- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
....wow....
That is... yeah, not gonna lie, that's horrifying.
Always check if the boss has Reflect status before you break out the big spells, people!
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
That is... yeah, not gonna lie, that's horrifying.
Always check if the boss has Reflect status before you break out the big spells, people!
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
He doesn't though he just casts them back himself but harder.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
We're talking about Gogo mimicking your attacks, not Reflect. He just went
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpi8q6Dmv1A&t=415
(Also, Meteor doesn't give a [quack] about Reflect, it bypasses it, so... :_D )
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I've only seen a Let's Play of Xenogears, but... yeah, the moment I saw the Red Gear, I didn't need to click the video.
My sincere condolences.
Final Fantasy V, Part 25
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Good news, everyone: I have a new computer!
It was a kindly gift by someone who upgraded and didn't need their old (but still high-end and well-performing) desktop anymore, which led to a whole set of new adventures (read: hair-pullingly frustrating obstacles) with the postal services. So that was fun. But now, instead of a laptop, I am writing you from a fancy keyboard that goes click-clack on a monitor larger than is strictly healthy next to a tower that is barely even making a sound.
Now, do you need all these things to run (*checks notes*) the Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster, a game that weighs less than 1 GB? Well, you don't need it, but it feels like the height of luxury, and really isn't that what matters?
And I'm gonna need it because today's update has not been the funnest time for me.
Welcome to Phoenix Tower.
For those of you following at home, I want to stress that Phoenix Tower is optional. What you get out of it is a story beat, a unique summon, and some incidental rewards along the way (although some of those rewards are… you'll see). It does not contain any of the tablets or any mandatory progression upgrade.
This is important because it is also one of the most tedious FF areas I have ever played through.
Phoenix Tower is composed of the following two identical floors alternating endlessly:
They're both identical, but one has two vine spots. When you interact with one of the vine spots, it either opens to reveal the stairs to the next floor, or it triggers a fight with a boss from earlier in the game, which upon defeats opens to reveal the stairs. Said bosses are the following:
This version of the Soul Cannon lacks the 'power up' function of the previous incarnation and just fires the Wave Cannon whenever it feels like it.
Now, that might not sound too bad. Those are some old bosses, but we know how to fight them, right?
There are 30 floors in Phoenix Tower, about fifteen of which contain the vine coin toss, meaning you will fight these guys two, three, four times each for some.
Phoenix Tower is just an endless spiraling walking pattern running from random encounter to old boss over and over again for two hours.
There's not much else to say. It's just floor after floor of this. I think this might also be annoyingly difficult, if I hadn't previously reached the (mostly) final form of my character builds, meaning I rock up to each fight with two Freelancers, a Mime and a Dualcast-equipped Summoner, trivializing every fight. Bartz is dual-wielding Excalibur and the Defender (both of which can be enchanted) but I don't really bother with Spellblade because Rapid Fire on its own already hits for probably about 6k damage, while Lenna delivering a single Two-Handed Brave Blade hit deals 5k+ damage, annihilating any boss within two turns at most, more if I actually bother to have Krile use Holy and Faris summon Syldra.
So the whole thing is actually trivially easy, which makes it more boring. On the one hand it's my fault for building so hard before the absolute endgame, on the other hand I can't imagine dealing through thirty floor of this repetitive bullshit if it was actually difficult and resource-consuming? Like I can take tough gauntlets when I'm not fighting the same boss five times in a row.
Okay, no, I lie, there is one other interesting feature in Phoenix Tower, and it's going to break the game in half.
It's those guys:
At five intervals in the tower's 30 floors, there are two pots, one on each side of the room. Interacting with one of the pots reveals a large gil reward; interacting with the other reveals this guy. This "Magic Pot" is basically invincible, as it has high HP and Defense and every turn it casts Heal and heals itself to full HP. There is, however, one way you can make it go away: by doing what it's asking and giving it an Elixir (ie, use the Item command and use an Elixir on it).
Now, "one of the two pots gives you a gil reward, but the other costs you a highly valuable Elixir that is far more valuable than this gil reward, so be careful" would be an alright gamble/trap (at least in the original context where you can only reload to before tackling the tower, instead of at the entrance to the room), if it weren't for one thing.
Here is what happens when you give the Magic Pot its Elixir:
That is 100 ABP for one Elixir. Of which I have 25, meaning I can easily afford it all of five times this encounter occurs. Oh, yeah, in the screen above you might notice that all my characters are in new jobs?
Yeah, as soon as I realized what was happening here, I just went… Like… It's free Job Points?
I can literally swap everyone to jobs I want them to master and get 90% of the way there in this tower alone with zero grinding.
Maybe, if I had known this was coming way ahead of time, I would have avoided grinding entirely in the game, and this is the point where I would only finally master my final jobs and complete my planned Freelancer/Mime builds. On the other hand, I'm not going to refuse a cool 500 ABP for endgame jobs?
I don't think whatever is left of the difficulty curve will recover from this.
Here's the plan: Bartz and Krile get Monk for the HP bonus. Faris finishes Summoner, and then gets started on Monk as well, although I don't know if she'll get to finish it. Lenna, who already has Monk and Thief mastered (and therefore the highest physical stat bonuses in the game), is going to instead level… Fuck it, Ranger, let's give her Rapid Fire. I don't think there's any way for her to quite catch up to Spellblade+Dual-Wielding+Rapid Fire, but Two-Handed+Rapid Fire with the maxed out Brave Blade should still be pretty fucking strong.
The random encounters in the dungeon are mostly made up of these female humanoid sprites, of which the Cherie looks… kinda like Aerith, doesn't she? Same hairdo, same color of dress, same flower deal… Anyway, as you can see, forgetting to put everyone back to Freelancer after each Magic Pot encounter has deadly results; this is a TPK.
