- Location
- California
Watching your slow descent into madness while you wrestle with the arcane nature of these games is, like, 30% of the fun of this thread.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
And of course, it isn't helped by the fact that Final Fantasy games are old JRPGs, so it's not just the arcane "we didn't explain shit" nature of things. It's also that people are going to want Omi to go out of his way to hit up every area because these older games are much more willing to just go "whoops you didn't visit Jerome the Jester in the seven separate villages in the right order before half of them are destroyed by the Emperor's Doomsday Tornado? Fuck you now you've missed out on a sidequest for some ultimate weapon or armor". Just so far in FFV we've gotten Karnak Castle exploding, FFII had the aforementioned tornado destroy... well half the towns on the map, and no spoilerinos but I can absolutely think of major missable things in future games.
This even includes being able to straight up get a party member perma-killed in one game, if you don't do things correctly. I would honestly be unsurprised if Omi either misses it on his own, or someone in the thread blurts out spoilers to avoid said character's death.
Doesn't FF6 technically have three? Shadow on the Floating Continent is the big one, but iirc you can also lose Mog and Umaro if you take the Gold Hairpin when Lone Wolf kidnaps Mog in the WoB.
I thought so too, but on checking the wiki apparently he still shows up in WoR no matter which option you picked in WoB, so you really it's a choice between getting a Gold Hairpin and getting him early (though iirc some of his dances are exclusive to WoB, so there's that).
I think just the water dance is WoB exclusive, but I always just make Mog a dragoon anyway, so it's only important in a completionist sense.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
perhaps a discussion that requires three consecutive Is Just A Spoiler Box posts is better held in a thread that's not a blind let's play?
Final Fantasy V, Part 8, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Alright, alright, people have been pestering me, "oooh Omi you missed a town," "Omi omi you missed plot cutscenes," "Omi you are playing the game wroooong," oh yeah? WELL LET'S SEE.
Okay so I guess there is a village I missed on my first time exploring the globe. Okay. Fine. Sure. I'm sure it's nothing important and there's nothing of note there.
Goddammit.
So yeah, this is Lix, Bartz's hometown. Everyone around here recognizes him, and interacting with places and people prompts several flashbacks that reveal more about his past and characters (twelve hours in, it's nice that he finally gets some stuff). The local innkeeper allows us to rest for free, which prompts another of these 'characters get up at night' scenes the game loves so much:
Bartz reveals that he was born here, in Lix, and that his mother died when he was young; after that, he traveled the world with his dad. Three years ago, though, his father got sick, and eventually passed away. So if we go from Bartz's canonical age being 18, he's been on his own since he was 15, with only Boko for company, which isn't shocking by anime protagonist standards but is impressive resilience by real world standards. The Son Goku vibes are getting even stronger.
There's another of these "is King Tycoon looking sad or just looking down" moments; there are a couple of sprites where Bartz says "that should do it" and raises a hand to the tombstone, then the stone reads "Here lies Stella and Dorgann, Devoted Husband," and Bartz says his father always wanted to be buried next to his wife. At first, this looks to me like Bartz is clearing up the inscription that wasn't fully visible at first with his hand, and it's only after a moment that I realize what's happened is that Bartz carved his father's name onto the stone, to make up for the fact that, wherever Dorgann's body is, it could never be brought home to be buried as he wished. Which is sweet.
Then Faris wonders aloud "what it's like" to have a father, which, wow Faris, way to make this about you!
I'm still holding to my current theory that Dorgann was from Galuf's planet and part of the group that imprisoned Exdeath before staying behind and siring a child with a woman from earth, btw. Just mentioning it in case that becomes relevant later.
Other characters in a hometown include a… childhood friend… of Bartz…
This is the funniest transition. Bartz's friend couldn't find him in a game of hide and seek and so literally just gave up and left him stuck on a roof all night. Some friends! Bartz was left with no option but to try and make his way down himself, which resulted in him slipping and nearly falling, having to catch himself on a windowsill and hanging there crying until somebody could wake up and rescue him. Which - his friend says laughing - is how he got his fear of heights.
Man, if that's indicative of the average friend Bartz had in this town, no wonder Dorgann took his kid out the instant his wife wasn't there to keep an eye out for him.
Sure you will, buddy. Sure you will.
Lix is also a mechanically useful town to explore, because Bartz gets a 25% "homeboy" discount on every item on sale, and it's the first place I've found that sells Ether, which is going to be a massive help because Faris's Red Mage MP pool is tiny as fuck and I keep running out casting Raise and Cura.
There's another childhood friend of Bartz who emotionally tells him she's been waiting for him and asks if, when he's finished his travel, he can visit her again, as she has something to tell him. Unfortunately for her, she is using the green-haired NPC Town Woman sprite and isn't given a name, so her chance in the Bartzbowl when Lenna and Faris both exist are slim to none.
We also learn that a bard has moved into Bartz's old place; when we go talk to them they're friendly and offer to let Bartz nose around the place to reminisce.
You know, when did the JRPG tradition of being able to just walk into any one person's home and wander about freely while talking to them? It's often been joked and memed about, but, hm. I don't think Final Fantasy I counts; FF1 had such limited resources that every building served a utilitarian purpose. You could walk into any given building freely, but you weren't going into people's homes, unless it was Sardia's or Matoya's caves, right?
So I guess that tradition is kind of an emergent property as the series grew and developed enough room to add homes that only exist for 'flavor' without at any point thinking about how that's kind of weird.
Anyway, Bartz finds a diary in the house, and interacting with it prompts another flashback to his childhood - this one a lot heavier than playing hide and seek.
This scene is really interesting because Bartz's dad is an absolute dirtbag in it, but Bartz, being a child, doesn't really grasp it. Even though Dorgann just said he didn't intend to leave again, Stella muses that it 'would be nice' if he stayed, not to take care of her, but so they could be together as a family. Dorgann says he'd like that, but she is still sick and should rest. Stella insists on finishing up some tasks around the house; meanwhile, Dorgann goes over to Bartz's bedside, and Bartz whispers: "You're leaving again, are you?" having secretly been awake during their conversation.
Bartz asks if Dorgann is going to "get more bad guys," and Dorgann responds "that's what I do," which suggests he is some kind of… Medieval vigilante? Wandering hero? Monster hunter? Either way, it's a calling so powerful that he admits that Bartz is right; he's going to leave in the night as soon as his mother is asleep, and he asks Bartz not to tell her that he saw him leave, "it'll be our little secret." After which he calls to Stella, insisting that she get to bed and that whatever she's doing over at the kitchen stove can wait until tomorrow. But before she can respond -
She collapses, and the flashback ends.
So.
Dorgann had:
And whatever he was doing, whatever heroics he was out performing, was so important that he was fine with lying to her about his plans and leaving them both in the middle of the night without warning, leaving her to take care of her child alone while gravely sick for howeverlong it takes him to come back, all while making his son complicit in his abandonment by telling her to keep his plans a secret. And while he cares to some extent about her health, trying to get her to rest, he's not offering to take care of household duties for her; he's just letting her work while sick and at most telling her to wait until tomorrow (when she'll have to do them alone, seeing as, again, he's planning to leave them).
What a scumbag.
I'm not sure the scene is intended to be read that way? The framing seems more positive towards Dorgann, but it's also seen through Bartz's eyes, and he seems to idealize his father to some extent.
But if whatever Dorgann was out there doing was any less important than "literally saving the world," he's a fucking asshole.
We learn another song from the Bard after the flashback ends, and I think that's all the storytelling in Lix covered for now.
Bartz has been a pretty shallow character compared to the others so far; Lenna has her princess deal and the importance her family (both King Tycoon and Faris) play for her and has been relatively heroic in incidental dialogue, Galuf's amnesia is well-handled and his role as the goofy old guy is funny, and Faris is probably the most interesting character with her piracy, secret background, and gender stuff, but Bartz doesn't have much to go on. This helps, though; the addition of some backstory and the ambiguous figure of his father clearly looming large in his mind all help build his character a little.
Alright, well, with all that covered, it's time to head back to the current state of the end of the world.
Last we checked on the main plot, the ruins under Gohn had revealed themselves to be a giant sky fortress that took off. According to Cid and Mid's research, it is actually powered by the Earth Crystal (the flying fortress is powered by the Earth Crystal? Odd). It's also a 'sky city' more than it is a 'sky fortress,' as it is is quite literally the capital of ancient Ronka lifted into the air - to do so, they used the same kind of crystal-amplifying machine as Cid did, but when they realized it was threatening the integrity of the crystal, they turned it off. Now that it's active again, it's only a matter of time before the crystal shatters.
Which is likely exactly what Exdeath is planning on, and thus it seems likely that he's the one puppetting King Tycoon's body right now. Dang. I guess we gotta save Lenna's dad on top of the Earth Crystal. No pressure!
The airship is currently not strong enough to get high enough up to reach the sky fortress; it needs to be reinforced with adamantite. I'm gonna skip over that part; it's just your basic fetch quest. The adamantite is in the meteorite Galuf rode down to earth, so we go there, get ambushed by the Adamantoise boss fight, kill it with ice spell and get back. Cid and Mid get to work while the crew takes a breather, which gives us this great bit where the fact that they're working incredibly fast is conveyed by multiplying their sprites:
The ship is fully upgraded by the time the party wakes up, but Cid warns us that the floating city is defended by powerful cannons that will have to be disabled before we can access the ship. With no other option, however, the party decides to take them head-on in the airship.
What follows is one of the best setpieces in the series so far.
