Part 12: "Final" Chapter - The Rosa Freak Out
"Final" Chapter - The Rosa Freak OutThis isn't actually the final chapter since there'll still be more updates to come, but this is the final update of this run, so...
At this point we're stuck in this final dungeon, but at least we can still get some essentials, which is nice since the enemies here give nice cash. This is the only item shop in the final dungeon, though, so if you want to buy more you'll have to backtrack.
At the very least I appreciate the Yoichi arrows.
All the other characters' ultimate weapons are guarded by generic monsters in chests. The Seraphim Staff gives a hefty 15-point bonus to Will and Strength, and casts Esuna as an item, a spell I don't think any White Mage actually learns since, you know, Remedies are so damn cheap and all. Don't get the Strength bonus since the staff would still be terrible and the characters who can use it (which I believe is all three women) have better offensive options anyway (Porom's hammers, Rosa's arrows, and Rydia's summons).
These side-bosses now guard Cecil's equipment. This is the only holy-elemental creature I noticed in this dungeon.
Honestly, most of the bosses here are unchanged. This guy still spams Slow and still dies as normal.
While this is technically a guess, I'm more than willing to assume that what armor you get here depends on whether Cecil is a Dark Knight or Paladin. There's similar boss battles for the other pieces of equipment, as well as Cecil's ultimate sword.
At any rate, Cecil's equipment will give the same stats either way, except they will either give a 5-point Wisdom boost (for DK Cecil's Hades gear) or 5-point Will boost (for Paladin Cecil's Crystal gear). They also protect against the opposing element. The shields are a bit better, but more on those once I get to them.
Rydia learned Bird.
(It's Cockatrice, of course.)
There's a good deal of armor here, as well. Thief Gloves give +15 Agility and protect against dragons. I give them to Edward since he's my main healer.
Cecil picks up Cure3, which would be nice if his healing still wasn't terrible with it.
Rosa picks up Comet, which means she may actually be useful with a Will-focused build. I'm going Strength-focused since I'm more reliant on her physical power in this party.
Not all weapons and armor require chest fights. This is the ultimate katana, but...that's all there is to it. It doesn't even cast Haste in this version!
In case you have a second heavy armor user (IIRC the only ones are Cecil, Kain, and Cid) then there's a second set of Dragon armor available. Little use to this party, sadly.
Tricker is back, except this time he spams Blink. I didn't really try spells, but he's vulnerable to Stop, so you can just wreck him that way. Otherwise, enemies are same as before, so I'll skip them all here.
15-point Wisdom boost, Dark elemental, casts Comet.
Ultimate axe, wrecks mages, can inflict Mute.
Best light armor available, with a significant evasion boost as well as 10 Agility. Again, suited for Edward.
Speaking of Edward, he learns the same "Reduce enemies to single-digit HP" song that Blubicante can cast. Of course, the charge time is crazy long and it's not very effective here, but hey.
And while we're on the Edward train, the Loki Harp wrecks a large variety of various typed enemies.
It's fire-elemental and casts Flare as an item.
Boosts Vitality, Wisdom, and Will by 15 each, plus blocks Mute, Pig, and Frog. I think I give this to Edward and then the Mirage armor to Rosa.
+15 Strength boost, protects against robots. This is definitely all Yang.
High magic evade and protects against the three primary elements. Either Edward or Rydia uses it, depending on whether Edward goes Harp or Knife.
Wrecks dragons.
Oh hey you might be tired of me describing equipment in great detail so maybe have a boss or something.
Wyvern is fucking deadly and a massive threat
...except for Rydia who evades every single one of Wyvern's attacks.
Wyvern's attack pattern is MegaFlare, Reflect, then a few reflected Flares, then Remedy for 2500HP.
The only strat is to Haste Rydia so Titan spam can keep up with Wyvern's self-healing. It's not worth it keeping everyone else alive.
Defeating Wyvern nets Cecil's ultimate weapon. No stat boosts, but it's stronger than even the Ragnarok, plus is one-handed so Cecil can get back to using shields. There's a Dark Knight equivalent, the Death sword, which boosts all stats by 15 and can inflict instant death.
Wrecks dragons. Shocking, I know.
All he does is inflict party-wide gradual petrification. The Aegis Shield makes him utterly useless.
More Cecil gear.
These guys' gimmick is bouncing Ice3 off each other.
...At least until Reflect expires, then they cast Ice3 on each other until one dies.
After that, the remaining one counters summons with Remedy and physicals with a generic Fire spell on everyone, but otherwise...does nothing.
As a plus, Rydia picks up Leviathan.
This isn't all, though.
Two Ribbons that boost all stats by 5 and of course protect against all status ailments. Edward and Rydia get these.
At this point I run from randoms. They're the same as in the original.
There's more useful loot down here, namely a second copy of the Protect Ring, Mirage Vest, Lord of Robes, and Strength Gloves.
Ogopogo gave me a game over due to his dual-Tidal. I manage to make it through the second time, though.
It glitches a bit, but I do get the Crystal Shield. This and the Hades Shield both give +15 to Wisdom and Will, but the Crystal Shield boosts Vitality by 15 while the Hades gives that boost to Agility.
