And then, there's this bit that's genuinely touching:
The ghosts of the four departed friends appear for a moment, without a word, as if to tell us that they have found peace and thank us for our deeds, and our three heroes head out into the world. What adventures await them? Who knows. The future is open-ended.
Soul of Rebirth provides even more context to this scene, by way of the reveal that Scott, Josef, Minwu, and Ricard were doing their own business in the afterlife and ultimately killed that aforementioned light half of the Emperor. Because of this, the same epilogue plays at the end of both campaigns, just from differing perspectives.
Anyway the real important takeway from all this is that Dissidia adapted FF2's proficiency-based advancement system by straight-up turning Firion into Archer Fatestaynight magically wielding every weapon type in the game at once and that makes him pretty cool.
Haste, ultimately, is what seals it. Berserk is nice and all, but Firion's base damage is garbage wielding the Blood Sword and Leon is already dead, so it only really matters for Guy, whom I need to cast healing spells. On the other hand, Haste increases the number of individual hits in Firion's attacks. And each hit drains 1/16th of the Emperor's total health.
That would have made him susceptible to healing magic, which is way worse, because that's the spell that is most leveled by default.
I'm a bit surprised that the Blood Sword was the weapon of choice instead of Excalibur or the Masamune; they're both stronger. I get the sense maybe @Omicron failed to find either, since otherwise it seems like they'd have earned at least a mention.
That would have made him susceptible to healing magic, which is way worse, because that's the spell that is most leveled by default.
I'm a bit surprised that the Blood Sword was the weapon of choice instead of Excalibur or the Masamune; they're both stronger. I get the sense maybe @Omicron failed to find either, since otherwise it seems like they'd have earned at least a mention.
You can get Excalibur from the dragoon lady and you can find the Masamune in a Pandaemonium box, but the Blood Sword's life steal ability just straight up outclasses both of them. One of the more hilarious ways to defeat the Emperor is in the PS1 version, where you can actually obtain a pair of blood swords, hand both to Leon, haste him up and watch him lawnmower through his ex-boss.
I've been genuinely surprised by just how much story they managed to get out of II. It was rudimentary and mostly incredibly obvious but it was there and it was obviously planned out. You can see the seeds for a lot of future FF games being laid down in II and it's legitimately fascinating to see.
It's kind of like seeing the missing link in the fossil record.
Not really. The Blood Sword is a perfectly fine choice of final weapon, don't get me wrong, but an Excalibur + Masamune attacker will deal twice as much damage, meaning the battle goes twice as fast. It's a tradeoff of durability for offense.
Not really. The Blood Sword is a perfectly fine choice of final weapon, don't get me wrong, but an Excalibur + Masamune attacker will deal twice as much damage, meaning the battle goes twice as fast. It's a tradeoff of durability for offense.
"The Massamune which have 170+ Attack Power doesn't even do 1000 damage while the Bloodsword with only 24 Attack Power does 9999. "
FF2 blood sword's version of lifesteal is straight up broken.
EDIT: here's a clip from a PS1 LP showing what happens with a non-blood sword fight with the Emperor, vs what happens when you dual-wield them (at 4:55)
Remember, the Hell Emperor has more defense than 'physically immune' enemies like Slimes whereas the Blood Sword does % damage. Hardly surprising to see it be the more effective option.
Now that you've beaten the game, and you're probably not going to beat a different version of the game just to check the dungeon out, you should really watch the ending of the Soul of Rebirth from the other FF2 rereleases: View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vnix0MKlTc
I have watched it! It's really good and I like it a lot, although it felt a bit outside the scope of my Let's Play commentary. But I did watch it, and it's a really neat addition and bit of closure. Very touching.
As for the Emperor, I am especially fond of how he asks for forgiveness from those he's hurt... And then as soon as that forgiveness is not forthcoming within thirty seconds of asking for it, declares the inability to forgive an indelible human sin that marks their inferiority.
One, out of all the party members, Leila was also my favorite, and that's in large part because I very much appreciated her high level Thunder during the Tropical Island dungeon against those stupid Hill Gigas that caused me so much trouble... But also cuz she's just cool.
