Welcome to Rupee Shards, my own little world for whatever I feel like writing about. (Gosh!) For those who don't know me, I'm an administrator of OtakuBoards and a theOtaku chat moderator, and I've been hanging around here since September 2001. I'm an avid gamer and anime fan so most of what you'll see here will relate to one or the other.
Nintendo WFC Friend Codes
Wii Number: 8387-7566-7057-0450
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 1504-5385-2566 (Des)
Rock Band 2: 4667-9521-5706
Mario Kart Wii: 4124-7294-7708
Animal Crossing: Wild World: 4553-2727-4864 (Desbreko in Kakariko)
Continuing through Final Fantasy IV, I went through the Magnetic Cave and beat down the Dark Elf earlier. I was a bit surprised to find the difficulty of the dungeon completely reversed—well, kind of. In FFIV Advance, simply getting through the cave was harder than actually beating the Dark Elf; in the original FFIV, it was the opposite. It seemed like there were fewer random battles in FFIV compared to FFIVA, and the ones I did run into didn't seem nearly as bad. In particular, there were many more Cave Nagas for Tellah to suck MP out of with Osmose and many less Ogres to put the beat down on me.
The Dark Elf was a different story. I've been noticing a trend of enemies being a little faster in FFIV compared to FFIVA but the battle with the Dark Elf was the first one which was noticeably harder because of it. Specifically, it made it harder for Tellah to keep the party healed once the Dark Elf transformed into the Dark Dragon and began using its Dark Breath attack (noticing a theme here?), which hits the entire party for quite a bit of damage. Instead of getting hit by one physical attack or one Dark Breath for every turn Tellah got, I was getting hit by both every turn. That hurt a lot but the Dark Dragon goes down pretty fast so I was able to pull through without too much extra trouble.
But here comes that, "well, kind of." See, in the easy type version there's a little trick for killing the Dark Dragon: You have Tellah cast Tornado (or Weak as it's called in the easy type version), which then lets you kill it in one attack. Most bosses are immune to Tornado, for good reason, but it works on this one. But I've never gotten it to work in FFIVA so I figured that it just doesn't work in the hard type version. Except that it does in the original hard type version. So, if you know this, the fight actually becomes easier than in FFIVA.
The fight with the Dark Elf made me see how Zeromus could be harder in the original version, though. Zeromus also has a very strong, full-party attack (Big Bang—it makes Sephiroth's Super Nova seem like a joke) and if he's able to use it more often then that would raise the difficulty. However, in my FFIVA video of Zeromus I didn't even need Rosa to cast Curaja every turn so there was a fair bit of leeway there. I'm really looking forward to fighting Zeromus in the original version now.
It had been a long time since I made any new videos for YouTube (Guitar Hero II and Smash Bros. Brawl can be thanked for that) but I finally uploaded another. I started playing the original Japanese hard type version of Final Fantasy IV (the SNES release we got in the US was the easy type version) because I've heard that it's harder than FFIV Advance, even though FFIVA is based on the hard type version.
In particular, I've seen various comments on YouTube videos of Zeromus (the end boss) that say he's so much easier in FFIVA and that you need to be around level 70 to beat him in the original version, as opposed to around level 50 in FFIVA. Now, considering that I can completely kick Zeromus's ass in FFIVA with my party ranging from level 55-58, and I can do it better than a lot of the videos I've seen of people fighting him at level 99, my immediate reaction is to call BS. But I've never fought him in the original hard type version so I can't know for sure.
FFIV being one of my favorite games, I could not let this lack of knowledge stand. I picked up an English patch, slapped it on (though I play the unpatched version for my recordings), and went to it. So far there have only been a few small differences that I've noticed between the original and FFIVA. (Well, besides the menu lag and turn order bugginess in FFIVA, but that only makes things harder.) But one such difference was enough to require a small change in strategy for one of the bosses so I decided to do another video for it and any other bosses that end up requiring alternate strategies from the ones used in my FFIVA videos.
The battle with Cagnazzo (カイナッツォ) on active battle speed 1. This is the original Japanese hard type version.
Tellah Lv23, Cecil Lv15, Palom Lv18, Yang Lv19, Porom Lv18
Cagnazzo is a little faster in the SNES version compared to the GBA version so this fight requires a slightly different strategy. Instead of having Tellah cast Thundaga to do massive damage and break the water barrier at the same time you should immediately have Palom cast Thunder (Thundara is too slow most of the time) to break it or else Cagnazzo will hit your party with Tsunami. Then, since ice is more effective while the barrier is down, have Tellah cast Blizzaga to cause the massive damage. Along with Cecil's and Yang's attacks, two Blizzagas should be enough to kill Cagnazzo.
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And there we go, Cagnazzo being owned just as thoroughly as in my FFIVA video. This fight is actually a bit harder than in FFIVA if you're unprepared for it but otherwise it's not any worse.
Just now I sat down and blew through all 41 solo event matches in Super Smash Bros. Brawl on normal difficulty, to unlock some stages and music. I gotta say, most of them were pretty boring. Melee had weird matches like the hyper speed dash along the Mute City track but the most creative they got in Brawl was making me KO a couple Yoshis while the Pirate Ship level was in the air. Most were basically just excuses to put me in 1v2 or 1v3 fights.
Event Match 41 was also pretty lame. I'm sure it's more difficult on hard but it only took me five tries to beat it on normal. And I would've had it beaten on my first try if I hadn't gotten screwed by items—I was about to KO the last one when a bomb dropped on our heads and I happened to fly off first. Even on hard I have a feeling it's still going to pale in comparison to Event Match 51 in Melee.
The more I play, the more I realize I only seriously care about a few things in Brawl: 1) unlocking all characters, 2) unlocking all stages, 3) unlocking all music, and 4) unlocking all stage builder parts. And I've already completed 1 and 4. Basically I just want to have everything for multiplayer matches available because that's where the real fun of the game is for me. I doubt I'm going to have the patience to grind through all of the challenges and unlock every single little thing like I did in Melee.
I spent a couple hours yesterday in the My Music options just listening to Smash Bros. Brawl's music and tweaking the likeliness that certain songs will play in the background when a level is selected. SSBB has a crazy amount of music—usually at least four tracks per level—and I'm still unlocking new songs. There are some amazing remixes of old themes, some taken straight from the original games, and even vocal tracks like Pikmin's Ai no Uta.
SSBB - Ai no Uta (Pikmin) Japanese Theme
I've loved this song (maybe a little too much) ever since I first heard it a little after Pikmin's release so of course I cranked its likeliness to play all the way up. The lyrics in romaji and translated English can be found on Chudah's Corner. It's a bit sad, a bit funny, and it describes the life of the Pikmin perfectly.
I'm hoping so much that they'll release the game's soundtrack.
My Super Smash Bros. Brawl friend code is: 1504-5385-2566
Add me and leave a comment with yours if you'd like to play online together. I hope to start filling up my friend roster with OtakuBoards and theOtaku peoples soon.
