Yeah, the biggest problem with ABP is that your gains remain almost constant, so if you want to level up jobs, the best way is to go back to mobs that represent no threat to you, and just mindlessly farm. ABP would've been a lot better if they just had it so that higher level mobs gave more.
they don't though? Like, even already Omicron has been seeing a gradual increase in ABP. Even aside options like grinding Skull Eaters, later in the game it becomes vastly easier to grind.
Like. Omicron is at the point where it certainly makes more sense to, say, grind Dhorme Chimera than early game goblins if you want to power grind ABP, and there are later fights that yield even more than the Skull Eaters. It's just a general upward trend, it just happens to take awhile to really start kicking in.
My going theory is that the ship is using an Ifrit-powered engine, because that would tie directly into what we did in the Library of Ancients, make summons involved in more than just combat, and also means I can think about our engine as that one furnace from Howl's Moving Castle with its adorable spirit.
It's really poorly worded, but it's not technically a lie. If you use multi-target magic (that isn't Aqua Breath for the OHKO), it'll set off the holes.
Oh my god. Yeah, the moment you wrote it that way, I got what the game was trying to convey, and it's the worst possible way to try and get the information across.
So, Skulleaters are actually one of the best ABP grinding enemies in this section of the game. Why? Because despite their massive defensive and offensive stats, they have exactly one HP. So if you have anything that can pierce those defenses (Geomancer or Ninja Scrolls tend to work), you can kill them easily for quick ABP. They aren't the best possible option because of that shitloads of offensive stats meaning if you don't go first someone probably dies, but still, a decent option.
Good to know, I now have both a spot to grind Bartz's Ninja levels and an outlet for that shitton of Lightning Scrolls I inexplicably got from these Thunder Anemones at sea.
Tell it to me straight Omni: did you, like me, also beeline for the cool looking shape at the bottom of the map first with your ship and immediately lose it 30 seconds later, and have to reload a save?
I took one look at the Crescent Isle on the map, went "this looks Plot Progression Shaped, and I just want to fuck around for a bit," and set it to dead last in my list of place to visits.
So somehow pretty much the opposite yet for the same reason.
Ranger has, as you mentioned, one of the endgame doom combos so you'll probably want to take Bartz through it at some point. In particular, once you get -Ga spells you can combine spellblade with X-Attack to insta-kill 4 enemies with elemental weaknesses at once. Other than that it's a decent back row class, because bows tend to have a lot of effects ranging from elemental damage to instant death chance to one that just triggers X-Attack without needing the actual ability.
Yeah, there's never really a real reason to go back to a past location just to grind. Dhorme Chimeras are phased out once you get access to the Skull Eaters, and even those only remain relevant if for some reason you don't want to inflate your XP. There are always more and better ABP spots coming up, even if they're off the beaten path. Backtracking is not particularly encouraged for this matter, and good thing that.
I mean, preferring ninja and the scrolls is fair and admittedly Cooler™️, no judging. But Geodudes (slapping the command on any other job is enough, you learn it with only 10-25 or so ABP anyway) are simply cheaper. :_D
The wildlife of the area appears, oddly enough, to be composed entirely of squirrels; these come in two flavors, packs of adorable chubby 'Nutkins' that always appear in three and are easily dealt with, and, hrm.
I see you found the party cave. Skull Eaters are one of the fun surprises for people on their first playthrough. This cave was really rough back in the days before we had the quick save slot to remove basically all the danger of wiping and having to start the cave run over.
More importantly, you now have access to the best version of the chocobo theme in the entire series! Sadly, the pixel remake isn't as good as the original, which owes a lot of its charm to its simple but effective orchestration (steel drum melody, horn line trumpet, bass guitar, bongos, and a guy yelling out "Huuugh!" at opportune moments.).
Here's the original. Here's the new version, for comparison (it's #29). New version is slightly slower tempo and for reasons I can't even begin to imagine the guy goes "Eww" sounds terrible and does it all of once. It has a B section to expand on the original but they decide to go with...a very basic bass solo. Honestly it's a bit of a letdown and misses a lot of the energy and charm of the original.
