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The Crystals Shed Their Light Silently

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years was released for WiiWare on Monday so I downloaded it and just got done with my first play session. I thought I'd post my first impressions as someone who knows FFIV like the back of his hand.

First off, AY (The After Years, which I don't feel like spelling out every time) is very much classic FFIV. It looks and sounds almost exactly like FFIV Advance, though the sound quality is better and more akin to the original SNES version. The character sprites are also more like FFVI's in their animations and the way the same ones are used for both overworld and battle views. Battle and menu mechanics are nearly identical, right down to being able to manually sort your spells and using equipped weapons as items in battle, except for one welcome exception: You now have many, many more item slots than in FFIV so you don't have to constantly worry about running out of space. Most of the monsters I've fought have also been straight out of FFIV, though with some stats and abilities tweaked here and there. And the difficulty level seems about the same, though it's hard to say for certain this early in the game. If you're familiar with FFIV you'll feel right at home with AY.

There are also some new features to keep things interesting. The biggest I've seen so far is the addition of four phases of the moon that change over time or whenever you stay at an inn. Depending on which phase of the moon it is the strength of different types of abilities will be affected for both your party and enemies. There are four categories, melee attacks, white magic, black magic and ranged attacks, and during a full moon, for example, black magic will become more powerful while melee attacks are weakened and the other two are unaffected. It seems like each phase raises one category, lowers another, and leaves the remaining two unaffected. You can view the current phase and its effects in the pause menu and affected commands are also color-coded during battle to show if they're strengthened or weakened. The changes in strength are very noticeable and I can see the phases playing an important role in some fights.

You can now also perform Band moves, which seem a lot like the double and triple techs from Chrono Trigger. Apparently only characters that share a bond can perform them together. (Biggs and Wedge could do one together but Ceodore couldn't perform it with them. I forgot to try one with Cecil and Rosa while I had control of them.) They also don't just hand them out as you level up, though you do learn some through story events. To learn most of them you have to experiment by selecting the Band command in battle and then Search for Bands to choose which other character(s) you want to attempt a Band with. If the Band fails, you just lost a turn, but if it works you can then select that Band move any time you want from the menu. Bands take a small amount of MP from each character involved (characters that can't use magic now have a little MP to use for Bands) and obviously require all of of them to have their ATB gauges filled.

So far the story is very intriguing. The second moon reappears right after the start of the game and then things go south fast. If you've beaten FFIV you'll know the significance of the second moon. If not, you'll probably be pretty lost. This is a sequel to FFIV, after all, and the game expects you to know what happened so I wouldn't recommend AY if you haven't already beaten FFIV. (I would instead tell you to go play FFIV because it's a great game and my favorite in the FF series.) I'm not very far into the game yet but I'm really interested in seeing where it goes.

One thing to be aware of when buying AY (for 800 Wii points) is that it's not the full game. In Japan it was released on mobile phones in monthly installments, there being thirteen chapters total. From looking at the game's official website it looks like those will be condensed to nine chapters for the WiiWare release, with the initial purchase getting you the first one. The second chapter, Rydia's Tale, is also currently available to purchase from an in-game menu for an additional 300 Wii points. 800 + 8 x 300 would be 3,200 points altogether, which is about the same price as a new DS game, though who knows whether the others chapters will all be the same price.

I'm very pleased with the game so far and unless they price gouge us with the additional chapters I can't imagine I'll have any complaints. Since FFIV is my favorite in the series, I'm happy they left the core game mechanics the same and just added new features on top of them.

Bits of Des

Contrary to my low posting frequency, I actually think of subjects I could write about somewhat often. I'm just too lazy to bother most of the time. So here's an assortment of the recent ones all at once:

Aria Love +1

Aria the Origination, which aired last season, finally finished getting subbed and with that the Aria series ended. It's a beautiful and wonderful series and, like Dagger, its ending had me alternating between grinning like an idiot and crying tears of joy.

Aria the Animation (the first season) got licensed and is being released in a sub-only set with all thirteen episodes for about $40. This is totally for the freaking win because, like, I can actually afford it since they aren't price gouging with single DVD releases and making me pay for a dub I don't care about. It's being released in September and more of the series is supposed to follow after that. The only reason I haven't pre-ordered it yet is because I'm trying to decide if I should pick up some of the manga at the same time to save on shipping.

Zetsubou Fight!

Zoku Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei also finished getting subbed recently. Anon releases had been trickling out for a while but I hadn't bothered watching any since I was still holding out hope that a.f.k. would continue subbing it. My patience finally dissolved when the last episode was released so I got them and picked up at ep5. Amazingly, the anon subs were actually pretty good.

I really missed the insanity of Zetsubou Sensei—it was my second favorite show from last season, after Aria. I'm still hoping a.f.k. will continue their subs at some point but going ahead and watching the others was totally worth it. Here's to hoping for a third season.

Oh, and the Hatsune Miku cameo was amusing.

Miku Miku

Speaking of Hatsune Miku, I've been hunting down a few more songs. This one titled echoes (Nico Nico, YouTube) is my favorite out of the latest ones I've downloaded. Though a torrent popped up on one of the sites I watch for new anime releases with a Miku song titled マケナイワタシノコイノウタ (Makenai Watashi no Koi no Uta) which is also pretty good.

Also, zomg, Miku playing a harp.

【初音ミク】「泉の女神」～月夜の森にて～【3DPV】

Nico Nico version: http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm3264508

IMMA CHARGIN MAH LAZER

I've been watching Magic Knight Rayearth in between new releases and catching up on shows from last season and I came across this:

Last time I had to add both the lazer and the caption. This time, only the caption. The prospect of this pattern continuing excites me.

