Topic: We're cute! We're scary! We love to LP Final Fantasy IV Advance! (Read 37076 times)

R^2 · « **Reply #460 on:** August 11, 2013, 01:52:52 PM »

Party change! Striker party has become Mage party!

I've already shown most of the dungeon so I'm gonna fast-forward a bit.

Brent: Kabbage...
Kabbage: I feel something... A strong energy...

I hear a voice... from offscreen...

Well, at least this one introduces himself.

Monks! They look like a huge crowd, but there's only (only...) eight distinct enemies.

You know what's good for fighting off parties of eight monsters?

I'm skipping over the last two battles with the Drillmasters, because you get the idea.

R^2 · « **Reply #461 on:** August 11, 2013, 01:55:30 PM »

Goddamn right it is.

Lunar Titan: You are the first to come all this way... I shall lend you my powers... ...if you can prove yourself!

Lunar Titan punches awfully hard but often tries to cast Earthquake because it's his thing. Earthquake is one of the few attacks I can just straight-up nullify, and I have, so...

The Discipline Armlet turns Power into Deadly, tripling Kabbage's attack power for a single devastating strike.

R^2 · « **Reply #462 on:** August 11, 2013, 01:56:48 PM »

The Piggy's Stick is... well, a stick. But it's got more raw attack power than the Holy Lance that I had to fight Plague Horror for. idgi

There are number tiles scattered around. Guess what you have to do!

Right, next Trial.

R^2 · « **Reply #463 on:** August 11, 2013, 02:04:01 PM »

Sure is foggy in here.

Lyrai reverts to her child self!

And her summons all bugger off!

It's a full reversion. She's able to cast her white magic again, although I can't imagine why you'd bother.

The summons that left were Shiva, Ifrit, Titan, and Ramuh. Chocobo and Dragon don't leave for this scene, and you can keep any of the summons you earned in battle.

R^2 · « **Reply #464 on:** August 11, 2013, 02:04:22 PM »

All of the random encounters here are "Mist" creatures. They're strong, but they're of the cockatrice, goblin, mind flayer, or bomb class; and summoners of same. So if you want to hang around and try to get a drop for the Cockatrice, Goblin, Mind Flayer, or Bomb summons, here's a good place.

Summon Monster Ifrit is nowhere near as strong as Lunar Ifrit.

Upon defeating him, you get the summon back. Hooray, I guess. I haven't summoned Ifrit since getting Leviathan oh-so-long ago.

Not surprisingly, all the other missing summons must be treated the same way.

R^2 · « **Reply #465 on:** August 11, 2013, 02:09:32 PM »

He's a ravamp of the first tutorial boss in the game, so it stands to reason he's been buffed up a bit.

He does keep his old turn-incorporeal trick, though...

...at the exact same power it was before. Way to... give me several turns to heal up in the middle of your vicious boss fight...?

Hey, you're... well, you're less jailbait now...

The Mist Ring makes Lyrai's Dragon add Blink status to the whole party in addition to its regular holy-elemental attack.

Classic · « **Reply #466 on:** August 11, 2013, 02:30:14 PM »

Quote from: R^2 on August 11, 2013, 01:16:25 PM

Problem is, you can't land in the desert. You have to park nearby and hoof it into town.

In the SNES version, you can park directly adjacent to Kaipo? I think it's one square east?

Mothra · « **Reply #467 on:** August 12, 2013, 04:29:58 AM »

Quote from: R^2 on August 11, 2013, 01:52:52 PM

Holy crap, this dungeon rules!

Somehow I never did any of the postgame for FF4A, despite beating ages ago. Some of this is pretty great so far.

Mothra · « **Reply #468 on:** August 12, 2013, 05:53:51 AM »

Quote from: R^2 on August 11, 2013, 01:16:25 PM

All I Want - The Offspring

R^2 · « **Reply #469 on:** August 12, 2013, 11:44:07 AM »

I used up the Grimoire LO, allowing Brent access to his own trial again.

There are seven or eight different tests of character in this trial, and this time I get a couple of different ones.

Crunch. A true paladin is honest about having broken someone's prized possession.

Om nom nom. Burrrp. What?

