One of the reasons I'm relatively cavalier about thoroughly checking every location and trying to find a way through every encounter is that the game has 20 'hard' save slots plus a quicksave and an autosave. At any time I usually have several saves covering the past couple hours, so it's easy to reload back a few story sequences or a dungeon if I missed something valuable.
I guess Galuf doesn't mind his friends smashing his decorative statue collection for hours on end? You'd think he'd say something about it at some point.
My interpretation is that Galuf keeps the dungeon as a training area and the statues magically reform themselves, so the vandalism isn't a problem.
As great as having enemies which grant loads of AP and can be killed with Gold Needles is, I think the statues' steal is the biggest get there - it's probably in the run for top ten most powerful weapons in the game overall, in the hands of a ninja.
I think the statues' steal is the biggest get there - it's probably in the run for top ten most powerful weapons in the game overall, in the hands of a ninja.
Speaking of their steal, it's probably the strangest weapon in the game. It's called the Twin Lance, it has the attack animation of a melee weapon, it has the damage formula of a spear, and it even does double damage with Jump. Despite all of this, it's not a spear at all, but a boomerang (meaning full damage from the back row) that can only be equipped by Thief, Ninja, and Freelancer. The Jump damage is especially weird, as Jump cancels the double attack aspect of the weapon to instead deal double damage(except in the mobile version).
Im not sure what the FFXIV equivalent would be, but that sounds like how one would ascribe JRPG combat values to Rhongomyniad LR, which is super funky because I thought Nasu's mushroom brain invented Twinmyniad whole cloth?
Im not sure what the FFXIV equivalent would be, but that sounds like how one would ascribe JRPG combat values to Rhongomyniad LR, which is super funky because I thought Nasu's mushroom brain invented Twinmyniad whole cloth?
Speaking of their steal, it's probably the strangest weapon in the game. It's called the Twin Lance, it has the attack animation of a melee weapon, it has the damage formula of a spear, and it even does double damage with Jump. Despite all of this, it's not a spear at all, but a boomerang (meaning full damage from the back row) that can only be equipped by Thief, Ninja, and Freelancer. The Jump damage is especially weird, as Jump cancels the double attack aspect of the weapon to instead deal double damage(except in the mobile version).
At least stateside and from what I experienced, most of the impression of moogles were influenced by FF636, which is to say murdermascot that
dances the dance of death
, best known as the postercritter with the evil looking sword. Fairly adorable design, but also will stab youeverything and is very helpful, etc. The more cutesy impression wouldn't really sink in over here until post SNES era, at least from what I was aware of.
Does remind me I can't remember when the next time after 6 is that a moogle is a party member of significant note, though, if it ever even happens again in a mainline game. Mog may just be the GMOAT. They're definitely my favorite one in the series, at least.
Does remind me I can't remember when the next time after 6 is that a moogle is a party member of significant note, though, if it ever even happens again in a mainline game. Mog may just be the GMOAT. They're definitely my favorite one in the series, at least.
Does remind me I can't remember when the next time after 6 is that a moogle is a party member of significant note, though, if it ever even happens again in a mainline game. Mog may just be the GMOAT. They're definitely my favorite one in the series, at least.
Does remind me I can't remember when the next time after 6 is that a moogle is a party member of significant note, though, if it ever even happens again in a mainline game. Mog may just be the GMOAT. They're definitely my favorite one in the series, at least.
Arguably Cait Sith from 7, but personally I don't think an animatronic counts, especially as the actual "character" is the cat puppet riding the moogle puppet.
FFTA was released in 2003 and features Montblanc the Moogle as a major party member, so it's probably that one.
Amusingly, not only he makes for a pretty strong dragoon with minimal investment, his choice of default command foreshadows the tendencies of moogles in later games.
As I mentioned after the last update, the Pixel Remasters game allow for a large number of saves. You have one Quicksave slot which you can use anywhere; you have one Autosave slot which the game saves into each time you enter a new screen; and on top of that, the "hard save" in the overworld or save rooms can save into any one of twenty save slots. As a result, right now I have save slots from half an hour ago and others from three hours into game.
All this to say that even though I left Castle Bal and progressed further into the game (though not by far), upon realization of the huge missed opportunity that passed me by, I immediately reload and venture right back into the dungeon.
This is a surprise tool that will help us later.
Alright, here's the deal. The Objet d'Art is the only enemy encounter in the small dungeon room below Castle Bal. They are very strong, with over 3k HP and powerful attacks - a physical strike that can OHKO one of my characters, and Break, which petrifies one of them. In a stand-up fight, they'd be a dragout battle requiring a solid chunk of my resources and still leaving the possibility of a party wipe.
