Part 3: Update Three: The Most Fitting Crew

Update Three: The Most Fitting Crew

Welcome back! Last time, on Final Fantasy IV, Bowser and Cecil burned down a village, killing all inhabitants except for the daughter of a summoner. That little girl was not happy about their deed and summoned Titan to kick their asses; he ended up changing the landscape and Bowser was separated from Cecil, who was left alone with the little girl. Today, we're going to see how Cecil handles that, so let's mosey.





When we last left off, Cecil was separated from the Mist village and can't get back.



...Pressing on doesn't yield what I'd call favorable results.



Being level 11 isn't exactly favorable either. At least, to me.



So, let's fix that, and now I have an opportunity to talk about some new enemies! The Desert Sahagin there only has 20 HP, so Cecil will make short work of 'em. And pretty much all they can do is die. At least, that's all I've ever seen them do.



Hundlegs back there is an interesting fellow; he's got 60 HP and can take a few hits before dying. Plus, I only count 28 legs, so he's also a Goddamned liar.



Insectus is nothing new, so let's chat about those Flying Eyes; they've got a good defense, but only 40 HP. Either way, it'll probably take at least two hits to drop them, and they can also inflict Blind on Cecil.



Like so. At first, I was concerned, as I expected Poison Powder to, y'know, poison Cecil. What a fool I am.



But, hey, look at those sweet-ass shades Cecil is now sporting. Blind also works interestingly; when attacking, each character doesn't hit just one time. It's actually a multitude of hits. If you'll look back at Cecil's stats up there, you'll notice he has a Precision of 82%, and above that his Attack is 15, but with a 2 in front of it.

What that means is Cecil is actually hitting the enemy twice, with an Attack of 15 to determine his damage. Blind seems to just cut his number of attacks, as I literally never saw him miss when blinded, but his damage was drastically lowered.



Since I didn't mention it before, XP is also divided among your party members. If Cecil had a second person with him, he would have only gotten 123 XP out of this encounter.



My plan here is to get Cecil to level 13, as he'll gain another point of Strength, and then, he'll hit three times instead of just two. Given my past history of grinding, this might seem superfluous, but it's entirely worth it, I assure you.



If you're playing along at home, I highly recommend you do the same.



Finally, we have the Sandworm. 75 HP and good attack, but it's not a danger to Cecil.



Yeehaw!



Cecil is proficiently leveled now, so let's continue on.



To this little burg right here.



I was going to tell you the name of the city in the last caption, but this seemed like such a better way to tell you. I probably would have said something like, "Yeah, it's fuckin' Kaipo and there's water and shit."



I'm not super great with words, usually.



But, enough of that. We've gotta get that little girl to an inn. Cecil's been carrying her around a desert all damned day.



Good to see this man is jovial. He must not be questioning the passed out little girl.



Or, God, he just noticed her and she looks terrible!



I have to wonder what that innkeeper is thinking. A Dark Knight just burst into his inn, sickly girl in hands; is he doing this out of the kindness of his heart or is he just afraid of Cecil?





Cecil puts her into one of the beds.



Before long, she stirs, but turns away from him.





Cecil, give it up for now. She needs some rest.





Well, at least you apologized. Maybe that'll help.



And you're being nice to her.





Getting nothing out of the little girl, Cecil decides to just call it a night.





She gives him one last look, but Cecil doesn't seem to notice.



Well, get some rest, you two. It's been one hell of a day.



Before long, a noise disturbs their rest.



...That's not good. Those are Baron guys.







Yeah, you tell 'em, Cecil!





Well, that escalated quickly.



Time for a boss fight, folks!



The Baron Soldiers have a laughable 27 HP a piece and the General in the back has a more respectable 226.



As you can see, Cecil has no problem mopping up these grunts.



They also won't attack until commanded to do so by the General.



And they've got some beefy offense, too. The last thing to deal that much damage to Cecil was the Mist Dragon's counter-attack.



Now, you can just slaughter all three of the soldiers and then the General will simply run away, ending the fight there.



However, the General is worth a nice amount of XP, so killing him is highly advised.



