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[R^2]

Calofisteri is... well, she's basically a superpowered Magissa, hitting with magic and nothing but. Reflect Rings and Silence Sword make the battle much easier.


So does having a party built to act as an unstoppable juggernaut of devastation.


Once Silence Sword procs, Calofisteri is virtually helpless. Her go-to counterattack is Drain, and that's shut down too.


Yep.


The next area is a waterfall cave.


Hey, what's that black shadow down there?


It's a robit!


Hullo, robit.


It is not a friendly robit.


Not even a little bit.






While an endgame superpowered death machine is nothing new to the series (the first being, uh, Death Machine in the very first game), I think this is the first time it's explicitly been called "Omega". He's super-fast and really loves attacks like Wave Cannon and Atomic Ray. Once he's hit, he counters twice with Rocket Punch, which does crazy damage and confuses its target (which is why Krile's corpse is turned around the other way from everyone else's).

[Zaratustra]

It really disappointed me that they didn't add Calculator as a job.

[R^2]

Let's try again.


Being sealed in the Rift for so long must make a guy awfully lonely. Lenna and Bartz sing Romeo's Ballad at the beast, keeping it locked down trying to understand this human thing called love.


Meanwhile, Faris and Krile enchant their swords with Thundaga and !Rapid Fire the beast. 7000 damage isn't much, but 7000x8 twice in a row while Omega can't get a turn in adds up fast.


Omega does manage to land an Encircle, removing Bartz from the party entirely. And a Rocket Punch has knocked Krile silly...


But by that point, one more Spellblade is all it takes.




Suck it, Omega.

[R^2]

The waterfall cave leads to a small library. All that dampness can't be good for these books.


Book: When storing power for this magic, you become utterly defenseless for a moment. Casters, be wary.




Oops, I forgot to take Lenna off of her Omega build of !Sing, HP+30%, HP+30%. It doesn't matter, though.


Apanda is a speedbump at worst.


YOU DON'T EVEN LOOK LIKE A PANDA.


Book: 'The roiling skies let loose a vile beast without a soul; Omega was its name. The dragon Shinryu came upon its heels. Not e'en the legendary weapons twelve were able to subdue these evil beasts. Inside the Rift the demons were interred; so should they stay until forever's end, their names to stay unspoken evermore.'

The meter was a bit wonky there at the start, but the archaic text = iambic pentameter we saw in the Lucavi eventually finds its foothold.


Apanda's book switches the exit to the library from the waterfall cave to this sky castle.


This would be awfully confusing if I didn't have Find Passages equipped.

[R^2]

Now we know where the soldier we fought outside Karnak castle came from.


Lots of dudes are imprisoned down here.


Including these old people (German "alte Leute"), who run around like crazy inside their cells.


Alte Loite isn't much of a threat.




Jura Aevis is about the same. But there are a lot of them, and the last save point was a while ago.




Remember this trick? It feels like it's been so long.


The top-left cell has a woman trapped inside, and this beast guarding her.


Catastrophe is fond of moves that evoke widespread natural disasters, like Tidal Wave. Earthquake is his absolute favorite, though.


Float doesn't even help, because his top priority is 100Gs, which removes the status.


But 100Gs is reflectable.


And it really is his top priority. If you have someone set up with both Float and Reflect, Catastrophe will do nothing else but the harmless 100Gs. He's a sitting duck.

[R^2]

Those of you who know a bit of Spanish or Portugese and can look past the wonky word order already know Azulmagia's theme: he's a blue mage. If you need to Learn almost anything, he has it. You just have to wait for him to cast it on you.




There are a few spells he can learn from you, though.


And once he learns one, he's so eager to try it out that he does so immediately.


...


Anyway, enjoy the save point Azulmagia was standing on.

[R^2]

Things learned:
While HP+% and MP+% stack with themselves, the new ABP Up and EXP Up do not.

If you Mimic the use of the Magic Lamp, it consumes another charge from the Lamp as if the second character had used it themselves.

[A²]

Cannoneer, Oracle, and Gladiator seem like half an idea to me. They're mechanically interesting and different from FF5, but FF5's base jobs are so obscene, and you get these new jobs so late, that I can't help but wonder if you were meant to get them earlier, or do [spoiler]The Hidden Dungeon[/spoiler] with just those jobs.

