Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I mean... Necrophobe is optional. Yes, fighting Exdeath without a save-point can be a hassle, but in theory there's nothing stopping the "canonical" FFV story to be that the group (Krile, probably) recognized the light as a trap, avoided it, and thus Gilgamesh survived the game to be able to make his various cameo appearances.
Heck, you can just... straight up murder Necrophobe. Gilgamesh only triggers to show up when the guy's under 9999 HP from what I recall, and Necrophobe is weak to every element. If you have Dualcast or Rapid Fire, it's trivially easy to just kill him without Gilgamesh even arriving to "save the day". Really the only reason to let it happen in the first place is that this is the only source of Genji Armor + fun story beats.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
"Note of the editor: Hahaha."
Or, you know, giving them a physical attack !command or job -
Er, fair I guess.
Game devs: "haha got em"
Although to be far, the placement of that chest is a bit ominous.
What an inhuman monster. D:
Yep. Correct in the difference between them, and a sad truth.
Although...
Funnily, the way I first killed Shinryu revolved around everyone going as Dragoons, or just !Jump. I don't remember the details, beyond that I didn't have that lance back then because, yearp, 3%, who is ever going to see that shit.
And the crowd goes wild!
It does have a sort of feeling like "she needs to take a dick", but er, not so disgusting and more concerned with her self-discovery whatever it may lead? It comes off more as kinda weird than just offensive.
Considering he knows white magic and he keeps taking unholy amounts of punishment to the face without worse for the wear...
- Location
- Sweden
Shinyru's initial appearance in XIV isn't foreshadowed at all, what? Specifically, the fact that it's going to be Shinryu isn't built up before it happens, and actually goes against everything we know about how Primals work at that point. Ilberd was trying to summon Rhalgr, and instead gets a random dragon with no connection to Ala Mhigo. It's not even really similar to the other dragons we'd seen, so it's not provided by Nidhogg either.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Ilberd never said he wanted to summon Rhalgr. He wanted to summon something "more powerful than the Seventh Calamity", ie something more powerful than Bahamut. The only mention of Rhalgr in that scene was in the English dialogue, when a dying Griffon soldier invoked that name; in Japanese, they just wanted more power.
And as the later Omega raids showed, Shinryu has a resemblance to one particular dragon: Midgardsormr. Whose corpse is still a major monument in Silvertear Lake, and thus well within sight of the Rising Stones, where Ilberd had been headquartered during his time in the Crystal Braves.
And as the later Omega raids showed, Shinryu has a resemblance to one particular dragon: Midgardsormr. Whose corpse is still a major monument in Silvertear Lake, and thus well within sight of the Rising Stones, where Ilberd had been headquartered during his time in the Crystal Braves.
Interestingly, I had read a lot of comments before that Omega and Shinryu were supposed to be eternal rivals from their appearance in FFV, but in the game itself they don't appear to have much to do with each other. Omega is just wandering in place around a small platform, while Shinryu is hiding in a chest for no apparent reason.
- Location
- Alberta
RIP Greg, truly a man deserving of the hype.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And that's the game done, update tonight or tomorrow hopefully.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
Yeah, this is one of the most famous "oh fuck you game designer, what do you possibly want me to do" moments in the history of Final Fantasy. I mean, mimics are a staple of RPGs, but how often are your mimics a superboss dragon?
I may have sounded much more pissed with this endgame than warranted before the last update, but that's because I was trying to avoid spoiling the Shinryu in the room. Now that we have the full context I'd like to lay it out again. IIRC the final 3 savepoints are in order: Behind Omega, Obtained due to beating AzulMagia, Obtained due to beating Necrophobe. This is in areas with difficult, bullshit, and unrewarding encounters, a dozen bosses of which a third or more are complete jumpscares, and a FUCKING SUPERBOSS MIMIC TRAP. Whoever ran this segment of the D&D campaign is an asshole. Hell, the Superboss Mimic Trap comes before Necrophobe anyways, so all you need to do is miss Azulmagia and you're going all the way back to the Omega Shuffle.
Aspiring game designers, please do not put your players in a position where they could easily be checkpoint starved during a boss rush, and by opening an important looking chest are almost guaranteed to wipe. Again, not FFIII levels of bullshit, that would be this dungeon section without any optional savepoints, but still, uncomfortably close to it.
I may have sounded much more pissed with this endgame than warranted before the last update, but that's because I was trying to avoid spoiling the Shinryu in the room. Now that we have the full context I'd like to lay it out again. IIRC the final 3 savepoints are in order: Behind Omega, Obtained due to beating AzulMagia, Obtained due to beating Necrophobe. This is in areas with difficult, bullshit, and unrewarding encounters, a dozen bosses of which a third or more are complete jumpscares, and a FUCKING SUPERBOSS MIMIC TRAP. Whoever ran this segment of the D&D campaign is an asshole. Hell, the Superboss Mimic Trap comes before Necrophobe anyways, so all you need to do is miss Azulmagia and you're going all the way back to the Omega Shuffle.
Aspiring game designers, please do not put your players in a position where they could easily be checkpoint starved during a boss rush, and by opening an important looking chest are almost guaranteed to wipe. Again, not FFIII levels of bullshit, that would be this dungeon section without any optional savepoints, but still, uncomfortably close to it.
He specifically said "I will call upon a deity more terrible than the very black wyrm of the Calamity itself!", and then before you see what it is, you go to activate Omega of all things to fight it which is a pretty big hint to what the primal is going to be in itself.
Afterwards, there's plenty of foreshadowing that Shinryu is going to show up later throughout Stormblood
Afterwards, there's plenty of foreshadowing that Shinryu is going to show up later throughout Stormblood
- Location
- Lost in Hell
And thus I'm caught up after reading through 30 or so pages for a third time! And somebody already beat me to making a joke about gilgamesh having a finely-tuned Gaydar!
