Finally, the punch class/crown. I enjoy punchy classes.
Update #14: Flying
Click here for update 14!
YouTube Link: Invidia
Dragon hatching, for real this time!
Also, forgetting to show the math minigame. Hahahahaha whoops.
That is, now that we have the harp:
YouTube Link: The Dragon Egg
The dragon has good taste, this is the second-best track in the game.
The egg cracks, and…
YouTube Link: Riding on the Dragon
…our dragon’s kinda dopey lookin’.
What isn’t dopey, however, is its theme song, which just so happens to be the best track in the game and is an extremely underrated example of how to do faux-chiptunes well.
: Hehe. What a cute little feller!
: Look at those magnificent wings! He’s still young, but he’ll be able to fly us to Spelvia.
: Okay, than. Let’s do it!
: Please take me with you. I have to see if my brother is still safe and sound!
And away we go!
It’s not a very good minigame anyway.
: Fly like the wind!
: …What’s going on? Why did Paul and John both just take off on me like that?
: * sigh * Oh, well. I suppose I’ll just have to do everything myself.
: Now, let’s see. First job is to try and find a way to lift the curse from Horne.
YouTube Link: Urbeth
And here we have Ringo, ditched a second time and still hanging around Urbeth.
No poll this time, for two reasons: firstly, this is a particularly stressful solo segment if you don’t have the exact correct setup, and secondly (and more importantly), I’ve been feeling that the polls have been happening a bit too close together lately so I thought now would be a good time to give 'em a rest.
Anyway:
Ringo appears to have spotted something.
Something that just so happens to be none other than Spelvia, floating conveniently close to Urbeth’s tower. Lucky break!
First and foremost, of course, is getting prepared. Elementalist has a passive resistance to all elemental attacks, while our shield and cape protect us from fire damage and confusion, respectively.
We’ll get to why this (and also the Mythril that is now in our inventory) is important in a bit.
Anywho, since Thauzand’s our biggest benefactor in this town, we ought to pay him a visit regarding our whole being-ditched-again situation:
It would help for Ringo to know where he’s gone, yeah.
: I’m afraid I don’t have any spare ships. Which makes it a wee bit hard for you to follow him.
Somewhere that Ringo can’t easily follow him, eh? Well, let’s explore our other options:
: You should go to Spelvia then.
: You’ve seen it, right? The giant island, floating in the air?
: The people there could help, I bet.
: Why don’t you talk to some of the other merchants and find out more?
Well then, how serendipitous that good ol’ Spelvia just so happens to be passing by!
This is… nothing special, just an otherwise-ordinary steel sword enhanced with gems. Its attack power is nice, I suppose, but the lack of capacity to exploit elemental weaknesses renders it fairly meh.
Unfortunately, because John is no longer present, we’ve lost access to the shopkeeping minigame.
I mean, we’re still loaded after the first time, but it’s the principle of the thing.
Anyway, the Thauzand recommended we talk to the other rich folks:
Well, that’s awful presumptuous of you, lady.
This boosts defense by a not-very-impressive amount.
: But it’s a long, hard climb to the top, and the place is full of beasties. You better be prepared!
…wow. Thauzand sure hit the nail on the head about these folks being helpful, eh?
On the plus side, this place is a mere few feet from Bylion’s place…
…and our magic key was placed in the bag that defies time and space.
How… how long have you been…
…and she just does shop things for us as if nothing was weird at all. Huh.
Incidentally, she sells the items that do elemental damage when used in battle… including the bomb fragments that were apparently really hard to get one’s hands on not too long ago. Looks like they were just locked up all along!
Truly, the magic key has brought about a miracle this day.
Alright Mylion, you’d better impress me.
: The Tower to the Sky was meant to reach Spelvia, but I wonder if they really built it high enough.
: I bet these Rainbow Boots of mine will help a million.
…tell me more.
: I’ll let you have them… in exchange for some Mythril.
Luckily, I stole some extra Mythril back around Invidia and deposited it in storage.
Also luckily, storage runs on the same principle of space and time defiance as the key item bag.
: I just KNOW you’re going to find them very useful indeed. Good luck!
For the record, if you don’t have any Mythril to give him, you have to buy the boots from the shopkeeper downstairs, which can get expensive if you have a less ridiculous sum of gil than we’ve got.
Well, they sound impressive, at any rate. You’re tentatively off my shitlist, Mylion.
With that, it’s about time to scale us a tower!
YouTube Link: The Witch’s Mansion
We start by heading west as the east is merely a dead end.
Unsurprisingly, the Tower to the Sky’s most notable feature is its healthy amount of floors.
The path south here just leads to a dead end.
Before going upstairs…
…we get something extremely boring. Sadly there isn’t much interesting to see here in terms of treasure.
Shortly after ascending a floor, we come face-to-face with the reason we equipped the confuse cape. While it would only be an annoyance if we had more party members, since we’re currently playing Ringo solo right now, confusion is basically certain, smacking-yourself-in-the-face-induced death.
The south is progress, the east…
…is element resistance.
Speaking of element resistance, this is why we have both Elementalist and a fire shield equipped, this absolutely wrecks your shit solo if you don’t prepare for it in some way.
Anyway, back to the task at hand.
Nothing much to this floor, the stairs down are in the southeast and the stairs up are in the northwest.
This is nice to have for free but doesn’t do much good to a solo character.
Anyway, the way up from this floor is the middle south path.
Bah.
This floor is just a hallway with a room in it.
This one, on the other hand, is a hallway with two rooms.
This would be nice, since some of the monsters here have earth-elemental attacks, were it not for the whole confusion-being-lethal thing.
And another hallway with a single room!
This is barely even a pittance at this point, even if we had a more typical sum of gil, but it’s still probably the best chest in the tower.
Oh boy, a save room, that can only mean…
…a wide open space with a rainbow and a single man?
They weren’t kidding when they said they stopped working on the tower.
So we’ve heard! We have a pair, but it’s kind of a hard rumor to believe, you know?
Might as well put it to the test since we have a rainbow right here, though!
Well, will you look at that. That’s a hell of a thing.
The rainbow is…
…a decidedly long walk.
One which deposits us directly into another dungeon.
I was distinctly not prepared for that tower and got my ass kicked a lot. Including not having Mythril and having to scrounge up the funds to get the Rainbow Boots.
The dragon flying song is real good.
Poorly-conceived April Fool’s Update: The Update For The First of April
Click here for the update for the first of April!
So, it’s April Fool’s day, eh? This one time for April Fools, I told some dudes that the SyFy Channel was going back to calling itself the SciFi Channel. Since this is obviously the pinnacle of April Fools, I frankly don’t see why anyone else bothers anymore, seeing as I’ve already won.
Anyway, we are now onto chapter 4, business as usual.
Since there was a lot of chatter about this in the thread, I’d like to take a moment to address it here: remember, most people know of Marth through Smash Bros., and the thing about Marth in Smash is that he has, like, animations and voice clips and stuff that makes it seem like he has an actual personality. Yes, we know that Marth comes from a world populated by non-sentient automatons and as such is non-sentient himself, but that doesn’t mean the general population does.
The names of the countries in this game are still a class act.
Also, the placement of the ‘h’ in “Dolhr” will forever throw me off.
…and Malledus is still making a superpower out of obvious exposition. Never change, Malledus.
YouTube Link: Preparations
That said, Malledus has a point; this is the first chapter where we have access to the preparations screen.
All these options are exactly what they say on the tin so I see no reason to spend much time here. That being said:
We have one more unit than the limit on this mission allows; as such, we’ll let Frey sit this one out after last time’s surprise crit landed him slightly ahead of everyone else.
As promised, Draug receives the honor of being our first reclass so as to take advantage of his very un-knight-like growths.
I know there was some skepticism from the thread, and it’ll take awhile, but I assure you this will be a much better setup in the long run.
And here are our sacrifices, all lined up for easy warpage.
