Happy Hunting!
Time to fire up and play some Final Fantasy IV. You know the story by now: Edward and Porom, inhabitants of Baron which is ruled by Mom Bomb, are given the Sand Ruby from Bahamut and tasked to fly around the world and find the Crystal in order to fight Zeromus in his lair located in the back room of Troia's bar.
...what.....
Oh, this isn't Final Fantasy IV, but FFIV: Free Enterprise, a Randomizer mod that takes the SNES version and randomizes characters, key items and bosses through-out the game. That Mist Dragon at the end of the Mist Cave? Now it can be Golbez. Oh, is that Edge being recruited in Elban Cave? Nope, now it's Cid. And somehow Yang's Wife holds the Darkness Crystal instead of her pan.
The story is gone, leaving you with the main objective of finding the crystal and beat Zeromus to win the game. You can have the Crystal be available as a key item that could be found behind a boss, in a story location or a random trap chest in a random dungeon, or complete a list of objectives such as defeat a specific boss, clear a dungeon or recruit a certain character in order for the crystal to appear. You have access to the Enterprise airship (hence the name) right off the bat, making the game more of a scavenger hunt to complete at your discretion. Some seeds might be straight forward and done in 30 minutes; some might require you to search every single nook and cranny for hours to find that last lousy missing objective. Other flags you can pick can make every chest just give money, leave a third of all chests empty. removing character recruitment spots that aren't behind a boss or key item (or vice versa), allowing duplicate party members, shops selling nothing or giving everything away for free, having Fusoya's spells be tied to boss progression, etc. Just search for equipment, hunt down the bosses and items, and have your random team be strong enough to challenge Zeromus in whatever form he could be in that seed, spoony bard or not.
Found here: http://ff4fe.com/
To avoid repeating tropes for the original FFIV, please just add tropes that the randomizer impacts in some way.
All spoilers for FFIV are unmarked.
Tropes Randomly Found:
- Adapted Out:
- The randomizer removes the end potion of the Fabul Rush where you fight Kain in a cutscene battle.
- The encounter spot/cutscene against Water Hag after using the Sand Ruby in Kaipo is gone, but Water Hag is still a boss fight check somewhere.
- The fire blocking the entrance to Mt Ordeals is gone, giving you access to it right off the bat without needing Palom. Mt Hobbs on the other hand still has the ice blockade that can only be cleared by Rydia (which can give her a random spell or summon), but Hobbs has a second entrance that can still be used.
- The Damcyan Bard fight cutscene is gone.
- If you don't use the package at Mist, then Mist does not get blocked by the mountain landslide.
- When you obtain the Falcon in the Underworld, it will already have the drill attached, letting you open the path from Agart if you entered the Underworld through Elban Cave/Tower of Babil.
- You can access Zot at any time without the Earth Crystal (but you need it to complete the dungeon and access the two character spots there) by talking to an NPC in Troia's Throne room. The scene with Kain escorting the party to Zot is removed.
- No one turns to stone after clearing the boss spot in Baron Castle. The walls do close in but the party just leaves the room, which then inexplicably explodes.
- Averted with Golbez's fight, which keeps the part where his Shadow Dragon knocks out everyone but two party members, then the fights starts.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- After you open a chest, you have the option to discard the item before adding it to your inventory. This also removes the need of the menu popping up in order for you to make room for the new item if your inventory is full. And if you have second thoughts after discarding, you can examine the open chest and pick the item back up, but only as long as you are on that map screen.
- Random encounters can be toggled on and off.
- You can enable a jump button which let's you jump over spaces on the screen, bypassing obstacles and NPCs and avoiding going the standard long way in dungeons.
- The Enterprise will already be able to fly over the lava in the Underworld.
- Dismissing characters gives you an opportunity to remove whatever equipment they have on before they leave.
- Dismissed characters can be found at the Tower of Wishes in Mysidia if you would like to re-recruit them.
- Boss in Mook's Clothing: The Dark Imps are a "boss" fight for an event flag in the original game, so they are included in the boss shuffle in the randomizer. They are just some mid-game mooks whose only battle script is to physically attack. However, if they land on a late game boss position whose stats such as speed or attack are much higher, they now can be doing hundreds or even thousands amount of damage per attack, easily overwhelming and defeating the party. Even if they are in early boss position where their stats are rounded down, they are still mid game enemies at an early part of the game and could give trouble.
- Couch Gag: Aside from randomizing bosses, items, and party recruitment, there are three cosmetic changes done for fun.
- The song that Edward plays is completely different, and the music is pulled from other video games.
- The Job Dwarf in Torma. In the original he states he's a farmer. The randomizer changes his occupation.
- Since Zeromus is excluded from the boss randomization, instead his sprite(mostly pulled from other games) completely changes, with a new name to go along with it.
