Final Fantasy II with Jobs 2025 Part V
Mar. 16th, 2025 09:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freshfeelingAlthough I won on March 13th (and shared my victory pic on March 14th), I was interested in completing Final Fantasy II's Soul of Rebirth postgame content... especially because it went awry when I did it with my last playthrough in mid-2023. The stuff I'm documenting here was played from March 14th to 16th.
As I played Final Fantasy II under the "For Some Reason We Added Jobs to Final Fantasy II" event rules, I adhered to a slightly stricter subset of rules. The official rules were that your four named characters had to adhere to whatever jobs were assigned - and that was fine although I didn't like the idea of a red mage or white mage using bows, so I just didn't do that. For the additional guest characters, the rule was "Guest characters use only whatever they came with.". However, most of the guest characters align to jobs anyway, so I just also made sure they adhered to jobs. This meant things like Leila as a black mage couldn't use swords, and Josef as a monk couldn't use his heavy armor.
As guest characters joined my team and were mostly killed assisting them, we ended up with Josef the monk, Minwu the white mage, and Ricard the dragoon joining the postgame, where they would retain their jobs.
I should say: some of you may not be initiated on what Soul of Rebirth is since it's not in the newest (nor oldest) versions of the game: it originated in the GBA Dawn of Souls release and continued into the PSP release, the original Steam release, and some but not all of the mobile ports up until the Pixel Remasters were released in 2022.
In Soul of Rebirth, after beating the main game of FF2, you get to do sort of an epilogue where you play as Scott - Gordon's brother who died early in the game - along with Minwu, Josef and Ricard. These dead companions retain all of their stats, equipment and spells from the main game as they start. The events of this tale are framed as happening simultaneously with the main game's party going through Pandaemonium in Hell and defeating the Emperor. This alternate party is going through the equivalent (Arubboth?) in Heaven and defeating the Emperor's "light side". I dunno; as far as FF2 goes this is actually a pretty good narrative element. The gameplay is interesting too, albeit kinda jankier than the main game. It was a neat idea for bonus content for this game, and I wish it were in Pixel Remaster.
Okay, so how about this Scott person? He happens to have an ultimate weapon available in this side story and it's a sword. I'd like him to be able to use it, so I suppose he'll be either a paladin, a dark knight, or a freelancer. I already had a freelancer (Freel), plus they're somewhat boring, so let's eliminate that option. We already have a white mage for support and healing, and even the monk has some of that... so let's not use paladin, even though that seems kind of fitting. Dark knight it is!
The Soul of Rebirth story begins with Minwu meeting Scott and joining him in battle. Scott starts with some spells but most of those are invalid for him. Minwu has his abysmal default equipment... so this fight was actually a bit tough.
Well... we won. It was closer than I would like.
We don't start with a lot of items and there are no free healing points, at least in this version. The best shot at survival, really, was rushing to the one town a few floors through this dungeon and recruiting the rest of the team along the way. This wasn't easy, though.
This green giant fellow beat us on floor 1.
I hadn't saved, so I had to start from the beginning. We had a much stronger start this time! This was how we ended the battle with the Sergeants and Black Knight.
I was going to be saving a lot more going forward!
As a dark knight, Scott has access to Blizzard for now. He will gain Flare and some status-afflicting spells later on.
On floor 2, we encountered Josef and Zombie Borghen. We beat him by using Minwu's Cure spell on him, which took three shots.
In the event rules, monks have a small number of support-based white magic that includes Life/Raise but not Cure. Josef also has no armor because he shed it in the main game so... he's not really starting out strong.
I am glad I was saving, because stupid things kept happening. Ambushes and large encounter groups generally just meant we died without any means to squeeze through.
I was really trying to just plow through the dungeon and not going out of my way for most treasure. I did stop for a few things, and I found an Ancient Sword for Scott and a Silver Cuirass. The Silver Cuirass went on Josef since Minwu's in the back row.
