More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

Did somebody say FF6?

So I was reading a particular FAQ the other day. Good FAQ, but man, that writer. Beginning and end of all his strategies are "DRAPE YOUR CHARACTERS IN THE APPROPRIATE ELEMENTAL AND/OR STATUS PROTECTION AND LAUGH." So in his honor, and to place the stamp of overpreparedness incorporated on his guide, let's play through without any of that elemental and/or status protection.

In other words, let's get naked.

And just because, I'm playing a version of FF6a heavily tricked out on the mods. People like some of the extra stuff this version has to offer, but they don't like the screen changes, translation changes, music changes, fixing the font...so there's patches to fix the lot of that. This is basically just cosmetic for reporting purposes.


The first little bit of this quest is a joke. Magitek Armor makes the lack of offense irrelevant, as does Magic a bit later. The enemies' offense is about as irrelevant, so Terra having no armor is no deal whatsoever.


It seems a bit unfair to use the Moogles when they have equipment, but even given that, Mog can punch the enemies to death easily. One battle sees him earn his first Dance, which he uses to dispose of everything in his way, including the boss. Things get a bit fidgety and he has to heal a few times, but it's nothing too serious.

The battle against the Magitek Armor is an interesting one. Locke gets a lethal kick to the face and dies, but Locke is pretty much just a stealbot in this variant quest. Plus we have Edgar for this fight. His Tools are completely uninhibited by our equipmentless restriction, so he and Terra are free to clean up.


Going up Mt. Kolts isn't too bad, but the damage from the enemies - many of which do have physical attacks - does adds up. Just need to use some healing items from time to time, really. I also found that sometimes, attacking with the fists is helpful for that extra push.

Vargas at the end, I thought I could handle and soldier through...


...then Locke pulls a desperation attack out so none of that even matters.


Banon is another character who we can't deequip, but that just helps. First time against Ultros, Terra got taken out by a combination of his fixed Tentacle and his counter-Ink on being struck with a Fire attack. Then Banon died after a combination MT Tentacle followed up by a ST

Tentacle is an unblockable physical attack with a high power of 146. It does in the neighborhood of 160-180 damage to our naked characters ST in the back row, and around 75ish when MT in the back - double these numbers if they're in the front. Ultros' battle script has fixed Tentacle attacks in his script, which target Terra, Sabin, and Banon individually at some points.

That all said, short of situations such as that, it's just barely enough to be able to handle from the back with Banon's Pray ability, and between Autocrossbow (210~), Fire (270~), and Aurabolt (410!!), he drops before that attack on Banon.

So scenarios. We want to do Sabin's last, and that's about it. For variety, I do Locke's first.


There's really not much to say about it until I reach Celes in the basement. Idly, one of the patches restores the violence in her introduction scene in this version, which was taken out to meet with Japan's CERO's ratings board, though the coding still remains.

The escape see Celes carry with her magic. An encounter with Vector Pups on the way out demonstrates just how painful physical attacks can get when you get caught naked in the front row. No Back Guards here, they're equipment too!


The boss at the end is Tunnel Armor, and provides an...interesting challenge. See, this is one of those fights in Final Fantasy where you're expected to use a certain job class. In this case, it's Celes with her Runic ability. Problem is...a naked Celes has no blade to support Runic with. So we're forced to deal with this thing and it's absurd magic power, capable of killing our characters in a single hit with any of its spells.


Conveniently, the game provides you with a Thunder Rod in this cave, provided you did not pick up the box with it in the first trip through. This can be broken to deal enough damage to kill the machine in a single shot. In FF6, you don't even need to be able to equip rods. Just click it and blow it up. So...what? You're saying rod breaking is cheap?


FINE. Sheesh. Took me about six tries to get this, featuring a lucky streak of turns where Tunnel Armor only attacked physically and missed. The two other ways I see to do this without Runic or the Thunder Rod are overleveling until Celes' magic can just potato it, and somehow outlasting its 900MP, which requires Gil grinding for all the resources and maybe a bit of leveling. Not that you have much else to spend money on if naked...wasn't an option for me, though, since I'd saved after leaving the town, and the game doesn't let you return.

Nothing to note about the Terra/Edgar/Banon scenario, except that I fail the checkpoint a few times to fight some monsters.


But the next scenario brings a new character to the fore. Shadow can physically attack, and deal quite a bit of physical damage, by throwing things, including the cheapy Shruiken. I thought that the solo Cyan vs. the Captain would be difficult, since he has no access to his swordtech skills, but he just had to chug a single Hi Potion to make it through.


The Telstar monster-in-a-box at the Imperial Camp was no issue. It counters Blitz techniques with Megazerk, but Shadow was able to throw Shruikens until it went down. I KO'd Shadow so he would not randomly leave before reaching the Phantom Train. On it, there were a few things of threat, including Bombs (who once killed me by going crazy with Blaze) and the Apparation monster-in-a-box, whose magic came this close to taking me out. Most of the monsters in here were wrecked by Sabin's Aurabolt.


