it. She doesn't actually have the spell charges to cast it yet because it's L6, but it's there for when she does.

One advantage of playing this character is that I could actually do better than usual down here. Most classes would have to hit RUN at the sight of the undead hordes, COCTRICEs, etc. Shanoa could instead attack them. CREMATE wiped out the zombie type enemies (IMAGEs occasionally survived), BLIZZARD beat the COCTRICEs. I even had SWIRL to wash away WIZARDs! This was better than risking a run attempt that might not even work.

It's still the Earth Cave though, so it still took multiple attempts to get through. Turn order is still a fickle thing. And the first time I reached the VAMPIRE, he DAZZLEd and killed Shanoa on the spot.

Ah, here's that horrendous piece of game design. On my winning run no less! VAMPIRE hit Shanoa with DAZZLE, which she resisted before killing him. Then there it is, no DAZZLE for her. The next opportunity to learn it would be in Mirage Tower. At least it's no big loss: it's a L6 spell, status-elemental with +32 accuracy. It's just a stronger GAZE, and still not as good as HOLD (and it's higher level).

After making it back, I went and got the ROD after refreshing. There was a big one waiting in the Titan's Tunnel behind the eponymous monster!

JIMERA uses an ability called STONE. This was originally known as POISON on the NES version, and was renamed to not be identical to the Gas D's infamous breath attack. It hits all enemies at +5 accuracy and attempts to inflict petrify on them! And with the improved spell accuracy, it has a strong chance of working indeed. This spell is absurd, and it's L5! If you know when to employ it, it's one of the best spells in the Blue Mage's arsenal.

Why 1HP, by the way? Should've mentioned it earlier, but if you die to an NPC monster, you don't game over. You just get booted back to the map with everyone at 1HP. JIMERA could be GLAREd at, but it was also weak to SWIRL. I had to do this a couple of times because of an unexpected and suboptimal level-up. One time after, I did get the failed to learn message. Keep in mind that Shanoa was level 16 here, having long since started to learn L5 spells. The odds of learning a spell are completely opaque, by the way.

So it was back into the Earth Cave after gaining level 17 and making sure it was a good one. My first attempt that made it down to B4 was a weird mirror of my first attempt at the Marsh Cave. This time, it was four COCTRICE groups that showed up. Three were frozen to death until the fourth finally got her.

I took this shot a little later. This guy is massive bait, and who I was alluding to earlier when I said most of the NPCs with monsters were in sensible locations. There's a reason why I showed Shanoa being one-shot by the ZoneEATER's SWIRL: BLAZE has the same 128 power. Remember, they move first in an ambush, so you can't set up AFIR to protect against this in a party setting, which will end up way in the hole on healing. And you may just fail to learn it, because of wonderful game design!

There is a VERY good reason why you don't have to put up with this in any* official game in the series. I know Ozmo loves his FF11, but no. This is one piece of game design that should've stayed there.

And for a solo, it meant spending more time on B4 than necessary. He is not worth it! Especially when I can just kill LICH instantly with GLARE! I was actually surprised at how quickly the Earth Cave cooperated here. My second attempt that made it to B4 made it through, fourth or fifth overall. Not going to complain!

Well, Blue Mage has been doing all right for itself so far. Level 17 is fairly low for a solo at this point. But of course I'm going to get more levels for the Ice Cave, and for spellcasting/learning purposes.

First leg of the game down. Click over to see what's next.

Next | Index

*FFT. Certain high-level magic can be learned Blue Mage style if an enemy caster hits you with it, but you can of course learn it naturally. But Ultima and Zodiac, which are exclusive to this, are guaranteed learns. So it's fine there. Not fine here!

Oh yes, I forgot about this guy. Not that it changed anything. Gas Ds use the infamous POISON, a L6 spell which has 136 base power. It hurts even more coming from a Blue Mage in FFR due to INT now giving a boost to damage.

I went for Gurgu first out of the midgame dungeons, and I had to approach it in a bizarre way due to levelups. First, I had to descend and fight the Red D: the spike tile in front of the Flame Armor is a far more convenient place to obtain BLAZE. It's weak to Ice, Water, Poison, and Stone. I fought it with the newly acquired spell for kicks.

