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I love how Steiner is such a complete doofus he genuinely thinks his princess got killed by a prop sword.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:06
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zfleeman posted:Why did this happen? Because it was a freaking pain getting it under 2MB.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:11
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Trivia: the move that Steiner uses on Blank is Armor Break, a move that he can use later on in the game. Admittedly most people never see it as it's named because it's kinda useless. It's fitting it being the move he uses here considering the effects.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:27
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I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that this cool, competent Garnet doesn't stick around.
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Jul 9, 2015 16:57
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Rabbi Raccoon posted:I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that this cool, competent Garnet doesn't stick around.
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Jul 9, 2015 17:06
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Eh, not really. She's a lot calmer and more in control here. Although she does live here and she has been training to escape, so she has every right to be cool and collected right now. She loses a lot of that demeanor once she's somewhere unfamiliar. Not to say that she freaks out or whines or anything, just that there's a noticeable difference in how she acts. It's not a bad thing, it's just part of her character arc.
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Jul 9, 2015 17:10
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In retrospect it's kind of amazing how many people gushed about Yuna being the hidden true main character considering the previous game. I suppose the fact here it's an intentional separation of the hero and the main character actually makes it less noticeable than the confused mess in FFX.Rabbi Raccoon posted:Eh, not really. She's a lot calmer and more in control here. Although she does live here and she has been training to escape, so she has every right to be cool and collected right now. She loses a lot of that demeanor once she's somewhere unfamiliar. Not to say that she freaks out or whines or anything, just that there's a noticeable difference in how she acts. It's not a bad thing, it's just part of her character arc. Yeah, hyper-competent characters are boring. It's actually pretty neat how they handle her being a pampered princess but still keep her likable by having her actively try and learn how to adapt to new situations.
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Jul 9, 2015 17:27
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BioMe posted:Yeah, hyper-competent characters are boring. It's actually pretty neat how they handle her being a pampered princess but still keep her likable by having her actively try and learn how to adapt to new situations.
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Jul 9, 2015 17:29
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Exactly. It would be boring if she stayed a step ahead of everyone the entire game. But here, on her home turf, it works.
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Jul 9, 2015 17:31
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Mega64 posted:Vivi has Black Magic and Focus. Focus simply boosts magic power a bit. It has its uses. This is a massive understatement.
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Jul 9, 2015 18:01
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Fister Roboto posted:This is a massive understatement. Yeah, it's super easy to jsut max out his Magic stat and do amazing damage for the rest of the fight. It stacks and stays for the whole battle.
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Jul 9, 2015 19:28
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Pureauthor posted:I love how Steiner is such a complete doofus he genuinely thinks his princess got killed by a prop sword. Mega64 posted:
He's competent at his job, he's just waaaaay out of his depth.
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Jul 9, 2015 20:51
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The funny thing about Steiner is that, regardless of his actual capabilities or those of the Pluto Knights, he still has one of the most important jobs in the realm - safeguarding the castle and the royal family. At least in matters of internal security, he's on equal standing with, if not outright outranking, General Beatrix, who commands the entire Alexandrian army.
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Jul 9, 2015 21:43
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 I love that the Tantalus crew are so into their salute they even do it on stage in front of all the Alexandrian nobility  And nobody notices
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Jul 9, 2015 22:10
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Dang you Mega64, I just turned on my PSOne, dusted off my copy of the game, and started playing. XD Edit: Or... maybe not, judging by how my console isn't loading things properly (selected "New Game", and it went to a black screen, with The Place I'll Return to Someday just endlessly playing. drat.) SorataYuy fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 22:23
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The funny thing is that the whole chase sequence is more or less structured like a play itself, complete with exits stage left and Steiner suddenly dropping in from the sky like a literal deus ex machina. Also Garnet owns and it's neat that she's just having a grand old time running away from the castle and improvising her way through the actual play. Shows initiative, it does.
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Jul 9, 2015 22:33
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Needs a screenshot of Garnet's face after the Bomb blows up. It's loving priceless.
