Hmmm. I don't remember, had that come up before in the series? Because that's one of the distinguishing traits of "actually a proper martial artist" classes in FFXI, that their hand to hand attacks hit twice, and now I'm wondering if it started here.
No, this actually goes all the way back to FF!: Monks made twice the attacks anyone else did at the same accuracy which otherwise controlled base attack count, if they were unarmed. A monk attacked as many time as a hasted character, and then a hasted monk twice that.
This is in fact basically straight repeating FF2; in FF2 if your monk has nothing in either hand, they 'dual wield' their fists and punch twice, just as a swordsman with two swords will swing twice. The unarmed combat in FF5 works the same way; a monk or other unarmed fighter will attack twice, but only if they don't have a shield or something blocking the second hand.
Unless I'm badly misremembering which I'll concede there's a small chance of since I'm not checking sourcing and this is off the top of my head.
(the difference between a Monk or character with the Monk unarmed combat skill equipped is mostly that they punch harder. Punches have a small flat weapon damage- 3? I think?- if you're not a monk, if you are or have unarmed combat equipped it's like the same flat value +2x character level, which actually means you can, through heavy grinding, create situations where your monks can beat defense values you 'shouldn't' have the weaponry to penetrate based on where you are in the game, thus eg killing Jackanapes early)
Right, video game history--Tower of Druaga is a Japanese Action-RPG that debuted in Japanese arcades in the 1980s, that was... well, very odd. This was a game where winning required you to do frequently random shit throughout the game so you got the right power-ups that let you beat the boss. And I mean random shit--utterly counter-intuitive stuff that you would only stumble on by trying literally everything on multiple playthroughs. It was an arcade hit, because in the 1980s Japanese arcade scene hanging out and swapping secrets was part of the point, and here was this thing where the entire point was to figure things out and pass them on. It was a massive success in Japan and essentially, the idea that a player would be part of a mass fandom that would be swapping secrets to figure out optimal playing strategies was part of Japanese video game culture for decades afterwards.
It's quite fascinating how an entire ecosystem of rumors, secrets, and mouth-to-ear advice has been entirely obsoleted by the emergence of Wikis. I remember when "Mew under the truck" was a real thing told to me on the playground by another kid, and while that was fake actually finding the truck was still revelatory; or my stepdad seeing me struggle against Psycho Mantis in MGS and suggesting I plug in another controller. None of that exists to quite the same extent anymore.
It's quite fascinating how an entire ecosystem of rumors, secrets, and mouth-to-ear advice has been entirely obsoleted by the emergence of Wikis. I remember when "Mew under the truck" was a real thing told to me on the playground by another kid, and while that was fake actually finding the truck was still revelatory; or my stepdad seeing me struggle against Psycho Mantis in MGS and suggesting I plug in another controller. None of that exists to quite the same extent anymore.
It's quite fascinating how an entire ecosystem of rumors, secrets, and mouth-to-ear advice has been entirely obsoleted by the emergence of Wikis. I remember when "Mew under the truck" was a real thing told to me on the playground by another kid, and while that was fake actually finding the truck was still revelatory; or my stepdad seeing me struggle against Psycho Mantis in MGS and suggesting I plug in another controller. None of that exists to quite the same extent anymore.
Gamefaqs certainly removed a lot of that element of mystery by providing a unified space for information, but if you wanted real in-depth information you had to wait for some guy called Swagmaster_Sephiroth_2 or whatever to compile his own encyclopedic FAQ complete with ASCII art.
Now it feels like any half-prominent game will have a fully-featured wiki by the end of launch day, and ProsafiaGaming will have a video of the secret final boss and ending with a spoiler thumbnail next morning.
I think I like the new paradigm more than the old, with the caveat that it's a thing where people need to know what the level of knowledge that make them appreciate a game is, and be capable of stopping at that and not looking out for more.
Like, I played Tomb Raider II the first time without any guide and there was a lot of fun in scouring the levels to find everything hidden, then I got a guide and replayed it and it was also fun to have the things I'd missed pointed out to me so I could experience them, but it was a different type of fun and, when I played other TR titles, I made sure to ignore the guides because I liked that more. On the other hand, I play Disgaea with a guide open because it's much more fun that way, and trying to figure out things blindly in that series sucks all of the fun out of it.
Overall, I will say that a good game should be able to provide the amount of information necessary to enjoy it without external help, but since that's such a subjective matter, I'm not inclined to take points from FFV for not being fully open, even if I personally would like it better if it was more open about things. I do think it's important to point out that every Final Fantasy title has stuff that it doesn't explains on purpose to increase the sense of exploration, and it had from the very beginning (War Machine, anyone?), so at this point having stuff that isn't clearly explained is very much a feature of the series, and it's merely a matter of "to which degree" the game is being unwilling to explain stuff to the player.
