Part 29: Update Twenty Eight: Regal Battle Royale

Update Twenty Eight: Regal Battle Royale

Welcome back! Last time, on Final Fantasy IV, we made our way to the Land of Summoned Monsters. We discovered a town down there, where Kim had spent her time after being swallowed by Leviathan. Today, we're going to meet the King and Queen down here, so let's mosey.





The King and Queen have a teleporter in the library that will take you to them.



But, before we head down there, I make sure Goemon is in the front row. He has two swords equipped now, so he'll need to hang up front.



I don't know why the royalty makes you go through the library to get to them. Maybe it encourages knowledge, so you don't seem like an idiot when you meet them.



I bet he's reading Ender's Game.



You're the one yelling, asshole!



All of these bookshelves have some text if you check them. They're all fairly interesting, so I hope nobody minds nerding it up for a bit. It balances out later with all the asskicking that comes in this update.



Though, if Summons have been around for so long, I wonder how the Summoners came about and managed to get them to appear when they called for them.



Oh, this book needs updating. There's only one summoner left now.



Titan's power rips through the earth, creating a huge crevice in which all is swallowed.

There are also some books around that hold information about the summons themselves.



Ifrit's flame has the power to incinerate all that is near.

As long as Firaga isn't around, Ifrit is a solid choice for high power Fire damage. Plus, I think his animation is wicked sweet. Would you guys like a video of all the summons sometime?



I think this could be a possible hint about the droppable summons, but I'm not sure.



Ramuh's wrath calls forth dark clouds that release bolts of lightning for condemnation.

Reading that, it makes Ramuh sound like he should be rather important down here. Even if he was just a random NPC or, hell, the Elder of another Summon Monster town, I think that'd be pretty cool.



Those who anger Shiva will be instantly transformed into a statue of ice.

Or she'll just, y'know, throw snowflakes at them, as she does in this game. But, I suppose those two are pretty close to the same thing.



The first to flee from battle. Too cute for words.





Like any good library, there is also a basement with even more books. Rumor has it this is also where the Summoned Monsters gather to play D&D on Tuesday nights.



The wife of the king, she guards the path that leads to him. Only those who can surpass her powers may behold the king's true form.

We'll be meeting Asura soon enough. Though, that part about surpassing her to see the king's true form is bullshit.



The lord of the vast ocean, he appeared one day from the northern sea. His powers are without equal in this land.

See, it is bullshit. We've already seen Leviathan.



Before we read any more books, this jerk is in the way.



Combining power lets them unleash their true strength.

Hmm...Are they listed here just for flavor or because they're actual summons?



His only defeat occurred when his sword was struck by lightning. Zantetsuken is his lethal attack that annihilates all enemies with a single blow.

Have we encountered Odin yet? Well, even if we have, if we need to fight him, we now know his weakness. And he already has our weakness queued up.



True strength lies in righteous souls. Yet to obtain this strength, one must prove his worth.

I guess this bit of knowledge was carved into the side of the bookshelf.



If you consider Hustler literature, I'm looking at some right now.



In the ancient sky, the two moons were only one. So it is written.

Well, now, ain't that somethin'?



Perhaps the only way to defeat him is to reflect his own strength against him.

Gee, I wonder who the God of Summons is.



Man, some legends are fucking weird.



What happened in the past? What does the future hold? Life is an eternal mystery.

I'm glad we're at the last bookshelf after this one. Now I remember why I usually don't read this crap.



Eat me, books.



If you skipped all of that book-learnin' stuff up there, feel free to rejoin us here.



Throne rooms come in many shapes and flavors. It's interesting that the floor here looks like the floor when descending into the Land of Summoned Monsters.





Oh, we're going to get hella permission, just you wait.



But you don't have to wait long, as we're about to receive it.





Man, I wonder the last time Leviathan got to talk to anybody.



If you're unprepared, you can say "No" and come back later. Because if you lose this fight, it's a Game Over.



The screen darkens...



...And the fight begins.





Asura started the fight by casting Protect on herself; I don't recall any other enemies that use Protect. Plus, Dispel doesn't do shit on Protect. Nor does it affect Reflect, so what the fuck good is it?



This is the gimmick of the fight.



Every so often, she'll cast Curaga on herself and restore a bunch of HP. What you're supposed to do is cast Reflect on her and take advantage of the free healing.



But, that's for pussies. Asura is a Mage type enemy.



Oh, Goemon, you beautiful ninja bastard. Asura has 31,005 HP, by the way.



Asura seems to counter physicals (or she's just fast enough to attack after every time I hit her; you decide!) and she's got some power behind her attacks.



She'll be constantly healing herself, so if you're going to try and brute force your way through it, make damn sure you've got the strength (and Mage Masher) to pull it off.



The Defender is this sweet fuchsia color, in addition to being an awesome defensive item.



Cecil will usually crack an enemy for over 1,000 damage now, so all of my physical fighters are dealing good damage now.



Oh, Jesus, Asura will crack him for over 1,000. Oof.



She's not weak to anything, so Bio is a good route to go. It's stronger than the mid-tier elemental spells and the summons are 10 MP more expensive, so if you're not sure what to cast on an enemy, try Bio.



