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Regalingualius posted:Now that's just evil. Just off the top of my head, that automatically makes at least 1/3 of the jobs either worthless or much harder to use (Black Mage, White Mage, Time Mage, Red Mage, Arcanist, Spiritualist, Magic Knight) just from being unable to buy magic. Combined with only being able to use equipment found out in the world... Spiritmaster, Arcanist and Red Mage are still good thanks to not needing to buy spells/their passives the real kick in the dick is the equipment
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Oct 1, 2014 03:46
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| # ? May 11, 2024 07:58 |
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bathroomrage posted:Do it with Bravely Default and hate your life You MONSTER. Now make it through the entire game that forces you to play the game multiple loving times because 'lolplottwistslolfuckyou'
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Oct 1, 2014 06:34
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Nakar posted:Can you get enough in stats from just the Crystarium to avoid leveling up any equipment in FFXIII? I seem to recall the boosts to Strength/Magic are enormous from weapons. You do find accessories so those would be fair game I guess. Yes. Literally every boss, Cieth stone mark and the Long Gui (upgraded Adamantoise) are beatable with a 5-star rating (there's an achievement for doing this for all 64 Cieth stones) with Tier 1 equipment, at level 1. By the time you're capable of taking out Mark 64 or a Long Gui your stats will be incredibly high. (Lightning gets 1,700 in both strength and magic with a full Crystarium for example, before weapon boosts are added) Buffs are much more important than upgraded weapons by that point. Just about every accessory is gained from enemy drops or treasure as well, so LOTL would be very simple in FF XIII.
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Oct 1, 2014 12:12
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Kemix posted:You MONSTER. Now make it through the entire game that forces you to play the game multiple loving times because 'lolplottwistslolfuckyou' The only reason a LOTL run of Bravely Default would be hard is because you can't use Norende to buy all the good equipment that breaks the game in half early and makes it beatable in the endgame. You'd have to live off of all the subpar poo poo you find in chests/can steal until the endgame when you can get a few legendary pieces and I guess since the Brave Suit and Luminous Robe are in chests it's not -all- bad.
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Oct 1, 2014 20:07
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Later chapters of BD also give you a number of pretty great things to steal. I'm assuming stealing is legal in LOTL, anyhow.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:17
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Considering you're not buying anything from them, yea, I would consider that LOTL. Also, you would probably want to not do anything with the Ability Link system as well, that would make things far too easy, specially early on.
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Oct 1, 2014 21:47
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GBA Bonus Run Part 4 Solid Snake a king is dying get the gently caress out of here man. Anyway, once all this happens, we're off to Deist/Dist. New party member time!  I just like this line. The pirates are as much of a threat as they were in the original. Anyway, Leila!  Unfortunately Gordon stole Dee's old bow, and this lovely Dark Bow is all I had to give her. Not that it really matters, since Leila's not gonna damage anything with either one. Especially since I was stupid and put the bow in the wrong hand. I just had that bit of text about hand preference and then forgot Leila is a leftie  Despite that handicap, Leila's a bit of a step up from Gordon. She has a spell, Thunder 4, so she can do something if I need her to. I have a leftover berserk tome too, so she gets one. Also, a gold hairpin to steal! Charlie gets the hairpin and Mac gets the thief gloves. Now, Charlie could use both since the agility bonus stacks in this version, but I'd rather Charlie not have the magic penalty. That all settled, it's time to head to Deist.  As my luck would have it I keep triggering MP increases for Charlie but not Dee.  Okay so he has less so it's easier to trigger MP increases for him but I'm still mad okay? Deist castle has a ton of stuff we want.  Believe it or not, the Curse tome is not really one of them. Curse was one of Vivian's go-to spells, but with berserk there really isn't a point to leveling it. Berserk cuts through defense just fine, and it doesn't have to roll against magic defense or contend with enemy resistances. I gave it to Charlie anyway, just for the hell of it.  But this is going to be extremely vital. There's also another antidote and eye drop, highly appreciated.  This goes to Mac, and it improves his attack by twenty points. Yeah he's been needing an upgrade.  I can't wait to hoard the poo poo out of this. At this point, I have the choice whether to go on to Deist cave like the game wants, or to do the tropical cave.  I'm actually gonna choose Deist cave. Hi Wyvern! Deist cave is less MP intensive than the tropical cave, since it doesn't have slime enemies. I might just end up doing the tropical cave when you're supposed to. I'm not looking forward to it, to be honest.  