The experience of watching Lupin the 3rd: The First and Lupin the 3rd: The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa side by side as my first Lupin movies was a flawless experience in tone whiplash.
For the uninitiated, Lupin the 3rd is a pretty long running series that gets moved between directors a bunch and so its tone and aesthetic change with different eras. So, hm, how to put this.
In The First, the titular Lupin the Third is a lovable rogue with a heart of gold, a funny, friendly guy who above all can't help but risk his own life helping innocents and women in distress. He's looking for a big heist that's really about solving the last great mystery his ancestor Arsene Lupin couldn't solve and swiftly sidetracked by having to keep Nazis from getting their hands on a magical superweapon. He has a friend called Goemon Ishikawa, a secondary character who is a weird samurai-looking dude who insists on doing sword tricks despite this being the 1960s and people having guns, but he does cool implausible feats like dismantling a car with his sword, though no one gets hurt in his antics.
In The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa, Lupin the Third is an amoral little psycho gremlin who is introduced stealing a giant vault full of money from a yakuza gambling ship while the ship is burning, killing hundreds (Lupin didn't set the fire or anything, it just didn't particularly bother him) who promptly uses that money to buy weed and booze and get high and drunk with his friends while trying to get in the pants of fellow "high and drunk" criminal lady Fujiko Mine, only to be interrupted when an American lumberjack Terminator crashes in his apartment and tries to kill him with axes, whereupon the movie is swiftly hijacked by Goemon Ishikawa, who was on the gambling ship where his yakuza boss died and now has a debt of honor to kill the lumberjack Terminator assassin, who on his quest for atonement murders/mutilates several dozen yakuza while unlocking his seventh sense then proceeds to have a final showdown in which he and the lumberjack shear off entire slices off flesh off each other's body while Lupin watches with his friend Jiren and is like "this is mad cool, man" as Goemon nearly dies multiple time.
These are, ostensibly, the same characters, in the same universe. Lupin is a wild franchise.
In five years Lupin the 3rd will be as old as Arsene Lupin was when Lupin the Third first came out. Only to be expected that it's interpretations vary as much in his later installments as his grandfather's did in creating him.
And you also have the Green vs. Red OVA where multiple men dress up like Lupin, a man decides to become Lupin in a Green coat leading to the eventual battle with Red coat Lupin where his old friends and partners are sitting at sidelines saying whoever wins is the real Lupin.
God there has got to be a better way to shorten Knight into a three-letter job code. It sounds like you just said "Agrias uses Hallowed Bolt and takes that cunt out."
I am going to say what is possibly the most Me thing I've ever said here:
I'm a little disappointed.
No, no, don't get me wrong - I'm not disappointed in Cid as such. He absolutely lives up to the hype, and seeing him join the party is a genuine "oh shit let's fucking go" moment and I can't wait to use him in battle.
But I thought I would get to fight him.
The game has been hyping him up for hours! I genuinely thought it was to build him up as a threat leading to a boss fight! Like Gaffgarion and Wiegraf before him!
Now he's our ally and I will probably never get to throw down with him in a no holds barred climactic battle. What a shame.
Oh wow so Goltanna is like, an actual idiot. "Hey Golty, this is your buddy the High Confessor. Yeah, I need you to arrest your most loyal and effective general without whom your entire support base crumbles and you absolutely cannot win the war. Yeah, he's plotting against you, with uuuuh, rogue members of the Church, totally. Just found out. Anyway, cheers." Outstanding stuff.
So, this is a perfectly fair observation, but I wanted to point out: if somebody had gone to Larg, and told to him "get rid of your second in command, lord Dycedarg, because he's planning to kill and replace you", that'd have been 100% accurate advice. From our outsider point of view, it's easy to see the difference, but in-game, Orlandu had expressed disagreement for Goltanna's plans, while Dycedarg was super-supportive of Larg and appeared to be behind him all the way, right up until he stuck that dagger in his back. So... can we really say that Goltanna's paranoia here was unjustified, when we compare it with Larg's trust?
Amusingly, in the PSX version, killing all the enemies DOES NOT ends the sluice battle. You need to wait for the bodies of the two knights on the sluice to crystallize, so you can move to the plates, and activate the two levers to open the sluice. A funny thing that was removed from WotL, so it seemed worth mentioning.
Also, as I like to occasionally point out things that LFT fixed, in their version of this battle, the two knight have Equip Bow; just to point out how easy it would have been to make these enemies at least somewhat threatening, instead of leaving them stuck with Throw Stone and therefore effectively reducing the enemy numbers by two.
Hear ye, hear ye! 'Tis the year of our Lord 2024, and it has come to pass that Ramza Beoulve has defeated the ancient men of iron, claimed the power of dragons, and reached out to heroes from beyond the world.
The Story So Far: Ramza, renegade scion of House Beoulve, has uncovered a conspiracy by the Church to manipulate the events of the civil war tearing apart Ivalice. With clever thinking and quick action, he temporarily halted the fighting between the two camps and recruited the fabled Count Cidolfus Orlandeau to his cause; now he hurries towards Limberry, where his sister is being held captive…
So.
Thunder God Cid. How does the old man fare?
Pretty good, I'd say.
Testing in random encounters confirm that the man is quite simply an absolute beast, a giant striding the battlefield with an array of overpowered ranged attacks, all of which have obnoxiously high damage on top of their individual riders or particularities like AoEs or debuffs. Most enemies simply die in a single hit. There isn't much to say here: If we take him with us, he absolutely dominates, though Agrias + Tynar Rouge is able to keep up thanks to her layered buffs.
So, let's head to the next node - the Trade City of Sal Ghidos. As we enter, we do not get a battle warning, but we do get a cutscene.
Not one that I was expecting in a million years, to tell the truth.
I. エアリスのテーマ
…
As Ramza walks the slums of the city. He is accosted. By Aerith Gainsborough.
