Sad to say, but things do not really improve from here in terms of memorable encounters. There is a counterpart to the Four Fiends, but it's pulled off with nowhere near the same panache, and the list of ways to totally break the combat is only going to grow from here, between Osmose, the Blood Sword, and a well-leveled Toad.
(Osmose is stupidly broken even at a very low level, I regret to inform you.)
Disgaea's is alright, but that's literally a game exclusively about grinding to the point that you can grind the levels of the items you equip by doing dungeons inside them so you know exactly what you're getting into when you play it.
I know Oblivion managed to fuck up the system so badly you got weaker the higher the level you were, due to monster scaling bullshit.
Oh! Rune Factory's use-based skill system is actually pretty fun, I think, and that has a skill for literally everything you do (except maybe being hit? don't quote me on that though)
And then you have all the Runescape games and derivatives which must be fun for someone, given how successful they are.
It's not the best set-up for a FF game, though, I agree. It's maybe better than the randomised stat-ups you got in I so that your fighters aren't stuck relying entirely on weapons to provide damage?
An NES game with a 2 in the name drops some mechanics that are now considered genre staples while experimenting with other mechanics in a way never done again in subsequent titles? Gee, how unusual.
This doesn't work. The need to level up each individual spell for it to be worth shit means magic takes up enormous amounts of my time only to end up with absolutely mediocre damage output, so I'm always better off just hitting the Attack button.
This is kinda weird... It's not exactly what I encountered playing Disgaea 5 but it is rather similar.
So, in Disgaea 1 and 2, spell range is primarily controlled by Staff Mastery, which means a mage with high staff mastery who just unlocked a new spell can hit nearly as far with it as they can with their leveled spells, and will have SOME AoE capacity even immediately afterwards. 5 went with this weird skill upgrade system where you spend Mana to unlock the AoE functions and increase range and beyond that range increase is controlled almost entirely by skill level(Staff Mastery SAYS it has some impact... but the base range is LITERALLY MELEE, even lvl 20 Staff Mastery barely moves the needle). Which meant, running around in the Item World, I used basically nothing but the starting level of Fire until I unlocked Tera Fire and purposely ground it up... and I still often wind up using the base Fire because it still has more range. Now, mages in Disagaea are never better off just buffing or just hitting stuff... well, ok you could technically equip one with a bow or a gun, they kind of sort of have the aptitude for that but not really. But it's still true that in 5 specifically it's REALLY hard to actually make the higher level spells get enough range to matter when you can move the mage 4 tiles a turn unless you dedicate multiple other units to getting them around.
Yeah. Final Fantasy is a series that always strives to be ambitious and innovative, and in cases like this you can see where that bit them in the ass. You can also see where and why they decided "aw shit we have to rein this in somehow" which, presumably, led to the advent of the job system in 3. Still there's a kind of elegance in FF1's simplicity that, along with just being straight up faster to get through, that made me a lot more positive toward it than 2.
EVERYTHING was "innovative and ambitious" in a way that bit them in the ass with sequels on the NES, since genres weren't so defined yet. Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros (US, but even JP to an extent), Fire Emblem... all of them the game numbered two is the odd duck in the franchise. Megaman and Dragon Quest are notable for being exceptions more than other games being notable for being examples
Yeah, even if I don't like the outcome and think it was a mistake, I respect that they tried such a swerve. And all the advancements in the narrative and setting design, IMO, make up for it.
Well, I guess if you keep this up we'll get to whatever this is referencing later.
And I think you've nailed a pretty common issues in games. Sure, having a bunch of options is good, but at a certain point as you say it just collapses in on itself and it stops being particularly interesting.
FF2 has a definite physical bias. It's unfortunate, but at least in the Dawn of Souls version you have it be the case that all the slimes, no matter how high tier have the same Super High This Is Physical Immune Right defense value...
Which is actually lower than the final boss's defense, who you will probably kill by hitting with weapons a lot.
