Lurker > andylt

Castle in the Sky is a high-tier Ghibli movie. You can't go wrong with almost all Ghiblis though, there's none I would recommend against watching.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Probably my fav sequence of final bosses in video games. I can't think of anything else that comes close.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Congrats! There are a bunch of hidden draw points in the Castle that you can use once (Meteor on the Terrace, Ultima in the Armory), and if you want you can head back to the world map and use the ones on the Islands etc to refill all your stock. Or you can refine which will be easier if you have the items (Star Fragment, Meteor Stone, Red Giant Card for Meteor, Energy Crystal, Dark Matter, Pulse Ammo, Ultima Stone for Ultima). But you've downed Omega so you should be able to handle Ultimecia!

Enjoy the finale!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I definitely should've done the Cloister of the Dead before overgrinding, there's no threat here. It is cool to see the old bosses again and exploit some of their weaknesses I now know in ways I didn't before. Ending on Necrophobe is a bit weird but it gives us a chance to actually fight him instead of 'Mesh putting in the work so that's something. Some of them seem more powerful than before but some don't. At the end of the six rooms we are given a Medal of Smiting, then it's off to finish the other superbosses.

Omega is very similar to Mk II, he gets an Encircle off but two sets of Rapid Fire do him in. Shinryu is a bit different, there's no more secret hidden targets and he catches me off guard with a very strong Tidal Wave to start the battle, killing two party members outright (Faris is immune thanks to the Force Shield on her). Other than that it's just the same tactics, much easier as there's no missing and he doesn't attack as often. Each super gives me a reward, and looking at my inventory there's like 5 separate ultimate sword weapons that all seem really similar in stats lol.

While I'm here I decide to go for the true ending, so it's Exdeath time. You know, I'm more thankful for Dualcast, and I regret not using Quick for much longer, but pound for pound Rapid Fire seems the most ridiculously OP damaging move in the game when combined with Dual-Wield and the top tier weapons. Exdeath only gets off one single attack on us in his second form, an Almagest that barely touches us. He quickly goes down and I get the proper ending finally.

Honestly this ending is way better than the original I got, it's not too sugary and keeps a sense of emotion and what was lost while just generally being more satisfying. I genuinely got sad when Krile was by the Guardian Tree remembering Galuf. She's framed like the actual lead protagonist here, a really interesting choice considering she only joins the party like two thirds through the game. Also lol at Lenna's memorable moments being her being poisoned 2 of the 3 times.

My final Bestiary rating is 89%, not too bad. The music player (this game's OST really is very good) seems to list the original names of the tracks, with Reina (guessing Lenna) and X-Death. Lenna and Boko are the only characters with their own named themes here, oddly enough. So... I think I might be done? :( Is there anything else I've missed out on? There's lots I'd like to do with the jobs but they all make much more sense to do in another playthrough, should I ever get around to one. I'll gather my thoughts more tomorrow but if this is it for the game, it's been a blast.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

handsomeboy2012 posted...

So is anyone going to talk about the bugs that every reviewer pointed out
Looks like I should wait a few months before buying?

CDPR ridiculously aren't allowing reviewers to post their own footage of the game, presumably to stop Andromeda-style meme vids of all the glitches. Yeah, they sound very rough.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Omega is the one with Reflect, I was targeting spells directly at Shinryu.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Call of the Sea is out today (adventure/puzzle game), averaging 79 but only a few reviews so far. A 9 from IGN. I was intrigued by the initial trailer for this and it seems like a perfect fit for Game Pass.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EROPOcrJyRs

Looking forward to playing this sometime!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Bane_Of_Despair posted...

https://twitter.com/theepictheymer/status/1336178597715972098?s=20

this seems not great

Man this is pretty bad! How on earth did something like this get through to release?

And it fascinates me how a certain subset of 'Gamers' despise Naughty Dog now but defend CDPR at all costs, despite both of them being awful corporations in largely the same ways. I guess being outwardly transphobic is enough of a benefit for them to outweigh the rest.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I actually like the bonus dungeon for the most part, it's a nice substantial size with quite a bit of variation and trekking around, and aside from the optional superbosses pretty much everything is doable normally. Grand Aevis was the biggest hurdle by far for me, I needed to grind ABP and go buy some stuff to have a chance (they should sell Angel Rings right around the entrance or something to give a hint). Apart from that it seems to be balanced OK. The end boss being a very fitting plot related character helps a lot in making the whole place feel like part of the regular game. Of course I haven't done the boss rush yet, will see how that goes.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

The "misses" that you were seeing against Neo Shinryu are due to a special mechanic he has. There are two additional targets in the battle that are invincible and cannot be manually selected as a target, but attacks that randomly choose their target will end up hitting them sometimes. Basically a means of reducing the effectiveness of stuff like Meteor and Rapid Fire

This makes sense thanks, but there were several single target attacks that didn't come up with damage either! Flare only gave numbers like 1 in 4 times.

Also lol at Neo Shinryu being in a chest too, they couldn't be bothered making an overworld sprite for him huh.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

It works if you click through, for me at least.

Full hour long vid (clip is from the start): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8en7gqsBz4

Jeff Gerstmann still a threat

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

pjbasis posted...

Should have just done the final dungeon first!

Do you mean the Cloister of the Dead? It seemed like a side bonus thing so I was leaving it til the end. And yeah I just couldn't be bothered traveling all the way back to the Rift to fight the regular superbosses first when I had no idea how tough they'd be and there were some waiting for me right here.

I definitely think I grinded too much to take away some challenge there (and I do feel like I cheesed those bosses, especially Omega II) but hey at least I got through the main thrust of the bonus dungeon and Enuo without grinding ridiculously.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

So uh... I may have overdone things.

Cloister of the Dead is just a boss rush so after clearing the first room once I decide to leave that for now and try the superbosses again. The problem is both Neo Shinryu and Omega Mk II just hit way too hard, even Shell'd up their basic spells do more damage than my party has HP, so I decide to knuckle down and level grind for some time. I find a really good spot (near where Omega II is) that spawns my beloved Dinozombies way more frequently than their earlier spot, and also has Medusas which give a bunch of EXP. I swap everybody to Freelancer so they can all equip Ribbons and not have to worry about being petrified, and set them all to have EXP Up. I then just sit there and mash A while listening to a podcast for a couple hours, going back to save every now and then in case of a crash.

