Board 8 > Andy plays Final Fantasy V (Blind playthrough)

(+) Yeah! (+)

I - II - III - IV - (TAY) - Final Fantasy V - VI - VII - (VIIR - DoC - CC) - VIII - IX - X - (X-2) - XII - (RW) - XIII - (XIII-2 - LR) - XV - Tactics - (TCB)

*Progressive spoilers will follow*

The FF journey continues with V Advance! I bought a GBA cart that turned out to be inauthentic :( but the save has held up on it for about a month now and by bootleg standards it seems remarkably well-made so I'm hoping it'll suffice. We'll see anyway. Also found my old DS charger (well SP charger but it works) so no worries on that front.

I know next to nothing about this one. The only names I know are Gilgamesh (and his kickass theme of course) and Exdeath (I think this is the final boss, but that's not usually a spoiler seeing as they tend to come out of nowhere in this series). I've been told the plot isn't that great but the characters are decent and the job system is fun, coming off of Tactics' cool job system this seems like a natural follow-up! This is my first fully 2D FF, I played IV on DS and Tactics is... 2.5D I'd say? Anyway.

If there's anything to know along the lines of missable quests/characters etc, or any handy tips then I would be very grateful to receive them! Otherwise I hope this goes well, I'll start it by this time tomorrow most likely. I wonder if I'll finish this one before Seabass beats VIII too.

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There's one job crystal you see early on that you can't actually get until a sidequest at the very end of the game. I (and probably a lot of people) reset and tried to replay that point at least once to see if you could get it, but you can't at that point.

At least one of the summons is permanently missable (because I missed it in my first playthrough). There's a couple fights with scripted events that I think you can mess up and miss stuff by killing them too soon but it's probably not going to be a problem unless you're overleveled.

there might be some of the blue magic and other job special abilities, but I'm not sure (glancing at the board quickly, they say that none of the blue magic is missable).

If you're trying to avoid missing any bestiary entries, you're going to have a bad time. >_>

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For a casual playthrough, nothing really important is missable. There are a few summons and bard songs but you won't be regretting not getting them later on or anything in a casual play of the game.

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Butz, he he

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Also I would say the game is balanced enough that you can pick any jobs you want and you'll have a reasonable party.

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Tag

There are quite a few missables. In particular, there are a few points of no return that will block off a bunch of stuff. As mentioned the stuff you would likely care about most are a summon and some songs.

If you don't want to miss the summon: Carefully explore Castle Walse (this might be a little hard to get at the first opportunity; you can come back later but don't put it off too long). (Not really a spoiler, just a place name)

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And yeah you can get through the game with any set of jobs; in fact, there's a yearly challenge (the Four Job Fiesta) where you're randomly assigned a set of jobs and clear the game with those. The one time I did it I had what I believe to be a bottom ten possible party (Thief/Berserker/Geomancer/Dragoon) and still didn't have any trouble besides with one optional area.

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I will watch out for that one summon thanks! And I'll try to look around pretty thoroughly so I don't miss the bard songs and other stuff (Glad the Bard class is here, I enjoy that one a lot). As long as it's not like in IV DS where the augments are hidden in weird places or you have to give people stuff before they leave but you don't know when they'll leave... it'll be fine. Even if not, I can do without a couple songs I'm sure.

Not bothered about the bestiary thankfully, and good to know about that job crystal so I don't drive myself crazy trying to get it. I'll probably try out all the jobs I can for a bit before I settle into a few like I did in Tactics.

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If you are careful to talk to all the NPCs they will give you hints about where all the missable summons can be found.

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There's a wolf guy you can let out of jail

Don't let him out of jail

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tag

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Four crystals, four elements, it's all sounding rather familiar at the start. The wind is fading and soon the other elements will as well, it's a decent setup. We get brief intros to our main players- a princess, an old man, a pirate, and finally our chocobo-friend protagonist. A meteorite falls, we find Lenna and Galuf knocked out by it (pretty lucky really...) and after some encouragement from Boko, Bartz decides that leaving a concussed young woman with an amnesiac flirty old man might not be the best idea. You could hold down A the entire first hour and not have a single problem with the battles so I'm not gonna bother mentioning the early ones. I like that Bartz is already distinguished as different from the noble heroic good guy Cecil archetype, just a commoner traveling around the world with his chocopal who was at the right place at the right time.