As of the final Magic Pot, Bartz is 205 ABP from mastering Monk, Krile 42 ABP away, Faris a hefty 550 ABP away, and Lenna is 105 ABP away from Ranger mastery.
And finally, finally we reach the final floor, and our reward.
Hiryu, the Wind Drake who sacrificed himself to save Lenna from Melusine's possession, is here. How, I'm not clear; he seemed to have vanished when he rushed at Melusine. As the group approaches him, Hiryu lets out a cry, and flies over to the edge of the tower, from which he seems to… drop and catch on fire?
Krile says that Hiryu knew he didn't have much longer to live, and came to this tower to use the last of his strength to help Lenna - and what plays next is a flashback I did not expect.
This is a younger Lenna, but she can't be that much younger. Her sprite is still the same size as her normal one, rather than Krile's. King Tycoon sorrowfully explains that the doctors did everything they could, but the only thing that could cure Lenna's mother's sickness is the tongue of a Wind Drake - and, as we know, there is only one Wind Drake left in Lenna's world. For King Tycoon, the matter is not worth considering. For Lenna, who hears this and sees it as a choice between her mother's life and that of her dad's pet dragon, the choice is immediate.
That is not a backstory twist I was expecting from Lenna Charlotte Tycoon, Friend to All Living Things, who literally poisoned herself nearly to death twice rather than let a Wind Drake die, and it definitely complicates her backstory and personality in kind of a fascinating way.
Lenna runs outside, knifer in hand, and approaches the sleeping drake. The old nurse who took care of her and Sarisa in previous flashbacks runs afters her, and tells her that if she'll do this, she will kill the last of the wind drake.
That is not a dialogue option I was expecting.
Now, that's not actually going to change anything, as we already know Lenna's mother dies* and Hiryu leaves, and I think the game wants me to say "no?" But I'm trying to put myself in the head of a fourteen-year old whose mother is dying and who could be solved by killing something that isn't my mom and doesn't even look human, and I think I wanna see what choosing "Yes" leads to.
*Side note but man how many characters in these games actually have living moms, jesus? Even those who are full on orphans somehow always have the moms die before the dads like with Cecil. Jesus, what happened to the writers' parents?
It leads to King Tycoon emerging out of the room and slapping Lenna so hard she moves several tiles to the left and is knocked over to the ground. Which, wow, that's impressively brutal. I mean, he was keeping her from committing a murder that would deal a terrible stain on their family for the rest of her life but, still. And there is no real resolution to this - Lenna stands up, sobs calling for her mother, and then we are back in the present.
…
I don't know what to make of this scene.
As a Summon, Phoenix provides a full life Raise to one character before blasting the enemy screen with damage, which sounds incredibly useful if I can remember to use it. Gorgeous animation, too.
On the one hand as an expansion on Lenna's backstory this is great. It's… It adds the kind of backstory nuance and edge that FFIV never really had (at least the original script, the later version added backstory context around Golbez and stuff I guess), where a character is made more complicated by revealing a moment in their past where they nearly did something awful, which still informs who they are.
Like, why is Lenna someone who is ready to risk her life to save non-human others multiple times? Well it turns out it's not because she's just that pure of heart. It's because at one point, she nearly killed for her own, selfish desire - her love for her mother, in spite of her mother and other loved ones' wishes, had her almost commit murder just so said mother wouldn't leave her. It was a moment of utter selfishness, and she was only kept from it by others. Every time she risks her life for someone else, she's simultaneously atoning for that moment of selfishness, and making sure her mother's own refusal not to take another life to save her own wasn't for nothing. It's powerful.
But also I have no idea what this game is doing with the death of monster friends.
Previously there was this thing where I kept complaining about the game murdering cool animal buddies but now it's taken on a… different track? And the problem I have here is that I have no idea what summons are. When Syldra's spirit appears to Faris and becomes a Summon, is Syldra dead? Is her spirit only with Faris in a temporary capacity, like Galuf lending a last moment's help to the protagonists, or Doga and Unei in FF3? Or is this something permanent, a transition to a different but lasting stage of being? When Hiryu becomes a phoenix, is that him dying and being reborn, as in turning into an actual, fully functional new life as a Phoenix who lends us his power, or is this a more ephemeral existence, a kind of potent ghost?
To cut straight to the chase, are these scenes happy or sad? I don't know, and I'm not sure the characters do either; each time they look kind of melancholy, neither happy to find that the lost friend was alive after all, nor sad at their final passing.
I'm probably overthinking this, but it bugs me. I just don't really know how I'm supposed to feel, and that just leaves me feeling ambivalent. The emotional catharsis is missing.
Which may have something to do with me getting kinda tired.
At this point, my playthrough of FFV is several hours longer than FFIV, still not done, and knee-deep in a kind of exhausting endgame cleanup through multiple long-ass dungeons. The appeal of the combinatorial job system has kinda floundered first on the ranks of every last job level taking several hundred ABPs to go through and second on the fact that the game still gives you enough stuff that I can just kinda homogenize everyone with the base base stats regardless. Due to my schedule stretching out because of other commitments, I've been on this one game for over four months, and while it's good, it's not quite good enough to justify spending half a year of my life on. I am about ready to be done.
But, this update draft is sitting at exactly 25 pictures right now, which means I can pause this here and go through another dungeon and we'll see how I feel afterwards.
Alright, sub time again, let's dive under the waves and see what else we got…
This cave is labeled only as "???" even after finding it, and it contains a single room, in which we find one man, and, well…
Hah! It's a stat room. That's neat, I like this. You can get an idea of the state of my progress here. Assuming I missed some chests but not many, we still have about a quarter to a fifth of the game's loot to discover, which probably means some long-ass dungeons ahead. I have also (obviously) mastered every job, and most job abilities overall, which is interesting considering there are many jobs I have barely even touched.