[R^2]

Well, things never really get better than Azulmagia's "I can't wait to try out my new spell!" *BLORF* but let's wrap this anyway.


The captured woman gives everyone a smooch as thanks for her rescue, which can in no way be a trap at all. I'm sure slutty girls get captured in thousand-year-old interdimensional clefts all the time.


Anyway, I'm turning everyone into a toad. That's not an effect of the maiden's kiss, it's something I equipped !Black spells to do to the party myself.


As you try to leave the castle, you're dragged back into the throne room.




Okay, so it's not really a trap or anything, it's just squicking the party out a little because they got kissed by a demon boss. It doesn't do anything else.






Halicarnassus always opens with Ribbit, which turns the whole party into frogs. Only if they're already frogs, it changes them back to humans instead.


Uh, Faris? That's not a spell you were supposed to dodge.


Halicarnassus gets more powerful as the fight goes on, and counters summons with a deady fencing technique, but honestly isn't difficult to fight by conventional means.

[R^2]

Twintania waits on the castle roof.


And now we wait.


Ice Storm, yeah yeah.


If you don't pick Mind Blast up from Wendigo, Azulmagia and Twintania have it. But really, you have "End of first tablet dungeon" or "middle of final dungeon" as your choices, might as well snag it early.


Can we get on with this please?


God, it's about time. Remember that book that said you're defenseless when charging Gigaflare?


It wasn't lying. Break Blade, Death Blade, Zantetsuken -- any fight-ending spell works on Twintania once he's charging up.

[R^2]

Hey, it's that guy!


He still talks a lot!


He still carries Genji Equipment!


You can fight if you want, but mostly you're just waiting for Gilgamesh to realize who he's up against.

Gilgamesh: Zounds! 'Tis no beast, just Bartz! You should've said so from the start! Oohhh, I don't like it here... Creepy monsters lurk around every corner, and I can' find the way out... Cripes... *sniffle* ...I'm gonna break down! Anyway. How did you get here? Or rather, how does one exit?
Bartz: Oh, just go that way, then...
Gilgamesh: I see! Let us egress posthaste! Say... afterwards, what say we have a few spectacular adventures, just us five?
Bartz: ...Um.
Gilgamesh: ...Oh yes, that whole savng the world thing.... phooey. If you make it out safely... Hah! No ifs about it. I'm certain we'll meet again. At that time, I hope you'll consider me a... Uhh...er. *cough* Never mind, ha ha! Hasta la bye-bye!


And now Gilgamesh wanders off, gets lost, and stumbles into almost every other Final Fantasy game before finding his final reward.
He shows up next in Final Fantasy 8, when Odin is defeated and his Zantetsuken flies into the sky from the battle. The Zantetsuken splits the sky open, and Gilgamesh catches the blade.
Gilgamesh shows up again in Final Fantasy 9, having eschewed weapons collection for card collection. He's back in 12, showing up with a full complement of faked series weapons for a few battles starting on, yes, a big bridge. I'm told in 13 he's available as a downloadable sidequest or something, where he starts the battle carrying various guns before throwing them aside, drawing his usual array of swords, and starting the battle for real.
And as we've seen, he's been retconned into Final Fantasy 1 in one of the optional dungeons. He's also available for a fight in the sequel to Final Fantasy 4, and retconned in as an esper in Final Fantasy 6.

He even shows up in the Dissidia sequel, but outside the normal summoning of interdimensional heroes and villains fighting for the sides of good and evil. He just stumbles into the middle of the conflict, wondering why everyone else can't remember who he is (on account of the memory-wipe that's part of the series backstory).

In Dissidia, Gilgamesh is something of a semi-lethal joke character. Every attack he does is with a random weapon: Excalibur, Excalipoor, Zantetsuken, Genji Blade, Masamune, Battle Axe, Naginata, or Chicken Knife, and each weapon has varying reach and attack power. Excalipoor only does 1 damage on a hit, for example, while Excalibur does double, the Battle Axe does random damage, the Masamune crits more often, and the Chicken Knife does more damage as Gilgamesh's Brave is depleted.

Gilgamesh's EX Mode is his Gilgamesh Morphing Time, has him turn into his monstrous form to wield eight random weapons at once to somewhat normalize the effects of his random choices -- but it's still possible to do an attack and end up smacking the target with eight Excalipoors.