I then had to go right back up because KARY would've given a level. I grabbed the Ice Sword on the way out. What a difference it made! Shanoa's physical offense had been faltering lately, but this was enough to get her up to 3 hits. Her physical attacks had been starting to lag, but this boosted them right back to being good.

The snakelady has an infamous weakness to the status element. One GAZE and she was under Shanoa's spell. The newly added water element is also a weakness of hers. It took three of them because the second rolled very low.

Ordeals was unusually rough. It's usually too short to be of any threat, but things kept popping up and killing Shanoa. She even died to the Zombie Ds twice when they rolled paralysis on their physicals before she could move! I also could've lost by leveling up, but that was on one of the Zombie D deaths. Of course, it brought forth the usual goodies. One thing worth noting: spellcasting items no longer benefit from INT because of a weird conclusion made of an unrelated issue. Though Zeus was still good in the original, so it doesn't affect much.

That brought me to the Ice Cave. Level 21 was really pushing it for a solo character. Shanoa has plenty of win buttons, but the problem was the threat of leveling up. 26 and 32 were my potential level goals: this is when she gains 5 and 6 L5 charges respectively. Higher is naturally on the table: it's the Ice Cave after all. The Peninsula was the right place to be: BLAZE destroyed the ZomBULL/TROLL groups and were the first encounter after a reset.

I don't have any pictures, but it was a fourth try Ice Cave. Can't ask for much better! On the winning attempt. I ran into the slot 7 on the first floor, aka the same as the spike trap. It had a full 9 pack and Shanoa BLAZEd them into oblivion before they could move. I got away with a CREMATE plus HEAT on one of the undead encounters that followed. Made it through the spike, and had an "um" moment when I bumped into random encounter Frost Ds. I wasn't sure what to do. I tried GLARE, and it missed. They just used physicals. I hit run and it worked. It alerted me to exactly where I was on the encounter table though: 24. I cautiously stalled on B1 instead of charging forward mindlessly: that would've seen me run into MAGEs and SORCERERs! Instead, Shanoa had to fight through WIZARDs (Zeus, one group nearly killed her) and a MUMMY/COCTRICE mix (thankfully few in number). I went down when a pair of slot 1s were slated. The EYE got GLAREd at, and I indeed just had two R.BONE group encounters. I had to get through one more MUMMY/COCTRICE mix (slot 4, SORCERERs on B3), and that was it! I'll take a bad Ordeals and smooth Ice Cave any day!

And after that? Shanoa had to get level 27. This was a strong HP level that needed STR and VIT. I actually took a suboptimal STR+25HP growth here instead of fighting for the 1/96. And yeah, good strong HP levels are more important than VIT if it's somehow between the two: you gain VIT÷4 HP per level up, but a strong HP growth ranges from 20-25. It adds up, and one point is worth a lot more than a quarter of a point. Shanoa had only missed 2HP from it so far.

I would not be class changing in this run or exploring a run with class change. Blue Wizard gets three things out of it: besides the usual new equipment still comparable to what's available on Red (Defense being a notable exception, gotta wait till Mirage for an upgrade), their LIMIT is to make the next spell they use cast with double accuracy and guarantee learning on the next they're hit it. CONVERGENCE doubles the power of a multi target spell in exchange for making it hit only one opponent. Nothing worth exploring.

After running the Waterfall for the obligatory Ribbon, I could start hunting L7 spells. A man in Lefein south of the magic shops could be spoken to without the SLAB and carried a Blue D. I tried instantly killing it but it was being stubborn, so I had Shanoa sword it to death instead. THUNDER has 152 base power. Compare to ICE3 which has 140. Without weaknesses involved, lit is generally a better element than ice: a lot of what resists it also resists ice anyway, only Blue D, OOZE, and SCUM are exceptions across normal monsters.

Sand Ws carried CRACK: earth-elemental and +16 accuracy, adding yet another instant death spell to Shanoa's repitoire. It's tied with GLARE for the most accurate, though it's in a much worse element at the cost of hitting everything. And the final L7 spell?

Hahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

TRANCE is every bit the horror you know it as: non-elemental paralysis that hits everything. While it doesn't have an accuracy bonus, it benefits from INT and it works on absolutely anything in the game except the Spellblade superboss and most of the Evoker ones - which Shanoa didn't have to worry about. Everything else, including CHAOS himself? Not safe from TRANCE. Instant death physicals are naturally not included with this, but when you look at a fair chunk of the Blue Mage's skillset, they can compensate for that with spells.