Ah well. I just want to drop by and say how much I enjoy reading this again, Omni. Keep up the good work!
Ah well. I just want to drop by and say how much I enjoy reading this again, Omni. Keep up the good work!
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Let's just say that as someone who had not played Final Fantasy V at the time of playing Stormblood, this bit was an absolutely baffling development that went completely against what I felt the story was naturally leading towards, and which only made sense once I asked other players "what the fuck was that" and received the explanation that it was an extended and gratuitous FFV reference. Homages are fun and all, but when your writing is baffling to people who don't have the reference you're failing in your job as a writer. But of course, that is par for the course for Stormblood's writing quality.
mothematics
How wide is the concept of "you"?
- Location
- the bottom of a coffee cup
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The only source I can find for this supposed statement by Yoshi-P is TV Tropes, itself unsourced. Do you remember where you found it?
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
No, hence the IIRC. I searched to to try to find my souce and couldn't either.
Final Fantasy V, Part 29: Endgame, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's time.
With all other bosses in the game successfully defeated, nothing is standing in our way as we make our advance to the top of the Void's floating crystal structure, which is increasingly overgrown with roots and tree branches - which, if you remember Exdeath's nature, is obviously not a great sign.
The last floor carries forward what's become more or less a tradition post-FF1, of a single straight corridor or stairway ascending towards the final boss, and it is there that we finally come face to face again with Exdeath.
"Mwa-ha-ha!" Exdeath says in his characteristic Evil Ham laughter, "Finally, it is within my grasp! The greatest power ever known - that which can control the universe! The power of the Void!"
Immediately after which, Exdeath disappears - or rather, changes form, revealing his true nature as What If The Giving Tree Got A Fucking Glock, embedding himself throughout the crystalline area, 'fusing' in some way with the Void to claim its power:
Castle Bal, the Catapult, the Pirate Hideout… Every place still holding someone the protagonists care about is sucked into the Void while Exdeath gloats, before telling the heroes it's their turn, and casting everyone into the Void.
Once again, we see Exdeath's patented approach to problem solving: why fight the heroes when you can simply send them to the Shadow Realm where they can't hurt you in any way?
As our heroes lay unconscious in the Void, however, a voice reaches out to them - then, as they each wake up and stand up, who else but the spirits of the Dawn Warriors of old?
On this line, "Enter the Dawn Warriors," the game makes a fantastic musical choice and starts playing the opening screen title, the bright, upbeat tune that plays over the intro cinematic of Bartz riding Boko through the letters of the Final Fantasy V title, a piece that inspires nothing but a sense of optimism and freedom and adventure ahead, immediately signaling a shift in tone - this is no longer a hopeless battle, but an inevitable victory.
I love that little superhero pose they do as they fly away on a trail of light.
Our heroes emerge back into the Interdimensional Rift, in front of Exdeath, who doesn't understand what is happening or why the power of the Void is disappearing; he makes another attempt at conjuring a Void sphere, but this time is held back by a different timely intervention:
King Tycoon, Lenna and Faris's father.
You know, it's funny, I had always just assumed that there was a direct connection between King Tycoon and the Dawn Warriors. I mean, it would make sense, right? He's tasked himself with protecting one of the crystals, he's actively working to thwart Exdeath's plans until Exdeath possesses him, he's of an age with Dorgann and would have been alive back when the Dawn Warriors appeared on Bartz's world… It would just make sense for them to have met and worked together in some way, and for Tycoon to be a kind of 'honorary Dawn Warrior,' but no. The game never draws that connection, and as far as the text of the game goes, none of the four Dawn Warriors whom he just joined would even know who he is. It's strange.
Also it's interesting how FFV is very much retreading ground from III here. The World of Darkness and the Void have obvious similarities, but more than this, the appearance of the spirits of the departed basically combines III's "all your friends' spirits show up to stop the dragon's cure," "Doga and Unmei's spirits appear to open a path to the dark world," and "the Warriors of Darkness's spirits sacrifice themselves to hold back the Cloud's power" into a single moment. I'm… not sure what to make of FFV's repeated use of the spirits of the dead showing up to help in some fashion, which at this point has occurred so often it feels less like a major dramatic moment and more like a continuation of a trend.
In any case, with all five of the deceased heroic figures holding back the Void's power, the warriors of light can finally engage Exdeath in actual combat, the one thing he's been trying to avoid this whole time - and, now that he's a giant fucking tree, there's no escaping the battle. It's time for our final showdown.
Not the biggest fan of this monster design, tbh. Although the way Exdeath's armored body is fused into the tree part of his body which is reaching into the crystal background is pretty neat on a conceptual level, but mostly this is ugly as hell.
So, the fight.
…
I had to actually go and check the wiki to verify that this wasn't meant to be a scripted battle in which the heroes just beat on a helpless Exdeath who can't do anything because his Void power is sealed. Exdeath does actually have moves, such as a physical attack, a White Hole attack which deals instant death and petrify (so useless against any Ribbon-equipped character) and the ultimate spells, Holy, Flare, and Meteor.
I don't see any of this. My opening move is to have Krile with her Masamune free first move cast Hastega, have Bartz self-buff with Flare Spellblade and Faris Dualcast Golem and Bahamut, and then it's Rapid Fire City. If Exdeath used any attack, I didn't see it and have no screenshot of it. Krile's missing HP was already missing when I started the battle, I think because of some equipment swap or something? That or I forgot to heal battle damage from a previous encounter. He just kind of implodes.
2+k damage a hit for eight hits is about 20k damage out of his 40k HP.
Whereupon Exdeath gets hoisted by his own petard, as he loses his control over the Void which immediately turns rampant and consumes him first, which is not exactly good news for us.