If you haven't already, try that out sometime. I think it came up earlier in the LP, but yes using Gold Needles on stone enemies will instantly... de-stone them and kill them in what is presumably a sudden explosion of flesh.
This. This will be your golden ticket, Omi. The golden ticket to a fairly painless ABP grind that is creeping ever so much closer to you. You will get 3 and 5 ABPs and more than enough gil to make up for the cost of the needles, well, assuming the remake didn't change the values.
I took one look at the Crescent Isle on the map, went "this looks Plot Progression Shaped, and I just want to fuck around for a bit," and set it to dead last in my list of place to visits.
So somehow pretty much the opposite yet for the same reason.
Hah, fair. I also try to aim for actual plot progression last, it's just that in this case I didn't expect plot progression to be "eat shit ship's gone lmao" just for entering a town.
Yeah, FFV doesn't expect the player to hyperfocus jobs until they're maxed out and expects them to try out a wide range of jobs early before focusing once ABP rewards start to increase. I'd say the average playthrough provides enough ABP to max out one of the expensive jobs and several less ABP heavy ones so you can afford to 'waste' some here and there.
Those two would be the Bard and the Ranger. Bard appears to be a passive buffing class that sings song which provide beneficial effects and whose attacks deal percentage-based magic damage; Ranger is our archer job and appears mainly noteworthy for one of its abilities being part of an endgame doom combo.
The Bard is an odd one. It's usefulness thought most of the game is pretty minimal, but spikes at a couple of areas. Once you unlock the final songs though it's extremely strong, if the fight doesn't end before it ramps up. An amusing class for solo challenges though, as most bosses are best beaten by using Hide and waiting hours for them to run out of MP.
The Ranger, as stated, is best known for it's final skill. Outside of that it's a fine enough damage dealer, but nothing standout unless you really like bows.
Ah yes, the Sandworm sure is a fight. As you've seen, it's classed as a Desert enemy so Aqua Breath does 8x damage to it and ends the fight immediately. Outside of that, it's once of the least threatening bosses in the game with pretty pathetic damage output. Honestly, it's only really a problem if you don't realise the gimmick, or are a madman attempting the infamous solo Berserker run, where the Sandworm is practically impossible until you hit the low 60s.
It's not a large place, but traversal is obstructed by large walls that have to be moved using skull switches. The wildlife of the area appears, oddly enough, to be composed entirely of squirrels; these come in two flavors, packs of adorable chubby 'Nutkins' that always appear in three and are easily dealt with, and, hrm.
'Skull Eaters'???
O...kay…
This is an absolutely wild encounter. Not only can that thing one-shot any of my party members, I can't do anything to it; all my attacks miss completely. Maybe magic would work? I don't know but tbh it's not really relevant, because that thing has another mechanic: it flees after a random number of turns. Sometimes it OHKOs one of my party members then immediately escapes, sometimes it goes the full round and I wipe. When it flees, any surviving party member get 0 XP or Gil, but 5 ABP, which would be really good value if not for the fact that it's driving a wedge between their respective progress owing to the fact that there's nearly always at least one KO character by the end of the """fight."""
And it's not a rare encounter, either. I would guess there is like a 50:50 chance of either getting the harmless Nutkin or the terrifying Skull Eater. What a place.
Not yet, surprisingly. Their only other appearances have been the cell phone games, World of Final Fantasy, and the chocobo roguelike spin-offs.
Although notably, the World of Final Fantasy version made the name a bit more descriptive.
The extremely cheeky in-game encyclopedia said:
A mu relative that's constantly munching on a skull. Cute, but don't let that fool you or you'll be next. Technically, it just nibbles skulls and doesn't actually eat them—but sadly, "nibbler" was already taken.
Fun fact, this isn't just flavour dialogue. If you go stand next to that sheep in the top left and interact with it from behind it'll kick you over the fence so you can interact with that dude in the top left corner and find some hidden items.
Basically all four members of my party are in their last stage of job mastery. Bartz is learning the last level of Spellblade, Lenna is learning HP +30%, Galuf is learning Summon lv 5, and Faris is (still) learning Dualcast. Faris I'm fine with, I've just accepted she'll be spending maybe most of the game in Red Mage learning mode, but the others are still several hundred ABPs from reaching their job mastery and it's… so… slow.