We fail to steal a pirate ship but Faris helps us out anyway thanks to recognising Lenna's pendant as identical to their own. I decline the auto-pilot and wander around the world map but there seems to be only one place to enter, a town called Tule. Galuf and Bartz perv on Faris accidentally, the town citizens talk about a monster sealed in the canal and I learn some very detailed gameplay basics nearby. At the Wind Shrine we heroically tap A through our first boss and then we get a proper intro to our hero's tale- the wind crystal is shattered into six pieces, each crystal sends its 'essence' to one of our four crewmates, and King Tycoon delivers some exposition before disappearing in a pretty odd way.

Putting them here to remind myself if needed later: Courage-Flame-Faris, Devotion-Water-Lenna, Hope-Earth-Galuf, Passion-Wind-Bartz. If these really are the only party members this must be the fastest the crew has been gathered together in any FF (or most RPGs!). The crystal pieces give us some fresh Jobs and the game can now finally start.

...Well, almost. It's still super easy for a bit, but it gives time to learn the ropes. I hit 'yes' on the tutorial again because I thought it was phrased differently and might give me new info, but nope, same unskippable 5 minutes as before. Lenna meets her family friend Zok who eventually gives Bartz the key to the canal (nice bit of characterisation having him hold onto it for a bit). Bartz remembers his parents talking about the crystals- they clearly still weigh heavily on his mind but of course this connects him to the plot in a bigger way. I drop back in to bring Boko along before going but he's been injured and is being looked after by the pirates. I'm sure we'll see him later, it's nice that they put this little detail in for players who would go back to check.

Karlabos doesn't put up much of a fight even though Fire is the only Black Mage spell I bought (>_>), but Faris's trusty steed Syldra, poor thing, gets dragged underwater. We drift along to a cool looking ship graveyard and hop along the shipwrecks (this is much better than 7's train graveyard in every way), murdering an army of shorts+bandana wearing skeletons on the way. After walking underwater (hey it's 2D you can get away with that) we get the least surprising reveal of all time with Faris's gender, hey at least they didn't drag it out for half the game. Galuf remains lecherous as ever but redeems himself soon after by resisting the impulses of the Siren, purely by virtue of not remembering who he is being shown (lol). Also worth noting that Faris gets taken in by the same illusion as Lenna, and with the pendant and her weird behaviour in the Wind Shrine it seems like she has a connection to the Tycoons.

The Siren is the first boss who has anything interesting going on with casting Silence and becoming undead, but isn't remotely a threat. Everybody thanks Galuf and we're back on the world map and soon in the lively Irish sounding town of Carwen. Bartz levels up his piano skills (lol) and the harbour is of course empty, so we head up the North Mountain avoiding the poison flowers until Lenna is shot by an arrow. Faris pulls off some impressive acrobatics to get us together again and we're soon into another boss. The gimmick here is Magissa's husband showing up but again we walk through it.

Lenna gets herself poisoned again (is she building up an immunity?) to heal her flying Wind Drake friend, and we now have our third method of world map transport within a couple hours. I leave it here. Enjoying things so far, the gameplay is still super easy but that's to be expected. I haven't spoken much about the job system but I'm still trying things out, swapping everybody around and seeing how the different classes are. I recently switched Bartz to Monk and the double hit plus counterattack is wiping everything. Q- are certain characters more suited to certain classes or can you just whack anything on anyone?

The dialogue is quirky and fun, the characters are pretty broadly laid out but they're already making sure to give everybody a bit of backstory and something to do. If the cast really is this small there's a lot of advantages to that, presumably nobody is gonna fade from the story or be useless and the inter-party banter could become great, we've already gotten hints of that. There's been some good music so far too. It's always awkward starting the intro to these playthroughs but we've got that down now so I'm looking forward to getting back to it!

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no character is really suited more for any particular job. The characters do have differences in their base stats, but its really insignificant.

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With our new mount we head straight to our destin- just kidding, we of course go flying around the world trying to find side-areas. Turns out we're trapped in the north-eastern corner of the map but we do get to go to Castle Tycoon, with a surprisingly not evil chancellor and a cool scene where Lenna reveals her suspicions that Faris is her sister. A woman named Jenica seems to confirm this, telling us of a princess named Sarisa who was lost at sea. I love that this is here, completely optional yet clearly important information that fleshes out some characters. Love when games reward you for going off the grid with lore like this.