This turns out to be an extremely effective method of grinding, and before I know it I've gone from Level 50 to Level 80! The party's HP now looks capable of withstanding a hit from the supers, so I gear up and try Neo Shinryu.

OK is this guy broken or something? Because like 80% of my attacks that connect (do the animation and everything) just don't have a number come up. This is super frustrating because occasionally numbers do come up so I know they're hitting, is this done intentionally to hide the hits so the player doesn't know how they're doing or were my attacks actually missing or what >_>

Anyway, for the actual fight. It takes several attempts even with our new superpowers. I quickly remember the Angel Ring is the perfect accessory for every single boss fight in this Temple, after foolishly attempting to use elemental rings to absorb some of his attacks. I keep Bartz as a Dual-Wielding Freelancer and the other three as Mimes. Meteor never shows any damage up, but then I know it's a weird spell anyway, and he absorbs Holy unfortunately. Bartz does 2K hits here and there but Lenna is the main force here, Flare is the only spell that even remotely reliably shows up as doing damage. One time I Mime Doublecasting Flare across the 3 characters, and the first four hits don't show damage numbers but the last two do.

The fight takes a long time, largely because Lenna is the only person actually doing proper damage. Fortunately we're immune to most of Shinryu's fancy attacks, he attempts to cast White Hole dozens of times and it never once succeeds, I'm guessing that's something to do with our Ribbons+Angel Rings. With Krile and Faris pretty much on support duty it's easy enough to keep everybody healed and buffed, and Quick helps in that regard. Eventually one of the Flares does him in and he casts a rather pathetic final couple spells that don't do much to us, and fades away. I may be a bit overleveled...

Ultima Weapon in hand (not literally, it doesn't recommend it above the other fancy weapons I have), we head to take down the other guy. Omega Mk II is an entirely different beast to Neo Shinryu, with his own gimmicks. The most key thing is his constant Reflect, that can't be Dispelled or removed in any way I could think of. Again it takes several tries to figure out a strategy here. Bartz's physical hits never connect, so I decide to try casting Reflect on our team (after buffing them, of course) and bouncing spells off onto him. This works, thankfully! But Omega absorbs most elements, and his one weakness keeps changing. Krile bounces Libra onto him to see his weakness at any given time, but I'm still having trouble making much headway. I would get a couple spells off, then he would cast several major damaging hits that seem to ignore our defences and I have to take a while to heal, during which time he learns to bounce his spells off of us to heal himself, or to bounce them off of him to hit us. Clever robot!

I gather that Quick combined with Dualcast is probably unstoppable, but given that it can only be cast upon the user Faris is the only one who can use it. I eventually decide to use it instead of Dualcast on Faris, and after Hastega and Quick she basically uses it to Dualcast White Wind on our Reflected party. Meanwhile several attempts in I finally have the bright idea to try equipping Aim on Bartz, his attacks connect now but do 0 damage. I then desperately try Rapid Fire, which... works! Obscenely well! With Dual Wield + two of the most powerful swords in the game, one single Rapid Fire command triggers 8 hits dealing around 30K damage total! I have no idea why this does damage but I will take it! Sadly Omega outcheeses us by deciding to just yeet Bartz out of the battle entirely with Encircle, and thanks to Reflect running out at a bad time we lose again.

I head raring back in knowing I have this super lame strat that works for some reason, and this time we succeed. Omega fails to Encircle Bartz the first time so he gets two Rapid Fires off, and then Lenna bounces a dual Blizzaga off of herself to finish things off. Force Shield get! I really didn't think I would be this overleveled from one session's grinding >_>

I still haven't done the regular superbosses or the boss rush, so that is to come tomorrow. Strangely upon returning to our world a cutscene plays where some structure seems to drop into the sea. I wasn't paying 100% attention but it looked like it was just a tall rock with a face on it, like those Moai things kinda. I take the sub around the world but can't find where it landed or what it was. I do discover Mr Clio who gives us some ingame stats, though.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Witcher wasn't cross-gen, I have a hard time seeing base Bone/PS4 handling Cyberpunk well even with a ton of patches.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Thanks for making the topic! Barring a major uptick in the scores Hades will officially be the highest-rated new game of 2020.

I look forward to the many videos of Cyberpunk bugs.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I mean last year's Smash announcement would've been Byleth, I think they knew the reception that would've gotten. Steve was probably gonna be the E3 announcement this year surely, so I would expect they have one planned. Who knows though. Last year the Ninty announcements were just Bravely Default II and that cool NMH3 trailer.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

They really made a video out of a tweet with three pictures, huh. Still we'll probably get something at TGAs.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Ah, I haven't used Quick. I've seen it there but I assumed it'd be like Tactics and just max out someone's ATB or something, and I saw it cost a lot of MP so never tried it. Will definitely give it a go when I play today!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Er there's a few I haven't, I don't generally use status spells in random encounters and don't want to waste time using them on bosses so I haven't touched the likes of Mini, Toad, Old, Confuse etc, other than that I think I've used all of the others. With bosses now I generally just use Meteor/Flare/Holy unless they have a specific elemental weakness.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Oh, so Freelancer abilities are permanently active, I see. That explains why I can see secret passages everywhere here too.

Turns out Grand Aevis was hiding a truckload of dungeon behind his stone self, and with Faris geared up with Read Ahead, Flee, Hermes Sandals and our new superspeed boost, traveling from room to room is a breeze. After the Arena room we are rewarded with a bunch of treasure chests, I was pleasantly surprised none of these are fake chests with monsters in. We enter the Heart of Ronka and run around a bit, discovering a Warp Zone further underground that only takes us back to the entrance for now, so no need to use that. Down, down we go further and further, zooming through the Abyssal Falls to see a magically blocked off entrance and a waterfall switch that allows us into the Hall of Tranquility.

This place lives up to its name, and comes fully equipped with the first Save point we've seen since the entrance to the temple. A friendly NPC has been waiting for us for some time, and tells us there's a mechanical beast to the left, a dragon to the right, and underneath us 'he who would thrust the world into darkest despair rests.' I smell a superboss! We are given a key to the Dungeons which is also the metaphorical key to moving forward, but for now I head left.

