Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Not sure why the Wiki isn't including FFIII - the dwarves that were blocked from sailing by the sea dragon on the floating continent had a very clear "viking" aesthetic and a ship the team took - I feel like that should qualify them as pirates in the final fantasy tradition.
Final Fantasy V, Part 3, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's time for more Final Fantasy V!
Last time, we escaped the ship graveyard after defeating the Siren. We're stranded without a means of transportation, but thankfully there is a town nearby.
This is Carwen, a quanit if charming little town. We spend a mere 10 gils to rest everyone, which I only mention to justify spending a screenshot on showing you just how adorable the sleeping sprites for the group are (and also that the game's technology has evolved to the point of separate beds rather than everyone sleeping in a pile FFIV-style):
Other than expressing concern (and horror) at us coming straight from the graveyard (I can only imagine the party shows up covered in cobwebs, barnacles, and smelling of brine) and asking if we're ghosts, the townsfolks of Carwen mostly serve to point us in the direction of our next goal in a relatively oblique fashion. One muses that "most of the wind drakes were killed in the war 50 years ago," setting up a still-vague backstory of war that hasn't been mentioned previously and I can only assume will grow relevant later, as well as identifying the dragon in the opening cutscene as the last survivor of its species (hi there FF2). They also talk about how the mountain to the north has purple grass that is poisonous to the touch, as well as 'dragon grass,' without elaborating on what this means. There is also, weirdly enough, a mother-in-law joke; the innkeep says "Did you hear? A meteorite fell near Tycoon. Too bad it didn't land on my mother-in-law…" Do people still make these today? I feel like they were really obnoxiously popular for a long time but I haven't heard them in ages and thank God for that, they're so unimaginative and tired. Weird to find one in my Final Fantasy, I can't imagine the target audience for one is the target audience for the other.
Also, I remember what one of my readers said, and I play the local piano:
It's atrocious. Just no natural talent whatsoever. A series of dull 'plonk.' Thankfully, a dialogue box informs me that my Piano skill has leveled up, so maybe there is hope in the distant future!
There is actually an extended dialogue bit with one of the townsfolk, where the group 'unfolds' to talk among themselves, which is kind of the big thing FF3 was missing in its own iteration on a consistent four-people party who always stuck together and reacted to things. According to a green-haired woman, the Kingdom of Walse, which lies beyond the sea, uses machines to amplify the power of the Water Crystal, just like Tule did with the Wind Crystal.
What happens next is a little stilted. What's implied is that the player characters came to the same conclusion I did earlier - "hm, trying to harness the power of a crystal with machinery didn't work for the Lufenians in FF1, it might not have been such a good idea for Tule, maybe the crystal shattered because it was overstretched by human greed in a metaphor for oil and climate change," except they never make that part explicit; they just hear "Walse uses machinery to amplify the crystal's power," Lenna immediately exclaims "We must stop them!" and everyone agrees and argues about how to get there. It's not like the reasoning isn't sound, it's just like it's missing the characters voicing that they came to the same conclusion the audience did and that they feel this is a more pressing concern than the ambiguous dark force mentioned by King Tycoon.
Well, in any case. Carwen and Walse aren't connected by land, and the winds don't let any ships sail. Galuf carelessly comments that "we don't have Syldra either" - a statement of fact, but one which everyone already knew about and which, voiced so casually, only hurts Faris:
It's so good for how understated it is. Digging into these games really has me trying to study the dialogue and sprite work on games that are trying to do very much with very little, and Galuf casually mentioning Syldra's assumed death because he only knew the dragon for a very short time and thinks of them as a simple means of transportation rather than a friend, accidentally hitting a heartstring for Faris who's been putting up a good front trying not to think about it, and Faris having that sad, defeated sprite with her hair fully hiding her face, and Galuf realizing his mistake and trying to apologize - it does so much in three lines of dialogue and a couple of sprite animations.
Lenna tries to divert everyone from the sadness by asking Bartz if he has any idea, and he audibly muses that, "if we can't go by land or sea, then… Hmmm…"
He's obviously hinting at sky being the answer, I think the chain of logic the game wants me to follow is that King Tycoon went off with a dragon, King Tycoon suffered a dire fate but his dragon is unaccounted for, people just talked about a mountain with dragon grass, so I should head there to find the dragon. It just feels like something is missing to grease the process, I think? It feels a little stilted to me. Not a big deal, I guess, just while I'm heading fr the mountain I feel like there's a missing piece.
Anyway, we leave town, murder some buffalos and hedgehods on the way north, and reach the mountain.
I'm starting to think I might have to cut the random encounter screenshots for room entirely, which is sad, because they're great, look at it, I'm fighting The Living Tombstone(s)! And look at these flying bat-kitties! Adorable!
After only a couple of encounters, Galuf and Faris master Barehanded, which means I can swap them back to WHM/BLM while still punching everything they meet into oblivion.
The mountain has one feature that is easily dealt with but which does catch you by surprise, though; remember how someone in town said there was poison grass up there?
Stepping through one of these purple thingies immediately causes the entire party to be poisoned and to start taking damage with every step. Fortunately, I Galuf can cast Poisona and heal everyone, and once that's done, navigating the dungeon is just a matter of walking around the grass patches.
There's a neat idea here where this is kind of a 'dual' dungeon, where we move between underground caves and the open air, but it's ultimately fairly unremarkable until we reach the end, where we make a surprising discovery.
Uh-oh. That would be King Tycoon's funky sci-fi helmet. Lenna rushes to it, and the item is acquired as a Mythril Helm (which no one can wear right now).
However, it looks like this was a trap, as moments later…
Bartz rushes towards her, but before he can do anything, a narratively convenient earthquake breaks the cliff, creating a chasm between the two of them, and the villain who fired the arrow makes her appearance.
Some kind of… huntress lady? Bartz is shocked that someone would hunt a wind drake, and Magissa does a 'Ohohoho!' anime villainess laughter and answers their hides fetch quite the price on the black market, which considering that this is seemingly the last living wind drake, is honestly not only evil but also kind of a cheap move. Like, you could do better with such a rare prize than selling some dragon hide, you know? Anyway, Magissa recognized Lenna as the Princess of Tycoon on sight, and says that "she'll make a lovely souvenir for my husband," which is… Disturbingly sinister. I'm choosing not to interrogate what she means by this.
Then Faris leaps to the rescue!
