Fun fact on Umaro. You may notice that his name sounds less localized and more transliterated than everybody else.
As the wiki theorizes, his name is most likely an edited portmanteau of the common name suffix -maru and the acronym UMA, or Unidentified Mysterious Animal. The latter being what Japan calls what we refer to as cryptids.
So, chances are Umaro is transliterated rather than localized because the nearest equivalent in English would be something along the lines of "Cryptidbert", which... doesn't flow as well.
Alright, I have to ask, when you got Mog, did you find a relic called Mololu's Charm? If you didn't go back and get it ASAP.
There is a Monster in a Box in Yeti's cave I think you should check out. Considering the monster in it, I will be very surprised if you got it and didn't mention it to us.
Umaro... Is the worst Party member in the game. You can't control him, he can't cast magic, and you can't put Magicite on him, so those stats are all you are going to get.
However, Umaro has a very valuable niche in the game. I think you will know what it is when the time comes.
IIRC, he's the best character to use at the Dragon's Neck Coloseum, because he already has an auto berserk status + OP attacks. It's the same reason why he's a hard counter to the Cultist's tower, he just ignores the no-melee restriction.
The Yeti's Cave is a very simple dungeon. There are weak floors. If you step on them, you fall to the lower level and have to climb back up. In order to reach the end of the cave, you have to find the right spot through which to fall to a spot you can't reach normally, then walk on these catwalks until the next drop that takes us to the yeti's lair.
Out of curiosity, did you find a chest with a monster in a box encounter in this dungeon? Because for that specific encounter, said enemy has only a percent chance to drop one of the best armor sets in the game for Terra and Celes, the Minerva Bustier, so figured it was relevant to mention.
Okay, so I came here looking for Mog, and clearly this was completely the wrong direction. It turns out I forgot about the hidden door at the bottom of Narshe that leads into the caves that lead into the Moogle home that aren't accessible from the other circuit of caves. And I won't lie to you, I had to briefly look it up, which is how I knew to also leave Narshe so I can take a party member out and have a free slot - then we head for the Moogle home.
And for another bit of dope loot, be sure to carefully look around the room where you found Mog for hidden items. There's an accessory I think you'll quite like, considering your reaction to a similar one earlier in the game.
The obvious answer is "they're dead," because there was an apocalypse, but Mog seems… strangely unbothered by this. Like, there's the appearance there of a very strong, sad narrative beat - Mog is the only surviving moogle, alone in the mines of Narshe where his friends used to be, with only monsters outside and with no one to play, separated from his last friend, the Yeti, by the length of the mines and all the beasts within.
But the game doesn't actually seem to be too concerned by this beat actually landing, because Mog is upbeat and when we go back to the Yeti it plays as a comedy beat.
I am moderately certain that it's supposed to be straight up "Moogles got Kupo'd and are no more", but at the same time the game really doesn't dwell on it, and for all that he's a talking Moogle, Mog just doesn't have anything to say about it. Really, outside of his recruitment scenes in both the WoB and WoR, he never has anything to say, which feels like kind of a waste.
Oh my god he is, we just got a new party member at the 11th hour?? His name is Umaro, and it's actually capable of rudimentary speech (frankly he's not worse of a conversationalist than Gau, I should have taken him along for this). I was kinda floored by this and haven't tried him out yet, but from a quick look online he's the epitome of an optional extra character - his gimmick is that he has very strong base stats, unremovable equipment, and is Berserk, so all he do is attack every turn. Tactically, he's pretty much there to fill a gap in your party comp if we have one when making multi-parties.
Still, wild that they just throw another PC at us like that.
Yyyyyup, one more playable character for the team. Umaro is very... traditional Berserker, where Gau and Mog have skills that leave them as sort of hybrid Berserkers and Blue Mages/Geomancers. He's also the reason I've never called Sabin "the highest base strength character in the game", because sadly even his mass of muscle is outclassed by a Yeti (at base, anyways).
Hm, what was it you said shortly before this, Omi? Quake and stuff is pretty eh?
I mean you have Ultima now so you aren't really wrong, but Quake is one of the best AoE spells otherwise if you plan around it with Float or Earth damage absorbing equipment.
In Japanese, these characters are called Sogno, Rêve and Sueno, "dream" in Italian, French and Spanish, respectively; the Three Stooges reference was an invention of the original SNES localization in which they were called Larry, Curley and Moe, and then the later localization went with fantasified takes on these names to make the joke less obvious. As a French millennial, this completely flew over my head - I don't think I've ever seen a single Three Stooges skit.
It looks like the group has been scattered all across this weird place, and we start off with only Celes (how the game decides which party we're given, I don't know), thankfully next to a full heal bucket. We need to explore the twisty, broken space around us in order to gather our friends.
