More Final Fantasy

[Sullla]

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/ironcore2.html

Part Two of the Ironcore team has been posted, in which things did not always go as planned.

T-Hawk, I'll take a look at your questions and give you a response soon.

[Amelia]

Ouch, as a fan of your website that has went through each report of yours at least thrice, that really took me back @.@ But getting back there in 4 hours? That really got me impressed!

[Selrahc]

The group went back and killed the Red Dragon

Wow. Glutton for punishment, rushing back into an optional encounter that wiped you out last time. Good job it worked out this time.

[Sullla]

First, catching up with T-Hawk's questions from before... I'm going to have to test that GBA emulator + FRAPS suggestion myself. I would love to record a playthrough of the "no sword" challenge from the original Legend of Zelda. That's a fun one to do, and I could cut out the rupee grinding parts.

No, I wasn't considering the Magic Pots. Normally, I would rather have the Elixirs than the extra ability points! I know that it's in the game and all, but getting a "free" job like that in a no-grinding game would feel like cheating to me, or at least be against the spirit of the variant. I'll leave them out of it - I could pull a free Red Mage mastery on my mages from the Magic Pots, and that's not what I had in mind for this game!

Well, of course I had to go back and kill the Red Dragon a second time - couldn't let that bastard get away with it, could I? (It's really not that tough of an opponent... I was pretty unlucky the first time.)

[Sofis]

The sword you get from Gilgamesh is actually called Excailbur. It was called エクスカリパー (ekusukaripaa) in the original, as opposed to エクスカリバー (ekusukaribaa) for Excalibur.
All a comment on the importance of spelling, I assume.

[Sullla]

Ha! That's great. I've got to play through this game once in the untranslated Super Famicom version to pick up little things like that. I've got the ROM, and I can read basic hiragana/katakana, so sooner or later...

Also love how they spell the series' title in Japanese:



ファイナル　ファンタジ
(Fainaru Fantaji in katakana)

[T-hawk]

I think Gilgamesh's sword is Excailbur in the SNES fansub version, Excalipur in the PS version, and Excalipoor in the GBA version (this last I'm sure of.)

I'm on vacation this week and haven't had time to go over the Ironcores in detail. But 4 hours to halfway through the second world is as amazing as the variant itself.

On the Red Dragon fights - one tactic to always keep in mind is the Reset spell. It always works in every fight (unlike running) and can really get out of a sticky situation in a hurry!

Zelda 1 swordless is a great game. I've done it, on an actual NES, though not (and wasn't really trying to) a one-credit run.

[Sullla]

Well, just to be clear, I mean four hours of real-world time. It was twelve hours on the in-game clock. I was using the Fast Forward feature liberally in skipping through cutscenes and the like.

[Sullla]

Part Three is finished. More reading, and more videos to go through.

[T-hawk]

Masterfully done, of course.

I'm not sure if you want to know this, but you were even closer on Odin than you thought. (The following is all as per my experience with the GBA version.) The clock DOES NOT STOP when his HP is depleted and he starts the dialogue and death animation. At the end of the 0:00 second, the battle terminates regardless of what's going on and the game bounces to the title screen, same as it does during the Karnak escape. You can lose even during his ending dialogue and I've done so. I believe you had less than a quarter of a second to spare.

I just now had a chance to watch the videos, including the world 2 Exdeath fight. Awesome recovery indeed! You definitely played that correctly: the Elixir on Faris was the right move, making sure she would survive even if the boss cast Earth Shaker again.

So is the challenge harder in FF1 or FF5? As we did it, probably pretty comparable. FF5 has a zillion bosses of course, but most really aren't dangerous once you know them, and the one loss came from an optional semi-boss encounter. FF5 would be easier with Chemist and GilToss and X-Fight on the table. FF1 also has a very limited set of party and character options; I certainly wouldn't try Ironcore with any white or black mage or thief. Really F-F-R-R is the only option; even F-BB-R-R is inferior without grinding levels for the BB. FF5 has much more room for different approaches.

So are you done with FF5 now or going to keep trying some more solos or other variants? Got time for one or two more before Civ 5 comes out...