Faris has by far the best insults in the series, and I strongly suspect that someone on the localization team made the 'ship captain' connection and drew from Captain Haddock for it. Wonder what she sounds like in Japanese.
As, in she literally "leaps" to the rescue, by leaping over that chasm there. Unfortunately, the ground is still unstable from the earthquake, and…
Look at this Will E. Coyote shit.
Faris manages to grab onto the edge of the cliff, only to slip and fall while Magissa watches and gloats. But then!
Faris caught up the wall further down and is now crawling up the face of the cliff! Magissa is too shocked to fire at her or something like that, and simply backs away before Faris'sincredible gay thirst resolve to save her friend, and the pirate manages to make it to the top of the cliff, where she throws a rope across the chasm, allowing Galuf and Bartz to join her rather than continue to just stand there like dickheads.
Faris helps Lenna up, and Magissa decides she'll simply have to crush these "annoying little twerps," and engages battle.
Lenna starts the fight poisoned, which is a fun little quirk but doesn't affect much beyond me needing to spend a Poisona casting on her. Magissa isn't a very tough opponent, though she has a powerful Drain that can inflict 180 damage (enough to kill anyone except Lenna) while healing her for the same amount. She doesn't have any particular elemental weakness, so amusingly Faris is doing more damage with her punching than her spells.
After Magissa has taken enough damage, though, she calls her husband, and things take a turn for the worse:
Forza hits pretty hard, multiple times per turn, including with a Tackle move that deals 180 damage, which just like Drain is a one-shot on the wrong character. And to top it off, Magissa casts healing spells on him. The end result is…
…I manage to take down Magissa only for her hubby to wipe the floor with my whole team. Feels bad, man.
The solution to this is simple; I mostly just need to level up so my characters have more than 180 HP and can survive a direct Tackle hit, which will allow me to keep pressuring him with damage rather than play a losing game of healing catch-up. I grind some mobs, get one level for everyone, and head out for a rematch.
Pictured: Faris in the process of punching. Punches hit twice, so that attack is actually around 160 damage total.
I need to do some dancing around with healing (mainly using Bartz to use Potions on people, which ends up more efficient than Galuf, who is more useful punching things) and we skate by KO a couple times, but in the end Magissa and Forza go down to the power of concentrated, unmitigated violence.
What is most interesting to me about this fight, however, has nothing to do with the fight itself, and everything to do about this victory screen, which is confirming a suspicion I've harbored since the giant eagle boss fight:
Look closely. What is striking about this fight?
You don't get XP from it.
We do get ABPs, which are the job advancement track. But for the first time in the series, boss fights - all boss fights, the giant eagle, the siren, and now the power couple - provide 0 xp.
This rouses an old memory that I had forgotten about how many JRPGs I played as a child had a similar system. It's always baffled me, I couldn't understand why, but now at last I have found the original culprit. The one responsible.
Having enquired on Discord, the rationale I've been given for this new development is that it's to allow for lv 1 challenge runs in which the goal is to win the game without ever gaining a level - bosses don't give no XP so much because they are bosses, but rather because they are story-mandated battles. You can't finish FF1 without hitting at least lv 9 from mandatory battles; you can, apparently, beat FFV with the whole party at lv 1 even with fully-mastered jobs.
As far as that goes I guess that's fair enough. It enables a specific playstyle without technically harming anything. I don't like it, though. One of the best feelings in an RPG is when you beat a cool tough boss and it explodes in a giant pile of XP and everyone levels up at the same time, skipping the usual incremental grind of XP from mobs. This is now gone, and it's going to stay gone as far as I remember, and that's a bummer. Not a massive one, I'll get over it, but it annoys me.
Hopefully later games will throw in some cool alternate rewards for beating bosses, which is a cool alternative to XP, like some sweet gear or something. Magissa and Forza give a Whip (which nobody can equip) and a Power Drink, which appears to be a Speed-boosting consumable.
Okay, I will grant you this, the game rewarding you for beating this huge jacked man by handing out a can of Monster is pretty funny.
I'm not blind, you're seeing it too, right?
Once these two are out of the way, we find our way to the top of the mountain…
We don't know yet how King Tycoon's helm made it to this isolated mountain peak, but it's clearly not the only one to have done so; Tycoon's wind drake, Hiryu, is also there. And he's been badly injured. Lenna says not to worry, she'll take care of him; the fabled dragon grass is right there… Just behind all these purple poison bushes.
Her friends call out to her to warn her not to do something so reckless, but Lenna powers through the pain, grabs the dragon grass, and comes back, all complete with pained pauses and swooshy effects on the screen to convey the effects of the poison, it's pretty effective.
Lenna hands the grass to Faris, asking her to give it to Hiryu quickly, before collapsing.
Faris does as requested, and within moments Hiryu is roaring back to life.
It looks like Hiryu isn't just a particularly smart flying creature; he actually has magic of its own, and casts a healing spell on Lenna, rescuing her from the poison.
There's so much joy in these sprites.
Oh yeah baby WE GOT A FUCKING DRAGON WOOOOO
Which is unfortunate for Bartz, who has an embarrassed moment as he turns away from the group and confesses that he has a fear of heights. The rest of the group reacts in the way you would expect from the group of battle-forged best friend they are by now:
By laughing at him.
Note how this mirrors the ending of the Siren fight, with Bartz is Galuf's position.
Everyone queues up to ride the dragon, except Bartz, who has to be kicked onto it by Galuf, and then, we are off!
Hell yeah, baby.
With the dragon, we are able to fly across the sea, to the Kingdom of Walse!
This tower presumably houses the Water Crystal, but it's guarded and the soldiers don't let us in.
Cut for space.
Last time, we escaped the ship graveyard after defeating the Siren. We're stranded without a means of transportation, but thankfully there is a town nearby.
