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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.

Ran a little long on this part. But now, it's finally time. No minor appetizers. The actual draw of this hack starts next time.

Next | Index

Decided I was overdue on playing this FF4 hack: Playable Golbez. This hack makes, among other modifications, a few story edits here and there culminating with letting you play as the man in black himself at the very end of it. I needed something chill the day I started it anyway. (And then I mostly spent time on something that will only be relevant later)

Not too sure about these text changes so far from the opening scene. They aren't terrible, this being the botttom rung, but they could be worse I guess. There were also some map changes; one I noticed was beds being in the Baron prison cells. Just flavor so far.

Like most hacks of the SNES version, commands like Decil's Dark Wave were available. Although there were elements of FF2us in there; namely, keeping simple Remedys as a catch-all healing item, though they were way more expensive.

Speaking of expensive, I did the infamous Mist Clip, picking up a Dancing Dagger by selling an X-Potion in town as well as getting the good equipment from Rydia's house. Because I felt like it.

I first started to notice changes when making my way through the watery pass. First, Rydia actually learned more than the three White Magic spells she did in vanilla. I already knew these would still go away later, though. Tellah also had more spells to start with: Scan/SIlence/Cure1 on White, and Poison/Drain/Toad/Sleep on Black.

More interestingly was Tellah's Guess/Recall. In the vanilla game, this is sad: 15% each of a basic tier 1 spell or toad, 5% each of Break, Bio, Tornado, or Death (which can be amusingly multicast even if the original spell doesn't), and 20% of nothing. 3D improved it to focus on elemental magic (and still 31% of Toad) and even let him pull rare spells out of it, keeping it after Ordeals. Here? I peeked into the editor to see what was up. 20% each of Slow, Hold, or Pig. 5% each of a tier 2 spell. 15% for Break, 10% for Death. It doesn't seem able to fail. Still gimmicky, but nice to gamble on.

There was also the first new instances of new equipment. Believe it or not, vanilla FF4 does not have a basic dagger weapon. This hack added it. Even if I didn't Mist Clip, I wouldn't use this. More amusingly was the Hades Shield. Decil infamously doesn't get a shield upgrade in the Watery Pass compared to getting one for all his other equipment pieces. He does here.

Octomammoth is never a big deal, and was less so with Dancing Dagger. I tried to get a Bolt2 out of Guess, but Tellah just used Slow followed by ineffectual spells. Stupid FF4 not letting you status bosses (except Slow)

Oh, neat. I always thought it was kind of absurd everyone died in Damcyan. There were significantly more survivors in the hack, one soldier saying that the King ordered them to stand down so they'd be spared. I like this change. Also, hey! Just handing you one of the summoning items! These are some of the game's ultra rare drops and really are not worth the trouble for the effort you need to get them. For example, Goblin is weaker than Chocobo. Would this hack change that?

A quick look showed it was 8MP to Chocobo's 4MP. Poking the data showed it had 6 power instead of 4 and the same casting time.

Anna is still among the dead though. Edward's Song had no changes. Antlion Cave was also very similar. With Goblin and Dancing Dagger doing around 400 damage each, Antlion fell easily.

Mt. Hobs had a treasure trove to be picked up. First was the Bomb spell, another one of Rydia's rare summons. It deals damage based off her HP. Then there was the Air Knife. Wind element aside, this was very weak and not worth using, especially because of the third weapon: the Silver Harp. Its power put it just below the level of strength of the illegal Dancing Dagger! It seemed to be both fire and holy elemental. On top of that, it was effective on the same undead enemies all Silver weapons in the vanilla game were. Suddenly, Edward was my best damage dealer!

Speaking of, Rosa was not. I thought here damage on Cocatrices felt low, so I checked and the wind element was indeed removed from arrows. Wind instead seems to be the domain of spears. I'm not sure what to think about that change. It's bad, but why?

Big change in Fabul: I haven't been bringing up shops much, but they have been changing. Here though, the Demon dark knight armor was removed and put in Fabul's treasure rooms instead. Good thing I went to look instead of directly into the gauntlet.

Oh yeah, neat change: Red Mages are in! They would appear scattered around various parts of the game moving forward. Also scholars were in FF4 to begin with, but there were more of them too.

Really? This isn't the luck I wanted in my life, game. I normally wouldn't be able to get this here, but the hack lets these items drop from anything. Said gauntlet was otherwise vanilla. After all that, I could pick up the Cocatrice summon from the treasure room in the throne room. Though Rydia wouldn't be able to use it.

Tiny change in Mysidia: the now Red Mage at the entrance hits Cecil with Mini instead of Toad.

Palom's Bluff returned. And Porom's Tears was modeled after the PSP version, inflicting mass confusion instead of effectively doing nothing.

There was another new knife heading up Mt. Ordeals, but that wasn't important. Scarmiglione was the same as always. But there was a pretty big change with Tellah: contrasted with before, now he was missing some spells! In the original game, he only misses out on Holy, Quake, Flare, and Death (despite the fact that he can Recall Death in the original). The hack did give him Death here, but removed access to tier 3 elemental spells and Tornado as well. He also lost access to Cure4 and Life2. Interesting rebalancing that was going to make the game more difficult.

