Part 10: "But it's ..free!!"

On a whim, I decided to check how much time I spent recording gameplay just for this update.

Three hours and twelve minutes. Granted, a lot of that was screwing around, but I also only really do one dungeon, of which that took up half of that time.

Anyway, last time we blew up a warship and saved a princess and a Cid. Let's celebrate.







Except everyone's worried about that useless king that's done nothing but lay in bed the entire game. Fuck him, I just blew up an airship.



At least this guy (and the other old man who says the same thing) is amazed at our awesome abilities at causing explosions.





You know this is a big deal because we have an actual cutscene here. If you think about it, the game generally doesn't move characters other than character departures or major scenes like this and the boulder event. This game definitely takes some steps toward the cutscene-heavy games of later eras, but right now it's still a NES RPG, and there's still more of a focus on building the narrative around the gameplay, even if the story is much more of its own thing here than in FF1.



Because Gordon learned to overcome his fears by hitting things with a stick, he gets to command an army. I don't see why he's any more qualified to lead an army than, say, Nathan Fillion (the character, not the actor), especially since Hilda seemed to be doing a decent job at it, but whatever.



This is supposed to be the first mention of the series-staple spell Ultima, i.e. what's usually the strongest, most dominant spell/technique in whatever game it's in. However, in one of the probably most bizarre translation choices I've seen, the spell is called Xtal. Even with the four-character limit, it's a weird choice.

Nathan. Please go to Dist. There must be a Dragoon left from that Massacre. You will need Dragon and Dragoon to help ..you .... ....







Your Majesty!!

And so the king finally decides to die after giving everyone some stuff to do.

DEATH COUNT: 22
-1 to whatever Altea's population is.



Let us go! And carry out each missions!!



And so Gordon goes to the throne room, while MingWu goes off to search for Xtal.



As for Hilda, she's no longer in the throne room, but rather instead in the bottom-right room that's been empty until now. Let's see how she's handling her father's passing.



...Moving on.



If you find a ship at Parm sail to the south.

So we have to go to Parm to reach Dist.



it's just a discord. But the Emperor meant to massacre all the [Dragoon] from the beginning.

You know what those brackets mean. It's time to learn a new password, Dragoon!

I hear that Dragoons understand the language of the [Dragon].

Dragon, you say?

There may be some Dragons left in Dist. Look for a ship to Dist in Port Palm.

You mean Parm, right?



Anyway, time for a quick trip to Parm/Palm. When we get there...





Keep in mind that a trip between Parm and Poft is only 32 gold. We have around 40k gold right now. I guess Nathan Fillion really loves free stuff.





So instead of going to the ship at the port, we have to go to the ship right on the coast. Yeah, that's not suspicious.





Welp.





...What.



Yeah, these dudes are weak. I just practice spells on them because why not.





Here's Powr for no reason.



And this is Bane. I'm not going to bother animating the spell effects anymore simply because they're pretty lackluster compared to those in later games.



Joining the Rebellions? ...... Scamps like us?!



Though I'll still do GIFs of silly shit like this.





And with that rather confusing dialogue, we have a new fourth party member!





Reila starts off with a bit of training in spears and bows. Luna has spears covered, and bows suck, so I decide to give her knives since she's focused on evasion, and since it won't impact her magic much (of which she starts with L2 Lit).



It's a good excuse to give her the evasion-boosting Defense knife. Of course, her hit rate is crap and she can't hit worth a damn with it, but her main job is to be a target and take/evade hits for the team, plus she has Lit if I need magic.



I also let Dude wear Reila's Tiara since it gives no magic penalty with an 11-point defense boost and 10-point Agility boost. That, and it makes him look pretty.



Also, we have a ship now, so we can go pretty much wherever we want.



There's random encounters in the sea, though they are much more infrequent than the overworld, which is nice.



And of course pretty much everything is weak against Lit, so that makes things go by more quickly.



More piretes.



This area south of Altea has some nasty enemies.



These guys aren't too bad. Like all flans, they shake off physical attacks, but magic wrecks them. Well, even Nathan Fillion's L4 Fire isn't enough to finish off one blue flan, though Lit kills the red one quickly.



These fuckers, however.



Yeah.





Even that didn't kill off the Bomb.

So we go through all this to get to a town. The town?





This is Mysidia. You can actually come here as soon as you get the Canoe, though there's not much reason to because the encounters, already quite above our current strength, will just destroy you, but mainly because everything's pretty damn expensive and you won't be able to afford anything at that stage, when money's still tough to come by. But at this stage? I've got nothing better to spend money on, so let's sequence break!

