CoN 25th Anniversary: 1997-2022
Most of the Party Members Are Useless

Posted: 24th May 2012 00:48

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Seriously, this game takes quite a bit of leveling up, and even after hours of doing so the characters are still really weak.. So I tried a strategy this time around that I thought of when I was a kid. Kill all the characters except Cecil.. Seriously. When I was a kid I got frustrated with trying to keep the weaker characters alive, so I would just kill them.

Every time I've played Final Fantasy IV I have used only Cecil (except for the point when Kain is with you on the Mist mission) until the point where he becomes a Paladin.

I don't make it a secret that story-wise, IV is easily my faovrite Final Fantasy, but couldn't they have done more to make the support characters useful instead of making them nothing but a burden to keep alive?

Not even Yang, powerful as he is, is very useful and I couldn't rememebr why, until I started playing yesterday and realized how much he misses his attacks, both normal and powered, especially during boss fights.. I'm fighting Cagnazzo right now and Yang is useless. He literally lands less than one strike per ten turns.. This is after much leveling..

I realize that this starts to shift, gradually, as you progress through the game and gain new characters, but the support characters in the beginning are not even worth keeping alive and I'm kind of feeling disappointed in my favorite FF (now that I'm older) for being this way.

Is this an issue in any of the handheld remakes? Or have things been changed?

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 24th May 2012 00:54

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Posted: 24th May 2012 02:48

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I kinda agree. For example, in the early-game, Rydia and Tellah don't have much MP and you're very hesitant to use magic--which means saving it for those special cases when you actually need magic, and otherwise leaving them to whack away at things doing either negligible damage or missing altogether much of the time. If I recall correctly, I was flat out amazed when Rydia was able to 1HKO those frogs with the ice rod or something.

Later on, Rydia has much better hit rate--on par with the usual physical attackers. However, she still hits for relatively little damage and--her biggest weakness--has very little HP.

Yang doesn't have that great a hit rate either. He's more of a damage-soaker than a great offense.

Edward, strangely, was actually rather useful, provided you kept his HP up. He actually had a decent hit rate when you first got him in your party--he hit almost as much as Cecil did, and actually did reasonable (albeit not as much as Cecil) damage--which was a huge contrast to Tellah and Rydia failing miserably. And you didn't need to spend MP to do this.

Rosa's somewhat useful, but mostly only as a healer, despite her pretty decent offense (think Edward's attack power, but even better hit rate and not hiding).

Cid has lots of HP and can hit stuff. That actually made him pretty useful.

Edge can hit stuff but is a bit lacking in HP. That makes him a little less useful than Cid in many cases...but then Edge also has some magic, and the ability to steal items, which helps.

FuSoYa has a mediocre hit rate for his normal attacks--not as terrible as early-game Rydia and Tellah. On the other hand his magic is rather constrained (at 190 MP, though at least he has more than Tellah does). So while he's totally cool, he's not all that useful.

Kain is basically Cid but with less HP, Jump, better defense, and no free Peep. So yeah, Kain is actually pretty useful...if only he'd not bat for both teams.

Palom and Porom have the same crappy mage (no-)hit-rate, though I think they have more MP than the two early-game mages, making them somewhat more useful. Plus, given that you get them for Mt. Ordeals, it is pretty decent that both of them can hurt zombies with their magic.

Golbez...now that man can pack a punch physically AND magically. And he's even got a summon!

FYI I'm talking about the SNES US version here ("Final Fantasy II").

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 24th May 2012 02:49

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Posted: 24th May 2012 18:42

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I'm currently playing the PS1 Version that came in a package with Chrono Trigger (Final Fantasy Chronicles).

The twins were less than useful during the Mt Ordeals trial. When I was younger I spent a whole lot of time leveling. After hours and hours you can eventually raise the twins' HP enough to keep them alive during the boss battle on top of the maountain... but Tellah is up there to help and has enough HP, along with white and black magic, so there isn't much point struggling to keep them in the fight. I get to use them one turn and then they're dead.

I haven't played IV in a long time, but I don't really remember Edge being terribly weak.. I do remember having to level him though, like every other character, before he has enough HP to be of much real use in battle.

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Posted: 25th May 2012 04:25

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I found every character except FuSoYs to be useful, in their own way. Sure, Cecil is your main man til ordeals is done, but even before that, if you train Palom up to know Bio and all the second level spells, he's great. The choco summon is great, too so far as it goes before that. I don't care for Edward either, though. Later on, Edge becomes a pain in the ass to keep alive, and I always find him to be underleveled. Still, by end game, every character on your team is clinch.

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Posted: 26th May 2012 00:01

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The mage characters are slightly more useful early on if you use staff/rod abilities. Even the basic staff cures Poison and the basic Rod uses a non-elemental magic attack. I usually kept child!Rydia, Tellah, Palom, and Porom in the back row and spammed Cure staff/elemental rods most of the time. Going through Baron with the twins is a lot easier if you get the Dancing Dagger from Mist since it does a fair bit of damage when used as an item.

Edward is underrated. He has pitiful HP and damage, but he inflicts status ailments fairly well with his harps. Sleeping or Confusing an enemy is pretty helpful if you remember not to knock it out of Sleep/Confusion.

Yang... just, Yang. I don't like Yang. At all. His high HP makes him come off as tough, but since his selection of armour is poor, it just means that you'll need to heal more HP when he gets hit. Kick is just useless the majority of the time.