The mechanical aesthetic is doing wonders here, with gunship-style turrets pointed directly at our ship that you can see in the far background, and the enemy sprites themselves being actual cannons that have to be fought with sword and magic - Final Fantasy's blend of sci-fi and fantasy is really doing the work here. There are four artillery positions that have to be fought one at a time, moving the ship to confront each one in a sequence. Each one is a powerful opponent in its own right, with some high-damage missile attacks and - bizarrely - a rocket attack that confuses the target and turns it against my party. However, what they all have in common is a crippling Lightning weakness; between Faris's Thundara, Galuf's Ramuh, and Bartz's Spellblade, they are all dealt with quickly (Lenna ends up being a liability, as she's hit by the confuse missile and immediately takes out Faris in one punch).
But, as soon as the outer defenses have been defeated, the fortress produces its strongest weapon system: the SOUL CANNON.
Don't ask me what a Soul Cannon is or how it works, I have no clue. There is the disturbing possibility that it is literally using souls as shells; is it possible the ancient Ronkans converted the souls of their dead into ammunition? That's terrifying if so. Notably, while the Soul Cannon itself is just a laser gun, these 'Launcher' adds have the ability to inflict the old status, of all things. Old is a new status and I don't really know what to make of it, other than it has a neat sprite effect where it turns the character's hair white:
In terms of strategy this fight is not too much of a problem. The main body has 20k HP, which is far more than anything we've encountered so far, but all components of the canon are weak to Lightning. The main cannon's principal contribution is a cool and ominous charging sequence, every turn flashing a message like 'DIFFUSION BEAM CANNON: ONLINE' or 'SAFETY LOCK: DISENGAGED,' which I am eating up. I love these kinds of sequences. Even more so when it gives out arbitrary numbers that make the whole thing sound technical and sciency like 'ENERGY CELLS: 128% CAPACITY,' which it absolutely does. On aesthetics alone, one of my favorite fights so far.
I manage to take out both Launchers before the main cannon fires, then heal up everyone and move them to the defensive, tanking the attack:
It looks so flippin' cool.
Not that the last part matters much - as you can see from these numbers, the Wave Cannon is a percentage based attack dealing 50% of Max HP in damage to each character, so the Defend action is irrelevant. What matters is taking out the Launchers and healing everyone up to above 50% so that nobody dies and the Launchers can't finish off anyone after the blast. If you do that, you're gucci, and we blow up the cannon with our next move, busting a hole in the wall big enough for us to put our ship through.
That's our way in!
Interestingly enough, while the outside of the floating city is a steel-plated hull bristling with antennae, reactors and artillery, the inside shares the same ancient-looking architecture as other Ronkan ruins, and unlike FF1, this isn't a matter of aesthetic drift in the Pixel Remaster, it always looked like this.
It's like they built a city in whatever the 'traditional Ronkan architecture' looked like, and then built a gigantic warship around it, like a shell.
Can you imagine if the strongest weapon in the US arsenal was a gigantic battleship that looks like modern warship do, all cold grey steel and guns and hard edges and protruding electronics, but the moment you wandered into it you found yourself in a Neoclassical building, all white marbles and rich carpets and brass everywhere? Like, you walk aboard the USS Iowa and find the Capitol Building inside it?
The degree of… Deliberate inefficiency, of pageantry this suggests, is fascinating. It's possible the city predates the flying shell, rather than it all being constructed concurrently, but the level of performance suggested in a bunch of 21st century 'RETVRN'-type Ronkans building some pastiche of their 'golden age' architecture into their future war machine would be a tantalizing glimpse as to their collective psychology.
Traversing the Ruins is initially a bit annoying because it's the place where the game really goes all out on invisible bridges:
The ones in these pictures are easy enough, it's obvious that you're meant to cross from the first tile to the standalone tile to the other side, but it's mostly just there to 'wake up' the reader to the existence of invisible bridges that they might have forgotten, which is good game design. Fortunately, this is going to stop being a problem soon:
The Stone Masks are whatever but these Knight guys have sky-high defenses and take as much as three turns of attacks to kill, and do not have a particular elemental weakness as an easy skip, making them a pain in my ass.
Lenna has mastered Monk!
Her Monk job now has three shiny stars over it, and Freelancer will from now on gain the benefits of Monk's Strength, Stamina, and innate skills.
Which means it's time to move her to another job - and I am going to make that Thief. I haven't been able to use Thief's passive skills ever since I gave Bartz Two-Handed as his secondary skill, and I want someone with that skill, especially in a dungeon with hidden pathways. On top of that, Thief has the highest Agility in the game, and seems to be a relatively quick job to master; by mastering both Thief and Monk, Lenna will have the highest Strength, Stamina and Agility in the game as a Freelancer. It's not exactly the Dual-Wielding/Rapid Shot/Spellblade doom combo, but having someone with just The Best Stats seems like a relatively decent approach to my second physical attacker until I unlock more advanced jobs.
Oh, also, you might have noticed Galuf is wearing a sheep cosplay in that screenshot above. That's because I bump into this guy:
The name 'Enchanted Fan' makes it sound innocuous, but this thing looks like someone's body hideously stretched on the rack. Between this, the Stone Masks, and the Ronkan Knights inexplicably roaming the corridors after centuries, I strongly suspect Ronkan did indeed trade in horrible soul-bindings.
The Enchanted Fan knows the White Wind spell, a powerful healing spell. Unfortunately, he is not going to use it on our party of his own free will. That, and the fact that the party was running low on HP and MP, is why I ended up going back out of the dungeon, switching Galuf into Beastmaster, and farming Skull Eaters (at great expenses in Phoenix Downs, which was a bad decision on my part, I should have just gone with the Dhorme Chimera) until he learns the Control skill. Then I come back, swap him to Blue Mage with Control in the secondary skill slot, and the next time I bump into one of these, I mind-control it into healing my party, and presto! The party has learned White Wind.
I barely make it any further into the ruins, though, before I notice something interesting. As you can see above, there's about a small XP gap between Faris and everyone else. That's not much; you can also see that a single fight rewards that much, though split four ways between the group. It does mean, however, that everyone in the party hits lv 25, except Faris, who is stuck at lv 24 for a couple of fights further…
…which means this is the perfect opportunity to go back to the Library of Ancients and learn Level 5 Death.
Spoilers: it was anything but perfect.
At first this seems so easy. As a Thief, Lenna knows the Scram command, which is a 100% effective escape from battle, so I just have to run like a coward from everything I encounter to avoid getting enough XP to level up Galuf. We race back out of the Ruins, to the library, and trigger fights until we get the one we want…
As you can see, Level 5 Death plays a sick-ass animation and also kills everyone who is a level multiplier of 5, which means everyone except Faris dies. All I have to do afterwards is raise Galuf and kill the beast so that Galuf is registered as having been affected by the spell and the party learns it.
It is a huge pain in my ass.
What I forgot is that the monster can just cast LV5D again, killing Galuf again. And Faris can't beat the monster on her own, because she's too busy casting Raise. And Galuf can barely win the fight on his own, because his Blue Magic spells kind of suck??? I should have checked which ones are good at dealing damage I can't remember and Aera isn't doing shit. Of course I raise other characters, but they also die to LV5D.
I basically exhaust most of my MP and beat my head against the desk for a while before I pull it off.
Now, all I have to do is walk back out of the Library.
Then I get lost.
Specifically, what happens is that to enter the library, you need to play a small puzzle game with hidden buttons that move bookshelves. It's fairly simple, except I have never done it from the other side to walk back out, and when after poking for a bit I fail to find a button to shift the bookshelves and leave the library, I jump to the extremely dumb conclusion that "well, the first time I had to go all the way through and find Mid who opened a secret exit, so I assume I am supposed to leave through that exit," because that's how my brain works sometimes.
So I just go through the whole library with my party on low MP and a monster that needs to be killed instantly whenever I spot it because it can trap me in the Level 5 Death hell again. It's not a great time. But thankfully, I end up finding the room at the end where Mid had his secret exit!
Which does not exist anymore. It was a plot shortcut and we can't take it.
So I have to walk ALL THE WAY BACK and poke around until I finally find the correct bookshelf I missed the first time around like an idiot.
ANYWAY.
Now that we are done with all the digressions and asides - NO I DIDN'T GO INTO THE SKULL EATER CAVE AGAIN TO GRIND MORE JOB LEVELS SHUT UP - we can finally, finally knuckled down and complete the Ronkan Ruins.
I do actually appreciate that you can just leave, though. Some later games might get stuck considering whether it 'makes sense' narratively for our characters to just abort a very important expedition to save the Earth Crystal to dick around the world some, but FFV is still in that original FF philosophy of D&D-style dungeon expeditions in which you can leave and resupply whenever you want. It definitely makes the Ronkan Ruins the longest dungeon run I've had in the series so far, because it's not a breezy run by itself by any means, and repeatedly leaving and going back extends that even more.
On top of the invisible bridges (which I can essentially stop thinking about as soon as Lenna becomes a Thief since she reveals them all by default, and I'm very glad for it), there's a room full of valuable loot… and breakable floors that dump you down a level if you cross them, forcing us to backtrack again.
At least it contains the Ancient Sword, which is a massive boost in Bartz's attacking power.
The dungeon also makes use of a clever visual technique in which it 'previews' the big plot beat at the end from behind a wall, so our characters don't see it but we, the player, see it in advance:
It looks like Daddy Tycoon's path is blocked by some kind of winged serpent. Now that I see it, the ruins do have a sort of Aztec-y vibe to them, especially in these ornamental statues with their characteristic kinda blocky design. Are we going to have to help him through?