So our first fight is a wipe. On my next attempt, I use my one and only Jeweled Ring to make at least one character immune to petrification, and then I just… Settle for the longest fight of my life.
I think it's right about here that I realized... Omi, you don't have any Ribbons, do you? At first I was thinking "why not" but then I realized of the three I have, two were from savescumming steals on Ultima Weapon and leaving a specific chest for the World of Ruin, which... obviously you didn't do in a blind-ish playthrough. And the third was hidden away in the Phoenix Cave, so either you missed it, or forgot about it.
Ah, I see we're going with Ragnarok the Esper over Ragnarok the Sword, definitively.
Though again, it's probably the stronger, easier choice overall because the other method of learning Ultima is a tad more tedious, and the spell can be learned on everyone instead of only on person getting to wield the sword.
I gotta say that while I get that within the context of the game, Magitek is bad, both in the sense of being the weapon of the evil empire and in being unethically source from esper suffering, I'm kinda sad that in the game which introduced Magitek and made it such a prominent feature of its plot and in which we have two characters literally called Magitek Knight/Elite, the closest we get to a character actually using Magitek is Edgar's Tools (which aren't actually Magitek but fill the niche of being advanced quirky tools that do cool effects). I'd like a chance to have Magitek-using characters - maybe in another game.
Not gonna lie, a Magitek party member who was like... a straight up cyborg or robot showing the other side of Imperial Magitek design would be pretty dope.
Man, toxic masculinity's a real bummer, isn't it? Cyan's warrior ideal is one that can't even say "I love you" to his wife, with whom he has a child - he has to actually break his own ethos to speak his feelings sincerely.
And it's everything about Cyan. This scene, some twenty hours after we meet him, finally brings into clarity some key aspects of Cyan's characterization that were never explicit before, which really highlights his pain.
This is a man who always struggled to embrace his feelings, even with his closest loved ones. He couldn't just go fishing with his son; he had to somehow justify that time spent with him as another kind of training. He could only tell his son he was proud of him through the medium of telling him he was getting good at fencing. He had to be made to tell his wife I loved her against his own embarrassment. And I'm not, like, criticizing him - he's not emotionally absent, he just really struggles to be earnest, to be sincere about his feelings, he has to mediate it through his position as a warrior, through sword practice.
And then they died. The swordsmanship he was teaching his son proved totally useless to protect him against deadly poison. He never got to tell them he loved them again. No wonder this loss haunts him, and no longer he's not emotionally equipped to deal with it. This man's not a well-forged sword - he may be hard and sharp, but he's brittle.
Said before, saying yet again: What characterization Cyan does get, tends to be very strong. I'd go so far as to say he's in the top three best written characters in the game for some of this, up there with Terra and Celes, which is saying something considering they've got the most main character focus in the game.
"His anger and his hate." Huh. Funny that it should mention these two specifically, since the game has kind of stayed away from strongly associating "anger" and "hate" with Cyan, hasn't it? Mostly it's focused on "sorrow."
Ultima is the ultimate magic, and completely ignores Reflect. Wrexsoul gets to pull off his possession trick exactly twice before being annihilated with superior firepower.
And oh hey, character analysis, haven't done one of these in a while!
Umaro! He's big, he's stronk, he's berserk, he hits things real hard with a club!
That's it that's the character. Honestly, if Umaro joined sooner in the game, he might get some actual use... but in the World of Ruin, he's pretty much a filler guy who at best you'll stick in an endgame party because you don't want to be bothered training up someone like Gau or Relm who needs a bit of effort to bring them up to par. He can't change equipment, he can't get Magicite Bonuses... Umaro is commonly considered one of the worst characters in the game, up there with Cyan. And unlike Cyan, he didn't get a buff in the form of the new mechanics for Bushido.
My assumption is they're referring to the arena. When you do arena matches, you don't get to control whoever you enter, so there's every chance they dick around casting completely random magic spells and get wiped for it. Meanwhile, Umaro's entire skill set is "just beat the shit out of that guy over there" so he'll pretty reliably just use the attack command over and over.
Though, there is one other character who might be better for it.
Yeah, I think I like the Magus Sisters better as well. The Stooges don't have a bad presentation, but they're... pretty irrelevant despite that, and the fight is annoying.
Glad you got Elaine and Owain being Cyan's memories (you'd be surprised how many people I've seen who don't), but your tangent on Wrexsoul and Alexander is ✌️
And all the more fitting when you remember that Alexander means "defender".
re Umaro's niche: There's the "I'll beat a motherfucker with another motherfucker" thing. The hilarity for me more than justifies him getting a spot in the cast.
