Final Fantasy II Classic Jobs Part V
Aug. 11th, 2023 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingWe got back to this on August 10th.
Right away I wasn't sure if the script had gone wonky; the only real indicator I saw as I reviewed the party's stats was Leila's agility having already hit 97.
It was actually a bit lower, but she had two pieces of agility-boosting equipment on, but still that seemed pretty high. The agility stat is one of the weirder parts of the Kawazu mechanics of this game, in that you gain agility by being agile which you do by having agility; thus, it's on somewhat of an exponential growth curve for all characters. I wasn't sure whether the high agility was natural or caused by my script but either way it ain't breaking the game so I decided not to be concerned about it.
We immediately tried to reach the Mysidia Tower but got consumed by Leviathan.
Remembering how harsh the lava tiles are in Final Fantasy V, it's nice that the damage tiles inside the Leviathan are as mild as they were in Final Fantasy I. In fact, they were almost inconsequential, given the larger HP totals. The enemies here were easy; many used multi-target specials but nothing particularly damaging. Enemies with spells and specials provide a good target for my newish Osmose spell.
I also got at least a bit of useful equipment here, like the Twist Headband (on Leila) and the Power Armlet (on Scott). After meeting Ricard and having him pseudo-join us, we also got a Gaia Blade as an upgrade for Scott.
In battles, Minwu was starting to emphasize levelling on some of the more useful buffs he'd acquired relatively recently, like Barrier, Berserk and Aura. Maria was mostly focusing on Drain and Osmose. We fought Roundworm - which just generally is weird as an idea for a boss - and there was just nothing memorable about the battle. Some buffs, and then violence.
Then it was on to Mysidia Tower. It's quite a lengthy dungeon, with ten floors. There were some real goodies around the thing, including White Robe (Minwu), Black Robe (Maria) and a Wizard's Staff (Maria). There are also lots of elemental weapons; we can't use some of them, but Scott now has access to a Flame Sword and an Ice Brand.
Through the tower, there is a set of two fire floors, then two ice floors, then two lightning floors. The enemies aren't particularly aligned to these themes, really, but there are elemental gigases to fight at the end of each segment. These were all super easy... each went down to just a bit more than two of Maria's casts of their opposite-element spell. They were pretty fast, but I buffed and cast other spells for the purpose of levelling things so I sort of dilly-dallied on purpose.
Fire Gigas:
Ice Gigas, which I was a tad late on the screenshot for:
And Thunder Gigas, whose opposite element in this game is poison/Scourge:
In terms of actual threats, probably the worst thing that was happening was Imps casting Confuse against my team, which worked pretty often. Minwu doesn't seem to have a high enough Basuna spell to fix the confusion. It doesn't last particularly long and for some reason Scott and Maria were frequently affected and Leila and Minwu never were (I suspect it's something from equipment), but it can be pretty bad when my characters attack themselves. They're strong!
Toward the end of the tower, there were a couple of other significant fights. There's a Gottos and a plant fella who live in a treasure chest with the Flare spell, but that was easy. There was a White Dragon in the treasure chest with the Black Robe, and that was about as big of a threat as the Gigases - even with epic boss music playing! While the gigases and this dragon were somewhat durable, I never actually felt like I was in danger.
At the top of the tower there are elemental orbs that supposedly boost the party's stats. As far as I could tell, these did literally nothing to my mixed-up party's stats. I was kind of surprised but, again, decided it didn't really matter.
We claimed the Ultima Tome, which I am really not sure to assign to a White Mage or Black Mage. Ultima is black magic in literally every single other Final Fantasy game it appears in (at least where the distinction exists) but it's considered white magic here. In any case, it's completely non-viable in this playthrough for a few reasons so... who cares?
After beating Mysidia Tower, the overworld enemies change. This includes lots of Sorcerers appearing everywhere dropping tomes all the time, and Captains appearing. The Captain had been really tough a few updates ago, but they are not so concerning now.