The Paladin equipment already was questionable in vanilla, but the hack nerfed it while keeping it the same price. As an example, Paladin Armor gives 11 defense in vanilla, 8 defense in the hack. It was already preferable to use the Gaia Gear or Karate Gi which give evasion and stat buffs, but this just makes the decision even more of a no-brainer. Still got the shield since it's cheap and there's nothing else to fill the slot.

Oh, that's a bug all right. Pretty sure this didn't happen in vanilla, either. Looks pretty sick at least, especially compared to his ugly original sprite. Speaking of bugs, there was another one the hack introduced: you could no longer choose your target with Slow. Not even sure how this happened: all the hack seemed to do in the data was change it from split to single target.

Wow, speaking of the gi, it went way up in price in this hack. Still bought Yang one. Probably good balancing, but also a little unneeded? It's like this hack is making a half-hearted effort to do that while also making things easier. I think I prefer that to going all in and ruining things, at least.

Nothing to note in the Old Waterway until the Ancient Sword. Somewhat infamous in the vanilla game, it's weaker than the Legend Sword Pecil starts with. It can inflict Curse on a hit, but 1) it's questionable, 2) it comes at the end of a dungeon and bosses can't suffer it, 3) the next dungeon bans swords. EasyType actually outright replaces it with the Coral Sword, which shreds Cagnazzo. No luck here, it maintained its lower accuracy, so I still stuck with the Legend Sword.

Ha, I see what the hack creator did there. Wrong twin saying it, but still, much more convincing line. I definitely noticed Tellah's missing spealls against the two Baron Castle bosses. Usually, Cagnazzo could be near instantly destroyed. It was a much slower fight with Bolt3/Ice3, but I wouldn't say more difficult: still had more than enough healing to deal with it.

More minor changes: the Black Mage in the tower instead uses Toad instead of Pig. More sensible to use different Black Magic I guess? Also I haven't been mentioning it, but a lot more characters call Cecil by name. Scarmiglione and this little girl in particular.

Now, in Troia came the first major story change. So far, everything had just been text alterations that simply boiled down to rewriting things. Cid's atrocious accent aside, it simply existed - it was not bad fanfic material, but a few lines aside on both sides it never stood out either. Not anymore.

Edward still wants to fight with Cecil. Instead of giving a Twin Harp/Whisperweed, he uses a special technique and projects a shadow of himself with the Twin Harp, effectively rejoining the party! The bad news is, the hacker either didn't know about the shadow party (how SNES works with characters who leave and rejoin), couldn't find a way to implement it (Unprecedented Crisis does and it uses the same tool), or intentionally made him rejoin at level 5. He points this out in the text, saying that he might be rusty.

I took him with me to Eblan to gain at least a few levels instead of rushing directly into things. If you ever have problems going here early in any version of the game, by the way? Just have Tellah multi-cast Break. If he gets it off, everything dies.

Two changes I noticed along the way: Cid had the Throw command. Edge never joins the team, so I guess this makes up for it. And instead of the Blood Lance, a Killer Bow was in the castle. This would be nice for the Magnetic Cave.

I could buy a Wrench in Agart. No one could equip this, however. I assumed it was a flavorful Shuriken change to go with Cid's new ability to Throw, and didn't buy it because it was 5000 gil a shot.

Two new weapons were in the Magnetic Cave. The Nocturne Harp was stronger than the currently unusable Silver and could poison. The Mirage Staff itemcasts Blink. Neat.

I switched Edward back to the Silver Harp for the Dark Elf fight to take advantage of Holy weakness. Result: he was on par with Cid and Yang. Poor Tellah, though. With his tier 3 spells and Tornado cut off, he couldn't do more than 1 damage to the boss. I instead had him use Slow. Didn't take long.

Zot was pretty vanilla. Surprisingly, a couple enemies dropped Sirens and I even got a Dark Sword. Also, Edward "leaves" the party. With Cid's Throw ability, I was able to sneak in some extra damage against Barbarricia while she was spinning.

This has been a hack all right so far. It's a ways off until the main draw of things, but it's good to see there's stuff to tide things over in the meantime. So check back later for the next part.

Next | Index

So with Kain in our party, do we switch Porom to the back again? Oddly enough, she is about as capable with the Fight command as Kain is, so he gets to stay in the back and use Jump, while Porom gets to swing her hammer. He can also equip the Throwing Axe if I really do need the Fight command (if Jump is too slow, I guess). Also, check out this freaky quirk when landing.

Some of her survivability goes up when I pick this bad boy up. Despite an unassuming name, the Armlet, in addition to a +10 Vitality bonus, protects against physical attacks from every single enemy race in the game. Its only downside is that it can't be equipped by any class that wears armor. It was also possible to send Edge back and have him rely on Shruiken, but I decided that there was more to keeping him in the front row than there was to putting Kain there. I also got a Blk.Cowl drop as a bonus for him, a floor before I'd get it normally.

Nope, this hack does not let you have Alerts. Lame.

I think I briefly touched on the Steal glitch in my Solo Edge report, so here it is in action. Despite the novelty, it wasn't worth it for Porom to do this when her Mystic Hammer was extremely powerful on its own. Similarly, when I got a Rune Staff/Silence Staff drop further in, she remained with the hammer.

The biggest problem when climbing the Tower were those BlackCat enemies. Hit them with a nonlethal attack, and they counter with Blaster, to either paralyze or instantly kill a random party member. Things like Edge's throwing, Kain's jumping, or Palom's Bio/Quake could bypass it, though.

