Part 19: Final Chapter - "Memories of people cried bitter tears will soon be forgotten"

Final Chapter - "Memories of people cried bitter tears will soon be forgotten"





We are now at the final dungeon proper, Castle Pandemonium. Enjoy the music!



This castle is a huge maze full of weird passages where you pretty much have to take the longest possible way to the exit.



Of course, there's also lots of new enemies. These guys can also cast single-target Fire16 for big damage.



DoomNites hit hard or something.



Silver Golems have huge physical defense.



Also, Dude's Will Power went up. You know how his Will was 89 before?



It'll stay at 99 unless you unequip and re-equip the item giving the stat boost, in this cast the White Robe. This happens every time the person gains a stat in that area, but it also allows his Will to be above 99, which is nifty.







Quirls are of course a common occurrence, since they're annoying as shit to fight.





New teleporter, new floor.



These guys can cast Lit10 and Stop8 and stuff.



They can also cast Xfer, making you weak to a bunch of elements that they don't really use.



Even in the final dungeon, there's plenty of shit treasure to go around!



This area has four doors. One leads to further on in the dungeon, but they all have high-end treasures.



Left two door lead to this room, though you have to go through both doors to get all the treasures.



EvilWolves curse. Curse halves physical attack/defense and persists after battle. They can also cast Fire 11.





Though the first of four mini-bosses, Zombie Borgen is still Borgen.



Albeit with Nuke 16, which he can mix with attacks. He's still so pathetic that he doesn't get any billing from other games' bonus dungeons.

Samurai stuff is heavy as crap and can tank evasion unless the person is agile. Luckily, Lion's agility is high enough to not suffer the hit, plus he enjoys the status resistances they give. Remember also that Luna got a pair from a lucky drop a couple dungeons ago.





Oh, and hidden away in a random room is the best weapon in the game, the Masamune.



It increases attack by a whopping 150 points. It also casts Fast 11 as an item, which is why I never bothered leveling Fast. Finally, it gives no penalties to magic stats, so Nathan Fillion can actually equip this baby and still nuke stuff efficiently. Of course, to attack with it would require moving him to the front row, so it won't actually get used for attacking.









Tiamat has a bunch of breath attacks that can do a bit of damage to everyone.





Like Gas. Nothing too major, though. Just got to cut through her defenses to win this.



Lamia Queens have a chance of dropping ProRings. I actually get a third one later in the dungeon but accidentally exit the menu without collecting it. Oops!



Second-to-right leads to the exit, so let's go far right next.



The various elemental giants from Mysidia Tower show up in this dungeon with an entourage of bombs.







Beelzebl can cast various spells, the most significant (and rarest chance of being cast) being Ruse16.





Not that its other attacks aren't devastating for poor Lion, of course.



But Lion can give as good as he gets, so it all works out.

The armor is just too heavy to use, plus it takes away from the agility bonus of the Ninja Gear.







Astaroth can be quite nasty with its HP-draining attack and Drain spells combined with having 7000HP.





Blind16 is also nasty, and Lion gets hit with it twice.



But Powr + Fast = Total destruction, and Luna and Lion tear this guy apart.

Ribbons resist all elements, have nice magic defense, and give no magic penalties. Perfect to compliment Dude.







The dungeon's a bit more straightforward from this point on, now that we've got all the ultimate stuff.







You know we're close to the end when we come upon rooms like these.





This is the final room in the game. Just have to go north to fight the Emperor. With that, let's look at our final stats!





-1 STR, INT +2, WILL +5, MAG +2, HP +43, MP +77, Phys +1, Nuke +1, Powr +1, Psyc +1

Nathan Fillion's final stats are as listed, except INT actually being 55. Overall, the most balanced member, though his INT is much lower than what I would've preferred. Ah well. My weakest attacker, but my best buffer, so it works out.



STR +4, AGI +7, VIT +2, INT -1, HP +186, Spear +1, Shield +1

Natural AGI is 71, which is still crazy high. Luna's not a huge damage dealer to bosses without Powr, but god damn is she a fantastic evasion tank. Nothing can hit her without having a ton of attacks, and her agility is so high she can wear high-defense armor without taking a hit to evasion. Definitely happy with how she progressed.