Yes, as pointed out numerous times in the thread, deliberately killing off three of our dudes in a single map seems excessive, but remember: unlocking the first side-mission requires that we have 15 units or less by the end of chapter 6, and by that point we can have up to 27. Frankly we’re kind of behind at this point, sacrifice-wise; this will take us to a body count of 5 of the 12 we need dead.
Anyway, here we start in the lower right corner of the map.
These knuckleheads are across the lake to the north…
…while this ass will make a beeline for this village pretty much immediately.
Naturally, we have our goal in the upper left. Yes, it’s another megatank mission; unfortunately, this one will not be as easy as the one in the prologue.
No bait-and-switch this time, Bentheon here is the actual boss, nobody to show up and tell him to get lost like the megatank guy in the prologue.
Anyway, we now have control:
YouTube Link: The Time to Act
Step one: eliminate this guy, since the village he’s intended to go after is one of the most important in the game.
Meanwhile, Lena gets to work putting our sacrifices in harm’s way, netting her a wet fart of a level.
Castor, while surprisingly tenacious, still gets exactly what he and every other Fire Emblem archer deserves.
Caeda and Abel go after the archer and thief to the northwest of the lake; unfortunately Caeda comes ever-so-slightly short, but I have a(n admittedly risky) plan.
Meanwhile, Lena sends the original Fire Emblem archer to a fate befitting someone who’d start such an irritating archetype…
…while our main force gets to work on the lake brigade, netting Julian a reasonable level…
…while Barst decides to cement kicking-a-surprising-amount-of-ass as his “thing” this playthrough.
Caeda ends up hurting from the aforementioned archer but comes out still kicking with this pegasus-knight-as-fuck level.
Gordin, too, is surprisingly durable, but he still ends up a corpse.
Serves him right, considering we should have already sacrificed him during the prologue for Norne.
Caeda gets parked on this fort to recuperate from her encounter with the archer.
As much as I’ll miss Wrys, there was really no other fate for him.
Especially since he gave Lena a much-needed mag boost.
Darros finishes cleaning up by the lake…
…while the rest of our main force starts pushing for the goal.
But not before stopping off at another tutorial house, of course.
We get our main force into a reasonable position…
…and start Abel into dealing with the one last chucklefuck from the lake.
Wrys does not have the same durability as Gordin and Castor.
With the lake squad out of commission, the dudes surrounding the castle start making their move.
But then, so do we.
We end this turn, and…
Will you look at that, one of the cavaliers is considerably prettier than the rest. Wonder what it could mean?
Luckily, Ogma chooses not to completely whip his ass.
Not the best, but not the worst either.
These assholes keep marching our way.
But so do we do the same.
… Matthis doesn’t seem to be a particularly bright individual.
But maybe we can do something about that.
YouTube Link: Come, Join Us
The last of Wrys’s stupid staff is used on an equally stupid idiot.
Right on cue, Matthis’ recruitment prompts a Bomb squad to come in from the northeast. I warned you all that wasn’t a one-off thing!
Fortunately, just like last time, Caeda is the solution.
Just in time for our main force to make their way west.
See what I mean? Kicking a surprising amount of ass, all the way to the bank.
Ogma, meanwhile, will sit the rest of the map out so as to give other units a chance at EXP.
Draug follows Ogma’s lead.
Also, Matthis can talk to Marth.
I know some of you are insistent that these little conversations added for Shadow Dragon give Marth enough character so as to no longer be non-sentient, but I would like to offer up the counterpoint that they all basically boil down to him acknowledging his army is getting bigger and not much else.
Case in point:
You know, I’m beginning to think Matthis might make some mighty fine sacrifice fodder later on down the line.
This rando of a cavalier gives us a surprising amount of trouble.
While Caeda just does her thing.
…a surprising amount of trouble indeed.
And I’d forgotten to use the save point, too.
Luckily, there wasn’t much to see on the return trip to this point.
Hell, it might have been a blessing in disguise, these are way better than the levels we got the first time through.
Although this asshole gives us a bit more trouble this run. I guess it’s no big deal, all things considered.
It doesn’t really take long for us to get to where we were.
Unfortunately, being flustered from the restart made me forget to get screenshots of the Bombs self-destructing on Caeda.
It was still the same as last time, though; self-destruct’s damage is blocked by res, but at an exaggerated level, so just a tiny amount of res means shrugging it off completely. Remember, pegasus knight.
Looks like the level luck from the reset is wearing off, regrettably.
Still, we can only push forward.
Eh.
Makin’ progress, makin’ progress.
And now for this village!
YouTube Link: Come, Join Us
Hoo boy, Merric
Merric, while he does need to shut up forever, isn’t just talk.
We’ll need to get him more tomes so he doesn’t wear Excalibur down on just randos, but that won’t be particularly difficult.
As expected, another new recruit means a quartet of Goombas spawns around this map’s arena. They’re actually surprisingly important, but we’ll get to that later.
Meh.
Pushing forward as usual.
Not bad, not bad.
So, actually fighting a megatank
The attack screen makes it look like a normal fight.
It even makes it look like its weak to the same things all other armored units are weak to.
YouTube Link: Megatank Boss
Actually fighting it, however, is another story altogether.
For one, it completely disarms anyone who tries to take it on head-on, regardless of what they actually had equipped.
And for two, no matter what the menus say it hits for, it’s actually a guaranteed kill on anyone attacking it.
No, the megatank, at least at this early point in the game, is actually a puzzle boss, and it’s a long, long puzzle at that. (Although I’m sure you were able to piece it together yourselves considering the timing and location of the Goomba spawns.) While, luckily, we’ll be able to just fight these things as the game goes on, it’s just not viable to do so at this point.
It’s such a long puzzle, in fact, it’s practically a chapter in and of itself, meaning it’ll have to wait until next time!
My apologies, just a bad idea I had a month ago. Something more real tomorrow, I promise.
You: That joke post yesterday was incredibly dopey and fell really flat.
Me: I ain’t got nothin’ to apologize for!
You: You already apo-
Me:
Look, the whole affair was funnier in my head when I came up with it a month ago at like 2 AM one night, alright?
ANYway:
Update #15: Helter Skelter
Click here for update 15!
YouTube Link: Cave of Wraiths
We rejoin Ringo, who has just reached the floating land of Spelvia.
Rather, she’s just arrived at the very bottom of Spelvia.
Luckily, the Spelvia dungeon is merciful enough to provide a free heal right away.
The very first thing we come across is a very familiar cat.
A cat who provides us with a very-much-overdue reunion.
: * sob * * sniffle *
: Wh-what’s wrong!? Why are you crying, Ringo?
: Forgive me, Your Highness. It’s just that… I’m so happy to see you.
All together now: Awwwwww.
: You see, I always thought I was better off alone, that I didn’t need anybody else.
: B-but now…
: Oh, I’m so glad you’re still willing to confide in me like this!
: I know I’ve been very selfish and bossy to you, and I regret it very much!
: I hope you can accept my apologies, I really do. And… I was wondering… well…
: Would you be so good as to travel with me from now on? As my companion… and friend?
: B-but of course! It would be an honor, my lady… that is to say, my friend.
This is actually one of my favorite scenes in the game; it shows that, despite the deliberately minimal faux-NES personalities, the cast really are growing as people.
Again, no crown distribution poll because I’d been feeling like we’d been having them a bit too close together recently. (Plus our current setup is already good for the rest of the Spelvia Dungeon anyway.)
We’re given another save point almost immediately after the last one due to the change in party members.
This is a fairly brief dungeon, almost certainly due to coming immediately after the tower.
This pheonix down is all there really is to see on this first floor, for instance.
On the next floor, there are two other staircases.
The exit to the southeast leads to a floor with this axe waiting at its northwest corner.
Meanwhile, the north stairs bring us to progress.
This floor is perfectly symmetrical.
The hallways on each side lead to another floor…
…with a mimic.
