Having fun with this Four Job Fiesta

[Chronicler]

I love this line.

 

[Chronicler]

So Exdeath just wiped almost every city off the map, which seems kind of grim.

We thought it was every city, but it looks like there are a few left.

It's not unheard of for one of these villains to "Destroy the World" or whatever, but something about the power of the void coming down on the cities specifically and leaving a crater where they once stood just feels a bit more real and less abstract than the standard slidewipe replacing the world with a desolate wasteland.

I'm sure these cities will all turn out to be safely tucked away in the void somewhere we can retrieve them when we save the day.

The fact that there was world 1, then world 2, then both combined would make me think I'm one third of the way through the game, but it seems like things have taken a step from bad to worse a few times consecutively, and there's gotta be nowhere to go but up at this point. Like, what could possibly be left except to gather these twelve legendary weapons and kick his ass?

 

[Chronicler]

I really need to figure out which one of these towns has a half decent item shop too. I've been eating through my everything venturing through this new merged world with no opportunity to restock.

 

[Chronicler]

So the Legendary Heroes who sealed these weapons away after using then to take out Enuo, they left guardians that would wake up if anybody tried to disturb the 12 tablets maintaining the seal, as you do.

I guess a thousand years ago they had some retrograde notions of gender, which makes sense, but is still a little surprising. These aren't in theory supposed to be bad guys. They're just here to make sure the weapons don't fall into the wrong hands.

 

[Chronicler]

I'm gonna be honest, I don't even begin to understand what's required of me at this point in the game.

Like, it's all become pretty open world at this point. You're free to explore this new merged world and check off the objectives in any order you choose. I remember when I played this in highschool being pretty wowed by how simply overlaying the maps on top of eachother created all these new pathways with new areas you can access, but maybe I'm just getting older and dimmer because this all feels way more confusing than its simple premise should warrant. Rather than the world opening up I feel like it's all closed off to me and I can't get anywhere. If the pieces don't start falling into place soon I'll probably be sticking to a walkthrough pretty closely through this chapter.

 

[Chronicler]

Remembered there was this helpful guy that would read the objectives back to me.

I misunderstood. There's only 4 of these tablets I need to assemble, not 12. After this he goes on about a bunch of bonus stuff that's unlocked when I do these, but I'm thinking I'll skip all that.

"Spirits of the past, blessed by soil" was the pyramid. I did that.

And then the Island Shrine, Kissed by Wind, was just the Island Shrine. That was pretty straightforward. Did that.

So now what I need to do is figure out where my submarine is in this new merged world so I can go looking for some kind of underwater volcano. For the life of me I couldn't even tell you where I left it in the old world, so that's a definite obstacle to overcome.

I think the river one I might only need Boko for. He can cross rivers.

 

[Chronicler]

Oh hey, it looks like all of this is actually optional. I can enter the final dungeon right now.

It kind of kicks my ass though. Probably gonna have to spend at least a bit of time collecting macguffins before I can handle it.

 

[Chronicler]

Okay, I caved and looked it up online.

In order to get the submarine, I have to rescue Cid, and in order to rescue Cid, I have to do the Forked Tower.

That, to be fair, is pretty straight forward. I know where the forked tower is. It's in pretty plain sight, out in the open. I was just hoping to skip it. You need to finish both forks of the tower simultaneously or it'll all explode or something, so that means splitting your party of four into two groups of two, which just sounds like a hassle.

Either way, I have my path forward. Nothing left but to do it.

 

[Chronicler]

So, the gimmick of the forked tower seems to be that the left fork is purely magical. All the enemies use magic, and if you use physical attacks they will unleash a powerful counter, killing you instantly.

The right fork is all physical. I can't access it yet, but the wiki says I "can't use magic" in that fork.

Now, my party's almost all physical. The spellblade can add magic to its physical attack. It's possible that's not allowed on either floor. And the chemist has some item combinations that do damage based on its magic stat. After some quick testing though that is definitely not allowed on the magic floor.

So it's looking like I'm gonna be running from a lot of battles here. But I'm not strong enough to run from some of these battles yet. Luckily, the ninja has a "Smoke" ability that is supposed to guarantee success while fleeing, and after some quick testing it does seem to work here, so it sounds like Smoke is the order of the day today. Hope it gives me an opportunity to swap my ability before the boss battle though or I'm basically gonna be fighting hamstrung.

 

[Chronicler]

After a little bit of trial and error figuring out the constraints of this tower, and some last minute googling when I seemed to have come into an unwinnable boss battle, our buddy Cid's back!

Mid and Krile both kind of bond over having great grandparents. Mid explains that Cid has a lot of guilt over his inventions causing the end of the world, but there was nothing he could've done to stop it, and deep down, Mid thinks Cid knows that. Ultimately it brings Cid a lot of peace of mind to be the Q to our James bond, seeing his inventions used to do some good.

