Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic

I hate to burden all of you with two news updates in a single morning, but this news tidbit was too juicy to ignore. 1up.com has released a final preview of Final Fantasy IV Advance, detailing the new dungeons and returning characters. I'll cover their preview to the best of my ability, saving you all the trouble of reading the 1up article yourselves.

To refresh your memory, FF IV Advance provides improved graphical textures, new menu portraits, and a refined translation compared to any previous version of the game, plus adds two new optional dungeons and a means for replacing characters in and out of your party. The game's difficulty is the same as it was in the original Japanese "Hardtype." For better or for worse, several spell names have changed, using the ara and aga suffixes rather than the oldschool numerals and changing Meteo to Meteor (I personally find that last edit disgraceful).

After defeating the Giant of Babil, you can replace Kain, Rosa, Rydia, or Edge with Palom, Porom, Cid, Edward, or Yang, each of whom was in your party sometime earlier in the story. Each of the five returning characters have had adjusted stats to make them useful in the new lategame. Cid "is a total hoss", featuring superior HP and Defense compared to other characters and Edward, while as frail as ever, is adept at inflicting status effects with his harps (far more so now than on the SNES). After re-recruiting these five characters, your party can return to Mount Ordeals for a short but intense 8-floor dungeon whose end features five new powerful weapons, one for each of your returning characters. Yang's weapon is the holy-elemental Hand of the Gods, Cid's is the randomly-Thundaga-casting Thor's Hammer, Edward's is called Apollo's Harp, Palom's the Triton's Dagger, and Porom's the Seraphim Mace.

If that wasn't enough for you, there is still another optional endgame dungeon, The Lunar Ruins found on the Moon. Once you've beaten the game, this new dungeon is unlocked, featuring nine special sealed gates, one corresponding to each character, with Palom and Porom sharing the same gate. In each gate, you'll first need to endure a brutal dungeon that makes the Path to the Core "look like a cakewalk." The early levels of the Lunar Ruins feature monsters that we're already familliar with, like Behemoths, Minds, and Wicked Faces from the final dungeon, but the lower levels include new monsters that are more difficult than any random encounter in the game. At the end of each of the sealed gate dungeons, you'll need to take the associated character along for a special trial - these trials range from Yang taking on dozens of powerful Monks to an airship-flying minigame for Cid. At the end of each set of trials we fight a beefed-up Lunar version of one of Rydia's summons, with HP ranging from 90,000 to more than 120,000. Beating each Lunar Summon will net you a new powerful piece of equipment and a special item called a Grimoire. Getting all nine Grimoires will unlock the game's ultimate challenge - "an unbelievably difficult fight that should make aficionados of FFIV trivia particularly happy."

So that's the game. This seems to be very similar and at the same time very different from the Dawn of Souls remake - there are a great deal of new features but instead of dumbing down the gameplay experience, it's more hardcore than ever. All of the information I've provided is derived from Gamespot's screenshots archive and 1up's detailed preview linked in the first paragraph. Final Fantasy IV Advance is released December 12th, 2005 in the US.

This post has been edited by laszlow on 30th November 2005 12:15

--------------------

this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

Total and complete awesomeness. That's all I can say.

--------------------

If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Absolutely agreed. I really liked having the additional elements added to FF1 in Dawn of Souls, but it seems that they are really outdoing themselves with this one. It's really a shame that their most interesting work seems to be reserved for patching old games these days, but I'm not going to complain. This is the first Squenix news that has really piqued my interest in quite a while.

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Wow. It's actually been a long time since I've been excited about the release of a game. But, like Josh, you have succeeded in piquing my interest. It looks like they've really stepped it up a notch to make it more difficult for the people who've played it 9000 times (like myself). Can't wait for this.

--------------------

"When I turn the page
The corner bends into the perfect dog ear
As if the words knew I'd need them again
But at the time, I didn't see it."

~"This Ain't a Surfin' Movie" - Minus the Bear

It really is nice news: the added content and playabilty for the final dungeon is quite interesting, so it'll be really worth getting it. Good news indeed.

I personally don't find this information particularly entertaining. I do have a question, though: Is there some gameplay element that prevents more than five characters from being in your party? Such as, airship can't hold more tha 5 people (which shouldn't be the case, considering the opening ingame cutscenes)?

I like how they've decided to do something new with the "forgotten" characters, especially making them gameplay-useful. While my personal ideal party is the final party minus Kain plus FuSoYa, I still see this as a welcome addition, and who knows how well it'll play? Maybe it'll come out kickass.

