I… have no idea what happened here. Did Unei enter a micronap, phase her mind to a dream copy of the dungeon, and blow up the rocks with magic she only has access to in the dream world? I guess that's the most sensical reading of that scene.
I've never seen "if you die in the dream, you die in real life" applied to rocks before.
Are we meant to understand that the rocks had a presence in the dreamworld because they were dreaming? Does this imply that animism is true? Actually come to think of it, wouldn't it make more sense if destroying things in the real world removed them from the dream, in which case...
Back in my FF2 review, I made a mention of something I found peculiar about FF1: it has no real optional content. Now, of course, there are items you can miss; fights you can skip; you can fail to visit Paul at the right time for him to hand you his secret stash, and so on. A speedrun of the game, I'm sure, would skip vast amounts of gameplay I experienced. But the skeleton of the game is linear. You don't have to open the chest that has Beelzebub protecting a valuable endgame weapon, but you will be going through Pandemonium either way. You can fail to find the Chocobo Forest, but all Chocobo does is making you move quicker and safer across the world map. There are unique weapons like Excalibur or Masamune which I missed because they require doing certain things in a certain order or finding the right secret room, which are the closest to optional content with valuable rewards the game provides.
But it's got nothing on FF3, that is just oozing extra content through every pore.
With the Invincible in tow, I am meant to challenge the Cave of Shadows, but I can just decide to… Not do that? And instead head back to the Floating Continent, where it's time to finally settle something that's been bugging me since the start of the game.
That moving shadow under the waves can finally be accessed with the Invincible, now that I can finally cross mountain ranges. I have suspected it was this game's iteration of Leviathan since the start, and now that the Bards in Duster and Evokers in Replito all but confirmed it, it's time for me to claim my most powerful summon to date. Taking the canoe and heading straight for the shadow triggers an animation to play in which my little boat spins around before sinking, and…
Some of these enemies hit pretty hard, and turning on the Autobattle proves Quaver's undoing when I fail to notice how much damage he's accumulating.
No hideous tunnels of flesh this time, thank God, but a rather more boring underwater grotto with sea monsters. Thankfully it makes up for its relative dullness by being full of stuff:
This thing casts Thundara, making up for my lack of a true Black Mage by dealing massive amounts of lightning damage.
At this point I only have like 9 Elixirs total, so this is pretty welcome.
In a amusing nod to the plot of FF2, this thing casts Confusion.
The place is full of Elixirs, hi-potions, high-tier spell consumables, and the like. But of course, the real prize is at the end.
Leviathan's main moves are Blizzaga and its basic attack (high damage single target) and Tsunami (medium damage to everyone). My attempts at buffing my party like I would have in FF1 or FF2 mostly backfire (I don't know how Protect works but it definitely doesn't seem to meaningfully reduce Leviathan's damage). Leviathan is vulnerable to Lightning damage, so I have Rushanaq summon Ramu - which is unfortunately incredibly unreliable; each time it's a coin toss between him dealing massive amounts of lightning damage with Thunderstorm and whiffing with Mind Blast, because Leviathan is immune to paralysis. The Heavenly Wrath can sub in for a Ramu summon to deal similar damage, but I only have one of those. Mimi can deal massive damage while avoiding half of Leviathan's hits, so she ends up a more reliable damage dealer than Rushanaq (isn't it sad, Rushanaq?) whom I probably should have just swapped back to Black Mage but didn't out of stubbornness. As for Quaver, he's a heavy damage dealer, but…
…he doesn't make it to the end of the fight, as his high HP doesn't make up for a lack of resistance which I suspect might be owed to his low job level, and I make a few mistake in who to target with healing.
Turns out I was wrong; on this picture, you can clearly see Quaver's KO sprite with his body having left his empty armor.
Leviathan goes down, but it's scuffed as hell. Frustrated, I reload for a second go with better tactics.
What the difference in these two screenshots shows is that minute difference in exact action order, buffs, enemy action, and the RNG factor of summoning can cause massive difference in fight outcomes against bosses, from a battered party with a downed member to everyone being way above half HP on the final bell. We are very, very far from FF2 and late-game FF1, where challenge felt largely non-existent. I am having to actually activate my neurons for this. It's great.
And the reward is significant:
See, this is how you do a meaningful challenge reward.
The games have had powerful unique gear that you can find in the endgame, and it's fine. Excalibur hits really hard, but fundamentally it's still more numbers on your basic attack. The Blood Sword/Lance is different, because the way it grants your main warrior an HP drain ability feels like a genuine shift in kind for their combat ability, granting them self-sustaining power they never had before. Holy had a really cool narrative presence and interesting mechanical design but was simply too much of a pain to level to really matter.