Scott's left-handedness, by the way, made me realize I hadn't paid a moment's attention to anyone's handedness in the main game at all. I wonder how many suboptimal equip situations I ran because of that.
In one of the next couple of dungeon floors was an area that was a mirror of the waterfall room in the Jade Passage, which included the secret magic shop.
We sold some items and with the cash we had on hand we were able to afford both Holy for Minwu - finally giving him a useful offensive option - and Flare for Scott, which may matter eventually. Later, we will be able to give Ricard a Berserk spell.
Not long after, we met Ricard. He's strong!
This Roundworm fellow, you may recall, was actually the very first boss that Ricard faced with the original party. It kind of makes you realize how far he's come... although the rest of the team has nowhere near the HP nor his offensive capability.
It was much easier to survive with all four party members! This mini-dungeon wrapped up after this floor and we ended up at the only town in Soul of Rebirth, Mechanon. There are a bunch of dead people here and an arbitrary selection of shops.
We had quite a bit of money and thus we were mostly able to outfit the team with the things we needed. I mean, our equipment situation isn't great, but it's better.
Since we needed some battles to raise our stats, what I wanted to do was walk backwards through the first areas, all the way to the beginning, and collect the treasures I had been skipping. I bought a big pile of Ethers and a few healing items to make this possible.
A lot of the treasure wasn't super great. We got an Aura Tome that Scott is able to learn from, but the spell is pretty dumb.
We really didn't get anything else of note, but it may have been a worthwhile trip regardless.
Mechanon has three teleporters - one back into the start area, which is mostly a reversed version of the Jade Passage, one into a thing called Chamber of the Seal, and one into the final area. Soul of Rebirth is not a long experience. Anyway, I happened to walk into Chamber of the Seal first. Since I was there, I let Minwu take his revenge on a door.
Inside, there were those stat orb thingies from Mysidia Tower. This time, I wasn't going to let them go to waste!
I watched our stats as we got these orbs. I have seen... differing accounts of what actually happens, and it didn't really seem to do anything at all for me last time I played. It seems to be +10 to the relevant stat for one randomized party member. Thus, it's perfectly likely that it isn't constructive at all... but whatever, bonuses are nice.
You can see our spell levels there. Minwu's already pretty solid with the buffs, but I'm trying hard to get Josef's Blink level up as well as Ricard's Berserk level. They both started with 5 max MP, so that has taken a bit of time.
While I was here, I decided to try Ultima Weapon. Last time I played this, I Osblinked it! Unfortunately, Osmose is fully unavailable in Soul of Rebirth - unless you taught it to a character before they died in the main game. This fight didn't go well.
We had neither the defense nor the offense to navigate this fight yet.
Well, let's try the other teleporter.
This is like, the ultimate RPG trope of, "If someone says to go to a place, you need to go to that place. If someone says NOT to go to a place, you need to go to that place." If we listen to this person then the world is doomed.
Fights in Arubboth were also pretty nasty at times. My first defeat was a quick one.
Others were really easy!
This gave a lot of hope that with some RNG on our side we'd be able to explore this place, level up, find some goodies in chests and maybe score some drops. We quickly got a Curse Tome for Scott, a Wizard's Staff for Minwu, a Black Robe, a Protect Ring and some Thunder Spears for Ricard. The Black Robe was a bit weird, but for now it seemed like it was best on Josef.
All this great gear and yet every so often we still got utterly stomped by random battles with an ambush or a lucky hit that penetrated our Blink spells.
Here's one that was a doozy with two Gold Golems! It seemed like it was going to be a stomp but we actually got through, sort of.
After such an exciting victory, it sucks when one of the next battles is like this:
Eventually, we got a dropped Ribbon. Naturally I thought Minwu would benefit most from it. This was dropped from enemies called Orukat who also dropped Diamond Cuirasses which I was able to get for both Minwu and Josef eventually.
One battle had four drops! I thought it was really exciting but few of them were actually useful. I did have the Power Armlet on Josef for a while.