Anyway, not much else to do there, so let's head to… The Cave!
Yeah, it's just called "Cave." It is the most disappointingly titled dungeon in the series so far, especially considering it is home to a Tablet.
Well, no, not really. The cave itself is just a short tunnel. It leads to a more important place, however.
I will spare you the obligatory Gargoyles fight before getting entrance, except to note that, as sacred guardians of the tablets, the Gargoyles are not demonic and in fact absorb Holy damage, which makes Rapid Firing with Excalibur extremely funny and counter-productive.
Istory Falls… is kind of annoying.
For the most part, Istory Falls is just this, a series of raised platform over water. There is a small gimmick in that these waterfalls you can see dripping directly down the stone will take our characters down a level forcibly (and prevent ascending to a higher level), which serves both to block some paths and to allow us access to alternate routes. Not much else to note until the end of the dungeon, except for two neat random encounters:
This is a recurring encounter with a humanoid being called Alchemya and a toad. The dialogue which plays out hints at using a Maiden's Kiss (the item which cures the Toad status on PCs) on said toad for some kind of effect, so that's what I do, and…
…it turns into a Red Dragon.
This is funny but a Red Dragon at this level is simply not enough to threaten us so it's not "lmao sucker get dunked on" levels funny, it's just a "huh, amusing!" and then I turn both opponents to minced meat in a flurry of blades.
(Having checked the wiki, what's going on is apparently that the Alchymia casts Ribbit on the toad, turning it into its dragon form, and that's supposed to be the challenge of the encounter. Oops.)
Using Maiden's Kiss on various toads in these encounters result in other giant lizards like a hydra but honestly there doesn't seem to be a particular point to it.
The other notable random encounter is much more interesting to me:
Tonberry!!!
Tonberries are such a classic Final Fantasy monster, they're almost a mascot in their own right. Who doesn't love these cute, round little critters, wobbling over to you with their lantern and their big knife and murdering your entire party?
I am always interested by 'early design experiments' and what I find interesting here is that while they mostly got Tonberry's design on the first try, this one is a little leaner, sharper than I'm used to. Compare it to this one from the FFVIIRemake, one of the most recent games to come out:
[Insert picture]
Note how the head has grown much larger while the sleeves have grown puffier with smaller hands, making the creature overall look more cute and cuddly (despite being just as murderous). This version of Tonberry doesn't seem like it was intended to come across as harmless yet, the way later variations do.
So, Tonberry. Mechanically, Tonberry is a massive wall (40k HP) who slowly advances towards the party every turn. If you fail to kill it before it reaches you, it attacks several party members for massive damage.
RIP Bartz.
Once it has done so, however, Tonberry proceeds to walk back to its original starting point instead of continuing to attack, so overall its threat is minimal. Just stack damage and prepare some healing and you're set.
Going further into the caverns, we find a save room surrounded by sharp crystals, and going further down…
A pitfall trap.
I will make a long story short. The room above has chests and stuff, and is full of unmarked holes that you have to remember the location of, otherwise you are dropped down into the room below, which also has chests but seems otherwise mostly empty. This is a massive waste of time constantly going up and down and trying not to run into the same pitfall I just ran into a second ago, which keeps happening.
I am, at that point, streaming my playthrough to help with the boredom of having been in this dungeon for a whole hour and having nowhere to go, and I can guarantee you my viewers find this extremely funny. I do not.
Istory Fall is full of goodies I'm not sure I'll actually use. Protect Rings (but I have Ribbons!). Reflect Rings (theoretically useful but it would fuck with my healing). The Rune Blade and Titan's Axe (but I have legendary weapons that are stronger…) The Aegis Shield (I might find use for this yet, though).
I double back and teleport out of the dungeon like twice thinking I have missed a path forward, subjecting myself to more and more of the same dungeon for no particular purpose, before @Emy finally points out what I'm missing:
The 'trap' floor you drop down to has several chests protected by crystals which jut out of the ground if you approach them, hurting the party. You need to use skull switches to turn them off. However, this particular chest has the crystals already out. Using the skull switches allows you access to the chest, sure, but also…
The crystals leave holes behind. You are supposed to jump into these holes, which is what I initially missed.
And there we go. The tablet room. This is the fourth tablet, so evidently I did the last two dungeons out of order, but no matter. Grabbing the tablet does nothing in and of itself, but as soon as we attempt to leave the room by the stairs…
One of the three monsters Exdeath sent to stop us gathering the tablets.
Also this is our first explicit sign that Exdeath intends to create a world of monsters, rather than destroying everything just because. It makes sense, but also it could have gone either way given his wacky over-the-top villain persona. It doesn't look like we'll be given much indication that there is a sympathetic motive in the monsters wanting a world for themselves, either; they're just evil and want to take over reality. Fair enough.
Unfortunately, this guy chose the wrong stop to ambush us.
Leviathan emerges from behind the waterfall and promptly eats the guy.
"Monster general shows up to gloat at us and tries to kill us, Leviathan does a big stretch and casually paws him into oblivion" is just such a funny twist on this scenario, I love it. Dude really thought he had a moment there, and in the end we'll never know either his name or his combat sprite! Get punked!
It's not a "mindless monster eats first thing in sight," either. Leviathan is an enemy of the Void, and, like the other summons, he is here to test us.
The emphasis on sin/purity is kind of fascinating, casting Leviathan as a punitive/redemptive figure, rather than one of raw power.