The Tomb of Memory awaits us, a puzzly sequence of rooms reminiscent of the Pyramid. Like the pyramid there's little critters wandering around on screen, but imagine my surprise when I come into contact with one and it's the ******* superboss Omega from the Rift! And there's a bunch of them just swarming around here like they're nothing! Thankfully we can flee, as I'm definitely still not prepared for dealing with this. It just means we have to properly navigate this area. The Decadent's path is filled with alluring switches to push, I fail to resist the temptation and fall down a sandpit, then drop down a hole that takes us all the way back to the River of Souls (That can't be geographically accurate, I'm certain we've descended well below the River by now!). This would be handy if I wanted to head to the Dungeon right now. But I don't. So we run all the way back down here, push a switch here and there, navigate Iniquity's Path, search 'Iniquity definition' online, and wind up in the Throne Room in front of what is certainly a boss.

I have a very bad feeling about this one so head back to save, and then fight... Omega Mk II. Lol. How many of these things are there?! No thank you, game. A quick game over later, I decide to try the Dungeon in the hopes that will be more manageable. The Archeodemon isn't too bad with our new Dualcasting status-immune (almost) party's powers. He casts Death on himself when hit with a physical attack, then immediately revives with full health. I consider casting Reflect on him, but the constant Arises would be tough to manage with his other spells, so I stick to summons/magic instead. Meteor (which tends to be very variable whenever it is cast) is incredibly useful here, and before long the demon goes down.

The warp down below opens up (but not the one in Abyssal Falls, so much for "all our barriers falling" when we kill Archeodemon, lying-ass NPC), and in it we arrive at Lethe's Court, which appears to be part of the Interdimensional Rift. A few warps later we have another fight with Guardian, very reminiscent of that one cool but tough cannon fight on the airship way back when. This thing isn't too tough, we basically use the same tactics we've been using since Aevis and focus on the launchers first (it's hard to tell where I'm targeting the cursor sometimes), then let all hell break loose when down to the main cannon. We kill it before it starts firing its massive laser, then head back to save.

Approaching the Void, we come across our enemy here- Enuo! This is a very cool and surprising twist given that this temple didn't exist in the original version, as Enuo has been alluded to on several occasions, Exdeath and Phantom Villagers mentioning how he was sealed into the void he sought to control. Enuo steals Exdeath's background and we're in for our fight!

OK the first attempt is a mistake, I don't realise the battle will auto-trigger when we move forward on the final floor and fail to switch Faris to an appropriate set of abilities. I decide to take the opportunity to try and feel out what I can from him rather than attacking. I don't learn much, but he does cast a powerful Blizzaga before I reset. Next time round I gear up properly (but forget to use a Cottage at the save so have to waste Elixirs >_>), and we do pretty well for a while. He seems to shift up a gear when some text about the void powering up appears on screen, and I realise how fragile my success was when Bartz is turned undead. I had him use the Sorcerer's Mantle we recently acquired to try and block the elementals, not realising that the rest of my party didn't have Item and I couldn't cure him. Krile is then petrified and we seem totally doomed, so I restart again.

This time, everything is in place. I have three Mimes and a Bartz. Everybody has Angel Rings, Bartz and Faris have Ribbons, and everybody equips either a Fire or Ice Shield. Krile has the Genji gear. Bartz is a Gladiator, and the others have Black Magic (Lenna), White Magic (Krile+Lenna), Time Magic (Faris), and Dualcast (all 3). I give Krile Item too, to be safe. The battle goes very smoothly through the first part, but again he gears up and uses all the very powerful spells Exdeath used. We are thankfully immune to Zombie status, and get lucky with some Petrify/Ice/Paralysis hits on the wrong people and the party being immune to Level 5 Death, but there's still a lot of death to be had here. Dualcast is so friggin' OP it's ridiculous. Everybody dies a lot, but thanks to Dualcasting it doesn't take *too* long to get people back up and buffed most of the time. Bartz has the absolute worst luck when attempting Finisher that I've seen, and we even have a couple of (un)lucky sequences where I can Mime everybody doing Finisher but still fail all 4 times. The others cast Holy, Flare, Meteor and Mimic each other when appropriate, and Dispel Enuo's buffs (and our own debuffs like Berserk that can't be undone by item or Esuna) every so often.

Despite his ridiculous casting speed and several OHKO attacks, we eventually triumph and defeat the evil trapped in the Void. We're kicked back to the top of the temple, and granted a new job (!), Necromancer. Notably this one does not contain the spirit of a warrior. It looks like a finnicky class that'll take some figuring out, but I'm assuming it'll be powerful if we're getting it this late on. The Cloister of the Dead is unlocked so I guess that's next on the list, it sounds like a series of fights more than a proper dungeon but we'll see. After that we still have that other cave to try, and then I guess I might have to start training for the superbosses. Oof!


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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Maybe Melee would fade away on its own (not die completely but no longer be such a big deal) if Nintendo was able to create a half-decent online experience for Ultimate, or literally anything else.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Absolutely annihilated him this time, I may have overgrinded ABP a little lol. Angel Rings were an absolute lifesaver, and I made use of Ribbons, Dualcast and Mimes. Krile and Faris were Mimes to fit in everything they needed (White/Summon/Dual for Krile, Time/Dual/Equip Ribbon for Faris). Still took several minutes with all the casting animations but removing his Zombie strats made it so much simpler, thanks a ton Malcolm! Whew, can finally rest on this for the night.

Minor disappointment: it seems Dualcast doesn't work with Blue Magic :( It does automatically give Red Magic to anyone holding Dualcast though, which seems to make it pretty pointless for anyone to stay as Red Mage now. Also is there a non-Thief class that casts passive Sprint? Cos I changed out of Thief and nobody has Sprint but I'm still flying around the map >_>

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I don't have any Angel Rings, they must be one of those expensive 50K ones- just checked and I now have over 2 million Gil so that should be no problem at all now. I haven't tried Freelancer since the beginning, but now that I've mastered some classes perhaps I should give that a go. Not sure what happened with the Reflect Ring then, I was sure that someone died, I brought them back, then they were hit with Aeroga. Must've been mistaken!