We talked to our leadership squad in Fynn and then raided Paul's house for another Gold Hairpin (for Maria) and a Blood Sword. The inn charged us to sleep there even though there's a gigantic magic tornado next door, despite us being the only ones who can stop it and thus save the inn. I met the hatched Wyvern and went into the Cyclone.
The Cyclone is honestly a bit irritating as a dungeon. It has lots of very long paths of stairs up that lead to treasure that really have you second-guessing whether you're on a side path or the main path. As a consequence of this, I kept using the Warp spell and even accidentally Warped out accidentally on multiple occasions. This giant fortress inside of a natural disaster just seems completely impractical.
The Ripper knife was a nice find, and it may even end up as Leila's final weapon, I think? It does an additional, flat 20 damage per hit to the enemy regardless of their defense, which I liken somewhat to Locke's Valiant Knife in Final Fantasy VI. We also grabbed a couple of minor armor upgrades for Scott and a Defender which may be nice when not using the Blood Sword.
On floor 6 we encountered a Green Dragon as a monster-in-a-box. Like the gigases earlier and the White Dragon, it's obviously quite weak to its opposite element, which in this case was Thunder. We fought it much in the manner we fought those earlier enemies. Maria's Thunder spell was dealing ~1900 damage, ending the battle in two turns.
That brought us to almost the end. Before our epic encounter with the Emperor himself, he for some reason makes us fight two small battles against the random enemies we've already been fighting, but with epic boss music. Then, there's the fight with the Emperor himself. It's weird compared to a lot of bosses because he's got a few weak cronies with him, but it wasn't hard.
After eliminating the extra enemies, it was simple. The Emperor has some pretty good spells, like Thunder X, but they dealt terrible, two-digit damage. The battle only took a few turns.
Everyone was celebrating back in Fynn, but we learned there's still an army led by Leon in Palamecia and we need to go deal with that. Cid died for some reason, but he leased us an airship, so at least there's that. On the way to pick up the airship, we also finally grabbed a Haste Tome from a random battle! I've decided as with Final Fantasy III, IV, IX, and X to get my white mage to use it, even though it's classified as black magic in this game.
<< Start | < Previous | Index | Next >
Right away I wasn't sure if the script had gone wonky; the only real indicator I saw as I reviewed the party's stats was Leila's agility having already hit 97.
It was actually a bit lower, but she had two pieces of agility-boosting equipment on, but still that seemed pretty high. The agility stat is one of the weirder parts of the Kawazu mechanics of this game, in that you gain agility by being agile which you do by having agility; thus, it's on somewhat of an exponential growth curve for all characters. I wasn't sure whether the high agility was natural or caused by my script but either way it ain't breaking the game so I decided not to be concerned about it.
We immediately tried to reach the Mysidia Tower but got consumed by Leviathan.
Remembering how harsh the lava tiles are in Final Fantasy V, it's nice that the damage tiles inside the Leviathan are as mild as they were in Final Fantasy I. In fact, they were almost inconsequential, given the larger HP totals. The enemies here were easy; many used multi-target specials but nothing particularly damaging. Enemies with spells and specials provide a good target for my newish Osmose spell.
I also got at least a bit of useful equipment here, like the Twist Headband (on Leila) and the Power Armlet (on Scott). After meeting Ricard and having him pseudo-join us, we also got a Gaia Blade as an upgrade for Scott.
In battles, Minwu was starting to emphasize levelling on some of the more useful buffs he'd acquired relatively recently, like Barrier, Berserk and Aura. Maria was mostly focusing on Drain and Osmose. We fought Roundworm - which just generally is weird as an idea for a boss - and there was just nothing memorable about the battle. Some buffs, and then violence.
Then it was on to Mysidia Tower. It's quite a lengthy dungeon, with ten floors. There were some real goodies around the thing, including White Robe (Minwu), Black Robe (Maria) and a Wizard's Staff (Maria). There are also lots of elemental weapons; we can't use some of them, but Scott now has access to a Flame Sword and an Ice Brand.