Some old fart leaves a Megalixir at someone's grave. A true paladin doesn't desecrate memorials to the dead, but I wish I'd known this trial was coming up. I'd have kept the Megalixir and given back the Golden Apple.

The Flandango was called the "Index Finger" in Japan, and I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. It has poor attack power but does extra damage to Flan monsters. You get it instead of the Lightbringer if you screw up one of the tests of character.

If you screw up all five, all you get is a hunk of scrap metal. No one can equip it but it can be Thrown... for sad and pathetic damage.

The fight with Lunar Odin goes much faster with a couple of Black Mages present.

R^2 · « **Reply #470 on:** August 12, 2013, 12:41:25 PM »

The Giant of Babel's mouth...

Mt... well, I forget which mountain this is. Either Ordeals or Hobbs I guess.

Sealed Cavern...

Tower of... Babel or Zot, I suppose. Look, I haven't memorized every damn map in the game!

If you already have the Grimoire, the game just tells you the door won't open instead of hinting at who you should bring to open it.

Another Zelda-style faerie spring...

With a doggie bag!

Upon revisiting the lower town level and buying a bunch of sweet gear from its shops, I equip everyone with their armor upgrades and some new weapons. MCE and Lyrai get Assassin's Daggers, because in the rare circumstance where they use a physical hit it they're more likely to kill something as a status effect than through straight damage.

Giant's Stomach.

Hey, it's you! I figured you were gone forever. I'll win this time, since I'm about double the experience level I was when you partywiped me before!

R^2 · « **Reply #471 on:** August 12, 2013, 12:49:15 PM »

MCE: I don't think we can continue down this path.

Zara: Hey! There's something written over here!
MCE: Let me try to decipher it. "Into the narrow gate and beyond two paths. Two must become one to overcome the trials."

Well, better let the twins with a telepathic connection handle it.

This Trial has a lot of talk talk talk talk talk talk talk about things that should be patently obvious, like how this hole is really tiny and only a small child rather than a fullgrown man in heavy armor can fit through, so this is a Trial where the twins each go solo on their own path.

And then words words words words words words words about how one twin pushing a button opens a passage on the other twin's path.

Some holes are small enough that only Minified people or Toads can fit through. Some doors only open when pigs try to pass them. Some floors are cracked and can't be stepped on, but can be Floated over. So the dungeon provides methods of self-inflicting those statuses to get through what could have been a brain-straining maze but is actually a quite linear path.

Eventually you find the big green buttons that marks the Trial's end, and by navigating each twin to their own button, they get the bright idea to push them both at the same time.

Which lowers the slab in the main chamber, hooray.

The twins return without any further prompting from the player.

R^2 · « **Reply #472 on:** August 12, 2013, 12:55:39 PM »

Like the other Lunar summons, Leviathan opens with his biggest attack to leave you struggling to heal up.

But, uh... it's not very effective.

He breaks it out a couple of times, but the rest of the fight is a cinch.

That is literally every screencap I took of this battle.

Standard reward!

MCE tries to take a little bit of the piss out of Zara's constant boasting, which he shrugs off.

You get two sets for some mysterious reason!

Equipping both Zara and MCE with Twin Stars gives them the ability to whip out Double Meteor instead of Pyro or Comet when they use their Twin Magic. But at this point, who cares? Double Meteor is still constrained by the 9999 damage limit, and both casters have magic that easily reaches that sort of output on their own. Factor in that both twins can move more than once in the time it would take to charge Double Meteor and you have the choice of doing 9999 damage once or 9999 damage four to six times.

The only time to use Double Meteor is if there are multiple strong enemies covering themselves with Reflect, I suppose.

R^2 · « **Reply #473 on:** August 12, 2013, 01:39:27 PM »

Old Man: You must not fight the dragon on this floor! IF you spot him, you must run! So many have met their end...

And there he is, the game's Omega Weapon. Only, you know, a biological creature rather than a machine.

So let's give it a whirl, shall we?

Hmm

Hmmmmm

Hmmmmmmmmm

When he whips out Globe199 and a Firaga-Blizzaga-Thundaga triplecast, it's the beginning of the end.

When he whips out a triplecast including Holy and Flare? That's the end of the end.

Screw you guys, I'm goin' home.