Gamefaqs certainly removed a lot of that element of mystery by providing a unified space for information, but if you wanted real in-depth information you had to wait for some guy called Swagmaster_Sephiroth_2 or whatever to compile his own encyclopedic FAQ complete with ASCII art.
Now it feels like any half-prominent game will have a fully-featured wiki by the end of launch day, and ProsafiaGaming will have a video of the secret final boss and ending with a spoiler thumbnail next morning.
It's quite fascinating how an entire ecosystem of rumors, secrets, and mouth-to-ear advice has been entirely obsoleted by the emergence of Wikis. I remember when "Mew under the truck" was a real thing told to me on the playground by another kid, and while that was fake actually finding the truck was still revelatory; or my stepdad seeing me struggle against Psycho Mantis in MGS and suggesting I plug in another controller. None of that exists to quite the same extent anymore.
Well, there were things like Nintendo Power and Prima strategy guides, but those just added to the mystique of the whole thing. Like the kid who could afford one being the coolest kid on the block since he could find out all the secrets you wanted (before we realized - thanks to lootboxes and MTX - that it was pay-to-win before pay-to-win was a thing). But the internet gave all said information for free, thus demystifying games as a whole.
I really don't consider it ruined since if you really don't want to you can just... not look up the wiki. I, for one, enjoy having the ability to determine what the game controls actually are.
Yeah, and I'm admittedly one of those with absolutely zero patience. Does it ruin the game for some to play it like I do, looking up guides and secrets? Yes, and more power to them if they enjoy going in blind and love learning through trial and error. I, sadly, am not one of them.
On the one hand, I'm grateful that all the information is now publicly available, so people don't have to agonize over obscure secrets that would have been impossible to find on their own.
On the other hand, it is a bit sad to imagine the end of the nostalgic school bus scuttlebutt talking about secrets and rumors in games, all the bullshit stories that we couldn't disprove, and the actual secrets and easter eggs that people did manage to puzzle out.
Yeah, my point isn't really about "playing games blind" vs "playing games with information available," I'm talking about the social dimension of gaming, which hasn't been ruined or destroyed by any means, but has shifted in profound ways. The rumor-space of games and the importance of empirical personal advice with little external validation and the scarcity of hard data has shifted the way we talk about games.
Closest you get today is like, the first half a week after Elden Ring's release, where everyone is excited about information they just found and no one else has, nothing you can find is reliable, and secrets actually exist in the game that aren't documented on a wiki and have yet to be found.
I mean, there is Noita, with its eye puzzle, which still has not been solved despite months of work from the community.
But Noita is a pretty ridiculous and niche roguelike.
I mean, there is Noita, with its eye puzzle, which still has not been solved despite months of work from the community.
But Noita is a pretty ridiculous and niche roguelike.
There was also The Lost on The binding of Isaac, stuff like that can still exist, it just requires more effort than a simple "finish the game as a really speedy boy" or "grind for ten RL hours on the first encounters because the forced defeat isn't actually scripted".
EDIT: Even if I actually enjoy tamer versions of the second, it always feels good when a game rewards you for putting more effort than warranted.
The Fire-Powered Ship was pissing me off, so I left. Which of course, only raises the question: what to do now?
Well, I have some ideas, thanks to having been explained the Rod mechanics that the game didn't really clarify previously. First up, we're heading back to the Karnak Meteorite. From there, we teleport back to the Walse Meteorite, ride Hiryu to Castle Walse, and go back into the depths for a rematch.
As you can see, there have been slight adjustments to my party make-up. Since Summoner isn't very useful until I've unlocked better summons, I've swapped Galuf to Black Mage, and equipped him with White Magic from his old job, making him effectively a ad hoc Red Mage, ensuring maximum coverage alongside Faris. I have also equipped both of them with Fire Rods.
The jump in effectiveness is massive:
So, here's the thing.
The reason I was stuck previously is that Shiva is the first boss with whom the game's system really works together.
For 90% of encounters so far, magic is pointless. Regardless of whether Galuf and Faris are kitted as Black Mage, Red Mage, or Summoner, they do more damage with their punches than with their spells, by far. The double hits with Monk Strength from Barehanded hit for 300+ damage total against most opponents, which is more than Faris deals with a Tier 2 spell like Fira, as long as I don't target elemental weaknesses. And a lot of random mobs either don't have elemental weaknesses, don't have clearly telegraphed ones that I would need to Libra them for, and in either case tend to die instantly to punching. And punching doesn't cost MP, meaning I don't run out of steam mid-dungeon casting my higher-tier spells every turn.
So I haven't been using rods, because rods are a massive power downgrade. Mages equipped with Rods frequently hit for 0 damage, and in any case fail to OHK enemies, while the damage boost to spells barely brings them up to par with punches. So I've just been coasting on punching almost everything in my way.
Which, incidentally, is why I just have everyone in the front row at all times. Sure, it means the wizards take more damage, but I don't care, because it means their punches hit harder than their spells at no cost. This is a small issue because I'm not on the ball enough to remember and fix the rows before boss fights when I actually do use their magic, but it makes 90% of my playtime faster and easier, so I'll take it.