I mean, her name isn't given to us. And she's not wearing the iconic pink dress. But look at her. She is labeled "flower peddler" and is trying to sell us flowers, and she looks - she is literally Aerith. She has the same haircut and everything.
What the fuck.
And she talks shit to Ramza when he acts surprised!
Ramza: "A flower?" Flower Peddler: "Yes, a flower - a blossomed bud. You've seen one, I'm sure." Ramza: "Of course I have!" Flower Peddler: "Well, then, surely you could spare a gil for one of mine. They're quite pretty."
We of course agree to buy one of her flowers for a measly gil.
Flower Peddler: "Then you'll buy one? Truly? Oh, thank you, kind ser! Few stop these days, and even fewer buy. It's a harder life than you might know. I always dream some charming knight will come galloping through and sweep me away from all this. Beg pardon, ser. I know there's naught you can do. I thank you again! May that flower bring you good fortune."
[She leaves.] Ramza: "These times are hard for all."
[End cutscene.]
This is a little weepier than the Aerith we're used to for a first introduction, but the basics - flower girl, lives in the slums, snarks at people, longs for a life of adventure - are still there. Of course, flower peddling has to be a more difficult job when you're not the possessor of the only patch of growing flower within a hundred miles radius.
What are we supposed to do with this? It's very curious.
In any case, we now have access to Sal Ghidos, which is a blue node (no combat encounter) connected to another blue node at Castle Zeltennia, so I take this opportunity to grind some Errands on my generics.
They found a cool pipe. I'm not sure the translators knew you aren't supposed to say "the Orient" anymore.
Hadrian, Hester, and Gillian get to go on a bunch of cool adventures, including discovering a god wandering ancient catacombs, nearly capturing the elusive thief of the rich ~~Zorro~~ ~~Lupin the Third~~ Zerro, and all getting trapped into a shadowy prison by an evil stalking ghost. Cool stuff.
And now, we have finally passed the JP threshold for Gillian to evolve into her final form. It is time for our girl - who has by now become the Omnimage, studying the arts of the Black Mage, the White Mage, the Time Mage, the Mystic and the Orator, to become…
A math nerd.
So. Arithmetician. How to explain this job.
Here's the list of Arithmetician Abilities:
You can learn "CT," "Level," "EXP," "Height," "Prime," or "Multiple of 5/4/3". What do these do?
Well, you combine two factors, and a spell.
So, for instance, if you pick "Level," "Multiple of 5," and attempt to cast "Curaga," then the Arithmetician will cast Curaga, at no MP cost and no Charge time, on all characters on the battlefield whose level is a multiple of 5.
You can see how ridiculous that is given the importance FFT puts on range restrictions, mobility and vertical reach. With all effects unlock, you can just go window-shopping for whichever of "all CT counts that are a prime number," "all heights that are a multiple of 5," "all EXP counts that are a multiple of 3" or whatever which interest you, and use them to free-cast spells instantly across the entire map.
It seems ridiculous. Of course, we won't truly know if it is for, huh, a while, because even the cheapest Arithmeticks combo, "CT multiple of 5," costs 450 JP to learn. Until Gillian has at least that much, the entire job is dead weight.
And earning JP is going to take a while. You see, there's a minor problem with base ART.
Here, I engaged in a normal random encounter battle while on my way to the Clockwork City of Goug. In that battle, Arithmetician Gillian acted,
Exactly once.
ART has a base Speed of 3. Three.
I am struggling to convey just how cosmically bad this is. Agrias, with no gear on, has Speed 8. Agrias takes 2.66 actions for every single action Gillian takes. Agrias, without Tynar Rouge, is not particularly fast! Hester has a base Speed of 10, and with the gear I usually give her, about 12! Hester takes four actions for each one Gillian takes. This is insane. I had to actually hold back from killing the last monster in this battle just so Gillian could have a chance to act once and earn a pittance of JP instead of the battle being over before she made a move at all.
This is so hilariously awful there can be no thought whatsoever of Arithmetician becoming a mainstay of my party, no matter how potentially powerful one use of their Arithmeticks might be.
Now, that doesn't mean this was a waste of time; Arithmeticks tacked on to one of Gillian's actually good magic classes could become an endgame powerhouse to rival Hadrian and Hester. Just… Well. She'll have to actually gain the JP to learn those ART abilities before she can swap. Which…
I mean, if she never gets to act, that's going to be a little tough, innit.
In this battle, I equipped Gillian with the Tynar Rouge as well as Speed-boosting equipment stolen from Balthier. This brought her up to the lofty heights of base Speed 6, auto-Haste. So around Speed 9. That's fast! …ish?
It's still below Hester and barely above Agrias's base Speed. By stacking every possible modifier on Gillian, I managed to get her to the level of "as fast as one of my normal units before any Speed-boosting gear or effect they might have." And because her Move is very low and her range isn't that great (remember, it will take her several hundred JP to unlock even one basic Arithmetic combination, until then she is just a White Mage without a second command ability and worse stats across the board), she doesn't actually get to take a JP-earning action each turn.
It genuinely feels like I've been tricked. Obviously there are ways we'll make ART work ("remember Errand exists so Gillian can earn JP without entering battle" I will tell myself after this play session), but as a "wow, cool new job, let's field test it!" twist this was godawful. Just felt like being smacked in the mouth for my presumption.
Well, Gillian's STEM adventures will have to wait. For now, it's time to deal with some interesting new developments.
II. The Men of Iron
You see, in the Tavern of Sal Ghidos awaits a new rumor exclusive to the city. It informed us of the existence of an island home to ancient temples, wherein dwells a fearsome iron sentinel. As we leave town, a new dot appears - the Nelveska Temple, on said island. Smells like a sidequest.
So of course just leave and head back to Goug instead to find what Mustadio's dad has been up to lately.
Look at this! Mustadio did canonically survive after all!