Exdeath wanted to master the Void, fusing himself with it in some weird tree-crystal symbiosis. Instead, the Void has fused with him, absorbing Exdeath and turning the both of them into a new being, a being of absolute nihilism, which declares: "All memories… dimensions… existence… All that is shall be returned to nothing. Then I, too, can disappear… Forever!!!"
Exdeath didn't want to destroy the world, I think. It's not clear because he never explains his motivations beyond "I want power because I want power," but I don't think he was lying to the rift demons - his goal was to destroy most of the (existing) world and then establish himself as ultimate lord of whatever horrible demon world he had created afterwards with his demonic minions.
Not anymore, though. This Neo Exdeath is no longer that being. It is an embodiment of the Void's intent to simply abolish all existence, ending with itself. And honestly?
I respect a villain with commitment.
Okay, now this is some proper fucking final boss design. Not sure where all the naked ladies are coming from, but this horrible mass of squirming flesh with many faces and mouths helmed by a horned demon form is sick as hell. Out of all final bosses so far (Chaos, the Emperor, the Cloud of Darkness, Zeromus), this is easily my favorite.
Mechanically, this is a massive step up as well. Neo Exdeath is finally using a trick that solves an issue of previous bosses: its body has four target markers, meaning his HP is split into four separate mechanical entities that have to each be destroyed to take down the whole monster; this reduces the impact of overwhelming single target attacks, as well as making multiple-target options more rewarding, so there's a reason to use Bahamut instead of Flare. Additionally, Rapid Fire's targeting is random, which means its total damage is spread out between each body part, so we can't focus down one body part at a time, somewhat blunting the overwhelming power of Rapid Fire combos. This is mechanically identical to Neo Exdeath just being four separate monsters as far as I can tell (each body section has its own turns and attacks), but it feels different thanks to the presentation.
And Neo Exdeath is no slouch in the offense department, either. It has access to Omega's Delta Attack, which is a damaging attack that causes Petrify and therefore a threat to Faris and Krile, who don't have a Ribbon because I am using the Gold Hairpin to maximize their HP instead.
Note the dynamic color-shifting background, which is sick as hell. Thankfully, Delta Attack does basically nothing to Bartz.
Much more dangerous, however, are Neo Exdeath's two strongest moves, Almagest and Grand Cross, both of which are actually significant threats to my party.
Almagest is a Holy-type attack causing massive, party-wide damage and inflicting Sap on the characters. Grand Cross is even more dangerous, causing massive damage to some characters and random status effects on all characters. Bartz paralyzed, Lenna and Faris down, and Krile being Mini'd is a very bad position to be in, even if Bartz and Krile have full health.
Fortunately, I have completed almost every sidequest in the game, and so I have friends to call upon.
Krile can Quick-cast up to two Arise, while Faris can Dualcast Phoenix for screen-wide damage and a full Arise on up to two characters. Neo Exdeath's multiple hitbox status is finally making the Summons ability pop up, after it spent most of the game very effective against mobs but relatively mediocre against bosses. Now Syldra, Bahamut and Phoenix are all getting their money's worth - and honestly I think Syldra might actually be doing nearly the same if not better damage than the Dragon King.
On top of that, my stockpile of Elixirs allows me to fully heal and regen MP on one character at basically anytime.
It's an exciting battle, and a fitting final boss battle, if nowhere near as hard as Omega. Neo Exdeath delivers a few scares, his pace of attack being fast and relentless, but with all my characters basically having double actions plus Haste (although that buff needs reapplying every time they're KO'd), and two characters having access to full-HP raises (Faris's Phoenix and Krile's Arise), plus Esuna to deal with the status effect, we are too strong for Neo Exdeath to take on.
Ultimate power.
One by one, each of Exdeath's body part is taken down, from the top down to the bottom, until the final blow is dealt.
That death animation is sick as hell, tbh.
It's done. Neo Exdeath has been defeated. The power of the Void has been vanquished. The world is saved.
What follows immediately after this battle is, at first, another of the scrolling text epilogues that have been here since the first game, without revealing the fate of the warriors of light.
I am absolutely not convinced by the awkward attempts to connect each emotion to an element. 'Passion for knowledge spread wisdom on the winds,' really?
Then, the screen reveals where our protagonists are - still in the Void, unconscious, without an obvious way out.
Once again (this is a scene that has been repeated many times before), Bartz is the first to wake up and to go around waking up the others, although this time he appears to be floating on a trail of light like the Dawn Warriors before.
Together, the four heroes fly around this endless expanse and pause to ponder: The Void is still here, why? Is it because the crystals are gone? Is the world still doomed to be swallowed by the Void?
As if in answer to their question, the shards of the crystals which they still carry with them take a life of their own, emerging and flying away while a voice over reiterates the link between elements and emotions.
Then, one by one, the crystals return to their places of origin - interestingly places they never were in during the game, as the worlds had split and the crystals been moved for use by the various nations of Bartz's world - it turns out the location of the four tablets was the original location of the crystals.
The Earth Crystal returns to the Pyramid of Moore, the Water Crystal to Istory Falls, the Fire Crystal to the Great Sea Trench, and the Wind Crystal… Well, we don't see that one yet.
At the same time, the places that had been swallowed by the Void are returned to the world, presumably with their people safe (seeing as the Phantom Town spent a thousand years there and people were just frozen in time).
Cut for image count.
With all other bosses in the game successfully defeated, nothing is standing in our way as we make our advance to the top of the Void's floating crystal structure, which is increasingly overgrown with roots and tree branches - which, if you remember Exdeath's nature, is obviously not a great sign.
The last floor carries forward what's become more or less a tradition post-FF1, of a single straight corridor or stairway ascending towards the final boss, and it is there that we finally come face to face again with Exdeath.
