Part 33: Everything Falls Apart (Part 2)

run run run run GO GO GO








ARGH




First things first: we're not actually under a timer in the real game. You'll see a lot of shaking, but you can take your time getting to the end.

Second, we've made it to the ground floor, and paladins will start showing up. The rest of the monsters can be dealt with, but paladins have Dragon shields, a vast array of swords (including Defender!), and armor out the wazoo. They'll use the Dragon shield at the beginning of combat to neutralize any magic-based crowd control for all targets. On top of that, they hit like trucks. Even worse, if you brought a monster down here, you better hope they're not undead, or they'll get a Sun sword upside their dome for a critical. They're a major PIA, and this area's flooded with the little bastards.

Fortunately, we're close enough to our target that we can bring out the big guns.










GANGWAY COMIN' THROUGH




I wasn't kidding about Rezen's stats being ridiculous. She's the first character we've seen, party or otherwise, to break the three digit barrier on damage. Any random mob is going to be liquidated by her Flare. Sure, we only have five casts between recharges—but if nothing else, it's immensely satisfying.






































T-Minus 9 minutes until nacelle destruction. Please assume crash position.

Oh sure, that'll help!











Keep going! We can do this!



































Almost there!





Move it, little dude! We gots places to be!



The hell with this, we warned you










...uh...







A... a little help here?

WORKING ON IT




Meet the haniwa! He's a burial doll from ancient Japan, he's represented as a malevolent haunted statue in modern pop culture, and he'll be your designated Stupidly Powerful Rare Monster for this game. He comes armed with abilities like Quake and Flare, but his signature attack is the Seven Sword. True to its name, it hits a single target up to seven times. Each successful hit is calculated like it was an individual attack, then summed together and applied to the target. Needless to say, if he hits all seven times, the damage output gets ridiculous. Fortunately, he has a reasonable amount of pffffft hahahaha noooooope. He has 10,000 HP and regenerates 1000 a round.

Yes, 1000. That was not a mistake. I know exactly what I typed.

Fortunately, haniwa is the one fight you can run from, and it works every time. If you're just here to get through the game, there's nothing wrong with it. However, in doing so, you'll miss two fun things. First and foremost, he's not an actual boss.




*bweeeeeEEEEE*







As for the second, we need to descend briefly into nerdery.

As some of you may already know, random numbers in computer programming aren't actually random. They're what's known as "pseudorandom"—that is, you won't normally get the same number twice, but reproducing the original starting conditions will pump out the same "random" sequence. Usually, these values are seeded by the onboard timer, which guarantees no two sequences will be the same. Thus, for all intents and purposes, you have something approaching random numbers.

This obviously breaks down when there's no onboard clock available. Guess what the original "big grey brick" gameboy didn't have?

In order to simulate randomness, SaGa relies on the one unpredictable element it has: the player. The number of steps taken by your party combines with actions taken in combat to produce something as random as it can muster. The value carries over between soft resets (Start+Select+A+B), so everything should—in theory—be "random enough."

However! By doing a hard reset on the gameboy (switch the power off and on), you reset the value. Furthermore, FFL2 doesn't actually stash the most recent random value in your save files. Have you figured out the consequences yet? If not, let me spell it out.

The game can be manipulated to guarantee certain outcomes.

In this case, the stars align just right so you can fight a haniwa whenever you want. It goes like this:

• Walk onto the "tiled" section of this floor.
  
• Save.
  
• Hard reset the gameboy and resume.
  
• You'll be attacked immediately. Win the fight.
  
• Take three steps. You'll be attacked again. Do whatever.
  
• Take one step. One last fight. Good job, go hog wild.
  
• You'll go through a stretch (about 30-40 steps) with no combat whatsoever.
  
• Your next fight will be a haniwa.
  

This only works with the original grey brick Game Boys (or emulators that use the original Game Boy as its programming model). Still, you may ask yourself: why on Earth would I want to fight this thing? It's fifty pounds of pain stuffed into a creepy little ten pound bag.




Clear!

Heather! Let's go!





I'm... just gonna take this with us.




Because Haniwa has a 1-in-64 chance of dropping his Seven Sword.