Now it was just a matter of clearing out what's left. I grabbed the SLAB from the upper floors of the Sea Shrine, grabbed the CHIME, and went into Mirage. This weapon is worth talking about. Shanoa actually couldn't equip it; it's exclusive to Blue Wizards, Beastmasters, and Rune Knights. It has 30/30/2.5 offenses, identical to Sun Sword except being 2 points weaker. However, it's effective on beasts. What FFR defines as a beast is "anything that isn't undead, humanoid, or mechanical". It can deal a touch more damage. Shanoa had to use the Sun Sword itself, which got her to 4 hits. While I was there, I was finally able to pick up DAZZLE, leaving only the L8 spells to pick up.

But before that time came, there was the final two fiends. I mostly ran from everything in these two dungeons, fighting only when I had to. BLIZZARD did a great job of demolishing WATERs.

This spot onwards to KRAKEN's room is very special. I'd be coming back to it later.

For KRAKEN, Shanoa used Defense thrice and GLAREd at him.

Again, I ran from everything in the Floating Castle. I counted so I didn't run into WarMECH. Yeah, I'd be fighting the thing: NUCLEAR is absolutely a Blue Mage spell. Just not yet. I picked up the ProCape for added defense.

TIAMAT was GLANCEd at. No need for a Bane Sword, she's just as weak to the stone element.

Now, I could easily beat the game at this point. Shanoa is a solo at the top of her class. But there were still the L8 spells left to grab. The two options were to get to level 50, or sacrifice stat growths. I chose the latter to make for more of a challenge. First up, heading back into the castle.

Beating WarMECH took some luck. Thankfully, the second encounter was not an ambush. Defense thrice, then I had her stall with Heal Staff until NUCLEAR came out. It eventually did. The question was how to beat it from here.

When I said everything in the base game except CHAOS is vulnerable to the time element, I meant everything. In the vanilla game, WarMECH would be protected from this anyway due to having 200 MDef, which due to the buggy formulae means most status spells will never hit anyway. But in FFR, INT works. And even after I discovered a massive failing/copying from Gamecorner which lists magic defenses in percentages which Ozmo copied over causing everything to have halved MDef, he adjusted the formula so things could still be hit with status about as consistently as before. Hence, an instantly scrapped robot.

It's also worth 32000XP, so Shanoa couldn't keep maintaining her level manipulation. NUCLEAR is the most easily accessible of the L8 spells. Its 160 base power makes it a weaker NUKE (200). Still a nice option, especially if you don't want to go in on instant death. The only flaw is being a L8 spell, and you might not reach that in normal gameplay without grinding.

Next up was INFERNO. This spell used to be exclusively found on CHAOS. There are two other enemies that use it in FFR. One of them is PHOENIX, who is exclusive to Evokers and out of Shanoa's reach. The other, I had to go back into the Sea Shrine in that little area I showed. From the end of that big room on B1 to the portal out, you have about a 1/100 chance (apparently) of running into something new that can use this skill. It doesn't follow regular encounter table logic: it just shows up and doesn't even replace the next encounter.

The first time, Shanoa died to LOBSTERs. The second go, she leveled up due to too many WATERs. But I kept going and the big guy eventually showed his face.

HADES has 128 attack, same as WarMECH, but only hits once. He has 800HP, and is weak to holy (a mostly nonexistent element in FFR; exclusive to Spellblade's EN-HOLY and Dragoon's Holy Lance) and water. And getting GLAREd at still kills him, of course. He usually uses ABYSSAL DARK. Despite the name, this is poison-elemental. Geomancers can sometimes use this as a rare spell here, and it still hurts through resistance. It can take a while for him to use INFERNO, but it popped up quickly enough in this run.

INFERNO is the fifth and final fire-elemental spell. It checks in with a power of 192, the strongest spell that a Blue Mage can cast (and still weaker than NUKE), as long as it's not resisted. I've seen this hit for over 700 damage on targets weak to it.

After that, I advanced the encounter table about...oh, a hundred times or so. Then it was off to the past!

There really wasn't much to write about the trip through the temple. I played conservatively, sometimes taking a pause to Defense/Heal Staff through battles instead of using potions. I also ran from a lot of fights. Gas Ds were a no show. PHANTOM got slashed down, and the fiends were all hit with GLARE. Even KRAKEN, who I just killed before he could move instead of futzing with Defense.

