Creator (boss)

The Creator is the final boss of Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. It has three forms, excluding the naughth form, and is also an enemy encountered in a scripted battle before the ending.

The Creator is fought with no breaks but the party's health and status will be fully restored after the second form.

Naughth form
During the first phase, ??? will not attack the party. It is just a matter of lowering its capacity of HP, which is not a lot. When it goes white and the second phase begins, ??? has a tendency to repetitively cast Drain and Osmose on the player's characters, which does not harm them much. Although it is not really a threat, casting Flare or using Bands like Spiral Blow ensures a quick victory. Its music, "Planetary Core", is the most-known Creators' track.

First form
At the start of the fight, the Creator will cast Auto-Reflect on itself. It will also cast it again whenever it loses effect. Physical attacks or Bands like Spiral Blow are encouraged, but this can be remedied with casting Reflect on the party and by casting Black Magic on them. Bahamut proves useful against it, as well. During the fight, Creator will use Binding Glare, which does a modicum of damage to a character, but may Paralyze them. It also uses Holy and Flare in addition to this when executing reactions.

Using Meteor on it causes the Creator to counter with one of its own. In the Complete Collection version of the game, the Creator does not maintain Auto-Reflect throughout the fight. Instead he goes through a cycle of casting reflect, using element drain, analyzing and copying the characters "reaction", and executing the reaction by attacking. The reflect activates after the first blow the player deals to the Creator and disappears after the second, meaning that if one is careful they can easily cycle between physical attacks and magical ones without fear of him reflecting them back onto the party.

His attacks remain unchanged from the Wii-ware version; the only difference is that he will not attack until he has copied a characters reaction. Once the player has hit him 3 times after he copies the player's reaction, he will say "copy complete;" after that the cycle begins again.

Second form
The Creator's third form is faster and has more attacks than its previous, and can still use Binding Glare, Holy, and Flare. Its most powerful attack is Bahamut's Megaflare, which it can use without even summoning him. Not only that, Creator can also use Meteor. Because it no longer has Reflect, using any Black Magic is safe. Using it with abilities like Dualcast is especially useful.

It is highly recommended to be prepared with Esuna or Remedies, because the third form uses Binding Glare more often than the last, and it can easily defeat the party with it if its main healers have no one available to restore their status.

Third form
The first phase of the fight is scripted and cannot be won. After a cutscene, the party's status will be fully restored. Have one character use one of the eight Crystals on the Creator so the party can attack it. Alternatively, using the rest of the other seven is also effective. During the fight, the Creator has a pattern of dangerous attacks. It will often use Split, which does high damage to a single character. Responding to this by having a character heal them often is a recommended course of action. It uses another powerful attack called Fuse, which drains around 1,000+ points of HP from every member of the party to restore its own.

The Creator may also use Regenerate, which will restore 9,999 of its HP and it will use this as much as it wishes. It also has the ability to change its weakness with Transform - using Libra or a Bestiary cannot read it. When the screen flashes purple during the fight, the Creator is readying the attack Explode, which does relatively high damage to the whole party. Multiply, another attack unique to the Creator, does similar amounts of damage to everyone.

The Creator also has Zeromus's Black Hole, which has the same effects. The Creator uses Black Hole immediately after the Crystal is used on it making any attempt to buff the party beforehand useless. It will sometimes chain another spell of its own with Black Hole, such as Split or Regenerate. Finally, the Creator knows strong Black Magic and White Magic spells, such as Firaga and Holy. It can use the spell Confuse on everybody in the party as it nears death. Equipment such as the Ribbon can easily negate this.

It is best to use strong attacks while simultaneously keeping the party's HP just above 2,000+ constantly, which will help them survive most of the Creator's attacks. It is not a good idea to use Band abilities that will use up most of the characters available in the party, rather it is best to perform ones that only use two characters. Kain and Ceodore's Double Jump, or Cecil's and Kain's Sky Grinder are good candidates, because both break the damage cap.

Again, Dual Cast is useful with casting Flare twice, which will do at least over 10,000+ damage. Because of the Creator's very high HP, this will easily use up a lot of MP, so having any sorts of MP restorative items is a must. The Creator also rarely uses Metastasis on itself during the fight, which takes off 3,000 of its own HP.

Encounters
The Creator will constantly appear as the party attempts to escape the Depths in a scripted battle. There is no trick to defeating it, each battle is a back attack and the Creator cannot be killed by the party. The Creator can use Collapse to do 9,999 damage to itself, or Destroy to subtract a large amount of HP from itself and a minuscule amount from one character. It also uses Crush (not to be confused with the ability used by the Demon Wall to one hit kill a party member) to do large amounts of damage to itself and low damage to the party.

Do not bother with Bands or Summons or even healing (unless necessary which should not really happen). Just keep attacking as the Creator does more damage to itself than it does to the party, and it will eventually fall during each encounter. When the party gets closer to the exit as the Creator catches up, several Maenads will appear on the party's side. They will attack the Creator before finally destroying it with a Meteor spell.

Il Creatore (boss)