So we climb up the floors of the tower. Lugae is not there to obstruct us, leaving us free to proceed behind him to the basement floors behind him (from Babil when you're entering it from the Eblan Cave). Yeah, I'm not sure how that works either.

One time it was worth it to switch Kain in, though: these Mad Ogres were weak to the Ogre Axe I'd picked up. Knowing they were in this box, I made the switchover for this one battle.

Lugae is waiting before the Crystal Room. He wasn't that difficult. Porom could dismantle the robot with her hammer, and the others' damage was not to be sneezed at as well. I was able to quickly move on to the second phase of the battle.

This whole bit is one big speedrunning reference. Lugae underflows the robot's MP to cast Meteo, which would actually be funny and pretty par for ROMhacks if he cast the real one and not Zeromus' which is basically harmless. And similarly, if Barnabas explosion from lack of oil kills everyone (it's no different than before), forcing you to kill both at the same time. Then he uses the attack you glitch in to kill the final boss instantly in the 64 door glitch category, the Grenades' Chain Reaction. Which is dubbed upt Co because menus, and is called that here too because references. For whatever reason, this does not instantly kill you. No damage race before doom either. Wasted moments...

Similarly, Lugaeborg was just a giant beatdown. He got off one nasty Laser due to his inflated HP, but without Sleeping Gas counters to worry about, this was probably slightly easier than it would be in vanilla.

The scene before this is weird. Golbez places a Crystal down, then just walks up to you and attacks. It's actually pretty similar to his Dwarf Castle incarnation from vanilla. Two key differences being you can resist the paralysis (Kain and Cecil's Viking Helmet/Power Gauntlets allowed this), and there's no Summoner to show up to save you. Regardless, I was able to inflict heavy damage on Golbez between Cecil using the Avenger, Palom using Bio, Edge physically attacking and hitting his Light weakness, and Porom and Kain both attacking physically.

From here, it was a race to see if I could outrace his Demolishes and counters on being hit. I didn't bring enough Phoenix Downs, so this was a tight thing. Cecil continued to chip away while Kain and the others played revival duty, throwing out damage when all was right.

And a final Quake ended it, the encounter coughing up one hell of a drop. Cursed Ring, by contrast to vanilla, has its elemental absorption built-in, and only has a penalty of -5 to all stats.

What the FUCK? I beat him! And I beat his dragon! Why the fuck am I the one face down on the ground? Fuck this ROMhack. I'm not putting up with this garbage. We won. What's on the other side?

This room! Oddly, it is actually set up to have an exit back, unlike its vanilla counterpart. The door there is also functional. And it leads...

Um? Hello?

I can't put down any crystals. The altars don't even respond. But I can go in the middle to repeat the scene where I get sent to the Underworld, though without any ill effects other than having to go up the tower again.

Anyway, with that BS and winning a battle I didn't know you weren't supposed to win and yet was coded with those drops and yet was not coded with anything to either branch off into an alternate path or explain why you're suddenly facedown on the ground out of the way, the game REALLY opens up. We're told to find our friends and save the world! Just like in FF6, except not really! There's also a few other quests you can do, and a primary one is finding the Floater.

So I can finally go to Mysidia. Palom and Porom encourage him to see the Elder, who has forgiven him by this point for his being deceived. Though Cecil has yet to forgive himself, the Elder says to climb Mt. Ordeals to become a Paladin. It seems I can't get in, though...also, I need to find a Floating Stone to raise the Lunar Whale, because wishes/prayers are DEAD. Where is it? They have no idea, so we need to look.

Also, the Serpent Road is here, but it's apparently being haunted by evil spirits, so I still can't enter it. At least I have some sort of explanation now!

Baron seems to be the only other place where I can make headway that doesn't involve part members, and I can do that with a new airship. Apparently Red Dwarf is a reference, and that's the kind of thing that's okay - subtle but fitting in context. This is stupid and forced, though both at least keep with the theme of FF3/FF4 Airships coming from popular culture...

So this Floater. Hm. Maybe it's in the Ice Cave, because it's there in FF1?

Oh, fuck me dead, it is. King Santos gives it to the twins as a present.

Anyway, this unlocks the moon and Mt. Ordeals. Class change is optional in this hack. Well. I was orignally going to do this part of the game as an "as I explored it" kind of style, but I felt this flowed better and is more informative. Okay, so you can sort-of freely choose your party from here on out in the game. Because of cumbersome engine limitations, you can't add a character without losing one first. So I'll talk about how to obtain and lose every character and their advantages and disadvantages.

- Paladin Cecil: After getting the Floater, you can go to Mt. Ordeals. Cecil will have to fight a Zombie/Ghoul/Revenant group five times on his own. He'll lose whatever equipment he has on after class changing of course, but if you have a Flame Sword and some throwaway equipment, it's perfect. You face the Dark Knight at the end as usual, and then you're given one final test: to protect others, namely the rest of your party in a battle against the DarkMist. Honestly, Cecil (who still spawns at Level 1!) is the one who needs protecting here.

Go for it, or not? The obvious disadvantage is having to build him back up again, as well as losing access to some of the Dark Swords like Blood and Avenger. Dark Knight Cecil is still viable. But if you're not going to use Porom or Tellah, Paladin Cecil is very good. Like Dark Knight, he learns a variety of White Magic, and way more than he does in vanilla. This includes Cure3.