Yes, here it is: IronGOL. The eighth slot (1/64) encounter on the final floor of the game! The first time this appears on the encounter table is 129. For the first and last time, I used the Blue Mage's ability: SKILL LURE. This increases the odds of the Blue Mage being targeted by a skill, and doubles the odds of them using it. It's of dubious use, especially for a solo. The second part of it was convenient here: IronGOLs only have a 1/8 chance of using TOXIC, so this sped things up.

For all the hell to find it and worse to lock it into your save, and for being a unique skill on the rarest enemy in the entire game, TOXIC is nothing special. In spite of its name, it's a death-elemental attack that hits everything and inflicts death. Do you remember what I mentioned about SQUINT vs. GLANCE? Exact same story here with STONE, right down to STONE having +5 accuracy. You can kill Frost Ds on the march back in with it, but you can kill them with INFERNO too. This is no Masmune. It isn't even a Glass Sword.

If you're wondering, by the way: TORNADO has a skill power of 128, same as the L5 SWIRL and BLAZE. Wind-element, naturally. INK is functionally identical to FLASH: same darkness, same +24 accuracy modifier, same status-element.

Oh yeah. And I wanted to lock it in. I got the encounter so early that I didn't even go for the Masmune before heading back. It wasn't like I was going to use it much on the way. Here's TOXIC in action against some Grey Ws on the Fire floor. Again, Shanoa was able to instantly splatter the fiends on the walk back. She had to use CRACK on LICH because of running out of L7 spells. Yeah, irony: the earth fiend is not immune to earth. I used the WARP Stone FFR provides if you talk to King Coneria after breaking the Black Orb to make it out once I was through the elemental floors.

Unfortunately from there, the temple became extremely uncooperative. I guess I got insanely lucky on that back and forth. KRAKEN resisted GLARE twice and killed Shanoa, KARY resisted GLARE thrice and killed Shanoa a couple of times, PHANTOM once got a double critical and nearly killed Shanoa. I once tried to outsmart KRAKEN and Defense once, but he hit twice and killed Shanoa. I even had a CHAOS loss, and a moment where I tried to get too conservative and too looking for the right Heal fight and ended up dying.

Eventually, things lined up again. Shanoa would still want the Masmune, which took her to 5 hits. CHAOS resists all elements - even the new wind, water, and holy ones! He also resists silence and confusion for what it's worth, as well as a few oddball new ones. She couldn't quite kill CHAOS with just NUCLEARs, so she had to sword him. Before that, TIAMAT just got instantly killed. No worries.

Here were Shanoa's stats. Higher level than I was intending to be at at the end, but it's sort of what happens when you frequently fight because you can (and go back and forth through the temple). I think she gained around 8 levels just because of L8 spell hunting.

Like I said, CHAOS is not immune to TRANCE. The first try, I got very unlucky and CHAOS hit SLO2 before it landed. He stayed paralyzed forever as Shanoa plinked him down with NUCLEAR and single hit slashes once she ran out of those. She TRANCEd him again as he recovered, but he broke out quickly. I'd used too many L7 spells on the water floor and she was out. CUR4 happened and that was it.

This time, it happened nice and early (but not before a bit critical from him). He stayed paralyzed as Shanoa worked him down. She usually did around 200 damage a FIGHT, but did over 500 on a critical. He eventually did recover, but it was too late.

I dropped a NUCLEAR as a stylish finish.

This was a pleasant solo to play through. I was expecting one on the easier side, which it was when the game wasn't being ridiculous. Blue Mage has strong options for handling groups of randoms, and can just delete any boss in the game except the final one with a snap of its fingers. And when spells fail, it still has swording to fall back on.

Of course, that's the thing about Blue Mage: while it has some damaging spells, it has a ton of instant death and that's where it shines the most. Things really get ugly with its LIMIT involved. If that's not your style, you're likely to be disappointed in it. This can be circumvented a bit by changing class: CONVERGENCE does a lot for their single-target damage output. Compared to the Black and Red Mages, its damaging spells are weaker in the early and late game (without that skill being involved), but stronger in the midgame. However, they don't bring the support spells that those two classes can bring. Black is even better at status and instant death: their spells are more accurate and they get a skill to ignore resistances.

