Part 56: I Am Getting Plenty Sick of This Damn Dungeon Theme

Chapter 47: I Am Getting Plenty Sick of This Damn Dungeon Theme



All right, let's cut to the chase; here are the Dragon Ruins. We started the game here, and it's also one of the epilogue dungeons. We can do these next two dungeons in any order, but this one is easier, so we start here.



Hey, the rocks have conveniently been cleared out! Well ain't that nice.





Oh goodie, the worst theme in the game. Joy.

And as befitting the boring music, the dungeon itself is rather boring. There's not a lot of twists and turns or surprises here, with about two exceptions. So let's jump right into enemy talk.



The very first encounter I experience here pretty aptly demonstrates the power of Jean's Lucia's Tear/Dimension Ring set-up, as well as illuminating how it works.



When you attack with Lucia's Tear, one of the enemies is designated the main target, and it takes full damage. The rest of the enemies take half damage. This works exactly the same way with criticals, by the way. As a matter of fact, the screenshot you see is a crit hit. Now unfortunately your main target will keep changing, which I'm not sure if that's because of Lucia's Tear or the Dimension Ring. (Probably the latter) But as you can guess, if you get a string of criticals, and the game is very generous with critical hits, you can demolish enemy encounters. And for posterity, no, Lucia's Tear doesn't reduce number of attacks like similar items do in the remakes.



Point is? Jean killed two of the three enemies in the very first turn, and Leo finished off the remainder. The enemy never hit me once. Cannon Thugs have 800 HP, by the way.

However, as you might imagine, pulling something like this off is very, very luck reliant. What's the enemy like if they don't get demolished by Jean the destruction machine?



...ouch.

Yeah, and it doesn't matter which character that decides to hit, by the way. It's a one-hit kill. Now, unless the cannons are tilted up, they won't actually do anything. But it's not uncommon to get into a battle with two cannons both upright. Try to kill 'em as soon as possible.

Oh, but the cannon blasts have different effects.



Same turn, by the way. Yeah, they attack twice. This is still one of the less dangerous ones if you make sure everyone wears something that protects against sleep. (And if you've been thorough about treasure you should have enough.) Doesn't help Jean, though, because of my accessory choice for her.

Yeah, one thing that sucks about the Lucia Tear/Dimension Ring combo is that there's no room for status protecting accessories. Most of the enemies here are rather fast, and only Jean is reliably faster. So the accessory combo is really best on her. At least you can hope she'll just kill the enemy before they sleep her.

The Cannon Angels are by far the nastiest enemies here, but it's not just Cannon Angels. What else we got here?

The Fire Elementals aren't as scary, but they can do some damage too.



Fortunately, out of everything here, they have least HP at 400. Yeah, 800 or so is about the norm for HP in this dungeon.



Now these guys-



Oh that's just sad.



Actually, while the Decepticons here did not take the bomp from bompalompalomp, they can cast Spark Cannon.



And they're pretty good at it. They telegraph that by holding their flashing hands up from under their cloak.



Oh yeah, and there's these guys. They're Blood Lords. They do about 30 to 40 damage per attack, and they get two. I assume they get a special attack too, but I never saw it.



At the very least, you get some damn good MExp and Silver out of it. I could buy even more Silverlights.

I never actually do.

And that's about it for enemies. I suppose I should actually talk about the dungeon itself at least a little bit.



Oh, here's something to talk about! On the second floor, there's an exit. Go out and-



Uh. Okay. I went and looked at the first update again, and yes, this is the exit Hiro runs out of when he's escaping the ruins at the beginning of the game. Neat continuity, I guess. I'm not sure why the real entrance of the dungeon can't be where we ran out; it seems like a really weird superfluous detail. I guess it's meant to be a trap, but it's on the second floor. That it's barely a speedbump. Anyway, back into the dungeon. On the third floor there's... uh...



This.

You can't fall through that hole, by the way. No, seriously, I tried. You just slide along the edge, like you with all other solid objects.



There's a couple holes, but can't fall down those either. I... I don't get this dungeon.