Getting the drop to happen is tricky. If you keep using the same combat actions through steps 1-6, you'll end up with the exact same results every time. Thus, you have tinker around to get the magic combination of actions for your particular party. No, I have no idea what they were for us; my eyes just kind of glazed over until it finally happened. Regardless, after many hours of resets, choosing various nonsensical actions, and then firing a Hyper, we finally get Haniwa to cough the stupid thing up.

Now, if I really wanted to be mean, I could have paid more attention, written down the combination, and used the above tricks to arm everyone in the party with a Seven Sword. However, "we gamed the system and slaughtered all before us" makes for a pretty shitty story climax, so we're going to leave that be.

(As a final note: This can also be used for other rare drops and even stat increases. It's technically cheating, which is the best kind of cheating! )







Finally! Control panel's this way!





...

Okay I'm not gonna lie, those weren't here last time.

Rezen Vox. We were created to eliminate you and your allies. Surrender and we will make it quick.

Warning. Warning. T-Minus 5 minutes before nacelle destruction.

You're programmed protect this world's status quo, right? You can't do that if the entire nacelle falls apart!

Rezen Vox. We were created to eliminate you and your allies. Surrender and we will make it quick.

Something tells me these guys don't have the same priorites.

We don't have time for this!





...other one!

*rev*

!!

Come get some you bucket of bolts

_...her

Sara?

_beautiful







Rezen Vox. We have—

Yeah, yeah. We heard you the first time!







Final boss time. This is Arsenal.

















No, not that one.

Final boss or not, Arsenal's not nearly as bad as Apollo if your guys' damage output is up to snuff. He's not a pushover by any means, but he's infinitely better than what we've been facing. He has some pretty cool attacks, too! Of course, you may not be all that concerned. After all, we have Rezen! Nuke him a few times with Flare, bust out the Masasmune and Xcalibur, and we're done here.

Yeah, about that. I didn't make up the above plot point. There's two Arsenal units, and Rez is soloing one. You get the other.

That's right—after getting used to the gigantic fuck-off guest party member this entire trip, you're doing the final boss without her. SaGa, y'all... right up to the very end.

Anyway, Arsenal. This fight comes in three stages. For the first part, he'll do this every round:







*zzzzppppt*

I'll take Heal Staff duty!








*bzzztptttz* Initiate repairs. Initiate repairs.

Yeah how's that feel

Don't get cocky! He still has three left!




He'll blast your guys with laser cannons every round until you do something about it. Each cannon has 1000 HP, which should be easy enough to knock out at this point. However, you can only take them out one at a time. As a bonus, as you destroy each cannon, the amount of damage done by the attack steadily drops. FFL2 may be a lot of things, but it does make sense. (Most of the time.)

Obviously, there's a catch: Arsenal will scramble to fix the cannons while you're fighting. Four rounds or so after you take down the first one, they'll start coming back online, one by one. Your job is to shell out 4000 across 4-5 rounds against steadily decreasing group damage. At this point, you shouldn't be holding anything back, so you ought to achieve it with minimal effort.




Guns offline. Deploying Smasher! unit.

Wow, he's really excited about that attack.

What's a smasher?

Smasher!

Whatever. It sounds totally lame-o.





*bonk*

Great. The world's coming to an end, and our best fighter still can't recognize simple patterns.




In the second stage of the fight, Arsenal will start using Smasher! (Yes, the exclamation point is included.) It's a physical attack that hits one person—and not very hard, either. This is even funnier because our party's all wearing ninja gauntlets, which cuts the damage further in half. This is a really good time to downshift to your second tier weapons and deploy Heal staves to get everyone back to full HP. Trust me—you're going to need it.
































T-Minus three minutes until nacelle destruction.

Argh this is taking too long!

Keep going! We've almost got him!

Initial salvo exhausted. Switching to main attack protocol.




Holy shit, you need to listen to this




Wait, main attack? Those were his backup weapons?!





*fling*

*smoosh*




After about 3000 more damage, Arsenal decides to get serious, and he'll straight up chuck the Smasher! at your guys every round. Much like releasing the , releasing the Smasher! does a shitload of damage. Your guys will eat 1000 randomly dispersed among all four members and there is nothing you can do to lessen or prevent it. Most of them will take an average of 250-300, but if you get supremely unlucky, a single character can end up taking up to 500 HP of non-negotiable damage. This is SaGa's final challenge: a race to 10k damage before you get crushed like a tomato can. Heal staves help, but they're only going to get you so far (especially if a couple of key party members take some really bad hits). Now's the time to uncork everything in your arsenal (), because you aren't getting a second chance.

