Final Fantasy IV has been on a bit of a hiatus the past couple of weeks and I’m sorry. There’s nothing I enjoy more than playing this classic Final Fantasy—albeit the remade version—and make fun of it with some very silly commentary, some nice edits and a few choice cuts of the footage to keep you entertained and as far away as possible from any grinding, which I’ve had to do twice so far, mostly because this game insists on giving you characters at astonishingly low levels compared to the party average.
The truth is that I’ve been sick, caught a flu or something and it came with a cough, which is usually my kryptonite as it lasts way longer than any other symptom, and I mean weeks. I’m on my third week of coughing and thankfully it’s almost cleared up. I spent yesterday without coughing a single time during the day or after eating, which was another annoyance, and I had my first night of sleep without some coughing fit interruption in a while.
But it’s not just the coughing, but I got hit with some full-blown laryngitis, and it meant I lost my voice…and I still had to work and everything. Nothing quite as entertaining as talking with clients over the phone when your voice barely registers. I’m sure some of them were looking for the subtitle option.
There you have it, that’s why Final Fantasy IV hasn’t had a single episode in the past couple of weeks. But my voice is almost back and I think I can get back to recording episodes, particularly because we’re at a really cool stage in the story. There are some amazing things coming and I really want to play through them. It’s going to be a match between the Glam Paladin and the Evil Golbez!
But let’s recap, shall we?
Episode 1 – Brood Knight: Cecil, the Dark Knight—no relation to Batman, save for the moodiness—does some really bad stuff for his King and then has the stupid idea of giving him lip, earning a free trip to the Valley of Mist as a “courier,” of perhaps the worst gift ever: terrorism. Only he and a little girl survive and make their way to a desert town, where they find Rosa—Cecil’s White Mage girlfriend—has somehow made it there in record time. She probably had the script and knew what was going to happen.
Episode 2 – Our Saviour, Ether: Exploring the aqueducts and meeting Tellah, I thought we would be unbeatable, which Final Fantasy IV didn’t appreciate and decided to teach me some humility. I learned my lesson through death and continues, eventually finding the most amazing bottle of Ether so I could escape, regroup, and then storm the place again with full resources. I was time to pay the game back for its lesson!
Episode 3 – 90s Nickelodeon: Tellah lets us know that if he talks during a boss battle, things will turn ugly. He says the boss will turn much more aggressive the lower health he has and guess what, it starts killing the party with horrible attacks! It took a couple of tries to get this disturbing octopus straight out some nightmarish 90s Nickelodeon cartoon. Hell, it’s even Nickelodeon orange! Oh, and once we clear him, Tellah’s daughter dies and he tries his best to seem like a badass trying to hit the Bard with his cane. It’s hilarious. He then gets murdery and goes away, leaving us with just the Bard Prince to get some Antlion eggs for Rosa. It does not end well.
Episode 4 – Exploration is Good: The Antlion kicks our combined asses again, so I decided it was a good idea to explore, maybe find a save point where I could use a tent and restore all my spent resources. And you know what? Final Fantasy IV proved exploration was worthwhile, as I found a brand new sword that made quick work of everything! With the Antlion egg in hand we save Rosa and then spend the rest of the time trying to find the entrance to the new area.
Episode 5 – Fabul-ous: Found the mountain, had the badass Monk join up and we made it to his home, Fabul, where Kain made his heel turn and tore through our defences and took the crystal and Rosa! I may have also gone overboard with the Rider Kick edits, but it was too good and too easy to pass up!
Episode 6 – Plot Mountain: Mt Ordeals is the most on-the-nose name for an important place in any videogame, not just Final Fantasy. Nevertheless, after a crappy boat ride we end up in Mysidia, the place where Dark Knight Cecil butchered a bunch of people for his king in the opening cutscene. They’re not really warming up to him, but tell him if he reached the peak of Mt. Ordeals and became a Paladin, they’d let things slide and help him. In the meantime, Golbez sends the first of his archfiends, the cheating one that sends you into a Back Attack boss fight. I call shenanigans on this, Final Fantasy IV!
Episode 7 – Going Glam: It finally happened. “The Final Countdown,” blasting in the background—at least in my head—Cecil abandons the path of the Dark Knight and becomes a Glam Rockstar Paladin, fighting off his darker half in the process, in what is perhaps one of the best gimmick fights in all of Final Fantasy, since you’re not supposed to do anything to actually win. After the transformation, Cecil hears a mysterious voice that pretty much confirms his protagonist role and aura and soon after it’s off to Baron, where Yang’s been mind-bended. Nothing a swift kicking won’t help!
And that’s where we are, where we’ll pick up next week with Episode 8 of Final Fantasy IV. It’s going to be a blast recording again and I hope you enjoy the episode as much as I will. And if you like what you’ve seen so far, why not subscribe to The Mental Attic’s YouTube channel? You’ll get instant notification of when new videos go out!
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