Part 15: Reina vs. Technology

The last real dungeon we've had was The Ancient Library. Go figure that this game would actually want me to get back to a point where I'm getting random encounters regularly again. Sadly, that'll have to wait until next update.



So last time, we saw a massive floating city rise to the sky, FF1-style. The game doesn't tell us what to do next, but there's not really anything better to do than continue dumping all of our problems on the Ids.





Save your breath...
We saw the ruins float through our telescope!



What?!
The crystal is what made it float... The machine had been turned off to keep it from breaking but...

Why would an Earth Crystal make something float? Wouldn't it be better used to power an underground fortress instead?

Also, the GBA clarifies that the ancient Ronkans or whatever they were in this version ran the floating town. It's a minor point because nobody cares about the Ronkans.



We've got to hurry! Someone started it up again!



Never!



This is a weird one, but it looks like they messed up the translation here, since the girls just get one line each in the other translations instead of duplicate lines where they repeat themselves in quotation marks. There's also the messed-up contraction above.





Adamantite! If we reinforce the ship with this, it will fly higher!





I remember seeing soem in the meteorite I rode in on!
You sure?!
What, you don't believe me?
But your memory...
I remembered the Adamantite, didn't I?



We'll stay and get things ready.
Hurry and bring us back some Adamantite!



So for a bit of busywork, we're going to where we began the game.







In there!



How about it?! Pretty good memory, huh?
How would an amnesiac like you know?





Anyway, we've got the next plot device. Let's finish this up.









Surprise boss!



This guy's big thing is that he hits like a truck and can hit twice a turn.



He's weak to ice, though he's still got good defenses backing him up.







Still, I whittle him down until he goes down. Not a tough fight, but one where you want to get it over with quickly since he hits so damn hard.

Also, apparently he's L20 and vulnerable to L5 Death. Huh.



Anyway, murdering a turtle is the only interesting part of this whole thing, so let's get this rock back so we can go to the next dungeon already.







others rest up.



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Th...that was fast!



Now we can get to the floating ruins, right?



Well, it's not that easy...Better take a look at this.





The book says the cannons are extremely powerful...
But we have to try!
Aye!
What're you all worryin' about? It's just a couple of measly cannons!
Thanks Cid, Mid. Now let's get to that crystal before it's too late!





OK, now we're ready to progess the plot.



I decide to ditch the Moonring for the Ninja Knife. The former is stronger and will do the same amount of damage no matter what row you or the enemy are in. On the other hand, the Ninja Knife can be used with Magic Sword, and we're gonna be fighting some stuff weak to Thunder.



Now we have an option to go up or down. Up progresses the plot, of course.







So for this next stage, there are four sets of cannons we have to defeat. Fortunately, we can leave and heal between battles, and the cannons won't respawn.







There's two different encounters, and this is the more dangerous one.







Rocket Punch is a nasty attack that deals half-damage and inflicts Confuse. A battle can turn south fast if you don't take care of them soon.





A Geomancer will get Wind Slash off up here. I think I already showed it off, so no GIF. At any rate, it's decent damage.





Ramuh is awesome up here.



They can also fire off missiles to deal 3/4 of your health worth of damage. Ick.

It's a Blue Mage spell, but I forgot to equip Learning on Faris, so welp.



Oh yeah, I put Bolt2 on Reina and let her deal 1600 damage to this thing. That was fun.



That said, it still got rather nasty toward the end.



The other type of encouter is FlameThrows.



This is all they do, and their flames don't do that much damage, so they end up being much less of a pain than the Rocket Guns. Still, I forgot to heal after that last battle, so they give me a bit of trouble before I wipe them out.



This is why I parked above a place with free healing.



I switch Faris to a Blue Mage so I can continue spamming Wind Slash without switching to a Geomancer with Learning. At least this way, I can use Blue Magic too.





I forgot that Burn Ray was Blue Magic, so there's that.







So there's one more cannon to go.



...You're not even speaking like a pirate anymore. You're just saying random gibberish.



So yeah, big gun, time to blow it up and stuff.





So meet the Soul Gun. This thing can be incredibly difficult due to how it's set up. It has a ridiculous amount of HP, for one thing.



First off, Wind Slash does nothing against this guy, since this guy's immune to wind attacks. Faris isn't going to be doing much this fight. Bolt's still awesome though.