Besrudio has gathered a number of pieces found in Tunnel 83 under Goug and assembling them into something he's not even quite sure of himself. Ramza takes a look at it, and identifies it as an orrery; as he approaches it, it sparks with lightning like the dorman Construct 8 once did. It would appear that we must find a new Zodiac Stone to activate that thing.
You know, I wasn't expecting the "machines under Goug react to the presence of the Zodiac Stones" plot point from earlier to lead into "there's a bunch of unattended Zodiac Stones that won't be part of the main story that you can go around to activate weird shit Mustadio's dad finds in the tunnels as part of sidequests," but sure, why not.
So let's head to Nelveska Temple and defeat its iron guardian to retrieve a Stone from its remains.
Hey, it looks like we just found Construct 8's little brother!
Construct 7: "WARNING! WARNING! HUMAN ENTRY PROHIBITED! VACATE PREMISES WITHIN 30 SECONDS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. 30… 29… 28… 27… 26… 25… 24… 23… SYSTEM ERROR. 3… 2… 1… ANNIHILATION MODE ACTIVATED. RESEARCH STAFF: EVACUATE TO SHELTERS IMMEDIATELY!"
One of my favorite hyper-specific fantasy tropes is when the protagonists stumble upon some "ruins of the ancients" and it turns out to be not just advanced technology, but also specifically to talk in conventional modern English instead of the fantasyspeak everyone is using as a way of indicating that this lost civilization would feel more familiar to us than the fantasy world that replaced it.
So! Construct 7 glitches, and battle begins. Our objective is to destroy it… Though that's not our real objective. But first, let's take a look at that status sheet.
Oh lord it's lv 66.
The other monsters are more on-level, at least, but Construct 7 is a beast. It's got decent Speed for its bulk, it's immune to magic thanks to Faith 00, it has the highest HP of anything not demonic we've ever faced, and it hits pretty hard too.
Still, it's not like it could stand up to sustained fire from our best units… The problem is that's not what we're here for.
You see, this map has treasure. It has a bunch of treasure, but getting all of it would be extremely inconvenient, so I'm just going to focus on one: There's a hidden Spear on one of the tiles. I want that spear for Hadrian. This will be our main challenge here: We can't afford to kill Construct 7 before getting the spear, because that would end the fight early.
So, how do we get it?
Do you see these huge pillars with the Hydras on top of them? Those are our hidden treasure spots. We need to get up there. The problem is - and I thank @Egleris for breaking this down for me - the specific mechanics of finding treasure are a huge pain in the ass. Our character needs the Treasure Hunter ability, which is a Movement Ability; that means we can't equip Ignore Elevation, Jump+X, or any of the other things that would make this easier. We need to be able to reach an elevation of 7H without a Movement Ability. This is basically impossible unless you know about another, bizarrely specific mechanic that's never been relevant before:
Monsters that are particularly large, such as our Holy Dragon Reis or Construct 8, can be used as a platform for characters to move onto, and have a higher elevation themselves. Specifically, Construct 8 has an elevation of three.
So, we need a character with Jump 4. Then we need Reis or Construct 8 in the party, and we need them to park themselves under the pillar so our other character can jump to the top. Jump 4 can be achieved either with certain jobs that have base Jump 4, or by putting on the Spike Boots, which grant Jump+1.
But that's not all.
Treasure Hunter item-finding chances are tied to Bravery. Sorry, I mean they are inversely tied to Bravery. When a character with Treasure Hunter walks onto a treasure tile, they do a check, and they either find the "common" treasure for that tile, or the "rare" treasure. The higher the Bravery, the more chances they have of finding the common treasure instead of the rare.
So we need: A huge coward with base Jump 3, Spiked Boots on, the Treasure Hunter ability, and Reis or Construct 8 in our party. What does this mean?
It means Rapha. Rapha has Bravery 31, the lowest of any of our units. She's also lv 28, so she's completely outleveled by everything on the island, but at least we can teach her Treasure Hunter with just one battle. We also take Construct 8, since I like the angle of making it fight its "brother" and also it's more resilient and has more ranged combat ability than Reis. Of course, we also need a support caster who can protect Rapha or Raise her when she inevitably goes down, and Gillian is the only one who fits the bill.
That takes up three of our party slots. And that means our other two characters have to handle the entire encounter by themselves. And Ramza is mandatory, so that only leaves me one flex slot.
I am incredibly thankful we just recruited Cid for this. Without him, this might be impossible (Agrias has the necessary fire power with Tynar Rouge, but she can't self-heal with Shadowblade). Dude's gonna be all but solo carrying this entire encounter.
Let's go.
On our first turn, Cid goes first, of course. The problem is he can't do anything. While he would be able to instakill these Hydras, that would leave the Hydra's corpse occupying the top of the pillar. I would need to wait three whole rounds for it to crystallize before I can reach it, and I don't think I will be able to drag the encounter out that long. This means I will need to wait for the Hydras to get down from the pillars before I can kill them. So instead I just have Cid advance towards the enemy and blast Construct 7 with Northwain's Strike. The robot withdraws into the temple…
…and instantly kills Rapha from high range with a laser beam swarm.
Then the evil birds perched atop the temple go, reveal themselves to be Cockatrices, and petrify Cid.
Well, that's a wash.
I try to keep going but even waiting five hundred years for Gillian to take her turn, it turns out she has bad compatibility with Cid, so her Esuna whiffs and I just reload.
I swapped Gillian back to White Mage so she would get to act ever, and Construct 7 instantly senses her frailty and obliterates her with a laser barrage. Whereupon it turns out that I do not have another character capable of using Phoenix Down. Let's just spare ourselves further embarrassment, reload and make sure Rapha has Items loaded up.
It just. Keeps. Happening.