"Mwa-ha-ha!" Exdeath says in his characteristic Evil Ham laughter, "Finally, it is within my grasp! The greatest power ever known - that which can control the universe! The power of the Void!"
Immediately after which, Exdeath disappears - or rather, changes form, revealing his true nature as What If The Giving Tree Got A Fucking Glock, embedding himself throughout the crystalline area, 'fusing' in some way with the Void to claim its power:
Castle Bal, the Catapult, the Pirate Hideout… Every place still holding someone the protagonists care about is sucked into the Void while Exdeath gloats, before telling the heroes it's their turn, and casting everyone into the Void.
Once again, we see Exdeath's patented approach to problem solving: why fight the heroes when you can simply send them to the Shadow Realm where they can't hurt you in any way?
As our heroes lay unconscious in the Void, however, a voice reaches out to them - then, as they each wake up and stand up, who else but the spirits of the Dawn Warriors of old?
On this line, "Enter the Dawn Warriors," the game makes a fantastic musical choice and starts playing the opening screen title, the bright, upbeat tune that plays over the intro cinematic of Bartz riding Boko through the letters of the Final Fantasy V title, a piece that inspires nothing but a sense of optimism and freedom and adventure ahead, immediately signaling a shift in tone - this is no longer a hopeless battle, but an inevitable victory.
I love that little superhero pose they do as they fly away on a trail of light.
Our heroes emerge back into the Interdimensional Rift, in front of Exdeath, who doesn't understand what is happening or why the power of the Void is disappearing; he makes another attempt at conjuring a Void sphere, but this time is held back by a different timely intervention:
King Tycoon, Lenna and Faris's father.
You know, it's funny, I had always just assumed that there was a direct connection between King Tycoon and the Dawn Warriors. I mean, it would make sense, right? He's tasked himself with protecting one of the crystals, he's actively working to thwart Exdeath's plans until Exdeath possesses him, he's of an age with Dorgann and would have been alive back when the Dawn Warriors appeared on Bartz's world… It would just make sense for them to have met and worked together in some way, and for Tycoon to be a kind of 'honorary Dawn Warrior,' but no. The game never draws that connection, and as far as the text of the game goes, none of the four Dawn Warriors whom he just joined would even know who he is. It's strange.
Also it's interesting how FFV is very much retreading ground from III here. The World of Darkness and the Void have obvious similarities, but more than this, the appearance of the spirits of the departed basically combines III's "all your friends' spirits show up to stop the dragon's cure," "Doga and Unmei's spirits appear to open a path to the dark world," and "the Warriors of Darkness's spirits sacrifice themselves to hold back the Cloud's power" into a single moment. I'm… not sure what to make of FFV's repeated use of the spirits of the dead showing up to help in some fashion, which at this point has occurred so often it feels less like a major dramatic moment and more like a continuation of a trend.
In any case, with all five of the deceased heroic figures holding back the Void's power, the warriors of light can finally engage Exdeath in actual combat, the one thing he's been trying to avoid this whole time - and, now that he's a giant fucking tree, there's no escaping the battle. It's time for our final showdown.
Not the biggest fan of this monster design, tbh. Although the way Exdeath's armored body is fused into the tree part of his body which is reaching into the crystal background is pretty neat on a conceptual level, but mostly this is ugly as hell.
So, the fight.
…
I had to actually go and check the wiki to verify that this wasn't meant to be a scripted battle in which the heroes just beat on a helpless Exdeath who can't do anything because his Void power is sealed. Exdeath does actually have moves, such as a physical attack, a White Hole attack which deals instant death and petrify (so useless against any Ribbon-equipped character) and the ultimate spells, Holy, Flare, and Meteor.
I don't see any of this. My opening move is to have Krile with her Masamune free first move cast Hastega, have Bartz self-buff with Flare Spellblade and Faris Dualcast Golem and Bahamut, and then it's Rapid Fire City. If Exdeath used any attack, I didn't see it and have no screenshot of it. Krile's missing HP was already missing when I started the battle, I think because of some equipment swap or something? That or I forgot to heal battle damage from a previous encounter. He just kind of implodes.
2+k damage a hit for eight hits is about 20k damage out of his 40k HP.
Whereupon Exdeath gets hoisted by his own petard, as he loses his control over the Void which immediately turns rampant and consumes him first, which is not exactly good news for us.
Exdeath wanted to master the Void, fusing himself with it in some weird tree-crystal symbiosis. Instead, the Void has fused with him, absorbing Exdeath and turning the both of them into a new being, a being of absolute nihilism, which declares: "All memories… dimensions… existence… All that is shall be returned to nothing. Then I, too, can disappear… Forever!!!"
Exdeath didn't want to destroy the world, I think. It's not clear because he never explains his motivations beyond "I want power because I want power," but I don't think he was lying to the rift demons - his goal was to destroy most of the (existing) world and then establish himself as ultimate lord of whatever horrible demon world he had created afterwards with his demonic minions.
Not anymore, though. This Neo Exdeath is no longer that being. It is an embodiment of the Void's intent to simply abolish all existence, ending with itself. And honestly?
I respect a villain with commitment.
Okay, now this is some proper fucking final boss design. Not sure where all the naked ladies are coming from, but this horrible mass of squirming flesh with many faces and mouths helmed by a horned demon form is sick as hell. Out of all final bosses so far (Chaos, the Emperor, the Cloud of Darkness, Zeromus), this is easily my favorite.