Despite it being a meme, the best way for Sabin to deal damage to the Phantom Train turned out to be the Suplex, also known as Meteor Strike in this version. It beats out Aurabolt by about 100 damage. Unfortunately, my first attempt at this went awry when Diabolical Whistle confused Sabin, causing him to Suplex himself instead. I couldn't recover from here. Second fight, both Sabin and Shadow got Imped, blocking off their commands. I tried to punch it to death from there and failed.

Third time was the charm, though. Interceptor chipped in at the start for 800 damage, which was followed up by 400+ apiece Suplex and Shruiken, along with a 110~ damage punch from Cyan. Another Suplex finished it off.


And one leap down a waterfall later, enter Gau. He is notable for two reasons in this challenge, perhaps to the point of dodging some of the points of this challenge: first of all, he can give himself various elemental properties and status protection with his various Rages. Second, his physical attack does not require weapons to be effective. And of course, certain rages use special attacks that do increased physical damage.

I spent about two hours in-game time getting just about everything Rage I could want so far, stocked up on Potions, Hi-Potions, and even Dried Meat with the money I got from it, and moved on.


Party setup for the Narshe battle...we put our three powerhouses at the head of each team. Edgar is so strong with his Bioblaster being able to run through most of the human enemies here, so he needs the least help and gets Cyan to accompany him. Gau will be taking on the miniboss and Kefka himself, both of whom I want to steal from, meaning Locke. Celes is in as support, also because if she gets confused, her magic isn't as destructive to my own party. That leaves Terra to go with Sabin.


I charge Edgar forth and put him in a position so the bulk of the enemy soldiers will walk by him, and when I can (because they kept running into him), stick Sabin and Gau at other chokepoints.


The Hell's Rider miniboss, I manage a rare Elixir steal from before Gau roasts it. I spent a long time searching for the Oversoul Rage, getting it just as I was about to give up. End result? 100 more damage over the Fira using Templar. Yay?


Kekfa was...somewhat harder. The first time, not wanting to exploit a Stop-based option because that's no fun, I went with Stray Cat. One of the most infamous rages, its !Catscratch special is four times as powerful as a normal physical blow. However, I was pasted by a multi-target Blizzara that gibbed Locke and Celes (doing more/as much damage as they had HP), leaving Gau to die alone. Luckily, losing to him doesn't result in a game over, so I got right up, sucked down a few potions, marched right back up, and took him on again.

Next battle, I outsmarted him and went with the lowly Leafer to absorb the ice spells. Which turned out to be the right move for that moment in time, because his companions were wiped by bad luck again, and Kefka cast one single-target on him.

More of this to come.

[English Language]

Berserk brothers Updates
-----------------------------

Magitek Armors were easier than expected. I couldn't egt both Mog and Umaro into the fight, so I was worried. I opened with the Desert Rhapsody..and Mog pulls a Sandstorm move that OHKOes them both. Wasn't even able to get a shot of the fight it happened so fast.

In South Figaro, I went and grabbed the two Relics there(Hermes Sandals and Hyper Wrist), giving them both to Umaro for the time being. Mog got some Sprint Shoes and a Star Pendant until I find him better stuff.


Finally, pictures! Now, for Vargas, you CAN win this fight normally, but he has an obscene 11K hit points. What you're supposed to do is have Sabin Blitz him after a certain amount of damage.


However, the Berserk Brothers don't give a **** and smash him down anyways, right as the Doom timer on Umaro hit 01. Not that it would have mattered since Mog of all people was doing the most damage of the two, with the occasional Rock Slide doing over 1000 damage a hit, and a few Sunbeams coming in when I needed healing. Umaro was just happy to be there, and also contribute a good chunk of damage.

Went to Returner Hideout, and saved for the time being.

[English Language]

Welp, seems Berserk Brothers has run into a bit of a roadblock.

For some reason, Umaro and all of his stats have been changed to the Scenario Select Mog, and changing the character back to Umaro himself doesn't fix that. So either the game is changed to a Mog solo until I can get Umaro proper, or I'll have to figure out how to fix this.

Now that I've got a hang on character changing though, I might be able to do the Gogo solo now at least....ooor not since he's replaced by Cosmog at the Mines.

EDIT: Aand fixed.....the Gogo problem, unfortunately I went too far and I can't fix Umaro without replaying the game up to then, so I'll hold off on him for a bit.

[English Language]

And Gogo hits another roadblock.

Problem: I can't find any combination of codes that lets Gogo fight Vargas. Everytime I put in a code to remove Locke and replace him with Gogo, it removes Gogo and puts everyone else in. Putting a code to remove evryone else and leave only Gogo results in Terra alone. I can't figure out why in the world it keeps doing this and haven't been able to find a code that lets me keep Gogo during the fight with an empty slot for Sabin.

I had this same issue with Mog/Umaro, but they were able to beat down Vargas in spite of Doom Fist, Gogo can't. I'll experiment with this more later, and if I can't find a solution I'll just chalk it up as undoable and hack past the fight.

EDIT: And moving Gogo to the first slot fixed it for some reason.

[English Language]

Think I found the reason for the above roadblock, as well as a new one I hit on the Phantom Train.