Basically every time we restart the battle, Construct 7 takes out Gillian. That means Rapha's first turn is always spent using Phoenix Down, and then if the robot goes again before Gillian's next turn, she goes down again. Gillian needs to go down, get back up, immediately move one square to be just barely out of Construct 7's laser range, at which point Rapha becomes the priority target and Gillian needs to be ready to Raise her. During all this, I need Construct 8 to position itself behind the pillar to be ready for Rapha to jump when her turn comes up while she's still alive.
In all this, we also have two hydras and three cockatrices to be dealing with, all of whom could sabotage my run by taking out Rapha and Gillian. Granted, that's not really that much of a problem…
Cid kills as many enemies as he can fit within the AoE of Judgment Blade every turn, it's fine. I've also swapped Ramza to Monk, and his cyclone can deal with the puny birds. It took some trial and error, but finally, everything lines up like a miracle, and Rapha makes her big jump…
IT WAS THE WRONG PILLAR. THAT WAS THE ONE WITH THE SHIELD, NOT THE SPEAR.
I have wasted this entire run.
We need to recalibrate everything to account for the fact that we are getting to that other pillar on the right. And that, in turn, means Rapha will need to spend at least one turn moving between the two pillars, completely exposed to laser fire.
It doesn't go great for her. Or Gillian, for that matter.
It takes multiple tries for me to get the timing and positioning right, but eventually, we pull it off. Gillian is wounded in the far corner of the map, Rapha goes down but is quickly Raised, Construct 7 moves in position…
RAPHA MAKES THE JUMP, AAAAAND-
It's a Javelin.
We can check it immediately thanks to Rapha's Reequip Command (an entirely useless ability in 99% of scenarios but our only way to check our party inventory mid-battle), though the sprite is also a dead giveaway.
The trick is, both spears that can be found as treasure on this map are labeled "Javelin." Just like the shield is always labeled "Estrucheon." But they can be found in two forms: Either the first available shield/spear in the game and its weakest, or the most powerful shield/spear in the game that happens to share the same name. And it's a random roll when the Treasure Hunter enters the tile, inversely tied to Bravery.
Well you know what?
Good thing we're running that game on an emulator.
I saved before making the big jump. Reload, and Rapha heads up again, and this time, we get our prize.
The Javelin II, as it's colloquially known, has an attack power of 30. It is stronger than Excalibur. We just broke the game again.
Granted, we absolutely could not have done it without directions. And the emulator's quicksave feature made this a lot easier than it could otherwise have been. Does that rob this prize of its value? Not really. I don't respect that kind of hidden "buy a guide" secret to begin with.
Perhaps this is a weapon too powerful for us to use. We'll see. For now…
How's the actual "battle" part of this battle going?
Pretty well, honestly. I actually have to hold Cid back or he would obliterate Construct 7 in two turns, three at the most. His damage is very high, but also Construct 7's own special robot moves are self-damaging, so its HP isn't as high as it actually appears. Ramza did get obliterated but, ah, well, I guess he's not the Sword Saint.
There's a fun mechanic where, once Construct 7 goes down, it plays a dialogue bit where it draws into its reserve energy and comes back to life at 1 HP - effectively it has Reraise. The problem is that Construct 7 also has a behavior pattern that makes it likely for it to retreat into the temple where we can't see shit, so I have no screenshots to show the process.
It's fun but Cid immediately goes again and obliterates the construct. The same gag with the countdown glitching out partway through plays out again with its self-destruct sequence. Construct 7's death animation is actually supposed to reveal that it was powered by a Zodiac Stone (as is our own Construct 8), which drops to the ground when it dies, but… Well, again, the temple just completely hides the entire last leg of the fight, and there's no dialogue marker to tell us that we just found a new Zodiac Stone, so it's possible to completely miss that we just found the item we've been looking for and should now head back to Besrudio's workshop.
The stone is supposed to appear here.
Ultimately Nelveska Temple has some interesting ideas but it has too many of those ideas at once, and it basically demands that you treat it as one of two things: It's either a fair challenge against a powerful boss backed by dangerous monster minions when tackled with normal units, or it's an annoying logistical puzzle to get a piece of treasure while Cidolfus Orlandeau kicks the encounter up and down the hill at leisure while trying to not kill the boss too quickly.
So, do we get any other reward for this fight beyond the Zodiac Stone?
Yes. Yes we do. And what a reward this is.
Cut for image count.
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Final Fantasy Tactics, Part 18.B: Final Fantasy VII, ReduxNew
We cut to the middle of a dialog between Ramza and Beowulf concerning Reis, the Holy Dragon; Beowulf has just made some claim that Ramza finds hard to believe.
Could it be…? Surely not.
Beowulf: "If not my words, believe your eyes. The Stone we've won, Cancer - on it my hopes must rest."
[Reis turns to Beowulf.] Beowulf: "Go now. Be not afraid."
[The dragon enters the temple, where we can't see it.]
Oh my god. It's real. It's…
THE DRAGON WIFE WAS REAL
What even is there to say here. We're given no explanation or backstory here; there is no further dialogue. It simply turns out that Reis was, in fact, Beowulf's girlfriend, at some point she was turned into a dragon, and he quested for a way to return her to her previous form (I see you, people already typing "coward" in the reply box).
The picture we're seeing of the Zodiac Stones in these side quests is fascinating. Where the main story has us deal with their aspect as symbols of legendary heroes that are actually connected to a great and secret evil, with the discovery that they can be used to do good only coming very recently… Here we see that the pre-collapse civilization of Ivalice treated the Zodiac Stones as nothing more than highly powerful batteries to power up robots clearly meant for both protection and labor; an incredibly utilitarian way to use items which, to us, are connected to a whole atmosphere of myth and legend. And then we used that Stone to somehow effect a miracle and revert some transformative curse through means unknown.
It's… Increasingly obvious that the collapse took with it an entire age of modernity, with not only superior technology but a modernistic, scientific understanding of the world. Ivalice is but a shadow of what it once was. What crimes could justify such a fall?