(Which provides us with extra Mythril, but that’s neither here nor there.)
…and corresponding treasure.
Two mimics, two pieces of light-elemental gear.
With that out of the way, the hall to the south…
YouTube Link: Spelvia
YouTube Link: Spelvia (night)
…brings us, at long last, to Spelvia proper.
Our party members are more concerned with the events of their previous exchange, of course.
Oh, just tell her you love her already.
The town is pretty sparsely populated, the only other human here being this palette swap of the asshole who attacked Urbeth Witch of the Sky.
That… doesn’t bode well, considering why we’re here.
Recall how the Invidians implied that a “mother dragon” was basically the only friend Rolan actually had.
While human presence is definitely lacking, there’s plenty of non-humans here.
…which gives us the opportunity to show off Ringo’s animal form; the transform staff turns her into a rabbit.
I’m sure that won’t be important in any way.
With nothing much left to see outside, it’s time to check out the most prominent feature of Spelvia, its enormous palace.
The first room inside contains a multitude of shops staffed by what appear to be wind-up robots.
They’ll need to be interacted with in animal form.
Talking to them while transformed just leads to business as usual.
However, changing to a human (and changing our gear setup while we’re at it)…
…and talking to one of the 'bots…
…leads to a fight.
They aren’t particularly hard fights; these can be found as random encounters in the dungeons below.
Still, it’s best to keep in mind that you can’t do any shopping as a human here.
Up past the shops…
Is this hallway filled with goats and golems.
Not a good sign for Horne’s curse.
Still, no choice for us but to go see the big man himself.
Something you’ll also remember from Invidia is that they’re much more long-lived than humans.
That’s… ominous.
We finally meet Rolan in his big ol’ throne room.
: That’s right. My name is Rolan… Rolan the Play Hero…
Well, it’s just one town’s curse, I dunno if I’d call that “big”…
: Oh, yes you have. You want me to help save Horne, don’t you?
Alright, I guess calling it a “big favor” is more honest:
: I know about Horne.
(Both options continue the same way from here.)
: I never see you humans until you need help, then you come crying to me with your sob stories. Boo-hoo for you, I don’t care!
Well, shit.
C’mon man, be a pal.
: He thinks he can do everything on his own and refuses everybody’s help.
Well, I don’t know if I’d say that was Ringo’s problem in particular; pretty much the entire party was like that for awhile.
Rolan is kind of a dark mirror for the party in that way; where the main characters are at the point where they’re finally starting to get their shit together, Rolan has apparently been at a low point for centuries now.
Well, there’s only one other (apparent) human here in Spelvia, maybe she’ll have some idea.
: His soul has been swallowed by darkness and sealed tight away.
: If you wish to make his heart free again, then you must enter this, the Fountain of Hope.
Well, okay.
We step into the fountain and there’s a flash…
…and, suddenly, we’re deposited right inside Rolan’s brain.
Appropriately, there he is right here in front of us.
I mean, we have nothing else to go on.
: I am all that is left of Rolan’s goodness, a mere shadow of what once was a kind young man. Alone, I am powerless.
: Yes, powerless… But with your courage and dedication, who knows? Perhaps united we can drive back the darkness.
So we’re very literally confronting Rolan’s inner demons. Well, we’ve already got an enormous demon body count under our belts, what’s a few more?
The last bit of Rolan’s good side, incidentally, is our fourth and last guest party member.
He’s also freely able to walk outside the fountain with the rest of the group.
: I am the last piece of goodness left in Rolan’s soul, but alone, I am powerless to change him.
I mean, you’re asking that of the dude whose soul it is you’re exploring, and he seems perfectly okay with the whole setup…
Worth noting is that the golems are willing to talk to Rolan without the need for the transformation staff.
Also, the “other” Rolan we spoke to earlier is now nowhere to be found.
(For the record Rolan can also be transformed with the staff and he turns into this dog.)
Rolan, like all guest characters, comes with a crown that we do not yet have access to ourselves.
In this case, it’s the Hero crown, which is based around the usage of swords.
(Unusually for a Final Fantasy game, this is the first character we have that actually specializes in them, considering we’re nearing the halfway point of the game.)
This gives Rolan the Reckless ability, which reduces Rolan’s defense when he uses it…
…but allows him to hit extra hard in exchange.
Granted, it helps that the sword he comes with is light-elemental and there’s plenty of monsters that are weak to light coming up.
With that out of the way, time’s coming up for Rolan to finally face his darkness.
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Speaking of swords, do you still have George’s starting weapon?
Unfortunately I only recently learned about The Secret of the King’s Shortsword and as such parted with it near the start of the game. I wish I’d known, it would have been a good way to show off the upgrade shop in Urbeth.
So, uh, whoops I guess.
Update #16: Help!
Click here for update 16!
YouTube Link: Another Space
When we last left off, we were about to start some very literal soul-searching with Rolan!
The first thing we find is this sweet-ass armor, so already we know his psyche isn’t a complete loss.
The opening room consists of a quartet of doors with the largest one sealed off. We head through the leftmost door first.
Said door deposits us in this void inhabited by a cyan silhouette.
The silhouette warps a handful of feet away and we need to catch it quickly, otherwise we get this message and the puzzle resets.
It’ll warp four or five times then return to its original position:
Now for the middle room!
It’s the same deal; chase the silhouette, get some Rolan backstory; the only difference is the positions the silhouettes teleport to.
Also, the random encounters here consist primarily of Fomor-like doppelgangers of the main cast (bizarrely including John and Paul despite Rolan having no knowledge of them).
There’s also the occasional encounter with more standard ghost-type enemies but that’s really less important.
They’re mere shadows of the characters that they are imitating, in more ways than one. It helps that they’re weak to light and Spelvia has provided us with an abundance of light-elemental attack power.
Anyway, the matter at hand:
Now for the last unsealed door.
Same ol’, same ol’.
After chasing down the three silhouettes, the large door in the middle finally opens.
Through the door is… another Rolan.
: I was weak, I was powerless, but they still made me a hero.
: Save the world, they said. The world? ME?
: …
: But, but we need your help. Horne needs your help!
: You’re the only one we can turn to.
: I’ve been alone for so long now. Why should I care what happens to you humans?
: There’s nothing more wonderful than having people rely on you, having people turn to you in their time of need…
: but by turning away from them, you are making yourself as lonely as anyone can be.
I really like this scene in conjunction with the backstory the silhouettes drop earlier in the dungeon. Rolan is a nice foil for the main cast and a nice look at how they might have turned out if they hadn’t had their friends…
Not even Rolan had thought his issues were so bad they could take physical form.
I couldn’t get a shot of it but here the “other” Rolan runs into “our” Rolan and the two apparently merge.
: No! No way! I can’t do it…
: It’s okay, Rolan. You’re not alone any more (sic)!
YouTube Link: Strong Enemy
Rolan’s issues manifest as both a fire dog and an ice dog.
They’re weak to what you’d expect them to be.
When one of the dogs is hit with magic the element it’s weak to it loses its aura, reducing its attack power for a few turns until it gets its aura back. (This only works with magic, physical attacks won’t remove the aura even if it’s the correct element.)
Both of them have party wide breath attacks of their respective elements.
The fire dog is primarily a physical attacker while ice is primarily magic and both have buffs to their respective attack type.
YouTube Link: A Desperate Situation
I don’t get a chance to show it, but if one dog dies and it takes too many turns to kill the other then the one that dies is revived.
Fortunately, it never comes to that.
: Were those beasts of darkness the same monsters that controlled Rolan’s heart?
: D-did we win…? Did I…?
: Yes, you did, Rolan! You’re free now. You don’t have to hide away any more (sic)!
: Thank… you…
The game allows us to talk to our party at this point but they say nothing new.
Then again, Ringo does have a point here, we should probably stop intruding.
Just as we leave the fountain, the ground shakes…
And the skies turn a decidedly unfriendly color.
