Total Death Count: 2
Finish Time: 21:32
Final Fantasy II Journal
Due to technical difficulties and other problems, we’ve been slack in the updates. We’ve been trucking along though, and struck Final Fantasy II dumb with our pure gaming power. Read on to see how it went.
-Quinton-
The trip from my place to Orie’s was rather uneventful, save for a brief moment in which I videotaped a highway patrol car coming our way. That wasn’t really exciting, although Orie thinks it was. Anyways.
Assisted by the ever so handy dandy (Andy?) Gamecube GBA player, and Orie’s retro controller for said GC, we were soon deep into Final Fantasy II. Our characters were blessed with the names Owo, GuruC, Pandar, and Rage. Although Rage left right away, so we didn’t see him until the end of the game.
It was soon decided that Orie would be a sword wielding maniac, GuruC would be a dual-spear wielding maniac…ess? And Pandar would be a dual-fist wielding BEAST. Unfortunately that last one didn’t work out all that great. But more on that later.
Stuffs happened, very difficult enemies were avoided, a canoe was found, and somehow I managed to get lost on the opposite side of the continent from where I was supposed to be. It’s all very unfortunate, but eventually the intrepid team ended up in the town of Salamand, the ICE TOWN. Salamand. What do you think of when you think ‘Salamand’? It brings to mind visions of buildings set ablaze amid a horrid cacophony of silence, since salamanders… Don’t really make noise. The point I’m trying to get it is that traditional fantasy settings clearly show that the salamander is the patron incarnation of fire. Or at least it’s very, very hot. And an ice town being named Salamand just doesn’t rub me the right way. I don’t know. Maybe it’s me.
More things happened, including some moderately awkward yet well-intentioned death scenes, in which you KNOW they’re dead because their bodies disappeared IN FRONT OF OUR VERY EYES. I believe every non-nameable you get to join in your party dies in some gruesome fashion or another, which is rather depressing because some of them are quite awesome. Well, there’s some pirate lady that manages to live. But the rest die. Poor things. Also, apparently Pandar knows how to speak Beaver. *jots that down on his resume*
3:00 AM rolls along, following Quinton’s harrowing encounter with a massive airship entitled ‘Dreadnought,’ which HAS to be evil with a name like that. The complete and utter BEAST that is Pandar begins to slow down a bit with damage, as the other characters acquire better and better weapons. This depresses me slightly, but not so much that I’m incapable of sleep. So I fell asleep.-Orie-
And with very little hurrah, I was given control at last. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve beaten the Origins version of Final Fantasy II before, and recall that at some points it was a very maddening game. Not least in some of the annoying ways the battle system attacks my sensibilities. The fact that you can’t gain MP by using spells outside of battle seems broken to me, since Cure is a very handy out of battle spell. The very nature of Cure means it will be used insane amounts of times throughout the game and will most likely be the highest level spell you have. The problem is your MP is going to be hurting because spells take their level in MP to cast, but if you have that Cure and use it outside of battle, the game won’t give you the precious increases in max MP that you need. Broken.
Thankfully, some of the madness has been relieved, if not the MP problem stated above. It was about this time, however, that I realized Quinton had left the game in my care at the exact time my least favorite part of it commences. After the climactic explosion of the Dreadnought, the king’s dying words tell the party to head off for Deist to enlist the aide of the Dragoons and their wyverns. So off I doth go with trepedation.
I arrive in the port town of Paloom and notice a new arrival, one Leila. She speaks with a heavy pirate accent, and tells me she has a deal of a cruise to Deist. I accept the offer and board the ship, only to be brought into the middle of nowhere and ambushed by the crew, who happen to be pirates. They are thoroughly trounced and Leila surrenders. Then, out of nowhere, the party invites Leila to join the fight against the Empire and she accepts. So…whatever. She’s pretty great though, with some high level Thunder magic and proficiency with both daggers and swords.
