Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[R^2]

Hey, it's Boko. C'mon y'all let's go for a ride.


We'll stop in Moore for a bit.


Because there's a guy here who wants to ask about how brave we are. If we're brave, we can have the thing on the left. If we're cowardly, we can have the thing on the right.


I take the one on the left, because the metric here is how many battles you've run from. I've either killed or been killed by everything I've met! The Brave Blade is a knightsword that loses attack power every time the party runs away. The alternative is the Chicken Knife, which gains attack power each time the party runs away, but the stronger it is, the more likely the party is to flee instead of doing whatever attack they were going to do with the Knife.


Boko runs by Surgate, which no longer completely blocks the valley it's in...


...and by Bal castle...


...and on to points south. The merging of the two worlds connected the peninsula south of Jachol with the islands on the second world to make a continuous land bridge connecting Jachol to Crescent and up to where... well, where Walse used to be.


What's this? An encounter on chocoboback?

[R^2]

That town trapped between dimensions mentioned back at the Library? This is it.


Inside is a challenge to ride around the entire world on a yellow chocobo.




The final piano of the game!


...and a black chocobo! There aren't many places left that have forests but not plains for the airship to land, but the ones that do exist are pretty important.




And Phantom Village has the best shopping around. Every store has two shopkeepers, one villager tells you. The first offers just plain good stuff, and the other sells stuff that's obscure, hard-to-find, or in some cases, hidden throughout the rest of the game in case you missed it. The hidden weapons store has ninja throwing items (since you can't get them in Lix anymore); the hidden armor shop sells the Flame, Coral, and Angel rings; and the hidden magic shop sells top-tier white and black spells instead of stuff you may have missed.




Some villagers give clues to other dungeons...


And a couple give plot information.

[Mothra]

aaaaaahhhhh

[R^2]

Crescent Island isn't a crescent or an island anymore. And where the underwater airship dock used to be, there's a tower in a tiny desert.


Another detour as we travel: the pirate's lair.


Before checking in with her crew, though, Faris runs off to a side passage.






Lenna: Faris... do you see something?
Faris: Don't you? Syldra's right there...
Krile: Syldra's your name? Oh, you're such a good girl...
Faris: Krile! You can see her?

Of course she can, Krile can do anything!

Krile: Syldra's spirit says she wants to help Faris...
Faris: Eh!?
Krile: Such a kind soul...


Syldra uses Thunderstorm, a powerful wind-elemental attack.




The pirates have nothing particularly important to say, but one of them fills in why Faris is called that. As a half-drowned toddler she couldn't pronounce "Sarisa", so they just adopted whatever slurred nonsense she used to refer to herself.

In the Playstation release, Faris's true name suffered from a bit of Japanese-style L-and-R confusion: her name was Salsa.

[R^2]

I don't know if this tiny sidequest is a shoutout to someone asking you to do the same thing in Final Fantasy 3, or if someone asking you to do the same thing as this guy was added to the DS version of Final Fantasy 3, but in any event both games have someone asking you to travel around the whole Ominous Ring of Land map for a trifling reward.


In this case, all your inkwehdible wark -- er, incredible work -- nets you a Mirage Vest. It has awful base defense but starts each battle with Blink already activated, nulling the first physical hit the wearer would have taken.

[A²]

Riding the Chocobo around the world was present in both FF3NES and FF5SNES. In FF3NES you got Gnome Bread (or as it called it, "MidgBread") for it. Which...cast Sight and can be bought for 200gil from most shops in the game.

[Sharkey]

Man, if I had known then what I know now thanks to this.

The first and last time I played this thing was shortly after the first fan translation hit, and apparently just to spite myself I forced my way to about this point with a party of all red mages. Really, with a stylish ensemble like that how could you play as anything else? (I did pretty much the same thing with FFIII, but switched to Scholars when they became available. They all have pony tails and trench coats. They're one fedora short of something perfect.) Made it to the last bit with Ex, but I was pretty much bum rushing the game and didn't feel like all the dicking around I've have to do with a party that had mastered red mage and not a hell of a lot else at that point.

I had someone in irc send me their endgame save file just to get some damn closure.

[R^2]

I have discovered something "fun"!

Sap status drains HP from a character, three or four at a time.
Mystic Knights have a Magic Shell ability that casts Shell on them anytime they take damage that leaves them at critical HP.