For some reason, Gogo permanently takes up the 4th slot of my party. While I never have to hack him in, it creates problems when I want to briefly remove him for cutscenes. I've been able to find ways around it, but I can't figure out why it does that, as even using a code to move him to other slots eventually just shoves him back into 4. I think the mass freeze I used to keep him might have had a hand in it, but I can't imagine why since I undid the freeze.

As for the Phantom Train roadblock, the dialogue for any Ghosts you have leaving the party would play, and then start again the instant it was over, since even having a blank slot would make the game think I still had a ghost for some reason. I eventually bypassed it by holding the emulator speedup and holding left to get me past it.

[System Error]

So here's something I did last night. FF6 nude is by no means abandoned, I was just watching streams and couldn't emulate it with speedup at the same time, so I played this instead.

_________


The Final Fantasy Legend is not actually a real Final Fantasy game. It simply bears the name in North America for marketing purposes. Still, it takes heavy inspiration from the series, so we'll give it a play anyway. A game from my childhood...mostly after my cart of FFL2 fell into the great abyss in my aunt's trailer and I wasn't allowed time to search for where it fell. That was frustrating to say the least...

It's about a group of adventurers who are traversing a tower and its many worlds in search of Paradise. It has some disturbingly deep for a Gameboy game and possibly unintentional philosophical themes. It's probably most fondly remembered for the final boss, the "Creator", who due to a bug, is capable of being killed with a Chainsaw. It was even referenced in the main series: the creators of FF13 made the final boss of that game vulnerable to instant death as an homage to this.

With this in mind, I'll be taking on the infamous Monster SCC. So there are three things to keep in mind here.

1) Doing this without this bug is out of the question. There's no way for even a top-tier monster to do enough damage to the Creator (he has 5000HP) before running out of moves, although there are some that would otherwise be able to do it. So we'll play through with the intention to kill God with a chainsaw at the end.
2) Due to the weird meat system, it's entirely possible to become the second-highest tier of monster as early as the first world. While I will be eating meat strategically, I won't be doing this, since I'd just crush the game otherwise and be one monster for the whole game. Also, refer to this guide and site. It's a useful resource.
3) I could well do this on the WSC remake...however. While the Saw bug still works (a few other bugs did get fixed, strangely enough), there is one other random change that makes me want to avoid it for a monster SCC, especially one with the above restriction. Maybe for a full party of monsters, though.


So name? Well, we're going to kill God with a chainsaw, so let's name him Jed, the shortened real name of Leatherface, anatagonist of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.


The objective of the first world is to gather a Sword, a Shield, and Armor from three kings and place them on a statue. Through messing around with meat, Jed eventually becomes a Ghoul before taking on King Sword.


Ghoul is not the monster to take him on with.

So in FFL, monsters can have weaknesses to elements, and weapons can have elements. If an elemental weapon hits a monster's weakness - the King Sword of which has all elements - they can take a Critical Hit and die instantly.


With this staring Jed down, I instead have him go for a Werewolf, who not only has oWEAPON to be more resistant to his physical blows, but no weaknesses and a strong attack. With this, it doesn't take long to cinch the victory.

The Shield is accessible after this, and just consists of avoiding walking into guards and beating a treacherous Steward. Simple.


Recommended first path for anyone with Humans and Mutants in their party is the Armor first, where you need to take on a Bandit threatening the King's love. A P(oison)-Frog, he has a special technique where contact poisons you, but it's no deal at all.


The Black Turtle of the North, Gen-Bu is the boss of this world. The Ssu-Ling of Chinese Mythology serve as this game's four fiends. He has three attacks: the physical TUSK, the magical GAS, and defensive SHELL.


The Gecko I was using was good, but not good enough. By eating a Zombie to become a Red Bone followed by a Wererat, I'm able to upgrade to a Rhino. This is able to break through his 250 HP easily.

It's possible to beat him with less, but whatever.


This gets you the Sphere to open the first door leading into the Tower, which has a ton of dangerous monsters. By far the worst are the Slimes, whose MELT not only deals a ton of damage, but also heals them. In the first picture, you see me experimenting with it. While a great monster type, it's too weak at this point.


This game can really fly by if you know what you're doing. The caves of the oceanic World 2 are annoying. I use a Hornet for a bit going in, then through a series of meat, become a Gazer. The Eye monsters' BEAM are great, defense-piercing attacks...


But the monster I eventually bump Jed into becoming is the Amoeba. It sports ACID, a weakish attack that hits all enemies, but more importantly, MELT. Because of the limited uses of these moves, I'm forced to run from most encounters. Not that they're worth anything for a monster, anyway...


I employ it against the next boss, Sei-Ryu. Who actually proves problematic.

Now, Sei-Ryu actually has meat to drop. For a solo monster who isn't abusing leveling, however, this isn't much help. You basically need MELT and/or oPARA to survive, which means either this, a Slime, or an Undead creature. In the first two cases, you become Garlic, which is decent, but not a very good monster comparatively. In the second case, you become a Siren, which is probably weaker than anything that could beat Sei-Ryu on its own. So I don't sweat it.