At Castle Walse I talk to everyone I see and before long we find Shiva, who immediately wrecks us. I would've waited to challenge her but I know she's on a time limit and one of the inhabitants mentioned her being sealed by the water crystal, which is presumably about to break. Second time around I explore a different way and get wrecked by a Jackanapes, as a helpful castle dweller informed me I would. The game has truly started now the party wipes have begun! Third time around I spam Flee to get the items in the Jackanapes room and get out alive (barely!). I do not let anyone out of the jail per Pun's advice, but I gotta tell you I was really tempted. I wonder what happens if you do...

Another meteorite falls and the King heads to the tower, as do we. It seems monsters pour out of the meteorite when it lands (Is there any game you didn't steal from, FF8?). I like that the dungeons are *slightly* more complex than the empty corridors in FF4 so far, hopefully this continues. At the top we fight poor Garula, a formerly timid creature we met at Walse who seems to be being mind-controlled. The fight isn't that tough but I almost get overwhelmed by being a bit too careless with the heals, have to remember I need to pay attention to the gameplay now!

The beast goes down, the knight recognises Galuf (is this gonna be like IV where pretty much everybody ends up being a royal >_>) and we get 6 new jobs! Er make that 5 new jobs, thanks Mr Crispy for the heads up I would definitely have reset and thought I missed the one that's out of reach. The tower straight up sinks into the ocean but thankfully Syldra shows up. We climb into Syldra's mouth (?) and are carried to a nearby beach, where Syldra seems to die for good (but its wail on the black screen leaves some doubt).

We hop back to the castle and test out our brand new classes on Shiva. It doesn't go very well, so I shift around and try things again. Berserker isn't half as powerful as I expected, so I keep Bartz as Monk where he deals more damage and I can control where he hits. Lenna is a Red Mage on the back row with Black Magic to use Fire, Galuf is a Mystic Knight with White Magic as backup, and Faris is a Time Mage. Just testing things out for now, but I have to say I'm enjoying this game a great deal now we have cool classes and the battles are more than mashing A. Shiva eventually goes down (she seems to have an awful lot of HP!), and we have a new summon (though nobody set on Summoner >_>).

Turns out that tower sinking wasn't as deadly as it looked, as not only did the King somehow survive, but even Garula is back to its normal state in the village. We head back to the meteorite and warp west to the continent of Karnak. There's a lot of random battles (Zus have plenty of HP as always!) but we eventually work our way around to Karnak Town itself. This town is pretty decent, they give intrigue straight away by telling us about the Queen & Cid and just having random bits of fire here and there. The music is good too, I've heard it before somewhere in the game but I'm only noting how cool it is now. We attempt to stock up on new weapons and are promptly thrown in jail (Love how they did that, genuinely caught me off guard!). Their reasoning is that we walked out of the monster-ridden meteorite, and to be honest that's pretty solid, I don't know how we would counter that.

We meet this game's Cid, who gives us some exposition (I know people call these early ones pure Fantasy games but I like that there's always some machinery going on in them too). We're let out of jail to help him, there's fire everywhere now, the Queen is missing, there's a werewolf (!) here and off we go! Strangely nobody seems to recognise Galuf, so my theory about him being this region's royal is out. It'd be nice if it told you which jobs each armour/weapon was suitable for when you're buying them like in Tactics, and I really would like if it told you if you'd already bought each Magic! Another note, the thief running speed is hilariously fast. Feels like I'm glitching the game.

Having a lot of fun now that things are getting going gameplaywise!

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Blue Mage is so good

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I've only played FFV once and that was like 20 years ago, so I won't be much help in terms of gameplay, but I'll still follow along!

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Yeah Berserker is an under-powered class for the most part. I only ever use it because I think Bartz' sprite for it is cute. Blue Mage is powerful but takes a lot of effort. I usually don't use it and just go for the faster solid jobs like Black Mage.

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The 100 points required for level 1 of Berserker put me off it too! I had Faris as Blue Mage for a while but she didn't learn any skills, I have Learning set as her ability now though so hopefully she'll get some.

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The music is good too, I've heard it before somewhere in the game but I'm only noting how cool it is now.

Ship Graveyard, and yeah, it's a nice tune. I think the official name is "Cursed Land".
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Thanks, that's the one!

