Wednesday, December 7, 2011

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy 4 (SNES, 1991): Issue #04: Did Calvin Mount Hobbs?


That's a perverted title. I apologize to Calvin and Hobbes fans.

Fortunately, nothing quite as perverted happens in this game. So, on to the matter at hand, huh?

In this case, it's the trip through Mt. Hobs. Technically, I've been spelling it wrong until that last time.

Now, the pass is blocked by a glacier on the Damcyan end. This is the first of a few times that the use of a spell is required to advance the plot. In this case, it's Rydia learning the Fire spell. The plot-related reason she hadn't yet is because she's afraid of fire after her village was destroyed by it. Eventually, the rest of the party talks her into it and she learns fire magic so they can use the trail and maybe save the nation of Fabul on the other side.

There are lots of goodies to be had along the way, provided that you're willing to do a little exploring and deal with a few ghosts and skeletons in the process, and go a bit out of the way.

Upon reaching the summit, the party sees a karate fighter engaged in combat with a band of monsters. After taking out a handful of imps, the karate guy is accosted by a bomb monster. This is a boss monster sent by the Kingdom of Baron to kill off Fabul's main fighting force so that Baron can swoop in, hork the crystal there, and kill as many folks as possible.

The party goes to the man's aid as he fights the monster, called MomBomb. After the fight, they find that the man's name is Yang, and that he's the chief monk from Fabul. When the others explain the situation, Yang joins the party and they go dashing off to Fabul in hopes that they can get there in time to avert disaster, which is where we'll pick up next time.

I know this was kind of a short entry in the series, but there's a reason for that. You see, I've been doing each of these entries roughly after every boss fight I've encountered thus far. Sadly, it's starting to reveal the downside to doing this with a game I've been through so many times over the years. The only really interesting thing I have to note here is that this is probably the first time in the 20 years I've been playing this game that I've actually made good tactical use of Edward's Hide option, during the boss fight with MomBomb. There's a part of the fight where the monster will do an explosive attack that hits all party members. I'm just surprised that it didn't occur to me before now that I could get one character out of the way of that. Otherwise, nothing really impressive happened this outing.

Perhaps that will change next time, when Cecil gets to Paint It Black to fight Baron and its monsters.

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