I'm sorry, it's a good scene, it's just. At this point I'm ready to rename this game Final Fantasy the Animated Series. I could have been watching this on France 3 on the week-ends as a kid. And it's so earnest about it to. This game is totally un-self-conscious in a way that's honestly kind of refreshing?
But the fact that the distance between Castle Bal and the Forest of Moore can be covered by a flying drake in less time than it takes for Exdeath to finish frying the heroes with a single spell is just. Incredible.
Hmm, maybe it could have worked better if Krile flew off to their help in response to the fire, instead of Exdeath going Return of the Jedi on their asses.
These are his final words, basically directly naming Krile to succeed him as one of the four heroes, and preemptively nuking (if it was necessary) any lingering idea that the solution to the Exdeath problem is not going to be "smack him in his stupid face until he dies." Which is in contrast to FFIV's kind of back-and-forth on the topic; Galuf was, implicitly, moved to incredible feats of power in fighting off the warlock by the desire to protect those he loved, rather than hatred, but ultimately the solution to guarantee said protection is still just to murder this guy.
Of "why don't they use Phoenix Downs on Aerith???" arguments, memes and discourse - I can literally pull up a full page of Google results for people asking that question on fucking Quora in The Year Of Our Lord 2023
When this whole time Final Fantasy V had a scene in which the characters explicitly pull every healing spell and item, including Raise and Phoenix Down, to try and bring back a dying character, only for his injuries to prove too severe for these to save him?
I have to say, between those two things, the emotional beats, and the fucking amazing battle at 0 hp to show how determined he is Galuf's death has got to be my favorite death scene in the entire franchise. Bar none. Everything else merely tries to do almost as well.
There are close seconds (I'm sure if I say "A smile better fits a hero" someone will start to cry, and while certain scene in VI doesn't quite get to "fulfill" the death aspect, it emotionally fucked me for a long time that I'd still count it), but yes, this ones goes the whole distance and more importantly, as Omi noted, it makes *you* go through it as an active participant.
I mean, if they looked like the crystals they're already familiar with, I could understand this. But... they don't? It wasn't even foreshadowed beyond a seal being involved.
But even if I agreed, I just can't hold it to the game, so good are the ensuing scenes.
I have to say, between those two things, the emotional beats, and the fucking amazing battle at 0 hp to show how determined he is Galuf's death has got to be my favorite death scene in the entire franchise. Bar none. Everything else merely tries to do almost as well.
There's one other I'd rank as either on par or better (though "favorite" might not be the right word, exactly, as bloody hell), but it has very different vibes, on multiple fronts.
... part of that might just be something like nostalgia, though, as it was also the first time a video game made me cry as a child, so. Playthrough's not there yet, we'll see it eventually.
You know, speaking of Final Fantasy the Animated Series...
I mean, it's not a series. But for whatever reason, there is totally a feature length Final Fantasy animated movie that is apparently based in the world of FFV, just hundreds of years later. ...Honestly I thought it was an adaption of FFV until I looked it up for this post. Probably spoilers or something in there so I wouldn't actually advise watching it right now, but fun to throw out that "this exists."
It is a series of four episodes, that channel just edited all together.
Also I'm watching it and... it's actually not bad? The cheesy dialogue is obviously intended for kids, and it has weird plot decisions (what's even with the pirates? Why the hell is Linali shining there!?) but it's like, legitimately entertaining? I remember barely one or two magazine ads around that time, and people saying it was crap.
It is a series of four episodes, that channel just edited all together.
Also I'm watching it and... it's actually not bad? The cheesy dialogue is obviously intended for kids, and it has weird plot decisions (what's even with the pirates? Why the hell is Linali shining there!?) but it's like, legitimately entertaining? I remember barely one or two magazine ads around that time, and people saying it was crap.
It probably helps that you now have context for what it's a distant sequel to - even though the only returning character is Mid('s ghost), knowing setting and plot background probably helps it seem less random. Its only releases were Japan in 1994 and the US in 1997 and 1998 - and the first non-Japanese release of FFV was 1999, so anybody non-Japanese at the time would have watched it and just been completely lost.