Which is why we're not fighting them fairly.
As alluded to by an NPC earlier in the game (and repeated by my readers), the Gold Needle, the item which turns a petrified party member back to flesh, also works against anything else made of living stone. Which means if used on one of those living statues, it instantly "kills" them, in what I can only assume is a horrifyingly gruesome transformation into a mound of nonsensical heaped-together flesh pulsing with the horrid beat of abiogenetic mimicry of life. Like a hideous fusion of Tetsuo's transformation in Akira and the human transmutation ritual in Fullmetal Alchemist.
The game, mercifully, spares us this sight by having the monster instead react to the Gold Needle by casting a 'Vanish' effect upon itself and disappearing in spooky purple flames.
Which means every character has an instant kill item it can use to destroy one of the Objets d'Art. You may note in the screenshot above, however, that there are five Objets, and only four party members. This means that, even with the instant kill item, these are not exactly safe battle.
The rewards, however, are significant. An encounter with three Objets nets 4 ABP; an encounter with five, 8 ABP (they always come in either three or five). Thankfully, we only have to manage this fairly high-risk high-reward strategy until…
…Galuf masters Summoner, allowing me to swap him to Blue Mage and kill everything with Level 5 Death, as the Objets all share the same level, which is a multiple of 5. There are no other encounters in this room. This means as soon as Galuf moves in a fight, the party instantly wins. This, in turn, means I can have Lenna (as Thief) focus on taking the Steal action every fight. This will be relevant soon. At this point I have a rote formula and I enter every fight on Autobattle, with Bartz and Faris set to Defend, Lenna set to Steal, and Galuf set to LV5D.
The rest is putting on Tim Rogers's Action Button Reviews Boku No Natsuyatsumiand immersing myself in the wonders of chill PS1-era Japanese games and reminiscing how cool the Resident Evil-era "3D character on a static prerendered background composed like individual paintings or movie frames" was and getting excited about playing the PS1 Final Fantasy games and wow by the time I look up again it's an hour later and what do you know!
Bartz has mastered Mystic Knight, meaning I can swap him to Ninja on a permanent basis, and Galuf has mastered Blue Magic, which means I can swap him back to Time Mage with Blue Magic equipped and still do the LV5D strategy while leveling Time Mage (I don't care about mastering BLU). Meanwhile, Lenna has learned her most important Thief skill, Mug, which allows her to attack an enemy and steal from them at the same time, meaning she no longer 'wastes' a damage turn to steal and I can just have her attempt to steal in every encounter no matter what, even when going through random mobs. And Faris is well on her way to mastering Dualcast.
Our group has already gotten a big leap in capability, but it's about to get way, way further than this. As I said, my Autobattle strategy has involved a lot of Stealing from the Objets d'Art before Galuf wipes them out with Level 5 Death. In the vast majority of fights, the result of this theft is a Hi-Potion, still a valuable item at this stage. But there is a small, small chance for Steal to instead result in a different item.
The Twin Lance.
The Twin Lance is a simple weapon. It is classified as a "boomerang," usable by the Freelancer, Thief and Ninja, like the Moonring Blade, while also being considered a spear for the purposes of Dragoon abilities (though Dragoon cannot equip it natively). It has standard damage for its level range (around ~400-500)... but it hits twice. Which makes it, just by default, a very good weapon at this stage; it competes in roughly the same category as a Ninja dual-wielding level-appropriate weapons, a Mystic Knight with Two-Handed equipped, and it exceeds, though not by that much, the damage from Barehanded.
Except.
It is not, itself, a two-handed weapon.
And I have been grinding a lot of Steal drops as a purely incidental side-effect of mastering jobs.
With two Twin Lances equipped, Bartz now hits four times a turn for up to around 2,000 damage. Lenna, a support class, has one Twin Lance equipped and is now once again one of my main damage dealers despite swapping Barehanded for Mug.
I think we're about to ruin some poor monsters' day.
That poor thing never stood a chance.
We cut through the other world like a heated knife through butter and take advantage to sightsee a little.
There is a dungeon called the "Gil Cave" which is populated entirely by these giant centipedes. Unfortunately they have some kind of counter-reaction that spams Earthquake under the right circumstances, and while my attack output is ludicrous, my Defense sucks ass, so they're still a threat. Navigating the Cave leads me to a strange corridor where every step sees me gain an increasing number of gil, but…
This "gil turtle" appears after a couple steps and its sky-high defense proves resilient to my "multiple average-damage attack" strategy, and the party wipes. I have to back down and leave that place for later.