I arrive on the scene at Castle Deist to discover that not only are all the Dragoon dead, but so are the wyverns. There is one still alive though, but it looks bad for it. A Dragoon widow outside tells me that Dragoons used some kind of pendant to communicate with the wyverns and I might be able to acquire one in the cave up north.
A short trip full of insanely powerful enemies later and I have the pendant! Using it’s mystic power I decipher that the wyvern wants me to take its last egg to the spring at the bottom of the Deist Cavern, where I found the pendant. So I set off to do just that, but first to get some stuff to aid my quest.
Sailing southwest I discover the quaint town of Mysidia, and they have Flame Lances. GuruC likes him/her some Flame Lances. I might need to explain the gender confusion surrounding GuruC. You see, GuruC is based on a guy we know on IRC, but the character he plays, Maria, is a girl. Yes, this entire thing was on purpose and I’m giggling madly at my stupid joke right now.
-Quinton-
Orie did a few more things before falling asleep, however the strangest thing is that he claims to have fallen asleep before the dungeon (A rather tropical island) that I had reclaimed control in. Yet there was the boss music, three surly Big Horns glaring at me with rabid intensity. Three of four total. Orie claims to have absolutely NO memory of even entering this dungeon, quite sure he had fallen asleep within the town of Mysidia. Which means that Orie apparently nearly cleared an entire dungeon in his sleep. Ca-rrrazy!
More things happened, along with Orie’s little brother coming in as a spectator, but that didn’t much matter. The game was to be beaten within a matter of soonlyness. And it was. Quite almost thoroughly, in fact. But not exactly. The final dungeon… Is complete and utter ridiculousness. In fact, it’s so ridiculous they decided to add TWO dungeons to the final dungeon. TWO. And flies are bothering me right now. I hate flies.
Anyways, these dungeons are littered with ridiculously difficult enemies, so ridiculous in fact that several times the party was wiped out by some of these enemies. What they do is hit a character for about 1500 damage, and heal half of that themselves. And they come in groups. And the max damage we can dish out around now is about 1000-1500. Which is decent, mind you, enough to kill these enemies in one round, most of the time. But they’re still ridiculous. There were also about 5 separate boss fights on the way up to the final boss, but they were easy enough.
The final boss though… Oh. If you thought Sephiroth was difficult in Final Fantasy VII… You… Should probably get your gaming skills checked for tumors. But he had nothing to do with the Emperor, a monster with 15000 HP and a penchant for the destruction of all things pink and squishy. Including us. He hits for 2-3k with physical attacks. This in itself would be manageable, we have a ridiculous stock of Elixirs and such. However, he also likes to recover himself with said physical attacks. He’s got other attacks, sure. Those are a break, dealing at best 500 damage to each party member, which is entirely inconsequiential to a level 14 Cure spell. But when you’re doing at best 700 damage a round to something with 15000 health, that heals about 1500 damage every other round, you’re in for a very long fight.
There was hope though, and the best hope ever, in fact. A few dungeons ago I picked up a Blood Sword that seemed innocent enough. It healed you as you hit the enemy, which in itself was a pleasant thing, but not enough to warrant a use of its pathetic attack power. But the final boss of Final Fantasy II is ridiculously weak to this blood sword. Suddenly what was 700 jumped to 2000. Soon the boss was conquered, and confetti and party hats were worn by all, along with some rushed character development and a plothole or two. Ah, NES Final Fantasies. Oh well, on to the next. The first leg of our long journey went fairly well. The next game on the agenda is none other than Final Fantasy II, which we began immediately upon completion of Final Fantasy I. Look for it soon!
Final Fantasy II Pictures
Gamera guards the GameCube well.
The awesome controller we used for FF2 and 3. Lovin’ the D-Pad.
Too bad he can’t speak English.
Holy accents, Batman!
Owo gets handed an interesting proposition.
I wonder what Nintendo would have done with this scene in the old days…
Hooray for happiness!
Another one under the belt.