On the fifth floor we've got this armor for Hiro. Sadly, this means unequipping the Phoenix Mail, which has Revive Magic attached to it. Leo can wear it, but it's actually a downgrade. It's not that severe a downgrade, so if you really want that Revive Magic you can probably just do it. Still, I've got the Phoenix Ring, so I don't really need it.



On the seventh floor we have a fork in the road. Er, sort of. There is another staircase leading down directly to the right of where you enters. Go down it.



Looks like Hiro is going to get himself a set of these. Although Hiro's current Flaming Shield protects against Sleep, so it's actually really useful here. Still, the Dragon Shield gives him a counter attack, so I just put a Fresh Ring on instead of the Refresher Ring he had on. And yes, Leo can wear the Flaming Shield but he shouldn't.



Now on the eight floor there's a doorway directly to the left of where we enter. If we enter it, we'll get the jewel and we could just warp out. However, further to the left there's two staircases with treasure beyond each of them. Obviously, we go for the treasure first.



If we go down the descending staircase, we get this. The Life Bracelet is for Ronfar and gives a Regen effect. It's a bit of a dilemma, because his current Justice Bracelet lets him cast Magic Swiper. Honestly, though, at this point a) I'm generally having Lemina heal us after battles so Ronfar isn't using any MP and b) if I need to give Ronfar MP in boss fights I might as well use a damn Silverlight. I keep the Justice Bracelet just in case, but I don't think I ever use it.



And up the other flight of stairs we have-




A boss fight! Yeah, they do just put it in the middle of the room. I knew this fight was coming, but I didn't realize where it was, so I was caught off guard.

We have fought Doppelgangers as a random encounters in the Dragon's Den, but we only fought two or three at a time. Not only are we fighting the full set, these guys are a lot stronger than the guys we fought before.

Still, like in Dragon's Den, the Hiro clone is the strongest, so we focus on him first.



THEIR JEAN IS FASTER THAN MY JEAN?! I CALL SHENANIGANS!

By the way, that did about 100. DoppelJean gets four attacks. At least she doesn't focus on one character.



Still, the most dangerous doppel remains Hiro. This battle got off to an auspicious start.



DoppelLeo's Flash Blade is a little less impressive, though.



Oh, by the way, Leo had a new skill I never showed off. It's Grizzle Gash; it hits all enemies. It's nice. Can't really go wrong with that sort of skill.

Thankfully, DoppelRonfar and DoppelLemina are as stupid as they were in Dragon's Den and they just whack us with their sticks. Well, they try to.



Oh, yeah, Jean's current equipment allows her to counter. And when she does, she still hits all enemies. Nice.

Thankfully, I had Lem cast White Dragon Protect in the earlier round, so DoppelHiro's Poe Sword doesn't kill anyone off. (And it would have been Ronfar!)

Oh, and speaking of DoppelHiro and counters-



Jean kills off DoppelHiro after countering DoppelLeo. Nice.

Leo revives Hiro, and we're back in business.



Man, even DoppelLemina hits for a fair amount.



Anyway, Jean kills off all the rest of the doppels in the third turn. I don't think I've properly established how awesome the Lucia's Tear/Dimension Ring combo is, especially if you're getting lucky with the crits.



And these Doppelgangers reward far better than the ones in Dragon's Den. Damn.

So what did we fight this random boss fight for?



A staff for Lemina. Seems a little underwhelming, honestly. Actually, this is her best staff, gives a wisdom boost, and it has MP absorb. Doesn't cast a spell if you use it, though, which seems odd to me. I still keep the Onyx Staff around just so Lemina can do something in battles that's not attacking or using MP.

And that was it for treasure. Let's go back to the eight floor, through the door, and get the jewel.






: Now that we have the left Dragon Eye Jewel, I wonder where the right one is? Do you know, Hiro?

...uh, Nall told us. Have you not been paying attention?

In any case, we are done with the Dragon Ruins. Time to warp out.