Also, looks like I was closer to job mastery than I thought. I just mastered Ninja on Bartz and Time Mage on Krile. That's now Mystic Knight/Ninja + Knight at LV 3 for Bartz, and Summoner/Time Mage + White Mage at LV 3 for Krile. I'm... Not sure what to swap them into next? The Ranger doom combo is tempting but wow I just tried Bartz as a ranger and the sheer fall-off in offensive power in the middle of a tough dungeon hurts real, real bad.
I would consider Red Mage for Krile. Unless you're taking Faris into Summoner and Time Mage, because dualcasted summons slap but you probably only need one person doing that. Alternatively, Chemist to add Mix to a utility caster.
For Bartz, Ranger is probably the best in the long run for his wombo combo, but you could wait to swap until the next time you can get a good bow. If losing ABP by sitting on a mastered job pains you, setting up a Ninja-like dual wield Thief is probably a viable DPS at this stage; even if it's not as good as Ninja, steal and flee are decent utility. He could totally go Dancer, but IIRC you don't have any of the Sword Dance boosting items yet.
Also I'm not saying you would forget to take advantage of this, but if you make him a ranger or dancer, please put him in the back row.
You can also finish up the Knight for Bartz. It also gives bonuses to strength and vitality, which is good for a melee build. They're worse than Monk's, but not that much worse, and it's going to be cheaper.
It's not even the worst case: in Europe we got Final Fantasy Tactics only in 2007 with the PSP remaster. That's 10 years after the JP release, on another console entirely.
Time for another round of The Music of Final Fantasy. This time we'll be talking about two tracks in particular, both revolving around Exdeath. Let's start things off with a track that has actually occured multiple times throughout the game already, mostly when things are at their most dire. The most recent instance in game is when the forest gets sets ablaze. It's basically the Exdeath shenanigans track.
The track in question is The Evil Lord Exdeath (original), and its a great example of how Uematsu uses chromatic motion to signal that shit has, indeed, gotten real. Listening to it as I write this, I want to just give particular note to ~0:40 where the bass note repeats on fade to create additional menace. Really great writing. My notes from when I was playing through the game was that, "it sounds like the heel entrance for a WWE match." Great track for storytelling through music. So, for those listening at home, keep this track in mind because Uematsu does the good compositional technique of leitmotif and this Exdeath motif gets used in the next track.
Decisive Battle (orig.). Every Final Fantasy has one, this particular iteration is actually a bit more narratively cohesive because Uematsu uses the main boss motif to great effect. This track is so good. I love the sytnhs in the opening gesture in how they create the musical impression of the grand villain stepping down from his throne to do battle, and then immediately going into double tempo with the drums (the tempo actually doesn't change here, it just goes from a slow 2 to quick 4 so it feels faster). Drums, in the deep. Such incredible energy. I will say this for the remaster though. They fuck it up. It's really unfortunate, but it's true. (Track 26). See, at about 1:50 you have this chromatic bass ostinato going on after the "heroic" brass interjections compating with the spoopy villian sounding flute lines (synth in the remix, which is an interesting way of tightening the musical narrative by reducing the variety of instrumentation). Very fun part of the track. Except that the Pixel Remaster fucks up the next part of the track because it reintroduces the percussion (which is some pretty awesome triplet pattern energy, massive hype machine for the track) eight bars too early. The original has the good sense to have the drums pull out of the texture for the first eight bars which makes their return have a huge impact. The remaster loses all that energy by having the drums in there from the start of that passage, which is a goddamn shame.
Still a good track though, despite the remix fucking it up. Everything else about the remix is fantastic except for that. Shoutout to the synth they use, which does a lot of heavy lifting to make me love this track despite their massive screw up. It's just the perfect combination of scifi spoopy and menacing, I love it so much.
Time for another round of The Music of Final Fantasy. This time we'll be talking about two tracks in particular, both revolving around Exdeath. Let's start things off with a track that has actually occured multiple times throughout the game, mostly when things are at their most dire. The most recent instance in game is when the forest gets sets ablaze. It's basically the Exdeath shenanigans track.
