Aug 26th, 2018, 04:11 PM
So, as some of you might already know, in the last couple of years we've seen a huge increase in the popularity of romhack randomizers for games. What are your thoughts on them? Have you ever tried one?
I've spent the last week or two watching a lot of Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise League, which is a speedrunning tournament of a Final Fantasy IV randomizer that completely changes everything about the game. You start with access to your airship and every where in the game is unlocked from the start. You start with two random characters, and the rest are spread out among the various places that you get them, but of course they are all randomized. Key items are completely randomized, bosses are completely randomized, treasure chests are randomized and shops are randomized.
I've had a blast watching these races, and I'm definitely going to try out this one myself. Overall it looks like the best randomizer I've seen yet. It's been awesome seeing what kind of crap goes down in these seeds. Seeing an early game boss like the Mist Dragon show up in the spot of a late-game boss and hit for 4,000+ damage is awesome. The bosses are in random spots, but the stats for those boss spots are unchanged. So you could end up getting a boss like Golbez in a high magic stat spot in the final dungeon, and see him hit for 8,000+ damage with his spells. Or you could get a late-game boss like Wyvern show up in an early game spot and Mega Flare your team for 8,000+ damage immediately. There's so much that can happen with the bosses in this randomizer that just make it so good.
So the goal of the randomizer is to find the items you need to beat the game. To those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy IV, you need a key item in order to fight the final boss. You need to use it on him to reveal his true form, and then the fight actually begins. So the first step in this randomizer is to obviously find that item, but of course it could be any where. Second, you need one of two key items that allow you to get to where the boss is. In this randomizer, they changed the Pass item to allow you to warp directly to the final boss, so you either need that or you need the vanilla item that gives you access to the final dungeon. Then of course you need the team and the right levels in order to beat the final boss, so even if you find the two items you need to get to and beat the final boss, you might not have the characters. I've seen seeds that give you the item to fight the final boss in the first five minutes. To me that's good and bad. Yes, you want the item, but at the same time, getting it that early makes it difficult to think about what to do about your team. Where do you go to get your party members? Which party members do you take? Do you just find the first three you can and then go? Or do you spend more time looking for the good characters like Edge, Rosa, Kain and Palom/Fu-So-Ya?
It's just awesome watching these runners, and to see some of the shit they do to be able to get where they need to be. In the league, you earn 4 points for a first place finish, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth. Once this round of the tournament is done, I believe they'll go from 32 runners down to the top 12. So if anyone is interested in watching one of the races, hit up RPG Limit Break on either Twitch (if you want to see a live race) or YouTube, where you can go and watch any of the previous races.
Oh, and I almost forgot one of the best parts of this randomizer... the people who made it did some special work on it, and they also randomized the song that Edward plays during the Twin Harp scene, and best of all, they randomized the sprite for the final boss once you reveal his true form. I've seen some pretty hilarious things, like the Moon from Majora's Mask, Thomas the Train, the Final Fantasy IV logo, and many others. So yeah, if you want a good time, definitely catch some of these races or watch the previous ones on YouTube.
I've spent the last week or two watching a lot of Final Fantasy IV: Free Enterprise League, which is a speedrunning tournament of a Final Fantasy IV randomizer that completely changes everything about the game. You start with access to your airship and every where in the game is unlocked from the start. You start with two random characters, and the rest are spread out among the various places that you get them, but of course they are all randomized. Key items are completely randomized, bosses are completely randomized, treasure chests are randomized and shops are randomized.
I've had a blast watching these races, and I'm definitely going to try out this one myself. Overall it looks like the best randomizer I've seen yet. It's been awesome seeing what kind of crap goes down in these seeds. Seeing an early game boss like the Mist Dragon show up in the spot of a late-game boss and hit for 4,000+ damage is awesome. The bosses are in random spots, but the stats for those boss spots are unchanged. So you could end up getting a boss like Golbez in a high magic stat spot in the final dungeon, and see him hit for 8,000+ damage with his spells. Or you could get a late-game boss like Wyvern show up in an early game spot and Mega Flare your team for 8,000+ damage immediately. There's so much that can happen with the bosses in this randomizer that just make it so good.
So the goal of the randomizer is to find the items you need to beat the game. To those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy IV, you need a key item in order to fight the final boss. You need to use it on him to reveal his true form, and then the fight actually begins. So the first step in this randomizer is to obviously find that item, but of course it could be any where. Second, you need one of two key items that allow you to get to where the boss is. In this randomizer, they changed the Pass item to allow you to warp directly to the final boss, so you either need that or you need the vanilla item that gives you access to the final dungeon. Then of course you need the team and the right levels in order to beat the final boss, so even if you find the two items you need to get to and beat the final boss, you might not have the characters. I've seen seeds that give you the item to fight the final boss in the first five minutes. To me that's good and bad. Yes, you want the item, but at the same time, getting it that early makes it difficult to think about what to do about your team. Where do you go to get your party members? Which party members do you take? Do you just find the first three you can and then go? Or do you spend more time looking for the good characters like Edge, Rosa, Kain and Palom/Fu-So-Ya?
It's just awesome watching these runners, and to see some of the shit they do to be able to get where they need to be. In the league, you earn 4 points for a first place finish, 3 for second, 2 for third and 1 for fourth. Once this round of the tournament is done, I believe they'll go from 32 runners down to the top 12. So if anyone is interested in watching one of the races, hit up RPG Limit Break on either Twitch (if you want to see a live race) or YouTube, where you can go and watch any of the previous races.
Oh, and I almost forgot one of the best parts of this randomizer... the people who made it did some special work on it, and they also randomized the song that Edward plays during the Twin Harp scene, and best of all, they randomized the sprite for the final boss once you reveal his true form. I've seen some pretty hilarious things, like the Moon from Majora's Mask, Thomas the Train, the Final Fantasy IV logo, and many others. So yeah, if you want a good time, definitely catch some of these races or watch the previous ones on YouTube.