Eventually, I'm able to get through all the his paralyzing STRICT attacks and get the victory. One short quest later, and it's off to World 3. Medusa monsters prove annoying and make me reload a few times with their petrifying gaze.


And in World 3, you can buy Elixirs in packs of 3. Now, the move usage issue is no longer an issue...well, we can't afford them now, but we shortly thereafter are able to stock up.


To advance, you need to beat up some Mosquito guardsmen at a pub to become a guard yourself. They can use DRINK, which is just like MELT. So I mess around and become a Gunfish, to try to take them all out as soon as possible with the group-target SQUIRT. But I only face one, so it's not really a big help.


I eat a Siren to become an Ice Crab along the way to the next destination, which just greets you with a short fight. It may seem like I'm skipping around a lot...but this game really isn't that long when you know what you're doing, and there isn't too much to talk about. An annoyance pops up when trying to break out of jail, however. Jed needed to kill those Imps with Ice before they killed him with Fire. Took a few tries.


A quick trip back into the Tower to feast on the splintery corpse of a Woodman, and Jed became a Chimera. Why the diversion?

Chimera has a particular attack, you see. It's called 3HEADS, attacking with its lion, dragon, and goat heads. This hits up to 3 times...with a attack multiplier of 12. Since it's also used by ASHURA, I guess they gave it this huge buff. To contrast, 4HEADS does hit that number of times, but its multiplier is only 4 - so it's weaker.


Because of this, I massacre Byak-ko in two good shots, taking out his 1000 HP easily.


More time for experimentation in the tower...I settle on a Thunder bird here. Beak ain't half-bad, and Thunder is good for group-killing.


World 4 is interesting in how the Ssu-Ling shows up right away, is invincible, and tries to kill you. After dying once, Jed makes it to the Subway tunnels, eats a Mou-Jya to become a Minotaur, takes down some Atom Ants threatening a girl named Sayaka, who makes me curse not having my friend name a companion in a SaGa2 DS playthrough after So-Cho, and moves on.


World 4 is also an awkward spot...it's entirely possible for us to hit the ceiling here. And if we hit the ceiling, we can't get back down. And actually, the only way down from the monster rank B is either going to Giant or Nue, which are only monster rank A with their second-highest having target levels of C.

Question of what to become for this world? Tororo might be good for bosses, but not exactly for trash-clearing. Jed eats another Dokuro (who's very rare in the tunnel I was in) and end up becoming a Cocatrice, taking me to that magic place near the ceiling...


And after recharging my PSP and analyzing, Jed becomes an Ironman, and remains as such for the rest of the world. His FLAME and GAS attacks are great for taking down random monsters, and KICK and BASH are good for dealing with tougher enemies.


After a few fetch quests, next up is the Nuclear Power Plant dungeon. There's an Evil Eye here who we can use to level to the max, but we don't want to do that. When you try to take the Plutonium at the end, a familiar face appears.


It's Warmech, yo. Called Machine here, but they share the same name in Japanese and basically the same sprite. He has a bunch of nasty attacks, including this beauty, which is an instant kill as far as Jed is concerned.

It's really just a matter of getting lucky. Machine has no mana, so magic attacks are the way to go - both of them did around 170-180. Eventually, he skips using the nasty stuff and dies.


Random commentary: the Skyscraper has some really weird dungeon design. Creative, though not exactly what you'd expect from a tower and deadly bird roost in a post-apocalyptic world.


So how can Su-Zaku fare without his defensive force field? He's got 1500 HP. His BLIND and FLAME attacks are useless on Jed, and BEAK only does 80-ish at best. He doesn't stand much of a chance.


Just more random commentary to pad this report out. There's lots of siderooms in the Tower, leading to various worlds. In this one, you see three dead children and a man, who reports that they barely made it to the shelter, but ran out of food and water. A man's last words told via his diary, apologizing to a Ken and Yuki for leaving them, telling his daughter Akira, to look after her brothers, and praying to the Creator to watch over them. Oh, and you get a Nukebomb for no reason.

My supply of Elixirs depicted there made my run through the tower fairly leisurely. I could blow up stuff if possible, run if not, and heal up to full after every encounter.


Still having stayed an Ironman for a bit, Jed eventually finds a nice floating eyeball on the way up that he digs into to become a Gummy. As previously discussed, Slime monsters are among the best in the game, held in check only by MELT's limited uses.


Just in time, too. Oh yes, talk to the man in the hat, or after an event, you'll won't be able to advance. It can be a source of confusion for veterans of the game.


Ashura is no joke. The only way for a monster to keep up with this kind of damage is by healing through and dealing heavy damage in return. Even so, it takes a good series of attacks to get through here, with him messing with GAZE and BLIND instead of murdering me. Even with MELT healing/dealing 250~ damage a turn, I just can't keep up with these monsterous hits.

This is where using the GB version over the WSC version is better for this challenge. MELT and DRINK both got hit with the nerf stick in that version, and no longer absorb HP. Similar draining moves don't work on Ashura due to his being undead for no good reason.