- Crutch Character: While getting Cid, Edge or Vanilla Fusoya early on makes the first half of the game easier, Edge and Fusoya can continue contributing to the party to the end but Cid's helpfulness drops off quickly. He has no additional skill to help in battle, only having high attack and HP. His speed becomes a liability and he only has a few hammers available until he needs to turn to axes, which do have end game strength but poor accuracy.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- Finding any late game weapon in an early chest.
- Recruiting Rydia and finding Bahamut early let's her obliterate 2/3s of all fights. You just need to get her MP high enough to cast him, though.
- Cid, Edge and especially Vanilla Fusoya. All join at high levels and stats, letting them easily handle the overworld bosses even with weaker equipment. Fusoya starts at 50, has almost 2000HP, near end game equipment and every black and white spell, letting him destroy bosses even with his small MP pool and able to tank hits despite being a Squishy Wizard.
- Double Unlock: For Paladin Cecil and Adult Rydia to be playable, you have to not only find them somewhere in the game (if they are even in the seed), but also complete Mt Ordeals and the first boss in Dwarf Castle respectively. However, they don't need to be in the party at that time.
- Fetch Quest: The whole game has been turned into one, finding items to get access to new areas and other items in order to find the Crystal.
- Glass Cannon: Edward with the Spoon gives him max strength, letting him do 3000 to 4000 damage every attack. However, he needs to be in the front row to get the most out of the weapon, and he has low HP and defense, putting him at risk to easily be taken out.
- The Key Is Behind the Lock: It is possible for some of the "key" items to be found in locations where you need that item to open that area, such as the Luca Key, which is needed to unlock the Sealed Cave, being the item found in the Sealed Cave. Typically this means that while some items can be impossible to obtain, it also means that they or their area/boss are not required to beat the game.
- Late Character Syndrome: This hits the Giant of Babil character spot the worst, especially if it was a character you really wanted. This is the last recruitment spot in the original game, right before the final dungeon, so this area is filled with strong enemies and two powerful bosses. Not only can certain bosses shuffled into the Elements or CPU positions be almost downright impossible to defeat, but every character joins the party at the level they first joined in the original game, meaning they can be 30 to 50 levels lower than your current party. And since players usually leave the Giant for the end of the game and at that point they have their final party fully conditioned to their liking, there's practically no point to bring this new character up to speed, so instead they just skip them altogether.
- Mutually Exclusive Party Members: Paladin Cecil and Adult Rydia are not available at the start of the game as they are tied to key story event flags which must be completed first. You cannot have both Cecils or both Rydias in the party at the same time as clearing those events automatically turns all potential Cecil and Rydia spots into their alternative form.
- Random Encounters: The general fights have not been altered, staying the same as they were in the original game. However, there is a feature provided that can turn encounters on and off.
- Skippable Boss:
- The Mist Cave and Waterway bosses, as well as their dungeon sections, are typically the most commonly skipped. These bosses don't reward any key items, there are no trap chests that could have a key item, there are only a few chests to loot for useful equipment/items and the enemies are weak and don't provide any worthwhile grinding. The bosses are also much weaker and provide miniscule rewards. The main reasons for players to fight these boss is if there is an objective boss found here or for a quick way to unlock 6 of Fusoya's spells if they are running a seed where he doesn't start off with all his spells.
- Since the normal entrance to Hobbs is blocked by ice which only Rydia can remove, players have to enter from its exit, approaching the boss from behind. While at the doorway, you can check the boss and potential character to decide if they warrent a fight. If not, you can leave without activating the boss fight.
- Spared by the Adaptation: Tellah does not have his Plotline Death after completing the Tower of Zot, allowing him to be used for the rest of the game.
- Starter Equipment: Characters will join with whatever equipment they had on when they first joined in the original game. There is an option where the characters come equipped with a randomized weapon that they can normally wield but don't have any armor.
- Undesirable Prize:
- A common occurrence in the randomizer where chests, monster chests or key item spots could have status healing items or their gil equivalent, weaker equipment or equipment that can't be used for any character available (such as spears in seeds where Kain isn't a choice). These can be sold for some gil, though. But the best example would be the Dark Knight equipment. Cecil is the only one who can use them and only for a tiny window as a Dark Knight, they are weak and sell for small chunk of change.
- For key items, this befalls the Magma Key if you already have the Hook. Either can be used to access the Underworld, but going the Hook path ends with you getting the Falcon with the drill attached, letting you open up the Agart Mountain path, making the Magma Key useless.
- As you start to exhaust all options late in the game, almost all non-objective items can fall under this as you try to find the one item to win the crystal.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Averted as a fully randomized game would have many seeds that are impossible to complete due to conflicting item/boss placements. The system has checks in place to avoid situations where Item A is located in Area B but Area B can only be opened using Item A if these are required to complete the game. Either the Magma Key or the Hook are needed to open a path to the Underworld and one of them CAN be located there, but that means that the other is available somewhere else that can be reached.