Rosa's a White Mage, so even with a bow I don't expect much from her. Still, she does hit flying enemies fairly hard. Cid's alright too, if only because he just smashes things hard and doesn't need much else to think about.

The handheld remakes do make them more useful, especially since the GBA/PSP versions let you switch your party members. The GBA/PSP versions add a bonus dungeon which has the sole purpose of giving Edward, Yang, Cid, Porom, and Palom exclusive gear—most of the stuff they get in the bonus Mt. Ordeals dungeon is actually better than what the original party can get—plus it adds a bonus dungeon after the end of the game where everyone can get new stuff. Porom can substitute for Rosa, but Palom is pointless compared to Rydia. Cid still gets a ton of power and health. Edward has lower HP than freaking Rydia, but he's not to be underestimated: he's fast and he can 9999 zombie dragons with Apollo's Harp. Yang... has a glitch in the GBA version which stunts his HP growth, making him once again freaking useless.

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Posted: 26th May 2012 00:55

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We had a big ol' topic about this some years ago: check it

My conclusions in that topic stem from having JUST played the GBA remake when it was posted. I still agree with myself for the most part.

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Posted: 28th May 2012 22:16

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Interesting how my opinions have changed over time, despite my having barely played FFIV since then. I think I've played a bit of FF4 Advance, and that's it. Seems like my previous assessment was based largely on the range of skills each character had access to.

My only big differences have to do with FuSoYa and Cid. I still find Kain not-that-useful, I still find Edward more-useful-than-not.

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Yang... has a glitch in the GBA version which stunts his HP growth, making him once again freaking useless.


Really?

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Posted: 29th May 2012 01:16

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Not sure if it's a glitch or not, but Yang's HP stops growing once you get to around 6,000 to 6100. That's a decently high number, but Yang doesn't have much in the way of defenses, and one of his defining characteristics before you hit that threshold is his high HP. A few levels later and Cecil, Kain, Cid, and even Edge pass him in the HP department. I wouldn't say the "glitch" makes Yang useless, but it definitely makes him less useful. I stand by my claims in that older linked thread.

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Posted: 29th May 2012 16:32

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I actually quite liked Kain. If I had an enemy that could often one-shot my whole party with a move, I'd keep him Jump'd, so that we would often miss it, or mass Poisons/Confuses so that he could bring everyone back to playable, then put him back up in the air. That helped me several times.

A lot of the support characters weren't that great, though. Definitely didn't appreciate having to level so much for a character when
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
I knew that character wasn't going to stick around for too long
, but the story really helped keep it interesting instead of feeling like a hassle.



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Posted: 29th May 2012 17:13

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Quote (laszlow @ 28th May 2012 20:16)
Not sure if it's a glitch or not, but Yang's HP stops growing once you get to around 6,000 to 6100. That's a decently high number, but Yang doesn't have much in the way of defenses, and one of his defining characteristics before you hit that threshold is his high HP. A few levels later and Cecil, Kain, Cid, and even Edge pass him in the HP department. I wouldn't say the "glitch" makes Yang useless, but it definitely makes him less useful. I stand by my claims in that older linked thread.

Oh, I see. That sounds like a glitch.

Is this the result of them not updating Yang's HP data in the process of making him a permanent playable character?

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Posted: 29th May 2012 21:01

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I'm guessing it's not a glitch. They seemed to put very deliberate "caps" on some character growth, like Tellah's magic power slowing and eventually decreasing if you gain too many levels with him. I'm guessing they knew exactly where they wanted Yang to be at his top tier and had accelerated growth at the beginning of his cycle of levels rather than at the end.

And I agree that a lot of FF4 party members are pretty useless in the original versions of the game, but the PSP and GBA versions really helped make the non-original-final-five characters useful in their own ways through new equipment and different stat growth. You'd never think Edward would be a solid end of game character, but with his end-game equipment in Complete Collection, he had absolutely ludicrous speed, could deal amazing damage to undeads, and could give everyone Protect and Shell with a single song. Pretty dang useful.

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Posted: 30th May 2012 02:36

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According to the FF Wiki, it's a bug that originated in the SNES versions and carried over into the North Americian and initial Japanese GBA release. Odds are that they never noticed the bug because there's really no reason to level Yang up that high in the SNES version. (But I'd still think he's useless without the bug. X3)

Apparently once you get to level 70, stat changes become randomized—it's possible for stats to decrease as well as increase. There's one notable (spoony) exception to that, though.

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Posted: 25th July 2013 00:04

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Well, I don't know about all that, but I do agree that I could only survive if I leveled ridiculously, which I generally do with most games anyway. But I will give you a hint: Yang's !Kick is not helpful against single targets. For boss battles, use !Attack.
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Posted: 29th July 2013 19:57

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What's this about leveling?

There's really only three times I stop to grind in FF4 ( yes, the original version); After Cecil becomes a Paladin (kill everyone else off, catch him up, revive everyone), when I get Edge (kill everyone off, catch him up, revive everyone), and right before Asura (to learn Reflect).

Otherwise I breeze through this game. But then, I've only played it about forty five f***ing million times.

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Posted: 29th July 2013 21:08

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Quote (Spooniest @ 29th July 2013 19:57)
What's this about leveling?

Grinding is my thing. I probably spend about half the game leveling up. Why? Because I can. Does there need to be a reason?
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