Final Fantasy IV Advance Diary, Week 1

Only real men keep running diaries of RPGs they play

In all its handheld glory!

    I'll provide some brief back story here, but I really wanna keep these entries fast moving, punchy, and just not as verbose and rambling as many of my other posts. As you may or may not know, I've never played Final Fantasy IV (known as Final Fantasy II on the SNES. But you knew that) before. It's considered a classic of the RPG genre, and most people will say it's just a step below the god-like VI (also haven't played). Here's where I'm gonna run into flaming troll hate: Final Fantasy VII was the first FF I ever played. Hell, the first one I ever even heard of. I know, I know. It doesn't hold a candle to VI. Sephiroth is no Kefka. It's wildly overrated. Blah-de-fucking-blah. It was an amazing game for the time (still damn fun now), and while I had some familiarity with turn-based RPGs (Breath of Fire being the first one I had ever played), I wasn't in love with them, and FFVII changed that for me. Maybe it's not the best game in the franchise, and I'm willing to allow that, but it holds a very special place in my heart. Not to mention my dad and I obsessed over it when we got it. Some of the best memories I have.
    Enough of that mushy shit. After VII, we played VIII. Great, but not quite as good. I remember feeling let down with VIII. Then IX came out. Then X. I assume you guys know how to count up from seven? The point is, going forward, I played all the games that came out. I never reached back to the past to play the older ones. That stops right here.
    Now, traditionally, when I beat a game, I do a "B-LOG SLAYING" write-up. Generally, these are long, and they can take me days to write them. Imagine me, keeping pages upon pages of detailed notes about this game, only to write a 10,000 word post on after I beat it? Not to mention, that post would take me a full week, or longer, to really bang out. That sounds very un-fun to me. I've figured out a great way to circumvent that rigmarole: just do weekly "diary" entries! I generally play on my lunch break, for anywhere between 45 minute and an hour. Once I finish my daily play session, I make some notes, and that's that. So probably every Thursday, I'll upload those notes here. I'll try to include story progress, general thoughts, cons/pros, and I'll still go over the bosses. I haven't decided if this is completely in lieu of a "B-LOG SLAYING", or if I'll compile a much shorter one afterwards, from my various diary notes. I'll probably do that.
    So, venerable readers, follow me through the amazing world of Final Fantasy IV!
    [Note I'm also going to include the date of each day, and even how long I played during that day!]

DAY 1 (12/8/14. PLAYTIME: 0:00 TO 0:57)

 

    Today I got through the intro, and got to play a bit. Right off the bat, I like the story: a once-noble king is suddenly murdering (annihilating is a better word) innocent people, all to procure mystical crystals. In fact, you start the game by murdering some innocent people. He even dupes the main character (Cecil is his name. God, great name) into killing an entire village of people (save one little girl). Pretty fucked up, really. I'm very interested to see where the story is going to go. Overall, I greatly enjoyed my first hour with the game. This game session probably had the least amount of time of me actually playing the game, because it sets up story, and there's lots of dialogue to get through. Here are some additional thoughts I had for my first hour (all of a sudden, I'm in love with bullet lists):

• The graphics are great. They look spectacular on my Gameboy Advance SP. Compared to screenshots of the original, definitely an improvement
• Cecil is fucking fast. When you're running through dungeons/towns, he moves like he has no time to fuck around. I personally love this. 
• There are lots of random encounters. I'm okay with this, as I sort of expected it. It can get tedious, but it can be overlooked
• Finally, at the very end of my session, I got access to the Chocobo summon. It's pretty cool

BOSS:

Mist Dragon:

Very misty indeed

    This is the first boss of the game, and as such, he's a piece of cake. My strategy was to just whale on him with both Cecil and Kain (god I love these names). He will occasionally turn to mist, and during this time, it would be a bad idea to attack him. If you do, he will unleash a decently powerful attack in response. Otherwise his normal attack is laughable weak. So, when he's mist, just defend or heal as needed. Nothing to worry about here.