The track in question is The Evil Lord Exdeath (original), and its a great example of how Uematsu uses chromatic motion to signal that shit has, indeed, gotten real. Listening to it as I write this, I want to just give particular note to ~0:40 where the bass note repeats on fade to create additional menace. Really great writing. My notes from when I was playing through the game was that, "it sounds like the heel entrance for a WWE match." Great track for storytelling through music. So, for those listening at home, keep this track in mind because Uematsu does the good compositional technique of leitmotif and this Exdeath theme in the next track.
Decisive Battle (orig.). Every Final Fantasy has one, this particular iteration is actually a bit more narratively cohesive because Uematsu uses the main boss motif to great effect. This track is so good. I love the sytnhs in the opening gesture in how they create the musical impression of the grand villain stepping down from his throne to do battle, and then immediately going into double tempo with the drums. Drums, in the deep. Such incredible energy. I will say this for the remaster though. They fuck it up. It's really unfortunate, but it's true. (Track 26). See, at about 1:50 you have this chromatic bass ostinato going on after the "heroic" brass interjections compating with the spoopy villian sounding flute lines (synth in the remix, which is an interesting way of tightening the musical narrative by reducing the variety of instrumentation). Very fun part of the track. Except that the Pixel Remaster fucks up the next part of the track because it reintroduces the percussion (which is some pretty awesome triplet pattern energy, massive hype machine for the track) eight bars too early. The original has the good sense to have the drums pull out of the texture for the first eight bars which makes their return have a huge impact. The remaster loses all that energy by having the drums in there from the start of that passage, which is a goddamn shame.
Still a good track though, despite the remix fucking it up. Everything else about the remix is fantastic except for that. Shoutout to the synth they use, which does a lot of heavy lifting to make me love this track despite their massive screw up. It's just the perfect combination of scifi spoopy and menacing, I love it so much.
I appreciate your Music of Final Fantasy posts because, not only are they informative and helpfully analytical, they also emphasize the futility of me trying to comment on the games' music, as someone who thought a "bar" was somewhere you go to have a drink
I do think the Remaster version of that Decisive Battle track sounds better to my uneducated ear, though
I appreciate your Music of Final Fantasy posts because, not only are they informative and helpfully analytical, they also emphasize the futility of me trying to comment on the games' music, as someone who thought a "bar" was somewhere you go to have a drink
Thanks for giving me a great excuse to ramble (and it's definitely a ramble lol, just wait until we get to VI. I will gush endlessly about every single track, even when the remaster makes some decisions which I REALLY don't agree with) on at length for something I really love deeply. Video game music was what really got me interested in music in the first place and the final fantasy series (VI in particular) holds a special place in my heart.
There's so much that they do right in the remaster version (the new samples sound great, particularly the sythn is so damn good), it's just that one particular mistake in forgetting to have the drums drop out which annoys me to no end. Don't give me wrong, I love this track and the remaster version is still great...it's just forgetting to have the drums lay out for a bit robs the piece of a great opportunity to build hype when they kick back in like in the original.
Thanks for giving me a great excuse to ramble (and it's definitely a ramble lol, just wait until we get to VI. I will gush endlessly about every single track, even when the remaster makes some decisions which I REALLY don't agree with) on at length for something I really love deeply. Video game music was what really got me interested in music in the first place and the final fantasy series (VI in particular) holds a special place in my heart.
Heh, I only haven't joined you yet in the music rambling because this thread is my first exposure to FFV. When we get to VI though, we'll just have to drop so much knowledge on Omi he stops muting the soundtrack like a heathen.
As for the remastered version of this track, I think it comes down to how crowded the low end of the sound in the track is. It gives it a huge presence but makes it a bit too muddy to hear the kind of layering effect the old one did clearly.
Decisive Battle (orig.). Every Final Fantasy has one, this particular iteration is actually a bit more narratively cohesive because Uematsu uses the main boss motif to great effect. This track is so good.
