The Pyramid of Moore is pain and if I were playing this game casually with other games I want to play right now, it might have killed this run. Please remember you can sponsor my suffering on Ko-Fi.
That's wild, because the pyramid was actually relatively easy on me. It was kind of a slog sure but I guess I just got lucky because Lenna wasn't anything all that crucial. Krile inherited Galuf's White Mage mastery so having her stick that on Time Mage with a Gold Hairpin I was able to very cheaply spam Comet at every conceivable threat while Samurai Faris and Ranger Bartz chewed through the remainder. Probably helps that I bought 99 gold needles for farming in Castle Bal so I had heaps of spares to easily chew through some of the stone enemies who spawn six at a time to fuck you.
Honestly I dunno if we should warn Omi to switch jobs before Melusine, because she's fully invulnerable to phys at first, but I just survived a little while and she barrier changed to no longer be, so he might be able to swing it.
Really what got me through the pyramid was Faris having Rapid Fire + Spellblade. Every encounter was just "Faris buffs, Faris instakills most of the enemies because she's doing buttloads of damage and also -Ga level spellblades instakill if they hit weaknesses." Throw in a little Bartz for summons and Time Mage nonsense, and it wasn't that bad.
The random encounters, anyways. The Pyramid itself is a fairly obnoxious dungeon.
@Omicron (or anyone in thread that is playing along like several others seem to be, myself included) if you're still struggling with the dungeon encounters allow me to give you one small piece of advice: denizens of an ancient pyramid are by definition old and there is nothing old people hate more than kids these days and their devil music.
@Omicron (or anyone in thread that is playing along like several others seem to be, myself included) if you're still struggling with the dungeon encounters allow me to give you one small piece of advice: denizens of an ancient pyramid are by definition old and there is nothing old people hate more than kids these days and their devil music.
Correct. A lot of the monsters are undead so Requiem tears right through them. With a decent magic score backing it up (say...!White6) you should be OHKOing the trash.
Correct. A lot of the monsters are undead so Requiem tears right through them. With a decent magic score backing it up (say...!White6) you should be OHKOing the trash.
Yeah, Requiem's spellpower is ridiculously high at 225 (Level 3 elemental magic is 185 for comparison) and has no reduced damage for hitting multiple targets. It also applies the Sap status which drains health over time at a decent rate but nothing Undead will live long enough for it to matter.
The Pyramid of Moore is the bane of my existence, and I'm going to make it your problem. It's time for a dungeon deep dive.
Okay, 'bane of my existence' may be a little strong. It's - it's not difficult, not really. It rarely threatens me with a TPK, or indeed with KO'd characters. It's just - it's exhausting.
For one thing, it's full of optional chests, and almost all of them are monster boxes.
Without Lenna to draw fire with a huge HP pool and contribute to my DPS, every fight takes time and resources - I'm under a constant MP and HP drain from Krile and Faris both using magic and everyone getting hit a lot more just because enemies take more time dying. And Ranger Bartz is basically dead weight, so I'm going to be spending pretty much the entire dungeon swapping Bartz's job to try and find something useful.
The Pyramid actually brings in a new innovation in dungeon tech:every floor has marked walls, and certain triggers (passing through a given door, opening a given chest) will cause that wall to break as snakes emerge from it and move around in the dungeon.
If you manage to avoid touching the snakes, they won't fight you. If you do, this triggers an encounter.
It's… A neat idea? I guess the idea is that since you're operating with a smaller party, the game is giving you an option to avoid certain encounters, maybe? Wait, no, that doesn't work, because the game still also has random encounters back to their normal rate (from the previously reduced overworld rate). I guess it's just there as one more obstacle to ruin my day.
Anyway, I know there are games, later in history, which would take that concept of enemies roaming the overworld and encounters only triggering when you touch them, and make them their entire 'random' encounter system. And I think that's the way to go. You either do this or normal encounter, not both of them in the same dungeon. And I think this might actually be a better design? Probably more hardware intensive. The series will stick to random encounters going forward for a while, though, I'm pretty sure.
So, let's try stuff.
Dancer Bartz! I dig the flamenco outfit. And with his shirt half-open. Dashing.
