Part 44: Part Forty-Four: The Knight

Part Forty-Four: The Knight


With new jobs in tow, I hop back on the Invincible to take care of business.


First business to take care of: grabbing the Nautilus.



Second business to take care of: emptying Golbez's spell list of the crap that's been in it since before the Nepto Temple.


Then replacing it with summon spells! (I picked these up at Doga's Village.)



You see, for the rest of the game, Golbez is going to be a Summoner. In my opinion, Summoners are a little better than Geomancers because they let you target weaknesses. Summoners also have a lot of MP, so it's not much of a concern.


This is a problem you'll probably run into a few times in the game: switching someone's job might mean you're short on equipment for the new class.


Also, MP stays the same as it was when you changed jobs, so Golbez is pretty useless before I go to an inn.


He's also a bit of a soft target.


For whatever reason I went to the inn at Amur instead of just heading back to the Invincible - not like it matters, though; 200 gil is pretty much nothing.


Summoners have a shitload of MP. All four of those spells are stronger than third-tier Black Magic, by the way.


To compare, here's Jecht's MP. I have no idea why you get so few level 4 spells as a Devout (or a Magus).


You remember Duster, the Bard/Geomancer town?


Well, I didn't. I thought it was Replito, the Summoner/Evoker town.


Unfortunately, I was looking for equipment, and the only thing they sell here is magic.


So, again, instead of just going to the Invincible to stock up, I continued on my way. The place we're headed is just southeast of Saronia.


If you use the submarine here, you'll find this little door.


The door leads to these catacombs! This is one of the game's sidequest dungeons. We could have come here as soon as we got the submarine, but it's really only useful after you get a Summoner.


There are, of course, new enemies down here. These are the Boss Troll and Fachan.


I don't know why the summon spells in this game have names that aren't just the summoned monster's name, but I suspect it initially had something to do with space limitations on the NES. Why didn't they change it for the DS? Fuck if I know.


Enemies here are not that tough.


At this point, I don't know what to do with Jecht most of the time. Devouts can be okay on offence if you give them Aeroga, I guess, but I don't really like using his MP for non-healing stuff.


As for how weak enemies here are, Kuja managed to finish this one off before Golbez could summon Shiva.


There are a bunch of these things here. My first thought was that they were cannons, but that would be stupid, so I decided they must be braziers.



Other than those, and these bones here, there's not really much going on in this place, scenery-wise. To be honest, the dungeons in this game are dull on the whole. Even the ones that look good are pretty much just straight hallways with a random encounter here or there.


This place looks exactly like the Amur sewer. Coming back to the game for the LP, I'd actually forgotten about half of the dungeons even existed.


New enemies!


Also not that tough.


This is Shiva's High Summon Spell, which is what Summoners get when they cast Icen. It's also, of course, the wrong spell for the situation: we're underwater, most enemies are weak to lightning.


These little summon flames are pretty standard for the series. I don't know if they were in the NES version of the game or not.





Summon animations in this game aren't minutes long like some other Final Fantasy games, but they're just long enough to get a bit annoying when you're using summons over and over through a dungeon or a long fight.


The damage is good, though. It'll never be on the same level as Sephy or Kuja's attacks, but it hits all enemies and it packs a real punch if it hits a weakness.



I wish this dungeon could have had a more interesting look to it.


That was one of the worst parts of playing through this game. The dungeons are just boring as hell, for some reason or another, without exception.



At least there's treasure on this floor. A Rune Bell, which is outdated and useless and this point...


...and an Aegis Shield, which is pretty good (for a shield) as it blocks all negative status effects. I still won't be using it, though, since I prefer to do extra damage.


There's also a Golem Staff. Sometimes I feel like the game has too many treasure chests for the amount of equipment in it, so it ends up throwing a bunch of things at you multiple times.


I give Jecht a couple of them since they have a better stat boost than the Rods. Of course, this leaves him with basically no attack capability, but it's not much of a loss.

(Technically, the Golem Staff casts Break when used as an item, but Break has a low hit rate and the petrification effect rarely takes, so it's the next best thing to useless.)


A preemptive strike is always nice. These are three Kyklopses.


They're no tougher than anything else in the dungeon.


Up this long staircase...


...Kraken's cousin!


Expecting a hard fight, I set up Golbez to summon Ramuh.



I was, uh, underwhelmed. Of course, that attack hit for more HP than Kraken ever had, so there's that.

By the way, the enemies' power does pick up eventually, and they go from being shitty cannon fodder to really damn tedious and annoying.


I also had to be sure that Sephy's job level was above 71 here. It's important.