Mechanically, this is a massive step up as well. Neo Exdeath is finally using a trick that solves an issue of previous bosses: its body has four target markers, meaning his HP is split into four separate mechanical entities that have to each be destroyed to take down the whole monster; this reduces the impact of overwhelming single target attacks, as well as making multiple-target options more rewarding, so there's a reason to use Bahamut instead of Flare. Additionally, Rapid Fire's targeting is random, which means its total damage is spread out between each body part, so we can't focus down one body part at a time, somewhat blunting the overwhelming power of Rapid Fire combos. This is mechanically identical to Neo Exdeath just being four separate monsters as far as I can tell (each body section has its own turns and attacks), but it feels different thanks to the presentation.
And Neo Exdeath is no slouch in the offense department, either. It has access to Omega's Delta Attack, which is a damaging attack that causes Petrify and therefore a threat to Faris and Krile, who don't have a Ribbon because I am using the Gold Hairpin to maximize their HP instead.
Note the dynamic color-shifting background, which is sick as hell. Thankfully, Delta Attack does basically nothing to Bartz.
Much more dangerous, however, are Neo Exdeath's two strongest moves, Almagest and Grand Cross, both of which are actually significant threats to my party.
Almagest is a Holy-type attack causing massive, party-wide damage and inflicting Sap on the characters. Grand Cross is even more dangerous, causing massive damage to some characters and random status effects on all characters. Bartz paralyzed, Lenna and Faris down, and Krile being Mini'd is a very bad position to be in, even if Bartz and Krile have full health.
Fortunately, I have completed almost every sidequest in the game, and so I have friends to call upon.
Krile can Quick-cast up to two Arise, while Faris can Dualcast Phoenix for screen-wide damage and a full Arise on up to two characters. Neo Exdeath's multiple hitbox status is finally making the Summons ability pop up, after it spent most of the game very effective against mobs but relatively mediocre against bosses. Now Syldra, Bahamut and Phoenix are all getting their money's worth - and honestly I think Syldra might actually be doing nearly the same if not better damage than the Dragon King.
On top of that, my stockpile of Elixirs allows me to fully heal and regen MP on one character at basically anytime.
It's an exciting battle, and a fitting final boss battle, if nowhere near as hard as Omega. Neo Exdeath delivers a few scares, his pace of attack being fast and relentless, but with all my characters basically having double actions plus Haste (although that buff needs reapplying every time they're KO'd), and two characters having access to full-HP raises (Faris's Phoenix and Krile's Arise), plus Esuna to deal with the status effect, we are too strong for Neo Exdeath to take on.
Ultimate power.
One by one, each of Exdeath's body part is taken down, from the top down to the bottom, until the final blow is dealt.
That death animation is sick as hell, tbh.
It's done. Neo Exdeath has been defeated. The power of the Void has been vanquished. The world is saved.
What follows immediately after this battle is, at first, another of the scrolling text epilogues that have been here since the first game, without revealing the fate of the warriors of light.
I am absolutely not convinced by the awkward attempts to connect each emotion to an element. 'Passion for knowledge spread wisdom on the winds,' really?
Then, the screen reveals where our protagonists are - still in the Void, unconscious, without an obvious way out.
Once again (this is a scene that has been repeated many times before), Bartz is the first to wake up and to go around waking up the others, although this time he appears to be floating on a trail of light like the Dawn Warriors before.
Together, the four heroes fly around this endless expanse and pause to ponder: The Void is still here, why? Is it because the crystals are gone? Is the world still doomed to be swallowed by the Void?
As if in answer to their question, the shards of the crystals which they still carry with them take a life of their own, emerging and flying away while a voice over reiterates the link between elements and emotions.
Then, one by one, the crystals return to their places of origin - interestingly places they never were in during the game, as the worlds had split and the crystals been moved for use by the various nations of Bartz's world - it turns out the location of the four tablets was the original location of the crystals.
The Earth Crystal returns to the Pyramid of Moore, the Water Crystal to Istory Falls, the Fire Crystal to the Great Sea Trench, and the Wind Crystal… Well, we don't see that one yet.
At the same time, the places that had been swallowed by the Void are returned to the world, presumably with their people safe (seeing as the Phantom Town spent a thousand years there and people were just frozen in time).
Final Fantasy V, Part 29: Endgame, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The power of the crystals still lay within the shards, and now the heroes are watching the world being reborn from the Void, floating, like…
…are they ghosts? It feels like the game is trying to make me think that they might have actually died in the final confrontation with Neo Exdeath. Bartz says "it's because you took such good care of the shards," to which Lenna replies "You did a pretty good job yourself," which is a bit odd of an exchange as 'taking care' of the shards wasn't really something that was brought up in the story before. Just as Lenna muses that 'the wind will now return to Tycoon,' she is answered by another voice.
…okay, so it looks like the protagonists might have actually died, or at least been stranded within the Void, if not for the spirits of the old generation once again coming to help them - this time by, it seems, conjuring the nameless wind drake of Bal to carry them home.
As the screen cuts to black, on the reunion between the heroes and the drake, we finally see the Wind Crystal manifest in its old home in the Wind Shrine.
So.
How do you do an epilogue?
For Final Fantasy I, the answer was simply, 'you don't.' You throw a splash text page and you're done. For Final Fantasy II, we had a much more advanced but still rudimentary epilogue; the characters appear at Fynn's court, and the characters basically take turns stating their state of mind and plans for the future one by one before leaving the screen. Final Fantasy III goes a lot farther, having the characters go on an airship trip with their friends, dropping them where they need to go with some parting words, one by one. Final Fantasy IV did a combo of the two, first showing us where each of the characters went on their own journey, and then gathering them again for a grand sendoff at Cecil and Rosa's wedding - and this approach was probably the best, and is what FFV is going to stick with, with one addition: a framing device.
Krile sends Cid and Mid a letter, and as she describes the events that have unfolded since the final battle, which she describes as "feeling like it was just a bad dream," we see various shots of the heroes' lives now that the world is once again at peace, all of them cute as hell.