Anyway Dancing doesn't do anything particular at this point for me. It means Bartz can equip a Ribbon and sometimes he fires Sword Dance, which is really good, but mostly it's a dud.
Bard Bartz!
This is much better, as suggested by my readers. Most opponents in the Pyramid are undead, and Bard's Requiem hits them for 2000+ damage, which is enough to kill some, and getting the rest down half their health. It doesn't hit everyone, though; these Ushabti above are stone, they're not undead, so in this fight Bartz is just dealing 2k damage to this Archeosaur alone, which is still solid! It's not as good as Faris Dualcasting Firaga, but… Well, put a pin in that. I'm going to run into a problem precisely because I miss a crucial leg of the calculus in that 'not as good as Dualcast.'
Also sometimes I run into an encounter where it's useless:
A monster that summons another monster. Neither is undead.
There's a sarcophagus room, where the pyramid is full of sand, and there are sarcophagi which block the path forward, that have another map-roaming monster that can be avoided or deliberately confronted:
…huh. I know that visual design. It's very reminiscent of Omega from FFXIV. But why are mecha heads roaming what's effectively a giant tomb? I don't know, but they're weak to Thundaga, so they're not too much of a problem…
…although check out Krile and Faris's MP.
This is the point where the toll of Dualcast and White/Time Magic is starting to show. I actually have to spend large amounts of Ether to keep these two characters active; if I don't, at some point they run out of juice and Krile and Faris in a fistfight are not having a good time. And incidentally, Requiem? Useless against robots!
Anyway, the sarcophagi have hostile mummies in them, because it wouldn't be a pyramid-themed dungeon without it.
These mummies are surprisingly weak, though, and die to two Requiems.
Weird item showcase: these mummies are defending the Thornlet, a headgear item which… decreases HP over time in exchange for immunity to Sleep? That sounds like a joke item. I have no idea why I would ever bother with this.
Hmmm.
We've seen that combination of "traditional architecture and cultural displays, advanced defense systems" before - in Ronka. This, I think, is a major necropolis of the Ronkan Empire, meant to house the remains of major leader figures. Its corridors are roamed by undead constructs and advanced robots as a continuation of Turning Point Ronka's tacky obsession with marrying antique aesthetics with high-tech weaponry, just like the Floating Fortress.
Anyway, next floor up, we run into a unique encounter:
Irrationally upset that 'Sekhmet' is some kind of bull dude and not a lioness.
Having been warned by a reader that this is a particular encounter (unique stealable item, dies and never shows up again if killed), I Flee from the battle and do some light job swapping.
Return is a spell I haven't talked about much because I keep forgetting it exists. What it does is offer you a free redo on the battle. It literally resets an encounter to the state it was when you entered it. In this case, I'm using it so that Thief Bartz can reroll Steal attempts indefinitely; you see, Sekhmet drops Thief's Gloves, but as a rare drop - which means most of the time, when you steal from it, you will just get its common drop, a Hi-Potion. So the tactic is to Steal and spam Return until you get the item, then Flee, and do it again for as many times as you care to have Thief's Gloves.
…
That's the theory, anyway. At this point I am already tired of the Pyramid, and after five attempts resulting only in Hi-Potions, I decide I'm done with this and I only need one set of Thief's Gloves anyway, so I fucking murder this guy.
Foreshadowing! Spooky!
Anyway, the correct move at this point would be to swap Bartz back to Bard, but I'm running into enough non-undead enemies that it doesn't feel worth it, so equip him with Dual-Wielded Twin Lances and keep him as a thief.
That is, until I run into this encounter, because the Lamia Queen drops the Lamia's Tiara, which turns the chances of Dancer executing its Sword Dance move to 50%! At which point it's back to Flamenco Bartz, who is a shockingly effective damage dealer at last.
Hey, remember those guys? They're not a level-appropriate encounter I could defeat normally, but I don't respect them enough for that, and spam Gold Needle regardless.
Oh and also there are sand cascade puzzles.
Running into the sand cascade drops you into a room below. You actually have to do it at least once in order to access an otherwise inaccessible chest; then you need to interact with the buttons above to stop the sand cascades and cross through.