Now to climb the Tower a second time, though it's a much more straightforward version consisting of escalator rides.


Just like in FF1, the four fiends show up again to cause you havoc. None of them but Su-Zaku can get by Gummy Jed's constant healing, and even then just barely and not always. Though I have to run from just about every random fight.


Once they are all dead, Jed doors out. And one Redbull later, and he gets into his chainsaw-wielding form. No monster above this carries SAW, hence our unusual way of going through this game without reaching the maximum level.


Then Jed needs to go all the way back up the Tower to meet his maker. Which some theorize to be its true form. Not as bad as it seems, due to the escalators and low encounter rate.


So what's up with this glitch, anyway, you ask? Well, how SAW is supposed to work is that it compares your attack to the enemy's defense, and if it's higher, you instantly kill the enemy if it connects. But the programmers got it backwards. So Creator with his 200 Defense, is prime bait for this attack.


This fitting final boss death animation, brought to you with ANIMATRONICS!!

So yeah. That's about it for this shortish report. This was a nice way to kill a night, not to mention my sleep schedule. More Final Fantasy Legend games in the future? Definitely. But for now...

[T-hawk]

Nice. Do Final Fantasy Legend II! I played that one a lot as a kid. Had Legend I also, but never got into it over Legend II.

The first loophole exploit I ever discovered in a video game: Robots' HP is determined by their equipped items. Equipping an item raises max and current HP, but removing one drops only max HP. Therefore, robots can restore current HP by unequipping and reequipping armor (weapons reduce in durability), adding up to unlimited free healing between battles.

12 year old me of course knew that made robots the awesomest and best characters ever, so I made a party with four of them, and actually got through the game pretty well. Except for the last boss that was unbeatable without any form of healing. I had to restart and play the game all over again with three robots and one wizard/mutant type guy for healing.

[System Error]

Nice. Do Final Fantasy Legend II! I played that one a lot as a kid. Had Legend I also, but never got into it over Legend II.

Sure~
__________


The sequel, Final Fantasy Legend 2 (having dropped the 'the') makes a few changes to the formula. Notably, humans and mutants both level their stats through training, instead of the former guzzling potions. The latter's magical abilities are now more predictable. Monsters are now easier to understand.

And it adds in one new race: the Robot. Akin to monsters' you-are-what-you-eat, with robots, you are what you equip.

That said, I've beaten four robots twice in the past There's a guide on GameFAQs that does a good job of describing robots, as well as a four-robot party. I guess I'll do it again. I'd do something more elaborate, but MasterBoy doesn't support what I would like to do. So that's on hold.


So we'll just take our character and name it...umm...uhhhhh...four letters...Robo, Artu...


Oh, screw it. We ROMhacks now!! (by the way, that's a useful reference site for this game). Meet our team. Floyd, our protagonist and multiple-purpose robot. He'll be whatever the situation demands. Aigis, an android who will protect our party. She'll be packing high-defense. Cutman, the scissor-headed master. Physical power is his game. And Vivit, combat-model from the future. She's got the agility to weave through anything

So I do this for two reasons: one, because thinking of four robot names that are four characters or less characters each is annoying. Two, to point this site out as a nice resource. What I'm using here is the NeoFFL2 hack, version 1.002.

This is just vanilla FFL2, except it has expanded names in a sense, by allowing you to use characters in the game that are combinations of two letters. These are in vanilla and perfectly usable with codes, but what this brings is a bit of extra hacking so everything looks nice when you use it.


The Base World is ridiculously simple with our party. Behind Aigis and her bulky defense, barely any enemies can get through her. Meanwhile, Cutman and Vivit use STR and AGL powered weapons respectively to tear up the opposition. The former gets a nice headstart due to grabbing our four starting Colts.


The first real dungeon of the game is not worth talking about. But in the second, a brilliant moneymaking opportunity is in front of us. All we need to do is bump into this on-the-map enemy over and over again, and fight a large group of Flies or Lizards.

It's worth noting that one of the things the remake fixes is the game's weird system of giving you GP. For a group of enemies, you get gold equal to [33 * (DS level) * Group Size] + [3 * (DS level) * Group Size * (Group Size - 1)]. In the remake, you do this for all groups of enemies in the battle, and add it all up. I'm not 100% on the formula for two separate enemy types, but it gets weird. To wit, three enemy groups with one apiece spits out 99GP, but a 1/3/1 mix only gives 33GP.

What this means for us though, is that there's some enemy groups that are inefficient for us to fight.


Three purchasable things are of interest in the first world. The SMG is a weapon that does 250 damage to a group before defense modification. It utterly obliterates anything in the first 3-4 worlds. Robots half the uses weapons they equip (save for Martial Arts, which are only good for raising AGL on them), but can reuse them over and over. The Gold Gauntlet gives robots a +10 to their defense.

There's also Kick, one of those a Martial Arts. 1400GP.


An exploit worth talking about with those and robots...if you have one on them, it has 0 uses, and you switch it around in your abilities, it disappears...but you keep all the associated boosts. I won't be using it except for this demonstration. For this playthrough, anyway...heh heh heh...