The fire-powered ship is a cool dungeon, this is already way more complex than IV's dungeons. It's pretty straightfoward really but I'm excited at there even being puzzles and things other than linear corridors, hopeful for how this will develop in the later dungeons. I like seeing the lower levels from above, this whole area gives me a Chrono Trigger vibe. There's an enemy called 'Crew Dust' which is a bit unsettling, and it takes me far too long to notice that I can fall down the chute things >_>

Into the boss room and the Queen is possessed, so we fight Liquid Flame. It has three forms including one resembling Barbarricia's cyclone thing where it heals itself. Not that easy really, I spend a lot of time Curing my party but we're never in real danger of wiping out and eventually it goes down. The crystal shatters (Yay free jobs- I mean oh no not the crystal!!) and a big friendly wolf man who knows Galuf seemingly sacrifices himself to buy us some time, and to repay him we just kinda stand there for a while. RIP Mr Wolf.

The unexpected gameplay additions aren't done yet though, because it's time for a classic Metroid-style escape countdown before the castle blows up! We have 10 minutes and I figure it's probably an overly generous countdown so I'm not too bothered, but then I spot some chests and it becomes clear what the actual challenge is here- whether I can resist my own greed and stroll outside or if I'll make it hard for myself and try to gorge on every Elixir imaginable. Of course I try to open all the chests, I even get a big side one at the end of a bunch of stairs, head to the front door with a minute left aaand the last bad guy is a bit harder than the others and has a True Form, time out, restart. >_>

Second time round I skip some of the chests (The Gigas enemy is so annoying, it's not a threat but the constant casting of Aero that disrupts ATB is ughhh. At least we learn Aero though!), making sure to get the equipment ones I remember (Ribbon, Main Gauche, Lightning Scroll, couple others I think), and we wipe the final Sergeant before he can even turn into the Iron Claw this time! Karnak Castle is no more, and we receive three of the crystal shards- Beastmaster, Geomancer, and Ninja. Geo and Ninja I used a lot in Tactics so I'm hype for those. I think Beastmaster is new to me!

So far I am very impressed at how improved the gameplay is from IV. Not that IV's was bad but it was pretty basic in establishing what would become the new blueprint for the series, and this has iterated on that way more than I thought it would considering their respective reputations.

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V's reputation being lower is almost purely because we didn't get it at the right time. I am certain it would be held in higher esteem than IV in the English speaking world if it had come out when it was first made

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FFV is one of my favorite RPGs, so I'm invested.

andylt posted...

Another note, the thief running speed is hilariously fast. Feels like I'm glitching the game.

It's going to be a bit unnatural because there was no run button in the original game. The only way to move faster was with the Thief skill. So running with that skill makes you go double fast.

andylt posted...

The crystal shatters (Yay free jobs- I mean oh no not the crystal!!)

Yeah, I always found it funny how you're supposed to be saving the crystals, but as a player you really want them to be destroyed since it means fun new jobs.

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FFV is 2D FF perfected

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Yeah FF5 is my personal favorite 2D FF.

Geomancer kinda sucks, unfortunately.

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I wish I could love FFV like others do but the job system holds no real allure for me.

X-Death top tier villain for the series though

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Tag. Will read through this and keep up on your progress! FFV is my favorite.

LordoftheMorons posted...
And yeah you can get through the game with any set of jobs; in fact, there's a yearly challenge (the Four Job Fiesta) where you're randomly assigned a set of jobs and clear the game with those.

I did the chaos run of the Four Job Fiesta... I didn't have anything except for freelancers until the 3rd crystal and never had a healer

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Four Job Fiesta is the best way to play FF5, it's how you discover that Bard is OP for instance.

I once did so much damage with a sword dancing chicken-knife user after maxing all stats with the bard that I did 70 000 damage, causing an overflow

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Not Dave posted...

Geomancer kinda sucks, unfortunately.

It is but I like it anyway

It's also actually pretty decent when you first get it, it just falls off hard by the end

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Geomancer is fun for me right now! The powers can be pretty strong, though being unable to control what I'm getting is a shame. I'm also enjoying Summoner, mainly because the summon animations are pretty quick unlike many other games, and Ninja is another good double-hitter to go with Monk. Haven't tried Beastmaster yet.

