Final Fantasy IV, Moon man down!

Over the past two days I was able to bring this epic game to a conclusion. I really liked this one and I often found myself wishing I wasn't rushing through at such a quick pace since I enjoyed it so much. But alas it is over, I'll sum a few things up here.

In short, I went to the moon on a massive behemoth of an airship, dark black and lined in red with windows on the sides, it out-sized my other two airships by at least 4x. Once again I could heal to full on my end game airship; nice touch that late in the game. I took my airship up to the moon, which was very weird, and I found a Crystal Palace where the Lunar people lived, and where Golbez meant to summon the Giant to consume the world.

Upon my arrival, I headed toward the Crystal Palace to find some kind of elder who explained that Cecil and Golbez were brothers and lunar people... oookay. Anyway he joined the party in place of traitor Kain again, a weak white/black mage of sorts. We headed to another part of the moon where Golbez was supposed to be and ended up fighting Bahamut instead, end game summon ftw! But we were too late apparently and Golbez had summoned the Giant already, so back to earth we go and we're greeted by an airship armada of about every character in the game including the two twins who died a long time ago, cured by their Elder. But no sign of Tellah the Sage, at least one person stayed dead, geez...

We attack the giant in Spaceballs fashion, entering the mouth and working our way to the self destruct button with the guidance of the schwartz. Once we get to the heart of the beast it was time to face the 4 arch fiends again, one after the other without rest or saves, but they all died easily. This was followed by a fight against a computer of all things, no problem. After that was done we faced off with Golbez, but instead of fighting him, the new Sage Fuyosa released him of his bond from the true arch nemesis Zemus, a much older elder of the moon. With Golbez released, he joins the winning side and apologizes. We lose Fuyosa and get Kain back, yay!

Anyway, Giant dies w/o his computer and we head back to the moon to face down Zemus. After a VERY long dungeon, we finally get to Zemus. Fuyosa and Golbez join forces to kill him on the spot with a Twin Meteor spell. But like the arch fiends, he only gains strength in death and resurrects to become more powerful, one shotting Fuyosa, Golbez and my entire party. Back on earth the Elder senses our struggle and the whole world starts to pray. We enter into a fight screen with resurrected Zemus, as Zeromus, and my entire party dead with exception of Cecil who has 1 HP. Uhhh not good.

Visions of prayers from earth start to appear on the screen and slowly my party is resurrected and brought to full HP/MP. Much better. Overall, pretty cool cut scene sequence there. I then proceed to whip the shit out of Zeromus. Sure he had his moments of cheating glory like casting Whirl (party HP reduces to single digits) followed within like two seconds by Meteor (5k party wide damage); but I had my own ace in Phoenix, an augment that says when that party member dies the entire party is resurrected with a percentage of their HP equal to his percentage of MP. I put it on Kain who never uses magic and always has 88/88 MP. So my party fully rez'd from the wipe. Notable damage dealers were Rydia summoning Bahamut for 9999 and the Ninja Edge throwing Fuma Shirukens for 9999 damage. Once in a while Kain would also Jump with Darkness up for 9999 damage, but Edge and Rydia definitely did like 80% of the damage. Ninja and Summoner ftw.

Once Zeromus went down I got a nice 15 minute long end scene spanning the globe and because it's on the DS I got a play again save. So as you can see my end game save after the boss is only level 10, but it's to start a second play through game. You'll notice the "Completion" time at the bottom left of my first beaten game. Longest one yet at thirty-four and a half hours. I expect the next two to clock in over forty each.



Here's some pics of the real party. Can't wait for anthologies (V and VI) to come in the mail.



On a side note it's worth mentioning here that this game also introduced the in dungeon save points which were SO much needed and became a regular staple in all games to come afterward. No more 3 hour dungeon treks to die on a boss anymore. More like one hour dungeon treks to die on a boss. =P

Lastly, the only beef I really had with this game was the whole naming thing. I hated that I couldn't name my own characters. It definitely took some of the personal touch from the game, made them feel less like your guys. Other than that, awesome great game for the DS. I hope I can overlook the super weak graphics coming my way in V and VI which will be on my PS3 in HD on my big screen in all their 16 bit glory.