Anyway, I like Umaro, in concept if nothing else. A secret character that's basically a wookiee who roars and hits things and only talks to the lazy sky rat respectable dragoon is pretty funny and creative.
So that the original thread doesn't end up one long series of boxes and black bars~ Completed: FFI to VIII Current: Tactics Omi has already played (to some extent): FFIX (vaguely remembers), FFXIV Please do not directly quote Omicron in this thread, though quoting in a way that doesn't ping...
"Your boyfriend," he writes, "whom you believe to be in Mobliz, passed away some time ago. I have been writing to you in his stead. We humans have a tendency to become trapped in the past and refuse to move on.I implore you not to let this happen. Now is a time for you to look forward, and rediscover love and all the other joys of life."
Then he explains what happened - that he had been wondering what had become of the girl in Maranda and gave her a visit, and when he did he learned that she'd long stopped receiving new letters, but still sent one every day. Unable to bear watching her sending these letters day after day knowing she'd never get an answer, he started his little act - but as he was writing, realized that he was like her, unable to let go, refusing to move on. His decision to send her a letter coming clean was simultaneously a decision for himself to stop living in the past and look to the future, and he's ready to join us in fighting Kefka.
There's probably a lot more to be said about Cyan's behavior there in light of what we just learned, but I'm not insightful/articulate enough to say it.
With that out of the way...The very last piece of advice I have is to go wander around Triangle Island until a Certain Enemy shows up and Does a Certain Thing. If you need directions, Triangle Island is the island shaped like a triangle.
I'll give it this at least, Omi is a lot more lenient with spoilers than some similar threads are, in that as long as we at least put it in spoiler blocks at most we get a jab or two for filling half a page of posts with nothing but said spoiler blocks.
On the other hand, I do occasionally wish it was enforced a bit better because it eventually leads to people just flat out openly going "YEAH SO OMI MAKE SURE YOU GET SPECIFIC ITEM CALLED THIS IN NEXT AREA YOU'LL VISIT, IT LETS YOU DO SPECIFIC THING I WILL NOW FULLY DETAIL" and it's like... come on, is it that hard to wait for him to bring it up himself? Or at least wait until he's gone through said area with the item and ask "did you find any kind of cool thing here, or do you need to re-search?" without actually naming said item and its effects. And it's often repeat offenders, so a few temporary threadbans or bonks of some kind might hopefully calm it down. Heck, I'll take my lumps for crossing the line if Omi thinks I did at some point too.
Hopefully now Cyan can actually take his own advice and fulfill his resolution from two updates ago.
There's probably a lot more to be said about Cyan's behavior there in light of what we just learned, but I'm not insightful/articulate enough to say it.
I'm pretty sure her dialogue changes once you've recruited Cyan if you go back and talk to her, so I guess the letter he sent before joining the party is supposed to be the same one/a different draft of the one you read on the desk.
Though yes, there's still plenty to still be said about Cyan deciding to live in the mountains writing romantic letters and sending paper flowers to a woman half his age to fill the empty hole in his heart left by the end of everything he's ever loved and fought for.
I remember playing the SNES version, but that was a long time ago, but the old man who thought Sabin and Cyan were there to fix a clock when the first arrived to the Veldt, is he still around in the World of Ruin?
They each yell 'Bon appetit!' and, one by one, leap into Cyan, disappearing into his soul/dreams. The party frontman yells 'wait!' and immediately jumps after them, inexplicably managing to follow in the wake of their dream traveling
The last dream-eater finished disappearing into Cyan's sleeping form just before Locke could reach him. "Wait!" he yelled, jumping after them.
Five minutes later, once Celes and Terra finished disentangling Locke and the still-sleeping Cyan from the jumble of limbs and bedding they had become after rolling off the bed, Celes couldn't keep it in any more. "What did you think that was going to accomplish, exactly?"
This place is the Yeti's Cave. I don't know if I mentioned the Yeti before, but it was brought by Narshe's townsfolks back in the World of Balance; basically there's a yeti in the caves of the mountain, and it's been seen playing with moogles, but doesn't show itself to humans. It can actually be seen peeking out of the caves long before this part of the game, but there's no way to reach it until now.
Umaro's Theme had most of its improvements in the form of an added section from ~0:45-1:15 serving as a much more elaborate loop transition than existed in the SNES version.
Mog joins the group, and, deciding here and there that I am not bothering with another goddamned Magic Training Session, I tag him with my most powerful spear, the Dragoon Boots (grants Jump) and the Dragon Horn (which turns the Attack command into the Jump command and makes every Jump a multi-hit attack, vastly increasing damage).
