Strange disturbances are bothering Cecil once again. What does it mean?

Speed Run Rules:
* Single Session
* Any% Completion
* Takes Damage to Save Time
* Suffers Death to Save Time
* Defeats a Terrible Nightmare

Square Enix has once again decided to remake Final Fantasy IV, but this remake I find to be quite a beautiful remake. The Complete Collection includes the original game, the sequel "The After Years", and adds in a new story that takes place one year after the original game. Given that it's simply an interlude, it's short - about the same length as most of The After Years chapters. It also plays much like them...no free roaming, just transported from area to area. Hell, even several bosses were rehashed, including the nightmare from everybody's FF4 childhood: DEMON WALL. Alas, it's much easier since you've got a kick ass mage that has level 3 black magic spells.

During this run, zero random battles were fought. Why? Because no level grinding needs to be done. The scenario is just that easy with fricken Palom having all of his level 3 spells. Speaking of boss fights, let's talk about them, shall we?

Introduction: Baron to Damcyan
Not much to talk about here. I set the Battle Mode to Active, Battle Message and Battle Speed to 1, Dash to On, Cursor to Keep, and Battle Order to On (which allows me to skip turns via Triangle). After that, it's just leaving Baron and talking to the pilot in order to fly to Damcyan. Walk straight in, talk to Edward, see the crystal, hear news, leave. Blah blah blah.

Go tell it on the mountain: Damcyan to Fabul
Despite having TWO airships, no I have to WALK to Mt. Hobs. After that I wander up the mountain much like in FF IV and at the top...well, lookie here. Does this seem familiar? Well, in the original, you fight Mom Bomb. Now you fight Dad Bomb! THINK OF THE CHILDREN, HEROES!

Boss: Dad Bomb
Stated HP: 12,000

This boss really almost comes off as too scripted. I attack once with Cecil, then just set up the rest of the fight. Monk B has a pair of Ice Claws, which I rip off and give to Yang and Monk A. The spares that I take off of them I give back to Monk B. Giving the front line the Ice Claws seems to bolster their damage a bit. After that, it's simply attack the Grey Bombs and Balloons after the Dad Bomb explodes and have Rosa use Curaga.

After this the two monks officially join (which to me is completely worthless since I never use them again) and we head down the east side towards Fabul.

Upon arriving, we find out that we're in time to see Sheila have the baby. Yang asks Cecil to name her and the name Ursula is chosen. Sound familiar to any "The After Years" players?

Interesting thing is that Cecil looks out the back side of the tower, but given the layout, shouldn't he be looking out the FRONT of the tower? Hmmm...

After kicking Yang and Rosa out of the party, I grab the Spider Silk, Elixer, and Ether (the Ether is a backup incase the late bosses don't cooperate) from the chests in the hidden path and then move on out.

A Nightmare From Childhood: The Sealed Cave

The sealed cave, oh how I hate you. There's no magical warp skipping this time! You have to take it and the Trap Doors head on (apply directly to the forehead)! The Trap Doors have 5000 HP each. Firaga is the best way to kill them, but Palom's usage is a bit...flakey at times. Usually he hits them for 4500+ damage, which is good, because combined with a hit or two from Cecil and Cid, it will kill them. But sometimes, Palom decides to do a 3500 or so hit, which if you nearly kill them, but not quite, they will enter SURPRISE! mode and bring in an enemy to take their place. Luckily we only have to face two of them to reach the bottom. And both times Palom's magic was solid. The first battle I had to take things a little slower then I liked, since Palom bit the dust, but once revived, his magic was solid. The second battle I rushed the auto battle a little too quickly, so Porom used Raise a little too early. Minor error though. I grabbed a Phoenix Down from a chest between the 2 doors in case she croaked, but it wasn't needed.

Upon arrival at the bottom comes the real terror: Demon Wall!