As evidenced before, though, this strategy fails against Shiva, hard. However, actually strategizing based on her elemental weaknesses changes everything, and it's the first boss where that really applies to this extent. A Fire Rod-buffed Galuf and Faris can hit the Ice Generals for one-hit kill damage with Fira (Faris deals around 750 dmg, Galuf around 1000 dmg, which is a good sample of the difference in raw power between a dedicated Black/White Mage and a Red Mage jack of all trade). This proves to be the key to the encounter; previously I got wiped because I couldn't deal with Ice Generals quickly enough, meaning the enemy took 4 actions per turn and the damage overwhelmed me. With these soldiers disposed of, though…
…Shiva's damage is lackluster, and fails to hurt me enough to require a healing stance.
Surprisingly, the worst-performing member of the party doesn't end up being Lenna, who despite having no Fire-type moves is still a beast in a burly brawl, but Bartz. Sadly, at this level, Spellblade just doesn't perform adequately:
That's a 600 dmg attack, after spending an entire turn powering up by casting Fira on himself. In terms of DPS, this is garbage. His attack hits for less damage than Faris's spells, significantly less than Galuf's, and around the same as Lenna despite wasting a turn charging up.
This is consistent with my random encounter experiences, where Mystic Knight is the weakest member of the party, hitting for less damage than not only Lenna, but the Summoner and Red Mage with Barehanded equipped.
Mystic Knight at this level is performing like shit, and we're going to need a fix soon.
Regardless…
Shiva can't keep up with our sheer damage output, and is quickly brought to heel, providing us with our first omni-target elemental summon, a significant improvement for Summoner. A quick job swap, and Galuf can finally earn his keep as a SMN.
Alright.
Time to head back to the Fire-Powered Ship, then?
NOT SO FAST.
Why head back to that miserable place, when instead we could do some… grinding?
After all, I don't have to accept Mystic Knight's weakness and wait for better spells to unlock. Not when I could just… fix it.
I sometimes forget to explain things that have been suggested to me by the thread even though I know some of my readers read only my updates and so might be at a loss for context, so to explain: the Knight, one of the Wind Crystal unlock job, has abilities like Cover (take damage for other characters), Guard (Defend, but harder), and the passive skill Two-Handed. Two-Handed allows the Knight to forgo equipping a shield to instead wield a sword in both hands, doubling their damage output.
With the Two-Handed skill beefing up his damage, Mystic Knight Bartz should have a base damage output on par with the rest of the group's, and should actually deliver on his promised effectiveness once that already-high damage is bass-boosted by Spellblade.
A quick swap to Knight, and it's time to grind some job abilities.
I'm still not clear on what the Garula thing is about, but at least that little girl still has (one of) her friend(s?). You can also still encounter Garula as a random encounter, and he's still non-hostile.
This is going to take a while, but, hmmm.
I don't "like" grinding, as such, of course. Who does? But FFV has a redeeming factor here, which is that unlike previous games, you're not grinding out a flat, monodirectional progression. You're not grinding because lv 15 is too weak so you need to be lv 20 before you can advance. You're grinding jobs, in order to unlock specific skills and customize your characters' ability loadout and party roster. This is much more tolerable, because there is purpose to it. In fact, by grinding opponents like Garula, who give out ABP but not XP, you can grind job levels without even gaining character levels, if you're worried about making the game too easy!
Also, this is 2023, and technology has evolved. I can just toggle autobattle and listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video while I'm fighting all these easy mobs. Personally I recommend You're Wrong About, Sarah Marshall's podcast about moral panics and mis-remembered events in media and popular culture and Patrick H. Willems's long-form video essays about movies and cinema, as the last two examples of grinding media I consumed.
Also, at this stage of the game, ABP is frustratingly equal everywhere. It doesn't matter if I'm fighting a Garula in Walse, a goblin in the very first starting area, a pack of Wild Nakks around Karnak, or actually tougher opponents on the Fire-Powered Ship: all encounters give 1 ABP. Not 1 ABP per enemy, 1 ABP period. XP scales with enemy numbers, ABP doesn't. This gets frustrating, but it also means it literally doesn't matter what I do or where I go, all fights are equal for my purposes. Meaning I can go around check out if I missed some content and finding that I did, like, uh, these dancers in one of the early towns flirting with the front character:
This is actually a necessary step you have to go through to unlock that piano behind and level up your piano skill, btw.
It takes me about half an hour to realize that if I want Bartz to actually learn Two-Handed and swap back to Mystic Knight before tackling the Fire-Powered Ship, it's going to take long enough that I might as well hit two birds with one stone and train some other job I was leaving by the wayside. In this case, that means pulling up a guide, squinting hard to try and keep spoilers to a minimum, and roaming every world area we've been to to get Galuf to learn Blue Mage spells.
