Interesting fact about Bindwa in PSIV

[Doctor Hooves]

Bindwa is listed as an enemy ability in the game (not an enemy exclusive ability, like Hewn, both players and enemies can use it), but no enemies in the game use it. Giving enemies different abilities typically results in glitchy messes and rather unsuccessful executions of the abilities.

I gave Bindwa to Sa-Lews...

Success acheived. It worked perfectly. No glitchy messes. It was completely integrated with his graphics like when he casts his other spells (the bottom right orb thingy casts Bindwa).

This has to mean that he was once intended to have Bindwa, otherwise, as he casts it with zero issue. Lots of stuff goes unused in video games, and PSIV isn’t expectation. Pretty interesting to me.

[Zucca]

How successful is Bindwa when he uses it? I mean, does it make the fight much harder?

[Doctor Hooves]

I haven’t properly used it in a fight with him, but I can say that it has a pretty high success rate. It worked on a level 99 Chaz and level 99 Alys (walking through walls code) fairly easily.

[MrStarbird]

Status ailments and debuffs check against a character's mental stat, so the higher the mental, the less likely it will have of hitting.

as far as whether this bosses was originally designed to use it or not, I have my doubts. an enemy can be given a majority of techniques to use from the enemy ability list and not have graphical glitches. Sa-Lews could have been given Foi, Wat, Zan, Megid, or any other technique and it would have worked just fine (I've seen Iglanova use Megid without issue before). The reason it showed up in that particular orb was most likely because the Bindwa was entered into the slot that originally had the ability that would show from that orb. If you put Bindwa into a different address, it should show being cast from a different orb. The graphical problems happen mostly when certain enemy animations need to happen along with it, such as Thunder Halberd, Lightning Shower, Thunderblast, etc.

[Doctor Hooves]

Well, I can’t imagine much other enemies it could have been intended for. Plus, Bindwa is the closest sleeping ability to Sa Lews’ other spells (they’re all esper skills).

Most enemies use Mindblast as a sleeping effect.

[Zucca]

Hmm. Good point there.

[MrStarbird]

True, but again mindblast is a skill. Bindwa is a tech. If you try giving bindwa to other enemies, it should work for them too.