Stats after we've got everything we want. Aigis is basically impentrable by anything on this world, Floyd and Aigis can trash stuff with their SMGs, Floyd, Cutman, and Vivit can all do heavy damage with their blades.


With all this, I shred through the next bit of the game. Another thing the remake changes is giving these (mini)bosses more HP.


Speaking of HP, Ashura has 900 in this version. He lasted one round.


Giant's World brings a defensive upgrade: the Giant's Gauntlet gives +18 in defense for Robots. They don't need to bother with other equipment types: they can stack multiple pieces onto themselves, and get the same boost from armor of the same class.


The next dungeon has a serious problem though...hello again, Melt/Dissolve. The good thing about it, is that the draining is no longer 1-for-1, and that it isn't defense ignoring. The bad news is, it's based on MANA, so our robots are just bait for this attack. Cobbles are a lesser problem, but worth noting they're not able to be one-shotted by a single SMG burst. Still, they can't hurt us.


I get the max of 8 Phagocyt, but take them out before they can Dissolve me to death with a single SMG burst.


With a new world comes new weapons. Gold Sword and Laser Sword are both nice, if pricey upgrades. Both give a +14 bonus to STR/AGL, and also do their respectie stat x 11 to figure the damage. It's also worth noting Laser Sword is the last AGL weapon upgrade for a while. There's a freebie of each in the world, but for now, I get a Gold Sword to Cutman and Laser Sword for Vivit. I'd later pick up a second.

There's also Headbutt, the next Martial Art. I don't get too much of that, as I'm strong enough, and the next upgrade isn't that far off.


Neptune's Volcano is full of damaging lava, but I push through and pick up a Gold Sword along the way. I bought another, so Cutman's up to 3. I don't even need the HP exploit. Dunatis' Mountain has Jellies - who can also Dissolve me - but I just make sure to take them out first. Then it's time for a Robot Showdown of epic propor-


Ahahahahahahaha so brokenly overpowered. The Mountain God at least gets his deserved power boost in the remake, but here, you poke him and his 300HP is gone.


Bright Cave is one of my favorite dungeons in an RPG, which its moving floor and wicked music. The free Laser Sword goes to Floyd.


This dungeon also is long, and happens to completely shatter my stocks...except for Cutman, who's carrying a ton of swords around. I was in no real danger of running out, it's just that battles became slow. But with heavy defense on all fronts, it's not like I was worried or anything...

Cutman does need some AGL for accuracy purposes, but the rest can go without. The stats should be self-explanatory. With enough weapons piled onto them, Robots can become monsterous.


Guardian's World and the Villain's Hideout are extremely short worlds. The former consists of four boss fights and a few random encounters if you take the direct route out, which is the best route anyway since there's nothing in the base after it's attacked. The latter is a single boss fight. I pick up some Grenades here. The SMG upgrade, their base damage is 350. They go to Floyd and only Floyd, because...


The final miniboss of this world can drop the _Grenade's_ upgrade, the Bazooka! Its base damage is 490. Aigis takes it up.


The Ninja boss humorously gets a surprise round the first time I fight him and actually has enough power to get through Aigis' 70 defense! Still, it's dead in one round. A bunch of soft resetting later, and I wind up with his Ice Sword. This does slightly more damage than the Gold Sword, gives more of an attack boost, and has an Ice-element attached. This is strictly a good thing. It does the same damage against foes resistant to Ice as it does to those neutral to it, and additional damage plus the chance to critical hit/instantly kill enemies weak against it.

More to come on account of this being a longer game.

[T-hawk]

Good stuff. I definitely remember loading that overpowered SMG onto a bunch of robots, though didn't realize it was buyable as soon as the first world. And I remember those Dissolve attacks from the monsters in Ki's Body.

Four Robots should trash the entire game, except for the very last boss that I was never able to beat without healing. Gotta see how you do it! I don't think I ever realized to optimize the frontmost robot with all defense, as recommended by that four-robots faq on Gamefaqs.

[System Error]

Venus' World has a lot of nice stuff. I don't pick up anything yet, though. Not even X-Kicks, as I feel I can hold out just a biiiiit longer for the next Martial Art.


Not much to say about the Sewers. The enemies aren't threatening, and I get a chance to flex that Ice Sword. But in the Ancient's Volcano, I come THIS close to dying against a group of magic-casters. Not that dying actually means anything in this game for like 85% of the game, as you simply end up in Valhalla Palace where Odin offers you the chance to repeat the fight again.


Venus herself, I tear her apart. She can be threatening with her Flame attack, but she skips using it and messes around with moves that either don't hurt or are ineffective.


Next world is the Dragon Circuit. Dragon Armor may only give as much Defense as the Giant equipment, but it gives O-Damage. Meaning those mages who nearly killed me? Yeah. All their elemental spells do NOTHING.

The track itself is meanwhile host to several infamous and lesser known glitches. The Dragon Warp, the second miniboss being Tortoises instead of Wights due to them getting the ID backwards, MAGI differences...I take the fastest Dragon, and can't exploit the former, so I only have to go through the middle of them. Another thing the remake fixes, by the way - you fight the right enemies there.