However, that Lunar Ruins element doesn't seem like the best idea, in my opinion. Sure, it introduces new cool stuff, including what might possibly be mind-bogglingly difficult bosses, as well as new character-specific elements, but something seems...wrong with it. For one thing, it seems like the sort of super-difficult-super-complex dungeon that an inexperienced amateur game designer would come up with (I myself have done that before, and I know there's much more to an RPG than super-difficult bosses), and for another thing, it feels like it detracts somewhat from the original game.

I felt that all the original game needed was
(1) some stat tweaking, to make certain characters *coughRydiacoughTellahcough* less annoying to play,
(2) some algorithm modifications, to make certain spells more or less useful and to improve many skills (like, put back the dummied skills and summons, make Kick do more damage),
(3) a good overhaul of the dialogue (it wasn't too bad initially, but there was a lot of room for improvement),

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

(4) some plot tweakings here and there to smooth off the storyline (e.g., suddenly Cid decides out of nowhere to bomb the entrance to the underworld, along with himself!),

(5) small improvements to shopping and menu interface (such as ability to compare current equipment stats against shop item stats, and more intuitive menu terms than "change" and "row").
The overall plot, the music, and the basic gameplay of FFII (US) were satisfactory, in my opinion, and needed little changing; what needed improvement (in some cases deserving quite some) were plot details, script, and gameplay details. And I'd like to see such improvements.

Well, I'm thinking of the game more so being re-released in a sort of "perfect edition" with all the bugs and annoyances worked out, but all the good things kept as is. I'm not really thinking "enhanced remake" here. I'm not a huge fan of replaying a game, and again, as I've said before, the only RPG that I've replayed--which is also the RPG I, simply put, enjoyed playing the most--is Super Mario RPG. That game was simply fun.

But then again, I haven't played the Playstation re-release/remake (which one is it?). That might answer my wishes.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 29th November 2005 17:11

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

It sounds like it will be much more sucessful than Dawn of Souls. It's actually harder for pete's sakes.

Will the original moves that weren't in the US easytype (ie Dark Wave, Pray etc) still be there?

--------------------

Dead Winter. A nice comic.

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey)

The overall plot, the music, and the basic gameplay of FFII (US) were satisfactory, in my opinion, and needed little changing; what needed improvement (in some cases deserving quite some) were plot details, script, and gameplay details.  And I'd like to see such improvements.

In these broad terms, all of these things are improved upon in just about any other FF4 release, including J2E's frankly excellent unofficial translation. It goes without saying that these changes will make it through to the GBA as it's based on the original rather than FF2US or EasyType. The interface seems likely to be improved on the GBA as well - as there are new fonts and menu pictures, there wouldn't seem to be much reason to stick to an identical menu setup. I couldn't say whether all of your individual points would be addressed, but Square clearly isn't against a bit of tweakage, as evidenced by Dawn of Souls.

If it comes down to a choice between "Optional if loosely-connected extra hard dungeon" and "No such extra bits", I'd definitely go for the former. You could always ignore it, after all. Something that fits into and expands the plot might be nicer, but it's not such an easy addition to make without angering fans of the previous setup in some way. The original writers might not work at Square any more (Sakaguchi certainly doesn't, eh?) and if they are, they're probably working on the Next Big Thing™ rather than an enhanced port, and that makes it much more difficult to insert plot content appropriately. On the other hand, adding an additional dungeon based on trialling aspects we DO know about the characters is a much safer option.

Quote (Barrylocke)

Will the original moves that weren't in the US easytype (ie Dark Wave, Pray etc) still be there?

Preview says yes.

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 29th November 2005 19:03

This game will consume my winter holidays.

"an unbelievably difficult fight that should make aficionados of FFIV trivia particularly happy."

Who can this final boss be? Zeromus? KluYa? Culex!?

--------------------

Lou: There's a couple of guys fighting down at the aquarium, Chief.
Wiggum: Do they still sell those frozen bananas?
Lou: I think so.
Wiggum: Let's roll.

Quote (Jlombardi13 @ 29th November 2005 15:21)

Culex!?

That would be SO sweet if Culex finally starred in FFIV. With more HP, of course. ("65536" seems like an appropriately respectful number.)

Not to mention that all those internet rumours would suddenly be true.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 29th November 2005 16:56)

That would be SO sweet if Culex finally starred in FFIV. With more HP, of course. ("65536" seems like an appropriately respectful number.)

Not to mention that all those internet rumours would suddenly be true.

Well, FF4 battle music + crystals... it could work. The bit about FF4 trivia could apply to this guy, in the sense that FF4 fans knew that Culex wasn't in it (although Nintendo made that claim). It's a stretch, but who knows!

--------------------

Lou: There's a couple of guys fighting down at the aquarium, Chief.
Wiggum: Do they still sell those frozen bananas?
Lou: I think so.
Wiggum: Let's roll.