The path through the Ronkan Ruins is windy and complicated, with a bunch of moving up and down stairs, but eventually we make our way to the last room - where we instantly run into a Godzilla reference:
This is technically a random encounter, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Ghidra's Poison Breath inflicts a debilitating Poison status effect on the whole party, his Rush and Lightning attacks deal heavy damage, and to top it off it casts Level 4 Graviga, a powerful Blue Mage spell that I can't actually learn due to not having Learn equipped and also none of my characters being a multiple of 4 in level. Allegedly you can also steal the Killer Bow from it, but I tried and my Steal actions just failed, so…
Anyway, we do manage to slay the beast, and can finally move on to the end of the dungeon after drinking like 50 potions to top everyone up.
This is an incredible moment because if I called King Tycoon's behavior "suspicious" it would be an understatement so extreme a British person would call it 'a mite exaggerated.' Like, it's not just that he reacts to the group's arrival with complete indifference and even annoyance, doesn't bring up the whole 'tricked you into falling down a hole' issue, brushes off Lenna after she spent the entire game so far trying to reach him, no, I want to point one thing out specifically:
His dead daughter who was long lost at sea just showed up and called him 'Papa,' and tells her to shut the fuck up.
Amazingly, the group proceeds to collectively fail the easiest Insight check of the century, turns to the GM and asks 'is there anything suspicious about him?', the GM stares blankly at them, stares at his notes on the scene he just described, looks back up, slowly says: "...no," and the entire group proceeds to shrug and just get on with it.
"""""King Tycoon""""" tells them that the winged serpent is the guardian of these ruins and demands that they 'make themselves useful' and defeat it for him, warning that it can change its weakness at will. THE GUARDIAN, THAT IS GUARDING THE CRYSTAL, THAT EXDEATH WANTS TO DESTROY, YOU ABSOLUTE TOOLS.
Time to kill Quetzalcoatl, I guess.
I have no idea what's going on with the Archeoaevis. Despite Tycoon's warning, it nevever gives any visible sign of changing its elemental weakness. Libra gives nonsensical information - the level it tells me the enemy is changes with each casting, its HP number is a lie (1,600 HP would make this a trivial fight, but it obviously has more HP than that and Libra still tells me he's at 1600/1600 even after dealing a couple thousand damage to him), and it says he's "vulnerable to wind," which I can't test since Blue Mage is my only wind-elemental attacker and I walked into this fight with Galuf as a Summoner.
Without any good information, all I can do is try hitting him as hard as I can with everything I got. Some attacks appear to deal 0 damage, but I can't parse the logic for it. Eventually I wear him down and 'kill it', whereupon it plays the disintegration sprite… Then roars back to life.
In this last phase, Libra gives out proper information (the enemy is lv 20 and would have been vulnerable to level 5 Death if I was using BLU, it has 2500 HP and no elemental weakness), and Archeoaevis absorbs *all* magic damage currently available to me, meaning it's time for my team of punchwizards to beat it to death with their fists.
…
Having looked it up on the wiki, the way Archeoaevis works is that it has five phases, each one treated as an independent monster with its own HP, set of attacks, and immunities (it doesn't actually have a weakness to anything except Wind in phase 1, it's just neutral to everything it doesn't absorb), and gives no indication of its phase changes. Every time you deal 1600 cumulative damage, the rest of that damage is lost (it doesn't 'roll up' to the next phase) and Archeoaevis's next phase 'spawns' as a fresh monster.
It's a pain in the ass is what it is. I don't know how the hell I was supposed to discern this from the limited information Libra gives me; this seems like a monster made for Nintendo Power guides or the wiki era. It's frustrating to me that a monster that could have been a fun boss fight if strategically engaged on its own term couldn't be because the game doesn't give me the information required for planning. Even if it had beaten me and I had reloaded with Galuf as Blue Mage, Level 5 Death doesn't actually work on most of its phases, the Wind weakness is temporary, and the game isn't giving me proper indication of what I'm doing wrong.
Instead I had to brute force it.
Cut for image count.
Okay so I guess there is a village I missed on my first time exploring the globe. Okay. Fine. Sure. I'm sure it's nothing important and there's nothing of note there.
Goddammit.
So yeah, this is Lix, Bartz's hometown. Everyone around here recognizes him, and interacting with places and people prompts several flashbacks that reveal more about his past and characters (twelve hours in, it's nice that he finally gets some stuff). The local innkeeper allows us to rest for free, which prompts another of these 'characters get up at night' scenes the game loves so much:
Bartz reveals that he was born here, in Lix, and that his mother died when he was young; after that, he traveled the world with his dad. Three years ago, though, his father got sick, and eventually passed away. So if we go from Bartz's canonical age being 18, he's been on his own since he was 15, with only Boko for company, which isn't shocking by anime protagonist standards but is impressive resilience by real world standards. The Son Goku vibes are getting even stronger.
There's another of these "is King Tycoon looking sad or just looking down" moments; there are a couple of sprites where Bartz says "that should do it" and raises a hand to the tombstone, then the stone reads "Here lies Stella and Dorgann, Devoted Husband," and Bartz says his father always wanted to be buried next to his wife. At first, this looks to me like Bartz is clearing up the inscription that wasn't fully visible at first with his hand, and it's only after a moment that I realize what's happened is that Bartz carved his father's name onto the stone, to make up for the fact that, wherever Dorgann's body is, it could never be brought home to be buried as he wished. Which is sweet.
Then Faris wonders aloud "what it's like" to have a father, which, wow Faris, way to make this about you!
I'm still holding to my current theory that Dorgann was from Galuf's planet and part of the group that imprisoned Exdeath before staying behind and siring a child with a woman from earth, btw. Just mentioning it in case that becomes relevant later.
Other characters in a hometown include a… childhood friend… of Bartz…
This is the funniest transition. Bartz's friend couldn't find him in a game of hide and seek and so literally just gave up and left him stuck on a roof all night. Some friends! Bartz was left with no option but to try and make his way down himself, which resulted in him slipping and nearly falling, having to catch himself on a windowsill and hanging there crying until somebody could wake up and rescue him. Which - his friend says laughing - is how he got his fear of heights.
Man, if that's indicative of the average friend Bartz had in this town, no wonder Dorgann took his kid out the instant his wife wasn't there to keep an eye out for him.
Sure you will, buddy. Sure you will.
Lix is also a mechanically useful town to explore, because Bartz gets a 25% "homeboy" discount on every item on sale, and it's the first place I've found that sells Ether, which is going to be a massive help because Faris's Red Mage MP pool is tiny as fuck and I keep running out casting Raise and Cura.
There's another childhood friend of Bartz who emotionally tells him she's been waiting for him and asks if, when he's finished his travel, he can visit her again, as she has something to tell him. Unfortunately for her, she is using the green-haired NPC Town Woman sprite and isn't given a name, so her chance in the Bartzbowl when Lenna and Faris both exist are slim to none.
We also learn that a bard has moved into Bartz's old place; when we go talk to them they're friendly and offer to let Bartz nose around the place to reminisce.
You know, when did the JRPG tradition of being able to just walk into any one person's home and wander about freely while talking to them? It's often been joked and memed about, but, hm. I don't think Final Fantasy I counts; FF1 had such limited resources that every building served a utilitarian purpose. You could walk into any given building freely, but you weren't going into people's homes, unless it was Sardia's or Matoya's caves, right?
So I guess that tradition is kind of an emergent property as the series grew and developed enough room to add homes that only exist for 'flavor' without at any point thinking about how that's kind of weird.
Anyway, Bartz finds a diary in the house, and interacting with it prompts another flashback to his childhood - this one a lot heavier than playing hide and seek.
This scene is really interesting because Bartz's dad is an absolute dirtbag in it, but Bartz, being a child, doesn't really grasp it. Even though Dorgann just said he didn't intend to leave again, Stella muses that it 'would be nice' if he stayed, not to take care of her, but so they could be together as a family. Dorgann says he'd like that, but she is still sick and should rest. Stella insists on finishing up some tasks around the house; meanwhile, Dorgann goes over to Bartz's bedside, and Bartz whispers: "You're leaving again, are you?" having secretly been awake during their conversation.
Bartz asks if Dorgann is going to "get more bad guys," and Dorgann responds "that's what I do," which suggests he is some kind of… Medieval vigilante? Wandering hero? Monster hunter? Either way, it's a calling so powerful that he admits that Bartz is right; he's going to leave in the night as soon as his mother is asleep, and he asks Bartz not to tell her that he saw him leave, "it'll be our little secret." After which he calls to Stella, insisting that she get to bed and that whatever she's doing over at the kitchen stove can wait until tomorrow. But before she can respond -
She collapses, and the flashback ends.
So.
Dorgann had:
- A wife without ostensible family or relatives to help her (considering that he took in Bartz after she died).
- Who was gravely ill, of an illness which, unbeknownst to him at the time, would eventually kill her.
- A small child.
And whatever he was doing, whatever heroics he was out performing, was so important that he was fine with lying to her about his plans and leaving them both in the middle of the night without warning, leaving her to take care of her child alone while gravely sick for howeverlong it takes him to come back, all while making his son complicit in his abandonment by telling her to keep his plans a secret. And while he cares to some extent about her health, trying to get her to rest, he's not offering to take care of household duties for her; he's just letting her work while sick and at most telling her to wait until tomorrow (when she'll have to do them alone, seeing as, again, he's planning to leave them).
What a scumbag.
I'm not sure the scene is intended to be read that way? The framing seems more positive towards Dorgann, but it's also seen through Bartz's eyes, and he seems to idealize his father to some extent.