I don't know what happened here, as I've never seen this happen before, but this Soldier smacked himself.



Which instantly killed him, as it did twice his HP in damage. I don't know what happened or why. When I said I'd never seen that before, that was not hyperbole. I didn't even know it could happen.



But good Goddamn, look at that amount of XP! Killing the General is a very good idea.



After the fight, Cecil turns to check on the girl. I can imagine she's due for some mental scarring, what with her entire village being burnt to the ground, her mother dying, destroying a mountain range and then watching one man brutally murder four others in front of her eyes, and all in a single day.



Incredibly, she still finds it in herself to ask Cecil a kind question.







So that's what it takes to get an introduction around here.



You just gettin' a hang of the name, Cecil?



Probably a good idea, since she's now part of your party, Cecil.





They finally get a good night's rest.



Damn, Rydia, you seem to have warmed up to Cecil nicely. Either way, they get up and wander out of their room.



Thanks for letting me know, Cecil. I wasn't sure.



Anyway, first thing's first; Rydia is not only a little girl, but she's a squishy little girl.



So, she gets moved into the back row. Now, rows are kind of weird in this game; see how Cecil is in the front row? Only those two spots above and two spots below can be in the same row, with those next to him in the back row. There's a "Row" option, which will swap those, but that means that not everyone can be in the front or back row.



Looking at that, it's a very good idea to move Rydia to the back row. Basically, you could whack her with a baseball cap and she'd die.



But she's got a full set of armor, at least. And a weapon, too, which will come in handy, for a reason you'll see later.



On the other side of the inn, there's an item shop.



This lady, too. I wonder if that name will be important in the future.



The item shop has a fairly sparse selection, but c'mon, it's the second item shop of the game (the first was in Baron). I buy some potions and phoenix downs for now.



To the left, there is the armor shop, which we don't need right now.



However, I'm still going to head in there.



To visit Namingway. All the shopkeeper has for sale is the stuff Rydia's already wearing.



Someone recommended renaming everyone but Cecil, and I'm rolling with that idea.



In keeping with the theme of renames of characters from my old LP's, Rydia becomes Kim.



There's also a weapon shop in town.



It's got nothing we need. It looks like that the Staff is a better piece of equipment for Kim, doesn't it?

Attack-wise, yes, it is. But, the Rod raises Intellect, which affects Black magic. I'm sure you all can now guess what Kim is good for.



Back outside, Kaipo is a fairly small town.



Hell, we've seen most of it already.



But, thankfully, this man is here to tell us about the girly prince up north.





This lady has some solid advice.



But this guy has something interesting for us. A damsel, from Baron? What woman from Baron would come this far?



Up here, we have something interesting to look at.





Moves? What kinda moves do you have?



I don't know if Kim should have seen that, but Cecil is going to get away as fast as he can.



Think of Rosa, Cecil! Don't let her know your armor tinks for other ladies!



Uh, sure, break into that house, Cecil.



I'm sure this old lady won't mind at all.



Well, good thing you found her. I must admit, I'm curious as to who from Baron would be here.



Desert fever? That doesn't sound good.



...Is that who I think it is?



Aww, crap.



Well, I'm sure you wanted to see her again, but not like this.





Poor girl can hardly speak. Desert fever must be some rough shit.



A bit late for that advice, Rosa, but it's appreciated.





Well, ladies and gentlemen, looks like we've got ourselves a mission.



...Maybe that advice Rosa was giving was for a future event. An eight-legged monster sounds fairly nasty.



And there's that mention of Tellah again.



But, whatever, we've got a little lady to save.



And an even littler lady to beef up.



Starting out, Kim doesn't have squat. She has access to both Black and White magic, but both of those menus look like this.



However, being a Summoner, she also has summon magic. She only has one spell right now, but it's a pretty powerful, all things considered.





Yep. She just summoned a Chocobo to run up and kick the shit out of an enemy. I love Kim.



She actually gained two from this fight.



Now, having access to both schools of magic means she's going to be getting a lot of spells, so don't expect all of them to shown off like this.



Even so, she can now heal a small amount of HP and even has a small offensive arsenal outside of Chocobo.