Overall, it really is sort of a variation of Red Mage. As a solo, I'd say it was easier, especially if we're talking about a Red Mage that goes unpromoted. But I feel Red is better in a party setting. Especially with the new trick it gains post promotion. It doesn't mean that Blue Mage is a bad class. It's solid, and it does well even without the L8 spell hassle (at least WarMECH is easily to manipulate). Your mileage may vary on it being limited to FF1 spells. I think it was the right choice, though: deviating from the original list would take it further away from being a FF1 expansion. Still, if STINGER disappeared in particular for TORNADO, I don't think anyone would miss it.

I've ranted enough about the coinflip on learning spells too. It's bad. All that needs to be said.

Still, there it is. A full spell list, and one I saved too.

I still need to finish all the games I mentioned in the previous report...funnily enough, I started this because I was too amped after getting 100 hammer rally in Mario & Luigi Brothership. Too much else distracted me, like a Super Robot Wars R playthrough (also Y hype!). One bit of progress at a time. Thanks for reading. May or may not do more before Samurai and Machinist drop. We'll see!

Index

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!

Index

Heading into the und--wait a minute, what? Rally-ho??? Was the hack maker a big FF9 fan or something, because that is not what it is in any other game. It's instead Tally-Ho later on in Tomra.

I managed the Rydialess against Golbez! Pig bought me the time. Always fun to do. I don't see why she gets to level up, though. There was a change in the cutscene after: instead of a magic hand, Golbez himself rises and takes the crystal himself before poofing.

Unfortunately, the Warp glitch was fixed in the hack. Surprisingly, no Dwarf Axe available to buy in the castle. But there were some new weapons for Rosa to potentially use. Punisher was one such treasure in the castle (or was it in Zot?) that was an okay weapon that cast the Ninja spell Bind when used as an item. Flail was interesting: low accuracy and power, effective on reptiles, giants, slimes, and mages, and could stun things. I just kept her with a bow.

In Babil, ice weapons shredded most of everything. One problem with Rydia, by the way: she hadn't learned any new black magic aside from the tier 2 spells she learned in the event. The hack frontloads her magic, although actually eases up once she starts learning them again. It's the big problem I'll have to contend with in solo Rydia. It was definitely a relief to get Bio a little later!

You ancient beings might find this weird, but a scientific society...I forget the whole of what I wrote there. But yeah. I before E is a damn lie.

Lugae went a little screwy, but it was fine.

At the end came the next big change: instead of Cid going on a suicide bombing run, he drops a Bomb Ring off the Enterprise! He subsequently rejoins the party. Doesn't help with the maintenance though, ha. His men complain that he was lazing at home.

There were a lot of Wrenches to pick up in the Eblan Cave, and even for sale. They definitely replace Shurikens. And give off a funny mental image of some mechanic just dropping them or something. I also bought a Morning Star along the way. Same as the Flail, but stronger. Felt ideal for Rosa for now, those racial bonuses go a long way.

Edge has a different palette for some reason. He looks the same in battle. Unlike in vanilla, he gets toasted before he can use fire on the fire fiend. Rubicante's personality changes to be more arrogant.

The scene afterwards changes; as I mentioned, Golbez replaces Edge. Cid mocks Edge, to which the ninja replies that Rubicante is his to defeat. Kain is like "are you mad?!" and Edge boasts about being a ninja. Rydia tells him to shut up: they lost many friends, and he just cares about his boasting? This gets Edge to apologize, and Cid to mock him more. Cecil points out there's more to this than some vendetta. Cid asks Rosa to heal him to shut him up, Edge also demands it. Rosa gets annoyed but does so. Edge does say his thanks and says he'll scout ahead. He says he'll race us there! Rydia tells him to be careful after he's gone. Cid still doesn't like him.

Instead of him doing a ninja trick, he digs a way inside that the party uses.

The Dwarven Hammer was in the four Mad Ogre chest. Seemed to be effective on giants. Thought it'd be thrown, so I had a fight where Cid was in the back row, oops.

Conveniently, Rosa learned Cure3 steps before reaching the bosses of overworld Babil. The King and Queen still fight, with Edge talking during the scene. However, it's Rydia who gets especially pissed after; Rubicante in turn responds that not even Shiva can pierce his cloak of flame.

