More Final Fantasy

[Sullla]

Solo Chemist game and report have been finished. I'm really interested to see what Sofis has to say when he sees how this one ended up...

[T-hawk]

Great work, yet again. I was really hoping some solo would take down Omega! The Mystic Knight might have had the offense via Spellblade Thunder, but none of the Chemist's defensive mixes. I've only ever done Omega with a nonvariant party, which isn't so tough, basically Spellblade Thunder + X-Fight with everybody else supporting that character.

I've been reading and appreciating all along, just haven't had anything to add. As the one responsible for getting you into FF5, I feel like I should be contributing something to the variant chronicles, but you've pretty much solved everything that could possibly come up! I did start one variant, but it seemed that every time I got stuck, the answer was already easily found in one of your reports.

So what's left? Red Mage and White Mage in the "normal" category, Geomancer as insane, and Berserker/Bare/Mime as not really possible. Maybe I should try something with one of the GBA job classes, since you don't seem to like that version.


On another note, this has nothing to do with Final Fantasy, but your character Harun al-Rashid reminded me of this. As a historian and gamer, have you ever played the CCG called Anachronism? It's now dead and out of production, but a couple friends and I have picked it up real cheap, and it's quite entertaining.

[Sullla]

Thanks, T-Hawk! Although this one paragraph was a little odd:

So what's left? Red Mage and White Mage in the "normal" category, Geomancer as insane, and Berserker/Bare/Mime as not really possible. Maybe I should try something with one of the GBA job classes, since you don't seem to like that version.

Bare as "not really possible"? Are you kidding? Maybe I should do that one next, because I see the Bare job as one of the easier variant. You - can - equip - EVERYTHING! I'll just say there's a lot of possibilities there, and leave it at that.

The Geomancer Terrain ability works better than you might think, even against bosses, although it's another "Dancer" job in that the results are extremely random.

White Mage... now there's the real insane challenge! How exactly do you do damage again? White Mages can't equip knives, which means their offense is limited to Flails only up until you get Holy. Which is only 90% of the game. I'm saving that challenge until the end, because it's just about the hardest one possible!

I'm glad you enjoyed reading. I love the Final Fantasy games on your website. And no, I haven't heard of that card game you mentioned, sorry.

[T-hawk]

Ha, and my thought process was a White Mage can win through attrition with defensive buffs and healing and plinking, but how does a Bare deal damage?

But on second thought, you're right. Plain weapon attacks for a Bare don't seem great without the likes of Double Grip or X-Fight or Spellblade, but they should be enough. As for White Magic, FFV has far more threats for which there isn't a countermeasure spell, unlike FF1. And White Magic healing isn't anything special in a game with farmable Elixers, again unlike FF1's healing options.

And really, my FF1 games weren't anything special, all I ever did was abuse the heck out of Fighter-heavy parties. Your reports are way better.

[Sofis]

I'm really interested to see what Sofis has to say when he sees how this one ended up...

My main comment would be that I clearly need to pay more attention when trying to do difficult things . (This is also a good idea in real life.)

I shall get my revenge by correcting you on a few minor details in your report, however. Take that!

There are a few differences in how we solved various challenges. Unsurprisingly: the near omnicompetence of the Chemist makes for many solutions .

One thing I don't think you realised is that the result of Mix: Potion+Potion may be called Potion, but it's a 90 heal (doubled to 180, of course). The same works with Hi-Potions. Potion+Potion is how I got past Karlabos without using Elixirs; I actually never used an Elixir for healing during the game.

I used a Lillith's Kiss against Magisa. It drained all her MP in one go, making her quite unthreatening. Clearly our strategies could be combined to utterly humiliate the couple .

Dark Matter, the last one being difficult to obtain until the third world.

They can fairly easily be farmed from Prototypes two islands SW of Crescent. They go down easily to Drain Kisses, which admittedly means you have to farm in order to farm, but Turtle Shells are at least very easy to get.
I used these together with Elixirs (Dark Elixir = Weak) against the Puroburos. It was pretty funny seeing them explode and do single digit damage. Somewhat resource intensive, but it's not as if I was using those Elixirs for anything.