…
I'm not having fun?
Yeah, this is probably a better descriptor than "it's too difficult" or "it's exhausting" or "I am struggling to adapt to the new gameplay challenge."
Games shake up your gameplay expectations from time to time, it's an old and potentially very useful tool for challenging players and force them to adapt their way of playing. They take away tools and give you new ones. Unfortunately, from my perspective, removing Lenna is a net negative. The four-man party is such an elegant number in terms of offering a breadth of gameplay and multiple toolset which cover for each other's weaknesses and also I just like Lenna and having her around and it bothers me that she just got sent to Eebie Deebie out of nowhere and I just.
I am not enjoying this.
Freelancer Bartz.
He has the best stats out of all mastered jobs and is dual-wielding the strongest swords in the game, but that's not really what I want him for. Find Passages is to locate every hidden chest in the Pyramid, because fuck if I'm letting this place get away with unlooted stuff for all the pain it's putting me through. Smoke is to spam so I can auto-evade every encounter.
I am not fighting a single more monster in this dungeon than I absolutely have to.
Incidentally, one of the game's only Ribbons is found on this shifting floor room, and a Protect Ring in one of the other chests, which I'm really glad I didn't miss.
Stepping on the 'smooth' part of this purple stairway results in you sliding back, like on ice, which means having to go back through the previous room and climbing again.
Oh hey, Faris Mastered Black Mage! That's neat, I didn't expect that so soon. I guess I'll swap her to Summoner, make sure to master every form of offensive magic on her. Or maybe I should instead be making her a White Mage so she can be support or offense as needed… Eh, Summoner will do.
And there we are, at long last.
No boss fight, which is a real surprise, but not an unwelcome one.
Or rather… the boss fight isn't included in the Pyramid itself. It is triggered by seizing the tablet, but it will go elsewhere. To whit, picking up the tablet causes a platform to rise, depositing us at the top of the Pyramid, outside.
Uh-oh.
Welp!
Yeah, so, the bird-shaped peninsula - which is incidentally where our airship was stranded just sank into the sea, unleashing the Dragon King Bahamut. Thankfully he does not immediately swoop down from the sky to smite us; instead, the skies darken as he looms over the pyramid and he sends us a message:
…and then the airship, not the worse for wear, comes drifting on the water to the nearby shore.
Well, alright then.
I assume the airship will open up some real mobility and allow us to revisit more places we've visited before to find stuff that was unlocked by the merging of the worlds, although the game has surprised me before with very restricted options on vehicles that feel like they should open up the world massively.
Well, before that - the Pyramid of Moore is named that way for a reason; its desert has taken the place of the Forest of Moore, right next to the town of Moore. Which means we can head back there!
New dialogue notes: a shed that was previously unlocked at the back of town is now open, and according to rumor, haunted. Someone enquires about Ghido's health and is reassured to learn he's alright, which kind of recontextualizes him for me as less 'obscure sage recluse in his cavern not seen in a decade' to 'grumpy old grandpa over on the hill who gets his milk and bread delivered by youngsters from the town.'
Also, people comment that the forest is growing again from around the Guardian Tree and overtaking the desert, returning life to the area, which is intriguing considering we're meant to still be in the "the earth is dying due to broken crystals" stage, a light of hope? Also combined with "Koko is probably meant to be the female chocobo from Galuf's world" as noted by a reader, I'm seriously wondering how long the crew has spent partying at Castle Tycoon!
So, checking out this shed at the back of town - it leads to a super-hidden passage (as in, Find Passages doesn't reveal it) through the forest.
…this weird old man gives us a choice between two items: the Brave Blade and the Chicken Knife. As hinted by his text, each one has effects heavily dependent on how much we've run away from fights across the course of the game. The Chicken Knife starts with abysmal power, and gains power every time we run from battle; the Brave Blade starts with the highest power in the game, and loses power every time we run from battle. And that effect is retroactive, tracking how many times I've run from battle over the whole game.
Well.
This is just flawless dramatic irony considering my handling of the Pyramid of Moore.
Heavy sigh.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
And… then we head for the airship, I guess? We have to pick up the last Water Crystal shard back from its shrine for the Mime job, right?