I've been grinding ABP in the Rift for like an hour now (just equipping all 4 of them with Finisher is hilarious) and have learned some skills that seem useful- turns out the 999 ABP Red Mage skill is Dualcast! That should be very handy if it works as cleanly as it did in IV. I have gotten Equip Ribbons on a couple of them now too. I only have three Ribbons, are they buyable somewhere? I was sure I had just two before, maybe they're a drop from one of the enemies around here...

Thanks for the help, you've given me a lot of options to work with. I still haven't messed around with Cannoneer beyond getting the level up for EXP Up. Once I have Faris learn Dualcast (700/999 atm, one more Mover battle should about do it), I'll give Aevis another go.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

The main problem is we're just too slow and I have no way to stop being Zombie'd/Petrified, and their hits are all way too hard and fast. I've been mixing around Blue Mage (for Mighty Guard and White Wind), White Mage (heals obv and also Reflect I tried but it's not really been helping) and Time Mage for Hastega, as well as the usual physical attackers that aren't doing much (Finisher sadly heals him :( ). I even tried putting Bartz back as a Dancer so I could equip a Ribbon, but he's too fragile there and gets knocked down by their regular hits. I have good weapons I think but that's not the problem, I can't even keep the party alive long enough to get hits in that aren't undone by the Dark Elementals. They just respawn if I manage to kill them, too.

I've been trying to mix around items but I don't have anything that seems to help, Reflect Rings wear off and don't allow me to cast Haste, even Hermes Sandals don't stop Aegis getting a hit in first that usually means Zombieing a party member. Right now I'm just grinding ABP back at the rift to hope for a useful ability, but idk. Are there some abilities I should be particularly trying for?

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

In terms of games, like third probably. In terms of console design, 1st. A purple cube with tiny discs, a carrying handle and a controller that looks ridiculous but is actually fantastic, the peak of absurd designs. PS5 wishes it could look that weird and cool.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Grand Aevis is kicking my ass. He moves so fast and no matter what I do he's throwing zombie/petrify at me and I don't have time to heal or anything before I'm finished off. I've tried Mighty Guard, Reflect, Hastega, he has never once been hit by Slow, idk what to do. Maybe I'm underleveled, I'm getting absolutely nowhere on him.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I never did Omega so can't give you proper strats, but it is immune to Slow and everything else (except Selphie's The End, but what's even the point of doing that). Limit Breaks are useful and several of them can break the damage limit, and White Wind is great for healing if you have it.

FFVIII's ATB Wait doesn't work like you think it would, you'd be better off moving the items/commands/spells you want to the top of the list before starting the battle.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Yes!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Take the middle portal, go up to the Chocobo Forest and ride a Chocobo down and around the continent until you find Ragnarok again.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Oh thanks, I wasn't planning to use that anyway but it's useful to know. Is there any ability that lowers encounter rate >_>

We go right again and touch one of the green orbs, which are actually warps. It takes us to the Titan's Grotto, which is where we've been told to catch a Behemoth, so that's nice. Faris manages to Catch one on the first attempt, we then proceed to face about a dozen more on the way down. Catching them is actually an easier way to beat them than killing them, as they do that classic 'casting Meteor as they die' thing.

We warp back to the River of Souls (handy!) and take the Behemoth to the NPC who opens the front gate. Inside the gate are a new set of enemies, mainly dragons and Assassins. Faris recently acquired a whip with effectiveness against Dragons, so she's pretty handy here. At the end of the path a snakey monster appears on screen, so I foolishly run back to save before trying it out. Before going back I try out the other warp in the Corridor which takes me to pretty much the same place as the first, and instead of warping back to the River of Souls I go up and see another NPC to talk to. They mention having a super Soft kinda item to unpetrify anything, and I realise that that was probably the snake from before.

I head back to confirm that yes, it is indeed a stone snake, and then have to trek all the way back down again to get the item >_> . We have 5 minutes to get back to the statue, get there in plenty of time, and I debate whether to prepare for a potential boss here or just wing it in case there's a timer. There is indeed a boss (of course!), but no timer. Sadly I'm not very well prepared here but even if I were the Grand Aevis and its Dark Elemental pals hit me very hard and very fast with a lot of status effects and we go down pretty quickly. Guess I have some grinding to do, or other areas to find that I haven't reached yet.

My fav enemies down here so far:
3. Flaremancers. Pros: Can steal an Elixir from them! Cons: They retaliate by murdering two party members. Still, good to know so I can build up stock.
2. Stingray. After handing Behemoth over I decide to try out Beastmaster some more, and Controling this guy lets me cast Mighty Guard on my party, thus learning it as a Blue Magic spell. Yay!
1. Dinozombie. Oh man this guy is great. My Gladiator Bartz has Duel Wield equipped with Excalibur and Holy Lance, so in one turn he does over 10K damage. He's no threat to us and goes down in two turns, gaining us a massive 7500 EXP for no effort. If only he spawned more regularly! This is probably where I'll grind for a bit.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Bartz is a Gladiator now, and Finisher is indeed super useful. I grind some ABP in the Void then head to the Sealed Temple, and find... a way more complex dungeon than I expected. This thing seems massive, with a bunch of different aesthetics, puzzle mechanics, pathways and monsters. The Movers are here and they give off 199ABP and a ton of Gil per battle, at this point I feel I should probably be grinding EXP more than that though, not sure what I'm supposed to be at but I beat Exdeath with everyone around Level 40.

I head right first, through a Corridor and past two glowing green dots- last time I saw something like this it was a boss so I'm gonna wait and get my bearings first. We enter a different locale with a bunch of hidden passageways revealed despite none of our party having that equipped (is it a passive of one of the classes or just how it's done here...), get some Shots for the Cannon class I still haven't used properly and fight some tougher enemies. There's an enemy here I can steal very appetising Elixirs from, but it also has a one-hit kill physical attack so I'm trying to be careful until I find an easier Save to get to.