Eventually, when luck allowed, we went a little deeper here. I knew there were ultimate equips in chests in these next few floors. The first we ran into was a Wyvern Lance, guarded by a Black Dragon. We had actually already defeated a Black Dragon who we encountered randomly. It wasn't easy but it was fine.
These enemies have normal death animations so I couldn't really get good victory screenshots. Anyway, we won. The strategy for these larger fights was Minwu using Protect/Shell (depending on what was needed, sometimes both), Scott attacking, Josef using Blink and then attacking, and Ricard using Berserk on the attackers and then attacking. It wasn't nearly as effective defensively as the Osblink nor as effective offensively as the Hastezerk, but it worked fairly well most of the time.
The ultimate equips are not only the best weapons (etc.) available for these characters, but they also bestow enormous stat boosts, literally maxing out a couple of character-relevant stats no matter what. Ricard now has 99 strength and agility - and obviously he's just going to keep this weapon for the rest of the game.
The next special chest we found contained the Wild Rose sword along with a re-skin of Astaroth named Lucifer.
Lucifer kicked our butts! Surprise round: OHKO Minwu. Turn 1: OHKO Scott. Turn 2: OHKO Josef. Then it teased Ricard for like 10 turns but ultimately we didn't win.
Thankfully I had saved before opening the chest. The next attempt went nothing like the first. With our Blink, Protect and Shell in place, Lucifer barely dented the team.
The Wild Rose is an incredible upgrade for Scott, more than doubling his attack over the storebought Wing Sword. He now has maxed strength and intelligence.
The next fun thing we found - and I was pressing a bit, having used the majority of my gigantic stack of Ethers and Hi-Potions - was the Stardust Rod for Minwu. It's guarded by a Tiamat-like creature named Yamatano Orochi (or Yoshi for short). Yoshi uses lots of elemental attacks... which are a lot easier to defend against and recover from than the gigantic physical blows we've seen from so many foes.
The Stardust Rod maxes out Minwu's spirit, intelligence and magic stats.
We were still encountering some new enemies from time to time. Only now did I meet these guys called Dark Magician, who have very low defense and HP. They were absolutely the easiest things to beat here.
Like the overworld wizard enemies, I thought they might drop some tomes. Later ones did, but none of them ended up mattering. Our spell lists have lots of gaps, but nothing super important other than Osmose and, as I said, that just doesn't exist anywhere in Soul of Rebirth.
I pushed a little further and found a chest with a Ribbon and a Steel Giant.
Ricard and Scott are quite a bit stronger with their new weapons, so although the fight took some time it was fairly straightforward. There were still some close calls, in part because it does use the rather cool-looking Starfall attack. I don't think I had seen Starfall in the main game.
Josef put on the Ribbon instead of wearing a Twist Headband.
I had said I was pushing deep and running low on items. I seriously thought that Minwu could use Teleport to get us back to Mechanon! It turns out that's not the case, and we had to walk back. I was quite nervous that I may have gotten myself into a situation we couldn't walk out of, but it turns out getting out was a lot easier than getting in. This was probably in large part due to all the goodies we'd gotten.
After we got back, I restocked my items and took another crack at Ultima Weapon. Whaddya know? It was easy!
This doesn't actually do anything for us, since Minwu can't use Ultima by the event rules.
When I headed back into Mechanon, I didn't know whether I was heading for endgame or just grinding. It turns out I was heading for endgame. We're good enough.
I mean, mostly.
Large groups and ambushes still had a tendency to ruin us.
The last ultimate equipment in this area is the Bracers item for Josef. Amusingly, in a battle right beside the Bracers chest, I got a second Protect Ring... so Josef equipped it for exactly one battle.
Here we had to fight Beelzebub Soul because someone at Squareenix ran out of new monster name ideas. Blink, Protect, Shell, Berserk... and then we unleash.
The Bracers, unlike everyone else getting a weapon, are hand armor. They are good defensively and give Josef maxed strength and stamina. The maxed strength provides a pretty huge boost to his unarmed attacks.
