Awesome / Final Fantasy IV

As a Moments subpage, all spoilers are unmarked as per policy. You Have Been Warned.

Awesome moments in Final Fantasy IV.

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• Just how the game started in general. Cecil and Kain are experienced knights, and it shows when you starts the game proper: Both immediately starts at level 10 and have full equipment, and as you go to the Mist Cave you'll easily slaughter any enemies that stands in your way. It's an excellent showcase of Gameplay and Story Integration, which also serves to show how badass Cecil and Kain are.
• One for Rydia's voice actress in the DS port. Her, "I hate you!" in her introduction scene will send chills down your spine.
• Cecil's wasting of four of Baron's guards in order to defend Rydia, as a way to start atoning for his sins. There's a reason that Cecil was Captain of the Red Wings; he's pretty freakin' awesome.
• Scarmiglone is introduced as a hunched, creepy little gremlin in a cloak, who dies pretty easily and goes toppling off a bridge when you beat him. So why would Golbez of all people be wasting his time with hi-OH MY GOD. Cue a frantic clash with the first of the Four Fiends, to the epic backdrop of The Dreadful Fight
• Cecil's fight with his own inner darkness to become a Paladin turns him from a depressed, unsure knight into a confident, walking engine of physical destruction, ready to fight for his beliefs instead of letting himself be forced to do nasty things against his will. Incidentally, the easiest way to win that fight is awesomeness in itself: sit there and take the hits, paying penance for what Cecil did as a Dark Knight.
• The confrontation with Golbez in the Dwarven Castle. Golbez paralyzes the party and summons a Shadow Dragon, who begins dealing a One-Hit KO to your party one by one, until only Cecil remains. Suddenly, a Mist Dragon appears and attacks, dispersing the Shadow Dragon. As Golbez grows confused over what's happening, someone heals Cecil and calls out to him, and Cecil seems to recognize the voice. Cue Rydia, now grown into an adult and knowing a much larger arsenal of spells and summons, running into the screen to rejoin the party. This is punctuated by the music changing from Golbez's theme to Battle with the Four Fiends, cueing that the real battle has begun.
  • Further, the fact that Rydia not only saved Cecil's life (repaying him for defending her from Baron's soldiers), but she did it using the same summon of her mother that he had killed. Awesome and Heartwarming.
  • Additionally, the battle is structured to make it entirely possible for Rydia to solo Golbez with her summons while Cecil keeps the two of them healed. First, he had promised to protect her, and that never changed even after they had been apart for "years" (in Rydia's case). Second, the player learns just how afraid Golbez was of the Summoners and exactly why he tricked Cecil into destroying Mist, because Rydia at that moment is showing just what said Summoners were capable of!
• Probably the biggest moment of awesome in the game is when Cid leaps off the airship riding what is apparently a nuclear bomb, in order to close the entrance to the underworld. After blowing himself up and then falling hundreds of feet, he survives and walks himself to the dwarf kingdom to recover. Then, while recovering, when he hears about the obstacles you face with your shiny new airship, which can't cross lava and needs a drill to get back to the surface, he gets out of bed and still has the strength to apply the necessary upgrades! Truly a mark of badass.
  • To add to that, the dwarven nurses that were taking care of Cid walk in partway through the second upgrade to the Falcon, to get him to stop. Cid's response? Press-gang the nurses into helping him finish. He might not be The Hero, but Cid is The Determinator bar none.
• Tellah's confrontation with Golbez, in which he uses his life force to cast the ultimate magic, Meteor to defeat the guy who killed his daughter.
  • In the same scene, Golbez actually tanks said meteor and lives.
• An awesome villainous moment happens when the heroes confront the Fiend of Fire, Rubicante. He actually apologizes to Hot-Blooded Ninja Edge that his Mad Scientist assistant tortured Edge's parents and turned them into monsters sent to fight him. He then proceeds to completely heal the party before fighting them because to do otherwise would be unfair. He gets another in his final defeat, where he praises Cecil and companions for successfully defeating him once more.
  • Before his final defeat he deviates from many villains by appearing with the other elemental lords and telling you that (unlike other villains who merely try to outnumber you in an ambush) they have learned the power of team work from your past victories and proceed to fight you as a team.
  • Due to technical limitations, they fight you one at a time because having four bosses on the screen would be impossible even in the DS version. The spirit of the dialog clearly indicates that they're fighting together, even if the game doesn't show it. They manage to do this very cleverly, however, in that the bosses swap out after a certain amount of turns, and they do so in an order that means if you cast the weakness of the active Fiend when they swap, it will be resisted by or heal the next in line, meaning they're taking hits for each other. On top of that, you are given no chance to save or heal outside of battle until all four are defeated at once.
• The assault on the Giant of Babil. The entire armies of the world, with every bit of technology and magic at their aid, assault the Big Bad's ultimate weapon and do not suffer being on the receiving end of a Curbstomp Battle like in any given Kaiju movie. They manage to stop it in its tracks before it can reach any populated areas! So. Very. Awesome.
• Edge, speaking to Rubicante in the Tower of Babil, especially in the DS version. As Rubicante gives a pitying speech about how mankind is a slave to their emotions and can never know true strength, Edge instantly slips into a Unstoppable Rage and delivers an awesome line to Rubicante amid a swirling storm of lightning.
  Edge: You think our rage... a weakness? Then let me show you HOW WRONG YOU ARE!!
  • This is followed up by Edge unlocking his Flood and Blitz abilities and being able to attack Rubicante with his weakness. However, Rubicante gets an immediate counter-moment with this Badass Boast:
    Rubicante: But they will not avail you. The frozen winds of hell's ninth circle could not penetrate this cloak of flame I wear. Come! I will heal your wounds! Face me at full strength!
• The two instances the "Theme of Final Fantasy" plays. It's not Awesome Music for nothing.
• The summoning of the Lunar Whale. The awesome music accompanying the scene is nothing short of epic.
• Cecil calls out to Golbez in the finale, calling him his brother. In the original, Golbez merely turns around to say farewell; in the DS version, we see him as Theodore as he says goodbye. It's much more effective if you're used to the original version.
• After Cecil's inexplicable "Stay in the Kitchen" abandonment of Rosa and Rydia on Earth before the final battle, they show up once he lands on the moon, having apparently been sitting in the entrance chute of the Lunar Whale during its trip through space. Utterly ridiculous, but nobody cares.
• Rosa's attempt to find Cecil counts as one for White Mages as a whole. Unlike her predecessors, relegated to staves and the occasional hammer (up until WHM's weak physical prowess catches up to them), Rosa apparently departs on her own with a bow, travels a fair distance towards Kaipo solo, and desert sickness aside, made it intact, implying that she survived random encounters and put more than a few arrows into things along the way. Look at her starting equipment and stats, imagine she's the only character in the party, and trace her approximate path from Baron. All of a sudden, she seems like one of the most capable and versatile White Mages in the entire series, including modern archetypes! Rosa doesn't need to rely on Dia, Aero, summons, or Holy to hold her own.