I could swap them to different jobs for a little bit, play around with configuration, I guess? But at the same time that just feels like delaying an inevitable grindfest that has to be resolved sooner or later. Once this is done it'll be a huge leap, I can transfer them all to a new job with their mastered abilities equip and try out fresh new strategies, but in the meantime… Watching these 400 ABP counts eroded one single point at a time with every encounter is exhausting.
Yeah the AP economy sucks ass and is what really drags down FFV's version of the job system. Because AP rewards don't really scale into the latergame at all it only becomes more and more prohibitive to try out a newer, weaker class to get it up to level 1 or 2 instead of continuing to chip away at the levels of a stronger class.
Time for more PS1 translation silliness! This town, which as you might've noticed is as far west as anything gets on the map, was named Easterly in that version.
On the subject of the black chocobo there's a town it lets you visit that you might want to check out.
Ah yes, the Skull Eater. That two-bit, Incisor-using, cheap-shotting, low-down, NO-GOOD MOTHERF-
*is dragged away frothing by people in white coats*
Sorry, sorry, flashbacks. Yeah, those fuckers hurt me pretty badly every time I went through the Jachol caves. Turns out, you either bring Geomancers and drop the ceiling on them (apparently quite literally, what with the Gaia move in caves being 'Stalactite'), or bring Ninjas and turn them into kunai pincushions. !Gaia ignores MDEF, !Throw ignores DEF, and Skull Eater has only 1 HP, so anything that bypasses its insane defenses instantly kills it.
Also, minor spoilers, but FFV almost matches FFIII in how many vehicles it gives you before the final airship (though to be fair, that covers most FF games as well).
Also, minor spoilers, but FFV almost matches FFIII in how many vehicles it gives you before the final airship (though to be fair, that covers most FF games as well).
Admittedly, part of that is how FFV just kind of chucks the vehicles at you for one story beat, then goes "okay NEXT". You've got Boco for the first 12 seconds of the prologue, then you've got a ship until it gets sunk in a canal, then you've got a dope-ass Dragon except it can't fly over mountains so you just go to the next city and maybe detour to Tycoon, then you've got a ship again but you can straight up lose in 3 minutes because you decided to visit Crescent Island first...
Eagerly awaiting the next update where upon killing the Sandworm, a bigger worm is angered and the next time Omi boards the Black Chocobo they immediately get eaten FFII Leviathan style
Fun fact, this isn't just flavour dialogue. If you go stand next to that sheep in the top left and interact with it from behind it'll kick you over the fence so you can interact with that dude in the top left corner and find some hidden items.
See, that was my immediate assumption - I noticed there were a couple of NPCs that seemed inaccessible, the shepherd girl suggested that sheep might kick me, so I drew the conclusion "sheep kicks you over into the inaccessible area." Then I interacted with each sheep in the field and nothing happened, so I left thinking I had a very smart moment that was also just wrong.
Good to know I missed it because I was interacting from the wrong direction grumble grumble.
Guess I'll go back.
You also could've enchanted Bartz's weapon with Break and turned it to stone in one shot.
FFV is the game where Stupid Clown-Ass Bullshit is the best way to defeat bosses and I'm kinda here for it.
Not to my knowledge; wiki only lists it as available in the same places you normally get its tier of spells, no early shenanigans like getting Esuna from Karnak Castle.
It is however apparently possible to Break the Sandworm using Beastmaster's !Capture ability, since some enemies when released will cast it. Another reason Beastmaster is in the Blue Mage category of classes for "becomes more useful with excessive game knowledge".
"Listen. All I wanted was a nice little vacation away from the city to visit family, right? And then outta nowhere this punk and his buddies come at me, and I'm over here like 'ay what's ya fuckin' problem, huh?' and this little asshole busts out some kinda fuckin' sword? Like what is this, the fuckin' Middle Ages? I think they were tryin' to shake me down, you know? Now look, I'm a law-abiding citizen, but a man's gotta have means of protection, right, it ain't like I broke out a gun or anything. So anyway, I got my tailduster, I give him one to the jaw, guy goes down like a fuckin' sack'a popotoes, like c'mon I didn't know he was gonna be made'a glass, gimme a break here. 'Sides, his buddies had me with my back to a wall, like what's a guy supposed to do, you know? Unbelievable how the old country's gone downhill, just unbelievable. My ma woulda wept, elements rest 'er soul."
