Ff4 Free Enterprise is Too Easy Its Based on the Easy Version
Introduction
Some time ago I learned about randomizers and became entranced by the A Link to the Past Randomizer. There's a whole randomizer movement now; seemingly every NES and SNES classic has a randomizer. As an RPG fan I've checked out a few RPG randomizers. I decided they weren't for me on the basis that most seem too random. You'd have characters with random stats randomly learning abilities with random effects fighting random enemies with random stats and abilities. It'd be like in ALttP if you picked up the boomerang but it acted like the Bombos medallion while fighting basic snake enemies that now hit harder than Ganon. I'm also not a fan of the more random ALttP randomizer modes.
Recently, I saw a stream of people playing FF4: Free Enterprise. Now this is the sort of RPG randomizer I wanted. Characters are the same as base FF4 and their spells are too. But now in each recruit spot the character you get is randomized. Equipment all acts the same but each chest has random contents.
I'm most impressed by how FE handles bosses. Boss attack patterns and abilities are the same. What boss appears in each boss spot is random. But rather than have a late-game boss show up in an early-game spot and just stomp you the boss's stats are changed to reflect the spot. If you run into Rubicant, a late boss, in the Mist Dragon's spot (first boss) Rubicant gets the HP and stats of the Mist Dragon. This not only prevents the spot from being an early blocker but leads to interesting combinations of stats and behavior. You can also see normally-easy early game bosses get jacked up stats and suddenly get tough.
The randomizer is called Free Enterprise because the Enterprise, one of the airships you get in FF4, is immediately unlocked. This allows for an open world style exploration and dearth of pathing choices. This makes it feel even more like the ALttP Randomizer; a lot of the fun is choosing where to go next.
Assembling the Team
You start with two team members, just like FF4 proper. I started with Kain the Dragoon and Tellah the Sage. I started by hitting up as many recruitment spots as possible trying to fill out my team. I quickly added Yang the Monk and Cid the Engineer (basically melee with a hammer in this game). Porom came on to be my White Mage but soon after I found Rosa who's also a White Mage. I think Rosa is generally better as she has better HP.
I probably made a mistake at the Black Mage spot. Lots of FE streams I've seen go with Palom since he gets spells a lot earlier than Rydia. Rydia has summons but in FE you need to track down where they are. In my case, I got Rydia first and she had the Mist summon before I found Palom. I also found a shop selling Bahamut, the best summon. So I stuck with Rydia. Later I found FuSoYa whose benefit is coming at a high level with high HP and all spells but low MP for his level. I stuck with Rydia thinking she'd eventually outgrow FuSoYa. That did happen but not until the very end. I also could've kicked out a melee person for FuSoYa but didn't.
Next was what to do with the melee spots. I was finding Masamunes, Edge's ultimate weapon, all over the place. The game just vomited them at me; I had four and found a shop selling them. Thankfully, Edge was found before long. Drawback of Edge in base FF4 is he joins late and underleveled. This time he was higher leveled than the rest of my team. He took Cid's spot.
I maybe should've stuck with Yang over Cecil the Paladin. But I like Cecil with his high defense and when I found him I already had his ultimate weapon and some of his ultimate gear.
Thus, I ended up with Kain, Rosa, Rydia, Edge, and Cecil: the same endgame team that base FF4 gives you. A bit boring but as mentioned above I had reasons for my choices.
Decked Out
One thing about randomizers for jRPGs is you'll probably get lategame gear really early. I mentioned how finding such gear influenced my party choices above.
I got the Adamant Armor for the first time ever. Base FF4 has insane requirements to get it: you need a 1/64 item drop from a 1/64 random encounter which can only happen in one specific room. But the Adamant Armor is pretty insane itself. It boasts massive defenses and gives big stat boosts to a bunch of stats. It can even be equipped by everyone! I put it on Rosa and anything that did more than scratch damage to her would cut anyone else to ribbons.
Speaking of Ribbons, they were for sale! FF Ribbons are known to usually give good defense and stat buffs but, most importantly, give the wearer immunity to all or most status ailments. I got one for the whole team. Later, this would cause shenannigans.
Notable Boss Fights
CPU was good example of how bosses can work in FE. It's normally a very late boss but it was one of the first I ran into. The fight was like a depowered version of normal. But because of the randomizer I also had much better equipment than usual for a boss at that point so CPU was easy.
The normally intimidating Demon Wall became a humorous fight. I found it in a spot around where it's usuly fought so its stats didn't suffer much. It packed quite a punch; before too long Rosa and her Adamant was the only one left standing. Problem is Demon Wall advances towards you and when it gets close it spams instant-death Crush. Rosa didn't have the offense to stop it. And she didn't have to. I had all Ribbons at this point. The whole team was immune to Crush. Demon Wall was now ironically harmless. Rosa brought the team back and they finished the boss off.
Plague took me two tries. Its gimmick is it puts Doom on everyone, giving them a 10-count until they go down. Even though he was fought at an earlier spot it was still tough to put him down in time.
The final boss is known for having two forms. The first form doesn't do anything; it's only there for plot. FE randomizes the true form of the boss. I've seen a bunch of different ones on streams. I got a Mimic from Dragon Quest, a welcome coincidence. The fight itself went easier than any fight I can remember against the FF4 final boss. Part of it was I picked up a couple tips from the streams I've seen. For instance, bypassing magic counters by putting Reflect on someone and bouncing spells off them. I also think it was easier as the base ROM was the FF4 English SNES version, which is one of the easier versions of FF4.
Conclusion
This is pretty much exactly what I wanted out of an RPG randomizer. It had the right amount of randomness, did cool things with characters, key items, and bosses, and opened the world so there were a lot of different choices most of the time. I'm moving on to Bravely Default II now but I'd like to try another spin of this at some point, especially since a run of FE is much faster than base FF4.
Source: https://superromobrothers.wordpress.com/2021/03/02/final-fantasy-iv-free-enterprise/
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