But if whatever Dorgann was out there doing was any less important than "literally saving the world," he's a fucking asshole.
We learn another song from the Bard after the flashback ends, and I think that's all the storytelling in Lix covered for now.
Bartz has been a pretty shallow character compared to the others so far; Lenna has her princess deal and the importance her family (both King Tycoon and Faris) play for her and has been relatively heroic in incidental dialogue, Galuf's amnesia is well-handled and his role as the goofy old guy is funny, and Faris is probably the most interesting character with her piracy, secret background, and gender stuff, but Bartz doesn't have much to go on. This helps, though; the addition of some backstory and the ambiguous figure of his father clearly looming large in his mind all help build his character a little.
Alright, well, with all that covered, it's time to head back to the current state of the end of the world.
Last we checked on the main plot, the ruins under Gohn had revealed themselves to be a giant sky fortress that took off. According to Cid and Mid's research, it is actually powered by the Earth Crystal (the flying fortress is powered by the Earth Crystal? Odd). It's also a 'sky city' more than it is a 'sky fortress,' as it is is quite literally the capital of ancient Ronka lifted into the air - to do so, they used the same kind of crystal-amplifying machine as Cid did, but when they realized it was threatening the integrity of the crystal, they turned it off. Now that it's active again, it's only a matter of time before the crystal shatters.
Which is likely exactly what Exdeath is planning on, and thus it seems likely that he's the one puppetting King Tycoon's body right now. Dang. I guess we gotta save Lenna's dad on top of the Earth Crystal. No pressure!
The airship is currently not strong enough to get high enough up to reach the sky fortress; it needs to be reinforced with adamantite. I'm gonna skip over that part; it's just your basic fetch quest. The adamantite is in the meteorite Galuf rode down to earth, so we go there, get ambushed by the Adamantoise boss fight, kill it with ice spell and get back. Cid and Mid get to work while the crew takes a breather, which gives us this great bit where the fact that they're working incredibly fast is conveyed by multiplying their sprites:
The ship is fully upgraded by the time the party wakes up, but Cid warns us that the floating city is defended by powerful cannons that will have to be disabled before we can access the ship. With no other option, however, the party decides to take them head-on in the airship.
What follows is one of the best setpieces in the series so far.
The mechanical aesthetic is doing wonders here, with gunship-style turrets pointed directly at our ship that you can see in the far background, and the enemy sprites themselves being actual cannons that have to be fought with sword and magic - Final Fantasy's blend of sci-fi and fantasy is really doing the work here. There are four artillery positions that have to be fought one at a time, moving the ship to confront each one in a sequence. Each one is a powerful opponent in its own right, with some high-damage missile attacks and - bizarrely - a rocket attack that confuses the target and turns it against my party. However, what they all have in common is a crippling Lightning weakness; between Faris's Thundara, Galuf's Ramuh, and Bartz's Spellblade, they are all dealt with quickly (Lenna ends up being a liability, as she's hit by the confuse missile and immediately takes out Faris in one punch).
But, as soon as the outer defenses have been defeated, the fortress produces its strongest weapon system: the SOUL CANNON.
Don't ask me what a Soul Cannon is or how it works, I have no clue. There is the disturbing possibility that it is literally using souls as shells; is it possible the ancient Ronkans converted the souls of their dead into ammunition? That's terrifying if so. Notably, while the Soul Cannon itself is just a laser gun, these 'Launcher' adds have the ability to inflict the old status, of all things. Old is a new status and I don't really know what to make of it, other than it has a neat sprite effect where it turns the character's hair white:
In terms of strategy this fight is not too much of a problem. The main body has 20k HP, which is far more than anything we've encountered so far, but all components of the canon are weak to Lightning. The main cannon's principal contribution is a cool and ominous charging sequence, every turn flashing a message like 'DIFFUSION BEAM CANNON: ONLINE' or 'SAFETY LOCK: DISENGAGED,' which I am eating up. I love these kinds of sequences. Even more so when it gives out arbitrary numbers that make the whole thing sound technical and sciency like 'ENERGY CELLS: 128% CAPACITY,' which it absolutely does. On aesthetics alone, one of my favorite fights so far.
I manage to take out both Launchers before the main cannon fires, then heal up everyone and move them to the defensive, tanking the attack:
It looks so flippin' cool.
Not that the last part matters much - as you can see from these numbers, the Wave Cannon is a percentage based attack dealing 50% of Max HP in damage to each character, so the Defend action is irrelevant. What matters is taking out the Launchers and healing everyone up to above 50% so that nobody dies and the Launchers can't finish off anyone after the blast. If you do that, you're gucci, and we blow up the cannon with our next move, busting a hole in the wall big enough for us to put our ship through.
That's our way in!
Interestingly enough, while the outside of the floating city is a steel-plated hull bristling with antennae, reactors and artillery, the inside shares the same ancient-looking architecture as other Ronkan ruins, and unlike FF1, this isn't a matter of aesthetic drift in the Pixel Remaster, it always looked like this.
It's like they built a city in whatever the 'traditional Ronkan architecture' looked like, and then built a gigantic warship around it, like a shell.
Can you imagine if the strongest weapon in the US arsenal was a gigantic battleship that looks like modern warship do, all cold grey steel and guns and hard edges and protruding electronics, but the moment you wandered into it you found yourself in a Neoclassical building, all white marbles and rich carpets and brass everywhere? Like, you walk aboard the USS Iowa and find the Capitol Building inside it?
The degree of… Deliberate inefficiency, of pageantry this suggests, is fascinating. It's possible the city predates the flying shell, rather than it all being constructed concurrently, but the level of performance suggested in a bunch of 21st century 'RETVRN'-type Ronkans building some pastiche of their 'golden age' architecture into their future war machine would be a tantalizing glimpse as to their collective psychology.
Traversing the Ruins is initially a bit annoying because it's the place where the game really goes all out on invisible bridges:
The ones in these pictures are easy enough, it's obvious that you're meant to cross from the first tile to the standalone tile to the other side, but it's mostly just there to 'wake up' the reader to the existence of invisible bridges that they might have forgotten, which is good game design. Fortunately, this is going to stop being a problem soon:
The Stone Masks are whatever but these Knight guys have sky-high defenses and take as much as three turns of attacks to kill, and do not have a particular elemental weakness as an easy skip, making them a pain in my ass.
Lenna has mastered Monk!
Her Monk job now has three shiny stars over it, and Freelancer will from now on gain the benefits of Monk's Strength, Stamina, and innate skills.
Which means it's time to move her to another job - and I am going to make that Thief. I haven't been able to use Thief's passive skills ever since I gave Bartz Two-Handed as his secondary skill, and I want someone with that skill, especially in a dungeon with hidden pathways. On top of that, Thief has the highest Agility in the game, and seems to be a relatively quick job to master; by mastering both Thief and Monk, Lenna will have the highest Strength, Stamina and Agility in the game as a Freelancer. It's not exactly the Dual-Wielding/Rapid Shot/Spellblade doom combo, but having someone with just The Best Stats seems like a relatively decent approach to my second physical attacker until I unlock more advanced jobs.
Oh, also, you might have noticed Galuf is wearing a sheep cosplay in that screenshot above. That's because I bump into this guy:
The name 'Enchanted Fan' makes it sound innocuous, but this thing looks like someone's body hideously stretched on the rack. Between this, the Stone Masks, and the Ronkan Knights inexplicably roaming the corridors after centuries, I strongly suspect Ronkan did indeed trade in horrible soul-bindings.
The Enchanted Fan knows the White Wind spell, a powerful healing spell. Unfortunately, he is not going to use it on our party of his own free will. That, and the fact that the party was running low on HP and MP, is why I ended up going back out of the dungeon, switching Galuf into Beastmaster, and farming Skull Eaters (at great expenses in Phoenix Downs, which was a bad decision on my part, I should have just gone with the Dhorme Chimera) until he learns the Control skill. Then I come back, swap him to Blue Mage with Control in the secondary skill slot, and the next time I bump into one of these, I mind-control it into healing my party, and presto! The party has learned White Wind.
I barely make it any further into the ruins, though, before I notice something interesting. As you can see above, there's about a small XP gap between Faris and everyone else. That's not much; you can also see that a single fight rewards that much, though split four ways between the group. It does mean, however, that everyone in the party hits lv 25, except Faris, who is stuck at lv 24 for a couple of fights further…
…which means this is the perfect opportunity to go back to the Library of Ancients and learn Level 5 Death.
Spoilers: it was anything but perfect.
At first this seems so easy. As a Thief, Lenna knows the Scram command, which is a 100% effective escape from battle, so I just have to run like a coward from everything I encounter to avoid getting enough XP to level up Galuf. We race back out of the Ruins, to the library, and trigger fights until we get the one we want…
As you can see, Level 5 Death plays a sick-ass animation and also kills everyone who is a level multiplier of 5, which means everyone except Faris dies. All I have to do afterwards is raise Galuf and kill the beast so that Galuf is registered as having been affected by the spell and the party learns it.
It is a huge pain in my ass.
What I forgot is that the monster can just cast LV5D again, killing Galuf again. And Faris can't beat the monster on her own, because she's too busy casting Raise. And Galuf can barely win the fight on his own, because his Blue Magic spells kind of suck??? I should have checked which ones are good at dealing damage I can't remember and Aera isn't doing shit. Of course I raise other characters, but they also die to LV5D.
I basically exhaust most of my MP and beat my head against the desk for a while before I pull it off.
Now, all I have to do is walk back out of the Library.
Then I get lost.