Well, the sky witch has generally known what’s what up to this point, let’s ask her:
: It began the moment that Rolan’s soul was released…
: Somehow, his soul had kept the darkness trapped, but now it is free to pour into the world.
: If this continues… No! You MUST find Rolan!
Welp. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems.
On the plus side, we see quite the sight for sore eyes to the north.
: Er, hi, John…
: Looks like you’re back to your old self. That’s good.
: …Y-yeah.
: Ringo, I’m really sorry I left you in Guera without saying anything.
: I owe you an apology too, Ringo.
: It’s okay, really. I know I wasn’t strong enough to adventure with either of you.
: But you don’t have to worry about me any more (sic). No more holding you back, I promise.
: But we’ve got more important things to worry about. The darkness is overflowing, pouring out of Rolan’s soul…
: Then we’ve got to find him!
Finally, after the entire first half of the game, the team has sorted out their personal problems and is now… well, a team again.
(There’ll be a poll for crown distribution after the next update instead of this one, I’d like to establish a few things about the second half of the game first.)
: What’s important is that you do your very best all the time, and never give up, no matter what!
I think it’s safe to say we’re all better people than that at this point, Ringo.
And it’s just in time, too, seeing how Rolan has taken on a decidedly ominous new look.
The game’s lack of targeting usually isn’t a problem, but I remember it being kind of a pain for the ice and fire dog fight.
Don’t Let Me Down
Click here for update 17!
YouTube Link: Cursed Town
When we last left our heroes, our efforts to help Rolan deal with his issues resulted in us covering the world in demons.
Rolan himself is looking less-than-stellar as well.
The most important thing for what’s coming up is protecting ourselves from dark damage.
Also, our healer needs protection from light.
Welp, sounds like there’s no problems here!
: Rolan, snap out of it!
: It’s no good. He can’t hear a thing we say!
: DIE, HUMANS. DIE!
: R-run… while you still… can…!
YouTube Link: Strong Enemy
Rolan is… kind of a rude fight, quite frankly.
The majority of his attacks are dark-elemental, hence the darksteel shields, which he also absorbs.
His one attack that isn’t dark-elemental is Thundara here, which does light damage and can paralyze.
He is also resistant to all other elements.
YouTube Link: A Desperate Situation
Fortunately, we have the attack power to get past his defenses.
He’s still pretty good at keeping our healer busy, though.
It takes some doing, but he goes down in time.
YouTube Link: Victory
We also get our hands on our first diamonds, the rarest variety of gem, which is required to upgrade crowns to their highest level.
: I don’t care about saving the world, but I care about you, Rolan!
: You’re my one and only brother. Hang in there!
: Rekoteh…
It was a long, long time coming, but we finally have our happy reunion.
Oh, hey, it’s you. We were kind of in the middle of something, pal.
: Long ago, Rolan was the hero who received our gift of light.
: He drank up the darkness in others’ souls 'til his own heart grew black and dark.
: In his mind he forgot the Light, and his soul was closed to all.
: The darkness has been released, but now it threatens to engulf each and every land in this world.
It’s only natural that we end such a dramatic scene by gaining the ability to be something called “Party Host.”
: Go forth now, Heroes of Light…
Ah well, crisis averted, at least.
…oh.
: Please! My brother can’t do it all on his own. Help him to drive back the world of darkness!
That… sounds like an awful tall order.
Well, the Sky Witch out front seems to know a lot about this sort of thing, I guess information gathering is as good a place to start as any.
Ayy, it’s John and Paul’s boy! Dunno where he went after he dropped them off here but now he’s just hangin’ out here.
: Brave people - brave HEROES - must travel to each nation of the world and quiet this raging storm of darkness…
: And as they do so, they will need to gather the legendary weapons that the hero Rolan once bore.
So, not only did our efforts to help Rolan unleash all the demons he was holding back, we actually unleashed so many demons onto the world that it broke time itself.
Dunno about you but I feel pretty damn accomplished.
Anyway, now that our boy’s back within reach, we can go dragon-ridin’!
YouTube Link: Riding on the Dragon
Setting aside the ominous new direction the sky has apparently chosen to take, the dragon is this game’s airship, FFV style. (Actually better, since this one can actually go over mountains.)
Also note the return of the excellent dragon-riding theme song. (I think this is part of why I like it so much; it stands out drastically compared to airship themes in the rest of the series.)
The dragon can be called anytime while on the world map with the dragon harp. Handy!
With this, we’re given free reign of the entire world; we can go anywhere and do anything. Like the witch said, each town in the world has its own quest to take care of and they can all be done in any order we desire (with the exception of Horne, which must be handled last). In addition, monster strength now scales to the party’s levels, so difficulty is largely the same regardless of the order things are handled in.
Therefore, there is only one logical course of action…
Head right back into Spelvia.
While Spelvia is included in the whole do-things-in-any-order setup, I figured that I’d handle it first regardless since, well, it’s right here.
Our party has more lines in town, but not a lot to say.
Except for George, who points out that Rolan has apparently disappeared.
Curious. Most curious.
(I lied when I said we immediately returned to Spelvia; I took the dragon to the various towns to get equipped with dark-elemental offensive gear and light-elemental defense.)
(Honestly it’s worth just going on a worldwide shopping spree regardless of your chosen course of action; all the shops have new inventory.)
Well, it’s not a very big island; Rolan can’t have gone too far, right?
Plus, this gives us a perfect opportunity to show off our new crowns.
Hero is the first crown we obtain for ourselves that we first saw on a guest character. Since we’ve already seen the basics from when Rolan was in the group, let’s see what we couldn’t do with him.
Bladeblitz is basically the regular physical attack only it hits all enemies at once for an extra AP.
Party Host, sadly, is much less interesting than its name would suggest.
Party Host’s whole deal is the psych up mechanic. Charm here psychs up a random party member until the end of the turn and its upgrade abilities do the same for the whole party. Since the psych up mechanic on the whole is just kinda “meh” the crown is honestly fairly unimpressive.
Anyway, our goal in the Spelvia Dungeons is the very bottom, where Ringo came from the first time.
Oh hey, there’s Rolan! Looks like he lost his little crown, too, and must have gone searching for it. Nothing weird going on here!
: Visitors, here? But why…?
Um, Rolan, it’s-
: Ah, you came at Father’s behest, didn’t you? You have come a long way just to check on my welfare.
Oh, right, the whole “there are so many demons running around that it literally broke time” thing. It appears this is Rolan from the past!
: But you’re wasting your time.
: I won’t open my heart to anyone. Not any more!
Well, it looks like we’re at a point where he’s just kind of a curmudgeon and not millions of demons…
…maybe we can give his soul a jump start on the whole “fixing things” front.
YouTube Link: Another Space
: They scare me… war and fighting scare me to death!
: Rolan the Hero, Rolan the Hero… That’s all I’ve ever heard. But no one asked ME if I wanted to be a hero.
It appears things are still going to hell pretty early on, though.
Our destinations are, unsurprisingly, the three void rooms.
Instead of silhouette chasing, however, it’s just a short walk to a monster, which in this room is to the west of the entrance.
I know I established “dark offense, light defense” earlier, but for now we actually want the opposite. Also, bring echo drops and/or remedies as well as curse-resisting gear.
Just mentioning it here since I forgot to get shots of myself doing it. :V
YouTube Link: Battle With Demons
Unsurprisingly, the Arch Demon here is weak to light…
…and dishes out dark. This attack can also inflict curse, hence the aforementioned preparations.
It has a pretty big bag of HP on top of its status effects but it goes down eventually.
When we go back out of the room, we get a scene:
: I sheltered behind her, hiding from the battles I was supposed to fight. I lived a lie…
: …and that lie let the demons into my heart. They came to steal the power of the hero buried within me!
The only difference between void rooms is the placement of the Arch Demon.
More of the same. After this fight:
: All I ever did was run… Run from people’s hopes, run from my own destiny.