The cave is designed to be done in three trips, and that's what I plan to do. Finished the first one, got the pendant, talked to the wyvern, and we're ready for the next trip. I go to Bafsk after each trip to heal up, so it's a bit tedious, but not infuriatingly so. Gives me an opportunity to practice magic and for Dee not to gain MP.  Oh, I noticed something odd. There was one ogre mage in this battle, but it never did anything. Yet Leila still got magic defense. Did they completely redo the magic defense formula? Hrm. I'll have to look into this.  There were two enemies in this cave that posed a challenge. One was the Hill Gigas; not so bad, but they're hard to kill and come in packs of two. That required breaking out the MP for berserk. The other was these yellow souls. No, they don't do much damage individually, but they are relentless and no one here has Vivian's HP.  Especially not Leila. Oh well, at least this enemy keeps triggering magic defense gains. And if you think I'm wasting my only phoenix down on her you are looney tunes.  Yes.  Oh, and Ogre Chiefs start to show up. I don't show the enemy itself because it doesn't matter, the drop does. Very nice. Charlie gets himself a wing sword.  Urgh, this piece of poo poo requires you to fight some adamantoises.  Even single target blizzard level 4 doesn't kill them. Insane. However, rather than ice them to death I can cast berserk and kill them that way, so at least I've got options. Hell, even without berserk Mac can damage them, just not much.  I never thought I'd be happy to get a bow, but I am.  This was overdue. And that was trip number two. After warping, bringing Leila back (why not?), and staying at the inn, we run the final lap.  You know, my party only has two pieces of headgear, and they're vastly superior to this POS even in just raw defense. I really don't know why they give you a full set of mythril armor in this dungeon.  At least this is can be useful. I occurs to me that I said I was going to use this in the last run, but never did. I actually did plan on using it for the lamia fight, but that didn't really work out. Will I use it in this run? Let's see!  Already have one, but this requires us to fight a special monster.  Yay! Could you patch up Charlie for me?  Wait, their cure is single target now? How did I forget that? Erm, anyway, got healed up. Thanks green souls, I'd not kill you if the game let me.  Nothing else really happens on the way to the bottom. Thankfully everyone comes into this fight with a decent amount of MP, so let's rock!  Rolled the highest number of enemies, but I got a preemptive strike. It gives me a turn to set up my buffs. Once I've got all my front-liners blinked and berserked, this is in the bag.  Their blaze attack is a bit nasty, but my important characters aren't really in danger.  And my party demolishes them before they can do any real damage.  'bout drat time. Once we sink the egg, time to warp out and head back to Altair.  Normally, I wouldn't care two shits about this spell, but considering that I already had an incident where Dee ran out of MP and couldn't teleport out, having Charlie learn Warp for emergencies isn't a bad idea. I could also use it as an insta-death spell, but I'd rather not bother. Gonna get some real insta-death spells soon anyway.  Charlie is such a ladies man.   So this fight has a million different ways for it to go wrong, and unlike Vivian there really isn't anything we can do to counter it.  Case in point. However, unlike Vivian getting hit with sleep isn't necessarily a death sentence, since there's a full party here.  I had Dee use the Mythril Mirror on herself to prevent being confused, but in retrospect that was a dumb idea. The one who'd do the most damage confused wasn't Dee.  It was someone like Mac. And Leila just berserked him, too.  Fortunately for me (well, as fortunate as one can be in this circumstance) Mac just took himself out. Charlie had broken out of sleep in the meantime and was able to cast blink on himself and get berserked. Obviously if the lamia queen chose to confuse Charlie this attempt is over, but he should be able to get a few hits in. Really, the best thing to do for this fight is just go in guns blazing and end it before it can go tits up.  And I did just that. Got it in one try, too. Not bad.  I also got a really great drop to boot! This goes to Dee. Death is pretty rare element, actually, but if I need resistance to death Dee's got it.  This translation just gives Leila all the good lines. Sadly, though, we lose her for the time being. Stupid stinky Gordon. Gotta go do the stupid arena. Stupid.  But hey, a chance to get some items! C'mon eye drops!  ...  At least the behemoth is still adorable.  And as pathetic. If you look at the party's HP you'll notice the behemoth didn't get a single hit in. I really don't get the logic of putting this boss after the lamia queen. If there's anyone here who ever had a problem with the behemoth please tell me.  Uh, thanks mystery voice? Anyway, the emperor runs away Dennis puts us in jail because he's a jerk, we get out, and so on.  For once, an antidote is worth fighting some monsters for. Well, maybe. ...not really.  And another cottage, another ether, and an elixir! Now we have the tense part; can we make it out without getting killed by teams of wizards or captains?  As it turns out, yes we can. I never even saw a single wizard or captain.  This was the scariest enemy encounter I ran into, since specters can cast stone, but they didn't. Go figure.  And Dee got some more MP! Yay! But yeah, the team walked out with no incident. And I guess we'll stop here.      
