Good point. Suggestions about what to do with it?
Hmm, maybe a graphics call of Haste on the party and Slow on the enemy? Or perhaps a Lit-1 graphic hitting the party to show higher speed? It's a difficult thing to show since it's a dual effect in a system that doesn't naturally use such things.
Yeah, I'll have to look back through your notes about magic-imbued weapons to refresh my memory on how to make spell and attack animation effects together, then give some thought to a proper spell animation.
You and I talked about it, and the decision was that as long as elemental monsters still had a chance to kill the player, then their presence was passable... The situation will be under ongoing review, though...
That's true and as the game has gone on I've seen where these rings seem all but essential to access some side content or to defeat bosses that you aren't meant to defeat in such manners. It's fair for now then.
Well, unless I've erred, you only have one headband. And this is a status-heavy battle...
Not if you have Blank, that gives you two Headbands, heh. Blind isn't really the problem in that fight I feel. Curse is the issue at hand. Blind is moderately irritating but Curse is a "Heal Now or Die!" sort of status. It also doesn't provide much defense in any measure. Against the Gaea Hat and the Headband it seems difficult to justify its purchase.
Yeah... Furio is supposed to only have access to a leather cap unless you hire Blank, thus only one headband. If you started with or in some other way acquired a second one, that's a mistake. Regarding Curse against the tentacles, it doesn't happen if you refrain from using Fight on the second form (you can still dart, etc).
Yes. As a matter of fact, P/P provide very little benefit beyond healing. The tentacles use an invisible full-cure ehren hit by Palom's magic. The real key is a strong non-Palom lightning assault.
With Thunder Kunai only and Lit Arrows, I assume? I'm not sure I agree with an invisible full-heal in this case, especially since there's no indication that Black Magic isn't doing anything. Wouldn't it have been more reasonable to just give them high magic defense that Palom couldn't break through indicating to the player that this plan of action can't work?
It's kind of a "guide dang it," I admit, but given the once-only really cool prize, and the fact that all you
need to do is outlast the tentacles to survive, I'm happy with it.
I find Cinna to be the best hired companion against the tentacles, as his lit spells still work.
That's also why it can't have high magic defense, I want Palom and Porom to be of little help, but not your hired sidekick. Never tried the battle with Ruby, but I can vouch for the possibility of beating the boss with a Furio/Blank party and a Furio/Cinna party.
It's my dream to eventually put in a card game, but the full version 1 has to be completed first. The ROM will almost definitely need to be expanded, which would break FF4kster compatibility.
Even still, I have no plans or ideas how I would make it work...
I do wish that we could somehow change FF4kster to look at offsets rather than see what the whole rom is doing at a given time. It may be something to ask PinkPuff about down the line. I am all for mini-games in FFIV. Even with some creative thinking you could make some mini-games out of the battle system.
He does show shades of a tender side up on the Highwind Pass, but mostly he's meant to be kind of an asshole. Sort of I'm!portant to the story, as I think you know.
It's sort of refreshing to have a hero character who second-guesses the party's every move instead of blindly following along.
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Wow, you're able to steal Cure3's from Armadillo's in Mist Cave? Not sure if that's an oversight or reward for exploration.
I... Can't remember. But Armadillos are the rare encounter, so I think we'll keep it.
It may be a glitch ZSNES, but the Mist Cave's Mist is over top the cave's graphics so it's literally a wall of mist, granted that can be easily dealt with through getting rid of that background layer.
I think it's an emulator thing. I had the same issue using SNES9X, then I pressed some button, which didn't make the mist go away, but did indeed make it transparent.
I forgot to mention that I really like the Dark Wave animation you used for Ceodore, looks great!
This is my first time reaching Rydia with Ceodore, I rather like his addition in the dialogue and the clear idea that he prefers being called "Ceo" over "Ceodore". Nice touch!
After Ceodore says "But-!" Rydia says "Don't worry aout me."
Oops. Putting that on the list
Well, I barely survived the fight with the Mist Dragon. Am I wrong, or can you not hit it physically At All anymore? I noticed you can hit it physically while it's Mist but that has a really nasty counter attack and rather low damage for the effort. I did manage to steal the Dragon Claws though, so that will be nice. Only Rydia and Furio were left alive at the end there.
Physical attacks should work fine against dragon form. She should also be impervious to magic once she first takes dragon form. If that's not what happens, then something is wrong.
So Highwind Pass is now completable? Perfect! I'll give my full review of that in short order. First I better pick up some items though. I ran out of Life Potions in the battle with the Mist Dragon.
It seems like enemies have been much better balanced despite Rydia heavily increasing the party's level average the enemies are still reasonable to fight.
After about 15 minutes of fast-forwarding I finally caught a Chocobo! So I'll be able to see what this cave is. I'm still not sure on the wisdom of having the Chocobo be so rare, but maybe I just got really unlucky. That would have easily been 45 minutes to an hour in real time though.
Did you know they're more plentiful in forests? About a 20% encounter rate. Fat Chocobo does say that. The
easiest catch, though, is in the desert, where you face a chocobo and a single basilisk, who won't use petrify because of the chocobo.
...And that would be why Chocobo are so rare in these parts. 15 Speed from the Feather Ring, goodness gracious!
Hah, Chocobos can travel over the Shallows, that's likely going to be important later.
Jump Points in Highwind Pass, hmm? Neat idea.
This is an impressive map you put together here, it really shows the detail of the underwater basin map tiles!
Hmm, I assume there is no way to reach that outcropping just to the North of the cave entrance is there?