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 29th November 2005 15:56)

Quote (Jlombardi13 @ 29th November 2005 15:21)

Culex!?

That would be SO sweet if Culex finally starred in FFIV. With more HP, of course. ("65536" seems like an appropriately respectful number.)

Not to mention that all those internet rumours would suddenly be true.

A respectful number indeed, if a bit cliche, but a bit weak unless whatever it is has massive defense. The nine prebosses all have between 90k and 120k HP according to the first post of this thread.

--------------------

"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Culex...655356...?

A 100 exp. points to the first one to enlighten me.

Quote (sax_russell_the_green @ 29th November 2005 22:28)

Culex...655356...?

A 100 exp. points to the first one to enlighten me.

If I'm not mistaken, the maximum HP any monster can have is 65535, which is
FFFF in hex, since all of the monster HP's can only accomodate up to four hex characters. Thus, 65536 would be FFFF + 1 = 10000 in hex, which would mean that they would have to change the programming to allow for more hex characters, breaking the old "barrier". Since some of the new bosses will have much more HP than that, it sounds like it was changed anyway. From what I understand, Zeromus could withstand over 100,000 damage, but he really only had FFFF HP, and somehow healed himself automatically at some point during the fight, although how that happens and exactly when is not well understood.

A final comment about these new bosses: I could just barely beat Zeromus with a fairly high level party on the J2E translation, so how much harder will these bosses be? I can't wait to find out just how hard it'll be! This game is going to be everything I hoped for and more.

--------------------

Cannis Rules: Balance of Power - My favourite Yuri's Revenge Mod

Quote (sax_russell_the_green @ 29th November 2005 22:28)

Culex...655356...?

A 100 exp. points to the first one to enlighten me.

Follow-up to Matt's explanation, with spoilers about Super Mario RPG:

Culex's HP in Super Mario RPG was 4096, which itself is a power of 2 ( 2^12 = 4096 ). Now, with each 'bit' (a computer 'binary digit' of value 0 or 1) representing 2 possibilities, they could have used simply 12 bits to represent Culex's HP, having the number cycle back to 4096 after going past 1 (which produces a way to check this theory, that is, by noting that there's probably a check in the game that kills off Culex when its HP after an attack is higher than its HP before one, and then triggering the game to heal Culex through one of your characters' attacks), but they more likely just used two 'bytes' (each byte being 8 bits), which represents a total of 2 ^ (2 x 8) = 2 ^ 16 = 65536 possibilities, being HP amounts from 0 to 65535. (Note that "0" would be equivalent to "4096" if they'd only used 12 bits, so they'd have to use at least 13 bits to represent 4096 and 0 as two distinct numbers.)

Well, so in any case, Culex probably doesn't have exactly 12 bits of HP data anyways, but still, I've always wondered why the programmers chose 4096 HP. Why not 4000? 4100? They have nicely perfect-hundreds HP amounts for each of the crystals--3200, 2100, 1600, and 800 for earth, fire, water, and wind crystals, respectively--as well as all other bosses (Smithy has 2000, 1000, and 8000, for example). My only explanation was that whoever it was thought there was something special about 2 raised to the 12th power, and therefore wrote "4096". There's the whole "12-bit" explanation but given the unlikelihood of them actually using 12 bits and the additional programming complexity it would cause, I doubt that's the case.

However, the point of this is that, from this, I derived a suggested "trend" such that they should give Culex an HP amount equal to some whole-number power of 2. Given the massive amounts of HP monsters seem to have in that Lunar Ruins dungeon that laszlow mentioned, I suggested 65536 (note: NOT 65535) as a tribute to Culex's original starring in SMRPG.

Now...how does Culex get into all this anyways? For that matter, who's Culex, and what's all this about Super Mario RPG?

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

Culex is an optional superboss (considered by most, if not all, players as harder than the final boss) found in behind the sealed door in Monstro Town. (To meet and fight Culex, buy the Shiny Stone from the girl in Moleville, then use it to open the door.) Culex will challenge you and be accompanied by four elemental crystals--fire, water, earth, and wind. Now this just might be a passing reference to the FF series, if not for Shimomura's choice of battle theme: a slightly-tweaked version of Final Fantasy IV's boss battle theme. These two things, combined with Culex's saying that he/she is from some other world (see the in-game script), quickly spawned numerous rumors on the internet (no, Dubya, it's not "internets") saying that Culex appeared in FF II (US) / IV (J). It took a while, but such rumors were later quenched by knowledgeable FFIV/IIus fans who knew that Culex in fact was not part of any Final Fantasy game.

However, in this discussion of possibilities for superbosses, Culex arises because--what if those rumors could suddenly become true, by one fell swoop from a Squenix development team? What if Culex were to star as a superboss in the game he/she was "supposed to come from"?