Neither of these treasures are really useful.


I think you're maybe supposed to come here and loot the place before getting the Invincible, but that's not how I roll (nor is any of the treasure really worth a trip here just to pick up).


Moving upstairs, it looks like we've come out in the castle's basement!


More braziers. Again, at the time I looked at these and thought "who put fuckin' cannons here?"


Now, you might be thinking that the only way to go here is up those stairs.


But of course there's a secret passage.


On my way, I actually manage to get Golbez to summon Ramuh.




His attack looks a bit more threatening when it actually hits something, but that big fuck-off bolt of lightning is still pretty cool.


All of the level 2-6 High Summon spells have 220 power (and no reduction for multi-target attacks), which beats out the 190 that Firaga brings as the highest third-tier Black Magic elemental spell (which is also reduced for multiple targets). These spells are actually only beat on power by two non-summons, neither of which can multi-target and both of which are beaten by the level 7 and 8 High Summons.


At the end of the secret passage are all these treasures! Wow!


No such thing as a free lunch, eh?




The Ouroboros here is weak to lightning, so Golbez has it locked up. (Note: Sephy could also have locked this up, but I wanted to show off how summons do when they hit a weakness.)


Yes, every chest on this side has a monster-in-a-box and an Elixir, and yes, they're all Ouroboros.



Whee! These fights are really tedious!


Meanwhile, on the other side of the room...


...yeah, it's this asshole again.


Yeah, he sucks. The Blood Sword/Lance, by the way, make it really easy to know if your attack's damage was 9,999 or higher (when relevant): since the healing is one-sixth of the damage, if it ever goes over 1,666 (the game truncates decimals) that means you did over 9,999 damage!




So, four Phoenix Downs and four Elixirs. That's not a bad take. Especially moving forward, since before long Elixirs will be the only healing item worth using at all.


Moving up, it's this guy! Who's this?


Jeez, dude, no need to be so grumpy about it!


Seriously.


So, yes, this is Odin, making his debut in the series by doing his favourite thing, hanging out in some shitty basement. Unlike other games, though, this fight isn't timed or anything.


It is important to steal from Odin.


Everybody else can just do like regular.


In his first appearance, Odin's series-standard weakness to lightning wasn't established, so Ramuh isn't any better than Shiva/Ifrit/Titan, but I summon him anyway.


This is annoying.


Odin can hit hard, but also remember that Golbez is under-equipped.


See how much worse Judgement Bolt looks when it actually hits something?


Odin has 31,000 HP, in case you're wondering. That's enough that you definitely wouldn't want to fight him when you first get the submarine.


What a dick, taking out Golbez.


The difference that equipment can make. This is why it's important to check your stuff and make sure you're stocked up.


And this is the real treasure here! The Gungnir is a great spear for a Dragoon, packing an amazing 140 Attack and boosting Strength and Agility by 10 each!

You can also get a second Gungnir from a drop, but it has something like a 2% chance of happening - I don't get it here.


A wasted Cura.


I bring Golbez back with a Phoenix Down, but Odin hates the kid and puts him right back down. This is a really annoying thing that happens more and more in the late game (enemies attacking people who were just revived, I mean).



This happening is probably not for the best, really. This is a little more than a fifth of the dude's max HP, though.


Raise is exactly as effective as a Phoenix Down (10% of max HP), which is kind of a letdown. Having that be a level 5 spell is a real pain in the ass.


Good thing I have so many Elixirs and a Thief - if whoever gets revived survives the round, Sephy can make sure they stay in it.


There's no fanciness with just doing 100% HP healing, an Elixir heals 9,999 every time.


Odin hates Golbez, I don't know why.


Kuja lands just in time.


Because Odin goes next and decides to bust out his party trick, Zantetsuken.


Generally, there's a timer counting down to this and it just gives an instant game over.


Here, it just hurts like a motherfucker.

I didn't make it out alive.


This is where I ended up after he slammed me with Zantetsuken during my second attempt.


It was much better because Sephy survived.


He's half of the party's damage output, it's important that he doesn't die.



Bosses give good gil but shit EXP, same old song and dance. I fought Odin a few times trying to get a second Gungnir, but sadly it never came out that way.



After the fight, we get Odin's summon. This is one of the worse summons in the game, since Zantetsuken misses a lot and Odin's got no backup effect for when that happens.


And then he disappears like a ghost.


He goes straight to Golbez's spell list.


And the Gungnir goes straight into Kuja's left hand.

Mognet


Today's letter is from Alus, reminding us that the Nautilus can fly into the wind! What a useful thing that we definitely would have forgotten!