Notably, Reis after her transformation remains playable. She joins again as an entirely new unit, and it's… Fascinating.
Reis is a lv 35 Dragonkin. According to her job blurb, she is not merely a human who was transformed into a dragon for a while and retains certain traits for it; she in fact bears the blood of the dragons, and is descended from the Holy Dragon itself. So Reis is not merely a Dragon Wife; she is herself descended from a long line of Dragon Wives. Incredible stuff.
So, how does Dragonkin work? Well, it has a lot of unique features. For such a late-game, entirely missable addition to the roster, a huge amount of customization went into Reis's design; she was probably some kind of dev favorite.
The first thing to notice about Dragonkin is its equipment list - it's extremely restrictive. Reis can only equip gear that is "female-only." Whereas most special jobs give you the Squire gear list and then expand it with additional stuff, Reis can in effect only equip gear that is not connected to any job. She could equip the Tynar Rouge, for instance, but not any of the stat-boosting shoes we have. She can wear the Barette as a headgear, but nothing else that we have. Right now, the only items we have available for her are Barette, and the Diamond Bracelet accessory.
Girl cannot even equip weapons.
What do we get in exchange for this rather peculiar gear list? Well…
Reis retains all three elemental breaths she had in her dragon form. She also becomes able to use Dragon's Charm to make enemy units leave their party and join ours; Dragon's Gift sacrifices her own HP to heal an ally and cure any status effect they suffer from; Dragon's Gift appears similar to Ramza's Shout, increasing her own Bravery, Speed, PA and MA. And Dragon's Speed selects a target and instantly fills a target's CT gauge, allowing them to act immediately, which seems really good although I suspect will be limited by its short range. Finally, Holy Breath is a Holy-elemental Breath attack. Seems pretty good!
Reis in action, using Thunder Breath.
Initial testing shows Reis to be a fairly solid unit even without learning any of her additional abilities. She's got solid stats, including very good Speed, and her Breath attacks are still powerful without much enhancement. If we could find a way to fill all her gear slots, she could be a real powerhouse. So what can we do about that?
Well… And this is another case of Final Fantasy Tactics having truly fascinating gender politics… The answer is to go buy her luxury designer handbags.
For a while now, the item shops have been carrying "Bag" items. These have a few things in common: They are class-agnostic, their damage isn't spectacular, they're female-only, and they are incredibly expensive. I've only just started having to deal with items reaching 50k prices like the Bracer; the Croakadile Bag has been sitting in item shops with a 53k price tag since, like, Chapter 2. It's ridiculous.
But you see, Reis has innate dual wield. So if we buy her not one, but two Hydrascale bags, she can equip both, and grant her +2 Speed and also the power to hit enemies with two purses at the same time.
Luxury handbags. The path to ultimate Dragonkin power. What the hell.
Will we make long-term use of Reis? I don't know. She has the other problem as all the other late-game recruits, in that there's very little time left to turn her into a lovingly handcrafted blorbo with custom ability sets; we'd have to rely entirely on her presumably OP native special job. And she's no Cid, although… Hm. If these starting stats are indicative of her stat growth… And of course, we can expand her equipment list by swapping Reis into new jobs once we're satisfied with what she has with Dragonkin.
This seems like a merely good unit as-is that would turn into completely crazy if she had enough time to branch out and equip some support abilities from other jobs.
Well, for now, since we recovered the Cancer Stone, let's head back to Goug and see if it slots into that orrery Mustadio's dad found; after all the Stone wasn't "consumed" by Reis's transformation, we still have it with us.
IV. "Cloud, Cloud Strife. And he isn't a SOLDIER anymore."
Mustadio: "You don't suppose this one will metamorphose as well, do you?" Ramza: "We'll soon know."
[He inserts the stone into the apparatus; the whole building starts to shake.] Mustadio: "Father's mercy!"
Honestly, given all we've seen of the Zodiac Stones so far, it's incredibly funny how casual Ramza is with the things in the Besrudio side quests. Our boy has genuinely no idea what that device even does, but he is fully willing to fuck around and find out. There's clearly a strain of curiosity and adventurism in Ramza that his demeanor obscures.
Lightning shoots out from the orrery as everything shakes, and then it falls, Terminator-style, and a figure emerges…
…
I beg your pardon?
Cloud!? Cloud Strife!? What the fuck are you doing in this game, man! What is happening here! At least Luso and Balthier were contextually presented as fellow Ivalicians who kind of got lost on their way to their original story, but did Cloud just get teleported from the FF7 world?
Young Man: "What… is this place? Who… who am I? I remember being swallowed by a current - a great stream, and then…" Besrudio: "I recall reading of something like this in a volume long ago: a transporter." Mustadio: "A transporter?" Besrudio: "A device for teleportation across dimensions - across the very fabric of time and space." Ramza: "Then, the man before us hails from a world beyond our own?" Besrudio: "Like as not. Behold his manner of dress." Young Man: "My name is… Cloud. Yes, that was it." Ramza: "I am Ramza, of House Beoulve. That man over there is…" Cloud: [He turns around, raising his hands to his face.] "I couldn't care less what your names are. What I need is a battlefield. That's right. I was… I was a member of SOLDIER." Mustadio: "Has he no manners at all?"
[Suddenly Cloud experiences Flashback Migraine and falls to his knees, holding his head.]
Cloud: "Uhn… What is this… this feeling in my fingertips? The heat! Inside my skull… No, stop… Sephiroth - no!" Mustadio: "Best keep your distance. That man is not stable." Cloud: "I have to get there…"
[Cloud gets up and walks out of the house.] Mustadio: "What do you suppose that was all about?"
Wild stuff.
I actually had heard about Cloud being a guest unit in the game at some point, but if it happened, I'd assumed we'd be dealing with a Balthier/Luso scenario: The character is integrated into the world of Ivalice, we encounter a mercenary with a shadowy background called Cloud who has some kind of magical past contact with a phenomenon native to the setting; a "fusion" crossover, rather than a "portal" crossover, to use terminology I was introduced to long ago by @EarthScorpion.
