LogFAQs > #947998512

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
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