Ubiquitous_ fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 22:48
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I've always internalized queen Brahe's voice like Captain N's Mother Brain. Kind of look similar too.
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Jul 9, 2015 23:01
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Twib posted:The funny thing about Steiner is that, regardless of his actual capabilities or those of the Pluto Knights, he still has one of the most important jobs in the realm - safeguarding the castle and the royal family. At least in matters of internal security, he's on equal standing with, if not outright outranking, General Beatrix, who commands the entire Alexandrian army. Eh, not really. I get the impression Beatrix is more in charge of that.  Both Steiner and Beatrix were told to go find the princess. I think Steiner and the Pluto Knights just get told to do whatever needs doing at the time.
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Jul 9, 2015 23:38
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No, that is the mission of the Pluto Knights, it's just that actually guarding the queen's bedroom is under the purview of a group of female knights. Think of the Pluto Knights like the secret service.
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Jul 10, 2015 00:15
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Garnet is a character I walked away from this game really remembering. Her, Zidane, the main antagonist, and one other character we'll see later. Maybe it's the name, it's really great. Princess Garnet Til Alexandros. Comparisons to Yuna...just don't quite hit the mark to me. Garnet is a strong character sure, but she doesn't come close to the "plot centers around me and ends with me" thing that Yuna had goin on. Zidane, Garnet, and Vivi is already 3/4ths of my endgame party and I have no regrets about it.David Corbett posted:I didn't think that FFIV's end-game party was in any way deficient, honestly. There certainly weren't any characters I wanted on the team that weren't there, and the ones that were missing had darn good reasons for not being there. FFIV character discussion below. You switched the twins, mate.
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Jul 10, 2015 00:26
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Don't think the game ever really tells Steiners background but just in case I'm spoilering it: According to the wiki he got his position by beating Beatrix in a duel and won through dumb luck. As a prize he became the captain of the knights of pluto.
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Jul 10, 2015 00:32
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Iretep posted:Don't think the game ever really tells Steiners background but just in case I'm spoilering it: According to the wiki he got his position by beating Beatrix in a duel and won through dumb luck. As a prize he became the captain of the knights of pluto. I don't think that ever comes up in the game.
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Jul 10, 2015 00:39
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Okay so I want to take a little time to talk about something related to the wonderful soundtrack of this game. Nobuo Uematsu was originally tasked to make 20 themes. Character themes, to be specific. What he then proceeded to do was make the entire game's soundtrack. (Specifically, about 160 themes. 140 is used in the game). Grashbar fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 00:51
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I love this game, but due to the time investment I have really only finished it the one time. I've picked it up 3 or 4 times since then, though. Speaking of completionism, in that playthrough I missed out on one of Zidane's abilities for the entire game. It's the second one on his list, iirc. There is an item is it the mage masher, or is it a butterfly sword or something? that you straight up can't get after the first couple hours of the game. Since I didn't buy it in a store I just never got the ability that is tied to it. Kind of a major thing to miss. If anyone is playing along for the first time, buy 2 of everything and don't sell anything.
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Jul 10, 2015 01:37
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Iretep posted:Don't think the game ever really tells Steiners background but just in case I'm spoilering it: According to the wiki he got his position by beating Beatrix in a duel and won through dumb luck. As a prize he became the captain of the knights of pluto. Brony Hunter posted:I don't think that ever comes up in the game. I certainly don't ever remember seeing anything about that in the game. Might be from one of the dead tree encyclopedias they released. I'd love to hear more.
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Jul 10, 2015 01:58
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AdmiralViscen posted:I love this game, but due to the time investment I have really only finished it the one time. I've picked it up 3 or 4 times since then, though. Yes, FFIX is utterly terrible about locking you out of poo poo suddenly.
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Jul 10, 2015 03:40
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Hot drat, a FF9 LP. I'm in the middle of a replay of it myself (currently just about to get Eiko), but reading this as well will be great.
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Jul 10, 2015 04:57
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FeyerbrandX posted:I've always internalized queen Brahe's voice like Captain N's Mother Brain. Kind of look similar too. Yeah, that is roughly how I imagined her sounding.