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Oct 3, 2014 01:30
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Sure, not dying by avoiding Magicians and Sorcerers is great, but then you miss out on all their sweet spell drops. Sweet spells which you are probably going to want.
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Oct 5, 2014 02:07
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When he is less likely to die getting them.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:07
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Please tell me Toad/Petrify are viable drops around this point in the game. That would really be awesome to have.
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Oct 5, 2014 20:14
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Kemix posted:Please tell me Toad/Petrify are viable drops around this point in the game. That would really be awesome to have. Would be really boring too.
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Oct 5, 2014 23:34
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TheFattestPat posted:Would be really boring too. There's nothing boring about turning 90% of the world's population into toads 
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Oct 6, 2014 04:10
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Fenrir posted:There's nothing boring about turning 90% of the world's population into toads 13 years later, Hilda and Gordon's daughter shows up on the doorstep of Firion/Solo/Charlie and puts her princessly boot up his rear end for giving her the worst full-time gig ever. It would suck being the only princess in a world of human-turned-frogs.
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Oct 6, 2014 05:17
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Bufuman posted:It would suck being the only princess in a world of human-turned-frogs. This is a FF2 LP, not a Chrono Trigger LP.
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Oct 6, 2014 07:01
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Bufuman posted:13 years later, Hilda and Gordon's daughter shows up on the doorstep of Firion/Solo/Charlie and puts her princessly boot up his rear end for giving her the worst full-time gig ever. It would suck being the only princess in a world of human-turned-frogs. Look on the bright side, it means the Emperor no longer holds the record for highest victim count! ...Wait, that's not bright at all.
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Oct 6, 2014 13:46
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GBA Bonus Run Part 5 Other than this evasion gain, the walk across the desert is uninteresting. Next up is retaking Castle Fynn.  I didn't show it, but in the original game Hilda's "camp" outside of Fynn just uses the castle tileset. I figured someone would be curious, and yes, in the remake it's actually a camp.  Welcome back!  This time I will actually put the bow in the correct hand. Leila still can't hit much because of the bow's accuracy, but at least she'll occasionally hit. Now Captain and Mages can spawn here, too, but didn't.  But Death Flowers do, and guess what they drop? Nice, although I'm coming to the point where I'm needing these items less and less.  But not much to do other than kill Gottos.  Gottos lasted four rounds, and spent each of those rounds trying to hit either Charlie or Mac and failing. Amusingly, Dee's lovely thunder level 2 finished him off. Somehow these guys had an easier time with Gottos than Vivian did, and it wasn't exactly a nail-biting battle for her. After taking care of that, time to raid the castle.  I could have gotten Toad earlier, but I'd have to farm captains for the tome, and I'd rather not. While spells don't level as fast as weapons do in this version, they do level faster, so it's not too much of a burden for Dee to level it. Now I won't toad everything I see, mostly it's going to be used to make random battles faster. I won't use it on bosses unless it's funny. (Well, especially funny, that is.) I also give Break to Charlie and Death to Leila, just for funzies. Oh, and this is one of the few times I actually ever use the death spell, and now that I can compare it pretty much directly to toad let me just say; the death spell loving sucks. Do not use it.  I did actually experiment with the Aura spell in the last run, but honestly I couldn't tell if it was doing anything or not. Apparently it adds +20 to your attack against certain enemy types, which is utterly useless for a party that's using berserk. Even for a character that isn't using berserk Aura is awful. Now, this chest is trapped with a sorcerer/sergeant combo.  The animation for the toad spell is pretty adorable. Hey, speaking of toad.  Guess what sorcerers can drop. Since Charlie hasn't gained a level in break yet, he tosses it aside and gets toad too.  I would put these on Mac, since stat bonuses stack in this version, but that would drop his evasion from 91% to 67%. Once Mac gets a bit more agility and shield levels I could potentially swing that, though. (And I eventually do!) Yeah, Mac is already close to 99% evasion. Shields are awesome folks.  And finally, this is the last piece of noteworthy armor here. Charlie gets this. While his evasion isn't as good as Mac's, the Main Gauche really has made a different. He's up to 4-76%, and for the most part he's not getting hit. Again, we can either do the tropical island dungeon or the dungeon under castle Fynn. Honestly, the Fynn dungeon is super easy, so that's first.   