FF4 (Continued From Chrono Trigger Thread)
 

I DID IT!! I passed it FINALLY tonight after like 6 months. Okay, so here's how:

First, I took the advice. I killed off every member in my party so Edge could steal the Dark Matter. Does anyone have any idea WHY killing off everyone in my party made it easier? I was planning to ask earlier, befroe doing it, but never got around to it.

Okay, then I resurrected and healed up everyone before having Cecil use the Crystal. Big Bang was used and... holy shit. It didn't appear like stealign the Dark Matter helped that much it all! Now, it may have just been me, but it seemed to be doing the exact same damage as before.

So then how did I pass it? Pure luck.

Rydia, Edge, and Rose were killed extremely quickly. With no time to lose, I shrugged off the disappointment and had Cecil use a Life on Rosa, followed by Kain using an elixer on her, and she using an elixer on Cecil. We were all healed up... we were ready.

I followed some of the other advice I had gotten and left Rydia and Edge dead. This allowed Cure4 to heal each of use for nearly 2000 HP each, usually fixing all the damage done by Big Bang.

I kept Cecil and Kain fighting with Rosa healing. Occasionally I'd stop Kain to use an elixer if I got behind on healing or a Ether2 if Rosa's MP was getting below 200. After about 10-15 minutes of this, Zeromus started using Meteo and I realized I was home free. 5 minutes later he finally died.

So I'm exhausted and relieved. I've been stuck on this boss forever, trying on and off to defeat him. Life is good now. Heh. Ending: Two thumbs up. Enjoyable.

Congratulations. I think most of us here knows what its like to beat a difficult game.

My personal challenge with FF4 is a little slower....5 peices of Adamant Armor....

I spend hours on end, using my 500 Alerts to fight battle after battle of Pink Puff's. One time, I fought 100 battles in a row...now did I get any Pink Tails? No, of course not. Damn you Pink Puff!!!

Well, that's because only Edge would act then. You wouldn't have to mind selecting Defense for all the other characters each turn, but I never did it that way, so I don't know how much it helps.
Yes, the Dark Matter doesn't help THAT much, but I did notice I could keep Edge and Rosa alive with it. Without that they would always soon die. I always tried to keep Edge alive, because throwing things dealt a good damage. Dind't care too much for Kain, but since he was often jumping and off the screen, he didn't got much hits and always survived.

I didn't have a lot to throw, so Kain was doing a lot more damage than Edge. And, more importantly, Kain stayed alive.

Originally, when I first beat it, Edge wasn't part of my vocab. But that was on the original FF2 for SNES. Now, on the updated one, Edge is a desirable item, seeing how they boosted up the difficulty and left everything the same.

"They boosted up the difficulty and left everything the same."

Isn't that kind of an oxymoron? :P

Whatever. They put in the usa original game, changed to the original japanese text in english and boosted the difficulty up. Happy now?

Actually, from what I understand, they took the original Japanese code for the game. The U.S. (FF2 for SNES) was redesigned to be super-easy. The re-released one (FF4 for PS1) is the original non-easy version.

It actually was super easy on the SNES. Take bahamut for example. On the FF2 version, I could easily take him down to 100 hp, get a glass of water, read the newspaper and still beat him before he could cast megaflare. On the PS one, I was barely scrambling to keep even Cecil alive. Yeah, I have to say the newer one is tougher.

I couldn't remember playing the original, I guess it didn't make that great of an impression on me. A lot of people though appreciate the games super tough though, I see many threads on game boards saying how easy a game is.