I'm going to keep this short, because if you've been following my adventures through the Istory Falls, the outcome won't surprise you: We outmatch Leviathan by an order of magnitude. Initially my plan is to have Bartz do Spellblade (Thundaga) into Rapid Fire, but this doesn't pan out because Leviathan actually does hit like a truck and manages to KO Bartz before he can deliver his followup attack. That doesn't matter; between Golem to shore up defenses, dualcast Bahamut, Lenna's two-handed Brave Blade attacks, Leviathan collapses before I have managed to get Bartz up again and fully buffed.
So I may have broken the game.
(Reloading as a quick experiment to check what happens when Bartz does get to use Spellblade into Rapid Fire, the answer is 36k total damage in a single attack.)
Leviathan is defeated, his Summon acquired, and we teleport out of the Falls and onto our next objective.
On the one hand, I'm worried I might have taken the fun out of it by making every boss fight going forward trivial.
On the other hand, the thought of going through Phoenix Tower and Istory Falls, which already took hours and was repetitive as hell, with every fight being actually difficult and resource-draining, makes me want to die a little inside.
Okay.
By my count, there is one dungeon left: The Great Sea Rift, where I will find the third tablet and, I assume, the Time Magic Meteor, which the book promised me but which I haven't seen yet. Once that's done, unless I'm mistaken, we are straight off to the Interdimensional Rift (after possibly chatting with some NPCs to see if we missed anything before heading for the endgame) and then it's the finale.
We're getting close. See you next time.
It was a kindly gift by someone who upgraded and didn't need their old (but still high-end and well-performing) desktop anymore, which led to a whole set of new adventures (read: hair-pullingly frustrating obstacles) with the postal services. So that was fun. But now, instead of a laptop, I am writing you from a fancy keyboard that goes click-clack on a monitor larger than is strictly healthy next to a tower that is barely even making a sound.
Now, do you need all these things to run (*checks notes*) the Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster, a game that weighs less than 1 GB? Well, you don't need it, but it feels like the height of luxury, and really isn't that what matters?
And I'm gonna need it because today's update has not been the funnest time for me.
Welcome to Phoenix Tower.
For those of you following at home, I want to stress that Phoenix Tower is optional. What you get out of it is a story beat, a unique summon, and some incidental rewards along the way (although some of those rewards are… you'll see). It does not contain any of the tablets or any mandatory progression upgrade.
This is important because it is also one of the most tedious FF areas I have ever played through.
Phoenix Tower is composed of the following two identical floors alternating endlessly:
They're both identical, but one has two vine spots. When you interact with one of the vine spots, it either opens to reveal the stairs to the next floor, or it triggers a fight with a boss from earlier in the game, which upon defeats opens to reveal the stairs. Said bosses are the following:
This version of the Soul Cannon lacks the 'power up' function of the previous incarnation and just fires the Wave Cannon whenever it feels like it.
Now, that might not sound too bad. Those are some old bosses, but we know how to fight them, right?
There are 30 floors in Phoenix Tower, about fifteen of which contain the vine coin toss, meaning you will fight these guys two, three, four times each for some.
Phoenix Tower is just an endless spiraling walking pattern running from random encounter to old boss over and over again for two hours.
There's not much else to say. It's just floor after floor of this. I think this might also be annoyingly difficult, if I hadn't previously reached the (mostly) final form of my character builds, meaning I rock up to each fight with two Freelancers, a Mime and a Dualcast-equipped Summoner, trivializing every fight. Bartz is dual-wielding Excalibur and the Defender (both of which can be enchanted) but I don't really bother with Spellblade because Rapid Fire on its own already hits for probably about 6k damage, while Lenna delivering a single Two-Handed Brave Blade hit deals 5k+ damage, annihilating any boss within two turns at most, more if I actually bother to have Krile use Holy and Faris summon Syldra.
So the whole thing is actually trivially easy, which makes it more boring. On the one hand it's my fault for building so hard before the absolute endgame, on the other hand I can't imagine dealing through thirty floor of this repetitive bullshit if it was actually difficult and resource-consuming? Like I can take tough gauntlets when I'm not fighting the same boss five times in a row.
Okay, no, I lie, there is one other interesting feature in Phoenix Tower, and it's going to break the game in half.
It's those guys:
At five intervals in the tower's 30 floors, there are two pots, one on each side of the room. Interacting with one of the pots reveals a large gil reward; interacting with the other reveals this guy. This "Magic Pot" is basically invincible, as it has high HP and Defense and every turn it casts Heal and heals itself to full HP. There is, however, one way you can make it go away: by doing what it's asking and giving it an Elixir (ie, use the Item command and use an Elixir on it).
Now, "one of the two pots gives you a gil reward, but the other costs you a highly valuable Elixir that is far more valuable than this gil reward, so be careful" would be an alright gamble/trap (at least in the original context where you can only reload to before tackling the tower, instead of at the entrance to the room), if it weren't for one thing.
Here is what happens when you give the Magic Pot its Elixir:
That is 100 ABP for one Elixir. Of which I have 25, meaning I can easily afford it all of five times this encounter occurs. Oh, yeah, in the screen above you might notice that all my characters are in new jobs?
Yeah, as soon as I realized what was happening here, I just went… Like… It's free Job Points?
I can literally swap everyone to jobs I want them to master and get 90% of the way there in this tower alone with zero grinding.
Maybe, if I had known this was coming way ahead of time, I would have avoided grinding entirely in the game, and this is the point where I would only finally master my final jobs and complete my planned Freelancer/Mime builds. On the other hand, I'm not going to refuse a cool 500 ABP for endgame jobs?
I don't think whatever is left of the difficulty curve will recover from this.
Here's the plan: Bartz and Krile get Monk for the HP bonus. Faris finishes Summoner, and then gets started on Monk as well, although I don't know if she'll get to finish it. Lenna, who already has Monk and Thief mastered (and therefore the highest physical stat bonuses in the game), is going to instead level… Fuck it, Ranger, let's give her Rapid Fire. I don't think there's any way for her to quite catch up to Spellblade+Dual-Wielding+Rapid Fire, but Two-Handed+Rapid Fire with the maxed out Brave Blade should still be pretty fucking strong.
