Part 18: Vanity, Thy Name is Asshole (Part 2)

I want ta go ome, I want ta go ome, dis di worst trip I err bin on~

What up!

Good mornin', all a ya! Want a coconut?

Oof. No thanks, I think I've drunk my weight in them.

Did everyone here get thrown out by Venus?

No, dis me village. Venus send di exiles when she found out. Gets di ugly ones out of di city, ya know.

Told you it wasn't a resort.

Uh, I'd say not after what we've seen. Someone really needs to close this place down. It's a health hazard!

Just ignore Heather. She's been on an ego trip ever since we left town.

Hog know where ta rub he skin, buhy.

Same!










Have you ever wondered why we're constantly barging into people's homes unannounced for no reason?

Nope.





...the walls.

But, like, why would you?

Are you kidding? The place is a freakin' thrift shop!





Seriously, the slightest little crack or paint chip and they chuck it right down the toilet.

Aren't you worried about the germs?

Ehn, I just dunk it in some warm water and let it dry. Good as new!

Gag me.

Agreed.

Great!

Not what I meant, and you know it.







Soooo. Where to next?

I thought you were the leader, Heather.

Pshuh! That doesn't mean you don't, like, get a vote.

Uh huh. Suuuuure.

Wait! We need magi to open the Nexus doors, right?

Yes?

I think I know where to get them!

What? ... oh. Oh no.





No. No.





no no no no





NO NO NO

Let's pop some f'n tags!

_{This. Is. Disgusting.}

Cheer up, Heather. Maybe we'll find some more power magi!

Or some dysentery.

Ehn, one's about as good as the other.










Ew! The mold's so bad it's, like, walking!

Lemme sanitize it real quick.





That... seemed kind of excessive.

Well somebody gave our hand sanitizer away, so.






Mercifully, enemies in the sewer are far easier to deal with than the ones in the jungle. The vast majority is mushrooms and white belts. Beating up mudansha is apparently profitable, because they give out pretty good GP. It's always nice when dungeon difficulty backslides!

As you can see, Zero has grown into his role as master spell flinger. He has access to Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder, plus a roving Blitz ability to make Heather's and Roy's lives easier. His bow is also effective enough to do impressive damage (and keep his Agility up!), so he's rapidly becoming the group's glass cannon. (On a side note, Sara's still kind of a hodgepodge as far as abilities. We're focusing on speed, and it's showing. Thanks to her laser sword, she probably hits the hardest out of everyone against random mobs.)

The party's coming along pretty well, all things considered. We're at or past the midpoint of the game, and they're growing into their respective loadouts nicely. I love it when a plan comes together







Oho! What's this?





Great! We should save that for a tactical advantage over—

IdunnoIthinkit'sprobablybettertogoaheadanduseitImeanitmighteventastegoodyoudon'tknowgimmeanotherone!!!

At least it went to the right person?






Stat potions are always welcome! It seems they're rarer in FFL2, and you can't just wander into a store and buy them, even at higher levels. That makes them even more important to pick up. I think I mentioned it before, but just a few extra points in one statistic can make a gigantic difference—especially when you throw compounding magi multipliers on top.
















Halt! Who goes there?

Just us, dude!

Just us, dude, who?

Actually I think you'll find I said JUSTICE, DUDE





Maybe we shouldn't be so proud about beating up literal babies.

You have to kill the young ones. Otherwise, they'll, like, track you down over their mom's death.

But we didn't kill his mom!

Not yet.




It's not all mushrooms and white belts down here. Here we see a group of Serious Business^tm monsters containing baby dragons, O-Bakes, and a Guard. Baby Dragons love their Flame attacks, so it's best to go after them immediately. The O-Bakes we've already faced; they're mostly manageable, but...




Welp, looks like we finally have things under control!







Like, anybody surprised by that? Anyone? Anyone at all?

Nope.

Nuh uhn.

Not me!

You don't count.

Well, if you're gonna be that way about it...





blorf



O-Bakes have a Touch attack that's pretty nasty. Pretty much any heavy hitting magical attack from here on out is going to neutralize Roy quickly, so we have to be careful who we target first. Even still, the Guard is the really dangerous one here (IMO). Since there's only one of him, we can't waste time hosing him down in spells, so we have to sic Heather on him. And that would be perfectly acceptable... if the game didn't shamelessly read your actions ahead of time and have the Guard block everything with his shield. With Zero and Sara running crowd control for his spell-throwing cohorts, we're spread pretty thin, and it doesn't take too many hits with a Gold sword to add up to some serious damage. Though, now that I think about, I believe Roy's musket will actually punch through the shield since it's a static damage amount. Yes, our brave robot protagonist—the one who was raised in a tiny village by a human mother and father—is using armor-piercing musket rounds against a black knight in the sewer of Venus' skyscraper city.

Read that last sentence a few more times. Realize it is all 100% in-game and not an embellishment. Just let it wash over you.

SaGa, y'all.

By the way, in case anybody is wondering how our guys are keeping up with the massive damage being thrown around: I buy a crapload of X-Potions whenever I'm in town. They're dirt cheap, heal just enough to bring each party member near 100%, and get 4 uses apiece. The game's not as generous with elixirs as FFL1, so you'll need to keep your guys stocked up and swill when necessary. There's a tactical advantage, too; potions heal Roy at full strength, whereas Sara's Cure ability uses his non-existent mana rating as a base. We're definitely not losing someone every single fight, but we do get a faceplant every now and then, and we have to patch people up efficiently. Moral of the story: if you're not going to load up on Mana and zap your way through the game, keeping multiple ways of accomplishing your tasks on hand is a really good plan. It's always nice to have a backup when things don't work quite like you expect.