The mystery save point now exists, too.
Now for the final battle!
I won't let you destroy the Earth!
HA HA HA! Good luck, Earthling!
...Suffer... And...perish... My hatred will last until I destroy all... Now it's your turn... Come into my darkness!
Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, hate cannot exist in the presence of love. Our greed and hatred may have given you form, but our love will vanquish you.
Zeromus! This is the end!
Hey it's fucking Zeromus.
He's largely unchanged. Big Bang spam, some Black Hole to ruin your buffs, a few Flares here and there, and later party-wide Ice3 spam to keep you on your toes.
Leviathan does really nice damage, but Zeromus's counters are deadly enough that it's honestly a better idea to stick with physicals and have Rydia stick with healing.
Which is lame, because honestly Rydia is the best character to have in this final gauntlet. She's usually the last person standing since she can tank magical attacks better than any other character, and her summons can do some sick damage on top of that. Rydia's the MVP of the final dungeon as far as I'm concerned.
After a failed first attempt that came down to a standoff between Zeromus and Rydia, I focused on physicals and brought Zeromus down. If you're curious, it was Rosa that delivered the final blow. Rosa can deal some good damage with her Charge command!
As long as there is evil in people's hearts... I will live on... The more wars you wage, the more power you seek, the more grudges you hold on to... The more monsters will appear, the more tame creatures will become vicious... and the more power I will gain... until I can take physical form once more! Until then...
r.i.p. the hatred of
...wait shouldn't he be called Golrobez or something ah fuck it who cares
I think he means that until humans learn to forgive and forget, he will live on somehow.
If we don't learn to love one another, the animals will become monsters...
We have to bring this lesson to the people of Earth so that this disaster is not repeated.
THAT'S IT ENJOY THE ENDING
I mean...it isn't as deep as FF4's messaging, but then again that wasn't really that deep either. As a ROM hack designed mainly to showcase the gameplay applications of hacking software designed for a specific game, I'm not going to be too critical on it. It works, fair enough.
Anyway, we'll stop off the ending montage by remembering to tell the Elder we accidentally got his kids to suicide via self-petrification.
But Cecil gets King Santos offscreen to cure them. It's a Christmas Miracle!
Meanwhile Kain beats the shit out of kids.
Edward and Tellah bond over a dead woman.
At least Damn Cyan is rebuilt to a proper castle now!
Meanwhile, Yang and Titan have a brawl so awesome that it reopens the path between Mist and Kaipo. To me, this is the essence of Final Fantasy.
Edge is horny.
Rosa's freaking the fuck out and even without dialogue this is better character development than she got throughout all of the original FF4. She obviously loves Cecil yet is independent enough to be fucking god damn scared of sacrificing part of that independence for the one she loves.
Cid makes airships and Baigan's the new commander of the Red Wings. Yes, he's still not evil! Go figure.
Next, the wedding scene where all the old characters show up. Baigan is Cecil's best man, and apparently Cecil's now adopting Rydia because why not.
Also since Rydia's still a kid now we get Palom hitting on Rydia. OK, sure.
Meanwhile Rosa's still freaking out and probably a little drunk.
If nothing else this hack made Rosa into an actual fucking character and I'll give props just for that.
But in the end, she goes through with it. Maybe. Probably. Does it matter, it's not like we're going to get a sequel of this shit.
After that, we get a montage of each character returning a crystal to a specific place, one important to the character.
Most of these make sense. Rydia to the Feymarch, the twins to the North Pole or whatever the Ice Cavern is called. Others are kinda given a place by default, like Rosa to Bahamut's Lagoon, or Cid to Giott's Castle.
Yang and Edward return their respective kingdoms' castles, of course, while Tellah gets stuck with Troia. I'm sure he's not complaining.
And of course Cecil gets to return the Water Crystal to the place where he murdered a bunch of people.
Happy Ending!
OH YEAH THIS ENTIRE HACK WAS A PREQUEL TO EITHER FF1 OR FF3 SO SUCK IT
I'm leaning FF3 since that game's plot was all about darkness, plus Dissidia is already FF1's prequel apparently. Yes, really.
Next time you critique a FF fan game or ROM hack's story, don't forget Final Fantasy has always been god damn stupid plot-wise.
Glad to finally finish this! The first time I played and streamed this, I got stuck in the underworld, and I'm glad to be able to finally finish it. For the most part I enjoyed the hack, it's not perfect (of the characters I focused on, Rydia became much more one-note and Paladin Cecil's not really improved even with more White Magic) but it definitely improves the gameplay a good bit (Edward's useful now, Rosa's got nice utility with her offense, and even a few borderline generic characters like Kain and Yang feel like they gain some utility with some added tankishness). Plus the story is insane and that's the most important quality to me in a jRPG.
Anyway, I'm not quite done yet, as I still need to show off Cid and Tellah's side-quests. Plus there's special endings if you beat the game with Cecil solo, both as a Paladin and as a Dark Knight. And maybe I'll futz around to give whatever interesting tidbits I find.
Until then!