This thing has two launchers, which you really should take out first.





Because those missiles will inflict Old on you, and Old is one of the most horrible status effects to have in this game. Old lowers your levels and stats at a constant rate, draining your attack and defenses the entire time. Esna apparently cures it (though I couldn't confirm that, not that I can could cast it with L3 Red Magic), as does killing the character, but all that will do is stop the decline. Your character's stats will still remain gimped for the rest of the battle, which just plain sucks.



I take care of the Launchers quickly, but the bad news is that my entire party besides Bartz is Old. Of course, Bartz is probably the one person I don't want Old anyway.

Also, gotta admire the work into setting up these gray hair sprites (and a subtle white-to-gray beard for Galuf) for each job class, though they probably just replace palettes to save the time to resprite everything.



Anyway, this guy's gimmick, despite the stat-draining missiles, is the standard "Does nothing but charge for a big attack."





Comparing Bolt2's, you can see Galuf is already falling behind. Eventually the decline will stop at L1 or so, but you really don't want reduced damage output when you have a boss with such high HP.









That Beam Cannon fucking hurts. That's pretty much half of everyone's HP.



At this point, Bartz goes from attacking to being on Cure2 duty. At least now Reina will stop declining since she got killed.



Of course, I still have reduced damage and a long battle to go.



By the way, there's Burn Ray.





Eventually I run low on MP and end up needing an Ether.



Well, I actually didn't need it, since I destroy it right after using it. Oh well.



Twin is an active ability that you use to make duplicates of that character, which results in nullifying two physical attacks. It's not really worth an ability slot.



Anyway, free Dark Matter. Neat.



So, no more cannon.



In the other translations, these lines are split between Bartz, Galuf, and Faris. Seems they ran out of room for this one, so they just dumped all the lines onto Bartz, making him sound weird in the process.



That said, I'm going to save the thing until next update, as I've got a bit of shopping to do.



I'm switching Reina to Hunter just to get some variety. Their special ability is Aim, giving them higher accuracy while costing a bit of time.

I want to give her the thunder-elemental bow because robots, so to Crescent!



OH GOD DAMMIT



Hey, got a Death Sickle out of it! But I think I forgot to actually buy the bow. Oh well, I'll do that next time (maybe).

3/13 MINI-UPDATE

Decided to do a couple more things, and figured this section would fit better here than leading off the next update, so here we go.



This part will be mainly collecting a few missing Blue Mage spells.







Black Shock reduces your level by half. This can be useful in certain situations, like manipulating an enemy's level to be divisible by 5. Of course, there are better alternatives.



The next spell is over at Walz.





When alone, Elf Toads will use Toad Song, which inflicts Toad on a character. We can do similar results with this spell.









Pep Up sacrifices the life of the caster to heal another target. It's up there with Exploder in being laughably useless, and it's no surprise that you need Control to even get an enemy to use this piece-of-shit ability.



This next fellow is in the Steamship, which is actually still accessible.





As seen earlier, Missile will knock 3/4 an enemy's health out. Very handy for Trainers wishing to catch monsters.







Guard-Off seems to lower defense. I don't know by how much, or if it actually does anything different than what it claims to do.



And now to grind a few jobs up.





Bartz gets L3 Red Magic, the last level he can learn, while Reina gets Critt.



It's not a critical hit, but rather it summons a random animal depending on the user's level. It's not a spectacular ability, but considering all of Reina's abilities besides SwordMagic and kinda-sorta Guard suck ass, it's great to give her something else to do, especially since she's whiffing a lot even with Aim.



Anyway, Red Mage has only one ability left. It's also tied for most expensive ability in the game, and I'm ready for a change of pace for Bartz, so back to Summoner he goes.



Here's one of the animal commands, Nightingale heals a very nice amount, more than Cure2. If Critt weren't random, this would be a very nice method of healing. Hell, it is even with being random.



Here's me attacking a squirrel with squirrels. Meh.



Galuf learns to Equip Whips. ...Meh.



I'm gonna switch him back to Monk since I need a heavy hitter, and since Monk's usefulness kinda wanes as the game progresses.

Anyway, next time I'll actually do the next dungeon and close in on finishing the first third of the game.