Still no sign of Lenna.
Well, I usually try to avoid just covering one dungeon in an update, but that's a good stopping point for today, at least.
I did not have a great time o_o
But at least I stuck with it and saw it through. Now here's to hoping we get a full party before running into Bahamut!
…this weird old man gives us a choice between two items: the Brave Blade and the Chicken Knife. As hinted by his text, each one has effects heavily dependent on how much we've run away from fights across the course of the game. The Chicken Knife starts with abysmal power, and gains power every time we run from battle; the Brave Blade starts with the highest power in the game, and loses power every time we run from battle. And that effect is retroactive, tracking how many times I've run from battle over the whole game.
Well.
This is just flawless dramatic irony considering my handling of the Pyramid of Moore.
Heavy sigh.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
Good news! The game was patched August last year to change how the Brave Blade works - it now regains 1 point of its original attack power every time you complete 'a set number of encounters' without running again. So just take the Brave Blade and try not to run from any more fights.
Good news! The game was patched August last year to change how the Brave Blade works - it now regains 1 point of its original attack power every time you complete 'a set number of encounters' without running again. So just take the Brave Blade and try not to run from any more fights.
The main advantage of the chicken knife is level 1 runs, since those involve a LOT of running.
Also, it has the effect of giving a decent chance of forcing you to run away every time you attack with it, which is annoying even if it doesnt impact job commands like rapidfire.
Yeah, this is probably a better descriptor than "it's too difficult" or "it's exhausting" or "I am struggling to adapt to the new gameplay challenge."
Games shake up your gameplay expectations from time to time, it's an old and potentially very useful tool for challenging players and force them to adapt their way of playing. They take away tools and give you new ones. Unfortunately, from my perspective, removing Lenna is a net negative. The four-man party is such an elegant number in terms of offering a breadth of gameplay and multiple toolset which cover for each other's weaknesses and also I just like Lenna and having her around and it bothers me that she just got sent to Eebie Deebie out of nowhere and I just.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
Brave Blade is simple, starts strong, gets weaker if you flee, so if you want to use it, you really have to commit to not ever fleeing even really annoying encounters. Goblin Punch uses the baseline +150 even if you flee a bunch, but that's a corner case.
Chicken Knife is a bit more complicated, it starts weak as anything, but it only ever gets stronger + it includes agility in the damage formula, which means it can easily outcompete Brave Blade. It also has the disadvantage that using the !Attack command has a chance of making you flee, which would be obviously annoying...but it only applies to that command specifically. Other Phys attack commands like Mug and Rapid Fire can be used without risk.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
so a maxed out chicken knife is probably more useful, except in cases where the enemy has ~100 or more defense (is that often? I dunno)
One downside of chicken knife is that it takes 254 flees for max benefit, so you might have to grind a bit for it.
Chicken knife also has the downside that it apparently has a 1/4th chance of making you retreat every time you do a normal attack with it. This can be avoided by doing special attacks, like, !Mug, !Aim, or !RapidFire
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
1. Job availability — knives can be wielded by more jobs than swords, which is relevant if you're using the weapon on something like a Ninja or other non-freelancer.
2. Do you actually want to grind up the Chicken Knife by fleeing repeatedly? The Pixel Remaster buffed the Brave Blade by having it recover lost attack value over time, so if you're just vibing and don't want to commit to a grind it'll serve you better.
3. The chicken knife has a higher damage ceiling, even though it doesn't look like it. The Brave Blade can have at most 150 attack, and the Chicken Knife can have at most 127 attack, but the Chicken Knife's damage formula includes Agility and the Brave Blade's doesn't. The lower attack can be worse against high defense enemies, unless you're using something like Rapidfire, which ignores defense.
4. The chicken knife will randomly flee sometimes when used with normal attacks, so if you don't want to flee, you have to use command attacks like Dance or Rapidfire with it.
So overall
Brave Blade: more restricted in who can equip it, already strong and doesn't need to be charged up
Chicken Knife: requires a grind, higher max damage, should be used with Dance or Rapidfire to avoid random Flees
He has the best stats out of all mastered jobs and is dual-wielding the strongest swords in the game, but that's not really what I want him for. Find Passages is to locate every hidden chest in the Pyramid, because fuck if I'm letting this place get away with unlooted stuff for all the pain it's putting me through. Smoke is to spam so I can auto-evade every encounter.