Not to my knowledge; wiki only lists it as available in the same places you normally get its tier of spells, no early shenanigans like getting Esuna from Karnak Castle.
It is however apparently possible to Break the Sandworm using Beastmaster's !Capture ability, since some enemies when released will cast it. Another reason Beastmaster is in the Blue Mage category of classes for "becomes more useful with excessive game knowledge".
Oh okay I guess I misremembered which enemy I used Mystic Knight Break on, I cooked my brain with the entirety of Umineko between starting FF5 and now so some things slipped through
Oh okay I guess I misremembered which enemy I used Mystic Knight Break on, I cooked my brain with the entirety of Umineko between starting FF5 and now so some things slipped through
To be entirely fair? After looking at the page for Break, which has listings of all the enemies it can take out, goddamn screw using the -ga spells against weaknesses, I'm pretty sure a Mystic Knight with Break on their sword can kill like 70% of the bestiary before bosses are factored in. Having one of the effects of Spellblade be "if the enemy doesn't resist this status it always works" is pretty dope.
"Listen. All I wanted was a nice little vacation away from the city to visit family, right? And then outta nowhere this punk and his buddies come at me, and I'm over here like 'ay what's ya fuckin' problem, huh?' and this little asshole busts out some kinda fuckin' sword? Like what is this, the fuckin' Middle Ages? I think they were tryin' to shake me down, you know? Now look, I'm a law-abiding citizen, but a man's gotta have means of protection, right, it ain't like I broke out a gun or anything. So anyway, I got my tailduster, I give him one to the jaw, guy goes down like a fuckin' sack'a popotoes, like c'mon I didn't know he was gonna be made'a glass, gimme a break here. 'Sides, his buddies had me with my back to a wall, like what's a guy supposed to do, you know? Unbelievable how the old country's gone downhill, just unbelievable. My ma woulda wept, elements rest 'er soul."
We have defeated the sandworm and opened the path through the Desert of Shifting Sands, which means there is only one thing left to do:
Immediately backtrack.
It's fine! I just wanted to check out some stuff! I promise I'm not wasting your time!
Specifically, now that I know what the deal is with Skull Eaters - sky-high defenses making it impossible to hit except with guaranteed hit attacks, but only 1 HP meaning those kill it instantly - now's the perfect opportunity to use an item which thus far I've had no use for. You see, one of the most common encounters at sea is the "Thunder Anemone." This is a very annoying enemy for the simple reason that it absorbs Lightning damage, unlike every other sea monster, which are weak to it instead. This means you can't Ramuh or omnicast Thundara your way out of sea encounters solely because these anemone assholes are sitting there, eating it up.
On the upside, though, these guys drop Lightning Scrolls when they die. Meaning at this point I have over thirty of the goddamned things, and nothing to use them for. Nothing except…
Turning Bartz into a Ninja and spamming Lightning Scrolls at Skull Eaters to gain a few dozen ABPs.
It's a finicky process because I need Bartz to act before the Skull Eater has a chance to go first and OHKO a party member, but it mostly works. I grab the first ranks of Ninja just so I have them and advance the rest of the party along their long, long grind, and then we're back out.
Time to zip over to Istory…
You have to interact with this ship from this specific direction for it to kick you over the fence, which is what I was missing before. Talking to the bard just above has them ask us if we are the adventurers on a quest to protect the crystal; when we say yes, they teach us Romeo's Ballad, "a song of love, soothing enough to move the hearts of any who hear it, even monsters." Neat!
There is also some old geezer who tells me that according to his great-great-grandmother, there is treasure behind the Istory waterfall, but unfortunately I have no idea how to access that place.
I can fly over it, sure, but it doesn't do anything.
And then it's back to the Shifting Sands.