I'm still not planning to make Blue Mage one of my main jobs, but hey, as long as I have time to waste, yeah?
Besides, once Galuf has reached job level 2, he unlocks Learn as a passive skill, meaning I can swap him back to Summoner and put Learn as his second skill, allowing him to still learn appropriate spells (although this means forgoing Barehanded and a significant loss in DPS).
After a little over an hour of this, Bartz has unlocked Two-Handed, and it's time to head back to the ship and put the damned thing to rest for good.
Also I realize that last time around I only showed the Crew Dust, so screw image limits, I want to show you just how fucked up the monsters are on this goddamned ship:
Sometimes a family is the hideous dickworm from Alien and the exploding robots that spawn out of its body when you kill it. Also what the fuck is that Poltergeist thing? It's like… two faces… connected by a single giant tongue?
Sometimes I can make sense of the monster ecology of a given dungeon but this is just Old Queen Karnak's Nightmare House of Horrors.
The ship has two monsters which also teach Learn and Self-Destruct, both of which require contriving circumstances to learn them; Crew Dust only uses Flash once it's the last enemy alive on the screen, which is easy enough, but Self-Destruct requires us to leave a Defeater opponent as the last one alive, then kill it, spawning two Motor Traps, then hitting these Motor Traps with a Lightning spell, causing them to self-destruct and hoping they target Galuf. It's an annoyingly finicky prospect.
Anyway, it's more of the same, only encounters are easier because we gained a few levels and several job synergies and it's not like 4am so my brain is working properly, making the whole dungeon a lot easier, if still annoying.
Valuable loot if I ever equip Steal again, I'm sure.
Conveyor Belt Hell is actually a very simple "four doors, one leads to loots, two send you back to your starting points, and the other two game progress" crossroads once you're staring at it with clear eyes.
This platforming level puzzle is actually exceedingly simple when it's not so late in the morning you might as well call it 'early,' but last time I played it seemed completely unbeatable.
And in the process, we finally reach one particular milestone:
Look at Faris.
That's right, she's unlocked all tiers of Red Magic, and now all that's left to master the class is the staggering 999 ABP required to unlock Dualcast. We're in for the long haul here, folks; if you have been paying attention, at current rate of progress this would require just shy of 1,000 encounters. For the record, judging at where Lenna here is on her own unlock path, I've had about… 250-ish encounters total across the game since unlock the Wind Crystal job.
It's not gonna be quick, is what I'm saying.
Anyway, thanks to the power of overwhelming violence (we basically get through the entire ship through punching once Galuf has learned the Blue Mage spells and I can swap him back to Barehanded) it's time to confront the source of the power drainage in the engine room.
Is she mind-controlled? I bet she's mind-controlled.
Yeah, at this point I can see the patterns in these games.
Queen Karnak - or rather, the entity possessing her - summons forth the flames powering the engine and has them attack us!
A flame elemental! Cool sprite. And it has a cool form-switching function - it has three separate forms ('human,' 'tornado' and 'hand'), and every time you hit it in one form it responds with a special counterattack then switches forms. Which in theory means you have to constantly rapidly adjust to his weaknesses and strengths - the human form is heavy on offense and counters with hitting everyone with Blaze, the hand form is defensive, the hurricane lacks an Ice weakness and self-heals with Fira…
Not that any of it matters.
That one summon deals 1000 damage, which is in the ballpark of everything else I'm throwing at it.
I equipped Galuf and Faris with Ice Rods, Bartz self-buffs with Blizzara Spellblade, Lenna just hits for 400+ damage per attack (with two attacks a turn, though she can miss), and I just blitz the goddamned thing so hard I don't even notice its mechanics. And then it dies.
To put it into perspective, I didn't heal anyone at any point in this fight, I just dealt damage every turn so fast the boss couldn't properly cycle use its mechanics before cycling into its next form and then dying on turn 2.
Hmmm.
Between Garula and Queen Karnak, it looks like we've got an active theme of possession going on. And not the FFIII-IV style "monsters going mad" or people being taken over by some abstract evil force or broad mind control, but an actual, individual entity taking over their body and consciously targeting the crystals as part of a greater plan.
Queen Karnak reveals what we might have started to suspect at this point - the machines aren't the sole source of the crystal's destruction. Whether or not they precipitated these events of made the crystals more fragile or drew an evil attention, there is something out there which is actively using their power to resurrect itself.
Queen Karnak begs us to go into the next room where the crystal is stored (this isn't described clearly, but we're actually leaving the ship through the piping that connects it to the Fire Shrine underneath Castle Karnak) to protect it.
We enter the room, and who would emerge, but the terrible werewolf fiend who's been trying to destroy it this entire time!
You get no points for guessing it was actually a good guy all along, what with it not hurting anyone, only ever trying to get to the crystals, fleeing rather than fighting the guards, and the emphasis put on the Karnak people being overly suspicious of everyone. My guess as to it being Lone Wolf or a transformed Queen Karnak didn't pan out, however - this guy is henceforth only gonna be known as "the werewolf."