We fall down some holes, face some tough Dark Elementals then I run back to the first save so we don't lose our progress. I then try heading to the left from the start, and go past a dungeon cell with a locked door and an NPC inside to enter some watery caverns with random stairway paths we have to trial and error our way across. I see an NPC blocking the path, which turns out to be a Gil Turtle. This thing has ridiculously high defences and takes a lot of work, but he doesn't usually attack until we do so we take our time and cast powerful spells/summons when we can. He's immune to all elements so Finisher's Elemental Attack is useless, but we eventually wear him down and survive an Earthquake scare as he dies.

Following the path ahead we face some new enemies including an odd looking Stingray. This thing has 30K HP, I only encounter it by itself and it barely ever attacks, not sure what its deal is but we steal some stuff from it. At the end of the path is an NPC who tells us to bring a captured Behemoth to open the path ahead. I run around the stair paths collecting all the chests I can and head back to the reliable save point again.

This is going to be a long dungeon, isn't it. I'm not complaining, but this looks way more elaborate than the rest of the ones in game, props to them for putting in the work for an optional area. Feel like I should be drawing a map as I go...

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Surprised at the many Nuts and Bolts suggestions, I thought Banjo fans hated that game. Will take looks into Conker, Jet Force, Blast Corps and Kameo. Thanks for the recs!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

My Game Pass expired but apparently I own Rare Replay because I watched some E3 stream on Mixer once (RIP those rewards they used to give). There's 30 games here and I have very little experience with them. I played and really liked Banjo-Kazooie, tried Tooie for a bit but wasn't feeling it, and right now I'm having a surprising amount of fun with Viva Pinata. I know Perfect Dark is beloved but aside from that are any others worth it? It's a shame Diddy Kong Racing isn't on here.

Full list for reference:
Atic Atac
Banjo-Kazooie
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts
Banjo-Tooie
Battletoads
Battletoads Arcade
Blast Corps
Cobra Triangle
Conker's Bad Fur Day
Digger T. Rock
Grabbed by the Ghoulies
Gunfright
Jet Force Gemini
Jetpac
Jetpac Refuelled
Kameo: Elements of Power
Killer Instinct Gold
Knight Lore
Lunar Jetman
Perfect Dark
Perfect Dark Zero
R. C. Pro-Am
R. C. Pro-Am 2
Sabre Wulf
Slalom
Snake Rattle N Roll
Solar Jetman
Underwurlde
Viva Pinata
Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

The team I used for Exdeath:
Bartz- Ninja, with +10%HP- I never used the HP boost before but I wasn't gonna bother stealing from Exdeath. He had recently been Gladiator (switched off it once I was told it was OP), Knight (used Dual Wield for ability), and in the past he has been a Monk, Dancer and Thief. He had Sasuke's Katana and Assassin Dagger but I pretty much only used Throw in the final battle.
Lenna- Samurai, with Red Magic- Had a hard time finding one to stick her into, she had mastered Black Mage but for random encounters I generally didn't use magic so wanted a physical for her. Samurai was good, and I picked Red Mage at the end because I wanted a secondary heal and she was only using Zeninage for attacks so no need for Black Magic.
Krile- Mime, with White Magic, Summon and +10% MP. Again the MP boost was solely for the last fight, I had been using Equip Bow on her for random encounters so she could do decent damage with physical hits. In the past she/Galuf had also been Ranger and Mystic Knight.
Faris- Time Mage, with Recover. This was a bad choice, I originally had her as Blue Mage/Time Mage for final fight but I wasn't using Blue Magic so swapped, and I didn't realise Recover wouldn't cure Petrify. If I had failed again I would've switched her over to Chemist/Time Mage. She has also been Bard, Beastmaster and briefly Geomancer, and I usually had Learning on her when she wasn't Blue. Time Mage was like 90% for Hastega, so I always had that on her somewhere.

For random battles I had Hermes Sandals on Bartz/Lenna by the end and Protect Rings on the other two, for bosses where I was casting Hastega I gave Lenna the third Protect Ring and switched Bartz to Coral Ring (best defence one I had that didn't cast Doom!).

I never tried Dragoon or the two other new Sealed Temple ones. I also don't feel like I gave enough of a shot to Berserker, Mystic Knight and Geomancer to see them properly. I used Bard, Chemist, Dancer and Beastmaster for quite a while but would've liked to use them more. I'll probably switch things up quite a bit going into the post-game dungeon!

tcaz2 posted...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCA1PDJid10

Him punching a crack open through the void is great. Guess they didn't have you fight his tree form lol.


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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Yeah you need to mess with the elevator to get the Floodgate Key, sounds like you got lucky and just wandered onto it with good party lineups!

Also man I really thought you'd beat the game this time before I finished a third FF playthrough >_>

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Lucky again with a boss I guess! As I said before I really do like that FFV's bosses generally are vulnerable to a couple status effects. Also tiny note I forgot to mention: I really appreciate that it lets you run back to save after the pre-final boss scenes so if you fail you can just hop right back into the fight and don't have to sit through it all again. God I wish other games did things like that before tough boss fights *cough* FFX *cough*.

Grand Kirby posted...

Yeah, the ending changes depending on who survives the final fight. It's nothing major, but it's a cool gimmick. It gets REALLY depressing if only one character makes it out alive.

Edit: Also, I guess I missed the Azulmagia fight because I wanted to talk about it a bit. It's a cool gimmick, since the boss is a Blue Mage and will Learn and use Blue Magic if you use it yourself. You can trick it into killing itself by using the Self-Destruct spell, which is hilarious.

I might look up all the endings on youtube after I've redone it and gotten the everybody lives ending myself! I feel like I missed out on experiencing some of the boss gimmicks, I definitely got that Azulmagia was a Blue Mage but I didn't get that it was learning as it goes, that's great. I never learned Self Destruct but that really is hilarious. This game really seems built for multiple playthroughs in a way most other RPGs aren't!

And I did not think to steal from Gilgamesh during that last fight! I saw I could move the cursor around but didn't want to interrupt what was going on. Ah well, I definitely prefer this way to being spoiled so thanks for being careful with that!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

The prisoner lady turns out to be Halicarnassus (I like that it makes you walk to the door twice and bounces you back). She's not difficult at all, I quickly learn not to cast spells as she retaliates with an instakill hit, and her gimmick of turning us into toads only takes a few Maiden's Kisses to solve. I manage to steal a Staff of Light from her, and she's really not a problem.