(I mean, you are, you can just reload your save. But that's not as dramatic.)




We are seriously overmatched here!

oof

Calculating angular momentum. Proper force for biological termination achieved.

*fwoomp*




















Warning. Warning. Optical systems destroyed. Smasher! efficiency severely degraded.

?!

You will not damage RY-29 further!

Mask!

Yes. I am the humanoid which you have mistaken me for.

Man, you couldn't have gotten here at a better time! We need your help!

I apologize, RY-29, but I am out of ammunition. However, I believe you have sufficient capabilities to win this fight.

Thanks for believing in us!

...

...

You're alright, WarMech. You're alright.

















Sara!

do something DO SOMETHING

*hoist*















The pact is to avenge, bitch




It's time to unleash our first ace in the hole. Heather can hit all seven times with the Seven Sword, and while her strength isn't enough to crank out something dumb like 5 figures, she can still do about 2000 by herself. This means we can put someone on sporatic Heal Staff duty and still crank out about 2.5-3k a round, which is only 3-5 hits of Smasher! That's not great, but it's doable. Ten hits, however, is not.







*bam*

Zero!





*splat*


Rezen Vox. We were created—

Stop saying that




Our second surprise? Well... remember how Sara was our backup fighter for a long time? A curious thing happens to agility weapons when you crank a party member's Agility up to 99...



T-Minus 30 seconds until nacelle destruction. Please take this moment to appreciate your loved ones.

Guys! There's a security lock, I can't do anything until you get rid of the last Arsenal unit!

_nngh

Can't you just kill him from there?!

No good, out of juice!

_...

T-Minus 10 seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven.

We're not going to make it we're not going to make it

If one of you is gonna be a hero, now would be a really good time to do it!

*chug*

...Sara?

Five. Four.

_{...the Lady calls me to serve.}

*schnk*

AND I ANSWEEEEEEEEEEEEEER
























Sara is doing 650-800, and it's enough to be our second most damaging party member this fight. Between her, Heather, and Roy's Samurai bow, we can crank out 3k+ without any sweat. It makes all the difference in the world, and with a few favorable rounds of Smasher!, we can punch its lights out in just three turns.




Three. Two.

do it now DO THE THING DO IT NOW

*beep* *boop* *doop*

On—Venting excess coolant. Pressure normalized. Rebooting systems.

*holds breath*

















Orbit stabilized. Normal operations restored.









Whew. Well, that was unnecessarily dramatic.

*kneel*

Woah wait what's going on here? You okay?

_{Did... did I do okay?}

Sure did, kiddo! Here, let me help you up.

I'm sorry I doubted you, my Lady. The prophecies were true.

Sure were! Way to prove 'em right.

...what? Me?

Well, it didn't say what kind of blade.

But... But the Saw...

You do know it's just a power tool, right? Seriously. You can buy them at any hardware store.

...?!







We did it, everyone! Nice work!





How did you fix the nacelle, anyway?

Ehn, I just started mashing buttons. It's never failed me before.

Didn't it say something about venting coolant?

Yeah?

We're in the middle of space.

Okay...

Soooo... where did it get vented to?
















I'm sure it'll be fine!

I guess?

Okay, I'm gonna patch up a few more things and get out of here. Now that security's been reset, you should be safe to leave on your own.

Y-you're leaving us?

Yup! I think I've done enough damage around here. Besides, the demiurge is finally gone. You guys don't need me anymore.



D'aww. C'mere, you. Maybe I'll come back and visit! You never know!



Oh, hey! Looks like the elevator's back up. Hang a right when you head out, it'll save you a ton of walking.

Alright. Thanks for everything, Is...Rezen.

No, thank you. You guys are kickass heroes. Your world's in good hands.



Take care, now!











Hey, Roy?

Hmm?

You do know that wasn't actually Mask, right?

Yup, sure do.









































Dad! We're back!

...Roy? What happened? Where's Apollo?

It's okay, dad. We beat him. The world's safe.

It's the strangest thing... I thought I had died, but...





Speaking of Mom... isn't there something you're forgetting?










Next Time: Everything Comes to an End