It would be improper to call the Desert a "dungeon," as it is only one screen long. It is a pretty big screen, though, and it is a massive pain to navigate, because apparently the game decided conveyor belts were such a good idea, it couldn't just do it once:
These weird squiggly lines indicate "currents" of sand which, if touched, will carry you at high speed to some other spot, taking turns and detours so it's essentially impossible to guess where you'll end up. These make up most of the desert's area, and you are not immune to random encounter while on them, so most fights will occur while you're in the middle of being precipitously carried off to fuck knows where.
Every mob in the desert dies to Aqua Breath in one hit, which isn't that big of a deal because everything dies in one or two hits of my normal characters anyway. Just autobattle through it, it's fine.
If you can manage to navigate the currents right, you can land in the middle of the desert, where you get to see its coolest feature - a giant ominous pyramid of doom. Unfortunately, it's locked, and we don't have the means to enter it at this stage, so it's useless.
You can climb to the top, which is really cool, even if it doesn't do anything.
Our only real goal here is instead to find the exit, which I do by kinda just wandering face-first into sand currents until they eventually get me there.
All in all, not the funnest place in the game, but at least we're out… for now.
The desert, of course, was just a transitional area. Our actual objective lies beyond - south, in the Town of Ruin.
….
They called the ruined town of the ancients, empty of all its inhabitants
"Gone"
This fucking game I swear.
Our group enters the village, exploring the ruins - gutted houses standing without roofs under the open sky, streets overgrown with vegetation, broken pillars standing pointlessly - when out of the corner of their eyes, they spot…
King Tycoon! Running away as soon as he feels he's been spotted!
…or is it? We found King Tycoon's helmet way back when on the dragon mountain, remember? And this one seems to have its helmet on perfectly fine, on top of running from us. The group doesn't seem to suspect a trap, and aren't even sure it was King Tycoon they saw in the first place; we pursue him through a very simple game of cat and mouse where we go to one location, see him run away, and go to another, and see him run away again, before going to a final location.
We finally corner King Tycoon at the top of the ruins, where Lenna calls to her father - and Faris shocks everyone by saying:
Damn. The way she says this, with the childish word and the hesitation, really makes me think she barely even remembers her father and her old life - that this is all a sudden, overwhelming rush from the past for her.
Unfortunately, King Tycoon(?) takes advantage of this to pull a supervillain trapdoor lever.
Oddly enough, he uses the "head lowered" sprite right after, suggesting he feels bad for what he just did.
Everyone falls down into the ruins, but as usual, are not much worse for wear. These characters are basically immune to fall damage as long as they can do a funny face while falling.
Note how Galuf is separated from the group by having fallen into a separate cell. At first, I'm a bit worried that this might lead to an actual split in the group, possibly with a tragic follow-up, but actually it's just used for a comedy beat.
First, though, a tearful reunion, or rather the reveal that this had been a reunion in the first place:
Lenna and Faris held hand in an emotional moment of family unity while their companions just stand there fucking dead, which is touching but also kind of inherently funny.
Bartz and Galuf wake up, Bartz joins up with the girls, and Galuf listens as the group notices that he's gone and decide to…
…just let him sort it out on his own, whatever.
Galuf is so incensed that he jumps into that big chasm at the bottom of the screen, disappear in what I can only presume is a feat of Spider-Man-crawling off the underside of the floor, and then emerges back out of a chasm in the top left to call everyone out.
Is… is that an actual expression? Do people say "wait one cotton-picking minute"? Please tell me that's not a thing.
The group mutters an awkward apology and we get on with exploring the ruins.
They head deeper into the ruins and find…
A teleporting pad! Woops!
The camera zooms over land, crossing the oceans and bringing us right back to Crescent Isle - looks like we're going to find out what was going on with those earthquakes! We land on a platform similar to the one we just left, only…
Lightning starts raining down on the platform, blowing up entire chunks of it and forcing the party to run as fast as they could as the warp pad disintegrates behind them. They barely manage to make it out into the next room, where they pause to take a breather.
It looks like the facility is old enough that it's no longer strictly dormant, but is misfiring at random, causing the earthquakes and whirlpools, and actually using the warp pad put more stress on the system that it could handle and made it blow up. Hopefully now that it's fully gone the earthquakes won't be an issue anymore?
There's a scene break there - "Meanwhile," the screen goes to black, and then we watch the black chocobo (which we left behind near the Library of Ancients) fly across the sea back to the Crescent Isle… and it's not alone!