It's something else to hear the legend of Leviathan, know where it's at the entire time, unlock the most powerful airship in the world to fly to its lair, confront it at the heart of its cave, and in turn for defeating him, claiming the power to summon it, personally, in battle, to use its awesome power. It just hits different.
So of course, pushed by my own hubris, I head for the very next optional dungeon with a legendary monster in it, using my first legendary Pokémon to beat up the next one and so on until it's done.
It's finally time for Rushanaq to be the MVP of this whole operation. I believe in her.
As you can see on this picture, Leviathan is a lv 7 summon, for which I do not have a spell slot, so I can't actually summon him yet, which is a good presage of about how well this operation is about to go for me.
Rushanaq is incapable of delivering on the Leviathan hype because she's not powerful enough to summon him and I nearly get my entire party wiped on the first floor of Bahamut's Lair. Rush-K is not okay.
I'm three encounters deep and running out of Phoenix Downs when I decide that enough is enough and just, fucking, high-tail it out of the Lair and back off the Floating Continent to nurse my wounds.
We're not taking down Bahamut yet. And by extension neither are we Odin. We must now sadly move forward with the plot.
In order to reach the Cave of Shadows, we must traverse an aerial maze:
Basically, we have to hope other these thin mountain rages, gauge which empty valley square will connect to the next, and do it again, until we've basically done a complete circle through the mountain area and reached the cave at its heart. It's moderately annoying, mostly for the trash mob aerial encounters in this area.
Also the Invincible cannons now provide support fire while we are attacked by airborne monsters, which is just insanely cool.
But eventually we reach our goal.
And then he McFucking dies.
The Cave of Shadows is a place born of nightmare and the tears of crying babes.
Okay, no, it's not that bad, but it's pretty bad. It is populated nigh exclusively by dividing monsters, who are all absolutely hideous and sport names like 'Valefor' or 'Vassago', so at this point I'm pretty sure they are in fact demons from hell. The entire place is dark as fuck and littered with bones. You know how the game's always had secret passages in dungeons? Yeah, they're mandatory this time. Many of the rooms in this dungeon do not visibly connect with each other and you must find the cracks in the walls to move on.
But it's not without reward for your troubles, because exploring enough of these hidden side rooms reveals an extremely valuable find:
The Genji armor set. Which goes to equip Quaver for as long as I decide to keep him as a Dark Knight, but I'm thinking post-Cave of Shadows I might want to have him back as a Bard because I miss the buffs and backup healing.
Tsugumi finally reaches White Mage jblv 99, where, to my crushing disappointment, it turns out the Pixel Remaster does not appear to have the unique reward equipment you get in the 3D version for mastering a job. Lame.
Until finally we reach the bottom of the cave, and the Fang of Earth… which, of course, is not undefended.
The Hecatoncheir is a powerful earth-type foe whose Quake attack deals massive damage to the whole party:
Now, the Cave of Shadows has leveled up my party enough that Rushanaq is, finally, able to cast Leviathan. Exactly once. Leviathan as summoned by an Evoker can choose to do one of two moves - Demon Eye, which petrifies all enemies; or Cyclone, which deals wind damage to all enemies. Of course, as a boss, Hecatoncheir is immune to petrification, but that shouldn't be an issue.
Why do I even bother.
IT'S NO MATTER. After beating him in a scuffed as hell run where I lose Tsugumi, I reload, and this time I own his ass.
Fuck you. Flawless victory! The Fang of Earth is in our hands and it's time to head back to Doga's Manor to meet up with the old mages. Technically, I don't think anything prevents us from just heading straight for the statue valleys, but our mentor figures expect us.
I do not like the sound of this.
In case you're wondering, he just teleported us.
Right, okay. Doga has a secret cave system underneath his manor. So far so wizard. Is it filled with hideous monsters? You bet it is.
I am a bit more… concerned… by the mass graves.
There are entire secret rooms buried underneath Doga's house filled with human bones. And these, above? These chests contain Shining Curtains, which are items casting Reflect, which is a spell specifically designed to reflect spells, such as a wizards might use.
Yeah, Doga's evil, I'm calling it. Probably had Unei come to him first so he could take her out while we wouldn't be there to help her, and now he's finishing the job. I knew I couldn't trust anyone with a moustache this flamboyant; it's as if I never learned anything from 19th century Germany.
Well, nothing for it but to power onward, into the depths of the grotto, where we're about to find...
Okay, so Doga's not evil. I guess all the bones in this dungeon are just your regular catacombs. Maybe that's where he buries the moogles? Or his human disciplines from Doga's Village? There's just… something, about Doga having a wizard's dungeon full of horrifying high-level monsters that can't have come here naturally, all strewn with human or humanoid bones, that invites incredibly sinister speculation. Either way, we still have to fight him - and the justification for it, that we must engage in a battle of epic proportions in order to release massive amounts of magical energy to power up the Eureka Key, is kind of metal. It's properly anime. I dig it.
Also, there's more. Remember how in FF2, several opponents shapeshifted before combat? The Lamia Queen was the first notable one, and then there were these four mages testing you in the Mysidia Tower by transforming into (or taking their true form as) Hill/Fire/Ice/Thunder Giants? It was kind of underexplored and ambiguous what was happening - but 'human-like opponent assumes a monstrous Combat Form before battle' is a recurring thing in Final Fantasy game (used interestingly in FFXIV's storyline). But this is the first time it's going to be so, uh, obvious and jarring.
Because this is Doga's battle sprite:
Jesus Fucking Christ what the fuck is this thing.
I don't know whether that's Doga's 'true' form, or whether that is some nightmare form he's custom-designed to transform himself into - or if it is merely an illusion, conjured to make it easier for the Warriors of Light to see him as an enemy and fight him. I don't know which option is more horrifying, honestly. Some kind of… tumorous, fleshy orb… thing, with a prehensile tongue sticking out of its enormous, many-fanged mouth, holding Doga's wizard's staff in its slathering grasp.
Because, yes. That thing is, ultimately, still a wizard.
He just casts Flare. Basically every turn. For most of anyone's entire health, meaning I have to use my highest-level curative spells to compensate for it and I am going to run out of those soon. Thankfully, somebody has finally decided to get off their ass and help:
Yeah, baby.
There's also Ifrit pulling some weight - it's a coin toss whether he inflicts fire damage or massively heals the party, but both outcomes are equally good to me and it's taking some weight off Tsugumi's shoulders, so Rushanaq is back in my good graces for now.
It's notable to me how much emphasis there is on how the Warriors of Light don't want this and are protesting it every step of the way, and Doga and Unei have to forced them to fight. This really is a traumatic thing they're being forced through.
Unei, too, transforms into a monster and forces the fight. She mainly uses ice-based spells (and it looks like her monster form is based on some kind of evil undine or other 'drowner' type of monster), and her chief threat is that she comes right after Doga - the first back-to-back bosses in the game leaving you no time to use out-of-combat consumables. I did go through a bunch of resources during my fight with Doga, but Unei is also a weaker opponent overall, and so in the end, we prevail.
Still a little too close for comfort.
Okay.
I think I've decided what I think of Unei and Doga.
They're 'monsters.'
They're spiritual or magical entities of the same kind as the less beastly forms that have appeared since Xande's earthquake, or as the summons that still dwell in the world. Perhaps Doga hails from the same darkness as the demonic monsters of the Cave of Shadows, and perhaps Unei is kin to Shiva, or perhaps they're more unique beings. They might not always have been; perhaps once they were akin to random encounter mobs. But they had a mind, as many other monsters do, and eventually, they found Noah, or Noah found them, and he taught them the ways of magic.
The reason for the paradox of their immortality - how Xande alone was 'gifted' with human morality, yet Doga laments that his time is running out, the reason we can 'kill' their bodies but their spirits endure, is because their human bodies are but vessels of flesh. Artificial vessels. All these rooms full of bones in Doga's Grotto are the remnants of hundred of experiments and past bodies - both discarded prototypes building up to the first functional creations, as well as past vessels who reached the end of their human lifespan and were interred after 'dying' while Doga moved on to a new vessel. Unei I'd say would have been unlikely to take part in this research, but perhaps benefited of its fruits - either way, remaining in stasis in the world of dreams made the aging process irrelevant to her.
I like this because it has a sinister vibe without actually being wrong - Doga didn't commit some horrible evil, but the practical result of his experiments left behind a whole bunch of dead bodies, and when he manifests in his true spiritual form it looks like a hideous monster. None of it makes him evil, but all of it makes him spooky.
And I think that fits, because, like... However necessary, whatever the state of his spirit, it's a pretty fucked-up thing that he's putting these kids through. To force them to kill two of their friends - after they saw Desch die, after they saw Aria die, they have to 'kill' not just friends, but what have in a very short time become mentor figures. It's a pretty ruthless thing to do, even if the fate of the world is at stake.
And, on the upshot, maybe it is in the process of this alchemical creation of life that he found himself designing the moogles! Wizards who have familiars and minions that are a byproduct of their other research have a long history in fantasy and science-fiction; if you'll forgive me the reference, that was what the Minions were back in the original Despicable Me, before they got this whole, uh, expanded origin story.
Also, it ties directly into FFXIV, wherein the Ascians are a group of antagonist whose chief feature is that they are very old, immortal spirits who have to possess bodies (whether actual people, as in demonic possession, or soulless vessels, whether those be corpses or vat-grown bodies) to pass as human and interact with the physical world.
It looks like we're entering the endgame. All that's left to do now is to use the Fangs to reach the Syrcus Tower, find and enter Eureka, and then look for Xande.
Which would be a good time to leave off, but we're going to stretch things a little further, just for this…
There are four sets of statues, one for each element, and they blow up one by one as we go through them.
There it is. The Crystal Tower. The one we saw towering over the waters of the flood aaaaall the way back when we first left the Floating Continent. But it looks like it's surrounded by an ominous maze…
'The Ancients' Maze.'
The Earth Crystal??? Already?
Huh.
So, you might recognize this as the same model as the Hecatoncheir we just fought. But now, it's called Titan - the same as our own summon. It seems doubtful that this is the 'true' Titan, seeing as we can still use the summon in this fight. This could be a mechanical conceit, but, hm.
No, the thing is, Replito, the Evoker village, just sells Titan as an item you can cast. So it's unlikely that you're buying, like, the soul of the true Titan to carry around; more likely you purchase some kind of focus, and then you either conjure a manifestation of the Platonic Titan 'form,' an ideal echo of an extant or mythical being, or call briefly upon the help of the actual Titan. In one case, this is the true Titan, corrupted by the darkness's influence. In another, these shadows that gather earlier are using the power of the Earth Crystal to borrow the form of Titan, and you are the one wielding its true power.
Hm, yes. Xande bound evil shades to the Earth Crystal that they manifest as a mockery of the earthly deity whose power, and you counter it with the power of the true Titan.
I like that one.
I mean, it's wrong, because after writing all of that I went and checked the wiki and it turns out that while both Titans are called 'Titan' in Japanese, they're actually using different kanji spellings that make them different name, so none of what I just said is true, because Japanese is a funny language that way.
BUT IF IT WAS IT WOULD FIT, because defeating 'Titan' is how we unlock the power of the Earth Crystal, and that Crystal…
…is how we unlock the evolved magic jobs.
That's right. I'm about to make Tsugumi into a catgirl.
Now I am invincible.
At long last!
No longer will I be playing dice every time I want to use a summon. No longer will I be capped to a lamentable two castings of my higher-end spells. No longer. Ultimate power is now mine. Or, technically, Rushanaq's.
Ultimate.
Ultimate!
If you'll pardon me, I'm posting this update and then I have to go and kick Odin and Bahamut's teeth in.
I don't know whether that's Doga's 'true' form, or whether that is some nightmare form he's custom-designed to transform himself into - or if it is merely an illusion, conjured to make it easier for the Warriors of Light to see him as an enemy and fight him. I don't know which option is more horrifying, honestly. Some kind of… tumorous, fleshy orb… thing, with a prehensile tongue sticking out of its enormous, many-fanged mouth, holding Doga's wizard's staff in its slathering grasp.
Because, yes. That thing is, ultimately, still a wizard.
And these are why I said the job level wasn't going to make switching not worth it. White Mage and Black Mage wind up with vastly more lower magic slots at a given level... but who cares, the Devout and Magus have way the fuck more of the Good Shit slots, including actually having access to final tier spells at all.
40+ casts of cure is funny but not as good as MORE CURAGA BABY.
Summoner is of course even more dramatic since it's both consistent and waaaay more powerful than Evoker.
They're spiritual or magical entities of the same kind as the less beastly forms that have appeared since Xande's earthquake, or as the summons that still dwell in the world.
The reason for the paradox of their immortality - how Xande alone was 'gifted' with human morality, yet Doga laments that his time is running out, the reason we can 'kill' their bodies but their spirits endure, is because their human bodies are but vessels of flesh.
So, now that you have this working theory to build off of, and the game definitely proved that Doga and Unei are indeed immortal (but only in spirit, not in body), do you have any more ideas to share about how exactly Zande, and Noah's gift to him, might slot into the whole thing?
The hood is literally called "cat ear hood" when it shows up as an equippable item, including in games like the mobile games that claim it to be the one from III
The hoods on Devouts would also get a reference as an FF12 accessory, the previously-mentioned Cat-Ear Hood, which i'm pretty sure isn't a spoiler.
The important bit about 12's Cat-Ear Hood is that it was one of the best accessories in the game, pre-remake, because it had a unique trait of 'as long as the item is equipped, the wearer is permanently given the Regen status.'
Quick Edit: The reason for the 'pre-remake' qualifier there isn't because the remake added bonkers new equipment - which it did, the biggest example being Seitengrat, a double-range, incredibly fast bow which has an incredibly small chance of being the randomly-generated item in... an invisible chest which itself has a ridiculously small chance of randomly spawning, with no way to tell if it has or not except painstakingly trawling every inch of the wide open space where it can appear - it's because the remake nerfed it, making it so it instead converted LP gained into gil.
Edit: Apparently it was an accessory the whole time, and I just misremembered because of the whole 'it's a hood' thing so I'm removing the stuff about it as armor.
Further edit: Apparently it never gave Regen at all, according to the wiki but I could have sworn I owned a guide which listed that as the effect. Weird.
Finally, Rushanaq is rewarded for the many trials and tribulations, not the least of which is Omicron's BLATANT discrimination, with the ultimate power an innocent smol bean like her deserves.
So, now that you have this working theory to build off of, and the game definitely proved that Doga and Unei are indeed immortal (but only in spirit, not in body), do you have any more ideas to share about how exactly Zande, and Noah's gift to him, might slot into the whole thing?
I like to think that the motivation behind Noah's gift to Xande can be narrowed down to three (more or less) likely options.
1: The least likely is that Noah was the meme wizard, no sense of right or wrong. "You get phenomenal power, you get phenomenal power but different, and you Xande, you get to f**king die LOL." Dies so that he gets the last word.
2: Noah had a sub-optimal grasp of Xande's character. Noah "Immortality is a curse and you should be free from the cycle." Xande "Oh how dare you make me mortal!" Begins throwing the biggest temper tantrum of all time.
3: Noah had an excellent grasp of Xande's character and after he failed "Morality for immortals 101" Noah knew that Xande needed an expiration date.
That was the set of options presented by the initial story as it was told to us, yes. My point here is that the revelations about the true nature of Doga and Unei might, perhaps, provide a handful of different, more nuanced possibility that should be worth of consideration.
So, now that you have this working theory to build off of, and the game definitely proved that Doga and Unei are indeed immortal (but only in spirit, not in body), do you have any more ideas to share about how exactly Zande, and Noah's gift to him, might slot into the whole thing?
Yeah, I forgot to add it in the post, but at this stage my working theory is that Xande simply was a man to begin with. Unei and Doga were each a different kind of spiritual/supernatural being, but Xande had been a mortal man when he became Noah's disciple. Noah's 'gift' of mortality wasn't inflicting the curse of a finite lifespan on Xande; it was telling him, on his deathbed: "And to you, my most beloved son, I leave the gift that you already had, and that neither of your siblings possess: a human's transient, beautiful mortality." Xande always expected his final reward to be some kind of transcendence into the same kind of immortal spiritual being for whom flesh is but cloth, and the realization that he was never getting that, and that his master had never understood his true motives and his feelings about his own mortality, shattered him and carved the rift between him and the other disciples.
Xande is a wizard of immense power, and has been able to grant himself unnatural long life through his magic, but unlike Doga and Unei, he is one body, one flesh, and when he perishes in his blood and bones he will perish entire. This, perhaps not necessarily terrifies him, but certainly offends him. He believes he deserves the same exalted status Doga and Unnei have, free of the bonds of flesh.
He doesn't see how his erstwhile kindred's nature warps their perception and experience of life. How they treat flesh as something to be assumed and thrown away, how they think nothing of spending a thousand years in a world of dreams, how they casually ask their own friends to slay their living bodies in a grand and terrible battle, failing to realize the toll this puts on others. To him, all these things are desirable. All these things are his by right, and he's been denied them.
But, because unlike FF2's Emperor he is not motivated by fear of death, but by outrage and spite, his plans may not even necessarily involve some means of seizing the immortality he's been denied. It may well be that we discover it's part of his goal during Syrcus Tower; but it would make just as much sense if he'd simply decided to destroy all things out of spite, not even caring to be the last one remaining, but content to sink into the darkness, so long as everyone else does as well.