Note: Find Passages is one of the abilities that becomes intrinsic to Freelancer on mastering Thief. If you've already mastered Thief, you don't need to blow the slot on it.
(the protection from ambushes and sprint I believe were the other two things that mastering thief is good for aside best in game agility that gives a solid argument for mastering thief on everyone eventually)
…this weird old man gives us a choice between two items: the Brave Blade and the Chicken Knife. As hinted by his text, each one has effects heavily dependent on how much we've run away from fights across the course of the game. The Chicken Knife starts with abysmal power, and gains power every time we run from battle; the Brave Blade starts with the highest power in the game, and loses power every time we run from battle. And that effect is retroactive, tracking how many times I've run from battle over the whole game.
Well.
This is just flawless dramatic irony considering my handling of the Pyramid of Moore.
Heavy sigh.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
And… then we head for the airship, I guess? We have to pick up the last Water Crystal shard back from its shrine for the Mime job, right?
Still no sign of Lenna.
Well, I usually try to avoid just covering one dungeon in an update, but that's a good stopping point for today, at least.
I did not have a great time o_o
But at least I stuck with it and saw it through. Now here's to hoping we get a full party before running into Bahamut!
Traditionally the Chicken Knife is considered better, because more classes can wield it, Freelancer can wield either one, and it caps at overall better damage. If I recall right Brave Blade is outright outclassed by Excalibur, in addition to its other relative flaws.
But given you don't run much and apparently there's the ability to recap the Braveblade in this version (that's an interesting change), it might be worth just going for it.
Anyway, I know there are games, later in history, which would take that concept of enemies roaming the overworld and encounters only triggering when you touch them, and make them their entire 'random' encounter system. And I think that's the way to go.
Having reloaded to pick each item once and look at their stats, it looks like the Brave Blade is still by far in the lead, rocking an impressive +137 Attack! By comparison, the Chicken Knife has a lowly +27. It seems like an easy pick, but if people have suggestions otherwise, I'm listening.
Good news! The game was patched August last year to change how the Brave Blade works - it now regains 1 point of its original attack power every time you complete 'a set number of encounters' without running again. So just take the Brave Blade and try not to run from any more fights.
Wait, really? Holy crap, the Brave Blade is so good then! I already preferred it because I like using it with Goblin Punch, but that makes it even better.
The Brave Blade is a big sword (not a regular sword), which restricts who can actually use it, but it's really good with both Two-Handed and Dual Wield. Two-Handed because it actually works, but the Dual Wield synergy is because of a quirk of how Goblin Punch works. Goblin Punch's power is equal to your weapon's power, but if you have two weapons, it adds them together for a single super-strong attack that penetrates defences really well.
Even if you run a whole lot and the Brave Blade is at minimum power, Goblin Punch uses its baseline attack value, just like it does for Excalipoor. As a Freelancer who's mastered Ninja, you can dual wield the Brave Blade and Excalipoor to make Goblin Punch a 250-power attack, which is immense.
Meanwhile, the Chicken Knife makes you try to flee 25% of the time you use it for a regular attack. It's very annoying.
The Pyramid of Moore is the bane of my existence, and I'm going to make it your problem. It's time for a dungeon deep dive.
Okay, 'bane of my existence' may be a little strong. It's - it's not difficult, not really. It rarely threatens me with a TPK, or indeed with KO'd characters. It's just - it's exhausting.
You know, it's strangely gratifying to know it wasn't just me going "wow I absolutely hate this dungeon" on my playthrough? I don't know, just all the factors of a three man party and a very... experimental dungeon, mechanically, compared to to others so far makes it into a real slog.
