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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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Omicron said:
I've reloaded to try the fight again once, and while my second run was a lot sloppier, Exdeath's first move was to cast Doom; putting a timer on Bartz, and I still beat him before the timer ran down.

We've just completely surpasses this guy.
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That awkward moment when the fight that is one step short of a scripted win and the random minor encounters is more threatening than the final boss!
 
Omicron said:
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You might notice that I still have Bartz as a Ranger instead of putting him on a Freelancer powertrip. This is because I have found something amazing:

Zeninage.

Now, this is an ability I've had for a long time. Zeninage is the Samurai's default command; it consumes gil in order to literally throw money at the enemy for huge damage. Previously, I did not use this skill; while I always had large sums of money on me, it always got mostly spent in huge chunks when upgrading my equipment in a new town or restocking Phoenix Downs and Ethers.

Now, though? I've gone through the gil cave. Throwing 3,000 to 6,000 gil at an enemy is nothing. I have other 270k gil going into Exdeath Castle, and I get 1k or more per battle, and a single gil toss does 5k damage to all enemies. This basically ends any encounter with anything that's not a pack of dragons.
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And so, Omi falls into the hole of "the most ridiculously overpowered shit that the game actually just hands you for free." Sure, it's nice that there's stronger combos because of multihits with things like Double Casting or Rapid Fire Dual Wielding... but also Samurai is just the best class in the entire game by far because it plops on in and goes "yo what if I had the best armor, some of the best weapons, multiple great abilities, oh and also I can just instakill most enemy compositions with the power of money?"
Omicron said:
The design evolution here is fascinating. In FFIII, Carbuncle was a weird and ugly mass of stuff, with one eye peering out. Here, Carbuncle is a giant, animal-looking creature, kind of feline, although its large claws also evoke digging rodents; the name 'Carbuncle' likely referring to the red gemstone (carbuncle) set in its brow. Every other Carbuncle I'm aware of later in the series is instead some kind of cute furry rodent, like a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit? Except in Final Fantasy XIV, where Carbuncle is a cute furry rodent… Except when at some point you encounter a Carbuncle-related creature that is a huge angry feral monster, as a joke, and that design I am now realizing may well be referencing this early form of Carbuncle? Shit has layers, man.

Although...

...that's what Carbuncle looks like when summoned. Definitely not the cutesy mascot of later games, this thing looks weird as hell, kinda has an alien vibe to it, but definitely smaller and less overtly threatening. Also I think it's the first summon to have a different appearance when summoned as opposed to fought? Which is kind of odd - is this supposed to mean that Carbuncle is diminished by the summoning, or maybe that it is only granting us a fraction of its power? Alternatively, it was 'destroyed' by our battle but, being a spiritual being, it reformed into a smaller, lesser form that will grow over time?
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...What, does Carbuncle actually change from that design? Maybe it's because I mostly fell off the series post-FFX or so, but the summoned Carbuncle in your pictures here is about how I've always remembered it.
Omicron said:
Oh my god. It's Gilgamesh. And he stole the fucking dungeon treasure. What a genius. Few villains could aspire to the depths of cunning that this man is able to reach, especially seeing as he's now equipped with a weapon of no-doubt awesome power!
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THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND RETURNS
Omicron said:
As expected, it's a total wipe. Gilgamesh's awesome power is too much for my group to contend with, and we fold within a single turn.
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Judging by that screenshot, Gilgamesh's power is so awe-inspiring that Faris just couldn't take fighting against him and wiped out the party all on her own :V
Omicron said:
Some of the dialogue choices have aged questionably well. Like, when Gilgamesh says "I feel we have gained an understanding… An understanding that… I will pound you silly! Ha ha!" my immediate reaction is to scold him because there are children in the audience. When he asks about Galuf's whereabouts, though, we get something more interesting; Krile says that Galuf fought Exdeath, and Gilgamesh's answer is a sober "...I see," then an ellipsis "..." a little later, with no quip or joke, which suggests that… he is not unsympathetic to the protagonists? He has enough respect for them to not treat the death of one of their members lightly. He might, in fact, be kinda sad that Galuf died? Gil is just having fun with this, and his boss may be too evil for him.
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Gilgamesh really is a bro. Seriously, I wish he could be a party member or helper or something, he would totally vibe with the group if he traveled with them.
Omicron said:
Excalipoor?!