Two, I was VERY disappointed on not being able to control a dragon as a ride. XD I was also disappointed about the tournament just amounting to "fight Behemoth".
Three, I unintentionally made Maria and Leon counterparts in gameplay. I made Maria learn a lot of White magic, including Holy, and gave Leon Black magic and Flare, because he had the 2nd highest Intelligence and such so I thought I'd give it to him.
Four, I laughed so hard when the Emperor revealed what he did after Leon took over. Because even if he isn't the deepest character in the world, I couldn't help but find it hilarious and give my respect to the fact that instead of just staying dead in Hell, he just straight up took over. XD idk it just had me in stitches.
Five, I also ended up two shoting the final boss too, also thanks to Blood Sword + Haste + Berserk. And Leon also barely did anything.
Six...I just realized that the FF's I haven't played before VII are all odd numbers. Welp. Either way, looking forward to seeing III.
At least it isn't like...what is it? Celtic mythology? Irish? Bah, I need to double check... Either, one of those mythologies where when you die on "Earth", you go to the Underworld, and when you die in the Underworld, you...go back to Earth, and so on, and so on, and so on. Because if it did work that way, the fight with the Emperor would also be never-ending.
So, since you didn't actually abuse the glitch (If it even exists in the Pixel Remaster), I'd like to demonstrate for you the... Demonstration of it, as it's put together quite nicely. You can read the full LP at Final Fantasy II . That being said, here's the relevant part.
It's not Easy Being Green said:
Or not using, as the case may be (this is an unarmed attack from Marty, after three Berserk 5s from Guido.) If all else fails you can just use the Yoichi Bow over and over again for its free Berserk 3, but it will take a long time to stack enough power to get anywhere since the bow's effect is spread over the whole party.
At this point Marty is perfectly capable of punching the Emperor to death, despite her complete lack of unarmed combat skill. But I came here to make toads and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of gum.
We've already established that Guido's super-effective Toad spell simply gets absorbed outright by the Emperor. However, Lenny also knows Toad, albeit at a vastly weaker level and without the stats to support it.
Normally this would be completely useless even in the best of circumstances. However, I hypothesize that if Lenny was to join forces with Fry, their combined lack of usefulness will combine to create a force so useless that it will effectively "wrap around" and become the most useful thing in the universe.
: "It's just crazy enough to work!"
: "Whatever. Hurry up and fail so I can finish this asshole off, it's been a while since you jerks let me actually win a boss fight."
: "Concentrate, Fry. You've got to suck harder than you've ever sucked before. What's the most useless thing you can possibly do?"
: "Yeah, that should do it. Here goes nothing!"
The following animation is brought to you in EPIC LARGE-O-VISION:
: "WHAT."
How indeed?!
Okay, I can't even begin to take credit for this one--I didn't even know this was possible until a couple of weeks ago. I was searching for some obscure FFII fact or another on GameFAQs and happened to find a thread on the message board detailing several bugs, including this one which I've never seen mentioned anywhere before.
So here's what just happened. When you successfully cast the Wall spell on someone, it automatically blocks offensive spells of equal or lower level. Unlike some of the spells in this version, Wall functions perfectly well; it's just that by its nature it tends to be useless, so I haven't actually used it before now (other than just training it up for the hell of it.) Enemy spells start out around level 4-5 (well before you'd have access to Wall unless you sneak off to Mysidia really early) and scale up to the point where by the end of the game you will almost never see an enemy spell lower than level 9-10, and level 16 spells are really common. So in order to get any benefit whatsoever from it you have to grind it to a level far above any level you would ever actually reach in regular gameplay even if you were casting Wall in every single fight.
Here's the catch: normally if a spell fails due to enemy magic resistance or inadequate level/stats, it just does nothing and prints "Ineffective." When a spell is blocked by a wall effect, though, it displays the spell's full animation. So, Fry casts Wall 4. It's a beneficial spell, so the Emperor doesn't roll magic defense against it. Lenny casts Toad 1, which is blocked by Wall (hence the "Failed" message), triggering the Toad spell animation... which includes the target monster dying, turning into a toad, and disappearing from the battle forever.