This is Carwen, a quanit if charming little town. We spend a mere 10 gils to rest everyone, which I only mention to justify spending a screenshot on showing you just how adorable the sleeping sprites for the group are (and also that the game's technology has evolved to the point of separate beds rather than everyone sleeping in a pile FFIV-style):
Other than expressing concern (and horror) at us coming straight from the graveyard (I can only imagine the party shows up covered in cobwebs, barnacles, and smelling of brine) and asking if we're ghosts, the townsfolks of Carwen mostly serve to point us in the direction of our next goal in a relatively oblique fashion. One muses that "most of the wind drakes were killed in the war 50 years ago," setting up a still-vague backstory of war that hasn't been mentioned previously and I can only assume will grow relevant later, as well as identifying the dragon in the opening cutscene as the last survivor of its species (hi there FF2). They also talk about how the mountain to the north has purple grass that is poisonous to the touch, as well as 'dragon grass,' without elaborating on what this means. There is also, weirdly enough, a mother-in-law joke; the innkeep says "Did you hear? A meteorite fell near Tycoon. Too bad it didn't land on my mother-in-law…" Do people still make these today? I feel like they were really obnoxiously popular for a long time but I haven't heard them in ages and thank God for that, they're so unimaginative and tired. Weird to find one in my Final Fantasy, I can't imagine the target audience for one is the target audience for the other.
Also, I remember what one of my readers said, and I play the local piano:
It's atrocious. Just no natural talent whatsoever. A series of dull 'plonk.' Thankfully, a dialogue box informs me that my Piano skill has leveled up, so maybe there is hope in the distant future!
There is actually an extended dialogue bit with one of the townsfolk, where the group 'unfolds' to talk among themselves, which is kind of the big thing FF3 was missing in its own iteration on a consistent four-people party who always stuck together and reacted to things. According to a green-haired woman, the Kingdom of Walse, which lies beyond the sea, uses machines to amplify the power of the Water Crystal, just like Tule did with the Wind Crystal.
What happens next is a little stilted. What's implied is that the player characters came to the same conclusion I did earlier - "hm, trying to harness the power of a crystal with machinery didn't work for the Lufenians in FF1, it might not have been such a good idea for Tule, maybe the crystal shattered because it was overstretched by human greed in a metaphor for oil and climate change," except they never make that part explicit; they just hear "Walse uses machinery to amplify the crystal's power," Lenna immediately exclaims "We must stop them!" and everyone agrees and argues about how to get there. It's not like the reasoning isn't sound, it's just like it's missing the characters voicing that they came to the same conclusion the audience did and that they feel this is a more pressing concern than the ambiguous dark force mentioned by King Tycoon.
Well, in any case. Carwen and Walse aren't connected by land, and the winds don't let any ships sail. Galuf carelessly comments that "we don't have Syldra either" - a statement of fact, but one which everyone already knew about and which, voiced so casually, only hurts Faris:
It's so good for how understated it is. Digging into these games really has me trying to study the dialogue and sprite work on games that are trying to do very much with very little, and Galuf casually mentioning Syldra's assumed death because he only knew the dragon for a very short time and thinks of them as a simple means of transportation rather than a friend, accidentally hitting a heartstring for Faris who's been putting up a good front trying not to think about it, and Faris having that sad, defeated sprite with her hair fully hiding her face, and Galuf realizing his mistake and trying to apologize - it does so much in three lines of dialogue and a couple of sprite animations.
Lenna tries to divert everyone from the sadness by asking Bartz if he has any idea, and he audibly muses that, "if we can't go by land or sea, then… Hmmm…"
He's obviously hinting at sky being the answer, I think the chain of logic the game wants me to follow is that King Tycoon went off with a dragon, King Tycoon suffered a dire fate but his dragon is unaccounted for, people just talked about a mountain with dragon grass, so I should head there to find the dragon. It just feels like something is missing to grease the process, I think? It feels a little stilted to me. Not a big deal, I guess, just while I'm heading fr the mountain I feel like there's a missing piece.
Anyway, we leave town, murder some buffalos and hedgehods on the way north, and reach the mountain.
I'm starting to think I might have to cut the random encounter screenshots for room entirely, which is sad, because they're great, look at it, I'm fighting The Living Tombstone(s)! And look at these flying bat-kitties! Adorable!
After only a couple of encounters, Galuf and Faris master Barehanded, which means I can swap them back to WHM/BLM while still punching everything they meet into oblivion.
The mountain has one feature that is easily dealt with but which does catch you by surprise, though; remember how someone in town said there was poison grass up there?
Stepping through one of these purple thingies immediately causes the entire party to be poisoned and to start taking damage with every step. Fortunately, I Galuf can cast Poisona and heal everyone, and once that's done, navigating the dungeon is just a matter of walking around the grass patches.
There's a neat idea here where this is kind of a 'dual' dungeon, where we move between underground caves and the open air, but it's ultimately fairly unremarkable until we reach the end, where we make a surprising discovery.
Uh-oh. That would be King Tycoon's funky sci-fi helmet. Lenna rushes to it, and the item is acquired as a Mythril Helm (which no one can wear right now).
However, it looks like this was a trap, as moments later…
Bartz rushes towards her, but before he can do anything, a narratively convenient earthquake breaks the cliff, creating a chasm between the two of them, and the villain who fired the arrow makes her appearance.
Some kind of… huntress lady? Bartz is shocked that someone would hunt a wind drake, and Magissa does a 'Ohohoho!' anime villainess laughter and answers their hides fetch quite the price on the black market, which considering that this is seemingly the last living wind drake, is honestly not only evil but also kind of a cheap move. Like, you could do better with such a rare prize than selling some dragon hide, you know? Anyway, Magissa recognized Lenna as the Princess of Tycoon on sight, and says that "she'll make a lovely souvenir for my husband," which is… Disturbingly sinister. I'm choosing not to interrogate what she means by this.
Then Faris leaps to the rescue!
Faris has by far the best insults in the series, and I strongly suspect that someone on the localization team made the 'ship captain' connection and drew from Captain Haddock for it. Wonder what she sounds like in Japanese.
As, in she literally "leaps" to the rescue, by leaping over that chasm there. Unfortunately, the ground is still unstable from the earthquake, and…
Look at this Will E. Coyote shit.
Faris manages to grab onto the edge of the cliff, only to slip and fall while Magissa watches and gloats. But then!
Faris caught up the wall further down and is now crawling up the face of the cliff! Magissa is too shocked to fire at her or something like that, and simply backs away before Faris's
Faris helps Lenna up, and Magissa decides she'll simply have to crush these "annoying little twerps," and engages battle.
Lenna starts the fight poisoned, which is a fun little quirk but doesn't affect much beyond me needing to spend a Poisona casting on her. Magissa isn't a very tough opponent, though she has a powerful Drain that can inflict 180 damage (enough to kill anyone except Lenna) while healing her for the same amount. She doesn't have any particular elemental weakness, so amusingly Faris is doing more damage with her punching than her spells.
