my dream FFXIV fight: Crystaller/Culex
In the back half of 1996's incredible fever dream Nintendo/Squaresoft collaboration, Super Mario RPG: The Legend of the Seven Stars, a delightful foray into platformer/RPG hybridization, Mario and crew find themselves in Monstro Town. Fittingly for the name, Monstro Town is full of the usual monsters you might expect to see in a Mario game: you can chat with a Thwomp or buy items from the Goomba who runs the local store.
There is also a mysteriously sealed door.
The only person in town who seems to know anything about it is the Piranha Plant who lives next door. The walls are thin in Monstro Town, it seems!
Attentive players will recall they have seen a crystal Shiny Stone before, offered by a mole girl in the earlier mining town of Moleville.
Luckily, fireworks are sold right nearby. Unluckily, they're quite expensive (500 coins!), but that's no issue for a wealthy celebrity hero like Mario!
Trading the fireworks to the mole girl nets you the Shiny Stone. Which by the way re-sells for only 2 coins. Not a bad little profit for a "pur-tend" store!
The sealed door, of course, responds immediately to the crystal. Contemporary players, and enjoyers of '90s Square, might naturally be reminded of 1995's Chrono Trigger, which hides quite a lot of late-game loot behind sealed chests and doors that react to a plot-important crystal pendant.
Behind the door, Mario and friends find themself in a mysterious abyss, where they're greeted by a strange, 2-D pixel man.
From there, he gives you a little explanation for his presence, which differs rather drastically across languages. In the English, he introduces himself as Culex, the Dark Knight of Vanda and strongest warrior of the Dark Mage, who just wants a good clean fight before he crosses back to his own dimension (if you decline, he's like "yeah that's smart, you have no weapons and are dressed like a plumber."). His name is a reference to FF4's Golbez; just as Golbez's original name (Golubaeser) is a reference, via the Serbian town of Golubac, to the fly S. colombaschense, Culex is a family of mosquitoes.
In the Japanese, he's more of a demon king type, the timeless evil overlord of the 2-D realm, seeking to understand the party's 3-D forms through combat. Here, he's called クリスタラー, Kurisutara, which I think translates best as Crystaller, or someone who's really into crystals. Compare to シャネラー (shanera/Chaneler), which denotes someone who's really into the brand Chanel!
Whatever the reason, he's here to fight you as the game's hidden superboss. And yeah, you better believe he's into crystals.
By the time the fight starts, it's probably obvious to someone with even a cursory awareness of '90s RPGs that we're doing a Final Fantasy riff. He's a monster with a square little overworld sprite that turns into a big elaborate piece of pixel art in the fight, he's an angel-demon-thing growing out of a cloud of crystals, and he literally brought along the four elemental crystals! His boss fight theme is just FF4's boss fight theme, and they straight up play the Victory Fanfare at the end of the fight!
After an appropriately difficult fight, Culex acknowledges the party's strength and bounces, though not before giving you a "Quartz Charm" that's the strongest accessory in the game. ...yeah, it's crystals again.
Anyways, I told you all that just so it would make sense when I tell you my deepest sincerest nerdiest wish is for Culex to appear in FFXIV. Okay yeah he's technically only Final Fantasy-adjacent, with even less of a direct franchise connection than e.g. anyone from Kingdom Hearts, but he has the music! He's from a game developed directly by Square! There's even circumstantial evidence he might be a Tetsuya Nomura design!
And he's perfectly suited for a trial or raid! He not only has adds in the form of the crystals, he has a big "here's the thing I say before my strongest mid-fight attack" speech ready to go! Much like the old FFT spell casts that got turned into Ivalice Alliance boss speeches, it even has a slightly cleaner modern translation.
He even comes with an extra phase change for Savage or Extreme! The extended Culex fight which was added to the 2023 remake (which also proves I'm not the only person still thinking about Culex) lets him return in empowered 3-D form with new moves! And also a crazy eight-pack and blandly handsome face.
Praying that the intentions of this post can transcend time and space to reach the hearts and minds of CBU3. This is what the people need! Show them the power of the end-game!