My immediate reaction to Faris being put in The Dress when she sits on the throne is to raise an eyebrow and ready to dock the game several points if they go with the hackneyed 'and the tomboy finally settled into her femininity and stopped threatening heteronormativity, and all was once again right in the world" but, thankfully, this is only a setup for the twist:
Faris goes to her room, and there she slips back into her pirate outfit and escapes through the window to join back with her pirate crew and return to her life of freedom on the seas (don't question the piracy thing, even though the pirates were initially introduced as dangerous and threatening the protagonists' lives, at this point we are firmly in the realm of 'pirates' being treated as fun sea-roaming rogues and not ruthless murderers and pillagers).
Krile says that 'everyone in Bal is worried, since they have no heir to the throne. Maybe I'll be queen! Yeah, in my dreams. But it would be pretty cool, though."
Which is a really weird comment considering that Lenna and Faris are over there in Tycoon ruling as queens, and Krile is Galuf's granddaughter. Sure, Krile is young, but that wouldn't mean she doesn't inherit, just that there is an initial period of regency until she comes of age, whereas she's strongly suggesting inheriting isn't in the cards at all.
There's only one possible conclusion: Bal is institutionally sexist and women cannot inherit the throne, something which Galuf never bothered to change even in his old age and knowing he had no heir. Which is a weird plot point to throw in there right at the end, but I guess in the most Gender FF so far it's appropriate to throw in a reminder that heteronormative patriarchy rules us all until we rise up and dismantle it forcefully!
I don't know what to make of the fact that chocobos are apparently canonically ovoviviparous.
Krile why are you doing the Kain Ending Pose. You are not a brooding loner!
Krile finishes her letter by saying that she will now return to her grandfather's resting place, and that if any of the others drop by, she'll be happy to meet them again.
Then we have something new to the series: a flashback montage of each character's Great Story Moments. As Cid says "Krile… You did an outstanding job… You all did…," sepia toned picture of each character's individual journey appear; although the specific choice of flashback moments might be a bit… odd.
The free moments highlight in Bartz's journey are standing up to Exdeath in Ghido's cave, facing Kelger's Lupine Attack and, weirdly enough, perving on a sleeping Faris back at the inn?
Lenna's highlighted moments are finding King Tycoon's helm, poisoning herself with Dragon Grass for Hiryu's sake, and that conversation where she reveals she knows Faris is her sister. Faris's are (sigh) being in The Dress back during the gala scene, watching Syldra drift away after spending her life force, and being found out as a girl by Galuf and Bartz, which is not the kind of scene I would deliberately highlight. Or choose to write, really. And finally, Krile's moments are finding her grandfather's pendant and inheriting his power, punching out Bartz that one time they went adventuring together, and saving everybody from the possessed King Tycoon.
As these flashbacks end, we fade in to Krile depositing flowers at the foot of the Guardian Tree, the closest approximation to a grave Galuf has, as his body vanished within the Guardian Tree not long before the worlds merged.
…yeah.
Krile is a tough cookie, but she's still a young girl whose only remaining family was Galuf, her grandfather. Now that he's gone, she has no family left, and the closest thing to it she had, her new friends, have scattered to tend to tend each to their own thing. Without them, she has no one.
At this point, Galuf gets his own sepia-toned flashback montage, going over that time the party left him behind in the Ronkan Ruins, saving them with the Wind Drake back at Castle Exdeath, and his final sacrifice against Exdeath.
And then, of course, the sad scene of Krile facing her own grief and loneliness gets the obvious payoff:
…were they… hiding in the tree to spy on her??? That's the only read I have of them dropping out of the branches like that! Not that Krile seems to mind; in fact she is overjoyed that her friends have made it. "As if there was any doubt," Bartz says, "Like we'd forget about a friend after everything we went through!" Krile is on the verge of tears at this point, but Lenna tells her "There's no need for tears, Krile. This is a time to be strong," which is kinda fucked up, I mean the world is saved and there is no urgent quest to save it required of you, if now's not the time to have a good cry I don't know when is. Faris adds "If Galuf were here, he'd have a good laugh at your blubbering, kiddo," which, on the other hand, fair, Galuf would absolutely do that.
And then, a light reaches down, and flowers bloom around the protagonists:
Here, a line of unmarked dialogue appears on the screen: "The crystals have regained their power. This time it's up to us to protect them." But who said that? Maybe all of them at once? It's not clear.
Lenna asks, "Do you hear that?" and Faris answers "Aye, I do." "Grandpa's voice?" Krile asks. "No," Bartz answer, "just the wind blowing through the trees." "Or the rippling of water?" Lenna adds. "Or the crackling of a fire?" Faris says. "Or the shifting of the earth?" Krile says. The sound of the elements returned to balance, which Lenna describes as "feeling warm, somehow."
And with these words, the four heroes raise a fist to the sky and launch onto their next adventure.
Boko's chicks and the wind drake are there to carry them, and what plays out in the closing scene is the best epilogue cinematic the series has had so far.
A scene of our heroes, free of having to risk their lives and face loss and tribulations to defend the world, riding freely across the plains, onwards to some new, untold destination, using high-detail custom sprites that exist exclusively for this scene, like some prototype of the pre-rendered cutscenes that would give later Final Fantasy title their claim to visual fame.
As the heroes leave the screen and the credits roll away, the final closing screen of each Pixel Remaster game appears, although this time it is actually followed by a neat little montage of each character doing a combat animation followed by a final summary of their capabilities in the endgame, their stats, their jobs mastered, and so on.
And with this, it's over. We've beaten Final Fantasy V.
…
I'm going to leave on that note for today, and come back tomorrow for a final "Conclusions" post summing up my thoughts on the game.
Thank you for reading.
