Final Fantasy V Part #23 - Galuf vs. A Black Hole

Part 23: Galuf vs. A Black Hole

So last time, we got ourselves a Dragon by having Reina poison herself again, then we landed it on a ship so we could beat up Gilgamesh. Then we joined Zeza to take a submarine to the Barrier Tower, our next dungeon.

New music, too.

Right. If we can destroy this, the barrier will disappear. I'm going to the power room below. You go to the top floor, to the antenna.

Antenna?

Right! You blow it up, while I stop the power!

In the RPGe version, it's merely a communicator, while the GBA version refines it to Whisperweed, which is what most modern FF's refer to it. Not that it's a common item in the series, but still.

So now we're tasked with climbing to the top of the tower. It's not a long dungeon, but the enemies can be annoying.

This guy casts Flash, which makes me burn through Eyedrops a bit. Minor annoyance.

I assume you can figure these out by process of elimination. The ReflectKnight has high physical defense and auto-reflect, plus he has the nifty Reflect Ring as a rare drop. Meanwhile, Magnities, another victim of having a goofy-ass name, pretty much drags people to the front row and has high evasion, which makes him a joke.

Traveler casts Time Slip, inflicting both Sleep and Age on a character.

It's also Blue Magic.

Along the way, Faris picks up Swrdgrab, which gives a class the Samurai's evasion boost. There is value to these passive commands, believe it or not, but I have Blue and Time Magic plus Earth that can do so much more.

At this point, I swap her into a Thief using Earth for damage.

This guy has a rare steal of a Flame Ring. Believe it or not, you can actually run away from these guys and keep retriggering the fight until you steal the damn thing.

Thing is, fighting these guys are rather nasty.

Fortunately, they know L3 Flare and happen to be a level multiple of 3.

You know the deal about the Blood Sword. Absorbs HP, hurts you against undead, blah blah blah. I don't know if this version's sucks like most other versions, since only Knights can use it.

Occasionally you'll go outside, with a nice circle of transparency that both shows off the fancy graphics while letting you see where the hell you're going.

These guys supposedly use the Blue Magic level spells, though I think they only attempted L4 Quarter on me. At any rate, rather trivial.

Galuf gets his second of three Bard abilities. Harps themselves suck for the most part, but it does give a Bard's stats to a character, making it surprisingly useful in certain challenges. For instance, did you know a Bard has better magic than a Red Mage? Equip Harp actually boosts a Red Mage's magic.

Rather than leave him to master Bard, I decide to let Galuf go into the last job I've yet to show off, the Lancer. This is another fighter-class job, focused on heavy armor while being the sole job to wield spears. As you probably guessed, their special ability is Jump.

While I get the occasional Gust, Earth nets a lot of Wind Slashes. Faris is pretty much my reliable multi-target wrecker, compared to Reina being pure death in the face of single-targets.

Remember, Reflect Knights have high defense, and I didn't bother buying the latest spear. Still, Jump's not really worth it.

Bartz picks up Dance, which is too gimmicky to really be worth using outside the Dancer class, but hey, now we can make him dance in one of his other classes. Maybe a dancing Red Mage, perhaps?

Actually, I stick him back to Summoner because we'll be getting into L4 Summons soon.

Finally, there's Gravidead, who spam Demi. Eh.

...brak...Do you read? Over!

We hear ya!

I'm in the power room. Over!

Everything's all right on this end. Over!...eh?!

Zeza doesn't get enough love considering how much of a badass he is for this part of the game.

to the top! Over!

Gotcha...er... Over!

Anyway, the march to the top's not that exciting from this point, as we've seen all the enemies and there's not much noteable loot...

...save this chest with another Red Dragon.

The HairOrnament, aka the FF staple Gold Hairpin, halves MP consumption, though its stats suck otherwise. Since Bartz has Summon/White going on, he's the obvious pick.

Eventually, we reach the top.

And...here we go.

Meet Atomos, one of the most well-known bosses of the game, and one that's always popping up in bonus dungeons of other FF games along with Gilgamesh and two other bosses we'll see eventually.

This guy's pretty interesting in just how unique he is.

First off, the guy's only attack to start with is Comet. He'll spam it, sometimes twice a turn, until at least one person is killed.

And then the fun starts, as he'll start dragging corpses toward him. At this point, however, all he'll cast is non-harmful Time Magic until everyone is revived. If he swallow someone, you lose that person for the rest of the battle, though obviously they'll come back afterward.

Thus this boss seems difficult, but isn't really once you know how the battle actually works. If one guy gets too close, revive him and let Atomos kill another person. Other than that, it's a lot like the Evil Wall in FF4 or Odin in other games, a pure damage race before you lose, though here you have a lot more time to pull it off.