I just thought this guy looked ridiculous. Look at those teeth

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DAY 2 (12/9/14. PLAY TIME: 0:58 TO 1:40)

    I spent my entire almost hour just running through an underground waterway. Right at the end of yesterday's session, I rescued a little girl named Rydia (the one from the village. I may or may not have inadvertently murdered her mother. Whoopsy...). At any rate, even though she's a little girl, she kicks ass. She's a summoner who can also use black and white magic. Unfortunately, I believe she's level one when you get her. It's easy enough to level her though. Also, at the beginning of this cave, I found an old sage named Tellah. He's an old man with big glasses and crazy white hair. I love his look. He also uses black and white magic, but he's much stronger than Rydia (considering he's level 20 when you find him, makes sense). They can be very strong using their magic, but their MP gets depleted pretty quickly. And with few ethers, it kind of puts me in a crappy spot. Do I use their magic and wreck everyone, or not use it, conserve it, and essentially have them be useless in combat? I do a little of both. Once I get the chance, I will need to keep a health amount of ethers on hand. A few miscellaneous though:

• This session wasn't nearly as story intensive as yesterday. It was almost all just running though this dumb cave. 
• Still LOTS of random encounters. Breath of Fire level!
• I like the animation on all the magic so far

BOSS: 

    Actually, no bosses today. I know I'm very close to one, though. And, according to the characters, he's got eight tentacles to boot!

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DAY 3 (12/10/14. PLAY TIME: 1:41 TO 2:27)

    Okay, big day today. It was the exact opposite of yesterday, really. In less than an hour, I fought two bosses and saw an entire castle full of people get massacred. Lots of story going on, so let's go over it: I started from the undergound cave and almost immediately fought the boss here: the octomammoth. I killed him easily enough and made my way to Damcyan, which appears to just be a castle. Even though it looks like a town from the world map, all you can go into is a castle. The king and his Red Wings (some specialized military unit, of which Cecil used to be a part) bomb the castle and steal another crystal. You get to witness the destruction. Tellah's daughter, Anna, is killed. She was there with her boyfriend/fiancee Edward, who happens to be a prince. Tellah disapproved of his daughter running away with a bard (they didn't know he was a prince). Tellah leaves in a rage, to find the new leader of the Red Wings. He leaves your party. But don't worry, because Prince Edward joins! He sucks. Hugely. Where Rydia and Tellah had magic/summons, he has...a harp? He doesn't have magic, persay, but he can "sing" during battle, which I believe deals a random status effect to an enemy. He can also "heal", which heals everyone in the party, which is nice. Too bad it's only for 14-16 HP. When Cecil has 300+, this is not at all helpful. Finally, he can "hide". Yup, he runs off the screen. I assume he can't be attacked during this. He also can't do anything else. He's completley worthless so far. 
    Anyway, after this happens, you go (on a hovercraft!) and find the antlion cave. It holds the sand ruby, which you need to cure your good friend (girlfriend?) Rosa of desert fever. You get to the end, kill a goofy-looking antlion, get the sand ruby, and leave the cave. That's where I shut it off. Phew! This session had lots of fighting and lots of story. Overall, it was great. While I didn't get much insight into what the hell the deal with the king is, there's a possible new foil in Golbez, who is the new leader of the Red Wings. Hopefully the next session is as intense as this one. So, notes, shall we?

• kind of disappointing that there are two cave-type dungeons in a row. They are aestethically basically exactly the same. At least the antlion cave is short
• As I said, Edward sucks. What a garbage character
• So far, it's been more of the same: random encounter heaped onto random encounter. Still very enjoyable though

BOSS:

Octomammoth:

Look at this psychotic bastard!

    He's pretty easy, even though he kind of looks intimidating. It seems magic doesn't hurt him (mine only did one damage), but summons, and espeically physical attacks, do. In fact, Cecil's physical attacks were much more powerful than normal. At any rate, Tellah is relegated to a healer/buffer in this battle. My strategy was to whale on him with Cecil, have Rydia summon Chocobo, and have Tellah heal or use blink when necessary (I believe blink makes it harder for enemies to hit you. This is great to use for Rydia and Tellah, because Octo here does decent damage to them. When blink is active, he usually misses). With this strategy, I was able to fairly easily overcome this many-armed goofball. 




Antlion: 

Speaking of goofballs...

    He looks less like a menacing foe and more like someone swiped the rest of his drugs, and he's not handling it well. But, he's also pretty easy. You no longer have Tellah, so his strong black magic (or even his white magic if you wanna use it) is gone. No matter though. I used a similar strategy to Octomammoth: physical attacks with Cecil, Chocobo with Rydia, and basically just let Edward sit, useless as a sack of trash. I ended up using his "heal", because while it sucks for Cecil, Edward has so little HP that 16 is a decent amount for him (even for Rydia, although she's right on the cusp of not benefiting from it anymore). That's all I did until he was dead. Again, pretty simple. I love his look though. I mean, just look at that bastard!





    Okay, folks, that's all for this week! In general, I'd like to get 3-5 sessions in a week. This week was only three. I plan on blogging hard next week, so it might be a little light. Don't worry, I'll be playing almost every day anyway, so the blog posts won't be far behind! Thanks for reading, and hopefully you enjoyed this little slice into Final Fantasy IV Advance.