: If only I had a little courage, perhaps I could have driven away the demons myself.
One final Arch Demon.
No scene when we leave the room this time, so now it’s time to check up on Rolan himself.
The tendrils of darkness disappear and Rolan walks through the door. Inside…
We see what can only be the demon head honcho.
This may be a familiar face to those of you who fought a lot of Norende nemeses in Bravely Default.
Now this is the guy we need dark-based attacks and light-based defenses for.
: Besides, we like to see things through to the end.
: I want you to be reunited with your sister and your father, the chief of Invidia…
: Thank you, my brave comrades! With your help, I’ll finally become the hero I was always meant to be!
: Hey, what are friends for? We’d never leave you in the lurch, ever. And don’t you forget it!
I mean, I’m pretty sure this is the version of Rolan we aren’t friends with, yet, but whatever floats your boat.
See what I mean? Head honcho. Duder’s literally named Lucifer.
YouTube Link: The Demon King’s Servants
I will admit that Lucifer kind of gave me some trouble here.
Lucifer, as his name suggests, does light-based damage…
…while being weak to dark.
The worst thing about him is his tendency for causing status effects; his thunder spells cause paralysis while his physical attacks cause silence.
(I can’t really guard against these because I forgot to pick up the accessories that block it and they stop being available in stores post-time-break. :V)
Also obnoxious is Aeroga; we could equip shields that block wind, but that would mean not equipping shields that block light, so the choice is either take extra damage from this or take extra damage from his light attacks. More of his attacks are light-based than wind-based, so Aeroga is his heaviest-hitting move by default.
He’s also another boss that takes flight after awhile.
While he’s in the air, he has access to the second-worst thing about him: Judgment Bolt. Contrary to its usual function and appearance, this time it’s a big ol’ laser that completely destroys your party’s AP.
As a result, the best course of action to take while he’s airborne is to just boost the whole time, since it reduces the damage he does and it’s unlikely your healer will have the AP to do anything effectively.
Lucifer ends up kicking my ass enough times…
…that I choose to bring out the nuclear option.
I make John the Elementalist as he’d been taking the most damage, then upgraded it twice for its most useful ability (arguably the most useful ability), Mysterio.
Truth be told, I honestly prefer to avoid using Elementalist when I can, but sometimes the situation just calls for it.
YouTube Link: Approaching Dread
Lucifer is fairly challenging even with Mysterio active, so it seems the situation did indeed call for it.
(I might have been able to handle the fight without Mysterio if I’d thought to get the aforementioned status-blocking accessories when I could, but that’s just speculation at this point.)
This is much more manageable.
Paul’s accessory made him double resistant to light so with Mysterio the boss is actually more likely to heal him than hurt with it on.
(Not shown here is that the same goes for John due the the Elementalist’s passive resistances.)
No protection from this awful thing, sadly, which is the chief reason this fight is still challenging, as it makes it difficult to heal and renew Mysterio when it wears off.
After taking enough damage, Lucifer starts casting Cura on himself.
It doesn’t do him much good.
You’d think a big-name demon wouldn’t be such a sore loser.
Back so soon?
: You find yourselves in an alternate world, a world that was destined to be saved by the original Rolan of legend.
: The demons you face are mere servants of the Dark Lord himself.
We go almost half the game without a crown that uses swords and along come two in a row!
: O, Heroes of Light.
: Join now with Rolan the champion, and bring Light back to the world.
With that, Spelvia has blue skies again.
: If you can only repair the distortions that are even now appearing in each land, then perhaps this world can be saved.
Travel the world, fix- oh yeah we got a new toy from that, didn’t we?
Paladin is… well, the typical Final Fantasy Paladin class, really. High defense, abilities to keep damage off your buddies, that sort of thing.
We should probably see what Rolan has to say before doing anything else.
It’s worth noting that the golems are now fine with us in human form. Anyway, Rolan:
: I will forever be in your debt. At last, I can stand on my own two feet.
'Bout time, after all that rigamarole.
: I shall travel the world with my dragon. I will learn more of its people and become a hero to everyone.
: Then, at the end of my journey, I shall return to Father and Rekoteh.
I mean, is it really likely, given how time itself is broken?
This just goes in a loop until you say yes. Finally, “but thou must” in its purest form!
: It was once wielded by a great hero, but I have no more need of it now.
And with that we’ve completed Spelvia. This is basically the rest of the game until the end; head to a town, sort out its demon problem, get a crown and a piece of equipment.
You might remember that Bravely Default tried to emulate this and it ended up basically being that game’s biggest flaw. This game actually handles it much better. While there’s some backtracking involved, this half is actually much more involved than just the recycle-the-first-half approach that BD took.
We should probably be on our way as well…
…because while Spelvia is fine again, the rest of the world is not looking so hot.
New Crowns
Click here for new crowns!
Party Host
The Party Host has forgettable stats and is based around a mechanic that’s not especially useful. One of its later abilities, Pot Luck, has a random effect a la main series mainstay Slots, but that’s about it.
Stats:
HP: 1.1
Strength: 1.1
Intellect: 1.1
Spirit: 1.1
Hero
A solid physical attacker. Bladeblitz in particular is useful as it’s a powerful move that hits all enemies on the field. It has balanced enough stats that it can use magic somewhat proficiently but that’s only really good for some backup healing.
HP: 1.1
Strength: 1.1
Intellect: 1.1
Spirit: 1.1
Paladin
Heavy defense, high HP, protects friends, all the standard Paladin stuff. It also hits a bit harder than the average tank.
See next post for important polls!
Probably too many polls ahead!
This’ll be the only time there’s so many at once, I promise. I should have had the foresight to prevent this but it’s been a busy past couple weeks. Sorry!
So, we’ve gotten the band back together and reached the non-linear “sandbox” portion of the game. The rest of the game, until the final dungeon, is a sort of demon-exorcising world tour: we go to each of the towns, solve their demon problem, and get awarded with a new crown and a piece of Rolan’s old gear. A side effect of this is that crowns are now given out one at a time rather than pairs like they had been for the first half of the game. Additionally, with the exception of Horne, which cannot be completed until last, the demons can be dealt with in any order (this includes Spelvia, but I chose to handle it now for the sake of demonstration). On top of all that, we still need to distribute the crowns from when we were still getting them in pairs.
Here’s how this breaks down:
First, four polls to redistribute the crowns from the first half of the plot. This is why there are no less than six in this post; luckily this is the redistribution in the game. We’re distributing 12 crowns so everyone gets three each.
Second, since Paladin came from taking out Lucifer, we have a poll for who it is given to since we’ll be doing that with every crown we get from now on. (Note that I’ll be trying to keep distribution even so whoever gets this won’t be allowed any new ones until things are even again.)
Last, since all the towns can be completed in any order,we have a poll for our next destination.
Click here for old crown distribution!
Crowns for Paul
- White Mage
- Black Mage
- Bandit
- Bard
- Salve-Maker
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Fighter
- Scholar
- Party Host
- Hero
- Seamstress
Crowns for John
- White Mage
- Black Mage
- Bandit
- Bard
- Salve-Maker
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Fighter
- Scholar
- Party Host
- Hero
- Seamstress
Crowns for Ringo
- White Mage
- Black Mage
- Bandit
- Bard
- Salve-Maker
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Fighter
- Scholar
- Party Host
- Hero
- Seamstress
Crowns for George
- White Mage
- Black Mage
- Bandit
- Bard
- Salve-Maker
- Elementalist
- Ranger
- Fighter
- Scholar
- Party Host
- Hero
- Seamstress
Click here to vote for the Paladin crown recipient!
Who will be given the Paladin crown?
[poll name=poll5 type=regular public=true name=paladin]- Paul
- John
- Ringo
- George
Click here to vote for our next destination!
Which town should we head to first?
[poll name=poll6 type=regular name=destination]- Guera
- Liberte
- Urbeth
- Arbor
- Invidia
The new boss theme and its critical health version are two of my favorite tunes in the game.