Really this quest would've been dead in the water ages ago without him. When we finally bring the world back from the brink of destruction it will be Cid's doing as much as it is any of ours.

 

[Chronicler]

This dug up some long forgotten memories. I've got some very positive associations with dwarves that look like this and say "Lali-Ho".

Looking through the wiki I think Final Fantasy 4 was the one with the very charming dwarves. Here they don't seem to be much more than a brief cameo. Still brightened up an otherwise bleak dungeon.

I'm way underground below the sea right now. Lord only knows how long the Great Dwarven Kingdom has been chilling down here. I didn't even encounter any legends or rumors of dwarves leading up to this. It might be the case that nobody on the surface world even knows that these guys exist.

 

[Chronicler]

Yeah, this dungeon seems like a bit much without a geomancer.

There are these lava floors, that eat up your health. They eat it up by like a lot, very rapidly. Even a short dip in the lava has me at 1hp, and unlike Final Fantasy 1, you can encounter enemies while walking through the lava.

The Geomancer has an ability that makes you immune to floor hazards, but I don't have the geomancer, so I basically have to compensate by extreme healing.

I don't have anybody who can cast healing spells either though, so that leaves us with healing items.

There's this store that sells elixirs, the strongest healing item, which fully restores your hp and mp. I thought I'd buy a bunch of those and brute force my way through that.

Turns out they're very expensive. They cost 50 000 Gil each, and I currently have 60 000 gil to my name. So I'm thinking that's unfeasible.

So I think what I'm gonna try and do is buy as many hi potions and phoenix downs as I can hold. I'm gonna train everybody in the ninja skill smoke so I can run away as fast as possible. And I'm gonna see how far I can get that way.

 

[Chronicler]

So it turns out each of these tablets is good for three legendary weapons, and I can just keep coming back as I get more tablets. I don't have to collect them all before I cash in.

So I got these four guys. These are the only four of the legendary weapons I can actually use with these classes. And with that I think I actually have all the macguffins my party can utilize. There are some summons I could get, but I don't have the summoner class. The rest of these legendary weapons are for classes I don't use. Any further dungeons I do is just for experience and any odds and ends I find in boxes along the way.

That actually takes an enourmous amount of pressure off me. I can just futz around until I feel ready to tackle the final dungeon.

 

[Chronicler]

So here we're presented with a choice between the strongest or the second strongest weapon in the game.

The Brave Blade is the strongest. It's a Knight Sword, which can only be used by the knight, Freelancer, and in the gameboy advanced remake the gladiator. The catch to its unparalled power is that it gets weaker every time you run from battle. In fact, it loses most of its power if you run from battle even once. Since I have the knight I could actually use it in this run, but alas, I've run from many battles, and I plan to run from many more. In highschool I was religious about never running though, honestly just in general but especially because of this thing.

The Chicken Knife is the second strongest. It's a dagger, which can be used by I'm pretty sure every class in the game, and unlike the brave blade it gets stronger every time you run from battle. Up to a point. Obviously it never gets as strong as the Brave Blade at its peak. Additionally, every time you try to attack with it, your character has a chance of ignoring your orders and running from battle instead.

This quest wasn't really what I thought it would be. I remembered the weapons but I didn't really remember the quest. Basically, in a town I have no real reason to revisit at this point, a path has been opened by the worlds merging. This path allows you to enter the wooded area just outside the town, where your view of where you are going is blocked by the trees, and many paths are obstructed by invisible obstacles. If you wander through there you can find this guy with his two boxes. After you choose the chicken knife he turns into a skeleton, does a mocking chicken impression, and walks away, leaving you alone in the woods.

 

[Chronicler]

Doing the final dungeon.

I guess Exdeath made some friends in the void. So that's cool. He's got a social life.

I farmed a bunch of materials for my chemist and honestly I'm probably overlevelled now but I'm pretty nervous about this. I'm eager to finish up so I can start a new one though. If I'm being completely honest some of this third world stuff has not been the most exciting part of the game. I remember being really wowed with how creatively they used the mechanics in highschool but honestly I've just been having trouble keeping up. I've been feeling the restartitis pretty strong for a hot minute now but since it's for charity I feel obligated to wrap this up properly now that I'm so close. So, let's do this.

 

[Chronicler]

Remember when I said I was almost positive Exdeath was a robot when you fight him as the final boss?

I was thinking of this guy. He's an optional bonus boss who's actually much harder than the final boss. You just kind of find him wandering about in one of the hallways. He's apparently some unrelated monster that was sealed away in the void at a previous date. One of the few monsters to have an overworld sprite.