After Magissa has taken enough damage, though, she calls her husband, and things take a turn for the worse:
Forza hits pretty hard, multiple times per turn, including with a Tackle move that deals 180 damage, which just like Drain is a one-shot on the wrong character. And to top it off, Magissa casts healing spells on him. The end result is…
…I manage to take down Magissa only for her hubby to wipe the floor with my whole team. Feels bad, man.
The solution to this is simple; I mostly just need to level up so my characters have more than 180 HP and can survive a direct Tackle hit, which will allow me to keep pressuring him with damage rather than play a losing game of healing catch-up. I grind some mobs, get one level for everyone, and head out for a rematch.
Pictured: Faris in the process of punching. Punches hit twice, so that attack is actually around 160 damage total.
I need to do some dancing around with healing (mainly using Bartz to use Potions on people, which ends up more efficient than Galuf, who is more useful punching things) and we skate by KO a couple times, but in the end Magissa and Forza go down to the power of concentrated, unmitigated violence.
What is most interesting to me about this fight, however, has nothing to do with the fight itself, and everything to do about this victory screen, which is confirming a suspicion I've harbored since the giant eagle boss fight:
Look closely. What is striking about this fight?
You don't get XP from it.
We do get ABPs, which are the job advancement track. But for the first time in the series, boss fights - all boss fights, the giant eagle, the siren, and now the power couple - provide 0 xp.
This rouses an old memory that I had forgotten about how many JRPGs I played as a child had a similar system. It's always baffled me, I couldn't understand why, but now at last I have found the original culprit. The one responsible.
Having enquired on Discord, the rationale I've been given for this new development is that it's to allow for lv 1 challenge runs in which the goal is to win the game without ever gaining a level - bosses don't give no XP so much because they are bosses, but rather because they are story-mandated battles. You can't finish FF1 without hitting at least lv 9 from mandatory battles; you can, apparently, beat FFV with the whole party at lv 1 even with fully-mastered jobs.
As far as that goes I guess that's fair enough. It enables a specific playstyle without technically harming anything. I don't like it, though. One of the best feelings in an RPG is when you beat a cool tough boss and it explodes in a giant pile of XP and everyone levels up at the same time, skipping the usual incremental grind of XP from mobs. This is now gone, and it's going to stay gone as far as I remember, and that's a bummer. Not a massive one, I'll get over it, but it annoys me.
Hopefully later games will throw in some cool alternate rewards for beating bosses, which is a cool alternative to XP, like some sweet gear or something. Magissa and Forza give a Whip (which nobody can equip) and a Power Drink, which appears to be a Speed-boosting consumable.
Okay, I will grant you this, the game rewarding you for beating this huge jacked man by handing out a can of Monster is pretty funny.
I'm not blind, you're seeing it too, right?
Once these two are out of the way, we find our way to the top of the mountain…
We don't know yet how King Tycoon's helm made it to this isolated mountain peak, but it's clearly not the only one to have done so; Tycoon's wind drake, Hiryu, is also there. And he's been badly injured. Lenna says not to worry, she'll take care of him; the fabled dragon grass is right there… Just behind all these purple poison bushes.
Her friends call out to her to warn her not to do something so reckless, but Lenna powers through the pain, grabs the dragon grass, and comes back, all complete with pained pauses and swooshy effects on the screen to convey the effects of the poison, it's pretty effective.
Lenna hands the grass to Faris, asking her to give it to Hiryu quickly, before collapsing.
Faris does as requested, and within moments Hiryu is roaring back to life.
It looks like Hiryu isn't just a particularly smart flying creature; he actually has magic of its own, and casts a healing spell on Lenna, rescuing her from the poison.
There's so much joy in these sprites.
Oh yeah baby WE GOT A FUCKING DRAGON WOOOOO
Which is unfortunate for Bartz, who has an embarrassed moment as he turns away from the group and confesses that he has a fear of heights. The rest of the group reacts in the way you would expect from the group of battle-forged best friend they are by now:
By laughing at him.
Note how this mirrors the ending of the Siren fight, with Bartz is Galuf's position.
Everyone queues up to ride the dragon, except Bartz, who has to be kicked onto it by Galuf, and then, we are off!
Hell yeah, baby.
With the dragon, we are able to fly across the sea, to the Kingdom of Walse!
This tower presumably houses the Water Crystal, but it's guarded and the soldiers don't let us in.
Final Fantasy V, Part 3, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Apparently, the power of the Water Crystal not only grants Walse the cleanest water in the world, but also protects it from monster, which, hmm…
"We live in a world so full of monsters that the only thing keeping us safe is the twisted machinery that is amplifying the power of one of the world's elemental crystals and will soon bring about its shattering" is kind of grim. Not that these characters seem to realize it! They're pretty safe in their idyllic fairy tale country.
They have a magic store which does the cool trick of previewing something you're about to get soon:
Note the unique icons. Even the spells above there aren't black or white magic. Previously the game has kind of struggled with where to put buffs and debuffs, and some like Haste have kind of ping-ponged between Black and White because the two schools of magic didn't really have a specific lore identity. This game has solved this by putting a clock next to them and making them 'time magic,' which I think is interesting. We'll get to that later.
There's also this tiny child playing next to some kind of big wooly mammoth kind of thing:
We learn that Garula is shy, and shouldn't be teased. I bumped into one as a random encounter, and notably, it doesn't appear to attack, and it doesn't give XP on death - though it does give ABP. If I felt like spending a dozen hours grinding them, I suppose I could master a job right now without breaking the game with overleveling!
…
I want to take a moment to rant.
I want to show you the picture that angers me the most. The worst part of this series, that I have been putting up with, SILENTLY, for FOUR ENTIRE GAMES. But NO MORE. I am making a stand. This is a callout post.
This is the worst picture in all of Final Fantasy:
What is this? You don't see it? But it's so simple. So obvious.
These NPCs have collision boxes, and they move around the screen.
WHICH MEANS THEY KEEP GETTING IN MY WAY AND BLOCKING ACCESS.
I have spent. Entire MINUTES. Waiting for some asshole to move his ass out of the way of a town corner I wanted to access. AND THEY DON'T. They just keep going around in circles, randomly! Until they finally happen to step aside and open the way! This is the worst! I hate it! And it's been five games and they still haven't solved it! It should be the easiest thing! I don't know how, but there has to be a way!!!