…are they ghosts? It feels like the game is trying to make me think that they might have actually died in the final confrontation with Neo Exdeath. Bartz says "it's because you took such good care of the shards," to which Lenna replies "You did a pretty good job yourself," which is a bit odd of an exchange as 'taking care' of the shards wasn't really something that was brought up in the story before. Just as Lenna muses that 'the wind will now return to Tycoon,' she is answered by another voice.
…okay, so it looks like the protagonists might have actually died, or at least been stranded within the Void, if not for the spirits of the old generation once again coming to help them - this time by, it seems, conjuring the nameless wind drake of Bal to carry them home.
As the screen cuts to black, on the reunion between the heroes and the drake, we finally see the Wind Crystal manifest in its old home in the Wind Shrine.
So.
How do you do an epilogue?
For Final Fantasy I, the answer was simply, 'you don't.' You throw a splash text page and you're done. For Final Fantasy II, we had a much more advanced but still rudimentary epilogue; the characters appear at Fynn's court, and the characters basically take turns stating their state of mind and plans for the future one by one before leaving the screen. Final Fantasy III goes a lot farther, having the characters go on an airship trip with their friends, dropping them where they need to go with some parting words, one by one. Final Fantasy IV did a combo of the two, first showing us where each of the characters went on their own journey, and then gathering them again for a grand sendoff at Cecil and Rosa's wedding - and this approach was probably the best, and is what FFV is going to stick with, with one addition: a framing device.
Krile sends Cid and Mid a letter, and as she describes the events that have unfolded since the final battle, which she describes as "feeling like it was just a bad dream," we see various shots of the heroes' lives now that the world is once again at peace, all of them cute as hell.
My immediate reaction to Faris being put in The Dress when she sits on the throne is to raise an eyebrow and ready to dock the game several points if they go with the hackneyed 'and the tomboy finally settled into her femininity and stopped threatening heteronormativity, and all was once again right in the world" but, thankfully, this is only a setup for the twist:
Faris goes to her room, and there she slips back into her pirate outfit and escapes through the window to join back with her pirate crew and return to her life of freedom on the seas (don't question the piracy thing, even though the pirates were initially introduced as dangerous and threatening the protagonists' lives, at this point we are firmly in the realm of 'pirates' being treated as fun sea-roaming rogues and not ruthless murderers and pillagers).
Krile says that 'everyone in Bal is worried, since they have no heir to the throne. Maybe I'll be queen! Yeah, in my dreams. But it would be pretty cool, though."
Which is a really weird comment considering that Lenna and Faris are over there in Tycoon ruling as queens, and Krile is Galuf's granddaughter. Sure, Krile is young, but that wouldn't mean she doesn't inherit, just that there is an initial period of regency until she comes of age, whereas she's strongly suggesting inheriting isn't in the cards at all.
There's only one possible conclusion: Bal is institutionally sexist and women cannot inherit the throne, something which Galuf never bothered to change even in his old age and knowing he had no heir. Which is a weird plot point to throw in there right at the end, but I guess in the most Gender FF so far it's appropriate to throw in a reminder that heteronormative patriarchy rules us all until we rise up and dismantle it forcefully!
I don't know what to make of the fact that chocobos are apparently canonically ovoviviparous.
Krile why are you doing the Kain Ending Pose. You are not a brooding loner!
Krile finishes her letter by saying that she will now return to her grandfather's resting place, and that if any of the others drop by, she'll be happy to meet them again.
Then we have something new to the series: a flashback montage of each character's Great Story Moments. As Cid says "Krile… You did an outstanding job… You all did…," sepia toned picture of each character's individual journey appear; although the specific choice of flashback moments might be a bit… odd.
The free moments highlight in Bartz's journey are standing up to Exdeath in Ghido's cave, facing Kelger's Lupine Attack and, weirdly enough, perving on a sleeping Faris back at the inn?
Lenna's highlighted moments are finding King Tycoon's helm, poisoning herself with Dragon Grass for Hiryu's sake, and that conversation where she reveals she knows Faris is her sister. Faris's are (sigh) being in The Dress back during the gala scene, watching Syldra drift away after spending her life force, and being found out as a girl by Galuf and Bartz, which is not the kind of scene I would deliberately highlight. Or choose to write, really. And finally, Krile's moments are finding her grandfather's pendant and inheriting his power, punching out Bartz that one time they went adventuring together, and saving everybody from the possessed King Tycoon.
As these flashbacks end, we fade in to Krile depositing flowers at the foot of the Guardian Tree, the closest approximation to a grave Galuf has, as his body vanished within the Guardian Tree not long before the worlds merged.
…yeah.
Krile is a tough cookie, but she's still a young girl whose only remaining family was Galuf, her grandfather. Now that he's gone, she has no family left, and the closest thing to it she had, her new friends, have scattered to tend to tend each to their own thing. Without them, she has no one.
At this point, Galuf gets his own sepia-toned flashback montage, going over that time the party left him behind in the Ronkan Ruins, saving them with the Wind Drake back at Castle Exdeath, and his final sacrifice against Exdeath.
And then, of course, the sad scene of Krile facing her own grief and loneliness gets the obvious payoff:
…were they… hiding in the tree to spy on her??? That's the only read I have of them dropping out of the branches like that! Not that Krile seems to mind; in fact she is overjoyed that her friends have made it. "As if there was any doubt," Bartz says, "Like we'd forget about a friend after everything we went through!" Krile is on the verge of tears at this point, but Lenna tells her "There's no need for tears, Krile. This is a time to be strong," which is kinda fucked up, I mean the world is saved and there is no urgent quest to save it required of you, if now's not the time to have a good cry I don't know when is. Faris adds "If Galuf were here, he'd have a good laugh at your blubbering, kiddo," which, on the other hand, fair, Galuf would absolutely do that.