When it's down though, she wrecks him pretty bad.

Wow, rare sight! I actually triggered Rubicante's death message! This only happens if you knock him under 1000HP without going to 0. It's very precise.

Afterwards, Edge offers to join, but the chancellor and our party tell him to go help his people in the caves. He does so, but still says he's going to go after Golbez. Rydia is a lot softer to him in this scene, compared to canon where she doesn't really give a damn and tolerates him at best. Did the hack dev ship them or something?

It turns out in this hack that the airship in Babil was stolen from Cid's designs. And he was going to name it the Falcon anyway. It still can't fly over magma.

Going into the infirmiary in the Dwarven Castle reveals that Edge didn't sit still for five minutes before falling into the underground and ending up here somehow. Cid mocks him some more, he claims to be learning about the dwarves, and Rydia defends him again. Sheesh. Cid at least uses this to make him help with the airship remodeling. Though, there's a hint that Rydia's sweet talking is intentional to manipulate him, but even that's out of character.

Over in Tomra, there was new stuff in the shops. Besides the Monkey Wrench which just seemed to be a stronger thing to throw, there was a purchasable Elven Bow and Silence Arrows which would normally be in the Sylph Cave. ColdSnap replaced the Chain Whip: the same power except ice-elemental and casts Flood.

It actually looked like all the ninja magic was scattered as itemcasts. Blitz and Flame cast their own spells, already mentioned Punisher casting Pin, a staff I haven't seen yet casts Smoke, and Mirage Staff was actually the ninja version. Neat. Also, apparently I missed a LOT of itemcasts. The hack gives no indication. But a short list of some that I did miss

- Legend Sword casts..."Staff". I assume this is the same Poisona spell the vanilla things uses. It was replaced with the Basuna Staff which casts the Mythril Staff effect instead.
- Flame/Blizzard Spears have Fire2/Ice2 respectively.
- Actually, Dagger and Air Knife also had the Dancing Dagger itemcast (as would an upcoming one). So there really was no difference in the Mist Clip after all.
- Orhalcon on Mt. Ordeals, meanwhile, used Fire1 instead.
- Nocturne Harp had Poison as an itemcast.
- Most hammers seem to have Quake as an Itemcast, just like Gaia Hammer. Exception being the base Wooden.

Anyway, one problem with heading to the side-dungeons: Rosa hadn't learned Float yet! The hack had messed with learn levels on her, too. She was set to learn it on level 33. Which, actually is only one level later, but point's still the same. Cure3 is another example: 31 vs 28.

My solution was to go in anyway. All I could really do. Wasn't too bad to go directly to the land of summons. Cid itemcasting hammer and Rydia itemcasting Blitz Whip messed up most of the enemies here.

Heh, nice lore tweak here. I assume it's assuming to Flayer?

I tried to fight Ashura with cunning, but it didn't work. So let's talk about ATB mechanics. I'm not sure if this is how it works on later versions, but SNES is totally screwed up. First, an agility anchor is determined. In the vanilla game, this will always be Cecil. If there are multiple, the first Cecil in party slot order is used. If he is not present, the first in party slot order is used. The game takes the anchor's agility×5 and divides it by the character or monster's agility, rounding down and setting it to 1 if either AGI stat is 0. That's how many ATB ticks must pass before they can act. Ashura had a Relative Agility (RA) of 1 with Cecil's current AGI of 24, and everyone else had an RA of 5 (in fact, he will always have an RA of 5 unless he hits 0). He would need to hit at least 27 AGI to slow her down.

So it was into the Sylph Cave. Rosa learned Float for the last battle of it, so damage tiles weren't a threat. The treasure room had a ton of stuff: a Power Shirt (only usable by the girls for some reason), Rune Staff (can't critical, makes sure anything else can't critical because of bugs, bad), Mist Rod (damage boosting!), Zeus Gauntlet (renamed Giant Gauntlet).

But then the last chest suddenly started playing boss music. These things hit stupidly hard, and could use Bad Breath. I tried reflecting it, but it had no effect, unlike the trick to mess up with the Lunarsaurs. Actually killed me once. They seemed to be weak to fire, so Rydia could nuke them with Fire3. Didn't have the Flame equipment though, otherwise Kain would've been able to destroy them too.