The group, still assuming evil intent, form a barrage and tell the werewolf they won't let him get to the crystal. The werewolf tells them he's not their enemy, and then addresses Galuf directly, asking him to speak up and vouch for him!
This profoundly disturbs Galuf, who goes through another 'why can't I remember anything' crisis. Unfortunately, this is just the distraction our true enemy needs to act.
The soldier, of course, does not care to answer. Instead, the malevolent influence possessing him manifests once more as a dark circle, and the soldier vanishes.
Interestingly, this seems to suggest the entity isn't a purely incorporeal spirit, and actually needs (or benefits from) a body to go around with, even a weak body like an ordinary soldier - if not it could just drop the soldier and escape as a ghost to find another host, but it does bother teleporting the soldier as well.
The mechanisms the soldier just triggered causes a number of giant pipes to emerge from the wall and connect to the crystal, overloading it with power. The party hurries to the switch to try and interrupt the procedure, but either it's not designed to stop partway through or the soldier broke the mechanism, and they can't stop it. As a result, the werewolf throws himself in front of the last pipe in a desperate bid to give them time to escape.
He warns that once the crystal is gone, the place will go up in flame, and we must leave and protect the last crystal with our lives. The group, of course, refuses to listen and attempts to rush to his head, unfortunately the shrine is already coming apart:
They try this way and that, the ground erupting every which way, and then finally collapses from underneath them, and they fall into the castle's dungeon. Left alone, the werewolf says "Galuf… You're our only hope…" moments before the crystal shatters. Fire engulfs the room, and the werewolf's sprite flickers and fades.
…
I think where this scene succeeds is that, even though we've only known the werewolf for a literal minute and have no attachment to him, it's still a tragic scene - not just because he's heroic and self-sacrificing, but because it means Galuf once again comes this close to answers about his past, from someone who would be all too happy to give them if they only had the time - but they don't, and that character perishes before he can explain anything, leaving Galuf with only further questions. Why does this old guy matter so much? Why do so many seem to count on him and be loyal to him? Why is he 'their only hope,' and why do the people who work with him seem to know so much about the crystals and the force that threatens them?
I am genuinely intrigued.
It was hard to catch in the action, but look at what the game's doing! Here the characters are falling from the ceiling, but the SNES-era game still labored under sprite limitations, even with its significantly higher sprite budget compared to prior games. So to depict the characters 'falling,' they use the Monk Kick sprite, but with the characters oriented various ways, and moving them down fast enough that it registers to the eye as the characters 'sprawled' or 'tumbling' rather than delivering a flying kick. It's really clever!
The party lands in the dungeon and takes a moment to gather their senses. These little flames that have been creeping all over the castle die out, and the air takes on an ominous crimson tinge; they quickly go up to the crystal room, only to find out that the crystal has shattered and the werewolf is nowhere to be seen, likely presumed dead.
Then, something really weird happens.
Now, Lenna has explained to us before that, if the Fire Crystal were to shatter, fire would go out across the world. No more warm in the winter, no more forging metal, and so on. That's perfectly sensible. And the crystal was shattered by channeling a massive amount of power through it and overloading it, so it would also be sensible if, say, before fires die, the overload of crystal energy threatens to blow up Castle Karnak.
That's not quite what happens, though.
I don't know where the fuck Lenna is pulling that from, or how it's supposed to work, but it's manifestly true. Bartz asks if "the castle is gonna blow" now that the crystal is gone, and Lenna says that's exactly it.
If this were the Earth Crystal I wouldn't bat an eye, but how on earth the castle is supposed to be held together by Fire Power and blow up without it I am kind of baffled by.
Anyway it doesn't matter, because what's going to follow is one of the most exciting sequence in all of Final Fantasy so far, something that finally gets my blood pumping.
It's a timed escape.
Now you might ask, "Omi, why are you so excited about this, timed missions are just kinda annoying and stressful," but no, look, here's the thing.
80% of the castle was previously locked by these rampant fires. The fires are now out. The entire castle is available to explore, except we have ten minutes to do it. Oh, and:
It's full of monsters, and the timer is ticking down while we're fighting them.
Now, at first I just fight them as you would any other encounter, and that seems to prompt a… curious comment. First, I run into a single hound encounter, and the hound's first move is to Flee. Then, I run into a specific encounter which is a pack of hounds and a Sergeant, and if I kill all the wounds, this happens:
Yeah, the game is telling me, "you idiot, you absolute buffon, you're on a timer and it's game over if you reach the end, why are you doing all these fights instead of running away to maximize time?"
And yeah.
He's right.
I mean, it would be the sensible thing to do.
EXCEPT.
ALL THESE FIGHTS GIVE 2 TO 3 ABP A POP, AND I CAN STILL ONE-HIT KILL EVERY ENEMY WITH MY MONK PUNCHES.