But no. This is the actual Cloud Strife, plucked straight from his original timeline. And from his dialogue, even though he is amnesiac, we can more or less figure out when; he was "swallowed by a current," so that would be when Cloud and Tifa are swallowed by the lifestream after his breakdown at the Northern Crater; the transporter must have somehow reached him in the lifestream and pulled him out, waking him up but leaving him completely disoriented and with his memories even more fucked up than they were before the Northern Crater.
What an absolutely insane plot point.
Obviously, we need to be following Cloud. Unfortunately, we're not given any leads.
Except, you'll recall, that at the start of this update we entered Sal Ghidos and met a carbon copy of Aerith selling flowers. So we head back there pronto…
Flower Peddler: "A flower for a gil, ser?"
[Cloud stares at her, his hand half-raised as if about to say something.] Cloud: "..." Flower Peddler: "Is something the matter? Do I look like someone familiar?" Cloud: "No. Never mind."
[He leaves.] Flower Peddler: "Well, then… Good-day to you, too."
[Several rogues appear out of the nearby alleyways.]
Aerith: "Oh, no!" Ruffian: "We've been searching for you, Aerith. Thought you'd kick'd away, eh? Hawking flowers for your mum again today, I see. Such a dear girl, always working so hard for your mum…" Aerith: "Please, ten more days - even just a week is all I need!"
[The Ruffian grabs Aerith by the collar.] Ruffian: "We set the date, and the date's long passed, love. You'll make good on that gelt here and now - all thirty thousand we lent you!" Aerith: "Release me!" Ruffian: "You know, now as I look at you, you're quite the rum-dutchess, aren't you? Seems to me as you'd earn a lot more selling that tinder-box o' yours than them flowers!"
[The ruffians all laugh.]
I am honestly, genuinely impressed and wondering where the fuck the translators even dug up "rum-dutchess" from. This is some straight up 18th century slang; one of the very first Google results is people on GameFAQs wondering what it even means. It uses a meaning of "rum" that's unrelated to booze and is in fact tied etymologically to "Rome," which is here used as a metaphor for grandeur and prestige in general; a "rum duke" is a remarkably handsome man, and a "rum-dutchess" is a handsome woman of cheerful deposition. He's basically calling her a hottie, but doing so using a construction that would likely be sarcastic under the circumstances. "Selling your tinder-box" here, of course, refers to prostitution. The man is shaking down Aerith for an absolutely outrageous sum (I mean we make 30k gil on the regular as a mercenary group, but the fact that Aerith sells her flowers one gil a piece gives us a good idea how much 30k represents for the average commoner) that she borrowed for unexplained reasons, and "suggesting" that she resort to prostitution to pay off the debt, with the implicit threat of physical violence if she doesn't comply. What a charmer. But I bet that's how he does a lot of his business.
But then, the hero appears.
Cloud: "Get your hands off her!" Ruffian: "What did you say?" Cloud: "I said get your filthy hands off her." Ruffian: [He lets go of Aerith and leans in towards Cloud in a threatening pose.] "I'd not be talking to me like that. Might be as you get blood on them fancy riggings of yours."
God but the sprite work in this game is so good. I'm pretty sure they made this a custom pose for literally just this one scene, and look at it! It's so evocative!
Cloud shoves the ruffian onto his back, and tells Aerith to "run." (And my god I wasn't expecting her to be literally called Aerith, is this a "there's always a lighthouse, there's always a man" type of situation or what).
She does so, the Ruffian gets up and asks Cloud if he wants to get beat up, but just as Cloud defiantly challenges him ,the Flashback Migraine kicks in again and he falls to his knees, groaning in pain and incapacitated.
Lucky for him, that's when we step in.
Ruffian: "Twice-be-damned luck! Come on, boys!"
[OBJECTIVE: PROTECT CLOUD!]
Alright, well.
This should be interesting.
Our opposition is extremely high level - several Thieves at lv 47-48, though there's one guy who's lv 33 for some reason - and we're only running with four units instead of five, and we left Cid at home so it wouldn't be too easy; Cloud is technically a fifth unit but he's currently incapacitated and this is represented by him choosing to spend the fight running and hiding, which as far as I'm concerned, is just as well.
Still, this is a surprisingly trouble-free battle. This is largely due to the fact that our opposition is deceptively weak; for all their high level and accordingly inflated HP counts, they're one Squire, three Thieves and one Monk, in which the only unit that's really threatening is the Monk, and also their equipment is kind of hot garbage.
One of the Thieves does open up with a successful Steal Heart on Gillian, but joke's on him; our girl's speed is so low that I have ample time to have Reis turn around and whack her with her purse until she comes back to her senses.
No, literally.
Also, most of these guys have only normal commands as their main offensive move, so the moment they walk up to Ramza they get First Strike'd, and they are not rocking a Knight's shield-and-parry combo.
I'll make a long story short: These guys' high level and large HP counts are largely a sandbag for me to get to flex a little.
Reis, our new recruit, performs decently. Nothing awe-inspiring, but she's still a completely fresh recruit with no extra abilities, and yet the Dual-Wielded Speed Purses + Dragon Breath combo is putting in work.
Cloud stays safely out of harm's way, and we mop up the thieves with ease. The last survivor flees to a corner where Reis hunts him down, and he manages to get in a stab shortly before paying for it with his life.
Dragon wife.
Battle's over, and we get some extra Cloud dialogue.
Cloud: "I've lost something… something very important." Ramza: "Cloud…?" Cloud: "I've not been myself ever since. Who… who am I now? What should I do? How… how can I stop this pain?" Ramza: "Cloud… There are people waiting for you back in your world, am I not right? With the power of another Stone, we may be able to return you there." Cloud: "Let's go, Ramza. I can't stay here. I have to get there - to the Promised Land."