Up on the castle roof we fight Twintania, and this one is tougher. It counters attacks by casting the top level summon spells, so we sit ourselves down and Shell everybody up. It begins charging Giga Flare, and thanks to reading a library book I know this is the time to attack. A few minutes into the battle Bartz's Assassin Dagger triggers its Death effect and we win the battle. Oh. I figured the bosses would all be immune to that but lol, I'll take it.

We finally get into the void itself, I like the look of this area and love how Exdeath's roots get more and more prominent the further in we go. The enemies give a lot of AP but we have to be careful not to trigger their bad sides (King Behemoth x2 + Meteor = oof). We talk to a familiar figure on the map and enter a fight with Gilgamesh! I didn't expect to see him here! After a brief bit of fighting he recognises us and we have a very sweet chat where it is made clear he sees us as his pals. Sadly we can't let him join our team, but he leaves us alone and heads off to the next dimensional portal. Thank you, Gilgamesh.

I avoid the treasure chests here as I know one of the ones at the end of a staircase has a superboss, and we make our way eventually to a spot of light that turns out to be Necrophobe. This guy is invincible til we take out his four Barrier chums who bounce magic off of each other onto us. Unfortunately the Assassin Dagger comes back to haunt us here, Bartz hits a Barrier and the Death bounces off and kills Krile at a very bad time, and we lose. Oops! Oh well, it gives me an excuse to replay the Gilgamesh fight and this time remember to steal his Shield.

I swap weapons out for the Necrophobe fight and this time it's not much trouble, Necrophobe himself isn't too tough once he is vulnerable and we get into a rhythm of- what's this? The return of Gilgamesh! He truly becomes a hero here, and sacrifices himself to help save the world. We love you, Gilgamesh! The dialogue in these last two fights of his is very good, and it's nice that he gets a goodbye for everybody (poor Faris's isn't as nice as the others though). Hopefully Bartz and he can have a one on one fight someday. I like that he probably canonically survives this given his later appearances, but it's a great exit to a great scene stealer who livened up the whole game and took the game's tone from slightly quirky to outright wacky and wonderful.

We get our final save point here now. I come across the Mover enemies that apparently give great ABP but the battle just cuts out back to the map partway through. No animation or anything. Well, I'll take that over crashes! I decide to not bother grinding a bunch and simply head up to the final encounter. Exdeath awaits us, and before our eyes transforms into his natural tree state and teleports a bunch of areas to the Void, including... us? What is this, a void inside the void or something? The Dawn Warriors and King Tycoon help us out somehow (that's right, Galuf gets the front spot. Good.) and we're into the final boss fight!

Tree Exdeath has a pretty cool design, and puts up a bit of a fight but honestly it's not worth saying much about it, it's the obligatory first form. Cool to take a step back and realise we are fighting an evil demon tree in the space between worlds though! I do waste some powerful items on him too. After a bit he is taken into the void himself and transforms into Neo Exdeath (badass name for a final boss), giving a really cool brief monologue that is very similar to Ultimecia's final fight one, guess she ripped him off. The background goes crazy here, pretty colourful for a void, and Neo Exdeath himself is a true eldritch abomination.

I am Neo-Exdeath! All memories...dimensions...existence... All that is shall be returned to nothing. Then I, too, can disappear... forever!!!
(Seriously is this not an Ultimecia 'All Existence Denied' line?)

Now this is a final boss fight. There are four different targets to hit, he has a lot of health, and continually casts devastating new attacks. The game slows way down at several points here. His most annoying attacks are Almagest, and the incredibly devastating Grand Cross, which takes forever to cast (rising my anxiety every second!) and can just kill people instantly no matter their defences, and often petrifies a dead body too. We use everything at our disposal here but things go against us just a bit too much, and I have to try again.

This time I swap classes and abilities a little bit (Black and Blue magic get no use here so I dump them) and save all my best disposable items for the final phase. Fuma Shurikens do a crapton of damage to Exdeath's front, and Lenna's Zeninage is the single most useful attack in this entire fight, hitting every part of Exdeath for 3K damage at once. It's still a tough fight, I prioritise buffing whenever possible, and freely drink up the Elixir supply as necessary. Faris's Meteor is helpful too, and when Krile isn't healing I have her Mime one of the more powerful attacks for a free hit. We hit a scare when we kill the third of the four targets, and he casts a string of Meteor, Comet and Vacuum Wave. At one point Krile gets Silenced, and this is the first time I realise there is no anti-silence item in this game! Where's the Echo Herbs, Square? What gives?! I consider killing Krile myself and reviving her, but that's too risky so I just abuse Elixirs and Phoenix Downs until she's herself again. Faris goes down and instead of reviving her I go for one final hit, which kills Neo Exdeath and wins us the game.

The ending sequence is pretty decent if a bit standard- the crystals still contain their base elements and thus can restore the world to its true state thanks to the Warriors of Light imbuing their essences. The dead gang show up again (why the hell is Galuf not at the front this time??), and poor Kelger and Xelzat seem like afterthoughts that Bartz has to mention given that everyone else has a relation lol. Faris fails to rejoin the world of the living with the other 3, and I am very pissed that I didn't just wait a single turn to revive her before finishing Exdeath. I'm assuming this is why she 'dies' here as there was no plot buildup for this.

In a way though, having one party member absent gives the ending a bit more weight, Lenna is a lone princess and Bartz remembers those who have been lost. Cid even has a black and white flashback of Faris's memorable moments (they were mostly in the first part of the game, huh), and Faris eventually is revived. The last lines are nicely underplayed, gentle musings on a far off voice the four can hear. They set off together on another adventure, and cue credits, ending in a very fancy Word Art version of The End bouncing around the screen.

The End

...Of all the games to get direct sequels why did they not pick the one where the main 4 are actually together at the end going off on another adventure >_> OK so clearly I didn't get the best ending here, though I kind of like how it went anyway. I'll save my proper overall thoughts on the game until I'm done with the extras, but it was a strong series of ending battles and I like that the gang stays together. Spoilers: I liked this game quite a lot!

Checklist of post-game stuff:
-Do the Sealed Temple
-Beat Omega
-Beat the other superboss
-Replay the ending with everyone alive (Are there different sequences for every permutation I wonder? I don't want to have to do that last fight 14 times!)