Okay. Thank you for listening to my talk. We can go back now.
Anyway, we're headed to Castle Walse.
Oh hey we're doing the Edward bit in FFIV where he already personally knew foreign heads of state and greeted them by name, making gaining access a lot quicker. I like that bit. It's a good way of rooting characters into their setting and role.
Lenna pleads with King Walse to stop amplifying the power of the Water Crystal; unfortunately they don't have much evidence to back their dire warnings with. King Walse has heard noises about an incident involving the Wind Crystal, but it's far enough that it hasn't reéally spread here yet. In what I find to be actually a pretty clever bit of writing, the game actually turns around the idea of the benevolent "good king" who cares about his people by making that very benevolence the source of King Walse's refusal to listen to the threat at hand:
King Walse cares about his people, and their opinion has an implicit influence on what he can actually do rather than his power being absolute, and as a result he's being complacent with the power he's wielding.
Definitely an environmentalism vibe to the plot - the overuse of a natural resource allows people to live in comfort, oblivious to the consequences their power is wrecking on the environment. It's not subtle, although it's not as overt about it as, say, FFVII.
The conversation is headed for a dead end when the group is interrupted by a terrible noise:
Uh-oh.
These meteorites definitely have an important role in the plot and connection to the shattering of the crystals, but it's not one I can parse yet. It could be we're facing a space-borne threat, like in FFIV?
King Walse says that their discussion will have to wait, as this is an emergency, and take the head of his troops to head to the Tower and ensure its safety - that is, of course, where the Water Crystal is stored. The Tower is, presumably, the construct designed to harness and amplify its power.
Obviously our next step is to follow after him, but first, let's fuck around the castle for a bit! There's stuff to find. One of the guards alludes to there being a treasure vault underground, but if I try to steal it, I'll become part of the underground - that is to say they'll throw me in jail. That sounds promising! Another guard warns me to run if I bump into a monster called a 'jackanapes,' but that sounds fine.
There are also scholars with some very intriguing information:
Shiva, uh? I'm intrigued. Let's head downstairs…
What the fuck.
OKAY TURNS OUT THE UNDERGROUND IS FULL OF MONSTERS THAT TAKE 0 DAMAGE FROM MY ATTACKS AND ONE-SHOT EVERYONE THEY HIT, LET'S RUN AND COME BACK LATER
…
Is what I would say, if I was a coward.
Because Bartz is a Thief, and can equip the Scram command, running away from battle with a 100% success rate. Which means it's time to power through the underground corridors by spamming Scram every time we bump into a monster!
There it is: the Kingdom of Walse's hidden stash of drugs. It's time to cook, Mr White (I assume they say that in Breaking Bad, I never watched the show)
Once that's done, we fuck off at extremely high speed (everyone except Bartz dies during that process btw) and find the underground jail:
Okay, so there's this old guy who's there on unspecified charges, and there is that dude on the far left who's a little crazy and the party decides to steer clear of, but in that other cell on the left, guess what?
That's right, hot werewolf rogue boyfriend. I've released him from his cell before I've even thought about it tbh.
I am fully confident in the righteous morality of my actions.
Anyway, we leave through a side door to go explore the moat around the castle, and find a hidden tunnel behind a waterfall:
A suspiciously-shaped room with a symmetrical design centered around a central object, filled with the water whose power we've been told was used to seal Shiva? While, it's almost like this whole room is a seal! I don't have Summoner unlocked yet, but I might as well take a headstart!
Very interesting that Shiva explicitly refers to herself as a divinity.
Okay, we're not fighting her alone, she has backup, but that's fine, we have the strongest party of all time, we're-
We're fucking dead.
Yeah, I think we're just plain underleveled and undergeared for this fight. I'm not going to bother trying it again, we'll leave and come back with new jobs.
With that incentive to come back later in place, it's time to head for the Tower of Walse.
Huh.
I don't really know what's up with the game consistently referring to Garula as a singular creature, when there are ostensibly several of them - the one in Walse, the ones in random encounters, and this one - but it's odd. We also appear to be in a typical "peaceful animal warped into aggression by an evil influence" scenario, and I suspect that influence is borne by the meteorites. "Evil sends meteorite, influence seeps out and seeks a nearby monster to take over" would be a reasonable explanation for events thus far.
We're told the King went after Garula, but not just the King - "some soldiers I've never seen before" as well. An unknown party acting as crystal protectors? Fascinating.
The Tower is full of monster, of which I'm going to highlight two:
Those "Ricard Mages' intrigue me because I have no idea what the hell a Ricard is in the context of this game, and they look human; were they sealed in the tower, are they conjured copies meant as a defense system, is there an invading army from the meteor, or what? Confusing.
The other I want to point out is the "Pas de Seul." In French, a "pas de deux" is a dance performed by two people. 'Seul' means alone. So a 'Pas de Seul" is… dancing with yourself.
I have no idea why this fucked up skullbat that shows up in a two-monster encounter is named after a French dancing pun, but it undeniably is, and now you know.
King Walse appears to be severely hurt, but not dead; he might yet make it. We'll just push through…
Huh.
This is a different style of armor from Walse's knight. This is evidently one of the strange soldiers who followed after Garula, and this one is validating my suspicion - Garula is being controlled by an evil force. Unfortunately, while brave, our unknown soldier isn't strong enough, and Garula crushes him and shoves him out of the way - then hears us and turns around.
This should be a simple fight. Big stumpy mammoth, hit it hard, heal up from damage from basic attacks-
Hum.
Okay, so all Garula does is inflict physical damage. But he does so with basic attacks, a Charge move, and counterattacks when struck. He also hits enormously hard, enough to take out my mages in single attacks. The speed of its attacks also appears to increase as it takes damage, likely representing it "going berserk." It's not a good time…
…but I think I can strategize my way around it, based on one simple fact: I bought the Protect spell recently. If I cast Protect on a character, they suddenly take like half as much damage from Garula's attacks, easily within the survivable range. I have to be careful about the ordering of the spell and lucky about who Garula targets, but eventually…
The benefits of Protect, the power of the Punch Mages, and enough potions and phoenix downs allows me to barely squeak by with the whole party on the edge of death.
Garula is defeated (sadly, we aren't given the option of a non-lethal takedown and must kill it), saving the Water Crystal from-
I'm sorry?