The Dream Stooges are a new iteration on the Magus Sisters from FFIV, only, like, ten times more annoying. They cast Reflect on themselves, then play spell volleyball to cast tier 3 spells at us while forcing us to play spell volleyball in return. On its own, that wouldn't be too egregious. But also, they cover for each other - their White Wind spell heals all three Stooges by the HP amount of the caster, and they can cast Arise to bring back a fallen Stooge at full HP. Furthermore, they can use Delta Attack to petrify a character. With only three characters instead of four, our margin of error is really limited.
Specifically, it's not that they cast arise. One stooge in particular can cast it, and it's not the one who otherwise casts the healing spells, who you'd normally try to focus first. Also, the stooges can only use their Delta Attack with all three of them alive.
"From the deepest pit of the seven hells to the very pinnacle of the Heavens, the world shall tremble! Unleash Ultima!"
Yeah, we have the ultimate spell.
Ultima makes everything else look like a joke. In Terra's hand, it hits every enemy for upwards of seven thousand damage. Every encounter ends the moment I cast it. Its only limiting factor is its stupendous MP cost of 80, but that won't be a problem as soon as I am out of this Dreamscape and can buy 99 Ethers. For now, it does mean I have to be careful to occasionally stop and use Osmose to reload Terra's batteries, during which Celes blasts everything with Firaga, so we're still doing great. Also? Ultima looks fantastic. Just this heavy, impactful explosion expanding to cover the whole screen while churning earth - beautiful.
Great screenshots. So, on the SNES version, ultima looked like this:
None of the debris added along the ground ring in the Pixel Remaster, and the sound effect was a growing sort of alien whine that built up until a final flash of white hit the screen along with, if memory serves, the exact same SCHWING sound effect that the SNES version used for Cyan's Oblivion technique. All of that added up to kid-me not interpreting it as an explosion, as much as a matter annihilation sphere like what the Fleia's do in Code Geass, or the sphere effect used for time travel in the Terminator series:
Ultima is the ultimate magic, and completely ignores Reflect. Wrexsoul gets to pull off his possession trick exactly twice before being annihilated with superior firepower.
In the menu, multiple techniques have now been unlocked - Eclipse, which rains ki blades down on enemies, Tempest, which delivers a powerful 4-hit combo against multiple enemies, and Oblivion, which instantly kills all enemies (who are susceptible to instant death).
And as a last prize, when we reach Doma's throne in the real world, the magicites that was there in the dream is still here.
One thing that kind of boggled my mind once I looked it up is that Tempest actually has very slightly less base ability strength than Flurry does (70 vs 72), but Tempest ignores defense, letting it far outdamage its little sibling nevertheless. Eclipse also is worth noting for also being able to inflict Stop on its targets.
Also, you didn't mention it in your update, but make sure to examine the sword there as well.
Not gonna lie, a Magitek party member who was like... a straight up cyborg or robot showing the other side of Imperial Magitek design would be pretty dope.
That seems like it would be some pretty great material for this hypothetical FFVI remake that keeps getting batted around. If it's an adaptation expansion, let's expand the cast some more as well! It can build on that one kid from Vector who got the ability to cast Cure.
Drowzee and also probably those guys come from the same inspiration: the Baku, which apparently looks like a Tapir. The Baku eats dreams, just nightmares for the more benign and even benevolent versions, and all dreams for the more malicious ones. The Tapir is only being referenced indirectly as a result.
So, chances are Umaro is transliterated rather than localized because the nearest equivalent in English would be something along the lines of "Cryptidbert", which... doesn't flow as well.
There is a Monster in a Box in Yeti's cave I think you should check out. Considering the monster in it, I will be very surprised if you got it and didn't mention it to us.
Out of curiosity, did you find a chest with a monster in a box encounter in this dungeon? Because for that specific encounter, said enemy has only a percent chance to drop one of the best armor sets in the game for Terra and Celes, the Minerva Bustier, so figured it was relevant to mention.
OK, glad people remembered to bring this up. The drop rate isn't that bad (and for those playing along, if it drops it shows up along with the xp and stuff like other monster drops. Do not confuse it with what you get from opening the chest) and getting a Minerva Bustier for one of your leading ladies is really nice.
None of the debris added along the ground ring in the Pixel Remaster, and the sound effect was a growing sort of alien whine that built up until a final flash of white hit the screen along with, if memory serves, the exact same SCHWING sound effect that the SNES version used for Cyan's Oblivion technique. All of that added up to kid-me not interpreting it as an explosion, as much as a matter annihilation sphere like what the Fleia's do in Code Geass, or the sphere effect used for time travel in the Terminator series:
