Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
While the idea is amusing and I appreciate the enthusiasm, an omake of a video game I happen to be doing a Let's Play of is more properly called "a fanfic" and should probably go into its own thread
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- Location
- Not your place of residence
Not sure whether this needs to go in a spoiler box, but better safe than sorry. Final Fantasy has some particularly infamous superbosses; Emerald and Ruby Weapon by virtue of being in FF7, Omega Weapon and Shinryu are iconic and recurring, Absolute Virtue might be the worst that I've ever seen a developer react to an enemy being defeated...however, one superboss is widely known in certain circles for just being a gigantic asshole that was poorly designed. Yiazmat from FFXII has over 50 million HP in a game where the max attack is 9999; halfway through that drops to 6999.
There are many things that are well known and awful about the fight, instakill attacks that in the last 10 MILLION HP phase have no warning, and a rest area so that you can actually beat the thing by running away and coming back...but something he ALSO can do is cast reflect on your party members.
One of the healing spells in the game restores a party member's HP to full, and it is one you will be using in the postgame.
Yiazmat's use of Reflect is the single most infamous example of reflect in the franchise.
There are many things that are well known and awful about the fight, instakill attacks that in the last 10 MILLION HP phase have no warning, and a rest area so that you can actually beat the thing by running away and coming back...but something he ALSO can do is cast reflect on your party members.
One of the healing spells in the game restores a party member's HP to full, and it is one you will be using in the postgame.
Yiazmat's use of Reflect is the single most infamous example of reflect in the franchise.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
@NotYourParents that's interesting; I was using Elixirs at that point, so that didn't happen to me, which means I had no idea it could. Talk about being annoying; that's already the most boring fight in the entire franchise by an incredibly large margin, extending it in such a way would be even more entirely unnecessary than the fight itself already was.
In the pixel remaster you only need to have 1 job leveled to 99, which I basically got by accident(White mage 1-99), though it does require some amount of grinding. The annoying one is probably Bestiary, since they have the double whammy of losing access to certain types of monsters after a certain point in the game and some rare spawns. Well, that and the chest issue.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
You can also use elixers on the monster, albeit that one is more of a "hey idiot pay attention"
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I mean, I suppose, but that's a very hard mistake to make in the game in question, even with the fight in question being one where it's hard to stay awake while it's ongoing.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Probably not the best place for this conversation.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Update is being delayed by hedgehogs.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Location
- California
Perfectly understandable, have a nice day.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
Cheap escalation is the bread and butter of battle manga
The MacKenzies
una salus victis nullam sperare salutem
- Location
- Pacific Northwest
- Pronouns
- Signature
Bread and butter is all well and good but it's no substitute for a steak.Cheap escalation is the bread and butter of battle manga
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Cheap escalation is the bread and butter of battle manga
Y'all need to eat more greens. Not sure what that is in this extended metaphor. But it's something.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
In FFXIV, it's landscape topography.
View: https://virovac.tumblr.com/post/699414542467416064/one-of-the-best-parts-of-the-dinner-is-that-there#notes
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
Shoujo manga.
- Location
- Florida USA
So I've caught up to the start of FFIV, and while I have that to go, I figured I'd say a few things.
I was born in 1982. This game came to the US when I'd just turned nine, it was IIRC a launch title of the SNES or close to launch, due to the success the first Final Fantasy enjoyed in America when it released here in 1990. I'd played that game only once or twice via rental, and didn't quite get into it, but what I did have was a Nintendo Power subscription, including their unique published single-volume strategy guide to FF1 (it was a promotion through, IIRC, 1990 or 1991, they did a series of strategy guides for specific games and series, including FF and I think Ninja Gaiden). It didn't just have maps and an bestiary and tips, though, but also lore, with chapters for certain sections of the game and written descriptions of stuff like the closing of the Mirage Tower by the Lufenians, the fall of what became the Sea Shrine, and a backstory for Bahamut and his dragons that made them exiles with their land overrun by monsters, and Bahamut single-handedly fighting his way back into his monster-infested castle to place the rat tail for future adventurers to prove their worth.
Needless to say, 8-9 year old me read the hell out of that book. Even though I never, ever owned a copy of the game.
So when FFIIUS dropped - I didn't know about the Japanese numbering being different, and wouldn't until we suddenly jumped from III to VII - I was immediately curious, and Nintendo Power coverage stoked the flames of that curiosity enough that it was, IIRC, one of the first games I ever rented from a video store for the SNES. And everything about it just grabbed me and made me love it. I would over time rent it over and over, until finally I got a copy of my own for Christmas in 1992, along with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (which wasn't as good but had a rocking soundtrack and which I still have a fond recollection of despite not being quite as good) and a few other games.
Renting it so much had its own effect, of course. Namely, other people having played it meant I got sneak peeks at future bits of the game. I knew some of it since the instruction booklet includes a strategy guide covering the first third or so of the game (I won't say what point since I haven't checked on how far you are into the PR version), but the rest tantalized me with the prospect of what was to come. (I knew some of it since another Nintendo Power special edition strategy guide, for SNES games in general, listed the game's dungeons in brief). When I finally owned it, it took me some time but I also beat it, though not properly since I also got a game genie for the SNES and used some of its codes (the infinite MP code primarily, plus the no-losing-gold-on-retreat since I was an impatient child and wanted to see more STORY, not grind through all those annoying random encounters.... I probably needn't say I often hit boss walls from lack of experience, plus missed some of the loots occasionally findable).
Anyway, this game has a special place in my heart. You can imagine how stoked I was to see FFXIV revisiting bits of it and homaging the musical tracks (let's just say 6.2's music choices made its release day - my 40th birthday - something of a birthday present from Yoshi-P and co to me personally, though obviously not intended). So I'm going to enjoy seeing your take on the game as I read on.
As a final note, I do personally prefer the 20th Anniversary edition that was released on PSP, which featured re-mastered sprites and in-game graphics for both FFIV, the FFIV After Years sequel released on Wii initially, and the interquel between them I believe has gone mentioned and which covers about 3-5 hours of game time IIRC. The sprites in that edition are utterly gorgeous and the use of that handheld system's graphics capability in some of the spell effects superbly done. Even countering the voiced DS version, I honestly consider the 20th Anniversary one the best made.
Anyway, going to continue catching up.
I was born in 1982. This game came to the US when I'd just turned nine, it was IIRC a launch title of the SNES or close to launch, due to the success the first Final Fantasy enjoyed in America when it released here in 1990. I'd played that game only once or twice via rental, and didn't quite get into it, but what I did have was a Nintendo Power subscription, including their unique published single-volume strategy guide to FF1 (it was a promotion through, IIRC, 1990 or 1991, they did a series of strategy guides for specific games and series, including FF and I think Ninja Gaiden). It didn't just have maps and an bestiary and tips, though, but also lore, with chapters for certain sections of the game and written descriptions of stuff like the closing of the Mirage Tower by the Lufenians, the fall of what became the Sea Shrine, and a backstory for Bahamut and his dragons that made them exiles with their land overrun by monsters, and Bahamut single-handedly fighting his way back into his monster-infested castle to place the rat tail for future adventurers to prove their worth.
Needless to say, 8-9 year old me read the hell out of that book. Even though I never, ever owned a copy of the game.
So when FFIIUS dropped - I didn't know about the Japanese numbering being different, and wouldn't until we suddenly jumped from III to VII - I was immediately curious, and Nintendo Power coverage stoked the flames of that curiosity enough that it was, IIRC, one of the first games I ever rented from a video store for the SNES. And everything about it just grabbed me and made me love it. I would over time rent it over and over, until finally I got a copy of my own for Christmas in 1992, along with Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (which wasn't as good but had a rocking soundtrack and which I still have a fond recollection of despite not being quite as good) and a few other games.
Renting it so much had its own effect, of course. Namely, other people having played it meant I got sneak peeks at future bits of the game. I knew some of it since the instruction booklet includes a strategy guide covering the first third or so of the game (I won't say what point since I haven't checked on how far you are into the PR version), but the rest tantalized me with the prospect of what was to come. (I knew some of it since another Nintendo Power special edition strategy guide, for SNES games in general, listed the game's dungeons in brief). When I finally owned it, it took me some time but I also beat it, though not properly since I also got a game genie for the SNES and used some of its codes (the infinite MP code primarily, plus the no-losing-gold-on-retreat since I was an impatient child and wanted to see more STORY, not grind through all those annoying random encounters.... I probably needn't say I often hit boss walls from lack of experience, plus missed some of the loots occasionally findable).
Anyway, this game has a special place in my heart. You can imagine how stoked I was to see FFXIV revisiting bits of it and homaging the musical tracks (let's just say 6.2's music choices made its release day - my 40th birthday - something of a birthday present from Yoshi-P and co to me personally, though obviously not intended). So I'm going to enjoy seeing your take on the game as I read on.
As a final note, I do personally prefer the 20th Anniversary edition that was released on PSP, which featured re-mastered sprites and in-game graphics for both FFIV, the FFIV After Years sequel released on Wii initially, and the interquel between them I believe has gone mentioned and which covers about 3-5 hours of game time IIRC. The sprites in that edition are utterly gorgeous and the use of that handheld system's graphics capability in some of the spell effects superbly done. Even countering the voiced DS version, I honestly consider the 20th Anniversary one the best made.
Anyway, going to continue catching up.
I have a feeling that most kids who grew up in the pre-widespread internet days know this experience in some form or another. Personally I owned the strategy guide for Paper Mario on the N64 and so basically had that game memorized front to back, despite never actually getting a chance to play the game until years later when I discovered emulation and had my own computer.
- Location
- Florida USA
Sorry, but reading this is making me LOL, never played the DS version y'see, but it does make a certain thing clear, which I will not reference but will undoubtedly be understood by those who know, including our dear Gallic LPer.
Yep. I had the Pokemon Red & Paper Mario NP guides memorized. Wish I hadn't lost them ages ago.
Final Fantasy IV, Part 8
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Last time on Final Fantasy!
Terrible stuff. Just, awful all around. And now we're being coerced into getting the last crystal for Golbez.
…you know, I wonder what his ultimate goal is. Is it merely temporal power? That seems a little cheap by Final Fantasy standards, but so far he's given no indication of wanting to trigger the apocalypse or anything like that.
We do have a cool airship though.
And yes, it's giving us total freedom of movement. The world just opened up. Check out all the grey dots we can visit now:
Disclaimer: most of those are just Chocobo Forests, unfortunately.
I also definitely wasn't expecting Cid to be a member of the playable party, I assumed he'd just stay as a background NPC running the ship, but nope, there he is - Cid wields a hammer, with which he hits pretty hard, and his special Command is Study, which reveals an enemy's HP and weaknesses. Hopefully it works on bosses, unlike Cecil's Scan.
Now, the first thing we're going to do is avoid repeating my mistake from the start of the game - even though we have a clear next destination (Troia), and are in the airship already airborne, we're not just thoughtlessly gonna head straight there. Instead, we're going to put down the ship and visit Baron Town and Baron Castle to see the aftermath of our raid into the castle and slaying of the imposter king.
The results are… fascinating.
This dancer has the best animation yet, because its gimmick is that Cecil dances with her to celebrate, which is just funny and adorable, even though I'm not sure Rose would approve.
The framing of the escape, frantically running away to grab the hidden ship and escape, with the Red Wings dropping in, all in the context of Golbez having subverted the king's power long ago, had led me to assume that Baron was still effectively in his grasp, but no. The town is free, the townsfolk are thankful, and everyone is divided between mourning the true king's presumed death, worrying about the future, and delighting in the end of the oppressive regime.
I have no idea where Golbez, Cain and their armies are operating out of right now, but it's not Baron. They're just… gone. And what about the Red Wings? Wouldn't they rebel once they understand that they've been misled?
Well, the game has an absolute baffling answer to that:
This is kind of a huge deal to just drop in one dialogue box in an incidental conversation, isn't it? Like… what does that mean? Did he turn the soldiers who followed him into monsters, or did he recruit only monsters and disguise them as human soldiers? What about the actual Baron soldiers, where were they during all that time? Did the entire army just fall asleep when Golbez took over and wake up after he was gone? Did no one in the civilian population notice?
Yet at the same time, these soldiers clearly lack a view of the full picture:
It's not clear from their sprites, but dialogue informs us these are dragoons.
Kain is the bad guy now, my dude! He dishonored your order! He betrayed the King! He sided with Golbez! How did you miss that memo?
I really love this bit of dialogue. This nameless NPC is just a normal Baron guard… But that's not how he would see it, would he? He's one of the King's personal guards, and he should have taken it upon himself to see his madness and act, whatever the cost to himself. This is the kind of inner depth you never see portrayed in ambient NPCs like this.
Some of the soldiers even react to being prompted for dialogue with suggesting 'Sir Cecil' should become King, that in the absence of an heir, he is the only one fit to sit on the throne. I wonder where that's going. I have some odds on 'Cecil being the king's biological son,' although then I would think the actual King would have featured more prominently. There is a soldier saying that he hears the King's voice echoing from the depths of the castle and wondering if it is haunted, though, so we might be getting there eventually.
I'm… guessing that the reason for these odd choices is to 'clear' the Baron army so that you're not wandering around the castle going 'okay, but you all willingly did a bunch of war crimes while you thought this was the true king, how come everyone's chill and acting like nobody did anything wrong?' Which… Feels kinda cheap, considering atonement over past wrong has been Cecil's whole deal.
Well, now that these intriguing facts are laid out, let's head out and do some world exploring!
The giant black hole in the southwest of the map is home to the largest superstructure seen in the games to date, its true purpose mysterious.
A ruined castle in the south of the map, utterly empty, its name one I have never heard before. Wild guess: this was the first place Golbez rose out of and destroyed in his quest for power. It's full of treasure chests, one of which is trapped and full of monsters that instantly kill me.
Agart is an intriguing town of people who are "descended from dwarves" - but do not appear to be dwarves themselves, strangely. They say they "cannot live without the blessing of the suns, although our ancestors might disagree" - I assume then they are dwarves that left their mountain caves for the open air and sun and sky. And accordingly, Agart is home to an observatory:
Anomalous activity? On the moon?? Exciting! "One moon has no sign of activity," Corio says, "but the other has traces of life, and is turning a reddish color… A color similar to that of blood… I have an inescapable sense of foreboding…" Yeah, whatever's happening down here with Golbez and the crystal, it is in some way tied to what is going on with the moon.
There are some odd comments among the other townsfolk of Agart. One tells me that their ancestors "came from the other world," a world whose sun was called "Magma" (Underground volcanic heat?) Another that "without darkness, light cannot exist; without day, there can be no light." Another that legend holds their people came from a crater north of their village, which…
Moon aliens? I wanna say moon aliens.
There's another quirky town I stumble upon, where everyone is either miniaturized, a frog, or a pig. God knows what happened to all these people:
That house to the right, with the door open? It's a truly strange building - entering it doesn't cause me to enter an 'inside' screen, instead I just enter the physical space on that screen inside the building, which I can't see and only occupies a handful of tiles; there's nothing to do but bump around in the dark and then leave again.
They are, somehow, the best weaponsmiths in the world so far. They also have a genuinely amazing three-people choreographed routine which involves a frog leaping over a miniaturized human while a pig dances. Fucking A, no notes.
We do eventually reach our goal, a town lodged deep within the thickest forests on the planet:
Yeah, so, 'the last crystal is probably held by monsters which is why Kain wants us to get it for him' was a good theory, and it's half-true, as we're about to see; but only half. The fact of the matter is, Troia is the most peaceful, prosperous town we've seen so far. Far isolated from war and world strife, it exudes happiness and leisure.
'For Pete's sake?' Really?
Townsfolk found in Troia include: women swimming, women sunbathing, drunk dudes mistaking Cecil for a woman and hitting on him, women hitting on Cecil, old men recounting younger ladies with the tale of his youthful adventuring days, younger ladies bored out of their mind with the old man telling them how he totally killed a goblin that one time, and chocobo farmers raising a rare black chocobo variant. It definitely has the vibe of a very… "liberated" town.
There's also a woman selling a "Member's Pass" for a whopping 10,000 gil, with zero explanation what it does. Very mysterious.
In fact, they're so happy and peaceful they have no need for prisons, and have converted their dungeon into a treasure vault. They're also a matriarchy with an all-female fighting force, as well as the only country so far to be ruled not by a monarchy but by a council of enlightened female clerics, no seriously:
Sure. Why not. We are in peak Mist of Avalon-style Vaguely Fetishistic Feminist Fantasy Land right there. Like, it's not just "ruled by women" and "female soldiers," it's the whole package: more enlightened political regime, more spiritual leaders, socially progressive in a "sexual liberation"-slanted way, devoid of crime, just generally happier yet at the same time unready to face the brutality and violence of the World of Man outside their paradise (one of the soldiers claims Troia "has never been at war," and several worry what would happen if Baron were to attack). Mists was, what, 1982? A decade of time for it to percolate into FF's source of inspirations until it manifested in one of the games doesn't seem too much of a stretch. It's honestly not that surprising that Final Fantasy would eventually draw from that well, given how freely it draws from any fantasy inspiration it likes, but it's definitely gonna put a dark spin on it if Cecil ends up screwing these people over.
These guards are using the dancer sprite, in case anyone was doubting the 'vaguely fetishistic' part.
That doesn't seem like what we're going for here, though. Instead, one of the soldiers mention that they recently rescued someone who claim to be a Damcyan Prince, and following that lead brings us to…
Tellah rarely minces words.
This is actually the first time Tellah and Edward meet since Tellah stormed off in anger after Anna's death, and Edward's - who is currently gravely injured in and bed-ridden - immediate concern is to convey to Tellah how sorry he is for indirectly causing Anna's death while saying he knows he can't expect forgiveness:
Edward's just a good dude, you know? When we met him, he was willing to let himself die of despair - for a moment, he was, understandably, centered on his own pain and grief - but despite his lacking strength and genuine fears, he almost immediately got a hold of himself to help others and atone for something he frankly could never have anticipated or be expected to prevent. Here, he is almost ready to throw himself out of bed and reopen all his injuries just for the chance to not be powerless to help his friends again, especially after learning that Rydia is presumed dead.
The game follows this by a bit of minor, but still jarring in the moment, break of continuity; it clearly assumed that I would first visit the Clerics instead of heading straight for Edward's bedroom, and the latter produces a fairly lengthy cutscene that the game can't really edit based on whether or not I have specific information, so my characters start explaining to Edward's Rosa's abduction (wait, wasn't Edward there for that?), then the trade Golbez forced onto them, and then they just pull the following knowledge out of the aether:
Like I said, not a huge deal, but jarring. Resigning himself to being unable to help physically, Edward lends us the 'Twin Harp,' an object capable of communicating across great distance, which he describes as 'the only way he can help Rosa right now,' without explaining how. Between this, the Dark Elf thing, and the characters having to explain Rosa's disappearance to Edward, this is one of the more awkward bits of dialogue in the game.
Heading for where we were supposed to have been headed to in the first place, though, we find the Clerics, and they fill us in:
Oh, well, if I can just go and kill this game's version of Astos and get the crystal on a loan, with no need for further coercion or bad deeds, then that's fine. Explains why Golbez didn't attack Troia despite it looking like a pretty easy target, to - they don't have the crystal, someone different and more dangerous does.
The Clerics also inform us that the Dark Elf is weak to metallic weapons, and as a result has created a magnetic field in his lair that makes using them onerous, so it looks like we're gonna have to tweak our equipment before heading in. Sure, why not!
However, we can't just zip over there. The island on which the Dark Elf's cave is located in completely covered in mountain and forests, and the airship can only land on plains. As a result, we need to leave the airship outside Troia and search, on foot, for a nearby Chocobo Forest that is home to a black chocobo, which are capable of flight and land in forests rather than plains. Which is fine…
…but wow some of the encounters we get thrown our way don't fuck around.
The chief culprits are these hedgehog guys, who have a Needle attack that can deal upwards of 200 damage each per round, have enough HP to tank anything but a full row of attacks from everyone (or Tellah using a very expensive Firaga), and as a result cause sights like this every time they show up:
Even with Cecil's passive protection abilities, these are regularly near-wipes and they often take out one or more character, requiring Phoenix Downs. And they just keep showing up again and again. I try to grind to beat them, but that requires beating them, which means the process is difficult and time-consuming. After finally looking them up on the wiki, I get what's happening here - the needlehog's normal attack is weak, but it reacts to any damage it receives with the much more powerful Needle. So if I have Yang use Kick on a group of three needlehogs, they immediately react with three extra Needle attacks outside their turn, for an extra 600-700 damage over the whole party, which can easily kill Tellah before he gets his turn.
The wiki's recommendation is simple: just have Yang and Cecil kill each needlehog with one hit to avoid retaliation. This is a very funny joke. It usually takes at least three attacks to kill one of them, which gets me a faceful of needles. So my solution is simple - have Tellah omnicast Firaga, killing everyone in one cast, at the cost of a third of his MP pool. This doesn't always work - a couple of times the 'hogs survive and promptly react with three Needles, nearly killing half my group.
It's just a mess and I get tired of it quickly, but I do manage to get a few levels out of this grind, which is a precautionary measure considering I'm gonna have to go through a whole dungeon without my normal equipment.
But, okay, let's head out there…
…in a moment. First, I'd like to make sure I have enough non-metallic equipment for my whole party and, with what money I have left over, why not? Let's check out what this mystery 'Member's Pass' actually does. I put down the massive 10k required, and…
…okay.
There is no reward for this. There's no special item you get out of this or anything. This is the reward. You pay 10,000 gil, and then you go into a room and Cecil gets a private sexy dance show for him. This is some straight up cabaret stuff.
I do not know what to make of this. Other than one of the writers wa clearly thinking, "everything will be sexier under the matriarchy."
MAGNETIC CAVE TIME
We found a black chocobo to fly us all the way there but it wasn't particularly exciting.
Cid reminds us that a powerful magnetic field will slow down everyone if they carry metal. Yang notes that his claws are unaffected, and Tellah says not to worry, with his magic we're basically invincible.
The Magnetic Cave is the first cave dungeon in the game to have a unique environmental design, and honestly it kinda kicks ass. Floating islands of magnetized ore in the void, connected by the scaffolding of ancient mining operations? Yeah, I dig it. Monsters include Mind Flayers (their Mind Blast paralyzes party members, which sucks), ogres (tons of HP), the goddamned hell needles (my anger meter is slowly rising), and these little fellows with a really cool unique sprite hanging from the 'floor' of the ceiling:
These battles take a toll. Figuring out the proper elemental weaknesses (Draculady is extremely vulnerable to fire and Yang has Fire Claws, so he one-shots her, anything flying is weak to arrows and lightning) helps, but I'm having to force my party into an annoying formation. You see Cecil is in the back row; this is because he doesn't have any decent available melee weapon to replace his sword, so I gave him a bow and magical arrows and shifted him to the back row while Cid hits things with his wooden hammer. Cecil does deal tremendous damage against any flying opponent, though, so these bat encounters are dealt with to the tune of a thousand damage a pop.
And finally, we reach the cave's own crystal room, and find a familiar face:
Yeah, that's Astos from FF1.
At first, I am fully confident in my ability to deal with the fight as-is. Cecil does plenty of damage with his bow, Tellah's magic is really powerful, I have a fully supply of ether… Frustratingly though, it turns out Cid's Analyze command doesn't work on bosses, so he's basically just another autoattack bot. Whatever.
Unfortunately the game has other ideas. While my attacks deal damage, when the Dark Elf takes his first turn, his immediate move is a triplecast - Fira, Blizzara and Thundara all cast one after the other without break for 400-500 damage each, wiping out the party.
Thankfully, this turns out to be merely a scripted defeat.
Even though it doesn't seem to make sense - even though he's miles away, cripplingly injured - Edward by a tremendous act of will drags himself out of bed, pushing aside the healers insisting that he return to bed, muttering "I don't care what happens to me, I am the only one who can save them," driven by singular focus and determination - to get his hands on his harp.
Inexplicably, almost miraculously, the music of Edward's harp is like horrendous screeching to the Dark Elf's ears, and his magnetic field wavers! Later, once we find him again, he will explain that he dredged from memories of traveling as a minstrel a song meant to ward off elves, and banked everything on that memory. It works.
As you'll recall, the reason the Dark Elf needed this magnetic field bullshit was because metallic weapons are specifically his weakness. Which means, now that his control has been disrupted, it's time to swap everyone back to their optimal equipment, including the legendary sword of Mysidia. The entire time, the sound of Edward's harp is playing in the background…
The Dark Elf's triplecast flounders against my armor dealing only a tenth of the damage it did earlier, although I am pretty sure these are script-adjusted values rather than an 'organic' result of equipping my best gear.
…and still playing as the fight begins. While Edward is putting his life on the line and the entire party has a resurgent moment of fighting with their full power, instead of the normal combat BGM, the soundtrack is still Edward's harp, emphasizing how he is right here, with us, making this fight possible in the first place.
It's incredibly fucking raw, you guys, is what I'm saying. Like, I encourage you to take a look for yourself (footage not mine):
The Dark Elf is no slouch even under the circumstances - he has a pattern where he uses Tornado, a spell that does not deal damage as such but rather automatically brings a character down to single digit HP (but can't kill them on its own), Hex to turn another character into a pig, and his elemental spells to deal minor damage. This ends when !Astos blows a gasket and decides it's time for him to enter his monster form, because yes, he has one:
The Dark Elf's draconic form is a more straightforward opponent, using Dark Breath to deal heavy party-wide damage, but with Tellah providing healing and Cecil's sword continuing to deal far more damage than it has to any other opponent in the game so far (seriously, I've seen that thing hit for over 1k damage in this fight), the foe is ultimately dealt with.
The foe is slain. Edward saved the party. The Earth Crystal is ours.
Let's take a break, because I have a feeling things aren't going to keep going our way for long.
Terrible stuff. Just, awful all around. And now we're being coerced into getting the last crystal for Golbez.
…you know, I wonder what his ultimate goal is. Is it merely temporal power? That seems a little cheap by Final Fantasy standards, but so far he's given no indication of wanting to trigger the apocalypse or anything like that.
We do have a cool airship though.
And yes, it's giving us total freedom of movement. The world just opened up. Check out all the grey dots we can visit now:
Disclaimer: most of those are just Chocobo Forests, unfortunately.
I also definitely wasn't expecting Cid to be a member of the playable party, I assumed he'd just stay as a background NPC running the ship, but nope, there he is - Cid wields a hammer, with which he hits pretty hard, and his special Command is Study, which reveals an enemy's HP and weaknesses. Hopefully it works on bosses, unlike Cecil's Scan.
Now, the first thing we're going to do is avoid repeating my mistake from the start of the game - even though we have a clear next destination (Troia), and are in the airship already airborne, we're not just thoughtlessly gonna head straight there. Instead, we're going to put down the ship and visit Baron Town and Baron Castle to see the aftermath of our raid into the castle and slaying of the imposter king.
The results are… fascinating.
This dancer has the best animation yet, because its gimmick is that Cecil dances with her to celebrate, which is just funny and adorable, even though I'm not sure Rose would approve.
The framing of the escape, frantically running away to grab the hidden ship and escape, with the Red Wings dropping in, all in the context of Golbez having subverted the king's power long ago, had led me to assume that Baron was still effectively in his grasp, but no. The town is free, the townsfolk are thankful, and everyone is divided between mourning the true king's presumed death, worrying about the future, and delighting in the end of the oppressive regime.
I have no idea where Golbez, Cain and their armies are operating out of right now, but it's not Baron. They're just… gone. And what about the Red Wings? Wouldn't they rebel once they understand that they've been misled?
Well, the game has an absolute baffling answer to that:
This is kind of a huge deal to just drop in one dialogue box in an incidental conversation, isn't it? Like… what does that mean? Did he turn the soldiers who followed him into monsters, or did he recruit only monsters and disguise them as human soldiers? What about the actual Baron soldiers, where were they during all that time? Did the entire army just fall asleep when Golbez took over and wake up after he was gone? Did no one in the civilian population notice?
Yet at the same time, these soldiers clearly lack a view of the full picture:
It's not clear from their sprites, but dialogue informs us these are dragoons.
Kain is the bad guy now, my dude! He dishonored your order! He betrayed the King! He sided with Golbez! How did you miss that memo?
I really love this bit of dialogue. This nameless NPC is just a normal Baron guard… But that's not how he would see it, would he? He's one of the King's personal guards, and he should have taken it upon himself to see his madness and act, whatever the cost to himself. This is the kind of inner depth you never see portrayed in ambient NPCs like this.
Some of the soldiers even react to being prompted for dialogue with suggesting 'Sir Cecil' should become King, that in the absence of an heir, he is the only one fit to sit on the throne. I wonder where that's going. I have some odds on 'Cecil being the king's biological son,' although then I would think the actual King would have featured more prominently. There is a soldier saying that he hears the King's voice echoing from the depths of the castle and wondering if it is haunted, though, so we might be getting there eventually.
I'm… guessing that the reason for these odd choices is to 'clear' the Baron army so that you're not wandering around the castle going 'okay, but you all willingly did a bunch of war crimes while you thought this was the true king, how come everyone's chill and acting like nobody did anything wrong?' Which… Feels kinda cheap, considering atonement over past wrong has been Cecil's whole deal.
Well, now that these intriguing facts are laid out, let's head out and do some world exploring!
The giant black hole in the southwest of the map is home to the largest superstructure seen in the games to date, its true purpose mysterious.
A ruined castle in the south of the map, utterly empty, its name one I have never heard before. Wild guess: this was the first place Golbez rose out of and destroyed in his quest for power. It's full of treasure chests, one of which is trapped and full of monsters that instantly kill me.
Agart is an intriguing town of people who are "descended from dwarves" - but do not appear to be dwarves themselves, strangely. They say they "cannot live without the blessing of the suns, although our ancestors might disagree" - I assume then they are dwarves that left their mountain caves for the open air and sun and sky. And accordingly, Agart is home to an observatory:
Anomalous activity? On the moon?? Exciting! "One moon has no sign of activity," Corio says, "but the other has traces of life, and is turning a reddish color… A color similar to that of blood… I have an inescapable sense of foreboding…" Yeah, whatever's happening down here with Golbez and the crystal, it is in some way tied to what is going on with the moon.
There are some odd comments among the other townsfolk of Agart. One tells me that their ancestors "came from the other world," a world whose sun was called "Magma" (Underground volcanic heat?) Another that "without darkness, light cannot exist; without day, there can be no light." Another that legend holds their people came from a crater north of their village, which…
Moon aliens? I wanna say moon aliens.
There's another quirky town I stumble upon, where everyone is either miniaturized, a frog, or a pig. God knows what happened to all these people:
That house to the right, with the door open? It's a truly strange building - entering it doesn't cause me to enter an 'inside' screen, instead I just enter the physical space on that screen inside the building, which I can't see and only occupies a handful of tiles; there's nothing to do but bump around in the dark and then leave again.
They are, somehow, the best weaponsmiths in the world so far. They also have a genuinely amazing three-people choreographed routine which involves a frog leaping over a miniaturized human while a pig dances. Fucking A, no notes.
We do eventually reach our goal, a town lodged deep within the thickest forests on the planet:
Yeah, so, 'the last crystal is probably held by monsters which is why Kain wants us to get it for him' was a good theory, and it's half-true, as we're about to see; but only half. The fact of the matter is, Troia is the most peaceful, prosperous town we've seen so far. Far isolated from war and world strife, it exudes happiness and leisure.
'For Pete's sake?' Really?
Townsfolk found in Troia include: women swimming, women sunbathing, drunk dudes mistaking Cecil for a woman and hitting on him, women hitting on Cecil, old men recounting younger ladies with the tale of his youthful adventuring days, younger ladies bored out of their mind with the old man telling them how he totally killed a goblin that one time, and chocobo farmers raising a rare black chocobo variant. It definitely has the vibe of a very… "liberated" town.
There's also a woman selling a "Member's Pass" for a whopping 10,000 gil, with zero explanation what it does. Very mysterious.
In fact, they're so happy and peaceful they have no need for prisons, and have converted their dungeon into a treasure vault. They're also a matriarchy with an all-female fighting force, as well as the only country so far to be ruled not by a monarchy but by a council of enlightened female clerics, no seriously:
Sure. Why not. We are in peak Mist of Avalon-style Vaguely Fetishistic Feminist Fantasy Land right there. Like, it's not just "ruled by women" and "female soldiers," it's the whole package: more enlightened political regime, more spiritual leaders, socially progressive in a "sexual liberation"-slanted way, devoid of crime, just generally happier yet at the same time unready to face the brutality and violence of the World of Man outside their paradise (one of the soldiers claims Troia "has never been at war," and several worry what would happen if Baron were to attack). Mists was, what, 1982? A decade of time for it to percolate into FF's source of inspirations until it manifested in one of the games doesn't seem too much of a stretch. It's honestly not that surprising that Final Fantasy would eventually draw from that well, given how freely it draws from any fantasy inspiration it likes, but it's definitely gonna put a dark spin on it if Cecil ends up screwing these people over.
These guards are using the dancer sprite, in case anyone was doubting the 'vaguely fetishistic' part.
That doesn't seem like what we're going for here, though. Instead, one of the soldiers mention that they recently rescued someone who claim to be a Damcyan Prince, and following that lead brings us to…
Tellah rarely minces words.
This is actually the first time Tellah and Edward meet since Tellah stormed off in anger after Anna's death, and Edward's - who is currently gravely injured in and bed-ridden - immediate concern is to convey to Tellah how sorry he is for indirectly causing Anna's death while saying he knows he can't expect forgiveness:
Edward's just a good dude, you know? When we met him, he was willing to let himself die of despair - for a moment, he was, understandably, centered on his own pain and grief - but despite his lacking strength and genuine fears, he almost immediately got a hold of himself to help others and atone for something he frankly could never have anticipated or be expected to prevent. Here, he is almost ready to throw himself out of bed and reopen all his injuries just for the chance to not be powerless to help his friends again, especially after learning that Rydia is presumed dead.
The game follows this by a bit of minor, but still jarring in the moment, break of continuity; it clearly assumed that I would first visit the Clerics instead of heading straight for Edward's bedroom, and the latter produces a fairly lengthy cutscene that the game can't really edit based on whether or not I have specific information, so my characters start explaining to Edward's Rosa's abduction (wait, wasn't Edward there for that?), then the trade Golbez forced onto them, and then they just pull the following knowledge out of the aether:
Like I said, not a huge deal, but jarring. Resigning himself to being unable to help physically, Edward lends us the 'Twin Harp,' an object capable of communicating across great distance, which he describes as 'the only way he can help Rosa right now,' without explaining how. Between this, the Dark Elf thing, and the characters having to explain Rosa's disappearance to Edward, this is one of the more awkward bits of dialogue in the game.
Heading for where we were supposed to have been headed to in the first place, though, we find the Clerics, and they fill us in:
Oh, well, if I can just go and kill this game's version of Astos and get the crystal on a loan, with no need for further coercion or bad deeds, then that's fine. Explains why Golbez didn't attack Troia despite it looking like a pretty easy target, to - they don't have the crystal, someone different and more dangerous does.
The Clerics also inform us that the Dark Elf is weak to metallic weapons, and as a result has created a magnetic field in his lair that makes using them onerous, so it looks like we're gonna have to tweak our equipment before heading in. Sure, why not!
However, we can't just zip over there. The island on which the Dark Elf's cave is located in completely covered in mountain and forests, and the airship can only land on plains. As a result, we need to leave the airship outside Troia and search, on foot, for a nearby Chocobo Forest that is home to a black chocobo, which are capable of flight and land in forests rather than plains. Which is fine…
…but wow some of the encounters we get thrown our way don't fuck around.
The chief culprits are these hedgehog guys, who have a Needle attack that can deal upwards of 200 damage each per round, have enough HP to tank anything but a full row of attacks from everyone (or Tellah using a very expensive Firaga), and as a result cause sights like this every time they show up:
Even with Cecil's passive protection abilities, these are regularly near-wipes and they often take out one or more character, requiring Phoenix Downs. And they just keep showing up again and again. I try to grind to beat them, but that requires beating them, which means the process is difficult and time-consuming. After finally looking them up on the wiki, I get what's happening here - the needlehog's normal attack is weak, but it reacts to any damage it receives with the much more powerful Needle. So if I have Yang use Kick on a group of three needlehogs, they immediately react with three extra Needle attacks outside their turn, for an extra 600-700 damage over the whole party, which can easily kill Tellah before he gets his turn.
The wiki's recommendation is simple: just have Yang and Cecil kill each needlehog with one hit to avoid retaliation. This is a very funny joke. It usually takes at least three attacks to kill one of them, which gets me a faceful of needles. So my solution is simple - have Tellah omnicast Firaga, killing everyone in one cast, at the cost of a third of his MP pool. This doesn't always work - a couple of times the 'hogs survive and promptly react with three Needles, nearly killing half my group.
It's just a mess and I get tired of it quickly, but I do manage to get a few levels out of this grind, which is a precautionary measure considering I'm gonna have to go through a whole dungeon without my normal equipment.
But, okay, let's head out there…
…in a moment. First, I'd like to make sure I have enough non-metallic equipment for my whole party and, with what money I have left over, why not? Let's check out what this mystery 'Member's Pass' actually does. I put down the massive 10k required, and…
…okay.
There is no reward for this. There's no special item you get out of this or anything. This is the reward. You pay 10,000 gil, and then you go into a room and Cecil gets a private sexy dance show for him. This is some straight up cabaret stuff.
I do not know what to make of this. Other than one of the writers wa clearly thinking, "everything will be sexier under the matriarchy."
MAGNETIC CAVE TIME
We found a black chocobo to fly us all the way there but it wasn't particularly exciting.
Cid reminds us that a powerful magnetic field will slow down everyone if they carry metal. Yang notes that his claws are unaffected, and Tellah says not to worry, with his magic we're basically invincible.
The Magnetic Cave is the first cave dungeon in the game to have a unique environmental design, and honestly it kinda kicks ass. Floating islands of magnetized ore in the void, connected by the scaffolding of ancient mining operations? Yeah, I dig it. Monsters include Mind Flayers (their Mind Blast paralyzes party members, which sucks), ogres (tons of HP), the goddamned hell needles (my anger meter is slowly rising), and these little fellows with a really cool unique sprite hanging from the 'floor' of the ceiling:
These battles take a toll. Figuring out the proper elemental weaknesses (Draculady is extremely vulnerable to fire and Yang has Fire Claws, so he one-shots her, anything flying is weak to arrows and lightning) helps, but I'm having to force my party into an annoying formation. You see Cecil is in the back row; this is because he doesn't have any decent available melee weapon to replace his sword, so I gave him a bow and magical arrows and shifted him to the back row while Cid hits things with his wooden hammer. Cecil does deal tremendous damage against any flying opponent, though, so these bat encounters are dealt with to the tune of a thousand damage a pop.
And finally, we reach the cave's own crystal room, and find a familiar face:
Yeah, that's Astos from FF1.
At first, I am fully confident in my ability to deal with the fight as-is. Cecil does plenty of damage with his bow, Tellah's magic is really powerful, I have a fully supply of ether… Frustratingly though, it turns out Cid's Analyze command doesn't work on bosses, so he's basically just another autoattack bot. Whatever.
Unfortunately the game has other ideas. While my attacks deal damage, when the Dark Elf takes his first turn, his immediate move is a triplecast - Fira, Blizzara and Thundara all cast one after the other without break for 400-500 damage each, wiping out the party.
Thankfully, this turns out to be merely a scripted defeat.
Even though it doesn't seem to make sense - even though he's miles away, cripplingly injured - Edward by a tremendous act of will drags himself out of bed, pushing aside the healers insisting that he return to bed, muttering "I don't care what happens to me, I am the only one who can save them," driven by singular focus and determination - to get his hands on his harp.
Inexplicably, almost miraculously, the music of Edward's harp is like horrendous screeching to the Dark Elf's ears, and his magnetic field wavers! Later, once we find him again, he will explain that he dredged from memories of traveling as a minstrel a song meant to ward off elves, and banked everything on that memory. It works.
As you'll recall, the reason the Dark Elf needed this magnetic field bullshit was because metallic weapons are specifically his weakness. Which means, now that his control has been disrupted, it's time to swap everyone back to their optimal equipment, including the legendary sword of Mysidia. The entire time, the sound of Edward's harp is playing in the background…
The Dark Elf's triplecast flounders against my armor dealing only a tenth of the damage it did earlier, although I am pretty sure these are script-adjusted values rather than an 'organic' result of equipping my best gear.
…and still playing as the fight begins. While Edward is putting his life on the line and the entire party has a resurgent moment of fighting with their full power, instead of the normal combat BGM, the soundtrack is still Edward's harp, emphasizing how he is right here, with us, making this fight possible in the first place.
It's incredibly fucking raw, you guys, is what I'm saying. Like, I encourage you to take a look for yourself (footage not mine):
The Dark Elf is no slouch even under the circumstances - he has a pattern where he uses Tornado, a spell that does not deal damage as such but rather automatically brings a character down to single digit HP (but can't kill them on its own), Hex to turn another character into a pig, and his elemental spells to deal minor damage. This ends when !Astos blows a gasket and decides it's time for him to enter his monster form, because yes, he has one:
The Dark Elf's draconic form is a more straightforward opponent, using Dark Breath to deal heavy party-wide damage, but with Tellah providing healing and Cecil's sword continuing to deal far more damage than it has to any other opponent in the game so far (seriously, I've seen that thing hit for over 1k damage in this fight), the foe is ultimately dealt with.
The foe is slain. Edward saved the party. The Earth Crystal is ours.
Let's take a break, because I have a feeling things aren't going to keep going our way for long.
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- Location
- Lost in Hell
…At least their heart was probably in the right place?
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
The early 90s were simultaneously extremely horny and very limited in the ways in which you could get porn. This is the result.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The DS translation translated the ruling council of Troia as "Epopts" rather than Clerics for some reason, presumably to sound more exotic.
The DS version also adjusted Cid's Study to target all foes at once, rather than one at a time.
Regarding Golbez' army of monsters, its pretty clear that at least some of those monsters were in fact originally humans from Baron - we know Baigan was originally a human Cecil knew, and the dialog certainly seemed to imply that was the real Baigan monsterfied rather than an imposter.
Also, regarding Cid's abilities, fun fact - in the original version, he had a second unique command buried in the code, inaccessible to the player, presumably dropped during development, called "Airship". It wasn't fully implemented, so even if you hack the game to put it back on his command list using it just makes the game freeze, but the obvious implication is that he was originally going to be able to call in airstrikes or something - I'm guessing they dropped that idea when they realized it wouldn't make sense for indoor fights.
The DS version also adjusted Cid's Study to target all foes at once, rather than one at a time.
Regarding Golbez' army of monsters, its pretty clear that at least some of those monsters were in fact originally humans from Baron - we know Baigan was originally a human Cecil knew, and the dialog certainly seemed to imply that was the real Baigan monsterfied rather than an imposter.
Also, regarding Cid's abilities, fun fact - in the original version, he had a second unique command buried in the code, inaccessible to the player, presumably dropped during development, called "Airship". It wasn't fully implemented, so even if you hack the game to put it back on his command list using it just makes the game freeze, but the obvious implication is that he was originally going to be able to call in airstrikes or something - I'm guessing they dropped that idea when they realized it wouldn't make sense for indoor fights.
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