All Final Fantasy villains so far have been driven above all by the spectre of death in some fashion, but Xande may yet turn out to be the first one who does not seek to avert it for himself, just as long as he takes everyone down with him.
(Or he simply plans for his alliance with the Darkness to grant him immortality within the dark world, that works too.)
I mean, it's wrong, because after writing all of that I went and checked the wiki and it turns out that while both Titans are called 'Titan' in Japanese, they're actually using different kanji spellings that make them different name, so none of what I just said is true, because Japanese is a funny language that way.
Ah yes, that thing that caused a massive headache for the FF14 loc team back during 2.x, because they their counterparts back in Japan forgot how they'd decided to write around this particular issue.
Very interesting take. I have a different theory of my own, but in the interest of not spoiling anything, I'll wait until Xande actually shows up on screen before presenting it - remind me later if I forget. Also, Xande's own words might provide more information on how to interpret him, once he actually gets the chance to speak for himself, instead of being spoken about.
Finally, Rushanaq is rewarded for the many trials and tribulations, not the least of which is Omicron's BLATANT discrimination, with the ultimate power an innocent smol bean like her deserves.
Ah, the Maze. One of the few things I do remember quite well from playing the NES version back when Mathusaleh was young. Only because of how much of a PAIN it was.
Ah yes, that thing that caused a massive headache for the FF14 loc team back during 2.x, because they their counterparts back in Japan forgot how they'd decided to write around this particular issue.
Phlegethon is based on the version of Titan from Final Fantasy III in coloring and ability set, who served as the boss of the "Ancients' Maze". Because both "Titan" and "Hecatoncheir" are used as terms and names in Final Fantasy XIV already, "Acheron" was the only available name from that enemy set. During the creation of the second part of Crystal Tower, the Japanese development team forgot that the name was already used in the English version and put in a version of the very same gray-skinned Acheron enemies from the earlier game, complete with the name. Rather than have Acheron refer to two different enemies depending on the game version, or have two enemies named Titan, the character was renamed Phlegethon (see etymology below).
Etymology
In Greek mythology, the river Phlegethon or Pyriphlegethon was one of the five rivers in the infernal regions of the underworld.
In ancient Greek mythology, Acheron was known as the river of woe, and was one of the five rivers of the Greek underworld.
Me playing FF14: "I really don't get this Labyrinth of the Ancients raid. Isn't there a front door? Why is there this whole huge underground complex full of lava right in front of the Crystal Tower we have to go through first?"
Me, two years later, playing FF3 and reaching this point: "Oh."
Way back in the misty depths of pre-5.3 FFXIV, the player did have to go through a whole rigmarole of crystal collecting and FATE grinding to unlock the way to the Labyrinth of the Ancients, in keeping with the FFIII roots.
And then the Crystal Tower raids were made mandatory for MSQ, and the devs realized that forcing players to re-enact FFIII was probably not a good game design decision in the present day, so it was streamlined. (I haven't New Game Plused the Crystal Tower storyline yet, so I don't know how it's different now.)
1: The least likely is that Noah was the meme wizard, no sense of right or wrong. "You get phenomenal power, you get phenomenal power but different, and you Xande, you get to f**king die LOL." Dies so that he gets the last word.
Omicron has taken all the names of the player characters in this game from respectively his own FFXIV character (Mimi) and his friends' FFXIV characters (Tsugumi, Rushanaq, Quaver) and its funny to play into it. Rushanaq is originally a White Mage, just like Tsugumi, hence why Omi had to move her to Black Mage at first, and then Evoker and now Summoner. It's fun to play into, because of how the game has ended up with a strong "bullying Rushanaq" vibe.
For maximum irony, Xande was a man to begin with…who became a Lich. And then on his deathbed Noah hit him with a Reincarnation.
For maximum hilarity, Xande is now a Moogle, (D&D's Reincarnation spell is random on what species you end up as, and we've already ripped off most everything else D&D anyways) which hadn't been an option until Doga made it an option.
Actually, as a newcomer to the franchise, are there any antagonist Moogles?
And now to actually contribute to the thread instead of sharing my shame with the internet.
For maximum irony, Xande was a man to begin with…who became a Lich. And then on his deathbed Noah hit him with a Reincarnation.
For maximum hilarity, Xande is now a Moogle, (D&D's Reincarnation spell is random on what species you end up as, and we've already ripped off most everything else D&D anyways) which hadn't been an option until Doga made it an option.
Actually, as a newcomer to the franchise, are there any antagonist Moogles?