Put a pin in that place, and let's head on with the direction the plot wants us to go into.
That village's placement is almost comical in how it's shooting "THIS IS WHERE YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GO NEXT YOU CAN'T GO ANYWHERE ELSE WE PUT MOUNTAINS EVERYWHERE"
This town, the village of Quelb, is noticeably empty - but not abandoned. Though the doors are all locked, a bunch of docile sheep are peacefully grazing in a corner. A nice touch of environmental storytelling - it's clear this town is populated but, for whatever reason, the population has fled recently. Perhaps at our approach? Galuf suggests we find Kelger, his werewolf friend, so we head for the only unlocked house, the big one in the middle. The house appears empty at first… at least until we try to leave.
Oh, this is the werewolf dude from the flashback! One of the four Dawn Warriors who sealed Exdeath on our world.
At first, it looks like the situation is about to resolve itself. However, the fact that we are still surrounded by three wolves on guard with Kelger taking his distance speaks to an unspoken tension even as he and Galuf greet each other as old friends. And indeed, things quickly go awry; Kelger asks "who are the pups" and Galuf blithely says we are from the world where Exdeath was sealed and Kelger, not up to date on the fine details of our homeworld politics, immediately misinterprets the situation.
It's… a stretch, as far as misunderstandings go. I'm not inherently opposed to miscommunication bringing characters who should be allies into conflict, but this one feels forced. Galuf tries to explain the situation to Kelger, who tells him to stand down then knocks him across the room before challenging Bartz to single combat.
The three grey wolves exit the house, which shows either an impressive level of confidence in their leader or an understanding that this isn't really about suspecting the party might be evil but some other unspoken issue. Bartz tells the others to stand aside, and that he must "settle this on my own," which feels kind of random as a development but does tie into Bartz's "anime protagonist" persona.
Speaking of which…
I can't really capture what happens next through screenshot, but it's kind of a fascinating scene, because it's a proper cutscene battle. In the past we've had characters knocked out by someone else, most notably Golbez's lightning, when the battle is meant to be one-sided; with FFIV the game has introduced 'narrative battles,' which are cutscenes using the in-game combat engine to portray a specific sequence of blows and counter-blows; but for whatever reason, probably because the job system makes it impossible for the game to "know" what skillset Bartz will have equipped going into this battle, the game goes for a wholly different approach.
Bartz and Kelger face each other on the tatami. A question mark pops up above Bartz's head, sensing something unusual about his opponent. Then Kelger starts doing the Afterimage Dance.
You know the trope. It shows up all the time in anime. A character is meant to show their superior speed and disorient their opponent but without taking them out immediately with an alpha strike, so they start vanishing and reappearing in brief blinks all around the enemy, until it seems like there is more than one of them at a time and their opponent is frozen, with no idea where to strike or where the true attack will come from. That is exactly what Kelger is doing, represented through the visual medium of his sprite blinking in a circle all around Bartz. At first, Bartz appears successfully disoriented… Unfortunately, Kelger played right into his hand by giving him the perfect opportunity to enter a Shounen Focus Trance, closing his eyes and letting the entire world go dark so he can narrow his senses to track his opponent through his speed illusions and punch him in the face.
Rookie move from Kelger. Everyone knows the Afterimage Danse has only two modes: Mode One is for protagonists who display the superior speed of their special technique to show total dominance over their opponent, Mode Two is for throwaway villains who think it makes them look superior only to provide an opportunity for the protagonist to learn a lesson in focus and then hit them in the dick. Kelger was not a protagonist, and thus could only access Mode Two.
Bartz, in fact, hits Kelger so hard that the werewolf goes flying out through the door and into the backroom of the house. Holy shit, kid. Also incredibly funny if you've been running Bartz as a squishy wizard (although due to the way jobs work, Bartz could presumably just decide to swap to Monk the moment he knows he's about to fistfight somebody).
Galuf, my man, what do you think Kelger was trying to do?
Anyway, for whatever reason, Bartz appears to have punched some sense into Kelger. The various characters leave the scene for a brief timeskip, and by the time we reconvene, Kelger is in bed, nursing his new injuries, and Bartz is apologizing for hurting him.