- Losing Kain: Go to Bahamut's Cave on the moon. The enemies in it are as dangerous as they always are, but you at least don't need to fight Behemoths. When you reach him, you face him with Kain alone. He greets Kain as the son of Ricard, and offers to take him up as an apprentice if he wins. To win, you simply jump over his Meganukes when they're at one; it's basically the Dark Bahamut battle from FF4a. Also in a fun glitch, Bahamut gives you a screwed-up message if you go back talk to him after.

Kain will automatically dispose of a boss if you lose him in this way, which is both a bad and a good thing. He can equip heavy armor (including the Dragon Armor found in Bahamut's Cave, which protects against the main three elements), can physically attack from the back row albeit with a few problems, and with his spears can deal air, fire, ice, lightning, and holy damage, as well as dealing racial damage to Mechs and Dragons with the Gungnir and Dragon Lance respectively. He can also equip axes, doing racial damage to Giants, Slimes, Reptiles, and Mages. He's extremely solid.

- Losing Palom/Porom: To lose the twins, you try to enter the Serpent's Road. You'll fight the EvilWall, who is weak to Light and despite starting really close dies really quickly. When you win, they petrify themselves to stop the wall from closing in further.

With Rosa and Rydia's abilities nerfed, they're the only characters to carry the full compliment of Black and White Magic respectively besides Tellah. Porom as you've seen is a capable front row fighter with hammers, dealing high damage on Mechs and Mages, as well as being able to hit with the Fire and Lightning element. Palom has his magic to rely on. Both good characters.

- Losing Edge: If you go to the Cave of Eblan, you'll find it infested with robots. The path that ordinarily leads to the castle's secret underground living quarters now leads to the Giant of Babel, where a surviving Lugae is. You fight the CPU at the end, and Edge leaves you to be with his people afterwards.

While Edge's Black Magic isn't too hot, he can throw things. Ashura, Kotetsu, and Murakumo can deal Holy, Dark, and Air damage respectively. Triton Dagger can deal Ice damage. Most interesting is the Assassin's Dagger. It doesn't seem to be anywhere in the hack from what I can tell, but it deals racial damage to Dragons, Reptiles, Giants, Slimes, and Mages, and may instantly KO a target. Fantastic weapon. Edge does suffer from low HP for a character that wants to be in the front row. He's also the only character who can't equip the White Robe, Dragon equipment, or Protect Armlet; he can't get resistance to the three basic elements. To him, the best defense is a good offense.

So oddly enough, I feel I want to keep this party. It's extremely solid, aside from the weirdness of Kain being in the back row.

- Obtaining Rydia: Speak to her in the Feymarch. You'll fight an upgraded Mombomb (explodes into GrayBombs and Balloons, or if she's strong enough, can outright kill it!) and the Baron Guards from her perspective and alone, both easy fights. She'll see her village being burned from her perspective, see the future, then join you - also because Cecil is the closest thing she has to family now.

Rydia continues to learn summon spells. Of the ones you haven't seen and their levels, 30: Mist/35: Flayr/40: Titan/45: Bird/50: Levia/55: Asura/60: Odin/65: Baham. The strongest is the last one at 60 power (and is even cast instantly), with Titan being 40 and Leviathan being 35. Rydia seems to shine at wiping out groups of enemies with her summons, but Black Magic seems stronger on single targets, like in FF5. To compare with some power numbers, Ice3 and friends are 64 power (and comes much sooner for Palom!) and Flare is 100 power. She can ignore Reflect with anything, which Palom only has Quake for.

Unlike what is claimed, she doesn't become a master of magic at any point to my knowledge. Her big flaw is the lack of any instant cast magic that's worthwhile up to Bahamut.

- Obtaining Rosa: Go to Bahamut's Lagoon. You'll see her trapped by tentacles, and then you have to face Octosoul. It has an 8-hit combo (laughable with Paladin's inherent Cover), and after using Search, will follow it up with the EvilWall's Crush. Oddly, she's the only character whose quest you can start without getting a WARNING. If you refuse her after the batlte, you can't get her.

Rosa can hit Mages and Dragons for racial damage, and can hit for all six elements. Her power is a bit on the low side, however, as aside from Yoichi Arrows, none of them have any attack value. She can't equip armlets with this setup, and staves are hardly acceptable damage-wise. Does get a decent selection of White Magic, at least.

- Obtaining Yang: Go to the Mythril Mines, which are a new dungeon with an original design! Most of its enemies are from the Sealed Cave/Ice Mines. Yang apparently went off to find the SeaRuby to cure the King of Fabul's poison, which randomly seemed to happen during the Fabul raid and only came up now. Beat the uncreative repeat palette swap Sealion near the end to obtain the SeaRuby, whose only real trick is a BigWave. The Thor Hammer is also in here, pretty useful hammer.

Yang punches stuff for consistently high damage, but has no elemental or racial properties with his fists due to the lack of claws, so his damage is a bit too consistent. As we went over before, Chakra is booty butt. Probably the worst character because of it. Two things of recruiting him or at least doing the quest and making him disappear forever, though: you receive the Save the Queen from the King, a neat Paladin sword that is weaker than other options but gives +15 Agility, and if Edge is in your party, she'll tell Yang to give the Cleaver to his ninja friend. Nothing that you'll miss, but still nice to have.