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Jul 10, 2015 05:10
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Grashbar posted:Okay so I want to take a little time to talk about something related to the wonderful soundtrack of this game. FFIX is usually the OST Uematsu cites as his favorite. That certainly would explain that.
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Jul 10, 2015 05:23
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I've spent way too much time thinking about what the voice cast would be like if IX had voices. Sadly Cristopher Lee is no longer of this world.
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Jul 10, 2015 05:27
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Dastardly posted:I've spent way too much time thinking about what the voice cast would be like if IX had voices. Sadly Cristopher Lee is no longer of this world. Garland?
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Jul 10, 2015 05:28
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Dastardly posted:I've spent way too much time thinking about what the voice cast would be like if IX had voices. Sadly Cristopher Lee is no longer of this world. Bryce Papenbrook did a pretty solid job for Zidane's voice in Dissidia, so he'd be a good choice. Vivi also has an on-record voice actor with Melissa Disney, who voiced him in his Kingdom Hearts 2 cameo. But man, what I wouldn't give for a FF9 remake. At the very least, a fix for a certain mechanic that Mega64 will get to shortly would be MANDATORY. Bufuman fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jul 10, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 05:31
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Xenocides posted:(future character) I think Mega64 asked for spoiler tags for that kind of thing I'm reading through TWD's LP again just because this one can't update fast enough. I enjoy the different tones each of you is going/went for though, as there's something to be said for mostly playing it straight.
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Jul 10, 2015 06:42
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I loved this game, I'm loving this LP. Good show. Also, the Bombs in this game are adorable. They're so smiley and bouncy and explode-y!
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Jul 10, 2015 07:13
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Tuxedo Ted posted:I certainly don't ever remember seeing anything about that in the game. Might be from one of the dead tree encyclopedias they released. I'd love to hear more. Square loves pulling this sort of poo poo, making up random, irreverent, but still interesting side-bits and they'll hide the information in art books or Ultimanias or whatever and then never really get around to translating them. That's how you end up on Gamefaqs trying to sift through rumors and 90% of the time they're bullshit ("you can get the Paladin Ring by fighting 255 fights with the cursed ring lol") and the real stuff sounds just as goofy (Sabin has a fear of squirrels because one kicked his rear end when he was a kid) except it's also badly translated because this was the 90's.
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Jul 10, 2015 08:25
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[while being dragged away] I remember Doctor Tot! I remember Doctor Tot! I remember [voice fades into distance]
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Jul 10, 2015 11:31
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 FOREST NOISES   Looks like Zidane survived, at the very least.   The Prima Vista...has seen better days.    Yeah, but the Prima Vista's wasted. Just our luck to crash in this forest... It's gonna get interesting... What do you mean, "interesting," Boss? I hear no one's ever made it outta here alive. Quit yer whinin' and get it under control! And get the wounded outta here! Alright! There's no way we can survive if all our stuff is toast. I'm on it!-----     They're lookin' for Garnet... Can't find her anywhere. Maybe she fell off... Got squashed under the ship. This is great. First we kidnap her, then we kill her. We'll hang for sure. At this time, Zidane finally decides to show up.  I can't believe you jumped off! You're nuts, you know that? I didn't jump off. I got thrown out from the impact. So, is everyone okay? Yeah. We've all got the devil's luck. But if we don't find Princess Garnet, we're all dead meat. Now it's time for a new mechanic.   Active Time Event is a system that lets you see other events that are happening at the same time elsewhere, kupo! Press the SELECT button when you see the icon flashing below. You can press the button anytime while the icon is flashing. ATE means you can view optional cutscenes involving people besides the currently-controlled character. There's usually no reason not to watch them. It's basically "Meanwhile..." made into a game mechanic for some reason.  