This is hilarious. It says it has +100 Attack, but I do not believe it for one second.
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As has been mentioned, while it does technically have +100 attack... it also has a unique damage formula that means it consistently does jack all instead. Is still useful for things like being thrown or particular spells like Goblin Punch, however.
Omicron said:
Exdeath is lv 66 (wonder if that's a sneaky reference to 666, what with him being absolutely evil and all that), has 32k HP, and is weak to Holy (unfortunately I have no Holy attacks or spells available in my current party setup). He has a number of attacks, including the -ga trio he used against Galuf. He responds to character buffing themselves with Dispel; however, because Hastega covers the whole party and Dispel affects only one character at a time, buffing is still highly action-efficient for me. From a quick look at the wiki, he also has many more attacks and moves, and three separate phases; first he uses a number of neat monster abilities and normal like Doom, Gravity, Hurricane, Bio, Level 3 Flare; then he moves to alternating between Vacuum Wave, a special move that inflicts a progressive HP loss called Sap and the -ga trio he used against Galuf, and then in third phase he uses Meteor.

I don't really notice any of that because he folds like paper. Part of it may be bad RNG on his part: He uses Vacuum Wave once, and it misses, and he doesn't even get to Meteor. Part of it may be efficient strategizing: Golem can absorb damage and Hastega means taking actions real fast (although in the event I can only have one of the two, since Summoning/Time Magic goes on Krile; I end up deciding on Hastega), having two characters with White Magic (Krile and Faris) means I can layer Protect and Shell to blunt all of Exdeath's damage. And part of it is probably also just using busted moves. Even a couple of Zeninage are enough to deal severe damage - plus I equipped Bartz with the Ninja's Throw command and have been tossing Shurikens, so even Ranger Bartz is doing decent DPS. I have a quarter as many screenshots for this fight as I do Gilgamesh. By the time Exdeath kicks it, the party is still at full health.
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Having Zeninage and abusing throw is probably the turning point here, tbh. Exdeath can be moderately difficult if he gets going, and has a lot of tricks up his sleeve... but if you get your setup quickly with Hastega and Reflect and Golem so you'll neuter most of what he has for the boss fight. Throw in high damage output, and he also doesn't get that many turns to actually burst you down.
Omicron said:
Bartz, being his impulsive self, tells Krile that, since they're back on his homeworld, there must be a reason for it, and they might as well just go looking for it together. Krile asks about Faris and Lenna, and Bartz tells her there's no way the two can slip out right now, in the middle of the ball thrown in their honor. Kind of a dick move not to wait for them, though, but…

This is cute?

It's cute that Bartz is so quickly willing to just go out into the world to figure out some hunch his new friend/little sister figure is having. I've mentioned this before but one of the strength of this game is how it frequently has scenes pairing two characters specifically so that we have a better idea of how Faris and Lenna relates to each other as opposed to Galuf and Bartz or Bartz and Faris or Bartz and Lenna, and giving Bartz and Krile a 'let's go out together' moment helps sell him as a cool, helpful, but somewhat irresponsible and impulsive older brother figure, which is something that makes sense for him to be, but wasn't necessarily evident on its own.
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Bartz may be an impulsive wanderlust-ridden brat, but he's also a surprisingly good older brother figure and general party leader, especially now that Galuf is gone. I really do like this bit of the game where he's clearly uncomfortable with the whole big party thing and just takes the first opportunity to run off with Krile for a bit.
Omicron said:
It's a fused map.

Exdeath merged the two worlds.
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And the shoe drops! Welcome to "World 3", Omi!
Etranger said:
That's so wild. Was that foreshadowed in any way? Are the protagonists even aware of it yet?
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The protags aren't quite aware yet, but there's been foreshadowing here and there. Most prominent I can think of is
The two halves of that one book found in the World 1 Ancient Library and World 2 Castle Surgate, which mention "two halves made whole" or somesuch.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Fun fact: the throw command calculates damage separately from how the attack command calculates damage. Because of this, throwing the excalipoor does just as much damage as if it wasn't a booby prize, even if you can only do so once.