What a difference a few magic defense levels make, huh? Thankfully I had two eye drops.  How thoughtful.  Again, appreciated.  There are only two enemies in the entire game that can toad you: Skulls and Wizards. Both of which won't be regular encounters until much later, after we've gotten equipment with status resistances. Admittedly, had I ran into Wizards earlier someone could have gotten hit with toad, and that would have sucked. But honestly that's the only time I can think of toad ever being a problem.   Dee's paltry MP means that whenever the brain land a successful swap on her that it'll always heal her MP. Heh. Still had to heal her HP, though.  You know the game throws a lot of shields at you. I'm still sticking with the golden shield for the poison resistance, although honestly most poison is inflicted by attacks and Mac isn't getting hit so.... probably should switch.  More ogre mages means I can round out Charlie and Dee's spell lists. Dee learned blink, and Charlie got Blizzard later on.  The Power Staff is a nice little upgrade for Cha- wait. Wait a sec. Lemme look this up. ...this was a blood sword, originally. I knew they removed one of the blood swords, but I thought it was the one in Paul's house, not this one. I was wrong! I don't need it for a while anyway, but since it's in Paul's house you can actually permanently miss the blood sword now. (If don't you ask Paul about the whirlwind until after it's gone, he won't let you into his treasure cache. Dick.)  There's also a flame armor and a orichalcum dagger in this dungeon, but I won't be using either. This battle here is the closest thing to a hard battle in this whole dungeon, and I got a preemptive strike on them anyway. I don't know if only Charlie's evasion determines preemptive chances, but certainly higher evasion makes the difference; this party get preemptives way more than Vivian ever did.  All right, this dungeon's done. Now I have to do the tropical island. Yay.  The first floor at least gives me a buncha items. In addition to this ether there's an eye drop and two hi potions. Other than the phoenix down that's the best treasure in the dungeon, sadly.  This, right here, is why I was kind of dreading this dungeon. Not because it's dangerous or hard, it's not, but because these loving monsters require you to spend MP to beat them. Not only do you need to spend MP to kill these monsters, you have to cast two spells, because both of these enemies have different elemental resistances. At least most of the party now has elemental spells at their disposal, so the MP burden is spread more equally, but it's still a drag. The enemies show up really frequently, too.  It was kind of pointless to go here, since I can't buy anything from these guys, and I just ended up doing out of instinct. I could just warp back a few levels, but I decided to exit entirely and run back to the nearest town.  Which is a bit of an annoyance. Honestly, I probably should have used one of the two cottages I have, since other than Mysidia Cave the other dungeons will be close enough to town or to the airship not to need a cottage. But what if I need it for the Mysidian Cave? WHAT IF THERE'S A BOSS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER?  Back in the dungeon, the treasure continues to be underwhelming. I guess Charlie can take this just for completion's sake. The other scourge scroll and the two(!) blind scrolls can just languish in my inventory. You know I actually sold off five blind scrolls earlier just to reduce the size of my bloated inventory. And I already had three characters with the spell. The game really wants me to have blind.  I end up getting so sick of these slimes/puddings/whatever that I was just running away from a bunch of them.  Yay Phoenix Down.  While this is powerful for an attack item, I almost never use them. It kind of gave me an idea. If I don't want to spend MP on the slimes or run from them, I do have a ton of hellfires that aren't doing anything.  They don't do much damage, but two of them will usually kill all of the slimes. (And the character's intelligence does matter, by the way.) Hellfires also aren't always destroyed when you use them, so this is a reliable method. Although none of my character can gain intelligence from this, so it's not much better than just running. At least fighting gives a chance for HP, evasion, and/or agility gains. By the way, the Gaia Drum doesn't work here. They changed how the Gaia Drum works in the remake; it was probably bugged in the original, but honestly I didn't use the drum enough in either version to get a good handle on the differences.  Rather than walk back, I saved a tiny bit of time by warping. Thanks warp!  Has anyone who's played this game gotten any use out of fear? Just wondering.  Anyway, the gang makes it to the boss with a decent amount of MP left. The big horn enemies only get 4 attacks, and both of my frontliners have over 4 evasion with high percentage, so they can't hit me. Once the boys get berserked, this battle's over.  Or I could just toad the lot. I said I'm not going to use toad for boss battles, but this barely counts.  