Oh man. I'm gonna completely wreck someone's crap with this thing.

Hmm. Nice worksmanship, good weight... You've got killer taste in swords, Zero. I'm impressed!

Hey, thanks! We cool now?

Totally.

Bangin'.












I guess the stories about flushed pets growing to massive sizes are true.

I'm the maintenance guy, you asshole!





We're not actually gonna fall for this, right?

Heck no.




The hermit crab is—you guessed it!—another out-of-place monster as a miniboss. He's comparable to the AtomCrabs from FFL1, right down to W-Pincher, which does...







ghadlghadlg




...that. It's straight physical damage and not mana based, so that's some serious business power behind it.

Funny thing about that, though!




ow ugh

*ping* Wot's all this, then?!





We've really got to work on your timing!



Hello? Anyone home?







However, as hilarious as that is, a better way to deal with him is...




Hosen in der Villa!





Boom shakalaka!




Having the full gamut of damage spells at our disposal is a fucking godsend right now. I'm hoping Sara becomes our "gadget" mage (and continues shelling out ridiculous damage with her laser sword), but it's going to take a pretty big Blitz replacement to move something off Zero's list. Barring an intensely interesting ability or catastrophic failure in planning on my part, he's basically set for the rest of the game. Heather and Sara need to keep upping their stats, though, and Roy's due for a tune-up in the near future. His armor's starting to fall behind the curve.







(Maintenance Room.)

...

Oopsie.
















(Maintenance Room.)


Well, let's hope it was worth it.








He was hoarding magi down here the whole time!

Does finding out after the fact remove guilt? I'm not sure about the ethics here.

No harm, no foul!

But... but there was harm!

Did someone call a foul?

No...

Well, there you go.

...did I just lose? Were we even arguing? What just happened?

I've been trying to figure that out for years. At some point, you just assume Zero's in a different conversation than everyone else.

Nah, I'm good, Roy. We should probably get a new sword while it's on sale, though.

See?







Yaaaaaaaay





Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay





Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay





Yaaaaaaaa—





—wait, what?




It's our first mimic! Anyone who's played RPGs probably just pooped themselves a lil'.

I'm assuming at least some of the audience doesn't know about this time-honored RPG tradition, so I'll take a moment to elaborate. As previously established, old-school RPGs hate you. They hate the ground you walk on, they hate the air you breathe, the ugly clothes you're wearing, the food you stuff into your fat, stupid mouth. Hate you. As a result, there exist monsters that are traditionally referred to as "mimics." Their actual name varies—trap chests, monster-in-a-box, cannibox, man-eater chests, Fred, etc. The earliest known variant I'm aware of is the monster-in-a-box from the original (Japanese) Final Fantasy 2. There's primitive precursors, of course—Wizardry had siren traps that essentially cause the same effect, and Final Fantasy had fixed encounters in front of important treasure—but, as far as I know, FF2 is the earliest example of opening a chest and getting jumped by something inside.

Back on point: When you try to open one of these chests, you are (naturally) informed that the chest is not real. Thankfully, it does not immediately snap off someone's arm like the Thing, which is good, because...










A cannibox from Dragon Warrior. Have fun sleeping tonight!








At any rate, the thing that sucks about mimics isn't the disappointment of getting a fight instead of treasure. Oh no. If that were the case, there'd be no evidence of how much the game hates you with the fury of a thousand exploding suns. So just to make its loathing of you clear, not only do you not get treasure, not only do you get a fight you didn't plan on...




You jerks! We were looking forward to more magi!

Meh. Give him the ol' Bunson Burner and let's get back to lootin'.

Is breá liom an chonaic!





zzz

...

Wha—Oh, hey! Didn't notice you guys.

...

Better get to work then. *stretch* *yawn* Who's first?

Stand back, guys, I got this one! Ein Truthahn für Ihre—

Great! A volunteer!







MOTHER OF GOD




Mimics are some of the most powerful monsters in RPGs. It's pretty much guaranteed that the difficulty on trap chest fights will be several orders of magnitude higher than random mobs—quite often, ridiculously so. In this particular case, I want to point out that Zero has five mana magi and easily the highest Mana rating of our entire party. Magic is what he does. It's his one, singular focus and theme.

And the Phantom really doesn't give a fuck.




Zero!

Holy shit HOLY SHIT DO SOMETHING

Nil an—










Mimics have and always will be the worst fights in RPGs. Once in a great while, the designers are merciful enough to give you a detector. Most of the time, though, you're on your own, dashing from chest to chest, terrified it could grow teeth at any moment and murder you in tiny pieces. Sure, sometimes you'll get something after the fight. Sometimes it'll even be powerful!




oh my god oh my god run run run RUN RUN RUN

Oh, c'mon. You kids should know how this works by now.







...




But it won't be worth it, because once the fight starts, you're stuck. Incredibly rare is the game that allows you to run from mimics. In fact, I can't think of a single one off the top of my head.

Mimics suck. SaGa mimics suck extra because, well, it's SaGa. The monsters are already stupidly over-levelled, and there's literally no way to tell a mimic from a regular chest until you stick your arm in it. Oh, and guess what? Your ability to progress hinges on getting things out of treasure chests! Ha ha ha fuck you SaGa. No, seriously. Just... just fuck you.




Bummer.

Yeah, sorry about your luck. Any last words?

Fer sure.

Okay. Let's hear 'em.





The gates of Valhalla totally open before me!











_...glorious.






















And they all died. The end.
































Next Time: ????