And then, a light reaches down, and flowers bloom around the protagonists:
Here, a line of unmarked dialogue appears on the screen: "The crystals have regained their power. This time it's up to us to protect them." But who said that? Maybe all of them at once? It's not clear.
Lenna asks, "Do you hear that?" and Faris answers "Aye, I do." "Grandpa's voice?" Krile asks. "No," Bartz answer, "just the wind blowing through the trees." "Or the rippling of water?" Lenna adds. "Or the crackling of a fire?" Faris says. "Or the shifting of the earth?" Krile says. The sound of the elements returned to balance, which Lenna describes as "feeling warm, somehow."
And with these words, the four heroes raise a fist to the sky and launch onto their next adventure.
Boko's chicks and the wind drake are there to carry them, and what plays out in the closing scene is the best epilogue cinematic the series has had so far.
A scene of our heroes, free of having to risk their lives and face loss and tribulations to defend the world, riding freely across the plains, onwards to some new, untold destination, using high-detail custom sprites that exist exclusively for this scene, like some prototype of the pre-rendered cutscenes that would give later Final Fantasy title their claim to visual fame.
As the heroes leave the screen and the credits roll away, the final closing screen of each Pixel Remaster game appears, although this time it is actually followed by a neat little montage of each character doing a combat animation followed by a final summary of their capabilities in the endgame, their stats, their jobs mastered, and so on.
And with this, it's over. We've beaten Final Fantasy V.
…
I'm going to leave on that note for today, and come back tomorrow for a final "Conclusions" post summing up my thoughts on the game.
Thank you for reading.
Mister Bad Guy
Mr Mercury to friends
- Location
- Bay Area
There's only one time in this thread where I would get to post this video, and it might as well be here.
View: https://youtube.com/shorts/qgrQYzJBJ6Q?feature=share
uh... don't all birds lay eggs? chocobos are basically giant yellow chickens, y'know.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fun fact: if a character was KO'd when you finished the final battle, they would be unable to escape the Void and would not get their "what they did in the year since" epilogue segment, only escaping/being revived at the Guardian Tree scene, being dead to the world for the interim year, with associated variations in who stands at the mountain looking into the distance and who narrates.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
"Ovoviviparous," as opposed to "oviparous," as in the chocobo mother's eggs remains within her body until incubation, and hatches immediatetely upon coming out. It's a feature that, for instance, some snakes have, but which to my knowledge is not the case of any bird species.
Always gotta love a good "title theme drops" moment in video games. It's just a nice heroic motif a lot of the time, gives that feeling of "fuck yeah you can do this".
As always, Rapid Fire and Dualcast are kind of... obscenely good at snapping FFV in half, including the first phase of the final boss.
So when do we get the sidequest to dethrone Bahamut for Syldra, anyways? She's made it damn clear that she'd make a better ruler of dragons. Actively helps out the party, better summon despite being a level 4 summon instead of level 5...
#SyldraForDragonQueen #DownWithThePatriarchy
So yeah, as mentioned by Zap? If any of your party members are down at the end of the final battle, then they'll just sort of... get left behind in the void, unable to escape, and this actually directly effects the ending since they aren't around. Though then at the "visiting Galuf's grave" scene, the Dawn Warriors pop in to go "not your time yet get up brah" and revive them, so still a happy ending. Just a bit of a bittersweet tinge leading up to it.
It really is a strange bit of lore, honestly? Like Galuf reveals he's a king in world 2 and that Krile is his granddaughter, there's one or two bits of dialogue acknowledging that Krile's parents/Galuf's kids and presumably heirs are dead... and they just kinda don't seem to connect the thread of "Krile is royalty and heir to Bal?"
Looking at this makes me feel like it's a nice precursor/first try to what's to come soon with FF6 and its intro. But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it in... Presumably the next week at max? However fast you decide to move on to one of the most highly rated games in the series. Going to be a blast, I can't wait.
- Location
- Sweden
...a thought occurs. Do we know that one of Krile's parents was in fact Galuf's kid? What if the reason her becoming the queen of Bal is uncertain is because she's not related to Galuf, she got adopted by him after her parents died?
- Location
- Portugal
Well done, that's another one down! This was fun, but story-wise I guess it is less dramatically focused than IV - on the other hand the connections between the characters seem more evenly explored overall, despite any caveats (and the heroic sacrifice moments don't feel uh, as weird, pfft). I think the endgame mechanical heft in this one would have annoyed me, even though as described in the LP, I can definitely see a lot of satisfaction in putting everything together.
It occurs to me only now, after this commentary on the role the spirits of the dead play, how... the only anime/manga I've consumed from the last decade or so that I can remember making use of departed characters in a helpful and sometimes very direct role in aiding the protagonists or holding back the antagonists, but never offering any explanation for itself or needing to justify it, has been like, Demon Slayer?
I feel like that used to be more common in storytelling, but I am at a loss to bring up more examples aside from several of these early Final Fantasy games.
It occurs to me only now, after this commentary on the role the spirits of the dead play, how... the only anime/manga I've consumed from the last decade or so that I can remember making use of departed characters in a helpful and sometimes very direct role in aiding the protagonists or holding back the antagonists, but never offering any explanation for itself or needing to justify it, has been like, Demon Slayer?
I feel like that used to be more common in storytelling, but I am at a loss to bring up more examples aside from several of these early Final Fantasy games.
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
That was really good! Having never really played the pre-VII FFs, I always thought of V as "the one that's not IV or VI," kind of an afterthought compared to two games everyone seemed to love. But this was really cool! Thanks as always for doing this, Omicron.
I'm excited for FF6, a game I know almost nothing about except a couple choice memes.
I'm excited for FF6, a game I know almost nothing about except a couple choice memes.