The minibosses themselves aren't too bad, except for the Watchers. Whose Beam can tear me apart. And there's Dissolvers along the way. Ugly, but I pull through. Floyd is pretty bad here due to lack of upgrading, but I give him the Aegis MAGI so he can at least do something...and avoid dying.


And now we get access to what we're looking for. The Dragon Sword is the strongest purchasable sword based on STR. I get a couple for Cutman. The Catclaw, meanwhile, is the strongest AGL weapon, period. By the time I'm done with this world, Floyd and Vivit both have two. The Tank is even nastier than the Bazooka, and even acts like a shield. I just hand a single one to Floyd for now, as his Grenades kinda suck.

Not pictured here to cut back on images uploaded is Jyudo, the strongest purchasable martial art. It's tied with Laser Gun for the best AGL boost on a purchasable piece of equipment. But where are we going to get all the money for this?


Well, we get a second Tank for free in the short Harbor dungeon. Completing this and doing an event after locks out some of the great items...but I made sure to buy all I needed before doing said event. But in turn...


We unlock another source of enemies we can just mindlessly encounter and grind cash on. The two we're really looking for are Knights and Gazers. I have Floyd go after the latter with his Tank due to his higher speed, and Aigis blows up the former since they can't really hurt us.

I do this. A lot. I buy a lot of stuff and become ridiculously powerful. Then I keep on grinding cash, for a very special purpose later on. Mostly for my own amusement since I've always wanted to check into it and this playthrough is an excuse. It's completely unnecessary...but we'll amuse ourselves.


Though it's not shown, Robots are able to push their stats beyond the normal cap of 99. Because of this, it'd be relatively pointless to show stat screens moving forward, and I'm too lazy to calculate the exact values. Vivit's insane boosts put her as a destroyer of universes here.


I stop at about this much cash, and prepare to have some more fun...


Here, just look here for an explanation of what's going on, as well as a bunch of other interesting stuff. Or for a cliffnotes/layman's terms version, check in here. Charming Hatamotos = pain.


Even Aigis can feel this. It's ridiculous, really. Eventually I get tired of this and blow them away with a Tank.


Castle Edo has a few nice things. Ninja Gauntlet is a piece of equipment that is among those that gives the second-highest DEF boost (+26, Dragon Shield and Arthur Armor also give this), but more importantly, bestows O-Weapon to make physical attacks even more useless. I surprisingly give this to Floyd, as Aigis needs no help in reducing physical damage further, Samurai Bow is a fantastic weapon, doing 1000 base damage to an entire group. It gives a nice AGL bonus, so Vivit gets to take hold of this.


I really like the background before the Magnate is fought. Random commentary.


The Dolphin optional minibosses don't last long, and Magnate doesn't either. O-Change does reduce our damage, so it takes a bit longer. He has a nasty Tornado attack that can do 500~ damage to everyone, but never uses it.


Next world...except not, since it's just a romp through a long dungeon full of item collecting. And my inventory is clogged with all these stat potions.


This is about as high damage as I see Vivit pump out. It's truly frightening...AGL weapons are fantastic in this game on Robots, as AGL accounts for accuracy as well which STR weapons need to connect.

Can STR bots dare challenge this and strike back? Yes, they can.


More remake commentary: in this version, Odin says nothing if you haven't died before encountering him, though amusingly, still revives and introduces himself to you should you die against him. Henceafter, death is just game over. In the remake, he taunts you before the fight for being a fool coming here if you have yet to taste defeat.


I don't, by the way. Even though I come close a few times searching for this beauty. It does a flat 1050 base damage...if STR is under 70. If not, it's 1050+15*(STR-70). Did I mention it hits groups, too? And that it never misses? AGL is not needed ever again, except for potential moving-before-enemy purposes.

Though embarrassingly, it fails to drop several times because I have no room for the thing. After realizing and fixing that, I get it a few fights after.


Yeah. How do you like that, Minion? The bad news is, our damage output goes down after this fight when all our MAGI is taken away. The good news is, it only goes down by 200-300 points of damage.


So we have max money now. Or so it seems. We can actually sell off some of our junk to get even more than can be displayed, so long as we don't fight any fights in between buying things. Ninja Gauntlets can be bought in the Final Town, by the way, which is nice.


I go ahead and use all the stat-potions in the game on Dad as he returns. No other place for Robots to use him. I also give him a pair of Hecate Shoes I had as I go in to clear out the Nasty Dungeon.


I still run out of inventory space along the way. And even picture space, because the emulator is weird and has a max of 99 images. I have to redo some stuff to show it off...and still don't get nearly what I want. Arthur Armor and Parasuit are the best new things I find, though. The former gives O-Stone, and while the latter isn't as great for a robot as it is for a human or mutant, +32DEF along with O-Fire, O-Ice, and O-Change is fantastic. There's also SelfFix, a robot-only piece of equipment that sees them restore 10% of their Max HP after every turn.