Hey, remember how Bartz first leveled up as Thief? That's right, fuckos. We're equipping our Mystic Knight with Sprint, our wizards with Barehanded, and blitzing through the castle at maximum speed scouring it for every single item while maximizing the number of encounters we fight and dispatching them as quickly as possible for maximum ABP gain.
And the thing is? I think the game knows that I might do this, and why, because if I still refuse to Flee and continue to fight in our next Sergeant/Nakk encounter, this happens:
As if the game was laughing, not in mockery, but in appreciation, and challenging me to bring my best to bear now that I've committed to running the clock as closely as possible to reap the maximum benefits from this level.
Well, don't mind if I do.
The Gigas casts Aero, which I already learned, and Aera, which is a better spell but I quite literally don't have time to play Blue Mage shenanigans here.
A second Elven Mantle, meaning my two squishiest characters now have like a 30% chance of evading all attacks entirely. The Main Gauche, a powerful looking weapon (which I don't have the classes to equip yet, unfortunately). The first Ribbon in the game (though it's not yet equippable by anyone but Freelancers). A treasure trove of valuable Elixirs that can't be purchased this early in the game. And, most important of all, early access to Esuna, the spell that is finally going to solve my status effect problems forever.
All while gorging on so much ABP that by the end of it, Faris is 110+ ABP into learning Dualcast - if you'll recall, when we started the Fire-Powered Ship, we'd only gotten a total of 250 ABP in the entire game so far.
It will not surprise anyone who's been following my adventures that this nearly immediately backfires when we reach the end of the castle having pillaged everything and with barely two minutes on the counter, and as we cross the bridge over the moat, this happens:
Galuf challenges the man to reveal his true form. The 'sergeant' laughs, and then reveals himself as THE FAMED BOUNTY HUNTER, IRON CLAW. MORPH!
No, really. He literally just says 'HENSHIN!' and then turns into a super sentai monster of the week. I fucking love it. I mean, what the fuck is that about? Is he a monster or a man or a man who can assume a monster form? Is 'morphing' a known, recurring ability that some people possess in the universe of FFV? Or was he merely a sentient monster hiding in a human guise? And was he the same sergeant we kept bumping into in the castle - even though I defeated that one repeatedly? What bounty is he after?
All questions that will never find an answer, because WE LITERALLY DON'T HAVE TIME HOLY SHIT I HAVE TWO MINUTES AND THEN I STILL NEED TO BAIL.
DIIIIIIIIIIIIE
Thankfully I manage to kick Iron Claw's teeth in with barely a minute left on the counter, and then it's a desperate dash to cross the remainder of the screen, and…
We did it, boys. We escaped the castle with all the loot it held and as much ABP and XP as we could feasibly gain from it, and we cut it down to the wire.
And now that the group have escaped the exploding castle, and are in the plain nearby, the shards of the crystals reach them!
New job unlocks!
Beastmaster
Geomancer
Ninja
…
That's surprisingly underwhelming. I expected more, like, in raw number. Granted, the Water Crystal was very recent, so it might have felt like too much too fast without a chance to take the old jobs out for a spin, but, hmmm…
Okay, as usual, we'll take a break here so I can mull it over. I'll post the job pictures right after this post because they're too cute to leave out but would take too much space in this update, so.
Beastmaster appears to have the ability to control enemy mobs. The primary use for this appears to be forcing opponents to use moves they normally wouldn't so as to ensure Blue Mage can learn spells, and they're almost always referenced in the same breath as BLU rather than an independent class, though they do have a Pokémon "catch and release" mechanic to turn an enemy against their own party which looks fun, if not particularly efficient. I think I'll leave that one out.
Geomancer does what it did in FF3, cast a special magic effect based on the terrain type, but apparently its main appeal is for its support abilities, which grant the group immunity to environmental damage like lava and make floor pits visible. I… guess? I can swap into this one if it ever becomes relevant, I suppose, this seems low-priority.
Ninja, finally, is something I'm interested in in the future. It's back from FF3, but no longer appears to be one of the endgame ultimate classes. Instead, it has some unique weapon access (I think it can use that Ashura sword I got earlier?), as well as the Throw command, which uses consumables to deal momentary high damage. I found Fire and Lightning Scrolls as well as a Shuriken in my escape from Castle Karnak, which are Throw-compatible (and in fact appear useless without it). Also, it seems it has a high-end 'Dual-Wield' ability if you master the class, which lets you dual-wield weapons in the same way Monk dual-wields its fists, which should translate to absurdly high damage. Kinda like the Fighter equivalent to RDM's Dualcast?
I think I might want to have Bartz master Mystic Knight (he's pretty close) then have him learn Ninja, and combo Spellblade and Dual-Wield. I'm pretty sure I would have come up with it myself but apparently it also is one of the well-known and established doom combos in the fanbase, at least if you combine it with some other ability from some class I don't have yet, which we'll get to if we get to it.