If a Mystic Knight is at critical HP and afflicted with Sap, she'll continually cast Shell on herself every time her HP ticks down, until she dies. The other characters are virtually paralyzed by her doing this, since every tick of the in-game timer the Knight loses another couple of HP, the game checks and sees she's still at critical, and stops to cast Magic Shell.

How "fun"!

[R^2]

Oh, and one more thing you need Boko for.


It's out of the way of getting to Phantom Village or the route to get around the entire map for the Mirage Vest, so I almost forgot.


The top of Istory Falls nets you a Magic Lamp. Using it in battle summons Bahamut! Once. Each time the Lamp is used, it summons a lesser creature, until you end up doing Chocobo Kick. You can come back to the top of the falls to refill it.


The first world had the shrine on the mountainous island. The second world had the Big Bridge. The merged world has both, making the shrine reachable. How convenient!


Hey, guard goyles.


Zeninage makes this fight a snap.

[R^2]

It seems fitting that Faris gets to be the one who spams the Syldra summon to get us through. The enemies here aren't particularly weak to wind, but Syldra is the strongest summon I have. The last three I got were Carbuncle, Catoblepas, and Golem, and while helpful they aren't very good at attacking monsters.


The first floor has the party sucked into a maze of ductwork. You can get a few thousand gil, an Elixir, and...


...a fight with a ninja hiding in a treasure chest. After beating the Covert up a little, he uses an Illusion move to summon two more copies of himself.


The reward is the Rising Sun, which is like the Moonring Blade but better. It hits from the back row and can be used by Thieves and Ninja.


It's a long dungeon, but not a particularly interesting one.


When the party reaches the next Tablet, one of the monsters Exdeath released from its prison in the Void appears.


Wendigo: But to think, it's only a group of little girls! Ha ha ha! Sorry, ladies... I will send you all to your graves!

[R^2]

One of those enemies is the real Wendigo. The rest are invincible illusions. Each time you hit the real one, he switches places with one of the illusions so you have to hunt him down again. Wendigo has 20,000 HP and no particular weaknesses.


He opens the fight with Mind Blast, and is the only monster outside the final dungeon to use that particular Blue spell. So I have to restart a couple of times to make sure he hits the character with Learning equipped. Mind Blast causes Paralyze and Sap, and is how I found out about the Sap/Mystic Knight lockdown I mentioned before.




Partywide attacks make the real Wendigo easy to find...


But if you do that, every fake Wendigo counters with Frost. It's a medium-strength ice-elemental attack, but three of them in a row can really chew through your party.


Oh wait, I equipped everyone with a Flame Ring to null ice-elemental attacks, so I don't care. Suck Zeninage and Thunderstorm, evildoer!

[R^2]

In the tower near Crescent...




Krile: 'The twin houses of the strongest magic, Fork Tower... If the two houses are not traversed and the spells removed as one, both shall be destroyed, and the tower rent asunder...'

Sounds like fun. Let's go!




And by "catapult" he means the Ronkan airship dock. I don't know why it's called a catapult.


The Minstrel in Crescent teaches Sinewy Etude, a song that increases the party's Strength.


And if you've played every piano in the game, he also teaches Hero's Rime, which increases the party's base level.


...which would be all the songs, except I appear to be missing Mana's Paean. I guess I reloaded the game and missed it the second time, and with the Library of Ancients sucked into the Void, my chance of learning it is gone forever. Oh well! It's just a bardsong.

[R^2]

The party does so. Bartz goes to the right, and the girls go to the left.


The girls make it to the top of their tower without a single random encounter. Weird.


Bartz makes it to the top of his after several encounters. Go figure.








But as Bartz grabs his spell, a monster attacks!

[R^2]

Minotaur uses regular attacks and Critical Attack. That's all he does, because this is the side of the tower where magic is disallowed.


Bartz braces himself for incoming hits...


...and counters Minotaur to death. Yes, a character can easily take this fight solo, with !Guard reducing their damage intake to zero and the Counterattack innate allowing them to strike back.

Minotaur tries to end the fight by casting Holy, but he doesn't have any MP. Well, usually -- you can't counter a counter, so Minotaur skipped even trying in this game.




It's true. If you try to walk away, or reconfigure your party for the boss fight, or do anything but grab the spell as fast as you can, you get a game over.


Surprise! This one's guarded too.


Omnicient counters every physical attack with Return, the time magic spell that restarts the battle. There's a loophole, though...


Well, two loopholes, really. Lenna and Krile are wearing the Reflect Rings I stole from Carbuncle, and all of the spells Omnicient can cast are reflectable. Observe as the boss slows himself.