Sometimes there's more than one. For now, let's watch this one.   Are you alright?  I-Is it still coming? And that's it. Now we're in control of Zidane.  Alright. Today we'll get into the actual gameplay of this game. Every Final Fantasy has a gimmick to learning new abilities and spells, like materia or espers or jobs or whatever.  This game has you learning abilities from items. For instance, the starting dagger that Zidane starts out with teaches the "Flee" ability, which gives you a guaranteed run from encounters you can run from, at the cost of 10% of the gil you would've won from that encounter. You can still run as normal with L1/R1, of course.  The Mage Masher is nice enough to teach Flee AND Detect, but most weapon and armor upgrades won't be so nice. You can use the ability as long as you have the weapon or armor piece equipped. So if I get another dagger that doesn't teach either of these abilities, I can't use them any longer. The exception, of course, is if you gain enough AP from battles to permanently learn them. Detect and Flee both require 40AP to learn. Once they're learned, you can go to the next weapon or armor or whatever and learn abilities from there. General reception to this system is "meh" at best, as generally you'll need more AP to master abilities than you normally would spend fighting enemies in dungeons, and it can be annoying to be stuck with lower-tier equipment especially when the game incentivizes you to steal good stuff early to make use of it only for you to still need to hold off to finish getting this ability. On the other hand, a lot of abilities are pretty unimpressive anyway (Detect lets you see what items an enemy is holding, pretty pointless when you can just get a guide and use it to get a link to GameFAQs to get what the enemy is carrying), though obviously it's hard to tell what's good in a first playthrough. At any rate, it's not the best way to handle abilities in the series, and it is a bit puzzling that they reuse this mechanic for the Tactics Advance games. I don't mind it so much myself though so I'll deal.    The Leather Hat teaches Fire, which Zidane can't learn, so it's only there for defensive boosts. The Wrist and Leather Shirt also teach abilities, and Zidane can learn something from the Moonstone as well.  There are two types of abilities. Active are ones you use during battle, like Flee or Vivi's Fire spell. Passive abilities give you certain boosts, like extra damage against certain enemy types, status immunities, or buffs you always have like Auto-Haste.  Another useful thing is you can press Select to get more information on, well, anything. Beast Killer does 150% damage to beast-type enemies. Zidane also gets Protect Girls, which takes damage for girls if their HP is below 50% of max, and Flee-Gil, which nets you 10% of the gil you would've won from an encounter if you ran away normally (L1 + R1, not the Flee ability). To use passives, you have to equip them. Each has a cost depending on how strong the ability is, and each character has a set amount of crystals to spend that go up with level. Right now, Zidane has more than enough to use all three passive abilities, but of course that will change as play continues and passives build up. Finally, everyone has different passives, with the physical jobs getting more to make up for the relative lack of abilities compared to mages. There's some overlap, such as Zidane and Steiner both getting Beast Killer, but overall the passives will be geared toward that character's skillset. Zidane has stuff that affects Steal, Steiner's focused on dealing more damage to various enemy groups, Vivi's geared towards magic passives, and so on.  There's a moogle to save at here but nothing new with Mognet for now.   Anyway, nothing to do but to go looking for Garnet.   The Evil Forest is our first dungeon. The locals around here aren't big on elaborate names. Enjoy the music for a bit, because we're about to do our first random encounter!    This is a Goblin. They're one of the enemies that like to hang out in this putrid forest swamp.  Back attacks are still a thing. I believe there's a passive that stops this stuff.  The Goblin by itself is no threat, chipping away ~10HP a hit.  Steal is not a 100% success rate. Yet. There's an ability we'll get pretty soon that will change that, though.  Let's show off Detect since we'll never see it again otherwise.    Some of the abilities are pretty goofy-looking and make no sense. Welcome to Final Fantasy IX! If there's more than one item to steal, Zidane's mechanical eye-ball pal will tell us.   Anyway, I got the item so I'm content to kill this guy in one hit now and then use the Potion I just stole and could've skipped if I killed him in the first place.   Each character has a celebratory dance I can't show off because moving backgrounds are the bane of animated GIFs. After the different fanfare themes of FF7 and FF8, the classic one from the earlier games has returned. Enjoy.  