Cid is ashamed that his work led to the castle's destruction, and he sinks into despair. We find him at the pub but there's nothing to do, so it's time to head to the Library of the Ancients the long way round as we trek around the desert to avoid the Water Breathing enemy we were warned about that seems pretty tough. This place is another cool mini-dungeon, the scholars are flailing around but there's not really much of a threat here, the regular book enemies are weird (couldn't figure out their gimmick!) but not difficult to take down. Our search to rescue Cid's grandson Mid leads us inadvertently to Ifrit, who has a fair bit of HP but takes his turns at such a slow pace we're fine to heal up between each attack.

Eventually we get to Byblos who has annoying status attacks, but I try to brute force my way through and have my summoner Galuf spam Ifrit the entire fight, only briefly stopping to heal himself. My other party members are toads, confused, poisoned, and eventually unconscious but we just manage to win in time when Byblos recognises Ifrit as the bookcase did (fun detail). Mid is blissfully unaware of any danger (lol) but takes his book with him and heads back to his grandfather when he's told how down in the dumps he is. I read up all the info I can here- I can learn Level 5 Death from some enemy and there's a staff given to someone in Tycoon, and head back to Karnak (how did Mid make it through unscathed?).

Mid slaps/talks some sense into his grandfather and they get to work on fixing the fire-powered ship, but the real surprise here is when Galuf recalls some of his past thanks to witnessing Mid/Cid's interaction- he has a granddaughter named Krile and appears to have lived in a big castle, but more importantly is from another world! From what I gather, he traveled to our world with his 3 pals (one was the wolfman I think) and sealed away Exdeath (first mention of the big bad!) 30 years ago, and traveled back here via meteorite when it appeared the seals were breaking again. Well that's a much more interesting amnesia explanation than I expected! And this is not the whole story, clearly.

Mid+Cid repair the ship and head back to the Library, and the world is now our oyster! I head in the exact opposite direction to see what I find, and eventually come across the town of Istory. There seems to be things here I can't get to yet, but I do acquire the Toad spell and someone warns me about a monster posing as an old man in the woods to the east. This old man, in a random battle on the world map, turns out to be Ramuh. We wear him down and recruit him- interestingly, he is also friends with Ifrit and agrees to join us the second he asks. It seems Ifrit is a big deal in this world! We have to click on him in the inventory to learn his summon weirdly, we didn't have to do that with the others. There's nothing else to do here it seems, so I'll leave it here for now and continue to travel the world later! I like just how quick everything is here, random battles aren't annoying on the map as they're so easy to flee.

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andylt posted...

We find him at the pub but there's nothing to do, so it's time to head to the Library of the Ancients the long way round as we trek around the desert to avoid the Water Breathing enemy we were warned about that seems pretty tough.

Aqua breath is worth picking up for your blue mages!

Also glad to see you got Ramuh; he's technically not missable, but you'd at some point lose the ability to get him until right before the final boss.

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Am I missing something in Jachol Cave? I get to the end and climb out and there's nothing to do on the map...

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No

You'll see why it's like that later

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The thing to do there is farm undead squirrels for JP

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Farm Nutkins so you have enough nuts for Nonstop Nut November

Next stop on our world tour is Jachol, not much to do here aside from hear some lore but they tell us some useful info for the nearby caves, which are packed to the brim with squirrels of two kinds. Nutkins are incredibly easy to kill, and Skull Eaters are super powerful. I didn't realise they were undead and now feel silly for not using healing spells on them, but I got some AP anyway as they tend to flee sometimes. We get what we can there and I pick up Aqua Breath in the desert (thanks for the tip Lordofthemorons!) and the only place left to go seems to be Crescent Island, where we've been pointed several times. There's an island in the middle of the ocean with a structure on it but no way to land there.

Heading into Crescent our ship immediately sinks thanks to some quake (there was word somewhere of an underground monster here I think). Thankfully we soon get our 4th mode of world map transport in the name of a Black Chocobo (the lighting/shadows in this forest are weird but cool), along with two new jobs- Bard and Ranger. Yay! Not really a surprising set of jobs considering the local town was selling harps and bows and we learned our first song there (and up to level 4 on the piano now!). The chocobo can only land in forests but flies over mountains so our range is opened up a bit, also no more random battles. Lol that a chocobo is objectively a better mode of transport than the massive fancy Wind Drake. First things first I head back to our old pal Boko and then to Walse to see if any new dialogue has opened up, sadly there's nothing.