But you know what, I dig it. The reasons that got us there make relatively little sense, but sometimes the one of your player who's here for cool fights needs to get his solo duel with a cool NPC just as much as your drama fiends need their theatricals and high emotion twists. As the one most likely to be playing the Bartz in any given group, I appreciate this.
Pretty rich line coming from you, Galuf.
IT EVEN HAS A FUCKING ANIME NAME
Then Bartz repeats that this was not pure skill, or quick improvisation: it was "a trick he learned from his dad." Kelger asks what his father's name was, and Bartz answers that he was named Dorgann, to hilarious reactions:
They made a custom googly-eyed werewolf sprite just so they could sell this one gag. We've moved so far from FF1.
Finally it's time to confirm what we've all suspected all along. Bartz at first doesn't answer, not knowing his dad as anything other than just "his dad," and the other two mutter among themselves about how unlikely this is before finally revealing the truth:
'Xezat Surgate' is the only name we haven't heard previously. It's… oddly elaborate.
Dorgann was one of the Dawn Warriors, but not just that: he was the odd one out. The one who stayed behind, but before that, the one who objected to the others' plans:
A lot is happening right now, but what's most interesting to me is that this Exdeath is clearly not a hulking armored guy at this stage. The game's deliberately keeping us to a limited back view, but this seems more like some kind of invertebrate creature, lumpy and vaguely shapeless.
Dorgann is raising precisely the issue I've brought up before, with the fundamentally unethical act of trapping a demon that comes from their world on another's and making it these people's problem. The issue is, he's raising this issue while they are in the middle of their climactic final battle - they had hoped to destroy Exdeath, but for whatever reason, Exdeath appears to be immortal, regenerating from whatever injury they inflict, and the sealing is a plan they are forced to by the circumstances of the moment. Galuf exclaims that they can't enact the sealing spell unless "all their hearts are united"; Dorgann spends a moment with his back turned to them, hesitating, but the argument of urgent necessity manages to sway him, and he joins his friends to cast to the spell which finally seals the warlock.
Hmmm.
Yeah, the decision to seal Exdeath on Bartz's world is a lot more understandable considering the extenuating circumstances that pushed them to do so. They were men with presumably finite power and stamina, fighting a regenerating evil that simply wouldn't stay down and would threaten to eventually overwhelm their defenses. Without the means to slay him or capture him alive, and without having prepared an alternate solution ahead of time, the sealing was their only solution. Still a shit deal for the people of Bartz's world, and it's fair to expect the Dawn Warriors to try and fix it, but it's not as bad as it seemed before.
The sealing scene is followed directly by this, Dorgann telling his friends that he will stay behind on this world, and refusing to explain himself. Two possibilities: he had already met Stella at this point and was staying out of love, or he felt a responsibility to the world Exdeath was sealed on and took it upon himself to ensure the safety of the crystals for as long as he could. The latter is Galuf's interpretation of events, but in the scene as portrayed Gordann gives no answer, so it's possible it might have been the former.
Kelger how fares his old friend, and Bartz delivers the sad news - although, having been separated like twenty years ago, it doesn't prompt waterworks so much as a quiet sense of reflection.
And with this story sequence handled and all these revelations, Kelger announces that he will have the north town gate open so that we might continue our journey to Drakenvale.
And as a bonus, the werewolves are no longer hiding, and we can talk to them!
Looks like Kelger was too old to try and follow Galuf, so they sent one of their young warriors. RIP.
Let's ignore this and swiftly move along.
It's always a plus when we get some insight into the culture of these little towns.
You know, I've seen the 'werewolf village' concept before? In Golden Sun, I'm pretty sure. In both cases the village had a layer of deceit - here the werewolves aren't a secret but they hide from you at first when you arrive, in Golden Sun they disguise themselves as humans to avoid persecution. Does that trope have a particular origin I'm not familiar with, or did FFV simply do it first and then later Golden Sun reused the idea?
Well, that seems enough for today!
Thoughts before closing:
…that's kind of the expanded FFIV plot though, isn't it?
Okay, sorry, let me backtrack. We've talked in the past about how the 3D remakes of FFIV expanded the story, most notably by filling in a lot of backstory elements surrounding Cecil's father. Now, I've been told in passing that this backfilling is based on original plans for the story of Final Fantasy IV - they're, in a sense, restoring parts of the narrative that couldn't make it into the original version for whatever reason.