The random encounters in the dungeon are mostly made up of these female humanoid sprites, of which the Cherie looks… kinda like Aerith, doesn't she? Same hairdo, same color of dress, same flower deal… Anyway, as you can see, forgetting to put everyone back to Freelancer after each Magic Pot encounter has deadly results; this is a TPK.
As of the final Magic Pot, Bartz is 205 ABP from mastering Monk, Krile 42 ABP away, Faris a hefty 550 ABP away, and Lenna is 105 ABP away from Ranger mastery.
And finally, finally we reach the final floor, and our reward.
Hiryu, the Wind Drake who sacrificed himself to save Lenna from Melusine's possession, is here. How, I'm not clear; he seemed to have vanished when he rushed at Melusine. As the group approaches him, Hiryu lets out a cry, and flies over to the edge of the tower, from which he seems to… drop and catch on fire?
Krile says that Hiryu knew he didn't have much longer to live, and came to this tower to use the last of his strength to help Lenna - and what plays next is a flashback I did not expect.
This is a younger Lenna, but she can't be that much younger. Her sprite is still the same size as her normal one, rather than Krile's. King Tycoon sorrowfully explains that the doctors did everything they could, but the only thing that could cure Lenna's mother's sickness is the tongue of a Wind Drake - and, as we know, there is only one Wind Drake left in Lenna's world. For King Tycoon, the matter is not worth considering. For Lenna, who hears this and sees it as a choice between her mother's life and that of her dad's pet dragon, the choice is immediate.
That is not a backstory twist I was expecting from Lenna Charlotte Tycoon, Friend to All Living Things, who literally poisoned herself nearly to death twice rather than let a Wind Drake die, and it definitely complicates her backstory and personality in kind of a fascinating way.
Lenna runs outside, knifer in hand, and approaches the sleeping drake. The old nurse who took care of her and Sarisa in previous flashbacks runs afters her, and tells her that if she'll do this, she will kill the last of the wind drake.
That is not a dialogue option I was expecting.
Now, that's not actually going to change anything, as we already know Lenna's mother dies* and Hiryu leaves, and I think the game wants me to say "no?" But I'm trying to put myself in the head of a fourteen-year old whose mother is dying and who could be solved by killing something that isn't my mom and doesn't even look human, and I think I wanna see what choosing "Yes" leads to.
*Side note but man how many characters in these games actually have living moms, jesus? Even those who are full on orphans somehow always have the moms die before the dads like with Cecil. Jesus, what happened to the writers' parents?
It leads to King Tycoon emerging out of the room and slapping Lenna so hard she moves several tiles to the left and is knocked over to the ground. Which, wow, that's impressively brutal. I mean, he was keeping her from committing a murder that would deal a terrible stain on their family for the rest of her life but, still. And there is no real resolution to this - Lenna stands up, sobs calling for her mother, and then we are back in the present.
…
I don't know what to make of this scene.
As a Summon, Phoenix provides a full life Raise to one character before blasting the enemy screen with damage, which sounds incredibly useful if I can remember to use it. Gorgeous animation, too.
On the one hand as an expansion on Lenna's backstory this is great. It's… It adds the kind of backstory nuance and edge that FFIV never really had (at least the original script, the later version added backstory context around Golbez and stuff I guess), where a character is made more complicated by revealing a moment in their past where they nearly did something awful, which still informs who they are.
Like, why is Lenna someone who is ready to risk her life to save non-human others multiple times? Well it turns out it's not because she's just that pure of heart. It's because at one point, she nearly killed for her own, selfish desire - her love for her mother, in spite of her mother and other loved ones' wishes, had her almost commit murder just so said mother wouldn't leave her. It was a moment of utter selfishness, and she was only kept from it by others. Every time she risks her life for someone else, she's simultaneously atoning for that moment of selfishness, and making sure her mother's own refusal not to take another life to save her own wasn't for nothing. It's powerful.
But also I have no idea what this game is doing with the death of monster friends.
Previously there was this thing where I kept complaining about the game murdering cool animal buddies but now it's taken on a… different track? And the problem I have here is that I have no idea what summons are. When Syldra's spirit appears to Faris and becomes a Summon, is Syldra dead? Is her spirit only with Faris in a temporary capacity, like Galuf lending a last moment's help to the protagonists, or Doga and Unei in FF3? Or is this something permanent, a transition to a different but lasting stage of being? When Hiryu becomes a phoenix, is that him dying and being reborn, as in turning into an actual, fully functional new life as a Phoenix who lends us his power, or is this a more ephemeral existence, a kind of potent ghost?
To cut straight to the chase, are these scenes happy or sad? I don't know, and I'm not sure the characters do either; each time they look kind of melancholy, neither happy to find that the lost friend was alive after all, nor sad at their final passing.
I'm probably overthinking this, but it bugs me. I just don't really know how I'm supposed to feel, and that just leaves me feeling ambivalent. The emotional catharsis is missing.
Which may have something to do with me getting kinda tired.
At this point, my playthrough of FFV is several hours longer than FFIV, still not done, and knee-deep in a kind of exhausting endgame cleanup through multiple long-ass dungeons. The appeal of the combinatorial job system has kinda floundered first on the ranks of every last job level taking several hundred ABPs to go through and second on the fact that the game still gives you enough stuff that I can just kinda homogenize everyone with the base base stats regardless. Due to my schedule stretching out because of other commitments, I've been on this one game for over four months, and while it's good, it's not quite good enough to justify spending half a year of my life on. I am about ready to be done.
