Part 6

Chapter 6





Welcome to the newly-bastardized Devil's Road. In the original game, Cecil and his gang used this to travel to Baron. However, in that game, there wasn't a fucking bullshit teleporter dungeon to annoy you. It just did this cool sound and just sent them to Baron with no fuss.

In the original game, NPCs mentioned how the Devil's Road would drain the stamina of those who used it. In the original, it didn't drain stamina at all, despite Cecil bringing along two young kids and an old man. If Cecil had to go through this monstrosity, however, then I can buy that.

I hate this dungeon. Let's go.





As you may have guessed, this dungeon's gimmick is, well, teleporters. You step in a circle, you move to another location.



All the while, you're fighting against Mt. Ordeals monsters, which are mostly undead. Having mages with Fira and Cura helps immensely with these.

That is, if you actually bother using those spells. If you're a complete idiot like me, you will futilely attack with Ceodore and Black Mage via Ice Rod while White Mage spams Healing Staff. Ceodore's attacks do shit, so essentially it's Hooded Man killing everything in one hit.

This may be the game's way of telling people to use their spells. I have no clue why I didn't, especially since this dungeon doesn't have a boss and is actually pretty short, even if it doesn't feel short.



Of course it's not a teleporter dungeon without branching paths.




Some of which will knock you back some. At least the later ones only knock you back a few notches instead of back to the beginning each time.

Still, fuck Square-Enix.



You've got skeletons.



You've got zombies.



Why didn't I use this?




You've got Liliths who love to paralyze and curse characters as a counter-attack.



Because Square-Enix doesn't hate you enough, there's also these floors that will damage you if you walk on them. Except you don't even get the Float spell to bypass them, and you have to walk over some such as this. In a mandatory dungeon, no less.




(Got sent back again.)



There's also souls, which are undead with fire absorption. They love to waste their turns casting weak Fire spells that are lucky to break single-digits.



At least Ceodore's gaining a lot of levels, and thus magic, this dungeon. Then again, a high encounter rate with large groups of enemies will do that. What it will also do is annoy the everliving shit out of you.



Flans! They're resistant to physical attacks. Even Hooded Man can't break 1HP on them.



It's Black Mage's time to shine!








Silver Apples raise max HP by 50. So obviously, it's going to one of my mages.

Nah, I'm just going to never use it because I'll keep waiting to figure out who to use it on before I end up forgetting I even have it. It's not like I really need the extra HP at this point anyway, with two strong melee characters and two expendables who will leave soon anyway.




FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU






Four steps. Four steps to get into a random battle.

This game really likes to punish you for even daring to like it.



This is another branching path. I think this one I actually get right. 1/4, hell yeah!



That was all on one screen. The game is merciful enough to give you a save point here.



Here is the third and final screen. Yep, this dungeon is two whole screens, yet the sheer amount of random battles and navigational bullshit means it feels and takes as much time as a regular dungeon.

WHY COULDN'T WE HAVE JUST TAKEN A BOAT




Anyway, this room's gimmick is that when walking over a circle, it and maybe other pieces turn to a block and it automatically moves you in a direction.

Most of these seem to work counter-clockwise, i.e. when I moved up into it, it moved me right. But then there are some that don't do that, so as far as I know there's no rhyme or reason with these things, so as usual you're just using brute force on this game's inane puzzles.



That's just wonderful.



Guh?



This little artifact will change your elemental resistances to absorption, which would be nice if it didn't destroy your stats. Thus, it's pretty damn useless.



This is so much fun!




Again, this makes no fucking sense. You pretty much have to dick around through trial and error to navigate this dungeon.

It'd be cool if there was an actual system in place, and if you learned the trick you could make it through easily. Well, it wouldn't be cool, but at least you'd get a sense of accomplishment, I guess. But just making everything trial and error? That's not fun, that's lazy game making. That's showing you don't fucking give enough of a shit to make a gameplay experience fun for the player rather than frustrating. It's pretty fucking insulting to the player that you don't think enough of them to put in the effort to make a good dungeon rather than this fucking bullshit that's clearly made just to prolong the game and waste our fucking time.

Fuck you, Square-Enix. You fucking inept pieces of shit. Fuck you, fuck this dungeon, and fuck this game and every business decision you've been making for the past five years.

Furthermore,



Oh wait, we're almost done?




OH FUCK YES THANK GOD YES YES YES



Next time, we revisit Baron!

Fuck you, Square-Enix. Fuck you, Matrix Software.