- Obtaining Edward: That body will finally be out of the way, so you can go into the basement of Damcyan Castle to find him with Anna, or rather an evil spirit possessing her corpse. He'll play music to calm the spirit while you beat it up and try not to get destroyed by its status magic. After Anna thanks you for freeing her, tells Edward to go out and love the entire world.

Edward performs as well as he would as if it were the postgame in GBA, getting the fantastic Loki's Lute that deals racial damage on every race in the game. There's also the Blood Harp for absorption, the Requiem Harp for Holy (and Spirits), and Apollo's Harp for Fire (and Dragons). His harps do require a double grip which limits his use of armlets, which is a bit unfortunate. He can equip the White Robe for the resistances, but remains quite frail.

His later songs kind of disappoint. Dirge (25) damages and may inflict Count on all enemies, Magic (36) recovers ally MP, Image (49) adds Blink to all allies and is definitely useful, Angel (64) is the same as Ciriatto's, and Final (81) restores all allies HP/MP, at the cost of an ungodly charge time of 15 and getting to level 81 in the first place.

- Obtaining Tellah: Go to the Magnetic Cave. It's a much shorter dungeon than in vanilla, being only three rooms including the final one, but still has its gimmick. Beat the Dark Elf at the end to obtain him and have him learn all spells in the game. The biggest problem from the battle against him is Tellah himself and his variety of high-damaging and instant kill spells.

Despite his status as a magical jack of all trades, Tellah has two huge flaws. The first is Edge syndrome. The other characters will have leveled up in the meantime due to being part of the shadow party, but Tellah will rejoin at a mere level 20. This is compounded by his not really gaining a lot of HP/MP until like Level 40. He needs a lot of investment to be worthwhile but can do Palom and Porom's jobs if you get him. Not at the same time and with a stat deficency, but at least the latter is something you might really want.

- Obtaining Cid: After getting the TARDIS, speak to him in the Dwarves' Castle. Beat the Ship'sAI boss, which more or less acts like Ivan Ooze from vanilla with all the Reflect business.

Cid uses Hammers and Axes, wears heavy armor, and has a truckload of HP. His attacks can be of the three basic elements, as well as being effective on Mechs and Mages. He's a bit of a one-trick pony, but the high HP and heavy armor (Dragon equipment) helps a lot. He's solid on his own, though not as tanky as Kain or the Cecils due to inability to equip shields with his hammers.

There's interactions between characters as you go through with these. For example, if you have Telllah when getting Edward they'll acknowledge each other, Rydia will make a smart remark about a Rat's Tail before Kain fights Bahamut

There are a couple other side-quests not linked to anything. You can retrieve the Adamant from the Mythril Mines to obtain the Ragnarok from Kokkol the Smithy. You can also fight Odin, to learn a bit about Cecil's history and how he adopted him as a child. He'll comment on whether or not you changed classes, acknowledge Kain and Rosa if either is there, and bestow you his late wife's sword, Excalibur, after a battle.

And a few other item locations...
- Air Knife: Damcyan Basement.
- Sage's Staff: Mt. Ordeals.
- Break Blade: Magnetic Cave. Is notably not magnetic.
- Venom Axe: Magnetic Cave. Is magnetic!
- Defender: Giant of Babil.
- Yoichi Bow: Giant of Babil.
- Gungnir: Giant of Babil
- Thor Hammer: Mythril Mines
- Muramasa: Mythril Mines
- Blood Harp: Mythril Mines
- Triton Dagger: Mythril Mines
- Slasher: Mythril Mines.
- Apollo Harp: Lunar Passage
- Holy Lance: Lunar Passage
- Murasame: Lunar Passage

Anyway, I checked out class change. I was able to use the speedrunning method of grinding to get Paladin Cecil back up to speed, though I used MacGiants instead of D.Machines because Porom could one-shot them; the D.Machines are strangely not machines. This also levels up everyone but Tellah, should I change my mind on this party, since they'll get all that experience as well - unsplit!

Let's finish what we started. So you go to the moon and are welcomed by Golbez, who sics the Eight Archfiends on you. This was a fun fight, with most everyone able to do heavy damage to everything in it.

If you got rid of Kain, he automatically kills the Shadow Dragon here. Since I did not, I had to fight it, and blew it away extremely quickly (and got another Cursed Ring!). Then it's Golbez himself, who wasn't too difficult. His counterattacks and DarkHoly were painful, but nothing I couldn't manage.

What happens next varies depending on whether you class changed Cecil or not. If you did, you kill him for real. Zeromus shows up, explains this is really an asteroid you're on instead of a moon, and all the hatred including your own for Golbez summoned him. If you did not, Golbez does not die. He begs for mercy, explains he has awakened an evil spirit, and you send him to face whatever his fate may be in Mysidia. Also either way, you can't turn back, because this hack loves its "you can't go here" triggers. At least there's a shop at the entrance to the Lunar Subterrane.

Instead of being able to talk, the Moon Crystals simply say what they are: Time, Space, Matter, Energy, Infinity, Singularity, Spirit, Mind.