Boss: Demon Wall
Stated HP: 28,000

The best strat involves using Slow with Porom, Bluffing with Palom twice (upping the strength of his magic spells), then using Blizzaga. If the Bluffed magic does 6,000+ damage each (which they can), the last 4k can be taken out via Cecil and Cid attacking. Thanks to Cecil and Cid's power hitting as well as some unexpectedly strong magic from Palom, I actually only needed 3 Blizzagas instead of the expected 4. Once I get though the two Bluffs, I can turn on Auto Battle which speed everything up greatly, including the death animation. (It's actually possible to beat Demon Wall before it fully appears on screen, but all of the physical hits and Blizzagas haved to be really strong. It was barely fully visible when it died.)

After that it's straight into the crystal room, adding Rydia to the party. Unfortunately whoever in the FF IV rehash department created this scenario, they must have HATED Rydia. She's as worthless really as a sack of potatoes. She doesn't have any tier 3 black magic spells, so she's basically my warper back up to the surface of the Sealed Cave. Note: You can NOT use warp in the crystal room or the Demon Wall boss room. Teleport doesn't work anywhere in the Sealed Cave, since we have to see the scenario at the top (the spell is grayed out on both Cecil and Porom's spell lists).

So an Elite Ninja wandered into a cave...: Elban Cave

In a change of cast, I now play as Edge, the UBER ELITE NINJA. Yeah, right. AMBUSH AMBUSH BACK ATTACK BACK...yeah, you get my point.

Not much to say here, really.

The Site of Tanks and Cannons: Tower of Babil

Once again we return to the dreaded Tower of Babil. The scenario is simple - work your way up while fighting several bosses. It's all about Palom here, baby. Yeah, you Palom, you tart.

Boss: Frostbeast
Stated HP: 8200
Weakness: Fire

One Firaga = Instant Death. Overkilled it.

Boss: Green Dragon
Stated HP: 8600

With no weakness, use Blizzaga twice and have Cecil attack. Porom continues to cure and Rydia...well, she just sits around like the worthless sack of potatoes she is right now. The game was nice with having Toad miss, though it would have shown off a nice glitch. If your lead character (the one on screen) is a toad when you go to the door/spot where the boss is, you turn back to normal for the scene.

Boss: Flamehound
Stated HP: 8600
Weakness: Ice

One Blizzaga = Instant Death. 9999 is as badass as you can get. (OK Palom, I'm sorry about the tart comment.)

Boss: Tunneler
Stated HP: 8550

I've had runs end with this boss, since he loves to counter some of my attacks with earthquake. One time he countered with it then immediately used it again as a normal attack. Run End. :( While it did decide to constrict Palom, an Esuna from Cecil fixed things up.

Once I get to the next boss fight, I'm fully healed of HP and MP.

Boss: Android Soldier (x3)
Stated HP: 25000
Weakness: Lightning

Not much happens here. Even though the bosses are stated to have 25000 HP each, just using Thundaga once on one of them causes them to switch modes and combine into the next boss.

Boss: Deus Ex Machina
Stated HP: 40110
Weakness: Lightning

Since 3/4 characters are at low HP, I need Porom to use Curaga, so Cecil uses a Spider Silk gotten earlier to slow the boss. Don't need to Bluff with Palom, since he generally hits for 9999 damage (or close to it). Edge uses Blitz for more damage. I then turn on Auto-Battle to speed the rest of the battle up.

After this, I move Edge to the front row with Cecil (making his normal attack stronger, which helps in the rest of the boss fights) and head up to the center of the tower. For those who don't recognize this spot, this is where we fought Edge's parents (who were turned into monsters) and Rubicante (Let us fight like gentlemen!) in the original FF IV. Edge here sniffs out a trap. Yep, that Rydia was a FAKE!

Boss: Shiva
Stated HP: 12800
Weakness: Fire

Easy enough - attack with Cecil and Edge and Firaga her with Palom. Falls quite quickly, given Firaga's strength against her.

Boss: Ramuh
Stated HP: 12000

Ramuh has the lowest HP of this boss sequence. I use Blizzaga as it seems to do the most damage.