Yeah. Eventually you hit the point where even nominally 'physically immune' sort of opponents are best stabbed to death, so much so they put the final boss past that value and it still doesn't save him from the wrath of your swords and/or fists.
As far as Maria goes my best guess is you gave her an item with an obtuse, unclearly explained effect? There's a lot of those, but I don't actually remember any that would cause what you describe personally. Been too long for one.
Did you put Maria in the back row? If she's up front as a squishy spellcaster she might be just taking the occasional punch that lops off a bunch of HP when you're not looking.
Did you put Maria in the back row? If she's up front as a squishy spellcaster she might be just taking the occasional punch that lops off a bunch of HP when you're not looking.
For the record, here are my last party stat snapshots from shortly before the Big Horn fight (everybody got one or two bumps here since and there but nothing game-changing):
Oh! Rune Factory's use-based skill system is actually pretty fun, I think, and that has a skill for literally everything you do (except maybe being hit? don't quote me on that though)
There is a "Defense" skill, yes. It rises from getting hit for damage. And in FFII fashion, it raises your Vitality stat and HP.
I think one of the aspects which makes Rune Factory's use-based skill system much better than what FFII is attempting is how you can raise a skill through multiple means. For example, you can raise the Resist Poison skill through either getting poisoned yourself, or inflicting poison on enemies. Or you can raise your Water Magic level by watering your crops.
And most things can be brute-forced through raw base stats, which you level by levelling skills, and each base stat can be levelled via many different skills. For example, while you have to level each weapon category skill individually, all of them raise Strength, and all the weapons (apart from magic staves, which don't have their own skill) also use Strength to calculate damage. So you could spend half the game using Long Swords, then decide to switch to Dual Blades at level one, and you'll still deal respectable damage. Or you could literally not do any combat and just eat lots of food and level your Eating skill, and it will still raise your Strength (and Intelligence and Vitality).
I'm also pretty sure some of the random "why are these even here" skills are intended to make sure the player has some stats levelled, no matter what else they do in-game. "Walking" is a skill, but it doesn't actually make you faster or somehow better at travel when you level it up through walking around; instead, you get higher HP, RP (ie the MP equivalent), and Vitality.
Huh, is he a monster? Interesting. Giving government positions to monsters - even brutal ones primarily intended to crack down on the populace and extract forced labor - isn't something I had expected. He's also the only articulate monster we've met aside from the Lamia Queen.
Aside from some interesting lore implications, Gottos is nothing to write home about, and quickly collapsed under a couple of Berserk/Haste-buffed attacks.
As far as lore implications go and him being articulate, I note that the generic version of him is the Beast Demon. So maybe he's different due to being summoned from the local hell-equivalent.
Check out the picture above. See how amost the entire party is near full health, except Maria who is close to death?
I think Maria might be cursed.
Every few hours - and this is too infrequent for me to have caught it happening in the moment - I come out of a battle and realize that Maria's health is in the red. Universally, this happens while I am grinding or going through a dungeon using autobattle. Now, I know what you're thinking, 'but Omi, you clearly just weren't paying enough attention while Maria was getting hit by enemies!' Okay, but the thing is, Maria has perfectly reliable defenses, the highest HP in the party, I keep track of whether my characters are slowly getting worn down every few encounters to avoid an embarrassing wipe out of nowhere, and it's always only Maria.
Perhaps her high HP is why she keeps getting hurt? I don't know how enemies in the game pick their target, but if they are programmed to prefer the character with the highest HP maybe that's why.
And I think I understand what is happening. Because Maria is not just losing massive chunks of HP out of nowhere - if you'll look closely, she's also losing a lot of MP. Even as the group's dedicated wizard, there's no way she's 200 MP in expenses behind everyone else.