If there's anything else to do feel free to let me know!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Bless you, Gilgamesh.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

That's handy, I will open every other chest I see then!

I decided to Teleport out of the rift and just stock up on a bunch of Cottages, Ethers and heals so I didn't have to worry about MP so much, then rush back through again. Hermes Sandals on my physical attackers makes the non-evasive fights go so much faster. The crash fight was indeed the one that triggers the save! He wasn't so tough this time, and I then beat up six dragons disguised as old men. The Catastrophe mini-boss proves tougher, he loves to spam Earth Shake putting me at a disadvantage. I could power through but decide to try and actually use tactics (!), trying out Float. He then uses 100G to ground me and repeats the same routine, but when I equip a Reflect Ring on Krile he just gets stuck in an endless loop of 100G. Didn't mean to cheese it quite that much but lol!

We are rewarded with a kiss from a lady who is 100% definitely not going to be another naked demon monster, and I just leave it there for now. The crash put a downer on things but I'm revving back up again, and will properly go through til credits tomorrow hopefully!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Oh well, not too bothered about that one song.

So I head through the Rift, quickly getting past the areas I already went and into a cave which thankfully has a save point. I try out a battle with Omega and get wiped in its very first attack before any of us can make a move. Welp, gonna save that for postgame I suppose! We beat Apanda without much difficulty, he's weak to Fire (and amusingly is very afraid of Ifrit and turns away when he's summoned), and head back out into some sky land with Dragon Aevises (which are fine) and Ninjas (which evade too much).

Finally we end up in Dimension Castle, and I search frantically for a save point. I avoid the treasure chests as per the warning before, but am unable to find any kind of save. The only room to go in is the prison below, and I talk to the wrong person and end up in another boss fight. It goes OK at first but it's tough to get the finish done as I'm very low on MP. I cast Libra and see he's only one hit away, so I take the hit and use Elixir on Krile, who casts one final summon to end it and...

The game crashes. Well, freezes with wavy graphics and replaying one second of sound. At first I think it's part of the game but nope! This is the second time this game has crashed on me (once it failed to quicksave and I had to reset then but didn't lose any progress). Until now the bootleg seemed to be perfectly fine and I was even looking into getting a VI Advance bootleg as that'd be way way easier but now... idk. Ugh. My save seems to still be there and it won't take long to get back where I was, but this has me very worried now. Also idk where the next save point is even. Really hope it holds out!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Oh rats, I'm vaguely remembering an ominous big orb in Exdeath's Castle around the point where you have to be careful not to trigger the falling traps or something. Completely forgot about it after I passed that floor! Oh well, I never use Carbuncle anyway, too gimmicky for me and I like my healing spells. Thanks though, Malcolm, nice to have it confirmed.

Got the Magic Lamp! Thanks for telling me how, I noticed those chocobo-friendly rivers a while ago and tried to ride Boko that way back when I was trying to figure out how to get into the Falls, but couldn't forge a path. Didn't think to go all the way around the other continent and up.

I am fond of my Elixirs, but 100ABP is good... Eh, I'm doing OK for now anyway.

Got the two bardsongs, still missing one though. I have Sinewy Etude, Swift Song, Mighty March, Mana's Paean, Hero's Rime, Requiem, and Alluring Air. Have I missed the other one? Thanks all three of you for the help! Looks like I'll be heading for the final dungeon tomorrow (and nice to know there's a postgame one still to come!).

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I'll try all three and see! If Gladiator's too broken I might not use it in the final dungeon.

So going around the world we find Syldra's spirit in the Pirate Hideout. Faris gets a bit of closure, and we get Syldra as a summon, which is neat. Then we head to the Phoenix Tower, and I swear last time I tried this I pressed A on all the outer walls and all the pillars numerous times but for some reason must've missed the three inner spots on the front wall. Oops! Well it would probably have been too tough for me back then anyway.

This tower is... unusual. It's one of the hardest areas in the game so far, largely because the random battles are all inescapable and packed with enemies that love to spam annoying status effects. On each floor there's a chance we'll hit an enemy in the wall but they're usually not too bad, it's the randoms that cause more problems. Every five floors we get a pot of gil and a Magic Pot enemy, and I don't know what this enemy does in this game but the potential of it wiping out my party has me running away as soon as I encounter it every time.

I start to worry we're headed for a 50/100 floor trial for which I am not prepared, and there are no saves so I have to start dipping into my Ether/Elixir stock to keep my mages up. Mime proves really useful here as I don't think it uses MP to mimic the spell that was just cast. There is one encounter about 25 floors in that nearly kills us, three of us are undead and asleep and it's one of those dancing enemies that just keeps casting really fast again and again. Thankfully Lenna gets knocked awake and not wanting to take any chances I use an Elixir on her Mini'd self and just cast Firaga til the enemy is dead. Other than that we get through pretty OK, it is just annoyingly long and I always feel like I'm only a couple mistakes away from wipeout. I always choose the leftmost wall part, if that changes anything.

Thankfully the tower is only 30 floors high, and I get really worried seeing there's no save here assuming I'll have to fight a boss. That's not the case though, Lenna's Wind Drake (that I was sure died freeing Lenna from the demon) is here and jumps off a cliff, turning into a Phoenix and becoming a summon too. Way to upstage Syldra, Hiryu. We get a flashback to Lenna as a kid and I choose to not cut out its tongue (I wonder what happens if you choose yes). If I were Krile's Wind Drake or Boko I'd be a little wary right now seeing how every mount is sacrificing itself to become a summon and I have one summon space left...

It's a nice scene getting the Phoenix and it is explicitly foreshadowed in one of the towns, I haven't used either new summon in battle yet but I look forward to seeing how they look. So as of now, I have 12/12 legendary weapons, all White/Black/Time spells, 11/12 summons, 5/8 Bardsongs and I'm missing 14 Blue Magic spells (>_>). Is there anything else I should do before we hop back into the gaping void?

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I literally just came back here to post that I found the hole in the wall in the Phoenix Tower! Thanks! Is this all I have left to do then before the final dungeon?