(I didn't finish the report, but did the hack. One big change: the Crystal Armor/Demon Armor, depending on whether you upgrade Cecil or not, is found from the Lunar Subterrane bosses. Zeromus is the same as usual except Paladin Golbez shows up to make him vulnerable if you don't change class, but there's something special for beating him with a solo Paladin Cecil: an extra dungeon where you find FuSoYa, who turns out to be Zemus, who turns out to have created Lavos from Chrono Trigger. Winning as solo Dark Knight, meanwhile, gives a New Game+. There's a Let's Play though if you want to read that)

Index

Last time, Cecil and company managed to reach Baron without their ship being attacked at sea. They defeated the fake, drowned king Cagnazzo in time to save Baigan, but due to an airship shortage, had to go through the Misty Mountains to reach Troia, defeated the blighted despot Scarmiglione on the way there. There, Golbez attacked and defeated them, only for Tellah to attack and defeat him. The old Sage survived the casting of Meteo, in this history.

So now what do we do? The hack gives no hint of this. Go to the Magnetic Cave and try to protect the crystal by hiding it there, similar to The After Years? Nope. We're not allowed into the Magnetic Cave, with the game pushing us back for no discernible reason open entry. Do we go to Mysidia and climb Mt. Ordeals to become a paladin? Nope, the latter is blocked by fire, and the former Cecil refuses to enter out of shame. Agart? Mythril Town? All you'll find there are places to shop.

No, instead you have to go to Eblan. Here, you meet up with Edge, and an out-of-character Rubicante. In this hack, he really did experiment on Edge's parents, instead of it being Lugae and Rubicante being disgusted with that. This is where the hack starts to diverge from "alternate history" into "reimagining", and this is the first of many questionable changes for the sake of being changed that some ROMhacks have a bad habit of doing. Luckily, I like ROMhack deconstruction about as much as alternate history, so here we go.

As for Edge himself, he lost his unique Ninja magic for Black Magic with an elemental focus, including Tornado which now does Wind damage. Due to the makeup of your team at the moment and the loss of Boomerangs as a weapon type, that's what he's most useful with in the now enemy-laden castle - though Tornado is the only useful one, since the only others are the level 1 elemental spells and Fire2. As a random note, don't quite understand how, but Ninja is coded in an interesting way to replace a Black Magic command set for him specifically.

There are still some trapped chests, but only lone Stalemen are in these, which Cid can shred. They guard various pieces of Flame equipment. Finally, the random encounters around the castle itself are a bit weaker, being from Troia's set instead of Eblan

Rubicante is in the basement. I equipped the Flame Shield and Flame Armor on Cecil and Cid respectively - they protect against fire in this hack instead of ice. The ones in the front row attack, Rydia summons Shiva if the cloak is open (2000+ of his 10000HP! Which is a bit less because of a death message) and Bomb if not, and Edge is pretty much an item bot.

I make use of a neat trick here: remember how in my Solo Rosa challenge, I mentioned that Rubicante will revive your whole party if you hit him with fire? It works that way in this hack too, and I took advantage of this when people went down. All in all, it wasn't a difficult fight. He's implied to retreat after being defeated.

############

I promised a hack that drastically went down the drain in quality, and so I shall deliver.

So beyond Rubicante is the Cave of the Eblan's living quarters floor. Yang leaves you in order to lead the armies of Eblan. The enemies in here are from the same part of the game as they would ordinarily be, and are a bit painful. Which makes you wonder why he replaced them on the overworld and not here. Nothing really of note in the shops, aside from Shruikens being 100GP apiece. I pick up a good stock of them for Edge's use.

So you go through, and then you end up in the enemy stronghold: the Tower of Zot. Which is somehow the Tower of Babil in this complete with the Babil music, but it has the same enemies as Zot. Enemies that are weaker than the ones in the cave leading there. Why he felt it necessary to do this fusion, I have no idea. Rydia learned Sylph during this excrusion, but the treasure really wasn't much to talk about.

The Magus Sisters weren't hard at all. They only got a chance to get off a single Delta Attack, between Cecil/Cid's attacks, Rydia's Bomb summon, and Edge throwing Shruikens, before Cindy kicked it. Sandy did throw out a Comet, but Mindy and her fell shortly thereafter.

In this hack, instead of there being mind control, Kain is just pretending to be loyal to Golbez. This bugs me in a bit of a weird way, though I'm not sure why

Barbariccia is up next. Somehow, Rosa tricked her into untying her, overpowered her, and tied her down in her place. Cecil fails to notice until he's untied Barbariccia, because I guess all blondes look the same, and so Kain teams up with us to take her down. She was an easy fight. In addition to Kain's jumping, Edge's throwing as in my solo challenge with him could pierce through and deal damage. Rydia's Sylph is Wind-elemental, and also worked to deal with her effectively.

Hey, stupid ROMhacker! When you write dialogue like this in an attempt at humor, get your facts straight! There's two moons in the sky in the world of FF4! Faulty dialogue - or more commonly, reference-laden, especially just for the sake of making a reference - is one of my biggest pet peeves with ROMhacks. In less crazy news, apparently the tower does leads to the moon, rather than summoning a giant robot or anything. But yeah, I was watching a friend play this before I got here, and my exact reaction was

[06/29][00:50:17] "The moon. As in, the one in the sky."
[06/29][00:50:30] bluntness aside, THERE'S TWO OF THEM :^)

All right, so we go back down. To the floor where you entered, there was a locked door. You can enter it with the Tower Key, and it leads to a Crystal Room. By the way, it's possible to encounter enemies from the second version of vanilla Babil in the brief walk between there and the crystal room. I got a preemptive here, so it wasn't that big a deal, though.