FFV's Decisive Battle is incredibly underrated in my opinion, glad someone else appreciates it since it doesn't get a lot of love. There's another track that'll appear fairly soon that fits that description as well; New World, which might be my favourite world map theme for how well it portrays the 'familiar yet different' vibe the game has at that point.
Galuf is dead. Krile is our new team member. Exdeath has absconded to his castle, where he is planning something terrible. This doesn't seem like an opportunity to sit around and dawdle; we have to stop him now.
Checking out a few places doesn't show much dialogue changes accounting for Galuf's death, which is kind of a shame, except for a Moore villager telling us that an eerie light shot out of the forest and towards Exdeath's castle, and this bit:
Which… damn, man, yeah, that's kinda sad. The last of the old heroes, left bedridden and forced to watch the new generation carry the weight of their failure on their shoulders, too old and frail to aid them anymore.
Alright. Time to head to Exdeath Castle and confront the warlock. This is definitely the final dungeon and the end of the game, right?
Some fat lot of good bringing down the barrier did these guys.
The way to the upper levels is finally open, and at first, Exdeath's vaunted castle isn't much to write home about, more generic castle environment with beast-type enemies.
The Reflect Mages unfortunately can't reflect summons or quad-attacks, so they perish quickly.
Eventually, though, we run into a dead end.
Yeah, Krile is already living up to expectations quickly after joining.
Unfortunately, this doesn't look to be one of the simple, intangible illusions where the way forward is to just cross through it blindly - it's really less an 'illusion' and more outright reality warping, completely masking the true nature of the castle. Krile implores her grandfather's spirit to help them from wherever he is - and old Galuf is going to pull through for us once again, though not without cost.
Back in Kelger's room, he is surrounded by other werewolves, reflecting on Galuf's passing and his status as the last of the Dawn Warriors, who's not long for this world either; with the werewolves around his bed, it gives the strong vibe of an elder surrounded by his relatives in his last moments.
Galuf has no spoken lines here; whatever his spirit is saying, Kelger is the only one to hear it, which is a touch I like. As Galuf's spirit fades, Kelger says that he understands what he needs to do, and asks the werewolves to Spirit Bomb with him.
Kelger's spirit, carrying the last of his strength and the power of the other werewolves, together with Galuf, shatter the illusion and open the path forward. This may seem slight - dispelling an illusion at the cost of one's own life doesn't seem to be much of an incredible feat - but these were Kelger's last moments anyway, and in truth, the scope of Exdeath's illusion is much more so than a Dark Souls fake wall.
This is the true appearance of Exdeath's Castle:
You can't see it on these still screenshots, but these statues framing every doorway? Their chests are pulsing. They're breathing.
This is Exdeath's demesne, a disgustingly organic bastion of flesh and bone, a living manse, whose corridors are adorned with pools not of water, but of boiling magma. Thousands of skulls stare at us from the walls, the entire thing a hideous living organism through whose bowels we move.
It's pretty sick, not gonna lie.
The enemies in this place are also a significant step up from the Forest of Moore. That little red bunny above there? That's the "Hellraiser," and when it dies, it casts Raise on a dead enemy. Annoying as hell. But there's worse!
These Bandercoeurls are just your basic beatstick. That's not the problem. The problem is the guy in the back:
In this one screenshot, he cast "Banish," which deleted Lenna from the encounter, Confused Bartz who is my main attacker and immediately proceeded to kill Krile, leaving only Faris as an effective fighter and, well…
…that's the first time I wipe to a random encounter in a loooong time, jesus.
Anyway, it's not that bad once I remember that Confuse turns off after one attack and that I can have one of the weaker caster attack a Confused character to prevent them running rampant through the party, though the instant kills (Break and Banish) are pretty bad.
The room you're seeing here is playing The Floor Is Lava for high stakes, inflicting severe damage to all characters with each step while forcing us to take a long, winding pathway through. Fortunately…
…we can just cast Float on everyone and avoid the danger entirely.
And hey, look! Bartz just mastered Ninja, and within moments, we found a hidden bow! If that's not a sign to turn him into a Ranger…
Yeah, let's take Ranger out for a spin.