One fun thing you can do with Rolan is if you go into the fight with 3 merchants and a freelancer, you can farm diamonds off him with the merchants’s gem finding ability. Since freelancer prevents you from losing gems on death, you can get up to 3 diamonds a fight.
Also mysterio is broken.
Intermission: History Lessons
Something I meant to mention before but forgot to: now that we’ve reached the midpoint of the game and shifted to the second half’s more open-ended structure, I’m going to be taking a break from updating for awhile. I know I’m saying this after the previous update came after a bigger gap than usual but I was actually planning this one (and given the circumstances that caused said gap it came at a pretty good time).
That’s not to say I have nothing to offer, however. 4 Heroes of Light, being the retro throwback that it is, is chock full of homages to other games in the series. I don’t mean in terms of the things that make it a Final Fantasy game in the first place – your firagas, black mages, and so on don’t count – but cameos and shout-outs and the like. Some are easy to see – the “airship” of the game being a dragon is pretty obviously a riff on Hiryu from Final Fantasy V – while others are more esoteric – a FFXII cameo in a single background detail in a single shop, for instance.
Aside from a few off-hand mentions, I haven’t really been talking about these because there was never really a way to work it into the LP proper without messing up the flow of things. As such, I decided I would take this intermission to go through my screenshot repository – meaning this is just what there is in the first half of the game – and see what sort of references they snuck in:
It's like Where's Waldo, in a way. (Final Fantasy series blanket spoiler warning)
Disclaimer: All the images here not from 4 Heroes are from the Final Fantasy Wikia since I cannot be assed to replay these games – or even scour another Let’s Play, really – just to get images for a minor intermission.
Final Fantasy I
The plot is kicked off by the king’s request that the heroes rescue a princess, before revealing that said rescue is merely the start of a larger adventure; in FFI, rescuing princess Sara being only the beginning of the whole story was in defiance of the then-conventional structure where rescuing a princess signified the end of the game.
Final Fantasy II
During the first half of the game, the party is separated from one another by a variety of circumstances. To make up for this, a quartet of guest characters rotate in and out of one of our free party slots; in FFII, Leon goes missing at the very start and the fourth party slot is used in much the same way. (The difference, of course, is that 4 Heroes’ guest characters all bring something useful to the table and our missing friends don’t do brief stints as the villain.)
Speaking of guests, the first of these is the Mystic Knight Krinjh. Krinjh is somewhat stronger than our heroes when he joins them and has access to abilities the rest of the party won’t gain for quite awhile (in this case the Mystic Knight crown), plus he has an air of mystery about him, not unlike Minwu of the Wild Rose Rebellion. (The Mystic Knight crown’s appearance is even based on Minwu, as Krinjh’s crown icon on the interface shows.)
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy III is perhaps the game that 4 Heroes draws the most influence from:
The Transform Staff, which changes our form to-and-from animal form, allows access to places and services not otherwise available to normal humans, much like toad and mini from FFII. (The Transform Staff not relying on your spell charges makes it much more elegant, of course.)
One of the main members of our party is George/Aire, the headstrong princess of Horne; in FFIII, we are joined early on by Sara Altney, the headstrong princess of Sasune. (That said, Sara isn’t a permanent or even playable character.)
Our crowns are provided to us by an ill-defined-but-implied-to-be-divine crystal, much like the jobs in FFIII being obtained from the four elemental crystals. (Crowns are given only one or two at a time, however, where jobs come in bigger waves, plus the elemental crystals’ nature is much more clear.)
Speaking of jobs, while the crown system is obviously another iteration of the recurring Job System, the relative simplicity and lack of using abilities across jobs makes it most resemble the version seen in FFIII.
Final Fantasy V
Our primary mode of aerial transportation is the dragon we hatched in Invidia, who is not dissimilar to Hiryu the Wind Drake in FFV. (4 Heroes’ dragon is more versatile, however, functioning more like a traditional airship.)
Same deal with the crystals as FFIII.
Final Fantasy VI
Near the end of the first half of the story, the party magically ventures directly into the soul of Rolan to confront the demons, both figurative and literal, that had taken up residence in his mind; Cyan’s friends in FFVI do very much the same (although some manifestation of Rolan is kind enough to join us in battle while Cyan is rendered helpless).
Final Fantasy VIII
The amount of influence from FFVIII is honestly kind of surprising (another disclaimer: I’ve never much cared for VIII so my memory of it is kinda fractured so I may be remembering things wrong here):
Spelvia, a city far more advanced than the rest of the setting, is entered by the party through its back entrance(s), a la Squall and co. entering Esthar.
Its ruler, the ancient hero Rolan, is confronted and defeated, much like SeeD confronting and defeating ancient Estharian ruler Adel.
Finally, our heroes end up literally breaking time itself, much like VIII’s time compression. (That said, the breakage in 4 Heroes is the result of the world crawling with the demons that escaped upon Rolan’s defeat while time compression, like most of FFVIII, is just a whole lotta nonsense.)
Final Fantasy X
The dragon, unlike most other forms of aerial travel in Final Fantasy, is not placed on a tile of the world map that requires trekking back to; rather, it can be called from anywhere on the map with the dragon harp, similarly to the Fahrenheit from FFX being accessible from any save point.
Final Fantasy XII
The weapon store counter in Urbeth – that is, the same counter used in the shopkeeping minigame – features a cameo from, of all things, the limited edition bottles for that Potion energy drink tie-in from FFXII.
Did you catch anything I didn’t? I wouldn’t be surprised; I mean, I’m honestly kind of surprised I didn’t find anything from IV or IX, especially considering how much VIII influence there is and how I only really looked at the numbered series. Let me know anything I might have missed! (Just keep standard courtesy in mind, in terms of both this game and the rest.)
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Just over one month is a long enough break, I think. Here’s what’s going down:
Poll Results:
Paul has been given the Bandit, Salve Maker, and White Mage crowns!
John has been given the Elementalist, Seamstress, and Ranger crowns!
Ringo has been given the Hero, Fighter, Bard, and Paladin crowns!
George has been given the Black Mage, Party Host, and Scholar crowns!
The first (well, technically second) town on our demon-extermination tour shall be Arbor!
And with that out of the way, the next update should be up sometime tomorrow.
Update #18: The Satanic Panic
Click here for update 18!
When we last joined our heroes, we had just learned that 
demons rule the earth and are now so omnipresent that they have broken time itself. This resulted in us meeting the past version of the hero Rolan, back when he was just kind of curmudgeonly and not yet the demon-possessed misanthrope he had become by our present.
Fortunately, we were able to free Spelvia from its infernal oppressor (nothing less than Lucifer himself ) and prevent Rolan’s darkness from overtaking his mind.
Less fortunately, that still leaves us with a whole lot more demons to deal with.
Luckily, defeating said demons is decidedly quite rewarding. Rolan’s sword here is leaps and bounds above everything we currently have (so long as we’re not fighting anything that absorbs light, obviously).
Spelvia has parked itself in the northeast corner of the world map, no longer moving like it has been for most of the game up till this point.
First order of business: Arbor. Maybe the current state of the space-time continuum landed us at a point where they weren’t so xenophobic.
YouTube Link: Cursed Town
The place sure is looking like they’ve seen better days.
Get used to that song, by the way; it plays in every town that hasn’t had its demon problem taken care of and it gets old irritatingly fast.
On the plus side, there appears to be a decidedly-quite-human mage just walking around unhindered. There may be hope for the place yet!
: I travel the whole world, searching for answers to its many mysteries.
: Arbor is FULL of mysteries! The Great Tree, fairies, magic… it is the most wondrous place I’ve seen!
: I cannot wait to explore it all. Farewell, till we meet again!
And he just waltzes on into the tree. Guy’s enthusiastic, if nothing else.
Legendary magic, y’say? What a coinkidink, we’re currently on the hunt for some Legendary stuff.