Anyway, I know there are games, later in history, which would take that concept of enemies roaming the overworld and encounters only triggering when you touch them, and make them their entire 'random' encounter system. And I think that's the way to go. You either do this or normal encounter, not both of them in the same dungeon. And I think this might actually be a better design? Probably more hardware intensive. The series will stick to random encounters going forward for a while, though, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, as time goes on a lot of RPGs have moved on somewhat from ye ol random encounters into things you can avoid somehow. Heck, it was a thought even back in the SNES days with a few games like Earthbound which was iirc entirely overworld encounters, and if you were strong enough compared to them you would instakill the enemy on contact to not have to deal with trash mobs.
Though personally, one system I kinda liked when I played it was Wild Arms 3, which had an entire mechanic where you had a second or two to react to upcoming encounters by negating them if you wanted with a push of a button, though that would drain a replenishable resource you had. Don't recall all the details since it's been... well over a decade since I played, and not particularly relevant to Final Fantasy, but just something that comes to mind.
Return is a spell I haven't talked about much because I keep forgetting it exists. What it does is offer you a free redo on the battle. It literally resets an encounter to the state it was when you entered it. In this case, I'm using it so that Thief Bartz can reroll Steal attempts indefinitely; you see, Sekhmet drops Thief's Gloves, but as a rare drop - which means most of the time, when you steal from it, you will just get its common drop, a Hi-Potion. So the tactic is to Steal and spam Return until you get the item, then Flee, and do it again for as many times as you care to have Thief's Gloves.
…
That's the theory, anyway. At this point I am already tired of the Pyramid, and after five attempts resulting only in Hi-Potions, I decide I'm done with this and I only need one set of Thief's Gloves anyway, so I fucking murder this guy.
Return is great, when you remember it exists. Partly for things like this where you can use it to vastly speed up stealing rare equipment, but also for if a boss battle or something just goes sideways even though you're pretty sure your current setup can handle it.
And yes, frankly you shouldn't really need more than one set of Thief's Gloves. It's there if you want it... but more an additional quality of life thing. I mean if you're resetting on a boss for stealing with Return anyways, it's not like you need multiple party members with an increased chance - you've got infinite chances in the first place, and probably want a party member or two not wasting slots on Steal/Mug.
Incidentally, one of the game's only Ribbons is found on this shifting floor room, and a Protect Ring in one of the other chests, which I'm really glad I didn't miss.
No boss fight, which is a real surprise, but not an unwelcome one.
Or rather… the boss fight isn't included in the Pyramid itself. It is triggered by seizing the tablet, but it will go elsewhere. To whit, picking up the tablet causes a platform to rise, depositing us at the top of the Pyramid, outside.
Personally, I suspect the devs just had the tiniest bit of mercy here and realized "boy sending the player against an actual serious boss fight (Gargoyles certainly didn't count they're more of a puzzle boss) after this slog of a dungeon might be a bit much."
I mean... the Pixel Remasters are already 30+ years later remake/patches that change a lot of small things from both their original releases and even some of the remakes, often for quality of life purposes. No reason they can't add a bit more QoL with a few more patches.
Yeah it's basically a choice between power and convenience here. The chicken knife is stronger, but the brave blade doesn't require you to jump through a bunch of annoying hoops to use it. If you want to spend a couple hours running from every fight you get in order to power up the knife that's good, but there isn't anything wrong with skipping that shit and just using the brave blade.
Yeah, okay, I reloaded an earlier save just to check what the Brave Blade looked like before running away from half the fight in the Pyramid, and the answer is that it had its full +150 value, losing 13 whole points from the Pyramid alone, which probably means it's going to regain that value over time as I resume normal gameplay instead of escaping all the time. That's insanely good, goddamn.
-Multiple stats that either don't work or work completely wrong, such as the Magic Evasion stat actually working as both types of evasion, so regular Evasion does nothing. Doubly hilarious because there's only like 2 or 3 pieces of equipment in the game that actually give Magic Evasion.
-Vanish shenanigans: vanish is a positive status effect that makes someone dodge all physical attacks, but also means you'll always get hit by magic. This had a side effect of being able to cast Vanish on enemies, and then cast spells that wouldn't usually work on them... such as Banish, instantly killing most enemies and bosses.
-Relm. Just Relm. I'm sure someone will elaborate when we get there.
There's totally more, but I'm just bringing those up because I know they've been fixed by the time of the GBA ports, let alone the Pixel Remasters, so won't really be relevant.