Also, Carbuncle is odd art-wise, in that they don't have concept art from the original release... but they do have concept art from the PS1 release. And it's, er, a thing. You note how Carbuncle isn't quite as cute and fuzzy as later versions, and sounded kinda jock-like? BEHOLD.


No, I don't know why tennis shoes either.
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WHAT'RE THOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE
 
Omicron said:
The overlap isn't… Perfect, I don't think, but it's pretty visible. Both worlds had a chain of island in the southeast that is now a fully continuous land barrier creating an inner sea; the north region of the great lakes in Bartz's world got 'filled in' by the desert from Galuf's world; the forest in the west of Galuf's world got superposed by the Desert of Shifting Sands, while the mountains south of the Desert filled in the gulf west of Drakenvale.

Wow. That's… clever. That is a really neat twist on the 'going from world to world' formula. And it explains why the maps of the two previous worlds seemed relatively small in total landmass - this merged world is massive, with multiple great lakes and inland seas, vast mountain ranges, the franchises' trademark overbearing mountain ranges… Interestingly though, the Giants' Causeway-style mountains and dark swamp fields of Galuf's world appear to have disappeared in the merging; I'm wondering why that is. It makes the world a lot more familiar-looking, which is a bit of a shame, I dug the slightly alien vibe of Galuf's world.

And people have no idea this happened! The whole Tycoon population just thinks the sky looks kinda weird! People are about to find entire nations dropped on their doorstep! The political picture of the world is going to radically and completely change as everyone's lives have to adjust to a completely upended reality!

This is a really cool fantasy twist, and a completely unique take from the previous games, damn. It's also making my Final Fantasy XIV sensors go absolutely wild.

But… how does that fit into Exdeath's plans? How is merging the two worlds in some way evil?

Well, I know, because that was a really exciting development so I had to keep playing, but this is a lot to take in, so we'll stop there for today.

Thanks for reading!
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This is a great twist I have been patiently silent on. This is why Galuf's world has books on Ronka. This is why there's a book in each world noted to be half a book.This is why there was a number of mysterious dead ends and weird spots throughout the entire world.

Because, per Exdeath's dialogue, he was trying to return the world to 'how it used to be', which means we can already guess here that the world was split in two at some long distant point in the past- but, presumably, after the Ancient Ronkan's days.

Etranger said:
That's so wild. Was that foreshadowed in any way? Are the protagonists even aware of it yet?
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There's a ton of foreshadowing- I just noted several specific examples, and I've probably forgotten some. For another example, the path in Galuf's Castle's basement that went nowhere.

Most of it is more obvious in retrospect, but there's bits all over the place, particularly that conspicuous book in each world both sides note as being 'it's like it's just half a book' or whatever they said exactly.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Fun fact: the throw command calculates damage separately from how the attack command calculates damage. Because of this, throwing the excalipoor does just as much damage as if it wasn't a booby prize, even if you can only do so once.

Also, Carbuncle is odd art-wise, in that they don't have concept art from the original release... but they do have concept art from the PS1 release. And it's, er, a thing. You note how Carbuncle isn't quite as cute and fuzzy as later versions, and sounded kinda jock-like? BEHOLD.


No, I don't know why tennis shoes either.
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Time for more of The Music of Final Fantasy!

Only one tune today so it's going to a bit short.

Exdeath's castle is just your average, everyday evil lair style music. I will say that this track is significantly improved from the original purely because of the improvement in samples, although I do miss the organ sample which reminds me of a Hammond organ which is just the perfect level of goofy sound choice for FFV. Anyway, the Pixel remaster has it all: it's got ominous strings (doing that chromatic movement I've mentioned before, the pairs of halfsteps), it's got menacing organ, it's got trumpets heralding your doom. Classic villain stuff. There's also a couple fun little arpeggio flourishes in the organ which are another nice touch. I can't find a clean video of the new version, but thankfully this let's play features a person so busy fussing with their setup that you get to hear the full track. Just don't mind all the boops and beeps of the cursor moving around.