The answer lies, I believe, in this enemy captured on photo earlier:
The Brain line of enemies can cast Swap, which, if successful causes the target and the caster to exchange their HP and MP values. Because Brains have HP counts in the low hundreds instead of the thousand, this is effectively one of the most 'damaging' moves in the entire game, taking out 90% of my character's health bar in one 'blow' where most enemies struggle to make an impact at all. Not only that, but it also affects MP - which, I think, is the only explanation for Maria falling to 5 MP in that second picture.
It's not a perfect explanation. Maria suddenly fell into the red in dungeons without Brains, and I'm not sure the MP counts shake out every time. And it doesn't explain why the enemy insists on casting Swap on Maria and only Maria - but it's the best answer I've got, so I'll stick to it.
So, Cave of Mysidia!
This dungeon's nothing special aside from one bizarre plot point. The stairs to the second floor are blocked by…
I'm sorry?
I don't know what to do with this.
When I saw another Firion sprite at the end of the corridor I was prepared for some weird cool mirror encounter, but this is… There is no explanation and nothing happens. The doppleganger doesn't move, it just stands there. Then I use the Black Mask on it, and it disappears.
Absolutely baffling.
Apparently, the doppleganger is active until you put the white mask on the statue, and does mirror the character's movement in some way. But I never saw that, so this encounter is just weirdly baffling.
Beyond this level, Cave of Mysidia is… frustrating.
Look at these. There are individual doors each concealed within a 'cell' accessible only by one stairway. 90% of these doors are dead end monster cells. I have to check each and every one before I find the one that leads forward. It's just extremely annoying dungeon design.
We've finally reached the actual Bomb with its iconic red color scheme. These actually have a lot of HP, enough not to die in one hit - their tactic is to stall me out until I run out of action, then self-destruct for massive (for their level) damage. This could really fuck up a group that wanders into thee cave with HP in the hundreds and a dearth of resources, which is how I assume the game was played on NES.
Incidentally, thanks to some investigative work by @Eukie, we can explain why the early version of the Balloon/Bomb line isn't fire-themed; as has been suggested before, they're another D&D ripoff. You see how these little orbs above their surface look a bit like eyes? The whole figure sorta kinda looks like a Beholder? They're based on the Gas Spore, one of OG D&D's 'fuck you' monsters. You see, the Gas Spore looks exactly like a Beholder, and Beholders project an antimagic field. So cleverly, you step into melee to whack the thing with your sword, and next thing you know this is happening to you:
AD&D: Because Fuck You.
Encountering the Marlboro inspires dreadful flashbacks in me, but if this version of them has the dreaded Bad Breath ability (which inflicts multiple status effects at the same time on all targets), then they decide to… not use it? Instead they use normal attacks for staggeringly low amounts of damage, far weaker than most monsters of their level, sometimes even failing to break the cap and doing 0 damage. A baffling introduction to an iconic, and beloathed, franchise icon.
If you look closely at this picture, you'll see that there is no door or stairs to get inside that cell with the chests in it. This is because you're supposed to hug the wall until you find a hidden passage.
And, well, we find the Crystal Rod. So far so good.
It's now time to head to the location of the Mysidia Tower, which is on an small isle within a broader atoll. I've been there before, but the door was locked. This time, though, I have the key, and…
At this point the game takes the controls away from me, which I watch happen with growing concern.
Growing. Concern.
What the fuck.
Aaaaaaaah-
I have been swallowed into a giant whirlpool, and I land in…
Holy shit.
Is that a gut?
Am I standing inside the gut of a giant marine animal?
Look at this shape. This is absolutely something's digestive track.
With Leila missing, we head out to look for her inside the guts of this giant beast. Which is, incidentally, another series first - say hello to our first Leviathan.
The environmental design is fantastically gross.
