/vr/ - Retro Games

I guess it's a trivial accomplishment, but I think I found a way to cheat the Zeromus fight.

It looks like FF4 stores HP as a 16-bit integer, so an enemy shouldn't be able to have more than 65535 max HP. Normally, Zeromus' HP is estimated to be around 100,000. To accomplish this, the game restores Zeromus' HP to max at some point during the fight, probably when his HP approaches a critical value. This occurs only once, and the effect goes unnoticed by the player since it's not announced like a spell or ability.

I wanted to see if I could force my party to push through the turn queue quickly enough while dealing large amounts of damage so Zeromus' HP could be depleted before the restore effect could be triggered. To do this, I maxed my party's levels so their STR would be sufficiently high. After having Cecil use the Crystal, I made Cecil, Kain and Edge berserk themselves with Bacchus while Rydia spammed Bahamut. Zeromus went down in after taking about ~55,000 damage within just a few rounds. So in conclusion, it appears your party actually -can- cancel out Zeromus' HP refresh, making him only half as strong as normal.

I would recommend the translated Super Famicom ROM, or the PS1 / FF Chronicles version, which is more or less the same thing. The "Namingway Edition" hack that keeps getting mentioned makes a lot of questionable gameplay changes and messes with the original balance, so I don't recommend it. I assume you are wanting to experience the original game as it was intended to be played, after all.

The GBA version is hideously ugly, full of bugs and has a hack job of a translation. There's a lot of post-game content that tosses gameplay balance right out the window, although you don't get to access that content until later on.

The PSP version looks nice on the surface, but later into the game you start to notice how mismatched and poorly upscaled some of the graphics are. And it's on par with the GBA translation.

The DS version seems like a nice idea in theory, but there are so many gameplay changes that it's like playing a different game entirely. And the translation is once again borked.

The oft-ignored WSC version is actually a pretty nice enhanced port, but hasn't been translated by any parties. Not really worth mentioning unless you understand Japanese.

The PSP version looks like shite. The graphics are all disproportionate and constantly clash with the backgrounds or other sprites, some are sharper or more blurred than others, and the color detail isn't very consistent. It's like Square assigned a dozen different artists to come up with their own designs. Like someone else mentioned, it looks more like an RPG Maker project than a professional game.

The GBA version has numerous intrusive bugs, some of which are addressed in the European and later Japanese revisions. The graphics are too bright and washed out. There's all kinds of slowdown, especially when using the airship. The retranslation is shit, and unfortunately the PSP version is based on it. The GBA version is easily the worst version of FF4 and should be avoided at all costs.

I didn't have any problems with the DS version trying to envision the game in 3D, but the translation was as remarkably bad as the GBA version.

I'd just stick with the original Hard Type version. You can either emulate a fan translation or play FF Chronicles for PS1.