Final Fantasy IV Part #34 - Cecil's Friends Wish He Would Conquer His Hatred

Part 34: Cecil's Friends Wish He Would Conquer His Hatred

Chapter 34 - Cecil's Friends Wish He Would Conquer His Hatred

Let's not delay this any further.

Video: Undying Hatred

Golbez! FuSoYa!

Golbez and FuSoYa go all out on Zemus, to little effect.

Do the Meteo now!

I'm ready!

This is just the beginning...... ...

The two combine their magic to create a powerful Meteo spell, killing Zemus.

...Yeah, I think Cecil really would have been better off just staying home. They didn't even need him to kill Zemus.

We defeated him.

It's a pity. He was consumed with evil and could not use his powers for good.

Man! I was to get Zemus!

Cecil...

Death only increased Zemus' hatred!

......It's no use! ...... Use the Crystal!

You, the man of Darkness using it does not mean anything to me, you fools!

Well...shit.

...Suffer... And...perish... My hatred will last until I destroy all... Now it's your turn... Come into my darkness!

Of course it's not over yet. We've still got one of the most badass moments of the entire game to go!

I highly, highly, highly recommend watching the video.

Video: Wishing for a Better Future

Master!

They are in danger!

Ahuh!

You veterans know what time it is. It's time for the fucking Prologue.

And thus our friends and allies wish/pray for Cecil the strength to fight Zeromus.

Cecil...!

Show us what true courage is!

We are all waiting for you!!

Come back alive!

For Mother Earth!

Stand up!

You're our last hope!

Wake up, dude!

Cecil...and everyone!

We've got the wishes of everyone at home supporting us, and we've got the power of the crystals on our side.

It's time to finish this.

That said, we're... kind of not in a good position right now.

Cecil!

Here's our power!

Do your best!

Don't give it up!

Concentrate!

Hold on to it!

Bless him, Moon!

My dear brother! Let your sacred power be with the Crystal!

The Prologue's still playing right now. Zeromus won't actually attack right now, which gives us time to buff if we wanted. It's not necessary, though. In other versions, Edge could use this time to steal a unique item called Dark Matter, which is supposed to weaken Zeromus's signature attack. We can't do that here, though.

While Zeromus can't attack us, we can't attack him, either.

That's where the Crystal comes into play.

You know what a proper final battle needs? Super awesome music. Here's Zeromus's theme, which I highly recommend you listen to.

This is Zeromus, the final boss. EasyType actually has a different form for him, but I prefer this...monstrosity.

Edge's job is to throw all the useless junk I've stocked up, starting with the Excalbur.

Rydia's job is to throw all her firepower at this thing.

Of course, Zeromus likes to counter with Nukes of his own.

Sadly, Cecil's immune to Berserk, but he's still doing big damage with his Crystal sword,

This is Zeromus's signature attack, Big Bang. It inflicts Sap and does pretty major damage. Of course, it doesn't look like it here, but the battle's barely started.

What really sucks is that I had Edge ready to throw the Spoon when he died. The Spoon then disappeared, and I don't think he threw it during the fight. Thus I think by dying before he could throw it, Edge lost the Spoon, which really fucking sucks because who doesn't want to kill Zeromus with a fucking Spoon?

Now Zeromus is putting on the hurt.

Black Hole nullifies all buffs and debuffs.

Zeromus doesn't use all his attacks on me, like Weak, but he does have more tricks up his sleeve.

Once Zeromus gets very low in health, he starts spamming Meteo. It's actually easy to avoid and doesn't hurt much, so it ends up pretty underwhelming compared to Big Bang.

Of course, Zeromus is a cakewalk here, but he can be pretty damn tough in other versions. Big Bang will ravage the party much more than it does here.

But hey, it's only hatred. Everybody knows Hatred's biggest weakness is a Dragon King.

Video: Victory

We saved the world.

I didn't know you people had such power. Your people might have been further along than us Lunarians.

No doubt!

But Zeromus' last words...

As long as there is evil in the hearts of people...

Evil in our minds will never disappear... We all have both evil and good in our mind, just as there are the crystals of Light and Darkness, the ground and underground. But as long as the evil exists, so does good. Just as you help good in your heart to fight evil.

Evil and good, dark and light, a common theme in Final Fantasy. Our protagonist did horrible things under the guise of dark, but nevertheless was still a good person the entire time. He embraced the light, and was certainly far from perfect, but he still came through. I guess the dark are easily manipulated, as Cecil did the King's bidding as a Dark Knight, and it wasn't until he became a Paladin that he truly obtained his own freedom. Look at how easily Golbez and Kain succumbed to evil, despite both being good people in the end. They let their jealousy and hatred overcome them in moments of weakness, because of the darkness in their hearts. It was only through Cecil's compassion and selflessness that the crystals could manifest the power necessary to expose Zeromus.

That said, I wish this game was more like FF3, where dark and light was made distinct from good and evil, where there were heroes of darkness who actually had to protect the world from light. Here, darkness is associated with evil, such as Golbez. While Cecil was a good person of darkness, he had to turn to light to save the world. I would've loved to see Cecil keep his dark side and win at the end with his dark blades. Golbez tried, but his darkness meant he simply could not defeat Zeromus. Other than that, there's Kain as a dark good guy, but even then he was a villain half the time.

At any rate, I still enjoy Cecil's arc, and he alone sums up a lot of the themes that Square put into FF3 and FF4. I kind of wished these ideas progressed further, but soon enough the series would delve into much deeper themes.