Mothra · « **Reply #474 on:** August 12, 2013, 03:19:29 PM »

Ummmmmm!!

Rico · « **Reply #475 on:** August 12, 2013, 03:39:19 PM »

It's really too bad the Hide exploit in 4 is less useful than the one in 5. It takes a while, but I really liked beating Omega with zombies.

R^2 · « **Reply #476 on:** August 15, 2013, 01:31:38 PM »

So anyway, that's almost all there is. But there's so much I haven't covered! Time to dick around with cheat codes for a little while and see what I can hack up.

The most promising is a code that affects the ingame variable that determines what mob of monsters you fight. Here I am outside Mysidia, on the overworld, fighting the mistborn monsters from Lyrai's Lunar Trial. Why bother? Well, the enemies in that area include Mist Eagles and Mist Krakens, which can also drop the Cockatrice and Mind Flayer summon emblems. The Mist Summoner in back summons more Mist Krakens.

I slew 250 Mist Krakens. I counted.

Have you gotten the impression that the game is a bit too stingy with rare drops? I'm pretty sure I've gone through the entire game without seeing even one. But that's okay, because I'm already hacking the game. Might as well do it to my inventory, too.

Graphically, the hidden summons are nothing to write home about. Petrifying Beak looks exactly the same as Break. It's also single-target, which leads me to wonder why it exists at all. (It was the only secret summon dummied out of the SNES game, so it must really be redundant.)

Mind Blast is just a tiny glimmer, and only affects one target. It's a little bit of nonelemental damage plus paralysis and HP drain, making it probably the most useful secret summon... but that's not saying much.

Self-Destruct (or "Responsible Bomb Use" in the DS version, since Lyrydia might have a slight aversion to careless summoning of such creatures) does about as much damage as Lyrai has HP. To one target.

Goblin Punch does less damage than Chocobo Kick. I'm not sure if the clause from later games that boosts damage if the caster and target have the same experience level is in effect here, and I don't really care.

R^2 · « **Reply #477 on:** August 15, 2013, 01:58:17 PM »

Gilgamesh, you seem a little shorter and not-a-multi-armed-humanoid-weapons-collector lately! Alas, this is another localization flub. See, in Japan, they have these turtles called Zeni-game, or "money turtles". (Don't bother Googling it, Zenigame is also the Japanese name for Squirtle, and those guys are way more popular.) Presumably their shells look like coins.

Well, "Zeni" is Japanese for "money", but in the Final Fantasy series, money is "gil". Hence the "Gil-game", a murderous tortoise that's worth a lot of money as a reward for killing it.

Only in this game, the name got confused for recurring series character Gilgamesh.

Using these hacks I can also fight the Brachioraidos on my own terms, fully-healed and prepared.

The reward is the Hero's Shield, the only shield in the game that anyone can equip. It grants +15 to all stats and absorbs every kind of elemental attack in the game.

Unfortunately, there are a few characters who can equip a Hero's Shield, but still might not want to. Romo's ~~harps~~ lyres are two-handed weapons, so he has to equip a dagger or something to carry the shield. Without an instrument, he can't use Barksong or Chant.

Likewise, Niku's hammers are two-handed, and Kabbage and D.Ni dual-wield rather than carry shields. So it's a great piece of equipment for a spellcaster, since they have very few defensive options and use one-handed weapons.

On the Flan Floor of the Lunar Ruins, it's possible to meet eight Princess Flans at once. I could just hack the Pink Tails into my inventory, but goshdarnit I guess I'd better earn something legitimately.

Er, as legitimately as it can be when every encounter gives eight chances to drop the item.

Oh, that reminds me, I never did use any of these Grimoires.

Why, they look and function exactly like every other summon in the game! How novel.

Good damage output though.

R^2 · « **Reply #478 on:** August 15, 2013, 02:08:37 PM »

So let's fight some royal jellies!

Nope.

FINE GAWD

You'd have to be some kinda... some kinda Lyrai to grind this out.

Mothra · « **Reply #479 on:** August 15, 2013, 02:15:49 PM »

GRINDQUEST

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Author Topic: We're cute! We're scary! We love to LP Final Fantasy IV Advance! (Read 37076 times)