Despite the fact that he must implicitly have been a problem at some point for them to go through the trouble of sealing him here, he doesn't really seem to have any interest in hurting anybody unless you get too close. Doesn't seem to be working to escape the void like any of the buddies Exdeath picked up here. Just kind of paces around his pretty small area. Just going based on his observed behaviors they probably could've treated him like a particularly dangerous bear and left him to his own devices. If I were to guess he was supposed to be some sort of guard dog at some point, and far outlived his original masters.

Anyway, we won't be bothering him today.

 

[Chronicler]

So I'm consulting walkthroughs pretty liberally as I go through this dungeon at this point. This miniboss is actually a high level blue mage. The gimmick of the blue mage class is that it can learn the magic that monsters cast by watching them do it. If you cast any blue magic spells that he doesn't already know, he will in fact learn them, mid battle.

It sounds like a fascinating thing to navigate if you have a blue mage in your party. Do you use that super helpful spell, knowing that it will then become a tool in his tool belt? I don't actually have a blue mage this time though. Wasn't in the cards. Blue mage has been on my bucket list for ages. The thing about the blue mage is that you pretty much have to use them from the beginning, if you use them at all. By the time I figured out how cool they were I'd already missed so many opportunities to learn cool spells from the monsters you encounter along the way. One of these days, though.

 

[Chronicler]

This encounter was pretty cute. Gilgamesh was Exdeath's ineffectual lackey for a portion of the story in world two. He'd kind of fight you but not be very good at it and conspicuously make up some half assed excuse he had to be elsewhere. Totally not because you're kicking his ass, though! He just suddenly remembered he had important commitments is all. More important than dealing with like the only effective opposition his master has.

At one point he gets what was supposed to be the legendary blade Excalibur and comes all cocky like he's gonna kick your ass with it, but the thing only deals one damage. Exdeath gets fed up with his bullshit and banishes him to god knows where. We loot the blade "Excalipoor" off him which has an astronomical attack stat but only does one damage.

Anyway, I guess it turns out this was where he was banished. When you first encounter him he's lashing out at you saying weird stuff like "Stay away from me, vile demon!" not even seeming terribly cognizant of his surroundings, but then he recognizes you. You're not vile demon. You're Bartz and the gang. He's been in here fighting for his life desperate to find some escape from this infernal plane the whole time. Seems pretty traumatized. All he wants at this point is directions. We tell him how we came in, presumably, how he can get out, and he thanks us profusely and goes on his way. He begins to say that when we encounter eachother after this, he hopes we will consider him a friend, but cuts himself off halfway through. He is ultimately still a minion of darkness, and we are still hero types. The same kindness that drove us to help him today will likely mean that when we meet, we'll be on opposite ends of the conflict once more. But I like to think something in our relationship is still changed by this exchange. And maybe, something in him.

 

[Chronicler]

Here's the other bonus boss, Shinryu. Weirdly, you actually find him in a trapped chest, mimic style. I have not been utilizing save states on my emulator this whole playthrough, but I through some dumb luck or foresight decided to save state before opening this chest, so deep into this dungeon, and it's a good thing because if I hadn't I would've lost a lot of progress. Think I fought four minibosses since my last save point.

We won't be bothering him today either. Just gonna leave him chilling in that chest for as long as he's content to stay there.

 

[Chronicler]

No real big plot twist before the final battle, but we do finally learn what Exdeath's end goal is. He wants to become one with the void, and then bring the whole world into the void. Everything will be nothing, and everything will be him.

There was a period where I kind of felt like he was just fucking shit up for the sake of it but I'm actually pretty satisfied with this motivation. Feels suitably alien for a tree that developed a malevolent sentience.

This is actually the first time they've called us the Light Warriors. By having us as successors to the dawn warriors they'd kind of alluded to us being a stand in for that concept, but I guess they saved the name for now, maybe as some sort of shout out to the long time fans.

This kind of finish was something they started doing in Final Fantasy 4, where all your friends who died along the way come back as spirits to help you in your eleventh hour. Sometimes your living friends' belief in your will lend you the power you need to face this greatest evil, that might happen later, when I get to his second form or something. It's cheesy as hell. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm a fan of it. You can feel the age of the target demographic a little more heavily in these moments, but honestly, when I was that target demographic, I could never get to the end of these games, and when I finally did get there I felt like it undercut a lot of the emotional moments leading up to it, but I was a cynical teenager by that point with a reflexive response to this sort of hope and optimism. That's just my experience with it though.

The boss kind of instantly murderized me. He has this tricky attack that instantly kills you and petrifies you at the same time, so you need to both revive and unpretrify your guy before you can use them again. I think I need to regroup, maybe go looking around for something that can make me immune to one or both of those effects, think I might've seen a ring in the armour store in Phantom village that could help, so we're not quite done with this game yet. Gonna be walking right back out the way I came and trying this again later.