We got some goodies on the last few floors and these ones didn't come with boss fights: Genji Helm, Aegis Shield, Genji Armor. I mix'n'matched this stuff between Scott and Ricard. Finally, we were at the Emperor... again.
In the last update I said we encountered him for the fourth or fifth time. I'm gonna go ahead and enumerate this so I sound less crazy to anyone especially pedantic who reads this. To be clear, I don't mind your pedantry; I have kids. You are welcome here. Anyway:
He tried to sell us paradise but we had people counting on us. We got to see some of them in the game's only scripted battle.
And then we had to battle the light-side Emperor.
To speed up the buffing a bit, Josef used a Berserk Tome here. But most of the strategies were pretty standard. Our damage wasn't enormous but we were piercing his defenses adequately.
The Emperor's most dangerous feature - besides focus-firing on Josef a bit - was using Starfall! When he does so he disappears, so that looks unusual.
Starfall did roughly 500 damage to all of us, and he used it a few times so it required some healing from Minwu. That was fine; it could've been worse, but the Emperor spent several turns casting Dispel, actually. Nothing really got very desperate... and then we won.
I didn't get to see the Soul of Rebirth ending in 2023, or ever. It's funny because it's mostly the same as the main game's ending, but with a bunch of ghosts watching and commenting on things. It is not as funny as other live commentary acts.
So, how was the FF2 with jobs event? Uh... my script version in 2023 was more fun, for sure, but it's a bit too technical and platform-limited to be useful for everyone. Some of the spells that are allowed for different jobs really seem like a stretch without much basis. Really, I don't love it.
I have historically rated FF2 among my least-favorite Final Fantasy games. This hasn't changed very much, but I think playing this a couple times recently as well as my recent playthrough of FF8 which I also sort of revile, I've got a new sort of acceptance for the idea of "even a bad Final Fantasy game is still an above-average JRPG".
Would I do this again with the same rules? Not without some peer pressure, no.
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As I played Final Fantasy II under the "For Some Reason We Added Jobs to Final Fantasy II" event rules, I adhered to a slightly stricter subset of rules. The official rules were that your four named characters had to adhere to whatever jobs were assigned - and that was fine although I didn't like the idea of a red mage or white mage using bows, so I just didn't do that. For the additional guest characters, the rule was "Guest characters use only whatever they came with.". However, most of the guest characters align to jobs anyway, so I just also made sure they adhered to jobs. This meant things like Leila as a black mage couldn't use swords, and Josef as a monk couldn't use his heavy armor.
As guest characters joined my team and were mostly killed assisting them, we ended up with Josef the monk, Minwu the white mage, and Ricard the dragoon joining the postgame, where they would retain their jobs.
I should say: some of you may not be initiated on what Soul of Rebirth is since it's not in the newest (nor oldest) versions of the game: it originated in the GBA Dawn of Souls release and continued into the PSP release, the original Steam release, and some but not all of the mobile ports up until the Pixel Remasters were released in 2022.
In Soul of Rebirth, after beating the main game of FF2, you get to do sort of an epilogue where you play as Scott - Gordon's brother who died early in the game - along with Minwu, Josef and Ricard. These dead companions retain all of their stats, equipment and spells from the main game as they start. The events of this tale are framed as happening simultaneously with the main game's party going through Pandaemonium in Hell and defeating the Emperor. This alternate party is going through the equivalent (Arubboth?) in Heaven and defeating the Emperor's "light side". I dunno; as far as FF2 goes this is actually a pretty good narrative element. The gameplay is interesting too, albeit kinda jankier than the main game. It was a neat idea for bonus content for this game, and I wish it were in Pixel Remaster.
Okay, so how about this Scott person? He happens to have an ultimate weapon available in this side story and it's a sword. I'd like him to be able to use it, so I suppose he'll be either a paladin, a dark knight, or a freelancer. I already had a freelancer (Freel), plus they're somewhat boring, so let's eliminate that option. We already have a white mage for support and healing, and even the monk has some of that... so let's not use paladin, even though that seems kind of fitting. Dark knight it is!
