Interman's Final Fantasy extravaganza

March 7, 2008



* Last night I was going for the final bosses, and things were looking pretty good. Right before the second last boss I ran into a pack of sorcerers, and they nailed my healer (the only one who can resurrect) with an instant-kill spell. I thought the ProRing was supposed to deal with these guys too, but I guess not. Because of this I'm leveling up a bit more, just in case.
* And that did the trick. I got past the sorcerers the second time, nailed the second last boss, ran out of potions to fully heal before the final boss, but got him anyway. I won't spoil the ending though

Thoughts about the game:
Well, it's longer than I thought. It may be one of the more boring games I've played, but it's definitely got a lot of 'stuff' going on, considering its age. At first it felt a lot like a job, and that you were fighting a spreadsheet, and while that feeling never really goes away they do throw some kind of cool things at you. It's important to keep in mind that I played through it using a walkthrough, and a huge map. Without these aids it would've been excruciatingly boring, and even frustrating, because there are for instance times when you need to talk to guys who I admittedly would not have visited first. Quest log and a proper map seem to be luxuries we take for granted these days.

During the first few hours I wasn't really that impressed with the graphics. I may not have played too many NES games the past few years, but at least during the second half of the game it starts looking better. The enemies get more detailed / interesting, and you start to really explore the continents that aren't just comprised of grass and water.

So was it worth putting in the hours? I'd say so. The hours would probably be better spent learning a language, or maybe an instrument, but it was nice seeing the first mention of many of the characters I've seen or fought in FF12.

I'm hoping to finish the second during easter. It depends on whether it snows or rains

FINAL FANTASY 2

It's easter, and unless we get good weather I'll be playing through FF2! I've glanced through the parts of a walkthrough that explain the new gameplay mechanics and there's definitely some neat stuff.



The game starts with your party being annihilated by four riding douche bags. You're somehow rescued and taken to the castle mentioned above. There you talk to Lady Nina, who runs the place.



This is what it looks like when you actually get to walk around. Initial impressions are good. The graphics are better, and the music not as nauseating.

* The characters themselves don't level up, but their individual skills, such as swords, shields, and strength level up as they're being used.

* If you're poisoned during battle you won't stay poisoned afterwards. This means you won't have to walk around with 3424390 antidotes, which is great.

* There's the concept of "battle rows". For both sides there are two rows that characters can stand in. Melee characters typically stand in front, while the magic users hide in the back. The back row can only be damaged by magic spells, or if the front row has been wiped.

March 16, 2008



I'm visiting relatives now that it's easter, and to get here I spent about a day on a boat the size of a ferry. This meant quite a few hours of free time, so I got some good quality time with FF2.

The screenshot for today isn't too exciting, but it shows the loot screen, which is new. So far monsters have dropped potions for the most part, but it gets better apparently.

The progress I've made entailed going through the first few towns, trying to figure out the geography, getting better equipment, and trying to help out the rebels. My main mission at the moment is to sabotage a big flying warship which some dudes in a village have been forced to work on. They used to be guarded by this nasty commander guy, but he's been replaced by some lazy guy, so I have a fair shot now.

Also, one neat feature is that you can pay for transportation now. One of the first towns you enter let you pay to go by boat to another town, where you can pay even more to go farther away by airship. Definitely a time saver.

The characters you interact with seem quite a bit more interesting this time around. It might have to do with the translation, but there are actual dialogues now. For instance when you're going to talk to some story related character you have the options of saying something, learning something, and using an item. The rebel leader talks among other things of the warship. By clicking learn, and then warship you keep that word in a notebook of sort, so when you talk to someone else you can go to say, and then mention warship. Eventually you do get quite a few things to say, but you can usually guess what's relevant or not.

The overall difficulty seems more balanced, even though high level monsters lurk in some fairly early areas. You do have to grind to get by though.

And finally I should expound some more on the level up/down mechanic. As I mentioned your stats go up as you use something, but other stats go down if you don't use other things. A melee heavy character will have his INT drop quite fast, and his melee power grow just as much. Characters have a higher chance of gaining HP when they're low on health, so since you can damage your own characters a pretty cheezy way is to hurt yourself until you're really low, and then just wipe out the enemies. Additionally there's a weird bug in the weapon skill level up algorithm where you can select an enemy to attack, cancel it, select it again, cancel it again, and so on. This gives you a pretty substantial bonus depending on the level of the enemy. Remember the high level monsters I mentioned? Once you're at a half decent one tactic is just to look for the easier of the bunch, do the select-cancel trick, and try to somehow kill the enemy with spells. I might give this a shot if the game turns really hard, but if not I'll try to play the game as intended.

My face stinks XD

March 17, 2008





Got to the warship, but the villain and his buddy fled, and are heading to the neighbor city. Guess I'll have to kick some ass.

It seems I have to harness some kind of solar energy to destroy the warship, and to get to it I need the goddess bell, and to get it I need to find some guy named Josef.


Some more pics from today's adventures


Zooming along on my ice sled.


Some beavers that helped me find this item I needed.


Stupid rats. You have to use antidotes to remove the effect of their poison attacks, which is annoying.


An annoying boss that heals itself when you use magic against it.


With the boss gone and the "egil torch" in my possession I can finally get the sun flame, which I'll use to blow up the warship.


The rebel leader was heading for the nearby town to meet up, but they got intercepted by the warship, and landed in the middle of nowhere.


Still, I found the very first FF chocobo, who gave me a much needed ride.

Wish I had the time to play some of the older ones, right now im playing the Metal Gear Solid series, just beat the 2nd one and im playing the 3rd.

MGS3 is the best in the series because you play the real deal: BIG BOSS KAMI XD

March 18, 2008


Rescued the princes and the pilot, and now I'm making my way to the engine room.


Take that, scummy bandits


Not the first time I've heard that line


BLAMMO

With the warship gone I'm making my way to this remote village to stock up on fat gear. I ran into a pirate chick who offered to sail me there, only to have her pirate buddies attack me. They lost. I recruited the girl, and got their ship.

After returning to the rebels the king died, just after telling me to seek out the dragoons, a race nearly wiped out some time ago. I sailed to their castle and met a woman and her boy. They want me to get a pendant so they can communicate with the man of the house. I assume some big nasty thing is guarding it.

March 19, 2008



Today hasn't been as EXCITING as the previous days. I needed to grind to make it through the cave north of the castle, so that took a few hours.


These guys were giving me some issues at first.


The cave is pretty big, contains a lot of paths and a lot of gear, but in the end I fought my way past these two guardians,




and brought the dragon egg to the sacred pool. The last dragon passed away, but hopefully the baby dragon will come out of nowhere to rescue me in the end - or something.

Continued...

With that done I went back to the rebel hq, where apparently Hilda, the leader, had gone crazy. I went to have a chat.




Hmmmmm


Great...


Nice


Guess that's what I'm doing tomorrow.