What we do get access to is Bartz's hometown of Lix, a very cool little surprise. There's three good scenes here fleshing out Bartz, his parents and his childhood (including one with Faris). Leaving this as an optional area you're not directed to in any way, and not having crucial plot but just some neat characterisation laying out who Bartz is and how he grew up, I really like how they go about this. I like that Bartz isn't some super cool important guy who is destined to be a hero, he's just living life the best he can after losing his family. Of course his parents probably have some plot relevance but for now I like that he's a pretty normal guy. Seems like a nice place too, with a free inn stay, very friendly locals who all remember him and a discount in the item shop (though they don't sell the overpriced Phoenix Downs here, I see what you're doing game!).

Excursion over we report the bad ship news to Cid/Mid who dgaf, and work our way through the Desert of Shifting Sands. The sandworm isn't too much trouble but it is a little hard to see which direction the sands take you in sometimes. We get through to Gohn, the Town of Ruin. There's nothing here except what appears to be King Tycoon, who leads us into falling down a pit (he didn't need to give us the runaround, we would have walked over that way anyway!). Faris confesses her identity to Lenna and they have a moment and we're all perfectly fine to leave poor Galuf to die alone.

The music tells us this is a very strange area, there's mechanical stuff everywhere but no enemies (very striking, I know there's no meteorite down here but that's still interesting). We inadvertently warp to under Crescent and the system collapses behind us due to its age. Following a paper trail we get the spell Mini (I bet I will never use this), rest up and discover the Fire-powered ship next to another ship with propellers above the black void below. OK did our ship sink here naturally because it is perfectly placed along the bridges as if somebody moved it to be so. They know how to draw crashed ships so I'm guessing this is intentional. Cid and Mid luckily fall down and Cid gets the gears turning to result in, yes, an airship rising out of the sea. The obligatory battle is over almost as soon as it starts thanks to a couple of Thundaras and a Ramuh summon, and we have our world map transport #5!

The gang acts like we're heading to the final battle against the big bad here, I wonder if anybody was fooled by this back in the day. The airship turns the world into 3D and is much faster than our other transports, but honestly it's a bit harder to see where we're going than back in 2D. We fly back to the old town ruins to see some massive structure rise out of the ground and disappear somewhere. Before following it I head back into the desert to try and find the building in the middle I missed earlier, and we do get there but it's locked. Oh well! That's all for now.

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I love this segment of the game where you get like four or five different modes of transportation that are immediately lost after using them to reach one new place

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Butz from the town of Lix

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WazzupGenius00 posted...

I love this segment of the game where you get like four or five different modes of transportation that are immediately lost after using them to reach one new place

One of the things I actually like best about FFV is that it feels like literally everything constantly goes poorly for the heroes.

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Out of interest, what level are your characters right now?
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Just checked, they're all level 19 except Lenna who is 18.

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Grand Kirby posted...

Butz from the town of Lix

Don't forget that his element is wind!

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And off we go! Not sure where to go I look around for Cid and find him under the sea, he sends us on a fetch quest for Adamantite. We have a boss fight against a very fitting Adamantoise, which isn't super easy as I don't have my usual attacking magic classes junctioned on anyone. Oops! We take it down anyway and then it's time for a sequence that's probably as cinematic as you could get on the SNES.

We ride our airship high and try to get past the defences of the Ronkan flying fortress, which involves 4 not-so-easy fights followed by a boss. The atmosphere is great here, compared to IV this game is super heavy on machinery and I love it. Fighting literal rocket launchers is great. This not being my first FF game, I figure machines are weak to lightning, and indeed Thundara and Ramuh are vital in these battles. They aren't easy though, on the third set of battles we very almost lose- three of the team were down and summoner Galuf was confused with very little health left. Thankfully the enemy used Missile which seems to be a percentage based attack, snapping him out of confusion and allowing him one final Ramuh summon to finish. Phew!

The fourth battle is fine but the Soul Cannon is tough. Again Thundara and Ramuh are lifesavers, but I have to use so many items up here my inventory is pretty bare by the end. Unfortunately my Lightning Scrolls were all used up in the last four fights. The two side launchers go down easy enough but then the boss just continually charges and fires his Wave Cannon, dealing 200+ damage and sapping HP of whoever survives. We scrape through (this thing has a lot of hp) and enter the ruins. I look for a save but there isn't one in the immediate vicinity, so I fly through the dungeon ignoring all the cool stuff nearby just desperate to find a save. We eventually find one on floor 4 and I can breathe.

