Part 11: "I was a little offensive, but I really liked you."

Fuck that last dungeon. Let's go back to Dist Castle.







I want to thank you on behalf of the Dragon ....



DEATH COUNT: 23

So the dragon died. He deserved it for making me go through that shithole dungeon just to boil an egg. I could've just went to the outside lake and cast Fire5 on that thing instead of trudging through all that bullshit.

Probably the biggest flaw in this game, even moreso than the esoteric, sometimes ridiculous leveling system, are the dungeons. You get punished for actually trying to explore, with tons of dead ends littering each dungeon. The encounters are wonky in difficulty with little regards for balance, so I can have an easy time one moment and the next have to deal with constant Giants. Finally, they're much longer than they need to be, usually taking me an hour or more even with a walkthrough to skip the bullshit, a bit more than later games.

Dungeons are not fun to play through because there's so much around to punish the player, and the one thing the remakes should've done was redesigned these shitholes into something that would've been enjoyable to play through.



Also, this game doesn't tell you that characters have left and right hands. Reila was hitting like complete shit with the Defense Dagger because she's left-handed, and I had it in her right. Swapping shows she's pretty damn good on the offense. I didn't know this until Falconer told me about it. A big thanks to all the goons in the thread for telling me important information that the game doesn't care to mention.

Oh hey, while I was spending time bitching about the game, we made it back to Altea! Let's get back to the reason I started this LP in the first place: Goofy dialogue!







...What.





Even Reila gets some welcoming here.





Probably because she's still greiving over the loss of her father. That, and she doesn't want anyone to see her eating rats.



I'm starting to warm up to this guy.



Anyway, our next quest is to talk to Hilda because Gordon sucks at doing anything.





...What.





Luna, who in canon apparently has a relationship with Nathan Fillion, sees nothing wrong with Princess Hilda beckoning to him in bed and offers to leave them alone. Maybe she's looking for an excuse to end it, or maybe it's an open kind of thing.



Reila gives the "one last concerned look" thing because why not?





Suddenly, some rather familiar music plays.



Yep, this is Hilda seducing Nathan Fillion. Not a bad job with the censorship since it's still obvious what's going on when you read between the lines.







Good thing Reila was listening in on private time and barges in!





The LamiaQueen can be pretty tricky, as she has a lot of HP and, as you'd expect by now, hits hard.



Her gimmick is status effects. Her physical attacks can send someone to sleep, which sucks of course. This is the point where evasion becomes pretty god damn important to avoid these nasty little surprises.



The strategy is, of course, beat the crap out of it with magic and Luna's spear.





It can also cast Charm on a character, inflicting confusion. Since my party consists of overpowered gods, it can be nasty to have. As a nice touch, the status effect is called "Mad." I love it, for reasons you'll see a little later.



Luckily, I kill her before Nathan Fillion gets to do anything crazy.





Get ready for random barging ins!





I understand your feelings. Go ahead!! I'll stay and help the people here.



So Reila's out, and Gordon's back in. Good thing I robbed Reila of her gear to give to Gordon! Also a good thing I have that Mage Staff for him.



Our next objective is to go to the Arena to rescue Hilda, where we'll finally meet the Emperor, the main villain of this game.





I was a little offensive, but I really liked you.

So many choice lines this update. Remember when this guy was all, "I said you guys would fail" when something happened that we couldn't prevent? This guy might be the best NPC in the game just because he actually changes as the game goes on. Rare to see a NPC who changes anything in any game, especially in a fucking NES RPG.



That's why I'm going to take a Chocobo there!



Spoilers: This jail is a mini-dungeon.



This kid has a good point. Should've been a man as a trophy, or better yet, not putting somebody up to be "won" in the first place.



That's for the next quest, buddy.



Reila is still around to do stuff. Weren't you leading a gang of pirates?

Anyway, to the arena!







So, here's the arena, next to what's likely the Emperor's castle. Let's do this.





After a short walk, we finally meet face-to-face with the Emperor. Halfway through the game is kind of an awkward time to first meet the game's antagonist, but hey.



Fight!! Winner gets the prize, The Hilda of Fin!!



Since it's an arena, we have to fight a monster.



And guess what? This is the first time the game plays its actual boss battle music!





This is the Behemoth.



This is all he does. Either him or some palatte swap of him ends up as one of the bonus bosses in the FF1 remake and The After Years, and all that incarnation does is attack. Same principle here.

The problem is that he's not really any stronger than even regular enemies like Giants, nor can he inflict status effects like the Lamia Queen. Pure damage isn't that scary at this point of the game.



Especially since we're better at that game.



So for the first guy to get legit boss music in the series, he's pretty underwhelming.











They didn't really bother with text wrapping for this part of the game, so enjoy missing text!



So now we're in





Good thing we're friends with a ninja!







Wonderful!



Better run!!

We've got another dungeon full of incredibly nasty enemies. Fortunately, there's only two real floors to this place.





Ahahaha, a fucking Antidote has enemies. Fuck this game.

The new guys just seem to hit harder.



Fortunately, there's a room with much better consumables and no enemies. Also get an Ether and a Tent from here.



Parasites don't hit hard, but their attacks will also sap a bit of MP from you, which is scary. Fortunately they're weak to Ice (and stabbing).



Floor two, and there's Hilda!



There's also these guys, who are pretty god damn nasty with their physical attacks inflicting madness.



But on the bright side, we get to see the awesomely hilarious animation of Mad. I think Mad is a much better choice than Confused for this instance!



These guys are tough as hell, with 500+ damage not being enough to kill them. It takes that plus a 400~ damage-hitting Fire5 to kill one. Worst enemies in the dungeon for sure.



Oh yeah, confused characters give no shits about row. Gordon will hit Nathan Fillion and Dude just the same.



Also, more Chimeras and their nasty Flame attacks.





Hilda! Are you alright?
G.. Gordon?! You..

Hilda's in disbelief that Gordon's taking any initiative whatsoever. Remember that she's been in captivity the entire time and hasn't seen Gordon in his competent mode.





Gordon won't hold his own against those monsters, especially since I stripped him of his gear. Sucker.



Hey, more bullshit! We can't simply warp out despite absolutely nothing else happening here.

At least it's a quick walk out of here.





Mage Staves for everyone!



Though I had this scary experience near the exit. Nathan Fillion managed to kill the flowers off before Luna stabbed my team to death. Kinda glad that Dude tanked up all that HP now!



No encounters here, just a straight shot out of here. With that, we're done!



AGI +1, VIT +1, INT +3, MAG +1, MP +13, Ice +1

Short dungeon meant little progess in stats, but now that I'm using him more for magic, Nathan Fillion's Intelligence is gaining momentum. Might need to work on his MP a bit though, but he's got a L5, L3, and L1 damage spell depending on how much power he needs, and Ice still hits a lot of weaknesses right now.



STR +1, AGI +1, VIT +4, INT -1, MAG +1, HP +101, MP +25

Despite not casting any spells, those Parasites helpfully gave Luna some more MP. And despite the brevity of that dungeon, being one of two targets for physical attacks also helped her gain HP.



VIT +2, WILL +2, HP +48, Fade +1

Nothing too exciting other than leveling up Fade, which is now doing decent damage and is a valuable source of offense for Dude. A shame it comes from the same pool as his very valuable healing magic, so expect more Swap abuse to raise the shit out of his MP, since he doesn't use enough magic in-battle to raise it.