If you can't tell, I really like Bio and I will spread the word whenever I have the chance.



She switches faces every now and then; right now, she has her Angry face on and is punching Cecil in the crotch.



He does not take it well.





Slow will help with her crushing physicals, so I highly recommend throwing it out. Bowser is performing up to snuff, as well, which is great.



In this form, she casts Life. If she had a Reflect up on her, I suppose I could have someone revived for free, but...Eh.



Y'know, the Mage Masher kind of looks like a cutlass. I now think of Goemon as a Pirateninja.



A very successful Pirateninja.



Why aren't you killing Goemon? He's the one who's laying out the big damage, Asura.





Keeping everyone healed is important. And it's amazing what a +10 boost to Spirit will do for healing magic.









Just keep piling on the damage.



Though, do be aware that she is entirely capable of dropping people like flies if she so wishes. Asura hits like The Hulk on PCP.





At this point, I wasn't concerned about them, as I knew I had Asura on the ropes.



Well, that and Goemon killed her before I could revive them. But whatever.

I just whipped Asura's ass without fucking around with her gimmick. And it's all thanks to Goemon. If you're doing this fight the "right" way, be sure to keep Reflect up on her as much as you can, have Kim use summons to get past it, and it probably wouldn't hurt to have Rosa Blink everyone up, as that'll provide immunity to her physicals.

All in all, it's kind of a tough fight, but entirely doable if you keep your head about you.



Goddamn, that's a lot of XP, too.





And after defeating Asura, we can now summon her at will. She's got a lot of different effects, which I'll go over later.



Jesus Christ, Leviathan, when is the last time you talked to someone who wasn't Asura? I bet you're glad we whipped your wife's ass. I think we just quintupled your amount of speaking friends.





Once again, if you lose this fight, it's a Game Over. I find it interesting that the King and Queen of Summoned Monsters will just murder the best hope at saving the planet.



The screen fades to blue and the fight against the King of Summons begins.





Tidal Wave is Leviathan's gimmick; when he's facing you, he'll blast it out.





It does pretty crummy damage. This is also a good sign that Leviathan is nowhere near as dangerous as Asura is. Really, if you fight them back to back, Leviathan is a big breather boss.



Leviathan, being a snake that hangs out in the sea, is weak to Lightning, so Blitz is handy as hell around here.







Leviathan has 50,001 HP to tear through. It's finally time to get revenge for him fucking up our boat and making us think Kim was dead. And I guess he injured Champ, but eh.



I was kind of hoping that Cecil would be able to repair the damage that Tidal Wave did. I'm not surprised he can't, just merely disappointed.





His only attack in this form is Blizzara.



So, yeah, if you can survive Tidal Wave and random Blizzaras, you've got this fight in the bag.





Kim has all she needs to be effective in this fight in Ramuh and Thundara; I've found that they both deal about the same kind of damage to Leviathan.





It's not often that I can claim Ninjutsu is useful. Actually, this is about the only time I can think of that I'd claim it's useful.



It horrifies me that it outdamaged Ramuh.







I don't know how long it takes Leviathan to swap back to his Tidal Wave form, but it seems to be roughly the amount of time it takes for each character to go, at least once.



But, he'll never use Tidal Wave twice in a row. If he did, that might make this fight rather dangerous. As it stands now, Leviathan is just an kind of boss.





Goemon has enough MP left right now to use Blitz once more, so I wanted to see how his physicals stacked up, to determine if I wanted to burn an Ether on him or not.





I switch to Thundara, as it's half as expensive as Ramuh and deals the same damage.



Blizzara deals a decent bit of damage, so you could slap your Ice-resistant gear on, but I wouldn't say that's necessary.





I really like that bolt of lightning. It just looks really metal to me.



In hindsight, maybe I should have given Goemon an Ether. But, his physicals were doing well enough and I was running low on Ethers, so he gets to smack the sea serpent with a sword from now on.



I wonder if that's sea water or fresh water. I don't know why it would matter, but I'm sure it could.



Remember when I got this in the Sylvan Cave? I barely did.



Man, I can respect that. Some of these attack items can be useful, if you use them at the right moment.







I wonder how Leviathan feels, being made a chump of by four random people, and Kim, from the Overworld.



Judging by that look on his face, he is not happy.







'course, I can't blame him. We're the first people he's been able to talk to in forever and we're beating the holy hell out of him.



You'd think that I'd pity him, but no. He should have seen this coming.





Thank God we didn't actually kill either of these guys. I do not want to see the pissed off group of Summoned Monsters that would come after us if we committed regicide.

Oh, and Goemon and Rosa gained levels after the fight.





And now, we can summon royalty. Leviathan is a Water-element summon and one of the few ways to reliably inflict Water damage in the game. Not much resists that, so Leviathan is a good way to drop some big numbers, barring his high MP cost. I'll talk about him more in the next update, though.



And with that, we're done here.



We'll pitch a Cottage in this guy's house and be done for the day.



Next time, on Final Fantasy IV, we'll finally get around to that bastard, the Sealed Cave. Stay tuned!