But, this update draft is sitting at exactly 25 pictures right now, which means I can pause this here and go through another dungeon and we'll see how I feel afterwards.
Alright, sub time again, let's dive under the waves and see what else we got…
This cave is labeled only as "???" even after finding it, and it contains a single room, in which we find one man, and, well…
Hah! It's a stat room. That's neat, I like this. You can get an idea of the state of my progress here. Assuming I missed some chests but not many, we still have about a quarter to a fifth of the game's loot to discover, which probably means some long-ass dungeons ahead. I have also (obviously) mastered every job, and most job abilities overall, which is interesting considering there are many jobs I have barely even touched.
Anyway, not much else to do there, so let's head to… The Cave!
Yeah, it's just called "Cave." It is the most disappointingly titled dungeon in the series so far, especially considering it is home to a Tablet.
Well, no, not really. The cave itself is just a short tunnel. It leads to a more important place, however.
I will spare you the obligatory Gargoyles fight before getting entrance, except to note that, as sacred guardians of the tablets, the Gargoyles are not demonic and in fact absorb Holy damage, which makes Rapid Firing with Excalibur extremely funny and counter-productive.
Istory Falls… is kind of annoying.
For the most part, Istory Falls is just this, a series of raised platform over water. There is a small gimmick in that these waterfalls you can see dripping directly down the stone will take our characters down a level forcibly (and prevent ascending to a higher level), which serves both to block some paths and to allow us access to alternate routes. Not much else to note until the end of the dungeon, except for two neat random encounters:
This is a recurring encounter with a humanoid being called Alchemya and a toad. The dialogue which plays out hints at using a Maiden's Kiss (the item which cures the Toad status on PCs) on said toad for some kind of effect, so that's what I do, and…
…it turns into a Red Dragon.
This is funny but a Red Dragon at this level is simply not enough to threaten us so it's not "lmao sucker get dunked on" levels funny, it's just a "huh, amusing!" and then I turn both opponents to minced meat in a flurry of blades.
(Having checked the wiki, what's going on is apparently that the Alchymia casts Ribbit on the toad, turning it into its dragon form, and that's supposed to be the challenge of the encounter. Oops.)
Using Maiden's Kiss on various toads in these encounters result in other giant lizards like a hydra but honestly there doesn't seem to be a particular point to it.
The other notable random encounter is much more interesting to me:
Tonberry!!!
Tonberries are such a classic Final Fantasy monster, they're almost a mascot in their own right. Who doesn't love these cute, round little critters, wobbling over to you with their lantern and their big knife and murdering your entire party?
I am always interested by 'early design experiments' and what I find interesting here is that while they mostly got Tonberry's design on the first try, this one is a little leaner, sharper than I'm used to. Compare it to this one from the FFVIIRemake, one of the most recent games to come out:
[Insert picture]Note how the head has grown much larger while the sleeves have grown puffier with smaller hands, making the creature overall look more cute and cuddly (despite being just as murderous). This version of Tonberry doesn't seem like it was intended to come across as harmless yet, the way later variations do.
So, Tonberry. Mechanically, Tonberry is a massive wall (40k HP) who slowly advances towards the party every turn. If you fail to kill it before it reaches you, it attacks several party members for massive damage.
RIP Bartz.
Once it has done so, however, Tonberry proceeds to walk back to its original starting point instead of continuing to attack, so overall its threat is minimal. Just stack damage and prepare some healing and you're set.
Going further into the caverns, we find a save room surrounded by sharp crystals, and going further down…
A pitfall trap.
I will make a long story short. The room above has chests and stuff, and is full of unmarked holes that you have to remember the location of, otherwise you are dropped down into the room below, which also has chests but seems otherwise mostly empty. This is a massive waste of time constantly going up and down and trying not to run into the same pitfall I just ran into a second ago, which keeps happening.
I am, at that point, streaming my playthrough to help with the boredom of having been in this dungeon for a whole hour and having nowhere to go, and I can guarantee you my viewers find this extremely funny. I do not.
Istory Fall is full of goodies I'm not sure I'll actually use. Protect Rings (but I have Ribbons!). Reflect Rings (theoretically useful but it would fuck with my healing). The Rune Blade and Titan's Axe (but I have legendary weapons that are stronger…) The Aegis Shield (I might find use for this yet, though).
I double back and teleport out of the dungeon like twice thinking I have missed a path forward, subjecting myself to more and more of the same dungeon for no particular purpose, before @Emy finally points out what I'm missing:
The 'trap' floor you drop down to has several chests protected by crystals which jut out of the ground if you approach them, hurting the party. You need to use skull switches to turn them off. However, this particular chest has the crystals already out. Using the skull switches allows you access to the chest, sure, but also…
The crystals leave holes behind. You are supposed to jump into these holes, which is what I initially missed.
And there we go. The tablet room. This is the fourth tablet, so evidently I did the last two dungeons out of order, but no matter. Grabbing the tablet does nothing in and of itself, but as soon as we attempt to leave the room by the stairs…
One of the three monsters Exdeath sent to stop us gathering the tablets.
Also this is our first explicit sign that Exdeath intends to create a world of monsters, rather than destroying everything just because. It makes sense, but also it could have gone either way given his wacky over-the-top villain persona. It doesn't look like we'll be given much indication that there is a sympathetic motive in the monsters wanting a world for themselves, either; they're just evil and want to take over reality. Fair enough.
Unfortunately, this guy chose the wrong stop to ambush us.
Leviathan emerges from behind the waterfall and promptly eats the guy.
"Monster general shows up to gloat at us and tries to kill us, Leviathan does a big stretch and casually paws him into oblivion" is just such a funny twist on this scenario, I love it. Dude really thought he had a moment there, and in the end we'll never know either his name or his combat sprite! Get punked!