But, in the context of those bits not having made it into the original, it looks a lot like they just… repurposed them for the next game? Bartz and Cecil are both children of a mother from their homeworld and a father from another planet; but Bartz gets this whole thing about his father having been an idealist who worked his whole life to help that world, rather than simply out of wanderlust, just like 3D!KluYa taught people magic (and paid a price for it). Rather than the circumstances around Cecil's abandonment being ambiguous, Bartz has this specific order where his mother dies first, and then his father, which is kiiinda like a merger of Cecil and Golbez?
Hmm. Maybe I'm reaching here. What it feels like is that if I had played FFV after playing the FFIV remakes, I might have felt like it was repeating itself, in a way that doesn't quite feel that way after playing the original FFIV with its underwritten backstory.
Is this anything? I'm curious about your opinions on this.
A lot is happening right now, but what's most interesting to me is that this Exdeath is clearly not a hulking armored guy at this stage. The game's deliberately keeping us to a limited back view, but this seems more like some kind of invertebrate creature, lumpy and vaguely shapeless.
looks to me like he's fallen face down, towards the camera, and is wearing a cloak, helmet, and fancy anime pauldrons, with his right arm outstretched, but his left closer in.
looks to me like he's fallen face down, towards the camera, and is wearing a cloak, helmet, and fancy anime pauldrons, with his right arm outstretched, but his left closer in.
A wizard wanting a frog is ominous in context of this being a world where "turn people into a toad and back again" spells exist and gold needles show status cures sometimes work on things that are naturally like that
Like, is he doing human experimentation? Is this his way of getting a girlfriend? Does he just want frogs legs for dinner? We will hopefully never know
There is a dungeon called the "Gil Cave" which is populated entirely by these giant centipedes. Unfortunately they have some kind of counter-reaction that spams Earthquake under the right circumstances, and while my attack output is ludicrous, my Defense sucks ass, so they're still a threat.
You know, I was originally going to go all "smh Omi you silly just cast float forhead" but went to double check and... for whatever inane reason, despite being a Level 2 Time Magic spell, Float is actually not yet available at this point in the game??? I really thought it showed up at Regole at the very least, since that's where you get Level 4 magic.
Bartz, in fact, hits Kelger so hard that the werewolf goes flying out through the door and into the backroom of the house. Holy shit, kid. Also incredibly funny if you've been running Bartz as a squishy wizard (although due to the way jobs work, Bartz could presumably just decide to swap to Monk the moment he knows he's about to fistfight somebody).
Meh, obviously the game knew that every good mage puts levels in learning Barehanded like you did to punch all your enemies into oblivion. Bartz just taking advantage of that himself.
A lot is happening right now, but what's most interesting to me is that this Exdeath is clearly not a hulking armored guy at this stage. The game's deliberately keeping us to a limited back view, but this seems more like some kind of invertebrate creature, lumpy and vaguely shapeless.
Saganatsu covered this too, but yeah that is totally just Exdeath getting a defeated/knocked out sprite like the main cast has.
Clearly, this implies that Exdeath will later turn out to be brainwashed by a bigger evil named ExZeromus and join the party to help them fight against it, and will also be Bartz's secret timetraveling older brother, since you mentioned how FFV reflects FFIV's plot in some ways
Bartz and Kelger face each other on the tatami. A question mark pops up above Bartz's head, sensing something unusual about his opponent. Then Kelger starts doing the Afterimage Dance.
You know the trope. It shows up all the time in anime. A character is meant to show their superior speed and disorient their opponent but without taking them out immediately with an alpha strike, so they start vanishing and reappearing in brief blinks all around the enemy, until it seems like there is more than one of them at a time and their opponent is frozen, with no idea where to strike or where the true attack will come from. That is exactly what Kelger is doing, represented through the visual medium of his sprite blinking in a circle all around Bartz. At first, Bartz appears successfully disoriented… Unfortunately, Kelger played right into his hand by giving him the perfect opportunity to enter a Shounen Focus Trance, closing his eyes and letting the entire world go dark so he can narrow his senses to track his opponent through his speed illusions and punch him in the face.
Rookie move from Kelger. Everyone knows the Afterimage Danse has only two modes: Mode One is for protagonists who display the superior speed of their special technique to show total dominance over their opponent, Mode Two is for throwaway villains who think it makes them look superior only to provide an opportunity for the protagonist to learn a lesson in focus and then hit them in the dick. Kelger was not a protagonist, and thus could only access Mode Two.
Bartz, in fact, hits Kelger so hard that the werewolf goes flying out through the door and into the backroom of the house. Holy shit, kid. Also incredibly funny if you've been running Bartz as a squishy wizard (although due to the way jobs work, Bartz could presumably just decide to swap to Monk the moment he knows he's about to fistfight somebody).