Through the tower, there is a set of two fire floors, then two ice floors, then two lightning floors. The enemies aren't particularly aligned to these themes, really, but there are elemental gigases to fight at the end of each segment. These were all super easy... each went down to just a bit more than two of Maria's casts of their opposite-element spell. They were pretty fast, but I buffed and cast other spells for the purpose of levelling things so I sort of dilly-dallied on purpose.
Fire Gigas:
Ice Gigas, which I was a tad late on the screenshot for:
And Thunder Gigas, whose opposite element in this game is poison/Scourge:
In terms of actual threats, probably the worst thing that was happening was Imps casting Confuse against my team, which worked pretty often. Minwu doesn't seem to have a high enough Basuna spell to fix the confusion. It doesn't last particularly long and for some reason Scott and Maria were frequently affected and Leila and Minwu never were (I suspect it's something from equipment), but it can be pretty bad when my characters attack themselves. They're strong!
Toward the end of the tower, there were a couple of other significant fights. There's a Gottos and a plant fella who live in a treasure chest with the Flare spell, but that was easy. There was a White Dragon in the treasure chest with the Black Robe, and that was about as big of a threat as the Gigases - even with epic boss music playing! While the gigases and this dragon were somewhat durable, I never actually felt like I was in danger.
At the top of the tower there are elemental orbs that supposedly boost the party's stats. As far as I could tell, these did literally nothing to my mixed-up party's stats. I was kind of surprised but, again, decided it didn't really matter.
We claimed the Ultima Tome, which I am really not sure to assign to a White Mage or Black Mage. Ultima is black magic in literally every single other Final Fantasy game it appears in (at least where the distinction exists) but it's considered white magic here. In any case, it's completely non-viable in this playthrough for a few reasons so... who cares?
After beating Mysidia Tower, the overworld enemies change. This includes lots of Sorcerers appearing everywhere dropping tomes all the time, and Captains appearing. The Captain had been really tough a few updates ago, but they are not so concerning now.
We talked to our leadership squad in Fynn and then raided Paul's house for another Gold Hairpin (for Maria) and a Blood Sword. The inn charged us to sleep there even though there's a gigantic magic tornado next door, despite us being the only ones who can stop it and thus save the inn. I met the hatched Wyvern and went into the Cyclone.
The Cyclone is honestly a bit irritating as a dungeon. It has lots of very long paths of stairs up that lead to treasure that really have you second-guessing whether you're on a side path or the main path. As a consequence of this, I kept using the Warp spell and even accidentally Warped out accidentally on multiple occasions. This giant fortress inside of a natural disaster just seems completely impractical.
The Ripper knife was a nice find, and it may even end up as Leila's final weapon, I think? It does an additional, flat 20 damage per hit to the enemy regardless of their defense, which I liken somewhat to Locke's Valiant Knife in Final Fantasy VI. We also grabbed a couple of minor armor upgrades for Scott and a Defender which may be nice when not using the Blood Sword.
On floor 6 we encountered a Green Dragon as a monster-in-a-box. Like the gigases earlier and the White Dragon, it's obviously quite weak to its opposite element, which in this case was Thunder. We fought it much in the manner we fought those earlier enemies. Maria's Thunder spell was dealing ~1900 damage, ending the battle in two turns.
That brought us to almost the end. Before our epic encounter with the Emperor himself, he for some reason makes us fight two small battles against the random enemies we've already been fighting, but with epic boss music. Then, there's the fight with the Emperor himself. It's weird compared to a lot of bosses because he's got a few weak cronies with him, but it wasn't hard.
After eliminating the extra enemies, it was simple. The Emperor has some pretty good spells, like Thunder X, but they dealt terrible, two-digit damage. The battle only took a few turns.
Everyone was celebrating back in Fynn, but we learned there's still an army led by Leon in Palamecia and we need to go deal with that. Cid died for some reason, but he leased us an airship, so at least there's that. On the way to pick up the airship, we also finally grabbed a Haste Tome from a random battle! I've decided as with Final Fantasy III, IV, IX, and X to get my white mage to use it, even though it's classified as black magic in this game.
<< Start | < Previous | Index | Next >