Specifically, what happens is that to enter the library, you need to play a small puzzle game with hidden buttons that move bookshelves. It's fairly simple, except I have never done it from the other side to walk back out, and when after poking for a bit I fail to find a button to shift the bookshelves and leave the library, I jump to the extremely dumb conclusion that "well, the first time I had to go all the way through and find Mid who opened a secret exit, so I assume I am supposed to leave through that exit," because that's how my brain works sometimes.
So I just go through the whole library with my party on low MP and a monster that needs to be killed instantly whenever I spot it because it can trap me in the Level 5 Death hell again. It's not a great time. But thankfully, I end up finding the room at the end where Mid had his secret exit!
Which does not exist anymore. It was a plot shortcut and we can't take it.
So I have to walk ALL THE WAY BACK and poke around until I finally find the correct bookshelf I missed the first time around like an idiot.
ANYWAY.
Now that we are done with all the digressions and asides - NO I DIDN'T GO INTO THE SKULL EATER CAVE AGAIN TO GRIND MORE JOB LEVELS SHUT UP - we can finally, finally knuckled down and complete the Ronkan Ruins.
I do actually appreciate that you can just leave, though. Some later games might get stuck considering whether it 'makes sense' narratively for our characters to just abort a very important expedition to save the Earth Crystal to dick around the world some, but FFV is still in that original FF philosophy of D&D-style dungeon expeditions in which you can leave and resupply whenever you want. It definitely makes the Ronkan Ruins the longest dungeon run I've had in the series so far, because it's not a breezy run by itself by any means, and repeatedly leaving and going back extends that even more.
On top of the invisible bridges (which I can essentially stop thinking about as soon as Lenna becomes a Thief since she reveals them all by default, and I'm very glad for it), there's a room full of valuable loot… and breakable floors that dump you down a level if you cross them, forcing us to backtrack again.
At least it contains the Ancient Sword, which is a massive boost in Bartz's attacking power.
The dungeon also makes use of a clever visual technique in which it 'previews' the big plot beat at the end from behind a wall, so our characters don't see it but we, the player, see it in advance:
It looks like Daddy Tycoon's path is blocked by some kind of winged serpent. Now that I see it, the ruins do have a sort of Aztec-y vibe to them, especially in these ornamental statues with their characteristic kinda blocky design. Are we going to have to help him through?
The path through the Ronkan Ruins is windy and complicated, with a bunch of moving up and down stairs, but eventually we make our way to the last room - where we instantly run into a Godzilla reference:
This is technically a random encounter, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Ghidra's Poison Breath inflicts a debilitating Poison status effect on the whole party, his Rush and Lightning attacks deal heavy damage, and to top it off it casts Level 4 Graviga, a powerful Blue Mage spell that I can't actually learn due to not having Learn equipped and also none of my characters being a multiple of 4 in level. Allegedly you can also steal the Killer Bow from it, but I tried and my Steal actions just failed, so…
Anyway, we do manage to slay the beast, and can finally move on to the end of the dungeon after drinking like 50 potions to top everyone up.
This is an incredible moment because if I called King Tycoon's behavior "suspicious" it would be an understatement so extreme a British person would call it 'a mite exaggerated.' Like, it's not just that he reacts to the group's arrival with complete indifference and even annoyance, doesn't bring up the whole 'tricked you into falling down a hole' issue, brushes off Lenna after she spent the entire game so far trying to reach him, no, I want to point one thing out specifically:
His dead daughter who was long lost at sea just showed up and called him 'Papa,' and tells her to shut the fuck up.
Amazingly, the group proceeds to collectively fail the easiest Insight check of the century, turns to the GM and asks 'is there anything suspicious about him?', the GM stares blankly at them, stares at his notes on the scene he just described, looks back up, slowly says: "...no," and the entire group proceeds to shrug and just get on with it.
"""""King Tycoon""""" tells them that the winged serpent is the guardian of these ruins and demands that they 'make themselves useful' and defeat it for him, warning that it can change its weakness at will. THE GUARDIAN, THAT IS GUARDING THE CRYSTAL, THAT EXDEATH WANTS TO DESTROY, YOU ABSOLUTE TOOLS.
Time to kill Quetzalcoatl, I guess.
I have no idea what's going on with the Archeoaevis. Despite Tycoon's warning, it nevever gives any visible sign of changing its elemental weakness. Libra gives nonsensical information - the level it tells me the enemy is changes with each casting, its HP number is a lie (1,600 HP would make this a trivial fight, but it obviously has more HP than that and Libra still tells me he's at 1600/1600 even after dealing a couple thousand damage to him), and it says he's "vulnerable to wind," which I can't test since Blue Mage is my only wind-elemental attacker and I walked into this fight with Galuf as a Summoner.
Without any good information, all I can do is try hitting him as hard as I can with everything I got. Some attacks appear to deal 0 damage, but I can't parse the logic for it. Eventually I wear him down and 'kill it', whereupon it plays the disintegration sprite… Then roars back to life.
In this last phase, Libra gives out proper information (the enemy is lv 20 and would have been vulnerable to level 5 Death if I was using BLU, it has 2500 HP and no elemental weakness), and Archeoaevis absorbs *all* magic damage currently available to me, meaning it's time for my team of punchwizards to beat it to death with their fists.
…
Having looked it up on the wiki, the way Archeoaevis works is that it has five phases, each one treated as an independent monster with its own HP, set of attacks, and immunities (it doesn't actually have a weakness to anything except Wind in phase 1, it's just neutral to everything it doesn't absorb), and gives no indication of its phase changes. Every time you deal 1600 cumulative damage, the rest of that damage is lost (it doesn't 'roll up' to the next phase) and Archeoaevis's next phase 'spawns' as a fresh monster.
It's a pain in the ass is what it is. I don't know how the hell I was supposed to discern this from the limited information Libra gives me; this seems like a monster made for Nintendo Power guides or the wiki era. It's frustrating to me that a monster that could have been a fun boss fight if strategically engaged on its own term couldn't be because the game doesn't give me the information required for planning. Even if it had beaten me and I had reloaded with Galuf as Blue Mage, Level 5 Death doesn't actually work on most of its phases, the Wind weakness is temporary, and the game isn't giving me proper indication of what I'm doing wrong.
Instead I had to brute force it.
Cut for image count.
Final Fantasy V, Part 9, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, in any case, the winged serpent dies, dropping a whole bunch of energy drinks, and "King Tycoon" throws in an evil laugh:
King Tycoon rushes forward without even pausing to talk to the party, and the heroes rush after him into the Earth Crystal room. At this point, they have, thankfully, realized that something isn't on the up and up.
Bartz steps forward intending to stop King Tycoon, which neither of the girls is willing to allow:
Bartz tells them to stand aside, and King Tycoon/Exdeath sees the opportunity to destroy all four of the heroes at once while they're distracted. However will our heroes get out of this one?
Meteorite.
"What?"
Meteorite.
The celestial body hits the floating fortress head on, hard enough to knock everyone except King Tycoon to the ground, and blowing a hole through the wall, from which emerges…
A little girl?!
She's got a gun!
A little girl who can cast Thunder!
A single Thunder spell is somehow enough to knock out Tycoon and blow him halfway across the room, so I guess Krile is packing some serious mojo for a 15-year old.
Galuf, being the amnesiac that he is, looks at this child and struggles to remember, and what plays out next is a really fun and creative use of sprites:
It's not super clear without the motion, so to clarify: first the ? bubble pops up over Galuf's head as he blanks out on who that girl is, then the I bubble pops up as he remembers her name and face, and then this finally kicks his brain into gear and clear up the fog of amnesia, which is represented by the exclamation mark knocking the question mark across the room.
A very touching reunion, although I would like to ask WHO LET THE TEENAGED GIRL PILOT A GODDAMNED METEORITE.
While Galuf and Krile have their reunion, Lenna and Faris get up, and their first and immediate concern is King Tycoon's health:
This really is the day for joyful reunions, it seems.
Which is of course when the game decides to hit us with a Patented Final Fantasy Five Moment.
Out of nowhere and without any explanation, the crystal shatters.
Was the floating city active for too long? Did Exdeath lay some kind of curse before we walked into the room? Did the Archeoaevis draw too much power to revive itself? Who fucking knows, there's no explanation: the game needs the crystal to shatter for the plot to progress so the crystal shatters, this entire thing was pointless, our victory was meaningless.
This is so frustrating. The game was this close to a strong moment.
This why everyone hates railroading GMs. As players, we understand if the story has some necessary steps or else the plot breaks down, and we're willing to work with you to trigger the proper flags. But nobody likes it when the GM says "you need to stop the thing from happening!," we do it and succeed, and then you look at your notes, realize the story can't advance without the thing happening, and just say "the thing happens anyway."
Our efforts were for naught, the crystals are gone, the world will decay and die, and Exdeath is free.
Admittedly the scene of his seal breaking is sick as hell.
Exdeath is now free, and in true villain fashion, the first thing he does is project himself over here to gloat.
I respect that after four attempts at making hit-and-miss grand evil villains the writers decided to just have that motherfucker be called Superkill, have no ostensible motivation other than being evil, and literally say "Mwa-hahahahaha!" every other sentence. We are playing with pure archetype here, let's see if it works better than Xande and Zemus's clumsy-handed attempts at character depth that collapsed the moment we talked to them.
Then something interesting happens - Exdeath orders the crystals, who so far have only bever shown an inclination to help us, to strike us down, and they obey.