Eventually, one fell, and then the other. And this was the reward. Could it be...?

...not gonna lie. This is pretty badass. However, that's all I can really say in its favor. It's effectively a worse Death or Break spell: 40MP vs 30 or 2, 4 casting time vs 2 for both. Higher accuracy, but it hardly makes a difference. It's also single target only.

With Reflect on Rosa, the only thing left to do was deal with the ATB problem. And there was one thing Cecil could use that I had that boosted his AGI over the threshold: the Dancing Dagger! Better still, taking it off did nothing, it's only initial AGI that matters. So he could...well. It was just Rydia attacking with Titan and Kain jumping with the Dancing Dagger. So he was on healing duty.

I used Ashura to buy myself some time to slow Leviathan. She still used FF2 US's odds; i.e. no chance of Protect, even though it is now a White spell. After that? Just attack and heal. Fire3 was the spell of choice for Rydia here. It did the most damage out of all her offensive options. Still would after this: Tsunami has 40 power, tier 3 black magic has 64. Same cast speed, too. Summoning magic is really best on random encounters, but they're still MP inefficient. Especially here where she could spam Blitz for nothing.

That brought me into the Sealed Cave. Unfortunately, the reflect trick didn't work anymore. What the hell?! I don't see why this of all things needed to be nerfed. I'm not even sure what happened; they don't resist KO. Maybe a change with enemy spells on an internal level? But the hack did make them mechs, so Cid could do some real damage. Reflect was still good to stop their Disrupt, but I had to have Cecil use the Dancing Dagger for those AGI related reasons I mentioned.

There was one final hammer in here for Cid, along with the Flandango Sword. The usual Light Sword as well. I had Cecil use that due to its higher accuracy.

Sure enough, Demon Wall was a mech too. It was a bit close, but got it done before it started Crushing.

And the scene on the way out is changed. Instead of Kain being remote mind controlled again, Golbez personally shows up to do it. Then he fails, so he just uses Pressure - status resistances be damned - walks up, and grabs it.

Yeah, this guy ships them. I hate it. Like, this is Playable Golbez. It did advertise some rewrites, but before it was just sprucing up some of the more poorly worded parts. This is changing things entirely. Ugh.

Edge naturally didn't speak during the Yang sidequest. No one did in his place. With Throw on Cid who was about to leave the party per Cecil's request to gather everyone to help just in case, there was no point in a knife/spoon as a reward. So instead, Sheila gave the Assassin Dagger as a reward. I saved Odin for later...

The scene with meeting Fusoya mostly implements extra canon text, such as namedropping Cecilia (Cecil's mom and namesake). However, Zemus is a scientist in this hack. Okay then.

Fusoya came with 50% more MP. With him, I noticed that compared to its casting time of 0 in the original game, Flare had a cast time of 3 here. Probably deserved it. Still the best black spell to cast. His Regen got buffed: restored 100HP per tick and no longer locked him down for the duration.

Nothing different in Bahamut's Cave. He fell no problem.

Kain's initial equipment on his third rejoining was scattered around this room in the Giant. The Firebute was in the Last Arm chest. Nothing to the bosses in the giant. Gungnir was changed to be lightning element, which helped against Cagnazzo and the mechanical enemies.

There's massive changes to the scene after. It goes mostly the same except for explicitly pointing out that Golbez's mind control was briefly shaken after Tellah's Meteor. Then Edge shows up for vengeance. Rydia talks him down. Golbez is prepared to accept his fate, but only after he stops Zemus.

Edge is ready to beat him down. Fusoya sense great potential and invites Edge along. He's startled, but goes along with it. Golbez begs to be taken along, but Fusoya refuses: Zemus already controlled him once, it could not only happen again, but could happen to Cecil too.

They leave, Cecil says it's time for them all to go.

Golbez is again prepared to answer for his crimes. However, Kain of all people sticks up for him; after all, he was controlled as well. Cecil can't really remember his brother from when he was young, and Golbez had his memories stolen (canon). He acknowledges being forgiven but doesn't think the rest of the world will agree. Cecil has a better idea: come with them to the moon. That will be his chance to redeem himself, and they need his help. They'll stop Zemus from taking them over with the power of trust. And besides, Edge and Fusoya are the ones who really need help. There's no bit with the girls being shoved aside and staying.