So! Bartz has a new career path ahead, Lenna is probably gonna have to reclass into something soon (she mastered HP+10% and HP+20%, her next job level will have Monk fully mastered and I don't really know what to do with her then), Galuf is still going strong as a Summoner with White Magic backup, and Faris is still on the long road to RDM mastery which just got a tinsy teeny bit faster.
One thing I wonder is, hmm…
So in FF3 a large part of the job progression was linear, with the most fun and freedom being in the mid-game. Early on you have Warrior/BLM/WHM/RDM which are all eventually made obsolete. Cleric is a straight upgrade on White Mage, Summoner is a straight upgrade on Evoker, and so on. You're expected to ditch these jobs without looking back, and then in the endgame you just do Sage + Ninja (with a few caveats, like in my own use of a single Dragoon).
FFV seems to be going a different route, though. So far, it's trying hard to make every job viable to some extent, especially with the Freelancer system where a fully mastered job grants its stats and passive skills to the Freelancer job, but not just that. There's no 'Warrior' anymore, we start straight off the bat with Knight which has the Cover support ability and learns the powerful Two-Handed skill, Thief has a bunch of support skills, a dip in Monk has been a crucial part of my playthrough… The Freelancer thing hasn't been relevant yet, but, hmm…
So White Mage and Black Mage only learn their respective magic up to lv 6 spells, right? And Summoner only learns summons up to lv 5. So there have to be some kind of upgrade jobs with the higher tiers of spells. I wonder how that will work? Will White/Black Mage get made obsolete, or will there still be an incentive to master them - say, if the 'upgrade' jobs have access to higher tier spells, but have a weaker Magic stat, so you're still incentivized to learn a 'lower tier' job so Freelancer gets both the high level spells and the high stat boost?
Just tossing ideas around. Maybe I'm completely off-base and it won't do 'upgrade' jobs at all somehow. We'll see!
So far, the job system has been even more fun to play with than FF3's, and I'm excited where this is going.
That's a 600 dmg attack, after spending an entire turn powering up by casting Blizzara on himself. In terms of DPS, this is garbage. His attack hits for less damage than Faris's spells, significantly less than Galuf's, and around the same as Lenna despite wasting a turn charging up.
So you hit the ice girl with an ice enchanted sword and it did slightly less damage than hitting with a fireball to the face? I can't say I've played much FFV but did you not have a Fire enchant spell to use?
So you hit the ice girl with an ice enchanted sword and it did slightly less damage than hitting with a fireball to the face? I can't say I've played much FFV but did you not have a Fire enchant spell to use?
A second Elven Mantle, meaning my two squishiest characters now have like a 30% chance of evading all attacks entirely. The Main Gauche, a powerful looking weapon (which I don't have the classes to equip yet, unfortunately). The first Ribbon in the game (though it's not yet equippable by anyone but Freelancers). A treasure trove of valuable Elixirs that can't be purchased this early in the game. And, most important of all, early access to Esuna, the spell that is finally going to solve my status effect problems forever.
We did it, boys. We escaped the castle with all the loot it held and as much ABP and XP as we could feasibly gain from it, and we cut it down to the wire.
Technically you missed a fairly powerful piece of blue magic from Iron Claw himself that won't show up again until much later, but you can skip out on blue overall, even though it's pretty handy.
Beastmaster appears to have the ability to control enemy mobs. The primary use for this appears to be forcing opponents to use moves they normally wouldn't so as to ensure Blue Mage can learn spells, and they're almost always referenced in the same breath as BLU rather than an independent class, though they do have a Pokémon "catch and release" mechanic to turn an enemy against their own party which looks fun, if not particularly efficient. I think I'll leave that one out.
The catch command is actually like, really useful for dealing with specifically planned for bosses/optional bosses/specific super mobs, but I'm not overly familiar with it I just kinda ignored it as too gimmicky.
It does mean you can use that whip you looted awhile back though.
Geomancer does what it did in FF3, cast a special magic effect based on the terrain type, but apparently its main appeal is for its support abilities, which grant the group immunity to environmental damage like lava and make floor pits visible. I… guess? I can swap into this one if it ever becomes relevant, I suppose, this seems low-priority.
I don't think I bothered with Geomancer much, it's not useless but it's kinda like a gimmickier summoner in terms of specializing in mass damage. Kinda lower end in value among FF5 classes.
Ninja, finally, is something I'm interested in in the future. It's back from FF3, but no longer appears to be one of the endgame ultimate classes. Instead, it has some unique weapon access (I think it can use that Ashura sword I got earlier?), as well as the Throw command, which uses consumables to deal momentary high damage. I found Fire and Lightning Scrolls as well as a Shuriken in my escape from Castle Karnak, which are Throw-compatible (and in fact appear useless without it). Also, it seems it has a high-end 'Dual-Wield' ability if you master the class, which lets you dual-wield weapons in the same way Monk dual-wields its fists, which should translate to absurdly high damage. Kinda like the Fighter equivalent to RDM's Dualcast?