[Cloud joins the party.]
Absolutely wild.
The references to "losing something very important," "not being himself" and "how to stop this pain" emphasize that this is Cloud post-Aerith's death, post-Northern Crater, in the throes of total grief and total shattering of his self-definition. If anything, the transport causing him partial amnesia made him more functional than he would be at this point in VII canon.
But God, the idea of making this Literal Cloud Strife from the Actual Final Fantasy VII World, but then also having there be a flower peddler who lives in the slums in Ivalice who is called Aerith and looks just like Aerith is crazy. It's notable to me that this is a kinda graceless handling of the parallels, though; we're doing the same "Cloud meets Aerith selling flowers, she gets into trouble with disreputable characters, Cloud comes to her help," except here Aerith genuinely is a hapless damsel in distress whom Cloud saves, and the whole scenario of it being some random thugs who are trying to shake her down (with an implicit threat of sexual coercion) and get wiped out is a much less interesting treatment than VII's own - of course, Final Fantasy Tactics has much less time to develop this thread, and they are ultimately tertiary characters. Still, Mirror Universe Aerith existing and then running off-screen to vanish presumably forever is definitely… A choice.
So. Cloud has joined our party now. What is he like?
Well, this is where I reveal The Twist to all of you reading this who haven't played Tactics:
Cloud is completely fucking useless.
His main flaw is that he joins us at lv 1. We are getting an amnesiac Cloud without any of his skills developed over the course of the original game, without his Buster Sword or any Materias, and this is reflected by him being incredibly weak.
His special job is Soldier (no all-caps, probably because Arazlam is writing all this from centuries in the future and is not aware of the nuances of SOLDIER nomenclature), which has the special command Limit. And in theory, that's pretty cool: Cloud has all the Limit Breaks he has in the original game plus an extra, original one, "Cherry Blossom"!
I like this, this feels like proper pandering. But also, these Limits… Can't actually be used. No, I don't mean the fact that he starts without any of them unlocked.
I will confess. I wanted to be sure I actually understood how Cloud even works before I tried to maybe put in the effort to level him up, so I looked him up on the wiki. The Limit ability can only be used when Cloud is equipped, not with a type of sword, but with one specific sword, the Materia Blade, which is only found using Treasure Hunter on a specific map we have not unlocked yet. And the Materia Blade isn't even good. In a perverse twist on Agrias's own issues with the magical growth/physical attack split, Cloud's Limits are all MA-based attack, but the MA growth of Soldier is bad, instead gaining Physical Attack growth that is largely useless because to use his Commands Cloud must equip a specific sword that isn't actually good, and his gear permissions are also terrible to begin with.
Reis's whole setup would eat this guy for breakfast even if she didn't join us already lv 35. We unlocked a better unit in the process of getting this one.
Listen. Guys. I spent months playing through FF7 for this Let's Play. You were there. You saw me get attached to these characters and their story. Crass pandering or not, "promo character that's a glorified ad to get you to buy another game" or not, I would make Cloud a permanent addition to my team.
If he didn't start at lv 1, completely unable to use his custom abilities, and with an impossibly contrived and bizarrely put-together combination of mechanics underlying his whole mechanical expression.
I'm not putting up with that. Cloud… Is getting shelved.
Sorry, man. I really did like you in FF7.
Aaaand that'll do it for us today. I was expecting to advance the plot a little further, I feel kinda bad that this mostly all covered a single side quest sequence, but it's half past midnight and this post is already full update-sized.
Besides I kind of wanted to just… Sit with how weird this all was. From Dragon Wife to Cloud Strife, this was a truly weird sequence of events. It's nice that Mustadio and his dad get to hang out and remind us that they exist, and the snippets of other people's stories are an interesting treat, but at the same time in the context of a game that has so much writing for its main quest, it all feels so… Underwritten and glossed over when it comes to these side quests. What even happened to Reis and Beowulf? We might never find out. Will Cloud ever make it back home? Doubtful.
Also, we did confirm that Cid was exactly as overwhelming as we expected from the last update.
Honestly, the decision to make all these units (Beowulf, Construct 8, Cid, Reis, Cloud) available at what has to be like... The 75%, 80% mark of the game is definitely a decision. There seems to be so little time to make them fully grow into their potential. I would have liked to get Beowulf, like, in mid-Chapter 3 maybe? I don't know if there's enough time to really round out Reis's skillset without just grinding high enough to trivialize the main story battles. Very odd construction.
And… Hm. Yeah, I'm going to need to find a way to assign Gillian a bunch of Errands without running into too many random encounters in the process; leveling Arithmetician "manually" is just too painful. Food for next update.
Thank you for reading.
Next Time: To Limberry!
Main Story Battle Count: Still 40 Side Quest Battle Count: 7 Random Encounter Count: 64, though that number is losing its usefulness. In most random encounters, I now run the "B-team" who are lowest in level of my active duty units, so as to keep Ramza and other front-liners from pushing past the level scaling of the next story beats. It does lead to some interesting team comps I wouldn't have otherwise tried and keeps Mustadio involved, which is nice.
It really feels like Chapter 4 is when the game expects you to ignore the plot and just endlessly wander and grind and unlock niche characters.
As far as I'm aware, everything in this update (except for the particulars of the translation of course) was in the original PS1 version.
Which means Squaresoft was already hyping Cloud as That Guy to be their wolverine even way back when, before FF8 was even released.
This was the era of mascot characters for video games I think, it wasn't just branding of 'here's more of what you like', but characters were starting to be expected to show up in situations and games where they're not from. I think this is the most blatant 'this is just them from another game' insert that I can recall in the series.
Granted, for all it's long shadow means FFT is often treated as one of the 'main' FF games, it is at this point just an offshoot of the main series. That's where you're supposed to stick promotional character crossovers in.