Exdeath doesn't stick around to confirm the kill; he mostly appears to have done this as a flex, or perhaps to deny the protagonists the power of the Earth Crystal for themselves. What I find interesting is that in the Archeoaevis fight, when the serpent revives itself, Exdeath!Tycoon muses 'so this is the power of the crystals,' which suggests he didn't previously really know what they could do other than maintain his seal; seizing control of the Earth Crystal shards and turning them against the heroes might have been an improvisation in the heat of the moment, not something he always knew he could do or planned to do.
With the crystals still floating around the room, presumably still under Exdeath's power AND DENYING US THESE SWEET JOB UNLOCKS, King Tycoon - the real one this time - does something odd.
The power of the crystals rush to him, knocking everyone else down, and I am not sure what is happening anymore.
One possibility is that Exdeath's spell is still causing the crystals to attack the group, and King Tycoon is somehow drawing the attacks to himself exclusively? But his phrasing suggests that he is giving back the power the crystals once bestowed upon him.
Also, his phrasing of 'warriors from another world' makes it clear that he doesn't know who Galuf is, and that he himself is from this world; looks like my theory around King Tycoon being from the alien planet and having decided to stick around was wrong. He simply had good Crystal Lore, but wasn't fully aware of the extent of the Exdeath threat - likely what left him open for takeover by his spirit. However, him calling Bartz by name suggests he does know of him; was he perhaps a friend of his late father?
That King Tycoon would make a heroic sacrifice is not surprising; I frankly wasn't expecting him to survive more than five minutes after Lenna and Faris's reunion, because it would offer too much information and closure, and FFV is playing it by the book. I am less clear on the mechanism of this sacrifice, but what's important is that the crystals are doing something to him, and withstanding that attack eventually… drains Exdeath's influence from them and causes them to fall inert?
King Tycoon gathers the crystals unto himself, and scatters them across the room.
All of King Tycoon's strength went into this last act, and as soon as it is done, he promptly collapses, speaking haltingly and clearly on the brink of death. With his last words, he asks Lenna and Sarisa for forgiveness, saying he "wasn't much of a father" - does he feel guilt at not being able to save Sarisa in that tempest, or at not looking harder for her now that he knows she's alive? What remorse does he hold towards Lenna, who seems to love him? Was he simply not there often enough, out there saving the world like Bartz's dad, or too preoccupied with his kingly duties? We'll never know. It is a pretty sad note to go out on, and adds a little more melancholy to King Tycoon's heroic character. Then he asks Bartz to take care of his daughter for him (which, rude, Faris is older than he is, this kind of thing is exactly why she presents as male in the first place, way to make her case for her), and with Lenna and Faris tearfully asking him to hold on and stay a little longer, he vanishes.
At this point 'people spontaneously disappear when they die' is consistent enough that I can call it a 'tradition' of Final Fantasy games, and I'm curious how that'll translate to the 3D era when you have to actually show what is happening rather than just delete a sprite.
Even as the group mourn King Tycoon's passing, the crystals shine, and return their power to them.
Look at the way the sprites are still doing their Head Down Pose even as the light shines around them. This is the saddest powerup of all time. Also note how Krile isn't set apart from the group but is one of the branches of the cross they form, clearly foreshadowing her status as an upcoming party member despite not receiving the light of the crystal.
We will get to the job unlocks at the end of this post, but first: the Earth Crystal being shattered means it is no longer powering the flying city. Oops.
I just wanted to post this in full because it's a pretty cool sequence.
The group barely manages to make it out in time, everything exploding around them, and Faris takes the wheel, flying the ship out of the collapsing fortress; just as they make it, the city falls back into the desert, and is destroyed, leaving no remaining trace.
Once in the relative calm of the open sky, the group has time to take stock. Lenna and Faris are busy grieving their father, but Galuf has a different concern on his mind: he now finally remembers everything.
Some of what he remembers isn't new to us, but is now added more depth and context, and the rest inspires great urgency. Exdeath is an evil warlock from Galuf's world, whom he and three others, the Dawn Warriors, sealed away thirty years ago; Exdeath's original goal was to destroy the crystals of this world, and the Dawn Warriors came after him to save this world… And inadvertently doomed it, when instead of dragging Exdeath back to their world, they decided to take advantage of the crystals to seal him down here, leaving him access to the very tools he would use to free himself. Why Exdeath sought to destroy the crystals, we don't know; unlike the Four Fiends or Golbez, he's not trying to claim their power, except incidentally as in the previous scene; he just wants to blow them up for reasons unknown, and now that he's done so, he's going to go after Galuf's world to.
Stricken with guilt for his responsibility in the destruction of the crystal and his failure to stop Exdeath, Galuf decides it's his responsibility to head back to his world and stop him - and importantly, his responsibility alone.
According to him, Krile's meteorite has enough power left for a return trip, but only one, and wherever they're getting these meteorites from, he's not expecting to find another one.
The group obviously objects, but Galuf refuses to be responsible for them being stranded on a foreign planet away from everyone they know. Which, hmm. Faris obviously would miss her pirate crew. And Lenna is a princess and likely feels a duty to her people whom she would be abandoning. But Bartz? Bartz spent three years alone in the wilderness with a chocobo rather than go back to his hometown. I'm not sure Bartz as anyone to lose, except the very friends he's made on this journey, of whom Galuf is one.
Nonetheless, Galuf sticks by his refusal, and boards the meteorite along with Krile, and they take off towards their home planet.
And… That's it.
There's no obvious clue as to what to do next. Obviously the story isn't over and it'll probably not be hard to find out where to go next (I'm going to check on Cid and Mid first thing next time I open the game), but as far as the characters know, right now, their story's over; there is no cutscene follow up to this, Galuf and Krile left to save their own planet and Bartz, Lenna and Faris are left behind. With no crystals to protect, Exdeath on another planet, that's just… it.
It's an interesting narrative choice. I would have expected at least a scene of the characters talking to each other about how 'we need to do something to go help Galuf', but it's not explicit. We, the players, will have to take them to make that connection ourselves.
Wew, that was kind of a mammoth update, goddamn. But at least now we're fully caught up to where I am in the game!
For now, let's talk jobs! The Earth Crystal unlocked four:
Samurai is a new addition to the series. I believe it has some kind of busted power where you throw money at the enemy for crazy damage? I don't know anything else about it.
Dragoon is our old friend returned. I have a thing for dragoons personally speaking, so if it's at all viable, I'd like to have one of the party members upgrade/sidegrade into it. Maybe Lenna?
Dancer is also new; it's some kind of support class that dances to provide passive bonuses and also has access to some unique valuable equipment like ribbons?
Chemist I know literally nothing about, other than some items I've gathered in the game tell me that they are used 'by a chemist,' and there are a bunch of items (the energy drink series) that I haven't been able to use so far and which the game tells me 'are used with the Drink command,' and Archeoaevis just gave me five of those, so I assume that Chemist is the job that uses them.
Any input would be appreciated!
Next time, we, uh, figure out where to go next.
King Tycoon rushes forward without even pausing to talk to the party, and the heroes rush after him into the Earth Crystal room. At this point, they have, thankfully, realized that something isn't on the up and up.
Bartz steps forward intending to stop King Tycoon, which neither of the girls is willing to allow:
Bartz tells them to stand aside, and King Tycoon/Exdeath sees the opportunity to destroy all four of the heroes at once while they're distracted. However will our heroes get out of this one?
Meteorite.
"What?"
Meteorite.
The celestial body hits the floating fortress head on, hard enough to knock everyone except King Tycoon to the ground, and blowing a hole through the wall, from which emerges…
A little girl?!
She's got a gun!
A little girl who can cast Thunder!
A single Thunder spell is somehow enough to knock out Tycoon and blow him halfway across the room, so I guess Krile is packing some serious mojo for a 15-year old.
Galuf, being the amnesiac that he is, looks at this child and struggles to remember, and what plays out next is a really fun and creative use of sprites:
It's not super clear without the motion, so to clarify: first the ? bubble pops up over Galuf's head as he blanks out on who that girl is, then the I bubble pops up as he remembers her name and face, and then this finally kicks his brain into gear and clear up the fog of amnesia, which is represented by the exclamation mark knocking the question mark across the room.
A very touching reunion, although I would like to ask WHO LET THE TEENAGED GIRL PILOT A GODDAMNED METEORITE.
While Galuf and Krile have their reunion, Lenna and Faris get up, and their first and immediate concern is King Tycoon's health:
This really is the day for joyful reunions, it seems.
Which is of course when the game decides to hit us with a Patented Final Fantasy Five Moment.
Out of nowhere and without any explanation, the crystal shatters.
Was the floating city active for too long? Did Exdeath lay some kind of curse before we walked into the room? Did the Archeoaevis draw too much power to revive itself? Who fucking knows, there's no explanation: the game needs the crystal to shatter for the plot to progress so the crystal shatters, this entire thing was pointless, our victory was meaningless.
This is so frustrating. The game was this close to a strong moment.
This why everyone hates railroading GMs. As players, we understand if the story has some necessary steps or else the plot breaks down, and we're willing to work with you to trigger the proper flags. But nobody likes it when the GM says "you need to stop the thing from happening!," we do it and succeed, and then you look at your notes, realize the story can't advance without the thing happening, and just say "the thing happens anyway."
Our efforts were for naught, the crystals are gone, the world will decay and die, and Exdeath is free.
Admittedly the scene of his seal breaking is sick as hell.
Exdeath is now free, and in true villain fashion, the first thing he does is project himself over here to gloat.
I respect that after four attempts at making hit-and-miss grand evil villains the writers decided to just have that motherfucker be called Superkill, have no ostensible motivation other than being evil, and literally say "Mwa-hahahahaha!" every other sentence. We are playing with pure archetype here, let's see if it works better than Xande and Zemus's clumsy-handed attempts at character depth that collapsed the moment we talked to them.