So this dungeon is also pretty good, thankfully we have Find Passage on so it's not a nightmare to navigate. There's some good equipment here and I have the idea to turn Bartz into a thief so I can steal some items and build my inventory back up a bit. The Ronkan Knights prove to be the best victims as they carry Hi-Potions that are easy to steal. The Archeotoads also carry them but steal pretty much never works on them for some reason. I discover that the Ranger's Animal ability is actually really cool, at least for now. More often than not it summons Nightingale to heal the party to full HP at no MP cost, terrific! And aside from that there's delightful squirrels and bees and a Mysidian Rabbit (which does nothing?) to summon.

As I'm scouring the dungeon I find there was another save point much earlier on than the one I found, and I eventually realise that I can take the ship back to the map and save/heal whenever I want. Oops >_> The path ahead is actually pretty cleverly hidden, I only see it off to the side from the Level 4 save room so you can't just sleepwalk your way through this one. Near the end Hydras start to spawn, and we steal a few Ethers from them. We meet King Tycoon, or whatever he is now, and he has us fight the area boss for him. Lovely.

Archaeoaevis can change its weakness at will, and after a bit of experimentation I decide to just whack it with physical attacks. I look through Faris's Blue Mage options to try and find a non-elemental attack and use Missile, which takes off 800 HP in one go, then 18HP. Seems like it really is percentage based, this could be very useful to know. Unfortunately the beast revives itself and we have to blast through it all over again, but its attacks really aren't frequent enough to be a problem. Missile doesn't work the second time round so not sure what the criteria is for that, but we take it down without much trouble.

I head back to the save before continuing in case there's another boss, but we are instead in for a lengthy set of plot-heavy cutscenes. I have to say the ongoing 'Lenna: Father! Faris: Papa!' got on my nerves in what was otherwise a good scene, they seriously repeat it like 6 times. The girls stop the boys from murdering their obviously evil father, and then in a moment reminiscent of that one IV Rydia sequence, Krile divebombs her way in via meteorite to take out the King. Galuf's ? bubble bounces off the screen (audibly lol'd) and we have two heartwarming reunions going on while Bartz stands around watching, presumably wondering why everybody forgot about the crystal that is about to collapse.

It does indeed collapse, and we get a flashy light show and some very cool music to announce the return of Exdeath. His opening line ends in 'Mwa-hahahaha!', I don't think we're gonna be getting a sob story face turn from this guy! He owns his evil like a cartoon supervillain, I guess with a name like Exdeath he didn't have much of a choice about where his life would end up. He taunts Galuf, and shows off his crystal power when Bartz stands up to him before darting back to Galuf's world. King Tycoon sacrifices himself to... I don't know what he accomplishes here actually. The Light of Earth 'reclaims' its essence from him which I guess buys us some time? The place still falls down. Anyway his death was well past due, and we finally get the 4 new classes here- Samurai, Dragoon, Dancer and Chemist. Those will do very nicely indeed.

We escape the ruins and I see an unopened treasure chest as the screen pans up :(. The girls mourn their father and Galuf drops some background info on himself and Exdeath. He and Krile take the meteorite back to their world- I was half expecting Bartz to join him there and then and worried I'd missed out on whatever I have left to do here. The gang talks it over and they all agree to go help him, which means finding Cid. He's not in the underwater base or the library so I'll look for him tomorrow (maybe in Karnak). Big stuff today!

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As you might suspect you're about to hit a point of no return, so if you put off doing anything in any area you currently have access to do it now!

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One thing I really love about the Four Job Fiesta is how completely and utterly different boss fights can be based on the party makeup you have. Archaeoaevis for instance can either be absolute cake or an utter nightmare in them, for instance.

Youll want to check the underwater base again. They left a clue about where to look for them.

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Thanks redrocket! Cid and Mid left a note and after catching up with them we're off to sort out the meteorites.

The first has 6 Purabolos, whose gimmick is that they revive each other upon death. After the first fail, what works is spamming Aqua Breath and not attacking with the others, which takes them all out together after 3 attacks.

I then skip to the desert one where we have an annoying Manticore who is fond of casting Frost and Aqua Breath and seems to resist all basic elements. What works here is Missile, which takes off a big chunk of its health and we can just about finish it off with regular attacks afterwards.