The walls of rippling flesh, the disgusting bumpy pink texture. The poodles of digestive juice that cause damage when you step on it - a creative new take on FFI's lava floors. It's even worse (better) on the battle screen:
Look at the detail and texture and depth. These veiny mounds of flesh. These streams of gastric acids, ready to corrode flesh. In the distance, these vast cliffs of mucus and cartilage. Most of FFII's combat background are either "outside, natural landscape" or "inside, stone" walls, but when it gets weird and cool it really goes all the way, like the Dreadnought's heavy industrial interiors - but those were claustrophobic, whereas Leviathan is immense. Look at the depth of field, the top-left corner fading into distance in the shadow, the meat cliffs raising above the cutoff point; this is a vast plain of flesh, heaving and moving, with walls taller than any mortal ceiling.
And there's an entire ecosystem thriving in it. Monsters by the score. Most of it marine wildlife, likely swallowed and having managed to survive so far. And when you leave a screen, it's not a door blocking your way - it is, forgive me the word, a sphincter:
Leviathan is straight up the weirdest, coolest thing the game has thrown at us so far. An absolutely stellar work on the part of the Pixel Remaster team, who really dug into the potential of the comparatively sparser NES environment and drew out their full disgusting grandeur.
And as it turns out, we're far from the first to be caught by Leviathan:
There's an entire community living inside Leviathan. They have furniture. They've been here for years and they're somehow still alive. They hate their condition, but they have accomodated themselves to it as best they can.
And among their number, we find…
Ricard takes the death of his loved ones and all that he has ever known and held dear in stride, which I suppose is helped by the fact that he spent the last few years slowly being digested by a giant sea monster. He went out looking for the Ultima Tome, and since we have the same objective, he teams up with us as our new guest member.
My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.
Predictably, Ricard is as worthless as any other party member when they join. He has bad HP for this level, no magic, and the later-series iconic Dragoon feature, their emphasis on jumping attacks, is impossible to replicate in FFII's "the three mechanics are attack, magic and item" system. He's an underleveled sword-and-spear dual wielder and that's all he is. He's a worse Leila.
Like literally - I also gave Leila a sword and spear set up, and in the past hour or so of gameplay which was performing genuinely well! She wasn't on par with any of the three core members, but she had over 1k HP and actually dealt meaningful damage. She was a solid contributor to the cause.
Now I have this.
Hm.
I'm sorry?
The crystal rods are the keys to the tower. They're the symbol of legitimate business. You have to pass trials to take the masks you need to get the crystal rods in the first place. They're meant to unlock the tower. How does it make sense to have a secret hidden monster swallowing anyone carrying them?
Was this put in place by a different, competing polity than the Mysidians who built the tower? How did the mages in Mysidia not know about this - they were the one who sent me on a quest to break the seals, they agreed the need was there. Is Leviathan a creation of the Empire? But no; it's been active for at least ten years (impressive surviving that long in there, btw). It's framed as an ancient guardian of the place, but… why was it put there, and how was it forgotten about?
Perhaps, in years long gone, the old Mysidian kingdom commanded Leviathan to stop any intruder on their soil by imprisoning them in its stomach, and would regularly have it come to shore to spit out the trespassers, that they might be interrogated and judged as to whether they were to be allowed inside the tower.
Maybe that's why Leviathan's body is so strangely survivable - it was never meant to truly eat people, but rather to hold them captive for a temporary duration and release them later. But whatever happened to old Mysidia caused the loss of this knowledge and whatever words of command were supposed to work on the beast, and it still fulfills its task without ever reaching its intended outcome.
I don't know. I'm simply not clear enough on the history of Mysidia to understand what's happening here.
Well, with Ricard in tow, there's only one thing to do: head for Leviathan's mouth and break out way out.
Absolutely fucking love this map. It's literally a giant mouth, the obstacles are teeth and pools of saliva, there's a big ship at the end clearly marking your goal, it's one of my favorite screens in the game.
And there we find the boss - a parasite, so clearly we're actually helping Leviathan by killing it.
Ricard proves even more useless than anticipated - he dies in the first round, the creature doing a basic attack for 700 damage, easily overcoming his entire HP. This gives everyone else time to buff up with Berserk, Haste and Protect, and the Roundworm is quickly dispatched.