Anyway, other stuff: not too much to add to Exdeaths castle except a couple small observations. Namely, !Sing continues to be surprisingly good. AOE stop that works on just about every dangerous enemy goes a long way towards cutting incoming damage. Also, those black warlocks and hell bunnies @Omicron was bitching about? Vulnerable to silence and berserk. Gives your white mage something to do and prevents them from wrecking your face or being annoying, respectively.
 
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Trivial question also about music: does Gilgamesh's theme "Battle on the Big Bridge" also play in this fight, despite not being on any sort of bridge that I can see?
 
Adloquium said:
Trivial question also about music: does Gilgamesh's theme "Battle on the Big Bridge" also play in this fight, despite not being on any sort of bridge that I can see?
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It plays pretty much anytime Gilgamesh shows up. So first the bridge, then the ships fights, and then here in the Exdeath Castle battle. Though iirc Exdeath's theme cuts it off at the end when he banishes him.
 
Omicron said:
Except when at some point you encounter a Carbuncle-related creature that is a huge angry feral monster, as a joke, and that design I am now realizing may well be referencing this early form of Carbuncle?
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The fight against Swole Carbuncle was easily the best of the Abyssos raids, and arguably all of the Pandemonium raid series so far. Gods that fight has a banging soundtrack.

Omicron said:
If you'll look closely, you'll see that these rooms are sort of symmetrical. This is because they're part of a falling puzzle. The platform with skulls on the right is full of tiles that break when we step on them; we need to experiment, falling into the lava bath below, until we find a path through the tiles that get us to various chests and to that bubbled flame thing. It takes a while, and the whole time we're facing tough as nails enemies. Like, the color dragon series:
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Geomancer would have saved you here, passives let you see fake floors and also stop them activating. If you need to fall, you can then just unequip the job over the desired tile.

Omicron said:
To be fair, I don't think this is a Breakfast Club situation, where every teenager with goth-y inclinations watching the movie goes "NO WAIT SHE LOOKED BETTER BEFORE THE MAKEOVER."
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They hate us because we're right.

Omicron said:
Although let's be real, if in-game Faris is meant to look like her concept art self, I know a lot of sapphics who would beg Faris to get back into the pirate outfit. And also to do the tilt-up-your-chin-with-her-sword thing.​
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That's just because we are ladies of good class and taste.
 
A) That Carbuncle art is absolutely 100% a DBZ reference.
B) And we see Gilgamesh go from Benkei (human) to Benkei (Asura), as is traditional for a lot of Japanese works that use Benkei as a reference. Gotta use all those weapons somehow, and a bunch of extra arms is often that somehow.

Impressed by the world-meld thing, but I'm still a little suspicious that you're currently in an illusory/dream world instead of an actual real merged one.
 
I love how your crew busts down the door all "I won't let you destroy the world, Exdeath!" since, y'know, that's as classical villain as classical villains get, but Exdeath is really doing the exact opposite of that.
 
(For anyone wondering, I just double-checked and Cell has been around since Feb 1992, so he could in fact have been the influence for the Carbuncle in FFV; he'd definitely been around for long enough by 1998, which was when the PS1 release was done.

Toriyama would absolutely also have been a massive influence on the Final Fantasy team, as he's been principal artist for Dragon Quest since the very beginning and DQ 1 and 2 were released before FF1. The DQ and FF teams (including Toriyama) would later unite to produce Chrono Trigger. Which came out in 1995, 3 years before the FFV PS1 release, so it's not ridiculous to imagine some exchanges going on there either.)
 
Etranger said:
That's so wild. Was that foreshadowed in any way? Are the protagonists even aware of it yet?
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It was foreshadowed, by stuff like Galuf's world having documentation on Ronka and the split libraries with the split Sealed Tome, but I completely missed the implication because it wasn't a twist I was expecting at all.

ZerbanDaGreat said:
i'm so glad he didn't even get out of his armchair when you fought him, because when i did he woke up and threw a full whiskey bottle directly at my head o_o
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Listen, the fact that he threw a Vacuum Wave at me and it missed is just inherently funny. I think Zeninage is what's breaking the fight, though; even just sticking to Doublecast, itself an OP ability makes the fight significantly longer and more dangerous. At this stage of the game, Zeninage is stronger than Dualcast. It's obscene.