It's not a "mindless monster eats first thing in sight," either. Leviathan is an enemy of the Void, and, like the other summons, he is here to test us.
The emphasis on sin/purity is kind of fascinating, casting Leviathan as a punitive/redemptive figure, rather than one of raw power.
I'm going to keep this short, because if you've been following my adventures through the Istory Falls, the outcome won't surprise you: We outmatch Leviathan by an order of magnitude. Initially my plan is to have Bartz do Spellblade (Thundaga) into Rapid Fire, but this doesn't pan out because Leviathan actually does hit like a truck and manages to KO Bartz before he can deliver his followup attack. That doesn't matter; between Golem to shore up defenses, dualcast Bahamut, Lenna's two-handed Brave Blade attacks, Leviathan collapses before I have managed to get Bartz up again and fully buffed.
So I may have broken the game.
(Reloading as a quick experiment to check what happens when Bartz does get to use Spellblade into Rapid Fire, the answer is 36k total damage in a single attack.)
Leviathan is defeated, his Summon acquired, and we teleport out of the Falls and onto our next objective.
On the one hand, I'm worried I might have taken the fun out of it by making every boss fight going forward trivial.
On the other hand, the thought of going through Phoenix Tower and Istory Falls, which already took hours and was repetitive as hell, with every fight being actually difficult and resource-draining, makes me want to die a little inside.
Okay.
By my count, there is one dungeon left: The Great Sea Rift, where I will find the third tablet and, I assume, the Time Magic Meteor, which the book promised me but which I haven't seen yet. Once that's done, unless I'm mistaken, we are straight off to the Interdimensional Rift (after possibly chatting with some NPCs to see if we missed anything before heading for the endgame) and then it's the finale.
We're getting close. See you next time.
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Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Of course, Exdeath is also absolutely the kind of villain who would tell his subordinates "nono, I am totally planning on making a new world after destroying this one, just for us" before inevitably blasting them right before the final fight.
- Location
- Canada, probably
The Phoenix story is… weird. It's a genuinely cool bit of storytelling, and I like the insight into Lenna. But unlike Syldra, whose death was haunting and I look forward to seeing her again every run even if I'm not using Summoner, Hiryu's sacrifice is barely even a thing. I forgot it happened, even. So it's a lovely narrative beat that serves as the payoff to a failed setup.
Also, hi Red Guy! I love Red Guy, he's my—oh, bye Red Guy…
Also, hi Red Guy! I love Red Guy, he's my—oh, bye Red Guy…
- Location
- Canada, probably
Took me a moment to remember, but yeah, that would be useful.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Ah yes, the Phoenix Tower. An endurance gauntlet, but yes, your disgusting over leveling would have made it a sad joke.
That said, you're right in saying these two dungeons are a slog, and taking the combat element out of the picture there is not something that I would hold to you.
The Magic Pots in fact is where I usually grind half of the last Red Mage level. Because mastering a 300-500 ABP job with that feels like a waste in a sense.
But I agree the message might not stick the landingbecause it went down in flames hohoho.
That said, you're right in saying these two dungeons are a slog, and taking the combat element out of the picture there is not something that I would hold to you.
The Magic Pots in fact is where I usually grind half of the last Red Mage level. Because mastering a 300-500 ABP job with that feels like a waste in a sense.
I get that, probably, it's intended to show Hiryu recognizing how far Lenna has come from her selfish days, and lending her the last of his strength so that it can be used in a constructive way.
But I agree the message might not stick the landing
- Location
- Texas
See, I have to thank you. Because I'm experiencing your play through, I don't feel I'm missing anything when I just grind up and blast through the games for 100% completion bragging rights. Like right now, still on FF2 (look, I'm the last one home from work, okay?), but the only party member I haven't killed off and left dead was Minwu, and I'm currently just past Leviathan. I'm also pretty much 1 or two shotting every boss and random encounter, and that's with trying to get Firion high enough with everything that Ultima will be semi-useful.
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- Location
- Alabama
I mean, that is classic RPG. (Octopath Traveler pretty much requires breaking things lategame.) Being broken is fine so long as it's not Chapter 1 or something.
Good for you on this. Enjoy your whispering computer.
*Also: Do you love Lenna and her Two-Handed 5k Attacks?*
MagicMan333
Post-apocalyptic Gonzo Journalist
- Location
- Washington
I actually interpreted Hiryu's actions as him being already mortally wounded and sacrificing himself at the tower to give the party one last ounce of aid before death would have claimed.
HolyDragoon
Call Gespenst!
- Location
- Portugal
And this is why I like to grind money for a bit to buy Angel Rings.
This is one of the very few areas where Geomancer shines, since they make pits visible and, IIRC, also make you immune to them.
Of course, by that point everyone forgets that Geomancer is a thing, so.
- Location
- Canada, probably
It's been a while since I rocked a Geomancer, but I'm about 97% sure that what they do is make you hop back when the pit opens instead of falling into it. You can then walk back into the pit if you actually want to or, more often, by accident because you held the directional button a bit too long.
Yeahhhh, Phoenix Tower is kind of tedious. Going to be totally honest, I just started abusing quicksaves about halfway up the tower to skip getting into boss fights. It's not even that they were that hard with the right party setup, just annoying.
Well maybe if someone hadn't decided to grind the shit out of their jobs halfway through the game, this would feel more like a cool reward?
Heck, this is where I finally mastered Dualcast on Bartz in my playthrough, which felt like a huge buff right before the last few dungeons.
That said Magic Pots still aren't the best source of ABP there's a random encounter you can grind later in the game that gives even more lmao
That's just the RPG standard, gotta MOTIVATE your party by killing off at least one parent, right?