The last for us is Titan, who packs a punch but on my successful attempt he doesn't cast Earth Shaker until death, maybe because I was just physically attacking him or maybe I got lucky. Missile failed to cast several times, still haven't figured out how that works yet. New summon get!

We have the warp point triangulated and I guess we're heading to another world, so I'm gonna ask if there's anything I missed that anyone would recommend I do before going ahead!

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andylt posted...

The last for us is Titan, who packs a punch but on my successful attempt he doesn't cast Earth Shaker until death, maybe because I was just physically attacking him or maybe I got lucky. Missile failed to cast several times, still haven't figured out how that works yet. New summon get!

(Game mechanics, don't read if you don't want to be spoiled)
Earth Shaker is a 1/3 chance every other round, you did just get lucky.

Missile has a base 75% chance to hit anything not immune (and quite obviously a 0% chance to hit anything that is immune.)

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Thanks for the info FBike! Since nobody jumped in I'm assuming I didn't miss anything major, so on we go. The gang hops into the interworld portal (pretty brave of them tbh, though I guess none of them have family left here) and we crash land on a tiny island with nowhere to go. I soon realise we are meant to use a Tent but seeing as we get a guaranteed Tent drop from the one enemy around here I decide to grind them up for a bit. We rest, the girls get taken and Bartz has a solo fight that he really isn't classed for. I decide not to use items and just swap jobs once the game over hits, but it's a scripted loss so good job I didn't waste any items!

We wake locked up in Exdeath's castle as he uses us and a giant mirror (of all the crazy fantasy/sci-fi stuff they could use I love that they just picked a fancy mirror) to halt Galuf's advance. We see for the first time the man, the myth, the legend, the only thing that anybody talks about from this game, none other than Gilgamesh!

Galuf comes to save us and we have some solo fights as him, not only does this help make up for him falling behind a bit in XP for a bit but this is just a fun little thing to do. He fights Gilgamesh who doesn't really put up much of a fight and flees. The party is back together and we have maybe the most laughable stealth sequence in video games, bless them for putting this in and varying things up so much but it's literally crawling past two people. Two people that Galuf walked past a minute ago! Hopefully there's more stealth later on, they can't have added that Bartz crawling animation for those 5 seconds.

Escaping the castle we wander around and go on the Big Bridge. Wait... is this the Big Bridge? Of 'Clash on the Big Bridge' fame? The music tells me yes! Cue an awesome sequence with one of the best tracks in video games as we maul through a bunch of monsters and have a proper fight with Gilgamesh. I learn the hard way that he has Reflect auto-cast on him, but we try some stuff with a mix of our new fancy classes (Samurai seems strong!) and the old faithfuls and Gilgamesh bluffs about being overwhelmed by us while casting a bunch of buffs on himself (lol) and then promptly jumps and drops his massive sprite on two unsuspecting party members. There's no great strategy here, just pounding away with the strongest attacks we have and then finishing the job with that one Samurai skill that throws a bunch of gil at him. He flees and vows to meet us again. I look forward to it!

Another fight or two and we get whacked by Castle Exdeath's barrier over into a different continent. Galuf and Bartz have a genuinely sweet moment and we're off again. Man, that was a terrific opener to what I guess is Act 2 of this game. This world is gonna be fun!

Walking along aimlessly to our next area, we have unfortunate encounters with the Zombie status effect and no Holy Waters on hand (Fairy Orcs, wonderful design), so pretty much flee to the local village Regole. Bartz and Galuf have another heartfelt chat at night time and Bartz makes some cash dancing for the locals, but we don't seem to learn anything about the plot or where to go next here really. Still, it's the first non-hostile piece of civilisation in this world. Heading down to the Sealed Castle we get rekt by a Shield Dragon multiple times, so I equip Flee and cheese past it to a sealed room of 12 legendary weapons. Doesn't seem like we can do anything here for now so we rest outside and leave it.

Phew, I said it already but that castle/prison/bridge opener was top notch! Eat your heart out, other games with secondary dark worlds where the villain is in charge!

I've been impressed with this game's soundtrack in many ways (It uses bass really well imo!) but Clash is on another level, man it's so good.

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

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You didn't miss anything from those two fights, but from now on you want to make sure you steal a piece of Genji equipment from Gilgamesh each time he shows up

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