I'm surprised you didn't mention the best feature of the Angel Suit (in my opinion): it's got the highest magic evade in the game, at 25%.

Dragon's Kiss was very effective against Gilgamesh on the boat, since it blocked both Death Claw and Missile.

It's not clear to me why you used Life Shield in addition to Dragon's Kiss against Exdeath in the second world. The only use I found for it was against Grand Cross, since that spell only checks the Heavy flag for Weak. Did I miss something?

especially since Dragon Fangs are very difficult to acquire in the third world

Not at all. You can get them from Dragon Valley, same as in the second world. It hasn't moved anywhere.

That's not counting the Power Drinks, which are bugged in this game and do nothing. (They are supposed to increase the Attack value of your equipped weapon, but due to the way the damage formulas are programmed they don't actually increase anything!)

I find it funny that the one way of increasing your attack value is bugged and does not work. It reminds me... of some other game .


The main difference between our games was that I didn't use nearly as much mixing. I didn't bother farming more than about 30 Dragon Fangs, for example. Hence why I didn't find the game to be very grindy. Of course, this means I ran from a lot of stuff .

White Mage... now there's the real insane challenge! How exactly do you do damage again? White Mages can't equip knives, which means their offense is limited to Flails only up until you get Holy. Which is only 90% of the game.

Now now, it's not that bad. You can get Light Staves from Metamorphas. They can be broken for Holy. That's in the second world .
I used this to good effect playing as a Red Mage, actually.

[Cjreynol]

Just wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading all of the FF reports, so thanks for taking the time to type them up while you play

[T-hawk]

Hey, let's hearken back to the original Realms Beyond Nintendo thread!
http://www.network54.com/Forum/189557/th...049386397/

I bring this up because last night I succeeded in a challenge mentioned there. I pulled off a perfect ironman run in Super Mario World, 96 exits plus Bowser with zero deaths. (One abort from falling into a pit via start-select, on Chocolate Island 2 after I'd already beaten it twice and accidentally took the same exit both times. Also a handful of start-select exits just to grab a powerup.)

For proof, I had Zsnes record a movie as I played, but somehow on playback it goes out of sync in my third play of Chocolate Island 2. Still, it shows ~70 levels before that, including all of Special, which I always do first to get past the nasty Tubular and Funky. My only real emergency was in the 7th castle, when I hit a spike early and missed catching the spare powerup, but refocused (with my heart racing on that looong block snake) and got through intact.

It was on about my 10th real try, half of which ended at Tubular of course. There were a few other random screwups, the memorable ones being the Reznor fight in Vanilla Fortress, and then after beating Forest Fortress and stupidly reentering Forest 4 with no powerups and got Spinyed. On that latter, I kept playing, and cleared Valley of Bowser with no deaths which gave me the confidence to keep trying.

Also a couple years ago I did the same thing in SMB3, on an actual NES. That was actually pretty easy, especially with the card-matching game memorized in order to start every level with a powerup and often a star.

Now I see Sullla's mention in that thread that he's done Mega Mans 2, 3, and 4 each on a single life. I've done all of them on no continues, but don't think I've ever managed a perfect run. Found my next challenge.

[Sofis]

Zelda II (two deaths for the whole game is my best)

That's pretty good. I usually die about six times when I play (though I've never actually tried to beat it on zero deaths, just zero game overs. I probably should try it, as a challenge I always beat is clearly too easy ).

One fun challenge I tried once was Link to the Past on minimal equipment. No bottles, no armour, the unupgraded Master Sword and thirteen hearts at max turns a very easy game into an actual challenge. And there's a special surprise when you make it to Ganon .

Now, Zelda II on minimal equipment, that'd be hard.

[Deceptus]

Sullla updated.

As always, I can only remind him that he has the complete extent of my support. Rock on, those reports are as always really entertaining.

In fact, I'm now inspired to play through Final Fantasy IV and this game is a real blast. It blew my everything, just like Contra and Phoenix Wright once did. For this outstanding recommendation I owe him many thanks.

[Sullla]

Thanks for the comment. Nice to know someone is reading, and that the reports have even inspired others.