In his EX Burst, Gilgamesh searches for the Strongest Sword:
Dissidia 012 [Duodecim]: Final Fantasy - Gilgamesh's EX Burst: Strongest Sword (English)

And given his vaguely Deadpool-like habit of noticing that he's in a game, as a villain, fighting to steal weapons from the heroes, he starts his EX Burst by rushing at the camera and busting a Gilgamesh-shaped hole in reality. He starts his EX Burst by breaking the fourth wall. After that, it's just a matter of nabbing the right sword as it happens to fly by. If he's successful, he finishes off the EX Burst with Ultimate Illusion, which as far as I can tell isn't based on any attack he gets in any game he appears in... but an "Ultimate Illusion" is the last of a series of things that is impossible or improbable. In other words, a "Final Fantasy".

If Gilgamesh grabs the wrong sword...
Dissidia 012 [Duodecim]: Final Fantasy - Gilgamesh's "Failed" EX Burst: Excalipoor (English)
He ends up with Excalipoor, of course, so that each hit does only a single point of damage. As shown in the video, it's possible to cherry-tap your way to victory by intentionally choosing Excalipoor when your opponent has fewer than 5 Brave left so that it finishes them off anyway...

If Exdeath and Gilgamesh fight a battle in Dissidia, the text for Exdeath's EX Burst changes. Instead of "The laws of the universe mean nothing!" the initial box reads "You worthless fool!", and instead of "Neo Almagest" the textbox reads "Fall to the depths of the Rift!" Exdeath is the one who banished Gilgamesh to wander between dimensions in the first place, so the two get a callback to when that initially happened.

[R^2]

This is the final stretch of the final dungeon. Enemies are tough and have stopped giving EXP entirely, but each battle is worth twenty to forty ABP. Mastering these last handful of jobs is not taking long.


Aw, what now? Do I have to fight for every piece of decent equipment I find here? What is this, Final Fantasy 2?


...or is that an optional superboss hidden in the most dickish way possible?


That's Shinryu's opening attack, Tidal Wave. Got a Coral Ring? No? You're dead. Hope you don't mind getting zapped back to the last save point, pre Twintania and Gilgamesh, for having the audacity to open a treasure chest! Ha ha ha!


I, of course, have save states, so I can show Shinryu without actually losing progress. Time to make a quicksave...


...continue from the title screen...


...and fight exactly two battles. For whatever reason, continuing from a quicksave muddles the random number generator that determines what monster you fight in the area you're in. Namely, the second fight is always with the rarest monster mob available. This sure would make hunting Princess Flans easier in the previous game!
Anyway, it's how I found the Stingray that taught me Mighty Guard, and it's how I find these little guys. Movers are unobtrusive little sphere monsters that attack in unison. But it's not what they do when they're alive that makes them special...




...it's what they do for you when they're dead. They're one point shy of giving double the ABP of a Magic Urn without costing you the Elixir, and with the quicksave exploit, they're easy to find in bulk.


This is how people who don't hack ABP in with Codebreaker codes to it.

[R^2]

Big Magic Voice: This light... I will never give it to you!


Necrophobe is a weird name for a boss, but here's the deal: dude's afraid not so much of the idea of death -- he's trying to kill us, after all -- but afraid of dying himself. So he constructed four barriers, and so long as they stand, he's invincible. The barriers themselves have high-level magic like Flare and Holy that they bounce off of their permanent Reflect status, so they're hard to kill, too.


Summons help by piercing Reflect and by hitting all four barriers at once. Here's Phoenix, doing a bit of fire damage to all the barriers and picking Faris up after she took a Holy and Flare combination to the face.


Necrophobe: You've left me no choice! Have a taste of my true power... It's all you can eat!


Uh huh. Now the goal is to get Necrophobe below 10,000 HP, but not kill him. Doing so...

Music: Battle on the Big Bridge


Prompts Gilgamesh to show back up!

Gilgamesh: Made it! Why hello there! Surprised to see me? Hah! If I'd just left you in the lurch, I'd look like a jerk for all of history! Thought I'd let that happen? As if!
Necrophobe: Hmph... You've a big mouth. If you're so eager to fight, you can be the first to die!
Gilgamesh: Oh really? Just try it, Baldy! You cannot even hold a birthday candle to the blazing flame of my winning spirit!