And we're done. I probably shouldn't have been so resistant to doing this dungeon, but it is so boring. Both of the "mask" dungeons are, to be honest. Next up is the Mysidia Cave, however, which is much less boring.  Once we're at Mysidia, there's really nothing to do but to inn, put the mask on the statue, and leave.  You'd think this party would have problems with the enemies on the way to Mysidia, but not really. Enemies get around four to six attacks, and both Charlie and Mac have over level four evasion at more than 80%, so most enemies get a single hit in at best. Ghosts could probably still gently caress me over, but never ran into any.  Oh, who to put this on? If you remember, this piece of equipment is +40 to defense, +10 to agility, and matter resistance. Charlie isn't hurting for the agility boost, but the matter resistance is appealing, so he gets it.   Oh, oh gently caress I was not anticipating having to deal with amnesia! Fortunately I have exactly two mallets (or echo screens or whatever) on hand. I guess I could have just let Leila go, but she's decent as a supporting spellcaster. Appropriately Dee got some magic defense from this battle.  Sweet. Goes to Dee, since she could use the agility.  And then we defeat an evil doppelganger through strength of heart and masks or something.  Ton of weapons in this cave. This is where you'd normally first get the power staff, and the flame lance already outclasses it. Charlie's really cycling through weapons, although he's not losing his main gauche. Sadly, the knife is pretty outdated by now. Hm.  Oh, you know one nice thing Malboros drop? Yeah. I wait until getting the osmose tome before Dee gets crazy with magic, but I'm at a point where everyone can be a lot freer with spells.  Another upgrade for Dee! Her old Flame Bow passes to Leila, and now she can actually hit enemies! Sadly, Leila won't be with us for much longer, so gotta appreciate it while I have it.  Thanks for raining on my parade. Those two mallets I used earlier are the only ones you ever find in the game, by the way. There is one enemy that drops mallets: the mantis king. Mantis Kings only show up on certain areas of the world map after the emperornado hits. They're also the only non-boss enemy that drop phoenix downs. But in any case, we're hosed for mallets. While I could have continued, I was boring and teleported out after this battle. I decided not to bother with the death and resurrection rigmarole and just bought a single mallet.  This is the first upgrade we got for axes in quite a while. The last axe Mac could use was the Mythril Axe, with 22 attack. The Ogrekiller has 58. There is an axe between the two, the Demon Axe, but you have to purchase it, it's only 27 attack, and you can most certainly buy the Ogrekiller by the time you get to the Demon Axe. You know, I looked it up, and there are exactly double the amount of swords in the game compared to axes. But then again we already knew that the game heavily skews towards sword users.  I believe this might be the last phoenix down we ever get, depending on what enemy drops I get. The Bell of Silence is still useless.  Hello Ghosts.  My old friends.  Other than paralyzing Leila and getting a single hit in on Charlie, they don't stand up long to a series of Fire spells and a roided up Mac. Since there are two drain scrolls in this dungeon both Charlie and Dee get one. I never get any use out of the Drain spell but I always have my characters learn it. Dunno why.  This, however, will not be used. Maybe for Dennis when he comes back? The thing is both of my casters have Toad, and Toad is just plain better. Mini does use spirit instead of intelligence, but neither of my casters really specialize in white magic, so mini is redundant.  Oh, and now that Charlie's got the same evasion level as Mac, and his evasion percent has been rising quite significantly due to the Main Gauche, he's now at 5-99%. He's actually got better evasion than Mac, first time that's happened in this run, since Mac is wearing both the Giant Gloves and Giant Helm. I really don't think I can over-emphasize how awesome the Main Gauche is.  This series of chests used to all have potions, but they put some nicer consumables in here. The total is one potion, two hi-potions, and an ether. Still not ground-breakingly great, but worth going after.  And we've made it to the end and gotten our plot advancing token. But more importantly...  Yes.  Yes. Osmose isn't quite as broken as it was in the original, since now you can't drain MP from targets that don't have any, but a surprising number of enemies in this game have MP. Dee is definitely never running out from now on, with the exception of that drat osmose spamming bastard in the jade passage. She's been kind of stagnating in her spellcasting stats, but now she should really be coming into her own. And I'm calling it here. Next time we get all the fancy status resisting stuff.      
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Oct 6, 2014 22:47
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The faster spell learning rate in this version, and the fact that Osmose is limited by enemy MP makes it a bit frustrating. I found myself easily ending up at a level 8 or so Osmose while trying it on various enemies that would give me 0 or 20 MP or something. Osmose isn't nearly as useful when it costs so much to cast, and few enemies seem to have more than 20 or 30 MP.