First, I spent my MExp. I finally maxed out Ronfar's Health skillset. The rest went into Lem's Fire magic. She got her upgraded Fire all-enemies spell, but still hasn't gotten onto her third tier fire spells.

While I'd normally want each of these dungeons to have its own update, the Dragon Ruins weren't that interesting, so let's just go on and do the next epilogue dungeon while we're here. Where did Nall say the next dungeon was?


Ah. Let's go to area where the White Dragon Cave is and look around.



Oh, that was easy. Yeah, it's on the way to the White Dragon Cave, and as long as you made sure to talk to Nall, you can't miss it.




They really didn't put a lot of effort into these epilogue dungeons, did they?

The remake removes this dungeon entirely. Instead, the second epilogue dungeon is in a forest between Vane and Azado. It's a water dungeon. It's okay.

Actually, the remake is kind of weird about the epilogue. You can't visit the optional dungeons until the endgame, for one. So that means no chests get refilled in the epilogue. Which is simpler, yes, but I still don't know why they'd push all the optional content to the end game. Also they add two new optional dungeons. Which if I recall they're kind of ass.



Back to the dungeon at hand. The Sunken Tower here has kind of a gimmick. We start on the sixth floor. Our eventual goal is to reach the seventh, but we first have to go all the way down. Each of the floors are divided into very small, separate boxes, and for right now there's only one way to go, so this actually goes very quickly.



On the third floor, there's another ascending staircase to the left. Go up and you get-



Nothing.

Meanies.

On the second floor you again have a split in the road. Go left, since there's nothing on the right.



And suddenly I remember I haven't mentioned enemies at all. Mainly because they're the same enemies as in the Dragon Ruins, but with Hell Raisers instead of Fire Elementals.



They're pretty nasty customers. They're as fast as or faster than Jean (SHENANIGANS!!!), can Stone you, and since they have two attacks, they can hit you once you're stoned. Fortunately, their attack power is rather low. (Hiro never actually died in this battle, but he got close.)



Once we're on the first floor, it's time to go back up. Until the fifth floor, all you can do is just go up.



On the fifth floor, if you're paying attention, you'll see this. There is, indeed, a door there.



We're going back down- again! This will lead you down to the second floor. It'll look like a dead end, but-



Secret passage!

I guess it's easy enough to stumble upon it by accident, but considering that this game doesn't really have secret passages, this is a bit of mean trick.



We get a weapon for Leo. It has a "surefire attack" which I'm pretty sure means it can't miss. I'm more excited to finally get a new weapon for him.

And now we go all the way back up to the fifth floor, and continue going up to the seventh floor, which is the top. Once we reach the top floor we just need to find the jewel and we're technically done, but there's treasure to get, damn it.



There's three other descending staircases on the top floor, but two of them lead to dead ends. Instead let's-



Wow, I got ambushed! That hardly ever-



Oh this could be bad.



Oh, I never mentioned that the Cannon Angel have an AoE attack. They do.



But, yeah, this is what I end the surprise round on.



So the end result shouldn't be surprising. Cannon Angels are nasty normally, but getting ambushed by them is just mean, game.

When I reload, I get ambushed again, but thankfully by only one Cannon Angel this time.

_{For the sake of completion, they're actually called Cannon Thugs in this dungeon, even though they're pretty much the same enemy as the Cannon Angels in the previous dungeon. And they're not like the Cannon Angels in Zophar- fuck it, let's just call them Cannon Angels.}



Anyway, the only path that leads to treasure is the top right staircase here. It'll look like a dead end when you go down it, but if you walk down a bit you'll see a door. Go down it to the fifth floor.



They're a staircase to your left, and another staircase beyond the doorway. Let's go through the doorway first.



A new robe for Lemina! It can absorb magic, although I never really see enemies here use magic on me. Also, the robe she already has on lets her cast Recovery Litany, which I've been relying on. I decided I'd try out the new robe, but honestly I'll probably switch back to old one, at least for dungeon crawling. I quite like having her with Recovery Litany.

Anyway, let's go back up and check on the other pathway. Go down the stairs and keep going down until you reach the third floor.