Curious. I'm not sure why they came back here, other than that the plot is going to need them shortly.
At first, I'd assumed these mysterious underground ruins we're exploring - which are labeled 'Catapult,' strangely enough - are going to be a dungeon. Not so! The area is entirely peaceful, and in fact, even provides opportunities to rest.
It's also gorgeous. Straight up the prettiest 'ancient ruin' in the games to date.
These living quarters are really neatly constructed. On the right is a library, with bookshelves and tables (sadly, we can't interact with the bookshelves to discern the wisdom of ancient Ronka; it can be assumed we don't share their language). There's not much of note except for one fun puzzle: the library has a switch that can't be pushed, but it has a note pointing us to the plants in the bedroom. The plants have a note that guide us to examine the notes on the table (so we can read Ronkan, I guess?).
Bartz is about to punch through the table in anger at ancient Ronkan pranks, but Lenna points out another note, which points us to an urn…
In the urn is a frog which gets spooked by us examining it, runs away, slams into a bookshelf and causes a book to drop.
Examining the book finally allows us to pull the lever downstairs, which opens up a wall leading to three chests containing two Shurikens and the Mini spell. Not a bad use of our time!
Rummaging about the place, we find another switch. Pulling it off does not seem to have any obvious effect for us at first, but…
Oops. Sorry, Cid and Mid.
Continuing our exploration, we find a gigantic black room - a hangar of some sorts? Or rather, a drydock:
We're just underneath the Crescent Bay! This is where the ships get sucked down during the earthquake! And it's not the only airship docked here!
Looks like we found us an airship!
And coincidentally Cid and Mid fall from the sky at just this moment.
We have a brief exchange with Mid about how the hell we both ended up here, during which Cid absconds, much more interested in this new technology than he is in wherever that conversation is going.
This is an interesting move the game is playing. Cid has always been connected with airships in Final Fantasy games so far - but here, the game has been delaying that connection. Cid starts out as a generically great engineer, with a steamship and crystal-amplifying machines to his name, but - and this is something that totally passed me by until now - airships don't exist in this world yet. We're back to the FF1 scenario in which the only airship is a buried relic of the ancient past; FF2, 3 and IV all used a set-up in which airships were a recent, but still extant technology, with Cid either as their inventor or just their foremost engineer. Now Cid is establishing his connection to the airship during the game, with us helping it along.
I just think it's neat.
Anyway, Cid digs into the guts of the airship and announces that he's already managed to tinker the ship back into shape, and she's ready to fly again!
Wow, that was fast. We unlocked the black chocobo what, half an hour ago? Jeez.
What's really cool though is the way the ship's exit from its hidden hangar is depicted. Now, at this point we know that the whirlpool must in some way connects to these underground docks, but how exactly?
Simple:
Giant fucking metal doors that part the sea itself.
No wonder that thing caused whirlpools and sank ships. The water displacement would be enough to suck in everything within range of it.
It's a genuinely fascinating bit of construction. Like, is it built into the bedrock? It would have to be, I think, since it's causing all these earthquakes on the islands - but the fact that the gate is built in the strait that controls access to the archipelago?
This is obviously a defense mechanism. Most of the facility and the docks are underwater, but any attempt to assault the island by sea can be defended by creating a massive whirlpool sucking in enemy ships - or, on the contrary, sending out your own ships to meet them. Most likely the facility is meant to drain the water from the giant hangar as quickly as it's sucked in; it could potentially success the defensive whirlpool forever. Of course, the island would still be vulnerable to conventional beaching, which explains why everything eventually moved underground. The town that was built by oblivious modern humans was built on what's essentially a crab's shell - a defensive geographic feature that's merely the visible outgrowth of a gargantuan underground, underwater military complex capable of fully sealing itself and still ensuring supplies through its teleportation facility.
An underwater bunker-complex, meant, as we'll soon see, to act as a counterpart to an airborne fortress, ensuring total control of the world. All that would dwell upon the surface would do so caught between the two eyes of the earth, the watchful and benevolent indestructible battle fortresses of the Ronkan people.