Then something interesting happens - Exdeath orders the crystals, who so far have only bever shown an inclination to help us, to strike us down, and they obey.
Exdeath doesn't stick around to confirm the kill; he mostly appears to have done this as a flex, or perhaps to deny the protagonists the power of the Earth Crystal for themselves. What I find interesting is that in the Archeoaevis fight, when the serpent revives itself, Exdeath!Tycoon muses 'so this is the power of the crystals,' which suggests he didn't previously really know what they could do other than maintain his seal; seizing control of the Earth Crystal shards and turning them against the heroes might have been an improvisation in the heat of the moment, not something he always knew he could do or planned to do.
With the crystals still floating around the room, presumably still under Exdeath's power AND DENYING US THESE SWEET JOB UNLOCKS, King Tycoon - the real one this time - does something odd.
The power of the crystals rush to him, knocking everyone else down, and I am not sure what is happening anymore.
One possibility is that Exdeath's spell is still causing the crystals to attack the group, and King Tycoon is somehow drawing the attacks to himself exclusively? But his phrasing suggests that he is giving back the power the crystals once bestowed upon him.
Also, his phrasing of 'warriors from another world' makes it clear that he doesn't know who Galuf is, and that he himself is from this world; looks like my theory around King Tycoon being from the alien planet and having decided to stick around was wrong. He simply had good Crystal Lore, but wasn't fully aware of the extent of the Exdeath threat - likely what left him open for takeover by his spirit. However, him calling Bartz by name suggests he does know of him; was he perhaps a friend of his late father?
That King Tycoon would make a heroic sacrifice is not surprising; I frankly wasn't expecting him to survive more than five minutes after Lenna and Faris's reunion, because it would offer too much information and closure, and FFV is playing it by the book. I am less clear on the mechanism of this sacrifice, but what's important is that the crystals are doing something to him, and withstanding that attack eventually… drains Exdeath's influence from them and causes them to fall inert?
King Tycoon gathers the crystals unto himself, and scatters them across the room.
All of King Tycoon's strength went into this last act, and as soon as it is done, he promptly collapses, speaking haltingly and clearly on the brink of death. With his last words, he asks Lenna and Sarisa for forgiveness, saying he "wasn't much of a father" - does he feel guilt at not being able to save Sarisa in that tempest, or at not looking harder for her now that he knows she's alive? What remorse does he hold towards Lenna, who seems to love him? Was he simply not there often enough, out there saving the world like Bartz's dad, or too preoccupied with his kingly duties? We'll never know. It is a pretty sad note to go out on, and adds a little more melancholy to King Tycoon's heroic character. Then he asks Bartz to take care of his daughter for him (which, rude, Faris is older than he is, this kind of thing is exactly why she presents as male in the first place, way to make her case for her), and with Lenna and Faris tearfully asking him to hold on and stay a little longer, he vanishes.
At this point 'people spontaneously disappear when they die' is consistent enough that I can call it a 'tradition' of Final Fantasy games, and I'm curious how that'll translate to the 3D era when you have to actually show what is happening rather than just delete a sprite.
Even as the group mourn King Tycoon's passing, the crystals shine, and return their power to them.
Look at the way the sprites are still doing their Head Down Pose even as the light shines around them. This is the saddest powerup of all time. Also note how Krile isn't set apart from the group but is one of the branches of the cross they form, clearly foreshadowing her status as an upcoming party member despite not receiving the light of the crystal.
We will get to the job unlocks at the end of this post, but first: the Earth Crystal being shattered means it is no longer powering the flying city. Oops.
I just wanted to post this in full because it's a pretty cool sequence.
The group barely manages to make it out in time, everything exploding around them, and Faris takes the wheel, flying the ship out of the collapsing fortress; just as they make it, the city falls back into the desert, and is destroyed, leaving no remaining trace.
Once in the relative calm of the open sky, the group has time to take stock. Lenna and Faris are busy grieving their father, but Galuf has a different concern on his mind: he now finally remembers everything.
Some of what he remembers isn't new to us, but is now added more depth and context, and the rest inspires great urgency. Exdeath is an evil warlock from Galuf's world, whom he and three others, the Dawn Warriors, sealed away thirty years ago; Exdeath's original goal was to destroy the crystals of this world, and the Dawn Warriors came after him to save this world… And inadvertently doomed it, when instead of dragging Exdeath back to their world, they decided to take advantage of the crystals to seal him down here, leaving him access to the very tools he would use to free himself. Why Exdeath sought to destroy the crystals, we don't know; unlike the Four Fiends or Golbez, he's not trying to claim their power, except incidentally as in the previous scene; he just wants to blow them up for reasons unknown, and now that he's done so, he's going to go after Galuf's world to.
Stricken with guilt for his responsibility in the destruction of the crystal and his failure to stop Exdeath, Galuf decides it's his responsibility to head back to his world and stop him - and importantly, his responsibility alone.
According to him, Krile's meteorite has enough power left for a return trip, but only one, and wherever they're getting these meteorites from, he's not expecting to find another one.
The group obviously objects, but Galuf refuses to be responsible for them being stranded on a foreign planet away from everyone they know. Which, hmm. Faris obviously would miss her pirate crew. And Lenna is a princess and likely feels a duty to her people whom she would be abandoning. But Bartz? Bartz spent three years alone in the wilderness with a chocobo rather than go back to his hometown. I'm not sure Bartz as anyone to lose, except the very friends he's made on this journey, of whom Galuf is one.
Nonetheless, Galuf sticks by his refusal, and boards the meteorite along with Krile, and they take off towards their home planet.
And… That's it.
There's no obvious clue as to what to do next. Obviously the story isn't over and it'll probably not be hard to find out where to go next (I'm going to check on Cid and Mid first thing next time I open the game), but as far as the characters know, right now, their story's over; there is no cutscene follow up to this, Galuf and Krile left to save their own planet and Bartz, Lenna and Faris are left behind. With no crystals to protect, Exdeath on another planet, that's just… it.
It's an interesting narrative choice. I would have expected at least a scene of the characters talking to each other about how 'we need to do something to go help Galuf', but it's not explicit. We, the players, will have to take them to make that connection ourselves.
Wew, that was kind of a mammoth update, goddamn. But at least now we're fully caught up to where I am in the game!
For now, let's talk jobs! The Earth Crystal unlocked four:
Samurai is a new addition to the series. I believe it has some kind of busted power where you throw money at the enemy for crazy damage? I don't know anything else about it.
Dragoon is our old friend returned. I have a thing for dragoons personally speaking, so if it's at all viable, I'd like to have one of the party members upgrade/sidegrade into it. Maybe Lenna?
Dancer is also new; it's some kind of support class that dances to provide passive bonuses and also has access to some unique valuable equipment like ribbons?
Chemist I know literally nothing about, other than some items I've gathered in the game tell me that they are used 'by a chemist,' and there are a bunch of items (the energy drink series) that I haven't been able to use so far and which the game tells me 'are used with the Drink command,' and Archeoaevis just gave me five of those, so I assume that Chemist is the job that uses them.
Any input would be appreciated!
Next time, we, uh, figure out where to go next.
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
No, Galuf! You didn't leave a replacement behind!! There's a hole in the party, Galuuuuuuuuuuuuf!!!
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- SomeWhereElse
Ah yes the greatest of all powers. Money. Whenever a skill like this shows up you have to use it once. And then reload because the pain of grinding that money back isn't worth it right up until like the final boss when money doesn't matter (but by then you've forgotten it exists).
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Alright, alright, people have been pestering me, "oooh Omi you missed a town," "Omi omi you missed plot cutscenes," "Omi you are playing the game wroooong," oh yeah? WELL LET'S SEE.
Okay so I guess there is a village I missed on my first time exploring the globe. Okay. Fine. Sure. I'm sure it's nothing important and there's nothing of note there.
Goddammit.
Bruh you got your ass cooked in the first 20 words of the update there's no coming back for you.
And now you see why I was really hoping you wouldn't end up missing it, it's not strictly necessary but it is nice to sort of bring Bartz up to the level of the rest of the party after he's had very little content. Also the fact his fear of heights is rooted in childhood trauma makes it even funnier that his only friends in the world are roasting his ass over it.
Cid and Mid get to work while the crew takes a breather, which gives us this great bit where the fact that they're working incredibly fast is conveyed by multiplying their sprites:
H-HAYAI...
But, as soon as the outer defenses have been defeated, the fortress produces its strongest weapon system: the SOUL CANNON.
Don't ask me what a Soul Cannon is or how it works, I have no clue. There is the disturbing possibility that it is literally using souls as shells; is it possible the ancient Ronkans converted the souls of their dead into ammunition? That's terrifying if so. Notably, while the Soul Cannon itself is just a laser gun, these 'Launcher' adds have the ability to inflict the old status, of all things. Old is a new status and I don't really know what to make of it, other than it has a neat sprite effect where it turns the character's hair white:
1) The Old status is basically a gradual stat drain, steadily making the afflicted character weaker over time - maliciously enough, curing it with Esuna only halts stat loss rather than returning it. Conversely when you inflict Old on an enemy it also slowly drains the enemy's Level, which can let you land level-based effects.
2) You can just floss on this boss by first casting Dark Spark (BLU spell) to halve its Level, then Level 5 Death to send it to Brazil.
... Omi...
Why didn't you just let Faris hit level 25, get to level 26 on the other characters, and then make Faris the sacrificial BLU.