What even is there to say here. We're given no explanation or backstory here; there is no further dialogue. It simply turns out that Reis was, in fact, Beowulf's girlfriend, at some point she was turned into a dragon, and he quested for a way to return her to her previous form (I see you, people already typing "coward" in the reply box).
I mean like come on what's the point if she just transforms into a White Woman can't she at least have claws and scales and horns like an au ra girl if nothing else.
What do we get in exchange for this rather peculiar gear list? Well…
Reis retains all three elemental breaths she had in her dragon form. She also becomes able to use Dragon's Charm to make enemy units leave their party and join ours; Dragon's Gift sacrifices her own HP to heal an ally and cure any status effect they suffer from; Dragon's Gift appears similar to Ramza's Shout, increasing her own Bravery, Speed, PA and MA. And Dragon's Speed selects a target and instantly fills a target's CT gauge, allowing them to act immediately, which seems really good although I suspect will be limited by its short range. Finally, Holy Breath is a Holy-elemental Breath attack. Seems pretty good!
For a while now, the item shops have been carrying "Bag" items. These have a few things in common: They are class-agnostic, their damage isn't spectacular, they're female-only, and they are incredibly expensive. I've only just started having to deal with items reaching 50k prices like the Bracer; the Croakadile Bag has been sitting in item shops with a 53k price tag since, like, Chapter 2. It's ridiculous.
But you see, Reis has innate dual wield. So if we buy her not one, but two Hydrascale bags, she can equip both, and grant her +2 Speed and also the power to hit enemies with two purses at the same time.
So. Cloud has joined our party now. What is he like?
Well, this is where I reveal The Twist to all of you reading this who haven't played Tactics:
Cloud is completely fucking useless.
His main flaw is that he joins us at lv 1. We are getting an amnesiac Cloud without any of his skills developed over the course of the original game, without his Buster Sword or any Materias, and this is reflected by him being incredibly weak.
His special job is Soldier (no all-caps, probably because Arazlam is writing all this from centuries in the future and is not aware of the nuances of SOLDIER nomenclature), which has the special command Limit. And in theory, that's pretty cool: Cloud has all the Limit Breaks he has in the original game plus an extra, original one, "Cherry Blossom"!
I like this, this feels like proper pandering. But also, these Limits… Can't actually be used. No, I don't mean the fact that he starts without any of them unlocked.
I will confess. I wanted to be sure I actually understood how Cloud even works before I tried to maybe put in the effort to level him up, so I looked him up on the wiki. The Limit ability can only be used when Cloud is equipped, not with a type of sword, but with one specific sword, the Materia Blade, which is only found using Treasure Hunter on a specific map we have not unlocked yet. And the Materia Blade isn't even good. In a perverse twist on Agrias's own issues with the magical growth/physical attack split, Cloud's Limits are all MA-based attack, but the MA growth of Soldier is bad, instead gaining Physical Attack growth that is largely useless because to use his Commands Cloud must equip a specific sword that isn't actually good, and his gear permissions are also terrible to begin with.
Reis's whole setup would eat this guy for breakfast even if she didn't join us already lv 35. We unlocked a better unit in the process of getting this one.
Genuinely what the fuck were they cooking. I can't even come up with a joke explanation, they just made the game wrong. In fact I'm pretty sure I remember from reading about it a while back that Cloud's Limits are also cast-based like a spell or Jump so he's at risk of his target moving away or killing his ass while he tries to Omnislash them. Did they design him wrong on purpose, as a joke???
But no. This is the actual Cloud Strife, plucked straight from his original timeline. And from his dialogue, even though he is amnesiac, we can more or less figure out when; he was "swallowed by a current," so that would be when Cloud and Tifa are swallowed by the lifestream after his breakdown at the Northern Crater; the transporter must have somehow reached him in the lifestream and pulled him out, waking him up but leaving him completely disoriented and with his memories even more fucked up than they were before the Northern Crater.
Fun fact: the reason why Cloud's presence is so weird compared to Balthier and Luso is because unlike them, he was in the original Final Fantasy Tactics. The devs just decided to Isekai Cloud fucking Strife straight into the middle of their serious political drama.
Hadrian, Hester, and Gillian get to go on a bunch of cool adventures, including discovering a god wandering ancient catacombs, nearly capturing the elusive thief of the rich ~~Zorro~~ ~~Lupin the Third~~ Zerro, and all getting trapped into a shadowy prison by an evil stalking ghost. Cool stuff.
Fun fact: the reason why Cloud's presence is so weird compared to Balthier and Luso is because unlike them, he was in the original Final Fantasy Tactics. The devs just decided to Isekai Cloud fucking Strife straight into the middle of their serious political drama.
It's even funnier when you realize that that decision almost certainly was made before FF7 was released, since both FFT and 7 were under development at the same time and 7 only beat Tactics to release by six months or so.
Which makes Cloud's mechanical awfulness even more baffling because you'd think they'd be trying to build the cross-game hype.
That would be quite a useless combination given how CT works.
And yes, the issue with Calculator is that you should never actually be a Calculator in a fight.
You should learn the abilities through errands, equip it as a secondary skill and then just go wild.
Equip everybody with Chameleon Robes, then use CT4 - Holy to basically nuke every enemy and heal your own units
What even is there to say here. We're given no explanation or backstory here; there is no further dialogue. It simply turns out that Reis was, in fact, Beowulf's girlfriend, at some point she was turned into a dragon, and he quested for a way to return her to her previous form (I see you, people already typing "coward" in the reply box).
I have to imagine a few simple tweaks would not only make Cloud viable but preferable:
- make his level a multiple of seven. 21 or 28 given the relative plot levels.
- alternate what his Limits draw on. Swords for strength, blade beams and rock chucking for magic.
- materia blade should/could be cloud exclusive and convert pa into ma for calculations.
FF7 Remake is looking more pixelated than I expected.
