So lately, I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy IV DS.

I must say, I like this way more than the original.

You see, the original was plagued with problems like the characters being too unbalanced (meaning, some were too weak, and others way too strong), most character abilities being very useless (Cry, I'm looking at you), and just a plain depressing experience all around. Though the music, story, and characters were and still are great.

But for the DS version, Matrix Software, the ones who remade FFIII almost two years ago, decided to remake FFIV and change a lot of things up.

Most notably, how the characters have been balanced. Characters who were seemingly mostly useless before, like, say....Edward, have been given entirely new tricks to help them compete. There is another new feature called the Augment system where, after an important character leaves the party, they give you one or several abilities of theirs depending on how many Augments you give them. This makes sure that each character that you actually keep can be customized with one or more abilities from the people who leave your save file permanently. Other abilities, even ones from bosses, can be found in hidden locations.

And the system works insanely well. Giving Cecil abilities like "Counter" help him to become even more of a powerhouse, while "MP+50%" on Rydia or Rosa increases the amount of spells they can do by 33%.

However, to counteract the usefulness of these augments (since if they were in the original game, the game would have been far too easy), nearly all the enemies and bosses have been rebalanced. Most of them seem to fight the same way as they did before, just more powerful, but other bosses have seriously had their patterns changed, meaning that any FFIV veterans expecting to win these battles with old tricks have to change their strategies around, 'cause they won't work here.

Outside of battle, the music, graphics, and overall style of FFIV have been given much care here. Some will decry FFIV for not looking quite as good as FFIII DS, but I say "phooey" to them :P (nah, just playing). The music has been redone and sounds great. The story is now partly acted out by voiced cutscenes, which are quite good, and many scenes are redone due to the new 3D perspective.

It seems that there have been some new story bits added in, which I won't spoil here. Maybe in a later blog entry. But I think these bits are the result of FFIV's producer wanting to add more story into the SNES version but being unable to, due to the limited capacity of a cartridge at the time. These new story bits are welcome and really flesh out the characters even more.

Also, there have been other changes made to the game. It now sports a New Game+ feature, which allows you to carry levels over into the next playthrough, as well as to get new Augments (some you can only get after beating the game and starting it over). There are two new bosses one can fight during this second playthrough, too, both pretty difficult.

All this comes at a price, though. The new stuff introduced in the GBA port/remake, like the new dungeons and the ability to switch your characters for the final dungeon, have been taken out due to memory issues. But that doesn't matter much as the new stuff introduced in the DS remake trumps all that stuff, in my opinion. All in all, FFIVDS is a welcome purchase even if you know the original game inside and out.

-capcommunist

Well, that was a long time for me to be gone, but I'm pretty much back and will start really updating the blog again. I'm not exactly sure what I'll be posting up other than the stuff I already said I'd post up, but I'll think of something. :D

I've been sick with allergies on top of having a heavy workload. Once this workload dies down I'll commit more time to both the blog and the forum. Everything's just been really stressful and it's hard to keep up (other aspiring graphic designers probably know what I'm saying). Luckily I have places like this where I can be at least somewhat calm and feel at home.

I'm not quite sure of what my next blog entry will be yet. I've started and saved a few in Wordpad but haven't finished any of them yet (though one is very near completion). You can probably expect that blog entry in a couple days.

-capcommunist

I'm basically just doing this for fun and also because I know some people who had trouble beating Le Mu at the end of Star Force 2. I have the Zerker x Ninja version of the game, so this will mainly deal with that.

Some things to know before going in:

-Include many potent HP recovery cards. I cannot stress this enough. There's a specific reason why you must do this, and it'll be further outlined later on.

-Those stage-affecting cards that inflict certain status onto the opponents' panels? Don't use 'em for this battle. They won't work. Replace a couple of those with Invisible or SprBarrier, if you have it.

-Have at least 520 HP or so before going into battle (and be sure to keep your HP up past 500 for at least the first half of the fight; e.g., until after he shoots off the beam). This is because of Le Mu's scripted, unblockable, unescapable beam attack once his life gets down to about 970 or so. It does about 500 damage to Mega Man, which could be bad if he's taken a beating already for the duration of the fight.

-By the same token, save some of your most potent Recover cards for after the giant beam so you can get your strength back.

-Don't really waste time with cards like DblStone, AtomMine, or cards like that when facing him. They won't affect him or his patterns.

