TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy 4 (SNES, 1991): Issue #19: Anything Can Happen On The Moon

The best Toast King joke I can think of right now is about what Bahamut's Cave could be referred to.

There's a lot of good stuff to be had here, too, of course. There's the Samurai armor set for Cecil in there. This is the first appearance of Karys, which have Artemis arrows for Rosa, which are the best in the game for her. And, of course, there's Bahamut himself.

Bahamut's the best summon in the game. His Mega Nuke attack can blast the hell out of anything it gets used on. The downside is that what I can say of the fight with Bahamut can apply to quite a bit of the other fights leading up to it. Bahamut only uses his Mega Nuke to attack the party, and it can kill everybody in one hit, much like Odin's attack. And it gets used on everybody at once, also just like Odin.

The easiest, quickest way to win this fight is to have Rosa and FuSoYa use Wall on everybody, which is easy enough, since there's really not much need to heal or revive anybody until Bahamut uses his attack. The wall spells will bounce the Mega Nuke back onto Bahamut and do major damage to him. Bahamut gives you plenty of time to set this up, as he counts down from five before attacking. The bad news is that this also gives just enough time for the Wall spell to wear off the first couple characters it got used on, so they'll have to be revived. But the reflected spells, when combined with attacks from the other party members should be enough to do him in before he can use the Mega Nuke more that twice or three times.

What really makes this cave hell is that there are four encounter points in this cave, all of which require fights with Behemoths. These fights are a pain in the ass because there's no way to avoid them, they can't be made easier with magic, and doing enough damage with physical weapons takes a long time. Trying to use Nuke, Weak, or White spells on these guys only causes them to counterattack with something that takes the entire party down to only a handful of HP each, and chances are, everybody's gonna die before the monster does if that happens.

Another hard aspect of this cave is that there are undead dragon skeletons that show up in here, too. They're a pain in the ass now, and will be in the last dungeon, as well. They're worse here, though, because the party's levels are lower and I don't have any throwing weapons for Edge yet. I'll have to remedy that later. Depending on what readers want here, I may or may not go into detail about the exact hows and whys of the process, but I'll deal with it.

But anyway, survive the cave and get through the fight with Bahamut, and you'll have the strongest summon in the game. With that, it's time to head back to the little blue marble we're orbiting and take on the Giant of Bab-Il. And that's where we'll pick up in issue 20: Return of the Fiends!