Boss: Ifrit
Stated HP: 14000
Weakness: Ice

Pretty much just like the Shiva battle, continue the attack with Edge and Cecil but use Blizzaga (obviously) with Palom.

Boss: Titan
Stated HP: 15000

I hate this boss. Quake is nasty at times. No, I don't have Float! Attack with Edge and Cecil (until the latter croaked) and Firaga with Palom.

Boss: Bahamut
Stated HP: ?

Finally, a REAL FF IV battle...HOPELESS! I don't need to do anything here, just wait for it to end, though I start having Edge defend since I don't need him to attack for the rest of the scenario. Megaflare is percentage based for this attack, so nobody else will die.

Now that the real Rydia has shown up (in style! Seriously, Mist Dragon's entrance is COOL), time to kill the fake!

Boss: Rydia?
Stated HP: ? (probably around 30000 HP)

This boss isn't hard, though any boss that does start with Meteor can look quite intimidating. Megaflare + Firaga = BYE BYE FAKE RYDIA. Auto Battle speeds things up again, but it does cause some of the SFX to get out of sync with the attack (like when I turned it on during Meteor). I did 30011 damage to Rydia during the fight, which was probably just enough to beat her. Normally would have Cecil defend, but since I didn't get to set it during the Bahamut fight (since he was dead), I let him continue to attack. Good thing I let him go at it this time.

End of an Interlude: Back to Baron and beyond.

After this, it's just dialogue. We find out why Rosa was "white as a sheet" as Cid so put it. She'll be fine...in 9 months. CONGRATS CECIL AND ROSA!

Credits roll, then Kain gets screen time for no apparent reason at all.

Game save and boom! 0:31!

Is a 0:30 possible in single-segment? With absolute perfect luck, the planets in alignment, a special dance performed, an extremely low amount of random encounters, perfect use of auto battle, perfect movement, and no mistakes, maybe.

Notes on Timing: The game timer appears to start when the opening cutscene starts (I manually timed from hitting "New Game" until the timer hit 0:01 and it was about 61 seconds. So given this, how did I manage a 0:31? From what I calculate as a start time until I hit the save screen, I should have had a 0:32 (I actually should have had about a 0:32:42). I was curious to see how close the game thought I was, but saves don't keep track of seconds. While this doesn't matter much for single-segment runs, it will matter for segmented runs.

I looked at various points in the run to see if maybe I could figure out where things get off. Here's a few points:
Setting Row/Order before Sealed Cave: 0:11 (expected 0:11:30)
After Curaga/Raise before Demon Wall: 0:13 (expected 0:14:06)
Using Curaga before Green Dragon: 0:19 (expected 0:20:37)
Using Curaga before Firebeast: 0:21 (expected 0:22:02)
Switch Edge's position in the party: 0:24 (expected 0:25:41)
Curaga before Rydia: 0:25 (expected 0:26:22)

So there's at least 40 seconds of things it doesn't count overall. What it is I'm not sure, but you can see the timer discrepency during the Sealed Cave. There's not that much loading to interfere, so I'm not sure what's up. Maybe not counting battle transitions?

This run is Copyright (C) 2011 Nicholas "Sir VG" Hoppe and IMAMYTH Colosseum (http://www.imamyth.com/ and http://www.youtube.com/user/SirVG) and is allowed for downloading and private viewing. Permissions for hosting this run have been granted to Radix and Speed Demos Archive. Public viewing of this run is prohibited without prior permission from the creator. The selling or distribution of this run for profit in any way, shape, or form including (but not limited to) selling on eBay and television for profit is prohibited without prior permission from the author. Video hosting sites (i.e. YouTube, etc) may host this video in part or in full, as long as full permission is granted by the author (the official Speed Demos Archive channel has automatic permission to host any of my runs). Any violation of the above listed may result in legal action. Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection is Copyright (C) 2011 Square Enix.

Sir VG, signing out.

"We came. We saw. We speed ran."

FIN