The Soul of Rebirth story begins with Minwu meeting Scott and joining him in battle. Scott starts with some spells but most of those are invalid for him. Minwu has his abysmal default equipment... so this fight was actually a bit tough.
Well... we won. It was closer than I would like.
We don't start with a lot of items and there are no free healing points, at least in this version. The best shot at survival, really, was rushing to the one town a few floors through this dungeon and recruiting the rest of the team along the way. This wasn't easy, though.
This green giant fellow beat us on floor 1.
I hadn't saved, so I had to start from the beginning. We had a much stronger start this time! This was how we ended the battle with the Sergeants and Black Knight.
I was going to be saving a lot more going forward!
As a dark knight, Scott has access to Blizzard for now. He will gain Flare and some status-afflicting spells later on.
On floor 2, we encountered Josef and Zombie Borghen. We beat him by using Minwu's Cure spell on him, which took three shots.
In the event rules, monks have a small number of support-based white magic that includes Life/Raise but not Cure. Josef also has no armor because he shed it in the main game so... he's not really starting out strong.
I am glad I was saving, because stupid things kept happening. Ambushes and large encounter groups generally just meant we died without any means to squeeze through.
I was really trying to just plow through the dungeon and not going out of my way for most treasure. I did stop for a few things, and I found an Ancient Sword for Scott and a Silver Cuirass. The Silver Cuirass went on Josef since Minwu's in the back row.
Scott's left-handedness, by the way, made me realize I hadn't paid a moment's attention to anyone's handedness in the main game at all. I wonder how many suboptimal equip situations I ran because of that.
In one of the next couple of dungeon floors was an area that was a mirror of the waterfall room in the Jade Passage, which included the secret magic shop.
We sold some items and with the cash we had on hand we were able to afford both Holy for Minwu - finally giving him a useful offensive option - and Flare for Scott, which may matter eventually. Later, we will be able to give Ricard a Berserk spell.
Not long after, we met Ricard. He's strong!
This Roundworm fellow, you may recall, was actually the very first boss that Ricard faced with the original party. It kind of makes you realize how far he's come... although the rest of the team has nowhere near the HP nor his offensive capability.
It was much easier to survive with all four party members! This mini-dungeon wrapped up after this floor and we ended up at the only town in Soul of Rebirth, Mechanon. There are a bunch of dead people here and an arbitrary selection of shops.
We had quite a bit of money and thus we were mostly able to outfit the team with the things we needed. I mean, our equipment situation isn't great, but it's better.
Since we needed some battles to raise our stats, what I wanted to do was walk backwards through the first areas, all the way to the beginning, and collect the treasures I had been skipping. I bought a big pile of Ethers and a few healing items to make this possible.
A lot of the treasure wasn't super great. We got an Aura Tome that Scott is able to learn from, but the spell is pretty dumb.
We really didn't get anything else of note, but it may have been a worthwhile trip regardless.
Mechanon has three teleporters - one back into the start area, which is mostly a reversed version of the Jade Passage, one into a thing called Chamber of the Seal, and one into the final area. Soul of Rebirth is not a long experience. Anyway, I happened to walk into Chamber of the Seal first. Since I was there, I let Minwu take his revenge on a door.
Inside, there were those stat orb thingies from Mysidia Tower. This time, I wasn't going to let them go to waste!
I watched our stats as we got these orbs. I have seen... differing accounts of what actually happens, and it didn't really seem to do anything at all for me last time I played. It seems to be +10 to the relevant stat for one randomized party member. Thus, it's perfectly likely that it isn't constructive at all... but whatever, bonuses are nice.
You can see our spell levels there. Minwu's already pretty solid with the buffs, but I'm trying hard to get Josef's Blink level up as well as Ricard's Berserk level. They both started with 5 max MP, so that has taken a bit of time.