Come again?
What the fuck.
This is such a bullshit move. We arrived here in time, we killed Garula before it could get to the Crystal, and then it just… explodes anyway, no explanation given? Not even a cursory "I guess Walse had already strained it too much amplifying its power" dialogue line, though that would still suck?
In continuing the RPG session metaphor, this feels like a railroading GM whose plot relies on the heroes' failure to avert the crystal's breaking, and who faced with their unplanned-for success is at a loss for how to progress the plot and so has the crystal blow up anyway.
Random aside: in an actual campaign, this isn't as bad as some people make it out to be. Some people argue for a school of TTRPG GMing that's "you're here to let the players tell their story, roll with everything," but that's not applicable to every game and every GM. Sometimes you have to move the plot in a specific direction. In those cases, what's important is communication. Don't try to preserve the secret GM mystique: simply tell your players, "I'm sorry, but my plans relied on X happening, and I am genuinely unprepared for running with Y instead. I'd like to talk about finding a resolution that still leads us down the path I had written for that's okay with everyone," and then talk it out like mature adults rather than blow up the game because you tried to do improv but you're a script guy.
Not particularly relevant to this game's plot that is written ahead of time, but still.
Anyway, it's bullshit, but it is what it is. The Crystal breaks, and its fragments litter the room. Thankfully, the sour taste this leaves in my mouth is quickly displaced by exciting new developments:
Oh yeah, baby.
A character being amnesiac so they (and you, the audience) don't know their personal drama and individual history and must uncover their buried trauma and motivations is one thing. A character who is amnesiac despite having an important role and huge responsibilities, people who look up to them and follow their orders, and having no idea about it, going about their cool adventures with their new friends, oblivious that there is a whole order of knights on a mission they sent them on that could shape the fate of the world?
That's on a whole other level. Galuf's amnesia is one of the best uses of the trope I've seen.
Sadly, the Knight perishes before he can tell us anything more. The group looks around - this time there is no sudden rush of power from the crystal, but as they look at the crystal fragments they wonder if they will be given their power as well. And they will - though in a twisty fashion:
We go to each of the crystal fragments individually, and one by one, they each unlock a new job.
This is really cool. And, interestingly, one of the fragments landed on a ledge that we can't reach now - a job unlock for later? (I have been spoiled, I know it's Mime and it unlocks a lot further down the line, but it was a neat twist).
There's some Plot coming, but we'll leave it for the next update because it's all dramatic and shit. Right now, I'm mainly interested in the new jobs, because when I next pick up the game I'll have some tough choices to make. But first, let's check out these awesome custom job sprites for each character:
I love that one of these just has a furry onesie as a job outfit. Also, kinda bugs me that the game is undermining Fari's gender presentation in the job sprites - it's giving a tiger outfit to the girls and a wolf outfit to the boys, and the one that's clearly drawing from Minwu (very based choice btw) for the boys has both Lenna and Faris in femme outfits, with a ponytail and jewelry and everything.
Alright, so. Before we move on.
The Water Crystal is huge in game design terms. The Wind Crystal kept it familiar; all FF1 classes with the new Blue Mage swapped in for Red Mage. A lot of possibilities for party construction, but nothing new as such, just handled with a new (very interesting!) ability system allowing for customization. But the Water Crystal throws us an almost complete set of new jobs never seen before:
Berserker (this appears to be a big beatstick type of guy that is constantly under the Berserk status effect?)
Mystic Knight (this job has a 'Spellblade' ability that says it enchants a weapon with a spell I know, though I don't know the details on what this actually means in practice)
Time Mage (this job has those spells from earlier, buffs and debuffs like Slow, Regen and Haste)
Summoner (I assume this works like in FF3)
Red Mage (it can cast both White and Black Magic up to level 3; I am being told that the real payoff of Dualcast takes like twice as much time as mastering any other job, so I'm not sure about committing to it for the entire rest of the game)
So!
I'll be thinking about how to build my party for the next stretch of the game, but I appreciate advice and input as long as they don't go into spoilers. I like Time Mage as a thematic thing, Mystic Knight looks really cool even if I am not quite sure I understand how it works, I need to have a Summoner no matter what as a point of principle, I wanted to do Red Mage Vergang but it's looking impractical, all in all a lot to think about.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Red Mage is actually really great for a while, but falls off in effectiveness later. Save for their final ability which is one of the best in the game
As a direct result of it, it's also the single most expensive Job Level in the entire game, at a whopping 999 ABP to acquire it. Even with that though, Vergang is a really good way to laugh as you rampage through the next leg of the game.
As a direct result of it, it's also the single most expensive Job Level in the entire game, at a whopping 999 ABP to acquire it. Even with that though, Vergang is a really good way to laugh as you rampage through the next leg of the game.
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- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
I just checked the wiki, saw that Dualcast lets you do two summons per turn, and had myself a full-on 'muahaha' moment.
Also, I'm normally down with show-don't-tell storytelling but this game could use about 10% more 'tell' in its narrative.
Also, I'm normally down with show-don't-tell storytelling but this game could use about 10% more 'tell' in its narrative.
- Location
- California
I personally am sickened that Squaresoft took a step back from it's groundbreaking portrayal of a polyamorous cuddlepile.
FFVII believes subtly is the name of an anvil traveling for your head at terminal velocity.
Redmageredmage!
Redmageredmageredmageredmage!
RED MAGE RED MAGE RED MAGE RED MAGE!!!
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Due to the way the damage formula works in this game, Garula is somewhat notable as with the highest tier of physical armour at this point a character will take 0 damage from it's attacks.
The way Spellblade works is by imbuing a spell (mostly black magic but there are a couple of white magic spells) onto your sword. This takes a turn but the imbue lasts until the character dies, the battle ends, or another spell is imbued.
Elemental spells cause your attacks to become that element, higher tier spells have a higher damage multiplier for hitting a weakness, and max level elemental spellblades also apply instant death if the target is both weak to the element and susceptible to the instant death. Status spellblades simply apply the status on hit, although it notably ignores enemy Magic Defense in the chance to hit calculation, making them generally more reliable at the cost of spending a turn to imbue.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Point of order, Magissa keeps on staring gormlessly as the gang secure the line by pulling out stakes and hammering them in. That's like, the extra single step of absurdity to this entire Loony Tunes pagentry that makes it such a great scene. I was half-expecting the gang to start pulling the two halves of the mountain together.