The switch from XP-and-levels in FF1 to a raise-skills-by-use system FF2 reflects a hot topic argument that was ongoing in the tabletop RPG space at the time, of how to best represent progression and character growth. FF1 takes the very conventional approach that basically all computer RPGs did and just copied D&D or other games copying D&D.
D&D is not the most popular tabletop RPG in Japan. It's not even the most popular fantasy tabletop RPG in Japan! The most popular tabletop RPG in Japan by far is the one and only Call of Cthulhu, a game so popular it sells more copies in Japan than in the rest of the world combined. Call of Cthulhu uses a system where skills are raised by using them.
So I suspect that a raise-skills-by-use system would feel very familiar to Japanese designers at the time. It's not what most cRPGs use, but it's an element of design that would be very available and obvious, there for the taking, as Final Fantasy tries to be more than just D&D.
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Still no.
I imagine this dashing fellow with the two sword is our main protagonist? FFI's logo showed the Warrior of Light but FFII showed the Emperor, so it's a toss-up.
Let's take a brief look at the gallery…
Nice. And yeah, definitely a protagonist.
Look at this amazing fucked-up pseudo-horse. Its claws, its mouth… Truly a steed of terror. I wonder if we'll be getting it instead of the chocobo this time around.
The character naming screen is interesting. Once again, we're getting four characters and we're not picking their class, but this time they all start out looking identical:
Characters without default names don't scream 'individuality' at me, so I decide to resort to the same naming scheme as FFI - namely, pulling from FFXIV, only this time instead of NPCs I will pick the name of my Warrior of Light and a few friends':
And without further ado, the game plays its intro scene!
An extremely confusing first sentence to read.
It looks like we're returning to a basic set-up close to that of FFI: the world has four crystals that are vital to its proper functioning, they've been lost to some kind of disaster, and a great darkness is coming if this is not fixed, but four youths have been chosen. Unlike FFI, however, these are not characters without history or origin, but four orphans being raised in a village - far from heroes yet, simple kids.
And notably they actually do have dialogue! They even get into fights! Interestingly though, that dialogue has no character markers - any of these lines could be spoken by any of these characters, so in that way they're not assigned a personality beyond that which you're projecting onto them. It's an… interesting middle-ground between FFI and FFII, though given how little character the FFII party had that still seems like a step back lmao. I'm curious where this is going.
Also another middle ground - instead of dropping you into the Overworld with no direction or starting off with a dramatic forced loss, instead the game starts off in its first dungeon.
It's mostly populated by goblins, which four… children? Teenagers? "Youths" is such an ambiguous word. Four kids armed with knives are apparently capable of taking on, so not too much danger here:
It does still, understandably, scares the shit out of them.
Right now, the characters all share the same class - they are 'Onion Knights,' and can't do anything other than use Attack and Item.
So right now, our characters are largely indistinct, with identical stats and abilities. We're back to D&D-style leveling - you get XP at the end of each fight, enough XP causes you to level up, and level-ups increase your stats in a way that is based on your job. However, there's a second number - we have a job level that is separate from our character level. So, for instance, a character can be lv 5 and Onion Knight lv 3, and I'm not sure what that means in practice, because job level don't directly impact my stats.
This cave doubles as both a kind of tutorial area and our first class unlock. For instance, it teaches you about interactable items:
And about a new feature, healing springs:
This is a much nicer introduction to the game, the characters and the mechanics than either of the other games so far.
Although I have to mention -
What the fuck is that 'Carbuncle.' That's not what Carbuncle looks like. Carbuncle is a delightful little bunny-squirrel with a gemstone on its forehead. What the fuck.
This is so wrong.
At the end of the cave, we find a crystal room, and are attacked by a hostile force!
The land turtle is a typical first game boss, having a beefy defense stat and a threatening attack and nothing else. Luckily, earlier in the dungeon we received two 'Antarctic Wind' items, which are single-use items that cast Blizzard, and I remember from FFII that turtles are weak to cold. Using both items shortens the battle significantly, a nice bit of basic strategizing and actually using those consumables I never used in FFI and FFII.