We'll talk to the townspeople and see the sights later, when we're supposed to be here.



Giant's Glove boosts Strength by 10, while the Steel Armor is a direct armor upgrade. Luna gets the armor.



High-end weaponry here, though the only one I'm interested in is the Flame Spear for Luna, which renders her into my best physical character by a mile.





Mysidia's magic shop has most of the magic you can buy. A nice way to sequence break, except four of these five shops are accessible right after getting the canoe, and without having to come here early.

Still a convenient place to buy Reila a Cure spell, at least.



This last shop however has a few nice spells. In particular interest to me are Fade and Swap, both of which I buy for Dude.





Fade is probably best-translated as Holy, except it's non-elemental here so it doesn't really matter. The important thing is that it's more powerful than the other elemental spells, and it's White Magic, so it's an actual offensive spell Dude can make good use of.





Let's continue the plot, shall we? Here's Dist.







They do the FF1 thing of having the character teleport backwards after every dialogue box.





There's also plenty of nice loot here. Tents are pretty damn expensive in this game.



There a boy and his mother in this castle. We can talk to him about the Dragoon...

I'm gonna be a great Dragoon like my Dad!

...and the Dragon.

Dragon is sleeping in this room. But Mom says it's gonna die soon .... It's not true, is it?



The last Dragon is in this room ....It's trying to tell us something, But I do not understand. If I have the Pendant, I can talk with [Dragon]. A Pendant should be on the 2nd floor of the Cave.

So we have to make a quick trip to the dungeon, backtrack here, then go back to do the dungeon proper. Alright, then.

Dragoon and Dragon both give the same dialogue.

Emperor poisoned the water for the Dragons. Poor Dragons all died. [Dragoon] cannot fight without Dragons.



Anyway, next stop is to get a pendant.







Not after we loot a bunch of stuff, of course. The big things are the Stop and Curse spells (there's also Stun, which we already got off a drop or two), and the Wing Sword, a nice upgrade that actually has decent accuracy, boosting Nathan Fillion's offense a good amount.



It's a very short march to the cave, but I go to Bafsuk make room in my inventory after all the crap I loot. Along the way, I run into these guys. They hit hard, but that's it.







Now, Swap. I've explained it before with MingWu, but it exchanges your HP and MP with that of the target's. It defaults to targeting allies, but it can swap with the enemy as well.

The only reason I got this spell is because it's an easy and reliable way to boost Dude's MP every time I'm close to an inn. At this point, a 300 gold inn stay is a drop in the bucket, while doing this trick earlier in the game can get rather expensive, especially since you can really only cast it once before running to an inn.

I don't plan to actively grind Dude's MP up this way, but I'll probably cast it whenever I'm heading to an inn, since Dude spends most of his MP outside of battle with Cure.



You'll also run into groups of undead around this area. Fortunately, Fire4 will wipe everything but the Geists (purple zombies).



Alright, another dungeon with boring dungeon music. Instead of that, let's break out the dungeon theme they dummied from the game!





Sound familiar? They reused this theme in FF6 to represent the town of Jidoor in the second half of the game.

This is a very quick trip, as the pendant is very close, though if you do on one of the two bottom pathways it'll take much longer.

So why make you go to a dungeon for a minute just to go back to the castle so you have to go back to this dungeon anyway?



It's probably just bad game design, but my guess is to let you know this dungeon does not fuck around. We fought one of these guys in the previous dungeon, and now they're a random encounter, with up to two of them, no less.



As a reminder, this is how hard they hit.



Well, when they're not hitting someone with high defense and evasion. Dude is a sitting duck, but Luna (and Reila somewhat) can take hits like a champ.





But yeah, now we go back to the castle.





Right before the war, a Dragoon name Edward left to get the ultimate magic spell.

In other versions, the dragoon is Ricard. Considering in FF4 Gilbert was renamed to Edward in that game's localization, I suspect Kauro Moriyama has a thing for the name "Edward."

We can talk to the dragon about Dragon.

Please grant my last wish! Soak this Egg in Spring of Life in the cave to the north. Please! Otherwise, it will dry out and die! It's the last Dragon Egg!



Our next mission is to put an egg into some water.





Right, so now we do the dungeon for real. Joy...