Well... Did you go back and talk to the Fat Chocobo after you caught a chocobo?
Oh hey, new music and new tileset to make the mountain Icy, nice touch!
That battle background looks great! I especially love the pink sunset.
Wow, Ice Claws from Leopards! Nice Steal indeed.
No more ice-weak bosses for a good long while, so at this point I figured it was OK
Wait a second here... how did you break one of the overriding commandments of FFIV? Thou Shalt Have the Main Character in the middle of the screen at all times? NPC versions of Furio for each screen? That's going pretty far for a cinematic effect!
Not just a Furio NPC on each screen, but custom ASM that forces him to your position every time you get to a jump point. To quote John Hammond in Jurassic Park, "we've spared no expense."
And that's the game... killed by the Grenade.
I wasn't sure about this music before, but now that I see how it's being used it fits very well!
New plan give the Feather Ring to Rydia so she can hit the Grenade before it explodes.
Hmm, a FireBomb, a nice enough prize for the effort it takes with a little planning.
Another Grenade another party wipe...
I might have forgotten to adjust the grenades to make them tough-but-reasonable. If you blitz them with attacks you should be able to survive the basically-inevitable (at your current level) explosion. Clearly that's not the case. Sorry...
So the Ghost Knight used "Absorb" which started to petrify one of my Party Members.
Mistake. I don't think they're supposed to do anything but fight and be undead, but I also don't remember ever writing their AI.
Whoops...
Well, Level 20 so Furio now has Pin, that will be useful. Did you plan on doing anything with Smoke? I'm sure you're aware it's entirely useless.
Um, well, I plan to take it out, but I still don't know what to put in there. Maybe I'll just nix it altogether...
Ah great! Another Cure Staff. I did forget to take mine off of Porom when she left anyhow.
Finally, a Save Point!
You even added an icy background for in caves, it looks wonderful!
That Snow Dragon does not fool around, but he does have Ether2's to Steal. Let's get the Frozen Ring back on Rydia then.
A new sword for Ceodore, neat. But... the name "Broadsword" is a bit misleading. Broadswords in FF are normally the first weapon one gets. Since this raises Vitality and Will by 5 it should probably have something more fitting like "Knight" or "Blessed" or something of that ken.
Maybe "knight," but definitely not "blessed." It's mostly just supposed to be a sword that is stronger than "steel," but not dark like "darkness."
Well! Running into Kain out of nowhere was unexpected! Considering he's dead and all.
Hmm, Kain's attacking animation looks strange, not so much Kain himself, but the Deathbringer is a fair distance away from him when he swings it... the wrong way.
Yeah, I have to research character battles a bit when I get the time. Eventually I want to make him swing a spear (and with his hand, not with the air five feet in front of him)
Also the delay between Kain landing and attacking afterwards seems a bit extreme.
Oh I see, that delay automatically is killing every living party member that's not Ceodore.
Alright, so it's not a Cecil-to-Paladin sort of deal you are expected to win...
Seems as if I'll need to put the Feather Ring on Ceodore to even keep up with Kain. This actually is a rather powerful combo with the Darkness Armor since it gives him some much needed Attack Multipliers without losing one.
We'll see if Vitality is worth the drop though.
Ah, you can inflict Blind on Kain! Nice usage of Status!
While the fight is a great idea I wonder if Kain has a little too much HP, once you inflict Blind the fight is all but a foregone conclusion and that delay in some of Kain's actions really hurts the flow of it all. Granted my Ceodore was only Level 17, maybe it's different at higher levels.
Did you know Ceo can use the cure staff? That's one important piece here. Kain has to have high HP because it is possible for Rydia to get off two elemental 3 spells before she dies. If he had less than 8000 HP or so, she would have the potential to sabotage the whole thing. Super powerful Rydia has been a huge challenge in creating this hack. I'll be really relieved once she leaves, which unfortunately doesn't happen for a good while still.
All in all, an interesting concept. I am curious if we will find out more of who would be raising the ghosts of the dead to fight on their behalf.
Oh, it's really Kain. His spirit inhabits the Pass that bears his name. It's his legacy. And he really is warning Ceo that some bad things will happen if they continue on. Of course, Kain is also a flawed character and doesn't always see the best way to achieve the greater good. None of this is explained, by the way, it's just how I conceptualize it. In the end, it's just an interesting boss fight and a nice scene. Works well to keep you scratching your head about what kind of guy Ceo really is, too.
Ah, FFII SNES with your amazingly obvious secret passages. Probably the reason there's nothing too ground breaking in that cache.
So, that's the end of the demo. A fantastic new addition! I really liked the dungeon, but a few oddities here...
The pictures above showed another battle with Shiva along with Rydia mentioning something about her magic. Were these beta plans and had to be changed as the story demanded, or are they just not fully implemented yet?
OK, something went seriously wrong here. Clearly you were able to use magic throughout the Highwind Pass, hence your reliance on Rydia despite not having won the Scourge whip from the tentacles.
When you get to the first snowy screen in the dungeon, there should be a conversation where all the characters notice that their magic is being blocked. That same event turns on the flag that blocks magic use, both in and out of battle. I will have to look into why that event never took place.
Regarding the Shiva battle, it's still there, but only if you make the choice on Mt Ordeals that does
not result in fighting her
there. If you defeat Shiva on the Highwind Pass, it breaks the magic seal,
but, then you'll never be able to acquire the Shiva summon later on if/when Furio becomes the Mystic. It's one epic choice early on that functions as a linchpin for a lot of things.
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