They're just gals being pals, Omi, I don't know what you see in them.
I'm not blind, you're seeing it too, right?
This seems like a heroic sacrifice, but the truth is Lenna got a taste of the good shit after that poison arrow from Magissa and is now high as ballsWe don't know yet how King Tycoon's helm made it to this isolated mountain peak, but it's clearly not the only one to have done so; Tycoon's wind drake, Hiryu, is also there. And he's been badly injured. Lenna says not to worry, she'll take care of him; the fabled dragon grass is right there… Just behind all these purple poison bushes.
Her friends call out to her to warn her not to do something so reckless, but Lenna powers through the pain, grabs the dragon grass, and comes back, all complete with pained pauses and swooshy effects on the screen to convey the effects of the poison, it's pretty effective.
Lenna hands the grass to Faris, asking her to give it to Hiryu quickly, before collapsing.
You know you can just... run into them, right?
If you run against an NPC, if they aren't explicitly programmed to block a path they'll take the hint and shuffle over a space or even trade spaces with you in certain circumstances. You had the power to push past that dude the entire time. And it was like that for every Pixel Remaster.
Isn't It Sad, Omi
>he doesn't know, chatOkay, so there's this old guy who's there on unspecified charges, and there is that dude on the far left who's a little crazy and the party decides to steer clear of, but in that other cell on the left, guess what?
That's right, hot werewolf rogue boyfriend. I've released him from his cell before I've even thought about it tbh.
I am fully confident in the righteous morality of my actions.
Galuf's pretty great, the best part of FF5 being totally forgotten by history is that there are no expectations and basically no pop-culture osmosis spoilers so everything works on its own merits and keeps it humming along.
Personally I mostly stuck with wind crystal jobs at this point. Red Mage requires a truly absurd amount of grinding to extract the useful part of it and I've always been biased against casters, but then again its limitation of only being able to cast 3rd-level Black and White magic doesn't matter at this early stage when you don't actually know any 4th-level spells. However - Summoners are still gigachads and I would heartily recommend levelling it, because thanks to job skill attributation I was able to do stupid shit like have Lenna as the party Thief who could also go Super Saiyan and summon Shiva to clear the board.
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I think FFV has a minor version of it, but a lot of RPG sprite games nowadays have a thing where if you push against an NPC standing in your way, it'll trigger them to move immediately so you can kind of... push them out of the way.
Fun fact involving that "need better gear": that water tower on the way up is one of the earliest areas in the game with actually good loot to steal, you rarely get mythril swords from the soldiers on the way to Shiva, which otherwise can't be purchased for another few towns.
So, in order-
Berserker is pretty much garbage because they have a permanent berserk effect, meaning you can't get much use out of other skillsets on one. That said they have sky-high strength and stamina and are the only class with axe and hammer access, both of which have a big defense-ignoring ability so they are admittedly one of the hardest hitters physically.
Mystic Knight has fairly well-rounded stats, and the spellblade ability lets them enchant their weapons (generally with offensive magic) so for the rest of the battle they hit with that element or status effect or what have you. Part of the late-game game-breaker combos for physically geared characters because of things like going "let's make every attack smack the enemy in their weak point for massive damage". Plus, spellblade is surprisingly economical because it's a single MP cost that then lasts forever, not an MP cost per attack or anything.
Time Mage is mostly a support spell class, but oh fucking golly is it a god of supports. I've basically had a Time Magic slot equipped on my party since I got it, because you've got everything from the classics like Haste/Slow/Hastega/Slowga/Stop, but also some other really tricksy spells I won't spoil. Point is, I absolutely recommend someone be up to date on Time Magic spells as you go because it tends to have some pretty invaluable tricks up its sleeve.
Summoner is... Summoner. Very stronk (highest magic stat of all spellcasters), but somewhat reliant on scouring the world because only the most basic summons tend to be sold in shops. I've generally found them somewhat more useful than a Black Mage in FFV, but admittedly that's partially me knowing where all the summons are and being able to beeline for them.
Red Mage has a power curve best described as the letter U: Right here and now, when you unlocked them, is around the strongest they'll be because they can only cast up to level 3 White and Black magic, so once tier 4 and up becomes available they start to fall off. Then, lategame when you can scrounge up the 999 AP necessary to master Dualcast, they become useful as ability fodder because you can combine that with other sets for everything from dual summons to multiple casts of time magic in one turn. Personally, I lean towards making a character or two master it up to Black/White Level 3 now, then whoever you know you want to be a dedicated endgame mage can just occasionally swap into it for random encounters when they're already up to par with their other job masteries if you want a jumpstart on Dualcast. Also worth noting that for whatever reason despite being the "good at many things master of none" class, they have an atrocious stat line. Really Blue Mage has much more fitting stats for "average at everything including sword-swinging."
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MagicMan333
Post-apocalyptic Gonzo Journalist
- Location
- Washington
Oh, hey. I've never seen a Luke/Leia reaction in real time! That's something to look forward to.
Oh, hey. I've never seen a Luke/Leia reaction in real time! That's something to look forward to.
What makes it especially funny is that Omni could totally know by now if he did a bit more exploring with the wind drake; you can fly all the way back to Castle Tycoon right now to loot the place and iirc get your first actual confirmation of "wait these are sisters".
Emy
Artificial Defender
Regarding the new jobs:
Berserker is a strong physical attacker, but I dislike it because of how non-interactive it is, its autoattacks can foul you up when you're trying to do specific targeting, or stealing, or what have you. I don't think it's strong enough to justify how unfun it is.
★☆☆☆☆ Would not recommend.
Mystic Knight is a weaker physical attacker that makes up for that by using Spellblade to target elemental weaknesses and apply status effects. Doing so takes an extra turn of setup, which makes them shine less in random battles, but with that setup they can clean house against tougher enemies.
★★★☆☆ Niche but powerful.
Time Mage is a strong utility caster with minor access to DPS and healing. Even if you don't stay in the class forever, Time Magic is a great second skill on any caster.
★★★★★ Would go back in time and take again.
Summoner is a strong offensive caster, focusing on multi-target damage, with a couple of defensive effects. It also has the highest Magic stat in the game, so like Time Magic, Summon also makes an excellent second skill for any other caster.
★★★★★ Good for wiping the board.