(This is me talking to the ferret in the last screenshot in animal form, by the way, since the text box blocks the view of the both of us.)
…well, crap.
This response isn’t really anything important but it is a moderately more interesting reaction to the transformation staff than we usually see.
The only really interesting thing to see in the stores here are the Leaf line of black magic spells, which do non-elemental damage.
It’s kind of a weird little coincidence; at pretty much the same time as this game, FFXIII introduced the Ruin spells as the “normal” (that is, not like Flare or Ultima or Meteor) non-elemental spell line, which then became a mainstay thanks to the A Realm Reborn version of FFXIV giving it to Arcanists, meaning Leaf ended up just sort of falling to the wayside. Kind of a shame, really, I think Leaf’s concept is a bit more interesting.
Still, you wait 20-odd years for a non-elemental spell and two come along at the exact same time!
Also around town:
Well, considering the lifespan of mice, Torte probably hasn’t even been born yet, so neither of you really have anything to worry about.
Oh, uh, yeah, I wouldn’t get too attached to that, if I were you.
Just… just sayin’.
Well, I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about; I’m sure a normal-ass volcano’s got nothing on all the magical guff you have going on here.
Glad to see you’re not all pricks about this, I suppose.
Aha, so that’s where our new friend was off to in such a hurry.
Been awhile since we’ve been down here.
YouTube Link: Cave of Wraiths
Luckily, we won’t be staying for very long.
Hey buddy you’re making an enormous mista-
I mean, sorta-kinda, I guess, but mostly we’re here to warn you this is a bad ide-
Okay yeah we’re after the legendary stuff too.
: They say there is wondrous magic sealed up somewhere in these warrens.
Whether you answer yes or no he gives us another option:
Seriously bro this is a terri-
uh
: Very well. The race is on!
…and he just runs off. Maybe cooperating with him is the better course of action:
Nope, dude runs off like an over-excited puppy regardless.
Seeing as time is literally broken and we haven’t just been sent into the past, all the treasures we obtained in the future remain gotten here in the past.
Excepting, of course, the one that was no longer there by the time we first arrived.
Right on cue.
No offense, but you don’t particularly strike me like the kind of individual who’d be responsible with this sort of thing.
All right, fine, if you’re going to pull the old “go on forever” trick.
You’re filling me with such confidence.
Wait, what?
Figures. We open potentially-dangerous treasure chests and get turned into cats; overly-enthused dopes open potentially-dangerous treasure chests and get off scot-free.
…or perhaps not.
Belphegor , you say? I dunno, sounds on the level to me.
Watch it, buster, only one of us has been demon-freeingly incompetent here and it ain’t any of us.
: I must take this new spell to the queen. Fear not, I shall save Arbor, if it is the last thing I do!
…and he runs off. Again. The fade-to-black is new, at least.
We’d better get to the queen ourselves, given the circumstances.
Well, he is very… puppy-ish. Birds of a feather, et cetera.
Anyway, on our way to meet the queen…
…we see a familiar face. Huh, guess he was alive this far into the past after all.
No explanation for his conspicuous absence up to now, though.
Or for our new mage friend’s own sudden, conspicuous absence. Maybe the queen knows something.
”Over there?” There’s nobody else in the room but the same guard as usual and Torte-
…oh. Well that certainly explains things. Quite a few things, in fact, and not just from this particular encounter with him…
: The demon has gone to the volcano in the north. He intends to make it erupt and bury Arbor under the ash and lava.
: Arbaroc flew after the beast to try and thward its plans, but I fear the demon is too powerful.
: You are strong and brave warriors. Will you go to the volcano and thwart his plans?
: The volcano in the north is easy to reach - if you have a dragon to take you there.
See, this is what Bravely Default missed when it tried to recreate this half of the game in its own context. We’re not just re-treading the same ground again and again, the volcano is actually a new place.
: Yet I must accept responsibility. The demon has to be returned to its prison without delay!
…and he runs off one last time. Guess we’re off to kill a demon and stop Torte from getting himself killed.
Not quite sure how you’d know the boss’s gimmick but I appreciate it nonetheless.
Looks like somebody doesn’t quite get this whole non-linearity thing.
I will freely admit that the mental image of human!Torte and this random ferret fighting each other amuses me far more than it should.
What he’s after really doesn’t matter if everyone’s dead, just saying.
…Paul, the queen just told us- oh, never mind.
It’s funny how Torte was all “ew gross humans” when we first met him… and then we find out the whole deal was his fault to begin with.
Well, I’m sure this is good advice and not at all one of the most annoying ways to actually fight him. Thanks for the advice, Ferret Hidden in the Text Boxes!
The volcano isn’t hard to miss, especially considering how foreboding it is on the upper screen map.
…then again, these places never really look as impressive in person as they do in the brochure.
Update #19: It Will Vanish and Shrink
Click here for update 19!
As unimpressive as this lava-filled pothole looks, it’s still part of Belphegor’s plot to blow Arbor to smithereens, so we’d better put a stop to him!
(After some obvious preparations, of course.)
YouTube Link: Cave of Wraiths
Mount Gulg, for those who don’t know, was a volcano in FFI (where it was also known as Mount Gulug or Gurgu Volcano, depending on which translation you look at), where it was host to the fiend of fire, (who was known as either Marilith or Kary, dependent on which translation you look at). It would also make another appearance in FFIX as Mount Gulug.
Something Mount Gulg is known for (well, kind of, but still) is its distinctive musical theme, which makes it kind of disappointing that we’re just getting the normal-ass dungeon theme here, so instead, I would advise you listen to this, this, or perhaps this.
Gulg starts out simple enough. The first floor has two mostly-symmetrical paths left and right…
…that are split into an inner and outer path each.
The outer paths lead to treasure…
…while the left branch’s inner path leads to progress. (The last path is just a dead end.)
The second floor is where this place gets interesting.
Bits of the ground are covered in lava. Technically, if we really, really wanted, we could just walk through the stuff and heal the damage we take. Unfortunately, we aren’t made of potions or AP, so we instead have some puzzling to do.
(Also here’s what’s in that treasure chest)
To the immediate right of the entrance to this floor, we find this device.
How this works, I can’t say.
It’s a moot point, however, since it gives us access to places we could not reach before…
…including a nice piece of treasure…
…and the entrance to the next floor.
Again, if you’re willing to take a metric shitton of damage, it is perfectly viable to just make a beeline to the next floor; take damage to save time and so on.
That goes double for this next floor. If we wanted, we could just keep running to the west and we’d bypass something like half the dungeon in exchange for a near death experience.
Honestly, though, where’s the fun in that?
The puzzle here is started by pressing this switch, immediately south of the one blocked by lava above.
For the record, there’s another damage shortcut to the east of this switch, but we will be resisting the temptation for the time being.
Instead, we activate the device, which gives us access to the first device we passed.
Which, in turn, removes the lava blocking a third switch to the west of the first one we pressed.
We now, technically, have a lava-free path to the boss.
Of course, since the lava is not removed, just relocated, we still have some navigation to do.
The safe path is, of course, at the southern end of the floor.
Aside from a neat accessory obtained from a not-at-all difficult fight, this last floor is just a winding passage to the end.
Although we pass by the damage shortcuts from earlier, of course.
The only trick here is save point guy being slightly more out of the way than usual.
One last staircase and…
We meet quite a sight.
A sight that makes for a good stopping point because I need to work on curbing my habit o making these updates like 100 images apiece.
So, uh, bad news and good news about this thread.
Mentions of mental health issues
The bad news: Well, it’s not so much “news” anymore. The thread died about a year ago! Immediately after I was supposed to be done with a hiatus, even!