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Oct 7, 2014 18:03
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GBA Bonus Run Part 6  And now we must say goodbye to Leila. She sure could cast berserk. Goodbye berserk casting Leila.  And helloooo new status resisting equipment. The question at this point becomes who gets what. Between the Twist Headband, the Power Vest, and the Power Armlet we have mind, body, and poison resistance. Poison resistance has become a non-issue; for the most party the two front-liners are dodging poison inflicting attacks, and I've got quite a few antidotes floating around. The Power Armlet still a decent piece of armor, though. Charlie already has the Black Grab, protecting him against matter, and the Gold Hairpin. He gets the Power Armlet while Mac gets the other two new pieces. Not quite fully immune, but the party is building up a decent set of resistances.  Oh hey Ric  While I'm killing Ricard, there's something odd I've noticed. I don't have access to the Haste spell, by the way, yet Mac here is hitting way too many hits. That's... quite odd. You'll also see characters hitting an inflated number of hits when they've been berserked. I guess they redid some formula or another, but hell if I know what. Kind of flummoxed.  Believe it or not, this is actually worse than what my characters are already using.  Ricard just 'cuz you're dead doesn't give you an excuse to swear Mr Potty Mouth And the Roundworm is just as much of a pushover here, so we're out in no time.  And Charlie now has more MP than Dee, who's not attacked once since she got Osmose. That doesn't actually last for long, I just think it's funny. Anyway, time to climb Mysidia Tower.  But now the little cutscene before you enter the tower is even lengthier and you still have to watch it every time. Goody.  Of the three staffs on the first floor, one of them are now an Ether. Just one, though. That seems odd to me.  But who cares, the real treasure is still here. Dee gets the White Robe, and now she's immune to everything but poison. The only poison inflicting attacks that can hit the back row are Scourge and Poison Cloud, and those are fairly rare (and don't always inflict poison). Again, I've got over 10 antidotes, so it's not a concern.   Unfortunately there are still a few gaps in the party's status protection.  Although I didn't really fall prey to any disaster. This is the worst Charlie did. He got confused pretty frequently, but it often wore off in the next round before he could do anything. Unlike the original, if a character gets confused before they act I believe your input is canceled and they just attack the party. However, since Charlie is so fast he always acted first. Just one of the many ways having a high evasion percentage really, really makes the game easier.  Most of the treasure on the fire floors is useless, but this sword is handy.  Even though Mac could take the evasion hit, since he's got a shield, I still wouldn't wanna go for the heavy armor here, since status protection means a hell of a lot more than protection from fire. Other than the Genji stuff and the Golden Armor (which protects against poison) none of the heavy stuff protects against status ailments. I know that the whole "heavy armor sucks in FF2" has been stated over and over again, but it really can't be said enough. Now we come up to the first elemental gigas.  And it's gone. Single target berserk is really, really overpowered, you guys.  And another flame sword! Mac gets it, although it'll get outdated pretty quickly.   Case in point.  Basilisks were about the only enemy that I was scared of, and most of my party has resistance to stone anyway.  The second I started thinking "hey, maybe I should be so careful around these guys" they got Mac. Oops. Thankfully had some gold needles kicking around, so this didn't end the run. Even though Mac doesn't have matter resistance, he usually shrugged Gaze off, mostly thanks to his level 7 magic defense. And to think, if I were playing the Origins version his magic defense level would be even higher.  New gigas. Not even going to show you the battle since berserked Mac ends it so quickly.  Hey, this was a potion originally. Nice.  Aw, it's no longer called the Evil Stick.  For the Thunder Gigas, I decided to try to give it a chance.  Two thirds of the party has thunder resistance, though, so it doesn't do much.  Huh, that's something I never thought I'd see after getting osmose. It also drops a Wizard Staff, which is... something, I guess.  Even for heavily-restricted Vivian, the only time she had much of a use for non-elemental spell was the final fight. This party has even less of a reason to use this. Dee gets it anyway.  And here is one of the two crosses I'll ever get. Then again, Charlie's the only one who is vulnerable to curse.  Again, I give the White Dragon a chance. Charlie ends up being the one to cast Berserk, and since he's berserk is lower leveled and he has less intelligence Mac doesn't just rip the dragon's head off in a hit.  Charlie and Mac's evasion levels are starting to not be enough to dodge every hit, but as Vivian learned one or two hits getting through isn't the end of the world.  Bye Minwu. See you in Soul of Rebirth!  So I had a bit of a conundrum here. I wanted to go into Soul of Rebirth with Ricard at factory default, but he could easily grab one of these stat boosts.  So I kind of broke the rules for this. I decided that I would save scum to prevent him from grabbing the strength and agility orbs, which would matter for him, but not for the intelligence and soul/spirit orbs. He did grab the agility one time, but upon reloading it went to someone else instead. Ricard didn't end up getting any of the boosts, actually. Charlie got the strength and spirit, Dee got the intelligence, and Mac got the agility. Not bad!  So... Ultima. It actually works in this version. That doesn't mean it's useful, mind you, but at least it will grow in power. Apparently with level 16 weapon skills and spells Ultima ends up pretty loving powerful, but again, if you've got level 16 skills and spells the game's not providing a challenge at that point. In any case, the spell goes to Charlie, since he's got the most diverse skillset.  