And suddenly, Rosa? This scene has some of the strangest original dialogue so far, not counting any forced references. Rosa goes around greeting everyone; kissing Cecil, saying hi to Cid who wants her to call him Grandpa for some reason, thanking Kain for being a spy, acting motherly to Rydia, meeting Edge, and generally acting cutesy. Also, I guess how she did it was she wooed Barbariccia into playing some hardcore BDSM but then ran off, the same Barbariccia who's implied to want Kain, but okay.

We get ready to go to the one and only moon by placing the Crystals on their respective altars, when suddenly, it's not working! What could be missing? Rydia guesses Heart, and I reach through the internet and strangle the ROMhacker for that stupid reference. Golbez reveals the second set of Crystals and the Underworld, and I guess in an act of being too demonstrative, drops us in a trapdoor to it. We somehow lose Rydia during this, ending up at the base of the Tower of Babil.

We can't go in there because Kain stops us, but we can go to the Dwarves' Castle, where Palom and Porom somehow ended up in after casting Warp on the ship earlier. The Dwarves offer them as help, and for once, the ROMhacker does something good with Cecil's reaction to them being Mysidian. Cid leaves us to help upgrade the tanks, and also a random airship lying around. It's red, and it's from the dwarves, so the twins come up with the name the Red Dwarf. So in the course of a few dungeons, our entire party save Cecil has been replaced.

So Porom is an interesting character. She can strangely equip Hammers now, and needs one to use her new ability, Bonk! It has a 25% chance each of casting Arise, Haste, Blink, or Esuna. While of questionable use, it's at least leagues better than the original Cry. Her defenses are still low, as is her attack multiplier, so this is more of a cute gimmick than something you can really rely on. They're also two handed, so you'll give up an armlet if you use it.

Palom has been given his Bluff command back, renamed Focus. Unlike his sister, he has nothing drastically special equipment-wise. So he has to do what Black Mages do best instead. Both of the twins suffer from Edge syndrome - they come at a much lower level than the rest of your party would normally be at.

With the Airship, you now you get a choice: the Feymarch, Bahamut's Lagoon (GET IT??? :D :D :D) - which replaces the Sylph Cave, or the Ice Mines - which replaces the Sealed Cave. This is where the game starts to get a bit more open-ended, ridiculously hard, and also quite hilarious in the wrong way. Each of these has a crystal, and props for actually giving them locations which vanilla and even The After Years is noticeably evasive on; they likely just ran out of time and never bothered to explain it. They house the Shadow, Holy, and Ice Crystals respectively, with the Dwarves' Castle having the Bolt one.

As for easily-accessible shopping, the castle doesn't have much of anything. Some of the stuff in Tomra is ridiculously expensive. I decide to skip out on most of it aside from grabbing some Ice Arrows for Rosa, due to a shortage of money and hoping I'll be getting even better stuff in the various dungeons.

Also, as it turns out, King Santos of Tomra is literally Santa Claus. Dwarves say Lali-Ho. He says Ho-ho-ho. Since when does Santa live in the geographical equivalent of Hell?!

I decide on the Feymarch first, to check out that last shopping locale. And it is brutal. You have no access to Float, and you're fully expected to cope with it by buying a billion healing items, soldiering through, and opening the menu every few steps over the damage tiles under penalty of having to run from random encounters. That are very capable of one-shotting some of your party members, because your equipment and levels aren't anywhere near what's practical for these enemies. Having to catch up the twins doesn't help this much, either...

I can cope, though. And the best part about coming here is, I get this thing from a trapped chest. The five Warriors in guarding it weren't a big deal, and fell to DarkWaves and Tornados. Here's Cecil's stats with it on. Though it has a penalty of -5 to every stat, it is extremely powerful and quite accurate.

Rydia takes Yang's role of being saved by the Sylphs, who have relocated here due to their cave being taken over by a reference. The boss, who attacks after you get the Shadow Crystal...

Not only is it a palette swap of Scarmiglione, it's the exact same fight! There's a bunch of Zombies, there's him in the back, he counters every time you hit him (with Stop), and he orders the goons to attack with RedFeast. Except they are way too powerful and leave my party completely crippled after just one of them. Apparently, these repeats may be in-part due to engine limitations making it difficult to insert new AI routines...but still.

I can't seem to kill him before he can get it off, and when I do kill him to stop those attacks, I still have to deal with the vicious Reapers. They have a ridiculous 6000HP, which Demi can at least cut into, but their physicals alone hit hard. So I have no choice but to turn back and leave Ciriatto for later.

The Lagoon's enemies are somewhat more manageable. Most interesting was a trapped chest with this guy in it. He actually was kinda like a mashup between FF1 Astos and his appearance in this game. He opened with a Fire2/Lit2/Ice2 combo, and would throw out Death and a party-wide Slow as part of his script. While I didn't have the equipment from later on in the cave that would deal insane damage to him, this wasn't too difficult an encounter. Each Shruiken throw did 1000 damage in particular.

The Avenger was the prize from the Wizard fight, but also in the same room of six was this thing. The Mystic Hammer was enough that Porom could actually do semirespectable damage when fighting in the front row. Specifically, it's extremely effective on mechs and mages - which included the ToadLady enemies and her TinyToads (speaking of, Cecil's and the twins' equipment helped stave off that and the Malboro's Breath). It can randomly silence on a hit, and gives a +15 to Wisdom and Will. The Rune Bow also was highly effective.