We then take the ship, escape Leviathan's hold, and make it to the tower to use the crystal rod and open it!
Wait.
What?
We just run?
What about Leila?
What about the other people trapped in Leviathan's stomach?
I can accept that we don't kill the beast - it is simply too vast to be fought in physical combat on a human scale (something it has in common with FF14 Bahamut), although maybe we could have found its heart and stabbed it from within or something, but that might not have been practical in causing everyone to drown with Leviathan's sinking - but we just…
We left them. We left them behind. We found a whole community of survivors trapped inside Leviathan's stomach for years, and we don't even try to help them escape. We didn't find Leila but we didn't even look. Am I supposed to assume she's dead? That she perished, swallowed by the beast, and there's nothing to do but move on? But nobody is even commenting on it. There's not one word spent on the most lasting and effective companion to join the crew since Minwu! What about her crew? There were a dozen sailors on that thing, and they're gone and nobody's talking about it.
I'm going to spend the rest of the game expecting for her to pop out of a bush somewhere with some explanation as to how she escaped Leviathan only for it to end without her ever being mentioned again, am I?
Fuck.
I liked Leila.
This plot development is so bizarre that it took the wind out of my sails. We'll stop here for today.
Encountering the Marlboro inspires dreadful flashbacks in me, but if this version of them has the dreaded Bad Breath ability (which inflicts multiple status effects at the same time on all targets), then they decide to… not use it? Instead they use normal attacks for staggeringly low amounts of damage, far weaker than most monsters of their level, sometimes even failing to break the cap and doing 0 damage. A baffling introduction to an iconic, and beloathed, franchise icon.
A quick wiki dive reveals that Malboros in FF2 possess a paralytic regular attack- supposedly 100% chance in the remaster specifically- and that there will be stronger versions that add more statuses- more or less everything for the final version- but that, no, they don't yet have actual spell type abilities.
So yes. They just regular attack, but the top tier is kinda like that attack also being bad breath.
One interpretation I saw suggested once was that the ancient Mysidians actually wanted to destroy Ultima, but weren't able to. So, they instead sealed it in the most secure location they could create, that could be opened with only a specific item and nothing else, then hid the item in a place that they protected with two keys found in separate locations, one of which given to people as a holy relic so they'd not part with it willingly, and as a last ditch security measure, they placed a monster specifically to eat anybody who actually had the specific item that works as a key, to ensure that nobody could make it to the tower with it. So, the whole thing is an extremely convoluted Rube Goldberg machine put into place to make it impossible to reach Ultima without actually destroying the thing, the reason for that being an inability to actually destroy it. And the reason the modern Mysidians don't know about any of this is because the ancient ones kept it secret to make the security measures more effective.
Make of that what you will; personally, I like your theory more.
Minor spoiler: Apparently, Leila somehow escapes and makes her way back to Fynn Castle on her own, where she offers no explanation and does nothing of consequence for the rest of the story.
One interpretation I saw suggested once was that the ancient Mysidians actually wanted to destroy Ultima, but weren't able to. So, they instead sealed it in the most secure location they could create, that could be opened with only a specific item and nothing else, then hid the item in a place that they protected with two keys found in separate locations, one of which given to people as a holy relic so they'd not part with it willingly, and as a last ditch security measure, they placed a monster specifically to eat anybody who actually had the specific item that works as a key, to ensure that nobody could make it to the tower with it. So, the whole thing is an extremely convoluted Rube Goldberg machine put into place to make it impossible to reach Ultima without actually destroying the thing, the reason for that being an inability to actually destroy it. And the reason the modern Mysidians don't know about any of this is because the ancient ones kept it secret to make the security measures more effective.
Make of that what you will; personally, I like your theory more.
It's not like the theories are mutually exclusive. The final stage of the rube goldberg machine could have been putting the people with the crystal rod on trial to figure out how they did it and increase security.