Heck, not Final Fantasy, but the Fire Emblem fandom has a joke about how every single MC's parents always die off even if they started the game alive, to the point that FE6 Roy is actually super notable because his dad pops in at the beginning, goes "oh no I have the coughs, Roy you better handle the plot even though I'm a legendary knight and stuff" and then Eliwood just... never shows up again and actually lives through the game.
Ahahaha holy SHIT I didn't expect that
I chose not to cut the tongue, and the scene just kind of cut away back to the tower, I figured choosing Yes might be similar and Idunno imply that Lenna couldn't go through with it.
Didn't expect "King Tycoon goes apeshit, throws his daughter across an entire tower".
Oh, it's not just a full life Raise. Phoenix also fully restores MP on top of HP.
So if you have two summoners, you can totally forgo using Osmose by just killing one and Phoenixing them when they start to run out, it's great.
Once again, I point to Object D'Art and that we probably shouldn't have told you about one of the best grinding spots in the game. Now granted FFV still isn't that hard to crack in half, but considering how much of the lategame has been "boy this is kind of stupid easy with an endgame skills party"... Idunno, guess that's the flaw of an open customization system like the job system. I've been dumping all over the Rift myself now that everything is coming together.
OMI
OMI YOU FORGOT THE GEOMANCERRRRRRRR
From swapping Krile into the class briefly during Istory Falls, it actually just makes all the pitfalls visible on the overworld so you can easily run around them or jump in if you're so inclined.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The thing is, I don't think the alternative is... much... better..? Like I seriously can't imagine going through Phoenix Tower fighting Liquid Flame and Soul Cannon fifteen times with it actually being difficult and not just giving up. And this applies more generally to the background encounters of these last few dungeons; at the density of encounters they have, with the time and loops and dead ends it takes to go through them, the idea of doing it in a context where I actually have to pay attention to each fight and be careful about my resource expenditure doesn't sound like engaging long term fantasy combat strategizing, it sounds like soul death.
Like, people keep mentioning more or less casually slowing down or dropping out entirely of the FFV endgame at some point between the first and the fifth of the merged world's dungeons, and I am starting to see why, I think.
Oh, hey, very belatedly!
Random vagaries of looking for old posts got my eyes on this post from a few months back, part of a series in which @Saint_007 (and I think also @FunkyEntropy and @HolyDragoon, forgive me if I am forgetting anyone one) brought up Hyadain's FFIV Four Fiends Meme Song and posted lyrics excerpts one by one as we went through each archfiend since the full song was spoilers, which I didn't comment much on at the time but was pretty funny, and the final song once I had gone through them all was a pretty funny capstone to that trend.
Anyway, I bring that up because, spoilers for FFXIV:
Yeah, so, in Patch 6.3, the final boss is a battle against this game's version of Rubicante, the Archfiend of Fire, and the thing is?
For his theme, they brought on Hyadain. The very same artist who started out with the iconic meme songs I Can't Defeat Air Man and, indeed, Four Fiends.
This version of the theme is not comedic, but it is obvious how much the Four Fiends song transpires through it, and it is a total banger.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIQeJJrjllk
Over a decade later, his work enters the Final Fantasy canon as an absolutely stunning piece.
For his theme, they brought on Hyadain. The very same artist who started out with the iconic meme songs I Can't Defeat Air Man and, indeed, Four Fiends.
This version of the theme is not comedic, but it is obvious how much the Four Fiends song transpires through it, and it is a total banger.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIQeJJrjllk
Over a decade later, his work enters the Final Fantasy canon as an absolutely stunning piece.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
"But know that you are not the first nor last to seek purgation" is a lyric that lives in my head.
(Hyadain, or more professionally Kenichi Maeyamada, didn't make the "Can't defeat Airman" song, but he made a lot of other meme songs including from Megaman 2, as well as lots of anime opening and ending themes like Nichijou. Many of which are slyly meme-y, and most of which are unreasonably catchy.)
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Damn, I got that bit wrong from the wiki page being vague about actual song names so I made a leap of logic, egg on my face.
Admittedly, I'd say Phoenix Tower is the worst of it. Most of the actual, non-optional dungeons might have one or two encounters that can be bad, but certainly not on par with combining "what if we had a shitload of status effect enemies" and "also time for Boss Rush Redux".
Heck, in particular? Highly recommend throwing in a bard for the next tablet dungeon. Everything except iirc the boss of the dungeon is undead, there was literally only a single enemy that could survive a requiem from Lenna in my case, just slapped some Hermes Sandals on her and watched as she sang the entire dungeon to death.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
I admit a lot of the comments about FFV so far have made it sound like it's a much better game on subsequent playthroughs, where the motivation isn't "what happens next in the story" anymore, but rather "how can I break the game with the least amount of effort".
As in, the player already knows the bosses and challenges coming up, and they also know what each class can do against them, so it's a game of matching bosses to counters.
As in, the player already knows the bosses and challenges coming up, and they also know what each class can do against them, so it's a game of matching bosses to counters.
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Yeah, you're on the home stretch here. The next dungeon is pretty annoying in its own right, but the worst is over.
You're absolutely right on that. The fact that the third world is almost entirely optional is great, as you can skip any content you don't want loot from, but you'll never know that on the first playthrough. Also helps that FFV is easily top 3 in the mainline series for challenge runs due to the sheer amount of in-battle options and limitations you can impose on yourself.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
It might just be me, but I don't remember later versions having the piscine tail, either.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Note that Leviathan winds up being the General Best summon with correct play. While there's always room for other tools, Leviathan does in fact do water damage, which is possible to get a booster to (I forget what though).
His damage is second to Bahamut, but not so much so that a 1.5 times multiplier won't put him ahead vs most targets.
His damage is second to Bahamut, but not so much so that a 1.5 times multiplier won't put him ahead vs most targets.