This room has a very simple puzzle where you step on a central button and the platform starts rapidly moving from one side to the next and back, stopping when you step off the platform; you can get two chests that way, and getting the timing wrong means a monster comes out to attack you.
Oh hey, Red Dragon. We've met that guy before. Atomic Breath is a powerful screen-wide attack, however, because Lenna currently has the Fire Shield equipped, it actually heals her instead of killing her, lmao.
Well, would you look who's back! We have significantly increased in power since the first time we met him; however, that is not as relevant as you might think, because Jackanapes' special ability is…
…Moon Flute, which turns everyone Berserk. Once that's happened, the "game" is essentially over; we have no input on a Berserk characters' actions, and no way to end the status, so if everyone is Berserk then the game plays itself. This party has low physical offense overall, so even with Berserk's attack boost, they're still kind of shit and Jackanapes gets plenty of free shots at them. It's… frustrating. I do not like this as a gameplay design element. The game shouldn't just take the controls away from you at random like that. Still, the Berserk party does beat the imp in the end, and we move on.
And Krile has mastered Time Mage! That's great.
Ranger performance is… lackluster. The problem is I can't enhance it directly; Two-Handed and Dual-Wielding are both incompatible with bows, bows cannot be enhanced with Spellblade… I can give Bartz Throw or Cover for some sidegrade utility, I guess?
Swapping Krile to White Mage with either Summoner or Time Mage in the secondary slot is all fun and games, but since she can only have two active Abilities, I keep swapping back and forth on which one I actually want.
Hmmm.
You know what, forget what I said earlier about the urgency of the situation and not dawdling. Let's take a break. I just found a safe room, and even after tenting, the fights in the second half of the dungeon are kind of kicking my ass. Instead, let's teleport out and wrap up some unfinished business outside the castle.
We're heading back to the Sealed Castle to confront the Shield Dragons. Are our characters better equipped to handle them with their now higher levels and completed jobs?
It turns out the answer is no.
Dude's just got too high defenses, a Knock Silly move that Confuses characters, a Zombie Breath move that puts the new "Zombie" status effect on someone (you can see it on Faris here, who has white eyes, green-tinged skin, and who is busy attacking her teammates despite nominally being at 0 HP), and is just a pain in the ass.
Fortunately, he's also not a no-escape battle. So I can just… Teleport out.
Bam.
With judicious use of teleport spells, we can make our way to the upper floor and the Sealed Chamber, where we find a shining altar… And this game's Legendary Weapons?!
Damn.
Unfortunately, we can't actually access them. Presumably, we will need an object to put on that altar before we unlock them. Time to teleport again, this time out of the castle and back to town for a good rest!
Faris is stuck with the Zombie status effect even through a rest and until I find her some Holy Water to cure the effect, which diegetically is just very funny. I can just picture the fun the Hypothetical Faris Player is having saying "no, no, I am going to roleplay my character as a shambling undead for as long as it takes to get us a healing item." Of these shenanigans great sessions are made of.
Anyway, once that's taken care of, it's time to deal with the last of the old obstacles that have been thwarting me since the moment I set foot on Galuf's world.
The Gil Cave.
…okay, the Gil Turtle still isn't fucking around.
This is actually kind of an exciting puzzle to work out. There is, as far as I can tell, no obvious gotcha solution to easily deal with the turtle. No matter what I do, it'll take effort, but it's possible.
Here's the problem: the turtle has sky-high Defense, 32,000 HP (easily more than anything I've dealt with so far), and while its normal attack is just a basic hit for ~600 damage (still enough to delete over half the health of anyone but Lenna), it responds to any attack (whether physical or magical) with "Turtle," an ability which hits twice, targeting random party members (it can target the same one twice), and inflicting up to a maximum of five status effects: Blind, Poison, Paralysis, and Old. That means that character needs an Esuna or they're out of the fight, and they'll still carry a fight-long debuff because Old reduces your character level over time and that doesn't heal when Old does. The Gil Turtle is vulnerable to Ice damage, but that still only means up to 3000 damage from Blizzaga, meaning I'll need more than ten castings to kill it. Even with Dualcast, that's a lot.