While Gilgamesh chatters, he and Necrophobe scrap a bit. This is the perfect time to nab the last bit of Genji gear from Gilgamesh. That's Shield, Helm, Armor, and Gloves -- the whole set!


Gilgamesh: Your grandfather... ...he was a pretty strong guy!
Krile: Grandpa...
Gilgamesh: And you, Faris! You must fall in love, or something, and try acting a little like a woman -- if you still know how!
Faris: Hey...
Gilgamesh: Lenna! Always so selfless towards animals... Never lose that pure heart!
Lenna: ...
Gilgamesh: And Bartz... I wanted to fight you one more time, mano-a-mano. You have admirable companions. I envy you.
Bartz: Gilgamesh...
Necrophobe: Enough of this. Die!


Necrophobe holds a Flare spell to the blazing flame of Gilgamesh's winning spirit.








Gilgamesh Self-Destructs, taking Necrophobe with him to the grave. So no matter how many games Gilgy shows up in, he does make it back to this one, addresses the closest thing he has to friends one last time, and goes out in a unneccessary blaze of glory. Good for him!

[Zaratustra]

Gilgamesh also uses an Elixir Remedy every turn he's in this fight, in case you were thinking of being a dick to him.

[R^2]

Let's try this again.


Krile is holding Masamune, guaranteeing she'll go first as soon as the fight begins.


She drops Quick on herself, giving her two turns, immediately, for free.


She then alchemically !Mixes together a Holy Water and a Turtle Shell, making a Bacchus' Wine. Bacchus' Wine causes Berserk, which Shinryu is vulnerable to. Haha, now he can't use any of his superpowered magic! He can only smack people for like, 8000 damage a hit. Hmm..


With her second turn, Krile !Mixes an Eyedrop and a Dragon Fang to make a Dark Sigh, blinding Shinryu. So Shinryu is limited to single-target physical attacks, which miss more often than not because he's blind. (Throw in that everyone has Shirahidori as an innate from mastering the Samurai job, and suddenly this battle got a lot easier.)


Oh yeah, and just in case Shinryu manages to land a hit? Golem can take that for us.


And just in case Blindness and Golem fail, I have a third-string backup in mind!


After that, it's just a matter of maintaining Golem and chipping away at Shinryu. Here Krile combines two Dark Matters into a single Shadowflare.


Weak! All I get is a useless reward item?


And the most powerful longsword in the game. So it's not a waste of time.

[R^2]

The aberrant arboreal resumes the form he's more comfortable with. All those hiveminded spirits must have found that armor pretty cramped.

[R^2]

Welp, that's the last of the Wind Drakes. There was only one left in each world, a potential mated pair in the merged world. But Hiryu sacrificed himself to become a phoenix and Krile's drake just got sucked into the Void.




Welp, that's the last of the chocobos...




Welp, that's the last of the lost Ronkan technology...








...to the silent beyond!

[R^2]

The Interdimensional Rift is chunks of mismatched solid matter banished from the material realms. It's the prison for the Void, which is... nothing.










Bartz: Galuf!
Galuf: Enter the Dawn Warriors!


Galuf: Bartz! Lenna! Faris! Krile! We'll hold off the Void. You kids take care of Exdeath! The only ones who can save the world from the power of darkness are the warriors of light! That's you! Now, go!!!

[R^2]

Dorgann: Now!
Galuf: This is it!
Xezat: Take your chance...
Kelger: Destroy Exdeath!
King Tycoon: Onward, Light Warriors!!!

Exdeath's control of the Void is no match for this much posthumous power to keep it at bay.

[R^2]

Exdeath is fond of high-level magic like Holy and Flare. His signature attack is White Hole, which kills a party member and petrifies the corpse to make it doubly difficult to revive them. But if you've got Ribbons -- there are three to be had -- and are of a decent level, you can just pound on him with your strongest attacks and the fight is mercifully brief. Both Faris and Bartz are going to town on the guy with Flare Spellblade Dual-Wield Rapid Fire, and that takes a big damn chunk out of his 49,001 HP every time.






Honestly it's such a boring battle I don't even bother taking screencaps of it.


Huh, I guess the series hadn't caught on to superpowered second forms for the final boss yet. Like Chaos, the Emperor, the Cloud of Darkness, and Zeromus's true form, that's all there is.