This happened because I’ve been dealing with a sort of mental health crisis since about a month before this LP started; I ran out of medication at an incredibly bad time (finding a doctor that takes your new insurance policy is a nightmare with un-medicated ADD), which in turn exacerbated other, at-the-time un-diagnosed mental health issues. The result of this was that I essentially retreated into a metaphorical turtle shell, reducing my (already fairly reclusive) internet presence to basically nil. (I have since learned about Avoidant Personality Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder, hence the whole recluse thing.)
The good news: I never really meant to abandon this thread; I like this game and I enjoyed the change of pace in playing it for an audience, the LP only stopped because of extraneous circumstances, all of which are, if not under control, at least more managed than they were before. Furthermore, it’s healthy for me to exist in a mode other than “hikikomori” and “at work,” so I’d rather like to get reacquainted with a community I had at least some sort of foothold in (even if it was only just).
As such, I’m going to try to get this adventure on the road again and see if we can’t see this LP through to the end… We’re well into the second half of the game already, after all, and just leaving things hanging where they are would just make me feel bad. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish what I started!
Apologies for the enormous delay, and thanks for reading if you did.
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Update #20: Back at it Again at Krispy Kreme
Click here for update 20!
YouTube Link: Cave of Wraiths
Hoo-whee, why does it feel like we’ve been hanging around this dreary-as-hell cave for like a year? We have work to do, dammit!
…just give me a second to remember what that work actually was.
YouTube Link: The Demon King’s Servants
Oh right, right, the whole “demons secretly rule the world ” thing. At least Belphegor and Arbaroc were kind enough to wait for us to get here before starting anything important!
Also Torte, I guess, but it’s past Torte so it’s not like there was much he could do anyway.
(Torte’s dialog in this scene is only intelligible if your lead party member is in animal form, for what it’s worth.)
: I shall possess your body and use it as my own. Then no one will be able to protect the great tree!
Not a bad plan, considering the difference in how your respective boss fights go, but we’ll get to that in a bit.
: Arbaroc! You can do no more!
Torte tries to involve himself in this little altercation.
It does not get him far.
: The rat dares interfere? Then the rat must die!
: Torte!
: Okay, now I’m mad!
Luckily, someone more capable is also on the case! Time for a boss fight…
…with Belphegor… and cubes! Demonic cubes!
Belphy’s gimmick is that he is a Barrier Shift style boss; he attunes himself to a particular element and both his offense and defense change to reflect this. Recall some advice an NPC in Arbor gave us:
The thing about this advice is that it a) sucks and b) is bad, largely because this description of Belphy’s ability is only partially true.
What actually happens is that you’ll cast a spell on Belphegor and/or his cubes (the cubes are basically miniature versions of the big guy, gimmick and all) to exploit their weakness…
…and they change specifically to the element you hit them with, nothing “at will” about it.
More importantly, the fight will always start with them fire elemental…
…so all one really needs to do…
…is gear up the party to resist fire.
He’s not entirely a pushover this way unless one is using an elementalist (ball of fire here still kind of hurts), but he’s far and away the most manageable boss from this part of the game even without one.
Honestly, trying to exploit his weaknesses here is really kind of a trap.
No, our ace in the hole here…
…is to turtle up…
…and non-elemental the shit out of 'em…
…so that we may continue to take advantage of our fire resistance.
Belphy’s physical attack can put party members to sleep, but as long as one remembers to always be healing it’s still nothing to worry about.
YouTube Link: Approaching Dread
The cubes are pretty much a non-entity and die fairly quickly.
Although, the non-elemental approach is working better for some members than others. What the hell was that mess, John!?
(Most likely that mess was me having plans for John that weren’t just sniping every turn then forgetting them over the course of the year. Hahahaha whoops.)
He’s not entirely a pushover (check out those HP values), but it’s not hard to see from this fight why he was so keen on possessing Arbaroc.
Hey, buddy! I think I missed you most of all from this game!
: You have defeated the demon of fire and saved good Arbaroc.
: The future of Arbor, once in Peril, is assured for all.
Oh hey, another recurring Final Fantasy job! (Just not the one you’re thinking of; more on that in a bit.)
With that, Belphy has been taken care of. Meanwhile, our party members all have things to say:
Being in full “humens are teh sux” mode at the time probably had something to do with it, remember?
Oh yeah, that was a thing. Ineffectual as he was, Belphy sure was an asshole, wasn’t he?
Couldn’t, like, we do it? With the staff we have? The one that’s made for this exact sort of thing?
Maybe she just doesn’t want to get on the queen’s bad side I guess.
Oh right, you weren’t there for that. Yeah, he was a boss fight that took like seven tries to beat.
Speaking of Arbaroc, animal form gets us more dialog from both 'Roc and Torte.
: I must thank you all. I doubt that I would have been able to defeat him on my own.
The disparity in boss fights says otherwise, buddy.
But of course! We’re the player characters and your stint as a guest is simultaneously long since over and decades from now.
That’s more than enough time inside a volcano right next to flowing lava, I think.
YouTube Link: Riding on the Dragon
It’s time to report back to Arbor and, more importantly, use this excuse to listen to the dragon theme again; it’s been far too long.
YouTube Link: Arbor
…I just don’t have the heart to tell 'em.
Demons rule the world , y’say?
Wait, why? Letting strangers into Arbor is the only reason the crisis was averted in the first pla- Oh, I get it, gotta prevent those time paradoxes, good call.
Player characters. Accept no substitutes.
Well given that we’d already beaten Rolan himself before even seeing Belphy…
Luckily, she’s like two feet away right now. Let’s find out!
: In doing so, you saved the realm of Arbor and the entire natural world.
: In gratitude for everything you have done, I shall return this one to his original form.
: Do you need to ask? I think there is only one group of people who could be entrusted with magic so powerful.
: Yes, of course. My friends, take this. Such a spell is too great for one such as I. But in your hands…
Oh hell yes.
You know, I don’t think we’ve seen him cast a single spell post-time-broken-by-demons.
I guess it was sort of brave of him to try rushing Belphy in the volcano, maybe? Still not very mage-like, though.
: Why, thank you, George, you are too kind. But…
: If she speaks the truth, perhaps you would be willing to serve me awhile, Torte.
: Yes, we have need of men of your caliber in the court of Arbor.
: I cannot tell you what an honor that would be!
: O-of course, Your Highness! Although, I didn’t really mind being a mouse…
With that, the Arbor leg of our little adventure in time and space is now complete!
…after a bit more dialog, of course.
Yes, yes, demons rule the world . It’s on our to-do list!
Honestly, I get you wanting to be a puppy more than I get Torte wanting to be a mouse.
Again, I don’t think we’ve seen Torte actually use any magic this trip.
_Now, how’s about a look at that cool new spell we just got our hands on, eh?
YouTube Link: Battle With Demons
Lux costs a full 5 AP (for White Mages 4) but is well worth the cost:
Most immediately, the entire team’s max HP is raised to 1.5 times its normal value…
…and the party is given health regen, AP regen, and all abilities are buffed.
We also have a new crown, the monk:
(Unfortunately, actually showing it off requires setup that I didn’t really have time to do. I’ll still talk about it at the bottom, though.)
In any case, we still have four towns to liberate!
New Crowns
Click here for new crowns!
…well, okay, only one new crown:
Monk
No, it’s not the typical Final Fantasy monk; we already knew that’s Fighter in this game. No, this is actually a return of Final Fantasy Tactics’ Mystic (or Oracle if you prefer):
(Technically they’re called different things in both Japanese and English but they’re both clearly based on Taoist priests.)
Monk here is a very high-risk, high-reward crown, for one simple reason: using it requires deliberately letting party members die. The actual Monk gets stronger every time they are killed and resurrected, their first two abilities are all about animating dead party members, and their third ability is a sacrifice attack that does damage based on how many times the user has died.
Monk can do ridiculous damage with enough deaths under its belt, but it cannot be overstated that this requires deliberately letting party members die and all the risks that entails.
HP: 1.1
Strength: 1.1
Intellect: 1.1
Spirit: 1.1
Polls for next location and recipient of the monk crown are in the next post!
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