While I was here, I decided to try Ultima Weapon. Last time I played this, I Osblinked it! Unfortunately, Osmose is fully unavailable in Soul of Rebirth - unless you taught it to a character before they died in the main game. This fight didn't go well.
We had neither the defense nor the offense to navigate this fight yet.
Well, let's try the other teleporter.
This is like, the ultimate RPG trope of, "If someone says to go to a place, you need to go to that place. If someone says NOT to go to a place, you need to go to that place." If we listen to this person then the world is doomed.
Fights in Arubboth were also pretty nasty at times. My first defeat was a quick one.
Others were really easy!
This gave a lot of hope that with some RNG on our side we'd be able to explore this place, level up, find some goodies in chests and maybe score some drops. We quickly got a Curse Tome for Scott, a Wizard's Staff for Minwu, a Black Robe, a Protect Ring and some Thunder Spears for Ricard. The Black Robe was a bit weird, but for now it seemed like it was best on Josef.
All this great gear and yet every so often we still got utterly stomped by random battles with an ambush or a lucky hit that penetrated our Blink spells.
Here's one that was a doozy with two Gold Golems! It seemed like it was going to be a stomp but we actually got through, sort of.
After such an exciting victory, it sucks when one of the next battles is like this:
Eventually, we got a dropped Ribbon. Naturally I thought Minwu would benefit most from it. This was dropped from enemies called Orukat who also dropped Diamond Cuirasses which I was able to get for both Minwu and Josef eventually.
One battle had four drops! I thought it was really exciting but few of them were actually useful. I did have the Power Armlet on Josef for a while.
Eventually, when luck allowed, we went a little deeper here. I knew there were ultimate equips in chests in these next few floors. The first we ran into was a Wyvern Lance, guarded by a Black Dragon. We had actually already defeated a Black Dragon who we encountered randomly. It wasn't easy but it was fine.
These enemies have normal death animations so I couldn't really get good victory screenshots. Anyway, we won. The strategy for these larger fights was Minwu using Protect/Shell (depending on what was needed, sometimes both), Scott attacking, Josef using Blink and then attacking, and Ricard using Berserk on the attackers and then attacking. It wasn't nearly as effective defensively as the Osblink nor as effective offensively as the Hastezerk, but it worked fairly well most of the time.
The ultimate equips are not only the best weapons (etc.) available for these characters, but they also bestow enormous stat boosts, literally maxing out a couple of character-relevant stats no matter what. Ricard now has 99 strength and agility - and obviously he's just going to keep this weapon for the rest of the game.
The next special chest we found contained the Wild Rose sword along with a re-skin of Astaroth named Lucifer.
Lucifer kicked our butts! Surprise round: OHKO Minwu. Turn 1: OHKO Scott. Turn 2: OHKO Josef. Then it teased Ricard for like 10 turns but ultimately we didn't win.
Thankfully I had saved before opening the chest. The next attempt went nothing like the first. With our Blink, Protect and Shell in place, Lucifer barely dented the team.
The Wild Rose is an incredible upgrade for Scott, more than doubling his attack over the storebought Wing Sword. He now has maxed strength and intelligence.
The next fun thing we found - and I was pressing a bit, having used the majority of my gigantic stack of Ethers and Hi-Potions - was the Stardust Rod for Minwu. It's guarded by a Tiamat-like creature named Yamatano Orochi (or Yoshi for short). Yoshi uses lots of elemental attacks... which are a lot easier to defend against and recover from than the gigantic physical blows we've seen from so many foes.
The Stardust Rod maxes out Minwu's spirit, intelligence and magic stats.
We were still encountering some new enemies from time to time. Only now did I meet these guys called Dark Magician, who have very low defense and HP. They were absolutely the easiest things to beat here.
Like the overworld wizard enemies, I thought they might drop some tomes. Later ones did, but none of them ended up mattering. Our spell lists have lots of gaps, but nothing super important other than Osmose and, as I said, that just doesn't exist anywhere in Soul of Rebirth.