Scrolls are neat. They do elemental damage to all enemies when thrown. The shuriken also constitutes one of the earlier ways to handle the Jackanapes if you actually want to fight them, due to high damage.
And yeah. Dual Wield Physical Attack Freelancer is one of the 'stock' things people do for end game alongside Dual Cast Casters. It's a very generically effective choice.
As for Lenna, you could simply move her to thief once she masters Monk. It offers the highest Agility modifier, and a bunch of useful passives you'll want somone to have mastered even if you don't want to try to make use of stealing. It also offers Mug, which is literally 'attack someone and also try to steal from them', so you can fish for theft without sacrificing attacking.
Give her barehanded and she'll still hit just as hard, of course.
Geomancer does what it did in FF3, cast a special magic effect based on the terrain type, but apparently its main appeal is for its support abilities, which grant the group immunity to environmental damage like lava and make floor pits visible. I… guess? I can swap into this one if it ever becomes relevant, I suppose, this seems low-priority.
Geomancer is actually very useful in an upcoming grinding spot...which is not the greatest endorsement tbh. It's special command is more than a bit gimmicky and erratic but can hit for quite the decent amount.
Really don't think I'd have used it but for the aforementioned Disc 1 designated grinding spot. (Obviously this game was not on discs, but I feel like spiritually it takes place in disc 1. It has a disc 1 vibe.)
Sometimes a family is the hideous dickworm from Alien and the exploding robots that spawn out of its body when you kill it. Also what the fuck is that Poltergeist thing? It's like… two faces… connected by a single giant tongue?
The robots I think are like, the security system, just gone whacko and thinking "the monsters are friendlies and YOU KILLED THEM. EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE."
The poltergeist I'm sure it's a single head, connected by the tongue. Just...
Queen Karnak begs us to go into the next room where the crystal is stored (this isn't described clearly, but we're actually leaving the ship through the piping that connects it to the Fire Shrine underneath Castle Karnak) to protect it.
'Isn't described clearly' is an understatement, by the time I was done my mind was boggling trying to figure out how Bartz and crew could go a couple tiles south of Castle Karnak to the Fire-Powered Ship, gone down a few decks into the engine room, one single room over to the Fire Crystal, and then fallen even further down into the castle dungeons several miles north.
Heh, that's nothing, kid. In my run I killed Iron Claw with 20 actual seconds left on the timer putting me in very real jeopardy of running out of time just from his death animation and I only shit myself a little bit.
Beastmaster appears to have the ability to control enemy mobs. The primary use for this appears to be forcing opponents to use moves they normally wouldn't so as to ensure Blue Mage can learn spells, and they're almost always referenced in the same breath as BLU rather than an independent class, though they do have a Pokémon "catch and release" mechanic to turn an enemy against their own party which looks fun, if not particularly efficient. I think I'll leave that one out.
So, the thing about control is that while it's mostly useless against bosses (not always, there are some bosses with minions who can be controlled as well as "boss" fights against a bunch of opponents who also can be controlled), it's effective against everything else and is generally pretty reliable.
In particular, there are some areas where you can encounter enemies who are way too strong for you to face head on, but still can be controlled. And while the control breaks if you order the enemy to attack itself, it doesn't apply to magic attacks, which means that such encounters are utterly trivialized. A lot of enemies can just be made to kill themselves. Just make sure not to attack controlled enemies with other characters, as it would free them.
The downside is that you can't use autobattles for this since controlled enemies always default to attack, regardless of anything.
And yes, it is a vital job to support blue mages. Monsters aren't going to use buffs and healing on you, after all, and in general the ability to ensure that monsters target your learner makes grinding for spells a lot easier.
Geomancer does what it did in FF3, cast a special magic effect based on the terrain type, but apparently its main appeal is for its support abilities, which grant the group immunity to environmental damage like lava and make floor pits visible. I… guess? I can swap into this one if it ever becomes relevant, I suppose, this seems low-priority.
Geomancers are mostly good because their special attack doesn't cost MP, so it's something for your mages to do if you don't want to spend ether. Since you went with punch wizards, though, it's not super relevant to you.
Ninja, finally, is something I'm interested in in the future. It's back from FF3, but no longer appears to be one of the endgame ultimate classes. Instead, it has some unique weapon access (I think it can use that Ashura sword I got earlier?), as well as the Throw command, which uses consumables to deal momentary high damage. I found Fire and Lightning Scrolls as well as a Shuriken in my escape from Castle Karnak, which are Throw-compatible (and in fact appear useless without it). Also, it seems it has a high-end 'Dual-Wield' ability if you master the class, which lets you dual-wield weapons in the same way Monk dual-wields its fists, which should translate to absurdly high damage. Kinda like the Fighter equivalent to RDM's Dualcast?