STR -2, AGI +2, VIT +1, WILL +10, MAG +2, HP +352, MP +22, Cure +1, Ruse +1, Fade +1

His only boosted stat is Will, obviously. Yes, Dude is the only person to max a stat, and Will is a hell of a stat to max. Fade10 does around a thousand damage, and it does't care about the enemy's physical defenses like my attackers do, making Dude both my most reliable healer and attacker. Ruse is useful as hell too for my attackers. Overall, a fantastic character to have.



STR +2, AGI +4, VIT +4, WILL +1, HP +160, Sword +1, Axe +1

Actual agility is 55, and he actually gains another Strength point on his way to the final boss. Lion is screwed because he can't actually evade most attacks due to his L3 Evade. He makes up for it by being the better physical attacker, constantly outdamaging Luna. Kind of a pain to keep revived and healed, but at least he can actually pull his weight in battle. Don't know why we don't get him right before the final dungeon, though.



Here we are! Who's ready for the final boss?







As a final boss, Empire takes up the whole screen with his undead visage.



As you'd expect, this guy has high defenses and resists all elements besides Matter and Death, which he flat-out absorbs. He also can drain HP to restore his 10,000HP with his physical attacks.





Of course, he also has magic attacks like Curse, Blind, and Slow to cripple your physical attackers (but which do jack to casters). Meteor, the Emperor's special attack, does big damage to the party. And of course there's also Nuke16 to do major damage.





So to start, I buff the hell out of my party.



Fast + Powr = Nearly a third of the Emperor's total health in one attack. And people suggest using your Blood Swords on this guy!



I decide to try to overkill this, so I cast Powr on Luna five times or so.



It doesn't really work as planned. I guess there's only so high you can boost attack, and this is still only half of what Lion pulled off. I guess Lion really wants the power.



So fittingly, Lion gets the final hit that finishes up the game. Our savior the DarkLord!



Apparently the Emperor's weird death cry here got him a bit of popularity in Japan, according to the FF Wiki. So, there you go.





-----







Welcome back safe!
Congratulations!!



Paul quickly congratulates you and then leaves.



Come and join us anytime! .. I'll be waiting!!

Reila meanwhile reminds us that Piretes are great immediately after we kill the world-destroying demon emperor.





And we see a quick glimpse of Josef while Nelly tells us she has a new job. That's wonderful.





Then the three go off to the corner for no reason.



Let's live together again!
.. .. ..
Right, Lion ..?



Apparently Lion realizes the whole "tried to rule the world as a Dark Lord Emperor" thing may not be look on too kindly by the half of the world that didn't actually die. Not that Hilda and co. really give a shit, but hey.





And so Lion leaves, probably to go try and conquer the world again. I wish him the best of luck.





Also, all our dead comrades show us to remind us that we literally watched half the world die. Our final ally/good NPC death count is 69, which is around how many people are still alive by the end of the game, so I'm not kidding.

We literally watched half of an entire game's world die during the course of the game.



And with that...





...we are done with Final Fantasy II.



The credits sequence is rather underwhelming, just showing faces in a crystal orb as names pop up.



The story was pretty ambitious for its time. It's kind of interesting how they tried to actually make this about a war between a rebellion(s) and an empire(s). They also didn't fuck around with dead, having entire towns wiped out and tons of people killed. Of course, there's still stuff like Lion being a bad guy and deciding to be Emperor, and really the Emperor didn't get much development considering most of the badass stuff he does is actually outside of the game (like, say, defeating Satan in order to escape hell and become a powerful demon).

There's really not much to talk about with the story. It's just there, really, and though it does a couple interesting things, everything else is just there.



The gameplay is both great and horrible. The game does a horrible job explaining mechanics, and a lot of stuff doesn't really work that well, but once you learn things it's pretty easy to survive in battle. However, the balance of this game is pretty terrible, as you either don't know what you're doing and get your ass kicked a lot, or you do know what you're doing and just breeze through everything. The longer the game went on, the less challenge there was. And the remakes adjust balance to help those ignorant of the game's mechanics, so it just makes things hilariously easier for those who know the mechanics. Yeah, FF games become easy once you know what to do, but it's especially true for this game, and once the novelty of the system wears off, you just have a game that ends up being surprisingly easy. Yes, I'm saying FF2 is easy.

It's not as terrible as its reputation makes it out to be, and there's gems of a good game in there (which is why it ended up spawning the SaGa series), but there's still a lot of flaws holding the game back, and at least Square used the lessons it learned from this game to really make some fantastic games in the future. So at least there's that.

As for the translation...that really spoke for itself, didn't it?