That's just a coincidence, King Tycoon is transphobic.
Huh, I didn't even realise. You see, by following the Blue Magic guide up to this point, I could cast 1,000 Needles.
So I simply cast that over and over until it died and it was super easy, barely an inconvenience.
Meteorite.
The celestial body hits the floating fortress head on, hard enough to knock everyone except King Tycoon to the ground, and blowing a hole through the wall, from which emerges…
A little girl?!
A little girl who can cast Thunder!
She's got a gun!
A single Thunder spell is somehow enough to knock out Tycoon and blow him halfway across the room, so I guess Krile is packing some serious mojo for a 15-year old.
I can't believe Galuf's 15-year-old granddaughter drove a Mini-Cooper through the side of a building, leaped out of the driver's seat and shot the King in the head with an FN Five-Seven. Hell of a character intro for Krile, I lost my shit when it happened.
Once in the relative calm of the open sky, the group has time to take stock. Lenna and Faris are busy grieving their father, but Galuf has a different concern on his mind: he now finally remembers everything.
I like how Galuf is posted up on the very tip of the foremast like he's not perilously dangling thousands of feet off the ground just because it's dramatic. Especially since Bartz is most likely shitting his pants to have gone even that far out on the foremast to talk to Galuf.
As to job choices, I sadly can't offer much because I was too busy trying desperately to level different jobs to try these ones for the most part last I left off. However I would recommend levelling someone as a Chemist sooner rather than later because the Mix command learned at level 2 offers a dizzying array of in-combat options, not the least of which is early access to Reflect which can be used to fish for some Blue Magic.
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chemist is a wiki heavy job: it has 2 big commands Drink, and Mix:
Drink allows you to use 1 of 5 special items with relatively big effects, like double your max HP for the rest of combat.
Mix allows you to use 2 items, and get a special effect from it. there's no reliable way to tell what any 2 items do beside try it out.
it also has a passive that doubles the effectiveness of used healing items, and has some narrow commands at the end to act as AP sinks (recover and revive)
Drink allows you to use 1 of 5 special items with relatively big effects, like double your max HP for the rest of combat.
Mix allows you to use 2 items, and get a special effect from it. there's no reliable way to tell what any 2 items do beside try it out.
it also has a passive that doubles the effectiveness of used healing items, and has some narrow commands at the end to act as AP sinks (recover and revive)
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Im pretty sure the entire reason Bartz' mom's name is Stella is the scene where Dorgann calls her name
Why a Japanese video game is doing a shoutout to A Streetcar Named Desire I have no idea but I'm here for it
Why a Japanese video game is doing a shoutout to A Streetcar Named Desire I have no idea but I'm here for it
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
You are correct; if you check the gravestone before triggering this cutscene, it just says 'here lies stella', but if you check after, the full inscription is present.
Dragoon and Samurai are both perfectly servicable choices for further rounding out warriors, though I don't recall the specifics too well. Well, Dragoon still has Jump, of course, it works basically exactly like Kain; delayed attack, invulnerable while airborne, bonus damage, etc.
Dancer is somewhat unique just for the fact that if I'm remembering right 'equip ribbon' is inherited to freelancer by mastering it, which is one of the only ways to expand a Freelancer's equipment range; freelancers can equip most equipment without needing special skills for it. Ribbons, of course, have their iconic Final Fantasy property: immunity to more or less all negative status, plus some snazzy stat boosts if I remember right.
Chemist is like blue mage or beastmaster in the sense that it can do a ton of very powerful things, but also you have to do a lot of experimentation or guide following to understand which ones to care about when.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It's not the only one either. From memory Tales of Legendia did the same thing
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Chemist has the added wrinkle that most of its truly broken mixes require finite or de facto finite items, so good fucking luck figuring it out by trial and error and still being able to use it
- Location
- Canada, probably
Oh no. Oh nooo, as someone who did this exact same thing—
Yeah. It's a dirty trick the game pulls on you here.
No comment.
Say hello, everyone, to the best character in the game. Oh, she has competition, but she's taken the gold and won't be giving it up. I love Krile so much, she's the absolute best.Meteorite.
The celestial body hits the floating fortress head on, hard enough to knock everyone except King Tycoon to the ground, and blowing a hole through the wall, from which emerges…
Ugghhhhh. Yes, yes the game does this again. Just like the water crystal, the earth crystal explodes because "fuck you player, I'm telling a story here!" This shit just keeps dragging down an incredible game for no goddamn reason.
I hate this shit that JRPGs seem to always pull (and other games too, of course, but it the norm for JRPGs for some reason). They have a battle just to toss a little gameplay-bone to you, and then yank it away and just say it doesn't matter. You beat the boss? Nope, doesn't matter. Get on the fucking railroad, idiot.
At least here you don't beat the boss and then they just run away after you win and they play a goddamn death animation, Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
*huff huff*
OK, I'm fine now. I can cope. I'm good to continue.
Samurai has a cool 25% physical evasion ability, Shirahadori/SwordGrab. I like combining Knight and Samurai because katana can be used with Two Handed, though sadly not with Spellsword. They eventually get an instant-death screen nuke, which is way worse than it sounds because it has a charge-up turn and a miss chance. They can also murder people with money and it's got an insane base damage, so some otherwise tough enemies just disappear under a hail of cash.
Dragoons are pretty decent, but honestly I never bothered much with them. There are some good spears, I think? Jump's double damage can punch through some annoying phase-changing shenanigans sometimes, and Dragoons also get this weird life-and-mana-steal ability that sucks for a purely physical Dragoon because it's based on magic, but if you give them a better magic stat through multijobbing, it can give you pretty great sustain.
Dancer is super fun, but also frustrating. They have an incredibly powerful attack called Sword Dance… but you can't actually choose which dance gets pulled, so it's only a 25% chance. Otherwise you get kinda weak lifesteal or manasteal (which backfire against undead), or inflict the confusion status. You can also flirt with enemies to charm them, which is occasionally helpful. They do get to wear the god-tier Ribbon, but like, so do Freelancers. Dancers get great sprites though.
Chemist is broken. Just broken. If you look up what mixtures do what, and what enemies are neutered by what effects, and where to farm ingredients, it is the most powerful job hands down. It's also really annoying to have to do all that crap. The other stuff they do is pretty good actually? They passively double the power of HP and MP-restoring items that they use, plus a knockoff Esuna ability and eventually Raise, both free to use. As a support class I kind of like them, but I hate Mix both in theory and in practice.
Freelancer can equip everything by default, including Ribbons. Mastering Dancer does let you wear Ribbons as a Mime, though.
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- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
The building entering/looting was more of a thing in the DQ series, iirc, and if didn't originate from it, almost certainly popularized it (especially after medals started showing up in weird places) to the point it started to become expected in general JRPG design. It's a pretty minor spoiler, but
it's more of a thing for FF starting in the next game, heh. It was definitely a year for it, as Breath of Fire 2 came out in the same one and used the mechanic pretty extensively.
... sadly, we're still well out from the point in JRPG design where it's particularly likely for there to be any friggin' indication any particular piece of furniture has loot in it. Hours of my youth were lost meticulously pressing the confirm button on every chest of drawers, closet, clock, bucket, barrel, potted plant, *mutters on, slowly fading into grumbling background noise*
The FF5 protagonists sure are the mirror image of the FF3 protagonists in terms of successfully thwarting the villains plans, huh?
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Let's be honest, that person's name probably starts with "Z" and rhymes with "turban."
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQunC9jniqw
Congrants on making through the first part of the game!
Samurai is...well. They can defeat any encounter by literally throwing money at the problem until it goes away.
So there's that.
They also have a really great passive, which gives you a % chance to dodge attacks. Which is useful for the class itself and also for your Freelancers.
Oh, and katanas can crit. This plus doublehand means you can continue the noble tradition of deleting trash mobs in one hit.
Dragons have the exact same weaknesses and advantages you remember from previous games. They're not more damage efficient than attacking twice in two turns, and they avoid damage by forcing the enemy to target your other characters (assuming ST damage).
Dancer deletes mobs by the power of RNG. Also, they get really good class exclusive equipment later. Like, really later. Nigh end of the game later.
Like Blue Mage and Beastmaster, this is a class that gets better the more you know about the game/are willing to wiki dive. If you don't know much - not very useful. If you do (or shamelessly abuse the wiki), absurdly broken.
Related to this class, about the Old stat - it starts reducing the targets level. Because of how the game does its damage calculations, level is really important. Argueably it's the most important stat. If your monk gets slapped with Old, for example, their damage will spiral down to garbage tier as the fight progresses. It is an insidious killer because Old feels a lot less impactful than it actually is.
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Dorgann: "I'm not leaving."
Stella: "Okay dear, have a nice trip."
Bartz: "Bye Dad, see you next year."
Funnily enough, Unnamed Childhood Friend is actually using Stella's SNES sprite, the Pixel Remaster changed her to a unique brown-haired one. Maybe the thing she wants to tell him is that she's possessed by Stella's ghost.
I wonder if they sealed Exdeath in an X-shaped forest on purpose, or if it grew that way afterwards due to ambient E D G E gradually building up in the soil.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
One thing I've noticed as I replay the game is that there are stone pillars amidst the forest of that island. When you take the meteor warp the first time, there are two pillars. When Exdeath gets free, there aren't any pillars left. Neat little detail.
Oh and speaking of the meteors, remember how at the start of the game Omi was talking about how there was some cool camera angles moving around as the game shows the path of the meteor? And how later they reveal that people were inside riding those meteors down? So maybe it's because the game was showing us that the meteors were being steered.
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