Zap Rowsdower said:
Fun fact: the throw command calculates damage separately from how the attack command calculates damage. Because of this, throwing the excalipoor does just as much damage as if it wasn't a booby prize, even if you can only do so once.

Also, Carbuncle is odd art-wise, in that they don't have concept art from the original release... but they do have concept art from the PS1 release. And it's, er, a thing. You note how Carbuncle isn't quite as cute and fuzzy as later versions, and sounded kinda jock-like? BEHOLD.


No, I don't know why tennis shoes either.
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That is 100% a Cell reference. The tennis shoes and gloves I don't know - might be a Sonic ref, might not be, can't say for sure - but the green scales, segmented beige belly, flared headplate, and gem-like protrusion? That's Imperfect Cell. It's even more obvious if you put it up next to 'larval' Cell from a flashback.



Now, I wouldn't venture so far as to say that the original Carbuncle design was inspired by Cell; its 'head crest' seem to just be ears, its tail is fluffy, it's a mammal of some description, not a lizard bug. But that PS1 concept art? Definitely inspired by Cell.

Incidentally Imperfect Cell really seems to have taken the video game/manga world by storm as a visual inspiration, because around the same time frame we have JoJo Part 4's Echoes Stand, which looks like, well:



Just a fun thing to note.

Adloquium said:
Trivial question also about music: does Gilgamesh's theme "Battle on the Big Bridge" also play in this fight, despite not being on any sort of bridge that I can see?
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Yes, and the moment Exdeath gets tired of Gil's shenanigans, his theme cuts in before he speaks, which is a fantastic use of character themes as storytelling.

Egleris said:
Yep. So, continuing that discussion on the scope of games in the series and the maps they offer, how does this compares with FFIII and FFIV?
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I'll need to wait until I see how the rest of the game plays out, but it's a great twist at first glance, that makes the world bigger, and which allows the game to put in a lot of early locations that you hang around without being able to access only to recontextualize everything for when you get access. I dig it.

deadcrystal said:
The fight against Swole Carbuncle was easily the best of the Abyssos raids, and arguably all of the Pandemonium raid series so far. Gods that fight has a banging soundtrack.
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Say goodnight
With each bite does your sanity die
Sucking the life out, letting the dark
Inside, say a prayer as the light leaves your eyes
Or scream all you like, your gods can't hear you

That's just because we are ladies of good class and taste.
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Listen.

Look.

I get it.

Kadmus said:
Impressed by the world-meld thing, but I'm still a little suspicious that you're currently in an illusory/dream world instead of an actual real merged one.
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Could be, but I don't think they'd go to the lengths of generating an entire new map for it.

pedanterrific said:
I can't believe Galuf and the Dawn Warriors never tried just throwing money at him. 😔
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Pictured, how the second generation Dawn Warriors finally solved the Exdeath threat:

 
Omicron said:
Listen, the fact that he threw a Vacuum Wave at me and it missed is just inherently funny. I think Zeninage is what's breaking the fight, though; even just sticking to Doublecast, itself an OP ability makes the fight significantly longer and more dangerous. At this stage of the game, Zeninage is stronger than Dualcast. It's obscene.
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look

listen

second go-around, faris got the doom proc so i hit her with berserk while i waited for her to die so she'd learn it, then once she got back up it was nothing but throwing nickels
 
Yoshitaka Amano's pencils are unregulated weapons and he knew what he was doing when drawing Faris.
 
Omicron said:
No, he is giving us The Legendary Gilgamesh Introduction. Even before I knew Gilgamesh was in this game, I already knew this line from him in it. A good part of why I suspected Faris had some Gender going back when she was still presenting as a man was because I remembered that line. I remember that line being used as the header in some TVTropes article back when I still read TVTropes fifteen years ago. Here it is, in all its glory:
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"Is Gilgamesh an ally?" The greatest thread in the history of SV, locked by mods after 119 pages.

pedanterrific said:
I can't believe Galuf and the Dawn Warriors never tried just throwing money at him. 😔
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They thought of it, but the cost of victory would have been too high.

They're still a ruling class, you know.
 
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