While Omnicient is immune to the Mute spell, he's not immune to Silence Sword. And while getting hit with a sword activates his Return counterattack... he can't cast it. He's silenced.


Much like Minotaur and Holy, Omnicient casts Flare before he dies. He has the MP for it -- but he's Silenced, and he cast it on someone with Reflect active. Poor guy didn't have a prayer.

[R^2]

Hey, we can get back to the Ronkan underground!


...where Cid is trapped on a flywheel.




Cid: I think I'm going to be sick... But first, the good news: While researching, we found a couple more techniques... So, we can upgrade the airship with submarine functionality!
Bartz: Really!?
Cid: Of course! Nothing's impossible for me! Come on, Mid!


Once again, Cid and Mid split into dozens of doppelgangers, who run around the airship engine making upgrades.


Krile: Wow, you two really work hard.
Mid: ... Grandpa blames himself for the world having ended up like this...
Krile: But... I mean, it's not like there's anything he could've done...
Mid: I know that... I think deep down, he knows it too. But that's why this time, he's so driven to see his machines used for peace.




Bartz: Thanks for everything, guys.
Cid: I can't fight for beans. In fact, about all I'm good at is modifying machinery. Even so, I've tried to do everything I can to help you out. The rest is in your hands...


Lenna: We can travel underwater now, right?
Faris: Aye. Now we can search for the tablet underneath the waves...






Yep.

[R^2]

But I forgot something, before I go on. And while above the water's surface, I accidentally fly through Tycoon airspace.






Everything gets all wavy.


We find ourselves on an otherworldly shore, crawling with monsters and with no familiar landmarks in sight. I guess I have to do the final dungeon now, without any of those other sidequests!


Hahaha j/k you can fly out the same way you got in. Makes you wonder why nobody else stuck in the Void bothers to do that.

[R^2]

The thing I forgot to do was collect a new set of weapons from Kuza castle with the Tablet I picked up in the Solitary Island Shrine.


While I'm at it, I guess I'll sail around this tiny lake, fighting off Sahagin and Sea Ibises and Thunder Anemones for a while. They're nice and easy, first-world, just-got-the-Fire-Powered-Ship monsters, so it's kind of like a vacation.


Except for this bad larry. He's level 97 -- a prime number, so no level-based blue magic works -- and hits hard with attacks and poisonous Fins.


Dude carries Dark Matter as his common steal item.


And while it takes several tries, Faris eventually takes over the monster's mind...


...and commands it to cast Mighty Guard on everyone. Mighty Guard is partywide Protect, Shell, and Float.


You don't have to wait until you can Flare Sword to fight a Stingray, but it's definitely a good idea to.


Hell yeah I did.

[R^2]

It was after fighting the Stingray that I found a very strange bug. My ship had lost submarine capability. If you land the airship on water, it turns into a sailing ship. At that point you can press the button again and get a prompt to either go back into the air or dive underwater -- and that prompt just plain stopped showing up.

After about half an hour of trying to figure out why that might be, I just said "Screw it", found a Codebreaker code, and proceeded with the game. So pardon any graphical mishaps with the submarine from here on out, since it's technically hacked in.

Anyway, here's the Great Sea Trench.


That's what I said.


There are Gargoyles by the front door, of course. Zeninage still instakills them.






All of the monsters in this dungeon are called Unknown. They're quite dangerous, each in their own way --  for instance, these slime-pile Unknowns will counter physical hits with Possess, removing a character from battle. But all of them are undead, so the !Sing ability and the Requiem song make every fight a breeze.


I remember thinking this was a great spot to grind, since it gave more experience, gil, and ABP than the basement of Castle Bal. This... does not actually seem to be the case.


Oh, and as you might expect from a geothermal vent in the ocean floor, there's lots of lava to walk on.

[R^2]

God, not you people again.


There are indeed only five of them, one of them is this guy, and one of them is a shopkeeper. So this is blessedly brief.


But their verbal tic is somehow even worse.




Sure enough, most of this area is a long, narrow tunnel.


With Urist McRallybo at the end.






HAVE YOU FOUND THE PHANTOM VILLAGE YET YOU MIGHT WANT TO GO THEY SELL FUMA SHURIKEN AND ARISE AND OTHER COOL STUFF

[R^2]

Anyway, let's give this Magic Lamp a little rub.




Neat!




Neat, but not as powerful!












Mental note: when designing fearsome monsters, "oink oink" is not the most terrifying of sounds for them to make.