Who had the Ronkan meant to fight with such power, I wonder? They certainly remind us of the Lufenians in more ways than one, and it's becoming increasingly obvious they harnessed the power of the Earth Crystal for their own ends long before Cid did. We know there are other worlds; did they seek to ward themselves against these alien forces, or did they build these marvelous engines of power only to secure their total authority over the people of this star?
Perhaps we'll find out.
But, just as it seems like we might be about to enjoy our newfound freedom in the sky, we are attacked!
Oh.
It's one of you.
VENGEANCE. VENGEANCE FOR SYLDRA!
The creature has 2000 HP and is vulnerable to Lightning (Libra pays off again), meaning it is trivially dispatched despite the moderate threat of its Tail Screw + Attack move (Tail Screw reduces a character to single-digit HP no matter their defense, so you have to heal them before Gray Claw attacks and finishes them off; this is easily handled).
I love this game's dialogue so much.
The ship has sustained some minor damage, and Cid and Mid tell us they can easily cannibalize the fire-powered ship to make the airship like new. He says he doesn't want to hear any thanks, and that he and his grandson will be searching the facility for information on the Earth Crystal; meanwhile, the sky is ours!
This is kind of an odd moment for a "heroes reaffirm their resolve" beat. It also feels like one of these moments the game opens up and tells me I'm free to go anywhere, do sidequests and stuff, and the plot will be waiting for me to pick it up when I'm done. Which it is, kinda, but…
I feel like I've done all the available stuff so far? I don't think there's a city I haven't explored yet. I've definitely missed the odd hidden chest here and there, but like - I'm pretty sure the Pyramid is waiting for the plot to unlock it later, I haven't missed some entire optional dungeon or anything, right?
Without any such obvious lead to follow, I decide to simply pick up where I left off last time I had freedom of movement, and simply head back to Ghon, Town of Ruin, which I never got to fully explore after King Tycoon(?) booby-trapped me. So I fly over the mountains, the deserts, the valleys, and…
Did the town just… blow up?
Wait, what's that giant patch of desert?
Wait. Something is coming out of it. The earth is shaking… The sand is parting as if some monumental object was emerging out of it…
Oh.
Giant underground sky fortress.
We really are resurrecting FF1 with drums and fanfare, aren't we. Only this time instead of having patiently waited for centuries in low orbit, the sky fortress was hidden under the earth the whole time.
Wait…
Did King Tycoon do this?
That's the implication, isn't it?
We tracked him to Ghon, found him before he had time to do anything, and he used a trap to delay us - then shortly after, the long-dormant sky fortress rose from the desert and into the sky. He must have done this.
I can see four possibilities: He's a mimic using Tycoon's appearance, he's been possessed by Exdeath like others before him, we've been misunderstanding his goals the whole time, or I misunderstood the implication and he trapped us for unrelated reasons and Exdeath unrelatedly awoke the sky fortress before he could prevent him. I would rank these possibilities in order of 3 > 4 > 2 > 1, purely off the sad face he made after casting us into the abyss.
Well. Things are picking up again.
I've played some distance further but did not complete the upcoming dungeon, and it's 1am and we're coming up on the image count limit anyway, so I figure here's a good place as any to stop.
Hello! If you've been following this thread so far, you're probably at least mildly interested in early Final Fantasy game. And if I had to guess, I would say there is a better than 50:50 chance that you are the kind of person who likes watching long-form video essays about media they like.
In the past I've recommended New Frame Plus as excellent companion pieces to this Let's Play touching on technical stuff with far more knowledge than I could hope to have in my playthrough. Today I'd like to recommend Ludiscere's YouTube channel, who also does really cool long-form essays about video game, including a series analysis of Final Fantasy one game at a time. A lot of their observations mirror mine, some diverge in interesting ways, and they bring in stuff that I never thought to include (while also occasionally having me go "haha, you missed this!" but, I will admit, rarely so). I think they're cool! I watched all four of their FF videos so far and I enjoyed them.
Obviously reccing a channel with tens of thousands of views in my thread with a mere couple hundred feels kind of silly, but I just do this because it's Final Fantasy content I enjoyed, and if you're reading this thread, that means there's a good chance you'll enjoy it too.