I'm sure there's an optimal setup, and I'm sure all of you who've played through this sequence have your favorite way to tackle it, but I'll just walk you through mine, derived from wiki hints and gameplay experimentation.
So, first off, the Ranger/Samurai/White Mage/Black Mage setup, my 'training' setup, won't cut it, period. I tried and it's a nearly instant wipe.
Next, we'll try the "minimal change" setup; Bartz swaps over to Knight, so he can use the Guard move ('take 0 damage from anything until the next turn) and the passive Cover effect to shield the party while they rain hell on the turtle.
Nnnno dice. As you can see here, while Guard does protect from damage, every time I hit the Turtle with a Blizzaga, it counters with Turtle, and Turtle still inflicts its status effects, meaning Bartz gets paralyzed and can no longer Guard or Cover, and then I wipe. That's on top of the fact that Cover only triggers to protect characters at low HP, so I would need to keep my party strategically in the red, which means they'd wipe the moment Bartz gets the status effects and his Cover breaks.
Additionally, a new problem is arising; Faris Dualcasting Blizzaga can deal 5k-6k damage a turn, making the fight much quicker… but the Turtle uses its counter for each hit, which means each Blizzaga is followed by four Turtle counters, guaranteeing KOs for some and status effects for the others.
So, Mystic Knight. We all remember Mystic Knight, right? Blizzaga Spellblade against an enemy weak to ice multiplies damage by 4 while negating enemy Defense. That would guarantee massive damage on the Turtle, wouldn't it?
It doesn't. For whatever reason, a Blizzaga Spellblade using my strongest sword (that can be enchanted, so no Blood Sword) only deals 700 damage. Literally not worth bothering considering the inevitable duo counter followup. Now, that's with Knight, which I use so I can still benefit from passive Cover protects on weaker party members even while attacking; swapping to Mystic Knight allows me to combine both Spellblade and Two-Handed… At which point Bartz is still dealing only 1,400 damage, a respectable amount but only half of a single Blizzaga cast while losing any ability to defend the party. That's not a worthwhile tradeoff.
Okay. So, the Gil Turtle overwhelmingly punishes offense with disabling, multi-target attacks.
Which means I need to shift to a defensive focus and become a turtle of my own.
First iteration of the final roster.
As you can see, I swapped Lenna to White Mage, with HP+30% from Monk as her secondary skill. The setup is simple: Bartz protects. Krile uses Time Magic to Haste the whole party, then Lenna and Krile use White Magic to cast Blink, massively reducing the accuracy of the turtle's counters, and Faris spends her first two turns casting Protect on the whole party (since she can dualcast buffs, an extremely potent tactic I hadn't previously considered). The result is a party that only takes ~330 damage from turtle attacks and has a high chance to evade them, and their status effects, entirely. The only offensive power is Faris's Dualcast Blizzaga (which, thanks to the Golden Hairpin I just found at the bottom of a sock drawer BECAUSE THE GAME KEEPS UNEQUIPPING IT, only costs as much as a single cast), so the group needs to survive 8+ turns in total.
It's not perfect. Blink charges are consumed over time (you can tell from how many reflections a character has behind them) and need to be renewed, the turtle can still get lucky and hit, and if both of my white mages get paralyzed that's GG, I can't cure them from the status, they can't keep up the buffs and heals, and we wipe. To add insult to injury, Bartz only provides marginal utility, often only Covering for characters that are already fucked by multi-status effects.
The breakthrough is swapping Krile's secondary slot from Time Magic to Summon, and using Golem. Golem puts up a rampart of HP which absorbs damage until it runs out, and if damage from an attack is fully absorbed, that attack is not considered to have hit the character, which means no status effects. This is the missing piece. Protect applies before Golem's Earthen Wall, meaning there's at least half a dozen attacks that I can afford to have 'slip through' Blink and the Elven Mantles' evade chance and still not hit my characters, giving me a very comfortable margin of maneuvre for missing windows in reapplying Blink or casting Curaga or Esuna. And Golem can be reapplied!