MP: 0/90

I haven't played FFIV any more since my previous post about the Dark Elf. I've been distracted by a free, month-long reactivation of my PlanetSide account and I've also been playing Guild Wars more often again. Apparently PlanetSide is undergoing a server merge later this month, which will result in there being only a single US server instead of two, for east and west. (And I think there used to be three US servers in the past, before I started playing.) The game's community always had plenty of doomsday prophets predicting its demise ever since I started playing but now I'm starting to think they might be right.

The Tower of Zot is up next in FFIV which, in my experience, tends to be one of the harder dungeons in the game. It's just barely scraping half way through the game but a sudden jump in monster strength combined with not having a dedicated healer in your party really does a number on you. You've got Tellah who, while he knows pretty much every white magic spell, is capped at 90 MP and thus can only cast thirty Cures or ten Curas before he's out; and you've got Cecil, whose Cure spells are really weak. If I'm really on top of things I can make it between save points without resorting to using Ethers (yay for Tents) but it's very difficult.

DARK ELVES SPEAK IN CAPS

Continuing through Final Fantasy IV, I went through the Magnetic Cave and beat down the Dark Elf earlier. I was a bit surprised to find the difficulty of the dungeon completely reversed—well, kind of. In FFIV Advance, simply getting through the cave was harder than actually beating the Dark Elf; in the original FFIV, it was the opposite. It seemed like there were fewer random battles in FFIV compared to FFIVA, and the ones I did run into didn't seem nearly as bad. In particular, there were many more Cave Nagas for Tellah to suck MP out of with Osmose and many less Ogres to put the beat down on me.

The Dark Elf was a different story. I've been noticing a trend of enemies being a little faster in FFIV compared to FFIVA but the battle with the Dark Elf was the first one which was noticeably harder because of it. Specifically, it made it harder for Tellah to keep the party healed once the Dark Elf transformed into the Dark Dragon and began using its Dark Breath attack (noticing a theme here?), which hits the entire party for quite a bit of damage. Instead of getting hit by one physical attack or one Dark Breath for every turn Tellah got, I was getting hit by both every turn. That hurt a lot but the Dark Dragon goes down pretty fast so I was able to pull through without too much extra trouble.

But here comes that, "well, kind of." See, in the easy type version there's a little trick for killing the Dark Dragon: You have Tellah cast Tornado (or Weak as it's called in the easy type version), which then lets you kill it in one attack. Most bosses are immune to Tornado, for good reason, but it works on this one. But I've never gotten it to work in FFIVA so I figured that it just doesn't work in the hard type version. Except that it does in the original hard type version. So, if you know this, the fight actually becomes easier than in FFIVA.

The fight with the Dark Elf made me see how Zeromus could be harder in the original version, though. Zeromus also has a very strong, full-party attack (Big Bang—it makes Sephiroth's Super Nova seem like a joke) and if he's able to use it more often then that would raise the difficulty. However, in my FFIVA video of Zeromus I didn't even need Rosa to cast Curaja every turn so there was a fair bit of leeway there. I'm really looking forward to fighting Zeromus in the original version now.

Final Fantasy IV - Cagnazzo

It had been a long time since I made any new videos for YouTube (Guitar Hero II and Smash Bros. Brawl can be thanked for that) but I finally uploaded another. I started playing the original Japanese hard type version of Final Fantasy IV (the SNES release we got in the US was the easy type version) because I've heard that it's harder than FFIV Advance, even though FFIVA is based on the hard type version.

In particular, I've seen various comments on YouTube videos of Zeromus (the end boss) that say he's so much easier in FFIVA and that you need to be around level 70 to beat him in the original version, as opposed to around level 50 in FFIVA. Now, considering that I can completely kick Zeromus's ass in FFIVA with my party ranging from level 55-58, and I can do it better than a lot of the videos I've seen of people fighting him at level 99, my immediate reaction is to call BS. But I've never fought him in the original hard type version so I can't know for sure.

FFIV being one of my favorite games, I could not let this lack of knowledge stand. I picked up an English patch, slapped it on (though I play the unpatched version for my recordings), and went to it. So far there have only been a few small differences that I've noticed between the original and FFIVA. (Well, besides the menu lag and turn order bugginess in FFIVA, but that only makes things harder.) But one such difference was enough to require a small change in strategy for one of the bosses so I decided to do another video for it and any other bosses that end up requiring alternate strategies from the ones used in my FFIVA videos.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Final Fantasy IV - Cagnazzo

Video response to: Final Fantasy IV Advance - Cagnazzo

The battle with Cagnazzo (カイナッツォ) on active battle speed 1. This is the original Japanese hard type version.
Tellah Lv23, Cecil Lv15, Palom Lv18, Yang Lv19, Porom Lv18

Cagnazzo is a little faster in the SNES version compared to the GBA version so this fight requires a slightly different strategy. Instead of having Tellah cast Thundaga to do massive damage and break the water barrier at the same time you should immediately have Palom cast Thunder (Thundara is too slow most of the time) to break it or else Cagnazzo will hit your party with Tsunami. Then, since ice is more effective while the barrier is down, have Tellah cast Blizzaga to cause the massive damage. Along with Cecil's and Yang's attacks, two Blizzagas should be enough to kill Cagnazzo.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

And there we go, Cagnazzo being owned just as thoroughly as in my FFIVA video. This fight is actually a bit harder than in FFIVA if you're unprepared for it but otherwise it's not any worse.