Funniest shit in the world, they were really pushing the envelope with the kinds of stuff they could get away with conveying in cutscenes and the fact Kelger fucks around and finds out so immediately and completely that it hard cuts to him lying in bed nursing a busted ass is just the best. I think I even did have Bartz as a Monk around this point.
But Omi, if you use Beastmaster to capture a frog in a Pokeball for him, he'll give you an item! I think it's the special helm that increases the success rate of Control.
Love how Dorgann stays behind to look out for the world where he and his friends sealed a dangerous entity, then never once in like twenty years does he warn anyone about what lies beneath the earth or possible consequences of messing with the crystals.
Also, you can use beastmaster to catch one of the frog/toad monsters for that guy. I think you get a hat or accessory to boost catch rate.
The rewards, however, are significant. An encounter with three Objets nets 4 ABP; an encounter with five, 8 ABP (they always come in either three or five). Thankfully, we only have to manage this fairly high-risk high-reward strategy until…
Love how Dorgann stays behind to look out for the world where he and his friends sealed a dangerous entity, then never once in like twenty years does he warn anyone about what lies beneath the earth or possible consequences of messing with the crystals.
Also, you can use beastmaster to catch one of the frog/toad monsters for that guy. I think you get a hat or accessory to boost catch rate.
I mean. There's zero sign that Dorgann knew that messing with the crystals could release Exdeath, at least at this stage. Like. yes, they used the crystals to seal exdeath, but people weren't trying to destroy the crystals, they were trying to tap them for power.
And at least at this juncture, apparently abso-fucking-lutely nothing went wrong with the crystals from Exdeath being sealed/the Crystals being tapped/amplified until like. Seconds before the game starts.
This isn't something where we got to Karnak and learned EXDEATH'S EVIL VILLAIN ENERGIES HAVE SEEPED INTO EVERY BRICK, YO!
This is a thing where to all layman info things were perfectly fine until suddenly they weren't. And Dorgann had apparently been dead for years before shit went down.
So like. Can we be sure he didn't warn anyone? And do we have any actual reason and not just an assumption of incompetence or malice to assume he'd have had a reason to think people need warning?
I mean. There's zero sign that Dorgann knew that messing with the crystals could release Exdeath, at least at this stage. Like. yes, they used the crystals to seal exdeath, but people weren't trying to destroy the crystals, they were trying to tap them for power.
And at least at this juncture, apparently abso-fucking-lutely nothing went wrong with the crystals from Exdeath being sealed/the Crystals being tapped/amplified until like. Seconds before the game starts.
This isn't something where we got to Karnak and learned EXDEATH'S EVIL VILLAIN ENERGIES HAVE SEEPED INTO EVERY BRICK, YO!
This is a thing where to all layman info things were perfectly fine until suddenly they weren't. And Dorgann had apparently been dead for years before shit went down.
So like. Can we be sure he didn't warn anyone? And do we have any actual reason and not just an assumption of incompetence or malice to assume he'd have had a reason to think people need warning?
This is the main reason I still don't feel like the crystals are an environment/climate change metaphor. There's no foreshadowing, it just goes from fine and dandy to shit in the span of a week. It took us decades if not centuries to get to where we are in screwing over the planet.
You know, I've seen the 'werewolf village' concept before? In Golden Sun, I'm pretty sure. In both cases the village had a layer of deceit - here the werewolves aren't a secret but they hide from you at first when you arrive, in Golden Sun they disguise themselves as humans to avoid persecution. Does that trope have a particular origin I'm not familiar with, or did FFV simply do it first and then later Golden Sun reused the idea?
FFV was initially released in 1996, Golden Sun: TLA came out in 2002, so FFV did it first. But as you mentioned the implementation of the two villages are fairly different, so I don't think GS copied FF in this case.
This "gil turtle" appears after a couple steps and its sky-high defense proves resilient to my "multiple average-damage attack" strategy, and the party wipes. I have to back down and leave that place for later.
So let's talk about the Gil Turtle. It is basically a superboss for this segment of the game. It is fast, with an Agility of 66 and very high defenses. It hits two characters a turn for very high damage, and inflicts Old, Confuse, and Poison. It uses Earthquake on death, hitting for several thousand damage. It is also immune to pretty much every status ailment. Oh, and it's a random encounter on all Gil squares, so you may have to fight it multiple times.
Definitely wait until you have a way around Earthquake, at a minimum.
