Part 3: Golden Pissy Whales

Final Fantasy V: Main Theme - FF5 is a good game and has a good theme. Edgar's theme is very regal and fitting for him; it's still a nice change of pace.

Hello friends! Last we saw our heroes, they had finished up a Desert Dance Off and were headed to the castle of some king that WuFei claims to know. Before we meet the king, however, we gotta loot the place.



We're not off to a good start.



This is a really good selection. Since stores are randomized you are never guaranteed to be able to buy Tonics or Potions at any given shop. Having an easy source of them this early is great. Cheap tools are also cool though I don't pick any up at this point. Cheap Warp Stones are helpful, in case you get stuck in a real shitty battle that is hard to run from. They mimic the Warp spell, which may not even show up on any of my Espers. I sold some stuff and bought some stuff, actually ending up in the positive.



This guy on the right is a grifter. Double price on two items, expensive throwables, and a Tool I won't be buying yet if at all.



Our first Monster-in-a-box. This could be dire.



Or not. Clearly the Narshe guards are onto our plot and sent an ambush ahead. Shame they didn't send their best.



The other chest is more cooperative but still not useful. The Blind status is fixed with the randomizer so having some cool sunglasses does have a negative. Free items are free, I suppose.



Ashuras are one of the most common drops I've seen in this game. I don't know how the game rates them but I always find several in chests all over the game; I'm pretty sure liquidypoo found his fair share as well. This one isn't even changed, it's exactly the same as the one Cyan starts with in vanilla.



My, what big ears you have, my liege. Who is this blue-haired and wing-eared king?



Why, it's Lenneth from Valkyrie Profile. Or Ranma from the anime series with cold water thrown on them.

I had to Wikipedia that, don't fucking @ me.

Surely this King isn't the last of their family? Who will take over the country if Ranma kicks the bucket?



A blind spoony bard, of course. We'll learn more about them in the future. Maybe they'll even give us a performance!



We wave hello to this nice Chancellor and his wonderful blue overcoat on our way back to the king. We need to find out what Ranma is made of.



Ranma is lookin' pretty swole! GP Rain is a Get Out Of Jail Free card usually; I'll also never say no to a Magic command. 3xWater will be very good for clearing out stuff weak to water. Having two magic commands backed up by a good Magic Power stat matched with good speed is wonderful news.




Iron Armor has two extra Magic Defense and the Flail has an extra two attack. The Heavy Shield gives us our first rogue effect! Super Jump is the effect you get from a Dragon Horn in vanilla. Instead of jumping once you have a chance to jump up to three extra times immediately at 75%, 18.75%, and 6.25% chance for each jump. Its a nice effect to have if you need to use Jump for offense. I rarely do so, unless that character has no other offensive options.



Moving on gives us a look at our main antagonist. It seems that Chupon, from another dimension, has taken over Kefka's position in the Empire. We're currently looking at his ass.



He doesn't look any better from the front



In a flash of darkness and with the speed of Hermes, we arrive at the next day. Everything is terrible.



Final Fantasy IV: Restless Moments (Unreleased) - I'm linking this again because it's so good.
Secret of Mana: The Little Sprite I don't think I've shown off our fanfare music yet.

I'm so very confused how the dogs were riding these. Are they inside? Were the dogs really alien monstrosities the whole time?

I didn't check their data entry before doing the fight, see if you can guess the first thing I tried. Otherwise, "Can't Escape" and a Petrify special are bad news. Luckily, I already have some decent power.

Whatever, let's drown these motherfuckers.





Oh.



Not even this glorious golden whale was any help. It would be better used pulling an Aquaman from Marvel Vs. DC.

Instead, a couple Flashes and a Pearl take care of the whole shebang. While waiting on the animations I discovered something about Ranma that I didn't check before.



They're a Natural Magic user! Natural Magic is the term given to Celes and Terra in the vanilla game. There, they would learn spells at certain level ups. Terra gets Ultima at 99 and Celes learns Meteor at 98, and a whole mess of various other spells at different levels.

Ranma currently knows W Wind and Safe. Safe raises a characters physical defense, cutting physical attack damage by 1/3. W Wind reduces the entire battlefield's HP by 15/16, ignoring Runic and Reflect. W Wind also won't work on anything that is immune to the Death status. Overall, W Wind is pretty useless. If it only targetted enemies it might have a niche use.



The chocobos are a nice green color. Unfortunately the game plays the same music from when Saber woke up; we don't get new Chocobo music yet. The caves themselves do have a new song.

Final Fantasy IV: Illusionary World A nice relaxing theme from the Summon World in FFIV.



*SHIIIINNNNG*



New monsters! Some sort of pants wearing Na'vi maybe.



They absorb Water and nullify Pearl, my main two damage dealers at the moment. Attack x3 is starting to get dangerous but their low level combined with only having 15 ATK means they're doing about 15 damage to a character in the back row. Flash and Fight do enough to put them down.

https://i.imgur.com/Ygk4v5z.gifv

STOP SWOONING!



Now here is something cool. "Near Death" is a status effect, normally applied when a character is reduced to less than 1/8 of their max health. This enables a few things: Desperation Attacks, the True Knight Relic, ValiantKnife and Atma Weapon. Some spells and commands will put characters into Near Death by reducing their HP exactly. There is also a bug with the Rippler Lore that can exchange an enemy's Near Death status with the user of the Lore.

The Cuisli's special attack, "NumbBlades" will put their target directly into Near Death status without reducing their hit points. This enables all the normal things that would happen at low HP, notably the Desperation Attacks. Speaking of, Desperation Attacks are based off the original character. Saber will have Terra's DA, WuFei will have Locke's, etc. Umaro and Gau don't have Desperation Attacks and so neither will their replacement.



Final Fantasy VIII: Fisherman's Horizon - Cool Ghost did a great LP of FFVIII located HERE. He put a ton of effort in; the whole thing is a wonderful read.

Duncan doesn't have anything special in his bucket.



Our last new monster for this update, using the same sprite as a typical enemy you'd find outside South Figaro.

These fellas and the Encrut above have Interceptor status. Interceptor is Shadow's dog, who will sometimes counter attack things for you. Unfortunately Interceptor on a monster and from using a Rage that gives the status does nothing. No doggies for them.

Morph is Terra's signature ability; it's not fully understood within the game but it seems to at least partially affect monsters. Morph will normally double damage and halve any magical damage taken. When an enemy takes "tick" damage in this game, such as the HP damage from Seizure, the attack actually originates from that enemy. A creature that has the Morph status and Seizure will take double the normal Seizure damage.



Ah, I can smell the Cafe's speciality tea from here!



And that's the update for today, friends. Next time we'll explore the town and maybe even make it through Mt. Koltz!