Anyways, that cavern is to the northeast. If we're gonna save Rosa, we've gotta go through there.



It's a damned desert the entire way through. Sorry for cutting it out.



Also, if you hit either of the shoulder buttons, the party leader changes. I'm a fan of doing this, so we're going to run around with Kim on the map for a little bit.





Before going to the left, heading straight north leads to some treasure.





A Maiden's Kiss will cure the Toad status ailment; the other chest was just a potion.





This is a dungeon, so there are random encounters.



Gigantoads! They have 47 HP, but being toads, they are weak to ice.



Conveniently enough, Kim just learned an ice-element spell.



Most spells in the game can be multi-targeted, which is pretty nice for enemies that share a weakness.





Hey, that looks kinda familiar, doesn't it?



Considering that Kim is just getting started, this is pretty nice damage. Before long, she's going to be the cutest engine of destruction around.



She's still gaining levels, too.







As we try to move further into the Waterway, we're ambushed by the most common group of monsters here.



Thunder is the order of the day here, as the Vile Shells are weak to it.







With 58 HP each, this is a pretty good start on killing these guys.



However the Water Bug in the back is an asshole; they, too, are weak to lightning, but with 125 HP and a good magic defense, dropping it is going to be a touch harder. Their Renew ability also restores their HP to full and triggers when they're hit by a magical attack that doesn't kill them.



However, physicals don't trigger that, so with a combo attack from Kim and Cecil, they're easy enough to take down.



The Rod is one of the weapons that has a useful effect when used as an item on the enemy.



Being magically powered, it's also useful for Kim to use, if she's low on MP.



That little shuriken thing that she throws explodes into this.



And the damage it deals isn't all that bad, either.



This time, they both level up from this fight.



And Kim learns Hold, which will lock an enemy down for a short amount of time. It will never see use.





In that chest, we find another Tent and add it to the stockpile.



Swapping back to Cecil, we prepare to cross the bridge and move further on.



But, there's an old man blocking our way.



I'm leaving this messed up shot in on purpose; it looks like that portraits are switched before text boxes are.



Granted, I probably should have the proper portrait there, but hey, it's all in good fun.



Well, we do have to get past this area...



Probably not a bad conclusion to come to, Cecil.



Now, I am quite curious as to how you can identify that just by giving her a once-over.



Ah, that eight-legged jerk we heard about earlier.



Sounds like a win-win situation to me, hoss.



I like that Cecil doesn't tell him why. It just gives me this feeling that Cecil is just going along with this old guy because it'll be faster.





And now we have a party of three!



Let's continue on.



Well, before we can really do that, there are fights to be fought.



Y'know, for being a Sage, Tellah's list of Black magic leaves something to be desired. At least he has Fire. His list of White Magic is similarly beefed up, but instead of just Cure, he has Cura, the second-tier healing spell.



Anyway, being a Sage, Tellah is a bit more powerful than Rydia. He's also got 90 MP to play with, and that Osmose spell of his allows him to drain MP from targets, for a 0 MP cost. He's a self-sufficient murder machine.



However, being both a magician type and older than dirt, Tellah is also about as fragile as fine china.



He's got a load of HP to back his low defenses up with, though.



However, he doesn't seem very good at this adventuring thing. He forgot a hat! That's something that needs to be fixed.



Thanks to the power of editing, we're now back in Kaipo, and you're spared the trip.



That Leather Cap and Iron Ring do wonders for his survivability, don't they?



Last, but not least, the old-timer is getting a name change.



There you go, Death Chicken.



Anyways, we're going to leave it here, at the entrance to the Waterway.

Next time on Final Fantasy IV, let's battle our way through the Waterway. Stay tuned.



VOTING TIME

Think the names I chose for Rydia and Tellah blow chunks? If so, suggest your own! BOLD a vote for names, or if you like them the way they are, then say as much! I'm willing to go with whatever for names, just as long as it's not stupid. As for what counts as stupid, well, I'm sure you all can figure out what qualifies.

However, keep in mind I've played a bit past where this update is, so it'll take a little bit for any name changes to come into effect.