This version gives Ultima some pretty loving elaborate animations. They only get flashier and lengthier as the spell levels.  And it's kind of a let-down considering the actual damage it does. In all fairness, that's double what level 1 flare is doing, and that's level one flare cast by a now pretty competent Dee. At least with how stuff levels in this version it'll be quick to level Ultima up, but I'm not going to devote that much time to it. Again, it's a case where Berserk and Toad are simply better uses of my time.  On the way back to Fynn, I run into a group of sorcerers and sergeants. This is the result. Dee gets haste for now, but I end up getting a couple of haste tomes so Charlie ends up with one later. Again, Haste is not as power as Berserk, but I'm kind of curious about something, so I'm leveling it. In addition to haste, there's another little special something we can get now.  Grab the Cyclone keyword.  Still kinda pervy, Paul.  There's three things we want here. First off, now everyone has matter resistance, although Mac will lose body resistance. Eh. There's an elixir, and finally...      And now we're ready for the next dungeon.  This tornado looks a little less sad than one in the original, although it's still underwhelming considering that this killed off half the world.    At least the emperor is keeping his flying cyclone fortress plenty lit.  I never did end up using this, but the Ripper actually works correctly in this version, and is kind of neat.  Instead of pools in the cyclone fortress we have electrified floors. Makes about as much sense.  Mac gets a sweet new axe.  And another one.  Sweet. Either now I can replace the rather outdated Main Gauche, or finally move Mac up to dual-wielding. Decisions... for now, Charlie gets it.  The RNG continues to coddle the party by only spawning one General defending the diamond armor.  Generals are still pretty nasty, but one of them is not worth worrying about. Even without berserk the gang takes it down without too many problems.  Oh, and there's a green dragon.  One would think Mac's poison axe wouldn't hurt it as much, but nope!   Turn into a toad? He managed to slow Mac before toadifying, but that's barely worth registering.  Aw. He gave me a phoenix down last time.  At least this time Charlie and Dee join the party. Apparently pirates aren't allowed to dance, or Leila's too cool to bother with it. And I guess Ricard and Mac are on the balcony taking a smoke break.  And Dennis is evil, la di da di da, we all know how this goes.  Also I just want to confirm that Dee/Vivian assuming that her brother is brainwashed isn't a fault of fan translation. It's just part of the script. A stupid part (of a stupid script.)  Oh, and at this point I've decided Mac can move onto dual-wielding. He takes a pretty substantial hit to his evasion, but in-between his weapon evasion boosts and his high agility it's not so bad. I kind of plan on having him wear the Aegis Shield as his end-game equipment, but that does kind of depends on whether or not another ribbon drops. We'll see! Next time, I hope to complete the game.      
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Oct 10, 2014 01:39
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As emperor, Dennis will be enacting a six-part plan throughout the realm: -Demonstrate might -Eradicate dissent -Neglect pleas -No mercy -Inspire fear -Sever heads Fister Roboto fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Oct 10, 2014 |
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Oct 10, 2014 01:47
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So I've actually already recorded some footage for Soul of Rebirth. I'm curious: do you all want the full story of the thing (it's not that much, but there actually is story in it) or just pithy recaps? Again, doing the full script wouldn't really be a hassle (it's on GameFaqs) but I don't know if you all actually want to see it.
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Oct 10, 2014 01:56
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Eh. I'd stick with pithy recaps, just to avoid having the whole tone of the LP do a complete 180. Plus, I can't imagine that it's any less clunky than the actual game's story.
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Oct 10, 2014 02:07
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I'm vaguely curious about the story in Soul of Rebirth. I've started it before, but by that point I've had too much FF2 by that point, so I never finished it. I know the story isn't going to be any GOOD, but I'd still like to see it.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:18
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Keldulas posted:I'm vaguely curious about the story in Soul of Rebirth. I've started it before, but by that point I've had too much FF2 by that point, so I never finished it. Same thing happened to me, and I am also interested. It doesn't have to be verbatim, but I'd like to see enough to pick up all the deep, deep nuances.
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Oct 10, 2014 05:58
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Camel Pimp posted:So I've actually already recorded some footage for Soul of Rebirth. I'm curious: do you all want the full story of the thing (it's not that much, but there actually is story in it) or just pithy recaps? Again, doing the full script wouldn't really be a hassle (it's on GameFaqs) but I don't know if you all actually want to see it. Maybe not exact word-for-word, but I'd definitely like to see enough to understand what's going on (to the extent that's even possible, since it's probably a huge cluster).
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Oct 10, 2014 15:12
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I've played SoR before, and the story really isn't that present from what I recall. I mean, outside of the mandatory bunch of talking right at the end. It is a JRPG after all.  Word-for-word or recaps would honestly amount to more or less the same thing.