I pushed a little further and found a chest with a Ribbon and a Steel Giant.
Ricard and Scott are quite a bit stronger with their new weapons, so although the fight took some time it was fairly straightforward. There were still some close calls, in part because it does use the rather cool-looking Starfall attack. I don't think I had seen Starfall in the main game.
Josef put on the Ribbon instead of wearing a Twist Headband.
I had said I was pushing deep and running low on items. I seriously thought that Minwu could use Teleport to get us back to Mechanon! It turns out that's not the case, and we had to walk back. I was quite nervous that I may have gotten myself into a situation we couldn't walk out of, but it turns out getting out was a lot easier than getting in. This was probably in large part due to all the goodies we'd gotten.
After we got back, I restocked my items and took another crack at Ultima Weapon. Whaddya know? It was easy!
This doesn't actually do anything for us, since Minwu can't use Ultima by the event rules.
When I headed back into Mechanon, I didn't know whether I was heading for endgame or just grinding. It turns out I was heading for endgame. We're good enough.
I mean, mostly.
Large groups and ambushes still had a tendency to ruin us.
The last ultimate equipment in this area is the Bracers item for Josef. Amusingly, in a battle right beside the Bracers chest, I got a second Protect Ring... so Josef equipped it for exactly one battle.
Here we had to fight Beelzebub Soul because someone at Squareenix ran out of new monster name ideas. Blink, Protect, Shell, Berserk... and then we unleash.
The Bracers, unlike everyone else getting a weapon, are hand armor. They are good defensively and give Josef maxed strength and stamina. The maxed strength provides a pretty huge boost to his unarmed attacks.
We got some goodies on the last few floors and these ones didn't come with boss fights: Genji Helm, Aegis Shield, Genji Armor. I mix'n'matched this stuff between Scott and Ricard. Finally, we were at the Emperor... again.
In the last update I said we encountered him for the fourth or fifth time. I'm gonna go ahead and enumerate this so I sound less crazy to anyone especially pedantic who reads this. To be clear, I don't mind your pedantry; I have kids. You are welcome here. Anyway:
- Palamecia Coliseum: drops you in a pit.
- Cyclone: you fight him.
- Palamecia Castle: fight Imperial Shadow in a chest.
- Palamecia Castle: face Leon/Freel and then the Emperor comes back.
- Pandaemonium: you fight him.
- Arubboth - where we are right now: you fight him.
He tried to sell us paradise but we had people counting on us. We got to see some of them in the game's only scripted battle.
And then we had to battle the light-side Emperor.
To speed up the buffing a bit, Josef used a Berserk Tome here. But most of the strategies were pretty standard. Our damage wasn't enormous but we were piercing his defenses adequately.
The Emperor's most dangerous feature - besides focus-firing on Josef a bit - was using Starfall! When he does so he disappears, so that looks unusual.
Starfall did roughly 500 damage to all of us, and he used it a few times so it required some healing from Minwu. That was fine; it could've been worse, but the Emperor spent several turns casting Dispel, actually. Nothing really got very desperate... and then we won.
I didn't get to see the Soul of Rebirth ending in 2023, or ever. It's funny because it's mostly the same as the main game's ending, but with a bunch of ghosts watching and commenting on things. It is not as funny as other live commentary acts.
So, how was the FF2 with jobs event? Uh... my script version in 2023 was more fun, for sure, but it's a bit too technical and platform-limited to be useful for everyone. Some of the spells that are allowed for different jobs really seem like a stretch without much basis. Really, I don't love it.
I have historically rated FF2 among my least-favorite Final Fantasy games. This hasn't changed very much, but I think playing this a couple times recently as well as my recent playthrough of FF8 which I also sort of revile, I've got a new sort of acceptance for the idea of "even a bad Final Fantasy game is still an above-average JRPG".
Would I do this again with the same rules? Not without some peer pressure, no.
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