There are two screens in the victory screen. First is EXP and AP, where you learn when people gain levels and learn abilities.  Next is gil and item drops. There are four slots for enemy drops, and each slot has a chance of dropping depending how rare it is, meaning theoretically you could get four drops from one enemy. Some enemies also have a chance of dropping cards for Tetra Master, which is its own separate drop rate.  Let's check out our inventory.  Potions are a bit different in this game in that they only heal 2/3 as much in the field, more rewarding you for actually using them in battle. Hi-Potions recover 450HP in battle, and Ethers recover 150MP in battle. Phoenix Downs revive a person at single-digit HP. Phoenix Pinions recover at around half HP, but they can only be used in battles. The rest I will assume you can glean since they're no different from other Final Fantasy games, though Tents have an interesting secondary use in this game that I'm sure will come up sooner or later.  You can also get information on weapons and armor, which is handy for looking up stuff like elemental defenses. Silk Shirts reduce Thunder damage by 50%! That might actually be useful!  This whole area is one screen and it's possible not to run into any battles at all. Next screen...  ...What the hell is that?  Release the princess at once!!! Yeah, like it's gonna realy listen to you.   Meet Soul Cage. This fight's kind of a gimmick.    You see, this is our introduction to Trance.    I've heard of it before! Trance is induced by a surge of emotion. Alright, let's take him!Trance is FFIX's version of a limit break. It does different things for each character, which are generally pretty awesome. It generally adds up from taking damage, and higher Spirit stats lets it rise more quickly. The major problem with Trance though is that, unlike Limit Breaks in FF7 and FF8, you can't save it. If it activates, it automatically happens and will wear off at the end of battle. That makes it pretty terrible and end up being nothing more than a nice bonus here and there if it activates at a point where you'd actually use it. Trance is used up as you take actions in Trance, especially those related to Trance.   So this guy can absorb Garnet's HP. If Garnet goes down, Game Over. There's nothing to Steal, so let's skip to Zidane's Trance. For Zidane, his basic skill set is changed to Dyne.  His abilities are replaced with new ones that do large damage, albeit at the cost of MP. Tidal Flame is a trap for this fight since it's multi-target, which means it'd kill Garnet. We want Free Energy for this fight.    It does solid damage.  Steiner does alright damage. He'll shine later on.   After two hits of Free Energy, Soul Cage runs away with Garnet in tow.  What the heck? Where did they go? She's gone... How could I let this happen!? Don't worry. She's not dead yet. That monster was only a minion. He's probably gonna take her to his master. That means the princess might still be- Come! We must go find her at once!  THINK AGAIN.   Now Vivi's caught in one, and we don't have Trance to help out.    Vivi however is in a much better position to help out in frying this drat thing.  This thing will also absorb Vivi's HP, so it's good to keep him healed while Steiner helps wear this thing down.   Zidane wants to steal some items first.  Don't be afraid to use a Potion on Vivi if he gets low. He's your biggest damage dealer this fight. After enough damage...    Victory!  Are you alright?   ...Welp. That could've gone better. Next time, we do some soul-searching on the Prima Vista. Mega64 fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Jul 11, 2015 |
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Jul 10, 2015 19:18
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Cerebral Bore posted:The funny thing is that the whole [game] is more or less structured like a play itself, complete with exits stage left and...literal deus ex machina In much the same way that FFVI shows you an opera and also is inspired by opera, FFIX has a distinct flair for the theatrical in much that it does, and tells you up front The Play's The Thing so you keep an eye out for it. It's a great technique, and as people have said, it's evidence that the people who put this game together really had a fun time doing it. The "SFX" combat option being there for the real fight against Steiner is one of my favorite touches of the opening sequence.
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Jul 10, 2015 19:30
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gbuchold posted:The "SFX" combat option being there for the real fight against Steiner is one of my favorite touches of the opening sequence. It would've been a fantastic touch if the SFX spells actually did damage to Steiner because he's dumb enough to believe they're attacking him with actual magic.
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Jul 10, 2015 19:33
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