XCalibr is one of the most notable treasures of the Final Dungeon. It's Gungnir...except it never runs out of uses. Good for our robots (it goes to Aigis), even better for humans. There's also another Parasuit and Arthur Armor in here.


Hi again, Warmech!!


Bye agai-WarMach. And I'm DEAD??? NukeBomb hurts. 600 base damage, blows through all defenses. He followed this up with some Missiles to wipe me off the map. Luckily, you can save anywhere, so nothing lost but some dignity.


Once I beat him, it's time to throw down with Apollo. I think I would rather not wait, thank you very much.

And I feel the only appropriate way to portray this is with ANIMATRONICS.




So to explain here. Apollo has 25000HP. How the fight normally goes is that he uses Aegis while taunting you. Then he transforms and becomes vulnerable. 12 turns after this, he explodes and Dad takes the explosion. Or if you can lower his HP enough, he'll get angry and use a brutal Flare, which Dad again takes.

However, it's possible to break through with Flare, never-miss weapons, and XCalibr/Gungnir. With enough STR (Dragon Swords, Sun Swords, the otherwise pointless 0-use Glass Sword), we can remove this before he transforms. End result, Dad dies for no good reason. Shoutouts to breaking the game!!

This is why I did all that cash-grinding before. Granted, I cash-grinded too hard and didn't actually need that much, but whatever.


Isis the Goddess joins us, we fix our equipment, then we go down th-wow. RUDE. Once we heal from this mess, and go get a few Tents for the road, we head down. Nothing really stops us along the way, not with every party member able to obliterate groups.


Isis can also cast Flare to get us out of almost any encounter, killing everything but the 2000HP Musashi in one hit, who I piled all the rest of the attacks on. Who, again, is rude and thankfully, Samurai Bow doesn't trigger his counters nor does it trigger if he dies. Like, say, instantly to Gungnir doing more than his health total.


Three Tents are enough to carry me to the bottom floor, and-


Wow.


WOW.


So a quick demonstration since the game was taunting me with a worthless item for this group...7-Sword is like any other multi-hit attack. Except it's ridiculously powerful and can hit up to 7 times. This is how much it does when Cutman swings it and all the hits connect on a weak enemy.

So why's this rare drop from a rare enemy sadly worthless? Well, you need AGL to hit. And robots can't have both in excess. It can still be used to do some really heavy damage on a balanced robot (5000~ with no resistances), but for the purposes of demonstration, since it's really inaccessible, I won't be using it. Oh, and as implied, I had to retreat after that. Haniwas are taxing fights, with 10000HP and them recovering 1000 of it every turn.


I go up to the final boss. Defense is largely useless against Arsenal, so I strip down Aigis and pump up her strength with some of those Dragon Swords. Then I realize that Floyd still has two pieces of armor, and I threw away two Jyudos the game generously gave me that could replace those. So I go beat up Black Belts while resetting a lot.

Is it necessary? Did I have to do it? Not really. I could easily win without these, but I prefer massive overkill having come this far. They end up dropping me two Karate and one Jyudo. I put the first two on Vivit, and give one of her Jyudos that was replaced as well as the one that dropped to Floyd. I also run into more Haniwas in the process. No more 7-Swords for me, but I sometimes get wiped when they spit out 900+ damage flares.


So here we are. The final boss that walled 12-year-old T-Hawk back in the day. How can a group of robots with no healing aside from SelfFix deal with Arsenal? And yes, I didn't get any even when searching, but you CAN get additional SelfFix from the robots/mecheyes here.


Well, a dead last line of defense (literally, the Japanese version calls it the Last Defense System) against those who may misuse MAGI - who thankfully does not turn into a giant robot in this version of the game much less Megazords with the other one if Threads of Fate are used - can't hurt us, can it?

So how can it hurt us? The first of its attacks in its first phase is Laser Cannon. Not the same as Laser Gun, this does around 45~ damage per active cannon. They're destroyed when 1000 damage is done to them, which is why I piled all the Karate onto Vivit - to increase her chance of one-shotting them. Floyd and Cutman needed no help with this. Second phase, Smasher! is the attack used. This does random damage to one target. It could be as low as 80. It tops out at just under 600. Final phase when the epic music hits (and sadly doesn't last long in this version), it launches the Smasher, as shown. This is basically that same attack on all-targets. Note how Cutman randomly took less.

Simply put, it's up to luck with Smasher's very variable damage, and your own damage. Kill it before it can kill you. All there is to it! You can win with even less than I have.

With what I have, though...the best it could do was kill off one robot if Smasher! followed by the launch gave some bad rolls, but with every robot able to do 900-1300 damage with its attacks, it didn't take too long to deplete its 10000HP.


This final boss death animation, also brought to you with ANIMATRONICS!!


So yeah, that's Final Fantasy Legend II, completed with four robots. I have more variants in mind for this game for the future, so you can look forward to more eventually.

One last relevant remake comment: in that version, Robots can actually use magic, via special pieces of equipment called Mana Circuits. They're rare though, and for extras you need to spend some time in a boss rematch arena. Just another way to use them in that version, and probably needed for healing purposes if you want to use threads and therefore fight the aforementioned giant robot.