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Yes I experienced her casting Death over and over... I guess I killed the toad too soon. How am I ever supposed to know which enemies are immune to death or not lol.

I went into the ??? place and picked up three new jobs (Gladiator seems the easiest to use), and now... I have no idea what to do. One door is jammed and the other says I can't get through because it's pitch black (could it be related to the magic lamp the dwarf mentioned?), and I can't figure out how to get ahead at Phoenix Tower (something to do with the one set of enemies we get I'm sure but no idea what!). I'll wander around for a bit, I'm trying to think of anywhere I forgot to check out again after the worlds merged or something.

Any vague hints would be welcome!

Edit: Well I found Syldra! But no idea where to go next still.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

I thought Xenoblade was the perennial GOTY around here.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

That is a very bold claim to make!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Well, at least Immortals could best one game set in BotW's Hyrule!

Is Dragon Quest really that good? I played the demo and had quite a bit of fun with it but nothing that made me think it was going to be mindblowing.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Don't know how I missed this. Sad nobody nominated FFX, FFIV DS, New Vegas, Halo 2+3 or Bioshock. Hopefully FFVIII is still in the top 20!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Empire of Sin is at 71 OC through 22 reviews/69 MC through 24 reviews, if anyone was wondering.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Wonderful write-up (and topic!). God I love Hollow Knight.

If you haven't played Hollow Knight pls do so and don't read azuarc's writeup or the rest of this post!

Hollow Knight does everything that Super Metroid does, and does it better.

I took a pause at this sentence, but you know what, I don't think I necessarily disagree with you.

Perfect song choice too, there's like a dozen all-timers on the OST imo but Sealed Vessel is the perfect encapsulation of this game. Some people think the game drags on too long, but I love that there's just more and more and more to discover. Every time you think you've got the game down it throws something entirely new at you. I didn't find The Hive until well over 30 hours playing! I still haven't done all the pantheons and fought Absolute Radiance (gonna be honest, no plans to do that one.) The piecemealing of the lore, making you have to go out and figure it for yourself, actually beginning to understand the magnitude of some of the events you witness and take part in, I just love it. And yeah, slowly figuring out that you aren't actually the Hollow Knight was a great touch.

It probably helped the experience that I knew next to nothing about the game beforehand other than it being a Metroidvania and everybody raving about it. A very worthy #1.

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!

Well, I feel like a right idiot after beating Gogo. The answer was, of course, to mimic him by doing literally nothing. I believe I did briefly consider this the first time round but the timer was forefront of my mind. Also you have to do nothing for two full minutes, I was sure I'd gotten it wrong and decided to just let the timer run out anyway. Phew, gotten the Mime class (is this the last job?), and Gogo Banishes himself to the abyss... maybe we'll meet him again in the rift!

Back to Istory Falls, I really love the aesthetic of the opening room. Water cascading to look like staircases and the waterfalls around, it's all really cool looking. Sadly it's just the one room and the rest of the dungeon is a bit more mundane. One enemy, Alchymia, is a lady and a toad, and text comes up at the top about how a Maiden's Kiss wasn't used. Naturally I use a Maiden's Kiss on it and it transforms into a Red Dragon. Well, won't be doing that again.

Wandering through we pick up our third Protect Ring (just one more to complete the set!), and face our first Tonberrys of the game. They work precisely as you'd expect, slowly teleporting closer to you then whacking you a whole lot. Down we go through the spike-ridden traps to find the Tablet quicker than I expected. Of course one of Exdeath's allies shows up to fight us, but Leviathan appears from behind a curtain of water, and dispatches the beast instantly. Gonna be honest, I thought Leviathan was possessed and we were gonna have to fight him there. It's a really cool entrance for him, gonna give him the edge over Bahamut in this one (as well as in IV!). When was Leviathan demoted to regular summon and Bahamut given the title of default Biggest Baddest Beast I wonder. Leviathan's design has always been cooler imo.

We fight him anyway of course, and he's pretty aggressive. Slow just does not hit and he loves to repeat Tidal Wave multiple times in a row. We lose, I gear up a bit better and try again. Equipping Black Mage Lenna with the Magus Rod is the best move I make here, as each Thundaga does over 7K damage this way. The rest focus on keeping everyone buffed and alive, and she takes him down pretty quickly. Leviathan get! Still some more summons left though...

After collecting our next three weapons (Fire Lash, Yoichi's Bow, and Apollo's Harp) we head to the last of the tablet dungeons, the Great Sea Trench. This is ostensibly the fire dungeon, and it's a pretty inventive idea to place it at the bottom of the ocean and use magma in place of fire. The enemies aren't fire-based at all though, none of them are named and they all have vibes of death. Krile's Sage Staff pretty much one shots anything here, and turns out Mime is way more useful in this game than Tactics, as you can equip three commands in addition to Mimic itself. Neat!!

We learn Doom, Float over some magma and reach... the Dwarven Kingdom! Now this is a surprise. Dwarves have been mentioned a few times but I couldn't see how they'd fit in this game. Turns out they... kinda don't. There's only five of them and they don't seem to do much. Still, neat to see them! One of them is digging a tunnel around the world and the map pulls out to show where he is, I think it's just a tease for the Phantom Village if I hadn't found it already. One mentions taking a Magic Lamp back to where it came from, too. Beyond the 'kingdom' is a seemingly useless spring, going into the corner triggers the blue healing flash but nobody actually gets healed.

The last proper room is easy enough to figure out, the only problem is one of the enemies being very fond of using Possess, which removes Float from the affected character and hits them with magma damage the second we leave battle even if we don't move. Into the tablet room we face three little piggies, and I soon confirm my suspicions that we have to kill all three pretty much simultaneously. They really pose next to no threat, Delta Attack is their only really harmful one and they only do that when I mess up and kill one too soon. Graviga is very useful here, and they soon go down. Last tablet get!

We stroll back through and pick up the remaining legendary weapons (Gaia Bell, Rune Axe and Holy Lance), then somebody helpfully informs us where to go next. There's been an earthquake down south and we must use the submarine to reach the underwater volcano it came from. Guess that's my next destination. I'm glad there's more to do, I'm not ready to go to the ending just yet, having way too much fun!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFV
Congrats to azuarc, Guru Champion 2020!