Earthen Wall in action.
I know it's not obvious in this screenshot but I did eventually remember to put everyone on the back row after switching them all to caster classes.
This is my first victory against the Gil Turtle, and it is deeply satisfying.
There are still misses, still wipes, but eventually I refine the roster to its final shame by finally accepting that Bartz is useless to me as a Knight and of marginal utility as a Mystic Knight, whereas Krile loses precious Blink/Curaga turns casting and reapplying Golem. Therefore…
This screenshot was taken during my brief attempt at using Shiva for damage, which proved hilarious pointless; Ice weakness or not, she is simply too low-level to matter.
Summoner Bartz, whose roll is to apply Golem and use items while the White Mages focus on buffs and healing. Krile is back to Time Magic so she can cast Hastega at the start of battle, and Faris remains our only offensive character.
This is, after a fashion, a return to FF1's "crew-served weapon" approach to Yda (the Monk) in the final fight. The entire party exists to protect and enable Faris. To the extent that Bartz, Lenna and Krile are buffing and protecting each other, it's because if any member of the defensive line falls, they can no longer protect Faris. It's an intricate web of self-reliance, the entire purpose of which is to ensure Faris acts as the central artillery piece dealing massive damage to the Gil Turtle every turn, while the group's impregnable wall withstands the quadruple-counter. Blink is the first layer of protection, causing automatic misses; the Elven Mantle brings in an additional miss chance on the two characters that have it equipped; Golem absorbs any attack that slips through; if Golem has run out and failed to be reapplied, Protect blunts the actual impact of the attack; then the White Mages hurry to put the victim back up with Esuna and Cura/ga while buffs are reapplied for another artillery salvo.
And it works. It's an actual, coherent tactic that can be executed rapidly, reliably, and efficiently.
It's enough to take the Gil Turtle down, and when it dies…
Picture from an earlier iteration of the build because I forgot the screenshot.
It casts Earthquake, hitting the entire party for NO DAMAGE AT ALL, BECAUSE I HAVE FLOAT.
We beat the Gil Cave.
Goddamn that was satisfying. Actually iterating on a party build and strategy and defeating a seemingly insurmountable monster not just once, but consistently, not by exploiting a singular weakness but by fine-tuning a well-oiled war machine?
I loved that.
The actual reward of the Gil Cave is just that: gil. Every two steps you take, you get an amount of gil, and just like the old fable with the chess board and the wheat stalk, the rewards are exponential: 10 gil, then 20, then 40, then 80… By the time we reach the end of the cave, the last tile grants 40,000 gil, for a sum total of roughly 80k.
And we can do it again. Basically as many time as we want.
I do eventually run out of Ether (the strategy I'm using is extremely MP-expensive), but not enough to offset the Cave's reward. Two full rounds in the cave bring in 160,000 gil and put me at around 250,000 total, or thereabouts.
At which point, I think, it's time to head back to Castle Exdeath.
….Which is where we'll be stopping today.
This was a very mechanics-heavy update that didn't move us far along the plot, but I felt it deserved highlighting, because it was a chance to finally really get into the nitty-gritty of using FFV's job system to fine tune a party set-up to tackle a specific challenge with maximum effectiveness, and in circumstances more difficult than any story-mandatory boss so far.
It was a great experience, and I hope you enjoyed reading it half as much as I enjoyed playing through it.
One thing you could have also used: the turtle is undead. I can't remember if you can kill it with heals and raises, but Bards singing Requiem is a perfectly valid strategy.
You can't see it on these still screenshots, but these statues framing every doorway? Their chests are pulsing. They're breathing.
This is Exdeath's demesne, a disgustingly organic bastion of flesh and bone, a living manse, whose corridors are adorned with pools not of water, but of boiling magma. Thousands of skulls stare at us from the walls, the entire thing a hideous living organism through whose bowels we move.