Completing a trifect was the Mage Masher, guarded by this ugly-looking thing. Flame Sword, Fire Arrows, and Fire2 took care of it quite handily.

A Rubicante palette swap who goes by Draghinazzo was the boss here. He even restores your health. He claims to be a prophet for Bahamut, but a slip of the tongue and we get to fight him.

He hits like a goddamned truck, but then again, so does Cecil with the Avenger. It seems the sword is Dark-elemental. Because of it, this one didn't last too long. He opened with Holy to flatten someone, then closed his cloak and used Blink. Had Edge and Palom attack to disperse it. His only other real move was a double physical combo concentrated on Porom. If I had Bio on Palom, this would've been a total stomp.

The Black Shirt and White Shirt were in the chests behind him. They were an interesting choice. The Angel Robes the twins had on do give +5 to Wisdom and Will (as well as Vitality), resisting Mute, Pig, and Toad. The others give +15 to their respective stat, and the White Robe resists the basic three elements. Seems situational.

I went to the Ice Mines next. It is literally the Ice Cave from FF1 in layout. Good creativity. The encounters here seem to be easiest of the trio, but their payout and the encounter rate are both low.

There was another Wizard-in-a-box here. It took 3184 from Edge, 2322 from Porom, then flopped over dead. The Chaos Blade was the reward from this, another Dark Swrod for Cecil, but the Blood Sword was coming out stronger even factoring in the stat drop.

Interestingly enough, the same Warp trick as would work in FF1 to get to your destination works here, though I explored the lower floors anyway. There was a huge cache of gold down there and an IceBrand.

Sheesh, now he's even recycling dialogue and circumstances on the palette swaps. Or making fun of himself/engine limitations.

The latest palette swap, Alichino, was a straightforward affair. His Ice3s hurt, but were not really lethal. When he raised the ice (with another stupid reference), he did throw up Reflect, but it didn't stop Cecil's Flamesword or the two Fire Arrows Rosa had on her, both of which could do over 1000 each. Despite getting owned by the Reflect, this one was a simple affair. And Palom and Porom find the real king alive and well in the ice after the battle.

Now for this guy proper. A couple of Yaguu Darkness and some extra attacks did indeed kill him before he could order the RedFeast brigade. I decided to get a few more levels beforehand, on seeing what was waiting when testing Bio for curiousity purposes later. And holy crap, Harm did not disappoint. Despite this, it was still better to do this than to save the Yaguus for later.

And naturally you fight undead Ciriatto too. He opens by telling you to hear the song of the fallen angel, uses Angel song on you, and reduces everyone to critical HP. Luckily, Porom had Cure3, but she was still my primary damage dealer with Harm, making this really awkward. Rosa's Holy Arrows did 1600. The first time, I got smacked by DarkWave and killed off from there. The second time, I prepared for it.

With a few Palom Focused Fire2s (for lack of anything better, he wasn't weak to it), thrown Shruiken or Edge attacks, and healing potions when needed, I got the kill. He had 16000 HP total.

So back to the Castle. I do a bit of inventory management, and unequip Rosa because she leaves. Cid upgraded the tanks, and even used the Bolt Crystal to generate an anti-Warp field. But then the Red Wings attack, Cid's fortification is put to the test, and Rosa leaves to help for some reason. Now, it's known that FF4 actually was indeed going to have two sets of archfiends. Calcabrina is one of the remnants of this, named after one of the Malebranche in Dante's Inferno much like the rest of them and the archfiends here. Is it finally time for its sort-of official promotion?!

Of course not! Meet Malacoda of the Thunder. She'll be able to bypass the electric barrier stopping Golbez from just Warping in and taking the Crystal. Now see? In-universe references are the kind of thing you should go with.

Meanwhile, we still do need to deal with those...that one doll. It's ridiculously easy. Palom's Bio and Porom's regular attacks could do over 2000 damage. It has 10000HP, and accomplished nothing significant before falling to pieces. It even had its HP run out.

Then Golbez shows up, beats us down in a cutscene because he's a cheater, takes the three Crystals we garthered, only to fall prey to his only other weakness besides Meteo: getting literally stabbed in the back by Kain! Malacoda shows up, and now we have to fight her.
.

As with the last three, this is the same deal as with her palette swap. She goes into a spin, Kain needs to Jump on her to get her out of it. This was really annoying at first, because she used Magnet to Stop him. She also hit Porom with it, which was dangerous and forced me to heal with HiPotions with everyone else, and Palom, who had been Focusing to power up his Ice2s while waiting on Kain. It seemed she had an Ice weakness.

I reset and got Kain a Blizzard Lance, but it didn't contribute anything other than heightened offense - his Thunder Spear was perfectly capable of hitting her due to a Wind weakness from her floating (weaknesses override absorption when it comes to physical hits). After a while of fighting, her 30000HP was all gone.

So status report? Golbez has 7/8 crystals, but it's useless without the last one we hold. Because Cid is an engineer and Rosa is a fucking badass and heavily damaged their airships with nothing more than her bow and sharpshooting skills, they get to lead the frontal assault on the tower. Meanwhile, everyone else will enter, using Kain's knowledge of the tower's layout, Edge's Ninja skills, Palom and Porom's magic, and Cecil's pretty face, and take back the rest of them!

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