You actually go out through the secret passage, which is a little odd. Anyway, one more floor down.





Both of these are for Jean. The Goddess Bracelet gives a boost to agility while replacing Aura Bracelet which boosted range and let her cast one of Hiro's shitty spells. It's not even a contest, especially considering my accessory choice. The Spiked Jacket is just a straight upgrade.

All right, back up to the seventh floor! From the staircase, just go left. And, uh... make sure you're healed up and maybe have the White Dragon Crest and Blue Dragon Crest equipped because-


: Your daring will be your downfall. I cannot allow you to take the Dragon Jewel to open the Star Dragon Tower. There can be no travel to the Blue Star until the appointed time. I will stop you at any cost...



Hey, it's our old friend Bandit Butt!



Well I'm happy to see you too, asshole. (That's Aura Blast, by the way.)

Yeah, so Bandit Butt here is much, much nasty than when we faced him last. First off, he has over ten thousand hit points. He does massively high damage, he's fast... he's a mean dude.



Oh, and when he does this little number, his next move is going be something called Snake Attack. Also, this blocks your attacks. Remember how I said he was fast? Yeah, if he pulls this, every one except Jean is going to waste their attacks. Yay.



Snake Attack itself isn't that bad, though. It's an AoE, although you can't really tell from the gif.



Oh, and thanks Revive Magic for putting Lemina all the way over there so I can't use Magic Shield. You're a peach.



Oh, and when Jean did her Blue Dragon Vigor each fucking hit was a critical. She only did about 380 per hit, so this isn't a repeat of Hiro's demolishing of Master Zophar, but still kind of impressive.

Anyway, when Bandit Butt's eyes are flashing he's going to-



Oh that's not a promising name for an attack.



Really, what's hard in this fight is keeping Lemina alive. I never even got to see what Pressure Cooker did, because when I did get her up I just wanted to keep her alive.



Oh, not cool! Plagiarizing asshole.



Oh, and for some reason, he can an attack called Slaughter Slice but it's the same thing as Killing Fields. I think the difference is that after Slaughter Slice, he gets another attack. (Or it's a response to White Dragon Protect, which I did cast, but I really doubt it.)



I actually put an Angel Ring on Hiro before this fight, basically because I couldn't think of a better accessory. So I got at least one use out of an Angel Ring. Go me.

_{Of course, had I put it on Lemina instead she could survived the first round and put up Magic Shield. I'm a great planner.}

Still, as annoying as this fight is, I wouldn't say it's hard. One more Blue Dragon Vigor and he's down.



By the way, he gives the maximum amount of experience any enemy in this game can give. Any more triggers a roll-over glitch. The Ice Mongrels around the White Dragon Cave give this much experience if you manage to kill them. Had we somehow killed one when we first encountered them that would have been a major boon.


: Don't think that this is the last time our paths will cross... You have not won...
: ...
: Hey, that's the guy we met in Bandit Butte, isn't it? He must be some sort of guardian or something. I wish there was some way to let him know that our intentions are good, just like Althena...

Considering that we don't have an antagonist at this point, we've got to have someone adding conflict. So, I wouldn't bet on this resolving peacefully.


: Hiro, you've found the other jewel! Now we've got both! Let's make tracks for the Star Dragon Tower! I bet these get us in!

This time around no acrobatics are necessary, so we just walk up and talk the jewel.

And you'd think now is the time to warp out, but there's one more little thing to the left.



Now you'd think this was a weapon for Jean.



It's not. She can't equip it.



And this all the hint text says about it. As a matter of fact, the Japanese version displays stats for it, but it's still not equippable. I'm guessing this was intended to be a weapon, but it was either coded into database incorrectly or otherwise incomplete. The fact that it's not dummied out and in a freaking treasure chest is a little baffling, though. They must really not have been trying very hard by this point in development.

So what does it do?



It casts Plasma Shock if used as an item. Lame.

EDIT: Prism has some words on the Flame Fist:




And on that disappointing note, that's it for Dragon Eye jewels. Next time... we're gonna finish the game. For real this time.