I like to imagine Exdeath, as a newly awakened evil sentient tree, wandering out of the woods, discover his first wooden buildings and then immediately go "We'll see how you guys like it!" before designing his own totally sick evil lair made entirely out of people.
This was a very mechanics-heavy update that didn't move us far along the plot, but I felt it deserved highlighting, because it was a chance to finally really get into the nitty-gritty of using FFV's job system to fine tune a party set-up to tackle a specific challenge with maximum effectiveness, and in circumstances more difficult than any story-mandatory boss so far.
Yeah, mechanically speaking FFV makes a very solid case for being the most fun game in the series. There's lot of possible permutations, and you haven't even gotten into taking full advantage of the Freelancer class yet... lot of fun stuff.
Runtime-wise, my playthrough of FFIV lasted 24:50, ending cutscenes included. This FFV playthrough is at 23:50, so it could just about wrap up in the same runtime if this was the actual final dungeon; but setting aside that every FF game in the series so far has trended towards higher runtime than its predecessor, FFV had me spent a lot more time engaging with mechanics, build tweaking, grinding job levels, and so on than FFIV, which had a straightforward "character level is all that matters" system, so it feels too short.
From an exploration design perspective, we just found the Legendary Weapons but not any way of actually getting them yet. I could find a Legendary Slab and be told to backtrack to the Sealed Castle immediately to get them before the endgame, but I doubt it, it's inelegant. Additionally, there is at least one location on Bartz's homeworld (the spooky pyramid) and on Galuf's world (the basement of Castle Bal, although it might have unlocked with Galuf's death actually? Should check it out) that have yet to be explored, so we need to get back there.
From a job perspective, we still don't have lv 6 spells or lv 5 summons, so something is incomplete. Our characters are heading into the 'final fight' without having reached the peak of their power, which doesn't fit.
From a narrative perspective, it's missing a classic Final Fantasy cosmic escalation. I don't expect Exdeath to develop character depth, of course, but we're missing at least one big villain move that threatens all the world more directly than the vague "he'll destroy the world... somehow and eventually" threat he presents right now. FFIII took us to the World of Darkness, FFIV to the Moon, we need a third location that raises the stakes.
With all those status effects flying around, did you get to enjoy Krile's Blind sprite? She's so short that the glasses are on her forehead instead of over her eyes.
Fair enough; looking forward to see if what happens in the game will be a satisfying answer to this need or not, for you.
Speaking of growing in scope though, I forgot to ask you what you thought of the difference between FFIII and FFIV in that respect - FFIII had the initial floating continent, then the flooded world which evolved into the world raised from the waters, and included an underwater map as well. FFIV had the surface world, the underworld (with a cave leading to the Summon world), and the Moon. Which would you say gave their game a bigger sense of scope, and how does that compares so far with FFV two worlds, one of the two with an underwater map?
Ah, Black Warlocks. Suffice to say after long enough running around Exdeath's Castle... I just started using !Smoke or !Flee whenever these buckos showed up. Not worth the status effects flying everywhere.
Ranger performance is… lackluster. The problem is I can't enhance it directly; Two-Handed and Dual-Wielding are both incompatible with bows, bows cannot be enhanced with Spellblade… I can give Bartz Throw or Cover for some sidegrade utility, I guess?
Ranger is a very... mid-game class, best used around when you first get them. They have high accuracy and can do bonus damage to flying enemies, but are otherwise pretty lackluster outside of that ever lovely !RapidFire which tends to be a huge buff to other physical classes. Sort of like how Red Mage plummets off a cliff once you hit Galuf's World, other than dualcast being awesome on other casters.
You know what, forget what I said earlier about the urgency of the situation and not dawdling. Let's take a break. I just found a safe room, and even after tenting, the fights in the second half of the dungeon are kind of kicking my ass. Instead, let's teleport out and wrap up some unfinished business outside the castle.
Ah yes, the jrpg classic. "Look I know the world might end in like two hours, but I got sidequestin' to do!"
And congrats on taking out the gil turtle. I didn't really bother in my own playthrough, but golem would probably me my strat as well. Such a useful summon.