Red Mage is a perfectly good offensive caster and healer for now and Dualcast is spectacular when you can get it. However, you might want to set it aside once you get access to spell levels it can't cast.
★★★☆☆ Lags in the middle.
Berserker is a strong physical attacker, but I dislike it because of how non-interactive it is, its autoattacks can foul you up when you're trying to do specific targeting, or stealing, or what have you. I don't think it's strong enough to justify how unfun it is.
★☆☆☆☆ Would not recommend.
Mystic Knight is a weaker physical attacker that makes up for that by using Spellblade to target elemental weaknesses and apply status effects. Doing so takes an extra turn of setup, which makes them shine less in random battles, but with that setup they can clean house against tougher enemies.
★★★☆☆ Niche but powerful.
Time Mage is a strong utility caster with minor access to DPS and healing. Even if you don't stay in the class forever, Time Magic is a great second skill on any caster.
★★★★★ Would go back in time and take again.
Summoner is a strong offensive caster, focusing on multi-target damage, with a couple of defensive effects. It also has the highest Magic stat in the game, so like Time Magic, Summon also makes an excellent second skill for any other caster.
★★★★★ Good for wiping the board.
Red Mage is a perfectly good offensive caster and healer for now and Dualcast is spectacular when you can get it. However, you might want to set it aside once you get access to spell levels it can't cast.
★★★☆☆ Lags in the middle.
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- Location
- Alberta
Okay, so these two enemies are...interesting in the PS1 localization. Pas de Seul ended up as "PaddleThru" which is amusing if understandable since they probably didn't expect enemies to be named in French.
Wyverns, on the other hand, are infamous in that version. Because they somehow ended up being called "Y Burn".
Your guess is as good as mine.
As far as the new jobs are concerned I'd say the only dud of the bunch is Berserker, for reasons that are obvious enough. The tiger-themed outfits for the girls are cute, at least.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Of those classes, I'd recommend Summoner for actually staying in longer term if you want, Red Mage for a grind and not much else, and Mystic Knight and Time Mage are good if used themselves (much more functional all game long than red mage), but amazing if you put their ability on a class with better attack and more non-utility spells respectively (or a Freelancer after mastering classes, obviously).
Mystic Knight in particular is an absolute must; its skill is 1/3 of the ultimate gamebreaking combo so broken they used it for Bartz' limit break in Dissidia. Even without the other two thirds its incredibly useful, particularly when MP costs run high. Time Mage, meanwhile, I can't comment on too much because I tend towards unga bunga and ignore utility magic, and Summoner is, well, summoner. It needs no explanation for why it kicks ass.
Berserker isn't the most useless class in the game (it gives Freelancer a stamina boost only one point less than the boost given by Monk, for 200 less AP to master), but it's definitely an honorable mention on a list of such.
Mystic Knight in particular is an absolute must; its skill is 1/3 of the ultimate gamebreaking combo so broken they used it for Bartz' limit break in Dissidia. Even without the other two thirds its incredibly useful, particularly when MP costs run high. Time Mage, meanwhile, I can't comment on too much because I tend towards unga bunga and ignore utility magic, and Summoner is, well, summoner. It needs no explanation for why it kicks ass.
Berserker isn't the most useless class in the game (it gives Freelancer a stamina boost only one point less than the boost given by Monk, for 200 less AP to master), but it's definitely an honorable mention on a list of such.
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AKuz
Been Better
- Location
- A Rising Tide of Horrors
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I personally am sickened that Squaresoft took a step back from it's groundbreaking portrayal of a polyamorous cuddlepile.
FFVII believes subtly is the name of an anvil traveling for your head at terminal velocity.
Redmageredmage!
Redmageredmageredmageredmage!
RED MAGE RED MAGE RED MAGE RED MAGE!!!
RDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDMRDM
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Word of warning - as has I think been mentioned, RDM here is jack of all trades in magic, not in stats. Its stamina is worse than white mage (bigger malus), its magic stat less than a third the boost of your other mages, and its strength less than half the boost of physical attackers. Its only stat boost that meets other games "RDM is good but not great at things" is agility. And that's on top of their good point, dualcast, being 999 ap to learn
They kinda went overboard in compensating for how amazing dualcast is. Completely worth it, but means the class itself is best used for grinding mindlessly with your hands while watching TV rather than for playing the game.
They kinda went overboard in compensating for how amazing dualcast is. Completely worth it, but means the class itself is best used for grinding mindlessly with your hands while watching TV rather than for playing the game.
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- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Clearly you should go Berserker on everyone, Hulk Smash your way to victory.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Is it just me or are those normal cats wearing some kind of glider-wing harnesses? Did someone equip them with those or did the cats invent them themselves for hunting birds and bats?
Don't ask me, my primary exposure to Breaking Bad is this skit:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fkc5r2lFZs
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Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Also worth noting - I'm not sure if those living gravestones are on the list, but you know how gold needles (available in shops starting at Carwen) cure the petrify status, turning you from stone back to flesh?
All, or at least most, random encounters in this game that have a rock-based physiology will instantly die if you use a gold needle on them. Try hard not to think about what exactly is happening to kill them and what that looks like in-universe.
All, or at least most, random encounters in this game that have a rock-based physiology will instantly die if you use a gold needle on them. Try hard not to think about what exactly is happening to kill them and what that looks like in-universe.
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Catch me casting Stone To Flesh on a boulder to create the world's largest meatball.
- Location
- Canada, probably
I love this line so much. It lives forever in my memory.
You released Lone Wolf? Huh.
Aaaand the cracks begin to form. Every time I go through the opening I'm reminded of what a strong opening the story has. And then by the time I get to the end, I remember why I think its story is just typical JRPG crap.
Anyway, new Jobs!
The Water Crystal has some truly amazing Jobs and also Berserker. Time Mage and Summoner barely require any effort to make busted, and Mystic Knight and Red Mage earn insane power for use in combos.
Unlike the Wind Jobs, I do actually have some definite preferences for who to give some of these to. I love Bartz's Mystic Knight Sprite, and I always make sure Faris is a Summoner for a sort of late-game Easter egg. Plus she just wears the robes best, I feel. Everyone looks ridiculous as a Time Mage except maybe [five], but it's so powerful you gotta have one anyway unless you're doing a challenge run.
They absolutely have solved it. I haven't played through 5 specifically, but in the PR for both I and VI you just hold down your movement against the NPC and they move out of your way.