So, damage comparisons. Granted, Luna's Flame Spear might be boosting her damage here (depending on whether elemental properties on weapons work in this game or not), but she's usually hitting for around 400-500 damage now, with Nathan Fillion hitting high values as well. Dude's actually last now that the other two have strong weapons, though he's still reliable in his high accuracy, plus he'll also kill things no problem.

The issue is that his nonexistant evasion means he takes massive damage, causing him to burn through MP to heal after every fight with a hard-hitting enemy.



There's two other paths in the main room. The left leads to a bunch of treasure, the right to our goal. First, the left path.



I hate these guys.



They're weak, but the only thing they ever do is cast Fire5 on the party. Not a powerful attack, but damn is it annoying fighting four of them and getting "Monsters First!" and having to sit through it, even with frame skip. Ugh.

And like the Red Soul, black magic heals them.



Lots of bridges in this one.



Captain Ogres hit hard, but aren't as annoying as the Wizard Ogres.



They dropped another Wing Sword, though, which would be nice if I had a second sword user. Since I don't, it's vendor trash.



Speaking of vendor trash!





Annoying, but not too bad. Wish I'd known about this one before I bought a Steel armor at Mysidia. Oh well, I'm sure Reila will like it.



Anyway, this entire path leads to a dead end full of the above treasure, so it's simpler just to Warp out, backtrack to Bafsuk to heal/sell, and then come back to do the actual path.



FUCK



My HP after that battle. Also, you may have noticed Dude's HP hitting quadruple digits. He takes so much damage, he gets HP boosts a lot. A lot.



These guys are also brutal, and between them and Giants, end up being responsible for this:



Yes, I'm finally sending Dude to the back row. His evasion is just too damn horrible for him to stay up front. If I need offense, he can always cast Fade, and hopefully he'll get it leveled soon and start wrecking everything with it.





This chest has a rather odd enemy. Green Souls have only 6HP and spend actions casting Cure on the party. I'm not complaining.



Especially since the Mage Staff casts L5 Lit on all enemies. Weak damage, but it's free.



That bridge is apparently a trap that forces you to backtrack, so I avoid it.





Welp.



Unfortunately, Nathan Fillion's useless against monsters who absorb black magic, so he might as well make use of the fact that running is apparently god damn impossible in this fucking game.



Finally, finally, finally, the end of the dungeon.



What a surprise!



Weak to ice, can poison with their attacks. You know the deal.









You can fight 1-4 of these things.





Chimeras can use a Flame attack to hurt everyone for big damage. Well, besides the Ice Shield-wielding Luna.



Dude healed, everyone on offense, and eventually Reila lands the killing blow on the second one. Not much to talk about other than Dude being almost out of MP by this point.





Good. We're done. Fuck this dungeon.



STR +2, AGI +1, VIT +14, INT +6, WILL +3, HP +440, MP +26, Fire +1

So... You may have noticed Nathan Fillion literally doubling his HP since the last update. That's part of what happens when you take a ton of damage after every battle. It'll be nice for the back row, though I may send him back up front for awhile to make use of his great offense (and, you know, more HP).



STR +3, AGI +2, VIT +6, INT -1, MAG +1, HP +251, Spear +1, Shield +1, Lit +1

Remember, her STR and AGI are boosted by 10 from equipment. Luna doesn't suck at evasion, so she didn't get as much a boost to HP and VIT as the guys, but they're still significant, and I'm still glad for it even if she needs it less. It'll keep her alive for the times her evasion fails her.



STR +2, VIT +11, INT -1, WILL +7, MAG +3, HP +417, MP +48, Cure +2, Ruse +1, Hel2 +1

Dude has a +10 Agility bonus from that Tiara he's wearing (which I thought was a glitch until writing this update). Anyway, lots of HP and MP from Swap abuse and being a damage sponge in the last dungeon. Also leveled a lot of magic, with Anti and Fade being pretty close to another level as well.



STR +6, AGI +4, VIT +13, INT +7, WILL -8, MAG +4, HP +257, MP +60, Knife +2, Shield +2, Lit +2

The Will loss is weird as hell, especially since it doesn't seem like she had/has any Will penalties/bonuses from equipment, though I'm still guessing it's equipment related and I just didn't catch it. She also isn't wearing the +10 AGI Tiara that she wore in the first status screen.

Other than that, she's growing pretty quickly in her stats, especially HP from all the getting beat up, but her weaponry and magic's also coming along nicely. Her offense is still horrible, but she's doing better magic-wise than Luna with L4 Lit now and she holds her own in battle. She's pretty much a magical version of Luna right now.

And, spell updates.