Encountering the Marlboro inspires dreadful flashbacks in me, but if this version of them has the dreaded Bad Breath ability (which inflicts multiple status effects at the same time on all targets), then they decide to… not use it? Instead they use normal attacks for staggeringly low amounts of damage, far weaker than most monsters of their level, sometimes even failing to break the cap and doing 0 damage. A baffling introduction to an iconic, and beloathed, franchise icon.
The name is one of those things that freaked me out, because I was convinced it was Marlboro, but it's just Malboro with no 'r'. Hasn't had an r is any version of any of the games, and I'd been so sure I thought I must have been losing my mind. My own personal Berenstoon Bears.
Of the FF games I've played I'd call FF8's experience with the Malboro the worst, if it gets off the Bad Breath attack you might as well reload, you're completely screwed unless you can flee and get back to an inn. Technically you can mitigate it somewhat but with FF8s weird-ass systems...not a really tenable option.
Predictably, Ricard is as worthless as any other party member when they join. He has bad HP for this level, no magic, and the later-series iconic Dragoon feature, their emphasis on jumping attacks, is impossible to replicate in FFII's "the three mechanics are attack, magic and item" system. He's an underleveled sword-and-spear dual wielder and that's all he is. He's a worse Leila.
Guest party members are a staple of the series, and as neat as the introduction is it definitely seems to be coming very badly with FF2's own levelling system here.
I know FF9 has a bunch of secret mechanics that helps make it's guests appropriately powered, so they've learned over time.
I'm half convinced who ever set the starting stats for guest party members did it for a version where the hp hard cap was 999 like in FF1, and then when they decided to let it go to 9999 never changed those numbers.
I'd call FF8's experience with the Malboro the worst, if it gets off the Bad Breath attack you might as well reload, you're completely screwed unless you can flee and get back to an inn. Technically you can mitigate it somewhat but with FF8s weird-ass systems...not a really tenable option.
I completely agree that FFVIII's Malboro is the most dangerous incarnation of the monster, but to me that makes it the best, not the worst.
In FFVIII, the Malboro always opens the battle with Bad Breath, and it gets the first round unless you have initiative. So, yeah, meeting one unprepared is generally a death sentence.
However, if the player understands the system, defeating them is challenging but hardly impossible; it's one of my favorite monsters to fight there, and I'm always disappointed when the versions in other games don't live up to that challenge. Of course, if the player doesn't really understand the system, it's possible to be strong enough to defeat some of the secret bosses and then wipe against a lv 100 Malboro; the parts of the system required for the two tasks are completely different.
FFVIII is just weird like that, but I think that's part of its charm.
The name is one of those things that freaked me out, because I was convinced it was Marlboro, but it's just Malboro with no 'r'. Hasn't had an r is any version of any of the games, and I'd been so sure I thought I must have been losing my mind. My own personal Berenstoon Bears.
I have the exact same thing. For the longest time I just knew the monster was called "Marlboro" and then they changed it all on me, I know that I saw it called that at some point.
The name is one of those things that freaked me out, because I was convinced it was Marlboro, but it's just Malboro with no 'r'. Hasn't had an r is any version of any of the games, and I'd been so sure I thought I must have been losing my mind. My own personal Berenstoon Bears.
I have the exact same thing. For the longest time I just knew the monster was called "Marlboro" and then they changed it all on me, I know that I saw it called that at some point.
It doesn't appear to have ever been called that, especially since that's copyrighted.
"Malboro" may derive from the Japanese onomatopoeia boro, the sound of an upset stomach. The word mal means "something bad" or "illness". The name could also be a reference to Marlboro Cigarettes, since the creatures often spew horrid fumes from their mouths.
Malboro is known as Xylomid in the French localization of the series. Perhaps in order to avoid references to the cigarette brand, the monster's name is rendered as "Molboro" in the Italian version of the franchise.