That's really interesting.
The Warriors of Light from FFI were crystal-bearers, but it wasn't clear if the crystals were the source of their power, or if the sole purpose of filling them with lights was to power-up the time-travel spell that would end the Chaos loop. In FFII, our characters were just people with their own skills, who started out as weak teenagers and slowly grew into power with no further explanation than their resolve and the trials they passed. But here, we start out with a band of simple youths with no special talent frightened of goblins, and they are chosen by the Light and receive the direct power of the crystal, which allows them to ascend to greater power and specialize in classes with actual abilities.
The first job unlock basically just opens up the FFI party roster minus Thief. The only one of these classes Mimi plays is Red Mage; Rushanaq and Tsugumi are both White Mage mains, but I don't want to double up, so I'm gonna ask Rushanaq to go stand in some ley lines for a while, and Quaver has every job in the game to max level so it's a freebie.
You might recognize this as our FFI party with Monk swapped in for Warrior.
Once empowered by the crystal, we return to our hometown, the village of Ur.
Wrong Ur.
The disappointing reality: not even a single ziggurat.
Ur is a massive step up from FFI and a slight but noticeable improvement from FFII, though, in terms of ambient NPCs you can talk to. FFI had like, a handful per town, FFI a bit more, but here not only are the streets full of NPCs, but we've also got entire buildings whose sole purpose is to have people to talk to inside:
This girl is a dancer and, when prompted, she does a whole dance routine using nothing more than her normal positional sprites, which is the clearly the devs showing off and really impressive in an NES context - less so in Pixel Remaster.
For the first time as well, the inns aren't purely mechanical resting spots, but actual living places with people in them, and even other customers!
The inn owners even act like they know us personally (as they do) and offer us to rest free of charge after all the trouble we went through, which is a really nice crutch to help with early game combat and leveling.
We even have our first 'sidequest' of sorts, in which a character tells us where we can find a Cure spell, sending us to a small shack at the back of town but look out! The path has monsters on it! Which is, I believe, the first time in the series where a single screen has monster encounters in one corner of it but not anywhere else and friendly NPCs elsewhere.
I teach the Cure spell to Tsugumi, which is a huge help because while Ur does have a magic shop, it, uh, only sells Poisona (a spell that cures poison). Which is… a bit disappointing, as this means Rushanaq can't actually learn black magic spells and is stuck ineffectually stabbing at people with knives for the coming hour of gameplay.
We are invited into the home of Elder Topapa, the village elder who raised the four orphans:
This is the first time the game has featured parental figures with a direct connection to the characters and who care about them from the start, which is a really nice addition.
Incidentally my sprite in those screenshots is Monk because I had second thoughts and decided I probably needed more muscle power, so I turned Mimi into a monk, since you can basically swap jobs whenever.
With Topapa's blessing, we head out on our journey. Talking to everyone in town gives us some ideas where to go - there is a town called Kazus to the south that has been overrun with monsters, and King Sasune, the ruler of this land, dwells in a castle to the west. We head out into the overworld, I open the map, and…
Huh.
In both games so far, the earth has been round. If you go to the 'edge' of the map in FFI or FFII, you just loop around to the other side seamlessly. Here, though, we appear to be on some kind of… flat earth, floating not in space, but in an infinite sky?
That's very new. Also, at the same time, this map feels… smaller than either one we've had before? I wonder if this is only the first of several, or if the game just increased the density of its world.
We head south, to the township of Kazus.
As I explore the overworld, something really strikes me - there were standout music pieces in both prior games, but here, the simple overworld theme and default map are both incredibly good:
In both games so far, the earth has been round. If you go to the 'edge' of the map in FFI or FFII, you just loop around to the other side seamlessly. Here, though, we appear to be on some kind of… flat earth, floating not in space, but in an infinite sky?
: "It's just crazy enough to work!"
: "Whatever. Hurry up and fail so I can finish this asshole off, it's been a while since you jerks let me actually win a boss fight."
: "Concentrate, Fry. You've got to suck harder than you've ever sucked before. What's the most useless thing you can possibly do?"
: "Yeah, that should do it. Here goes nothing!"