-I used the Giga Card DarknessHole to actually finish him off, but others may have a different strategy as to how to do that.

-While we're on the subject, save any of the Giga Cards you may have gotten for last. Yes, even if you get the card extremely early in the battle.

Now for the fight itself. You'll notice that Le Mu doesn't have an HP total under him. There's a reason for that. When you shoot at him, the colored plate on the front of him absorbs the impact of your attacks, pretty much. While being damaged, it'll change to yellow and eventually to red. After enough "in-the-red" damage, his armor will break off and you can finally damage him for real. His original final-boss self has 2,000 HP. I usually use the somewhat weaker cards to break his armor off and save the better ones for the actual fight.

He has only a couple attacks I've noticed in his first form (before the armor breaks). Occasionally his arms will turn into drills. When he does this, start going left and right to dodge them. He'll oftentimes summon Murians to attack you, but these are easily dodged as well.

The real problem here is probably his black hole attack, which goes through Invisible and poses a problem to dodge because he usually has an elemental Murian trying to attack at the same time diagonally across from where you're standing. But if you can detect when exactly to dodge to the extreme opposite row from where you're standing to get away from both attacks (the timing's usually a couple seconds) the black holes will be easy to dodge.

After the armor is broken, all bets are off. Le Mu starts going a bit more haywire with his attacks, but he's still incredibly manageable. His black hole attacks become faster, and he summons more Murians. Just use the same strategy I outlined above, dodge to the extreme right or extreme left row (depending on where you are) and neither attack should hit you.

Le Mu also does a machinegun attack. It took me a while to figure out exactly how to dodge it, but here's how I do it. He shoots in what seems like a sort of wave pattern, but with a twist: the machinegun fire actually follows you. What I do is stand in the left square, use the shield, and he should shoot at you, then shoot forward to the square in front of you. When he does this, go right to the next square and use the shield again. He'll do the exact same thing. Repeat this for the last square, and whenever he shoots his machinegun like that, just use that pattern to escape the brunt of nearly all of it (you might still get tagged once by a rare, unpredictable hit).

Le Mu's broken armor form has a sword attack, but it is very rarely used from what I've seen. He didn't even use it the very first time I fought him. Since that time, I fought him about 20 times and he's only used it 5. Weird. The sword attack basically takes up two rows each time it hits (it hits twice) and does a hefty chunk of damage. Just dodge all the way to the right for the first attack, and all the way to the left for the second. You should escape unscathed.

Now comes his most devastating attack, a giant beam that covers the whole stage, cannot be countered or Invisibled through (believe me, I've tried), and does heaps of damage. Once you get Le Mu to about 970 HP left, be wary, 'cause he'll rev up the beam shortly. If you have a SprBarrier card it will help you greatly and absorb a small bit of the beam's punishment. Also have some Recover cards ready for after the beam is done with, 'cause you might need them if you don't have any really hard-hitting cards.

Before weakening Le Mu to under 1000 HP, make sure your own HP is over 500, 'cause 500 seems to be about the amount of damage the beam does. When he ducks down, sits there and stops attacking for a couple seconds, and you see his eye, that means he's getting ready to use the move. Stand your ground and clench, basically.

Thank goodness for either having gotten a lot of HP Memories or having that SprBarrier, huh? Certainly came in handy. Now just use any Recover cards you might have and just resume attacking and dodging as normal. If you have the Giga Card DarknessHole, then once he's down to under 500 HP, use it and victory is yours. Or if you have any other Giga Cards, those would be fine too.

And after this grueling battle, you can basically just sit back, relax, and watch the ending and the credits. But wait, don't turn the game off yet. After the credits there's more to the ending, then you can save your game and get a nice little star above the New Game/Continue screen for beating it. There are other stars you can get for beating other parts of the game that open up upon saving your clear file, but I'll outline those in a future blog entry.

-capcommunist

Finally, my summer break is over and I can get back to blogging here. My summer break was very eventful-- encountered conflict, went on a couple trips to other states, bought a whole slew of new games (including Mega Man Star Force 2: Zerker x Ninja-- which I've already beaten once and am in the process of getting all the cards now), and just generally had a weird amalgam of a time.

I look forward to adding some awesome blog posts either later tonight or sometime tomorrow when school lets out.

-capcommunist