Sorry to possibly disappoint y'all Culex fans (myself included, sadly), the only possible problem that I see with this idea is that Culex might be copyrighted/licensed/owned/whatever by Nintendo. There's the chance that Square/Squenix owns the character, or Squenix might buy the rights to use the character, or Nintendo might just let them and either give permission or not care. I personally hope that Culex stars in this game.

Replying to Rangers51: actually, considering that 4096 isn't either 2^8 (hence 1 byte) or 2^16 (hence 2 bytes), I guess it wouldn't hurt to simply double 65536 and get 131072 HP. Or maybe he/she could have 2 (or even 3) waves of FFFF (hexadecimal) = 65535 HP, a la Zeromus.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 30th November 2005 11:16

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Glenn Magus Harvey @ 30th November 2005 06:15)

Sorry to possibly disappoint y'all Culex fans (myself included, sadly), the only possible problem that I see with this idea is that Culex might be copyrighted/licensed/owned/whatever by Nintendo.  There's the chance that Square/Squenix owns the character, or Squenix might buy the rights to use the character, or Nintendo might just let them and either give permission or not care.  I personally hope that Culex stars in this game.

Square owns all SMRPG characters not already licensed to Nintendo prior to the making of the game. Geno makes a cameo in Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, a Nintendo-made game without any S-E influence, and in the game's ending credits there is the usual disclaimer: "all characters licensed by Nintendo" followed by what is essentially "Except Geno, which is the intellectual property of Square-Enix." This leads me to believe that Culex is indeed owned by Square and is probably a possibility for the game's last boss.

However, I'm inclined to think that the final boss is KluYa. He could have sealed himself in the moon following sealing Zeromus, and Zeromus' awakening could have revealed the seal on his resting place. Whatever. In any case, I'm pretty sure that I will discover the identity of this mysterious superboss approximately four or five days after getting this game, barring spoilers.

This post has been edited by laszlow on 30th November 2005 12:14

--------------------

this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER

::plays victoly! music::

Be fair, now. Meteo is just Japanese for "Meteor."

--------------------

Some ghost of me might greet my son
the day he is delivered.


Eternal Sleep, Track 1-1: The Blue Planet

I definitely plan on getting this game. I can't say I'm terribly interested in using the other characters on my team (I love the original final team), but it's a cool addition. The only thing I didn't like was the menu pics (Cecil's excepted). They should've left the menu pics of Kain and Edge as they were.

--------------------

SPEKKIO: "GRRR...That was most embarrassing!"

Ah, thanks for the explanation. I had googled Culex but came up with a lot of gibberish of him appearing in II and sometimes III.

Fanfare
Matt and Glenn Magus Harvey won the conversation!
50 exp. points
200 gil
Matt gained a level!
Glenn Magus Harvey gained a level!

Interesting about Culex too.

Remind me who Gino is. It's been a while since I played M&L: Superstar Saga.

--------------------

Dead Winter. A nice comic.

Quote (laszlow @ 30th November 2005 06:53)

However, I'm inclined to think that the final boss is KluYa. He could have sealed himself in the moon following sealing Zeromus, and Zeromus' awakening could have revealed the seal on his resting place. Whatever. In any case, I'm pretty sure that I will discover the identity of this mysterious superboss approximately four or five days after getting this game, barring spoilers.

Response:

Possible spoilers: highlight to view

I was under the impression that he had died.

Quote (Barrylocke)

Remind me who Gino is. It's been a while since I played M&L: Superstar Saga.

Geno is a yellow-brownish doll with blue clothing.

--------------------

Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )

Quote (Barrylocke @ 2nd December 2005 08:43)

Interesting about Culex too.

Remind me who Gino is. It's been a while since I played M&L: Superstar Saga.

Geno's cameo in M&LSS is pretty brief; I wouldn't expect you to remember him. He's basically the proctor of the arcade minigame in Little Fungitown with the tipping platform where you dump all of the mushrooms/stars/bombs in to one of two Piranha Plants. He tells you your score and asks if you want to play again or something. It's a pretty insignificant cameo, but Geno was by far my favorite new addition to the Mario universes from SMRPG, which is quite an entertaining game.

And yes, KluYa was supposed to have died, but what's to prevent the staff from including him anyhow? He's able to contact his son from beyond the grave, right? Culex is supposed to be from "Vanda" and serve the "Dark Mage", which certainly don't exist in any FF game. I always thought that Culex was supposed to be an FF parody - the game's director fabricated Culex to make fun of the nature of FF bosses and FF games in general. I liked Culex, and it would be cool to see him as this hidden uberboss, but I think his relation to FF IV is so marginal (all that he really has in common in the music) that it won't be him.

--------------------

this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
END SPOILER