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Oct 11, 2014 00:07
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GBA Bonus Run Part 7 Airship!  So the kid at Deist is apparently named Kain, at least in the GBA version. Whether this is just a cute reference or tiresome fan pandering is up to your own interpretation.  And we're up to the penultimate dungeon!  I was rather stupid and underestimated these guys. It certainly doesn't help that Mac's evasion isn't maxed out. Oops. Had to use up one of my phoenix downs, since I can't warp out, but I have two more.  As a consolation prize I get the best axe in the game. drat.  Even without berserk, the rune axe tears enemies apart in this dungeon. I'm only one dungeon away from the rune axe, so it's not a game-breakingly awesome find or anything, but still pretty swell. (And I got another one later on. Lucky!)  Most of the crap treasure in this dungeon is still crap, but they did replace the knife here with an ether.  Charlie gets another new spear.  Theoretically the emperor's ghost here could be pretty lovely, since he casts a lot of status spells that the party doesn't have full protection from, but in practice they have enough magic defense to brush it off. Yeah, the revised magic defense leveling really makes the game so much easier...  And I got the stupid Sun Blade this time. Usually it's guarded by couerls, but this time I just got a single Lamia Queen. That ended quickly.  Also three elixirs, which brings the party total up to 6. With 12 ethers, the party's pretty decently prepared for the final dungeon, I think.  Other than the odd general fight, the dungeon goes pretty fast.  Turns out it's actually very easy.     And story and all that. Anyway, now we that Dennis has returned to the fold, we have the endgame party.  First off, I had an extra Haste scroll lying about, and gave it to Dennis. That's the only spell he'll get, but I hope to get it to a decent level.  Other than practicing haste, I actually plan to keep him in the front row. Yeah, three front-liner usually isn't a good idea, but I don't foresee Charlie or Mac getting more evasion levels, and three front-liners will make battles go even faster. All that diamond crap has to go, though.  Much better.  This time, we actually get to use the Excalibur. Mac gets it.  And that's all we really had left to do. Time to tackle the final dungeon.  They added a teleporter here. I don't know why, but okay.  At least Dennis doesn't have to do much to trigger MP gains, but he only starts with a mere 5 MP. Since that haste spell will level very quickly he'll run out of his MP even faster.  It's been a very long time since Charlie's used maces/canes/staves, and he doesn't use this for long, but at least it gets some use.  This, however, sees zero use. Yeah, pretty much none of the knives are worth using except for the main gauche, but I'd argue the main gauche is worth training the skillset, even if Charlie isn't using it anymore. Oh and it was guarded by a dragon but none of the dragons give me any trouble so whatever.  By the way, here is what a Great Malboro can do to you if you don't have a lot of evasion/status protection. Nasty. At least was just Dennis, and it didn't kill him.  This would be my third Rune Axe.  Yeah that could be deadly if you didn't die in two rounds.  Abyss Worms, on the other hand, are pretty deadly if you get large enough groups of them. Also, Dee only has so much MP for Cure, and while she can always steal more, it's up to RNG whether I get an enemy with MP.  Oh, and Dennis managed to get himself some evasion.  Dee never attacks any more, but she gets a new bow anyway.  Once again, the Red Dragon drops a Holy Lance. That's only a 10% chance, by the way. Odd. Charlie doesn't even really need it, since the Holy Lance and the Diamond Mace have the same attack power. Still, his spear level is higher, so the Diamond Mace's brief stint in the spotlight is over.  While Mac's now dual wielding, this shield is too good to pass up. Resistance to mind, matter, body, and death? Awesome. Also, this treasure room has Dragon Armor. Now it's heavy, and normally I wouldn't bother, but it has resistance to Fire, ice, lightning, and poison. Paired with the shield it's effectively a ribbon. The Dragon Armor does hurt spell casting, but Mac hasn't used a single spell all game, and the Aegis Shield can offset the evasion penalty. The major downside to all this is that Mac loses the power of dual wielding, but Dennis picks up his slack. As well as Mac's old armor.  Honestly, Death elemental attacks are so rare that the protect ring almost isn't worth it. Still, +21% to magic defense. Dennis can use it.  You know, I never used an elixir once during this entire run.  I did, however, start using ethers. I could have just warped out once Dennis got his MP increase, but honestly I wanted to do this dungeon in one go if I could. So instead Dennis got an ether. Why the hell not? Got twelve of them. Had only four ethers by the end of the game, and I got a couple during the dungeon, so that tells you how the party was chugging them down.  Speaking of which, I was kind of expecting to get hosed over by the Mega Parasites, but this is only time I encountered them, and that's all they did.  Indeed it is, Charlie.  So Death Riders are still son of bitches. And if you look most of that damage wasn't from the drain touch. Ouch. Still, Charlie and Mac have level six evasion at high percent, meaning this is about the max damage. Dennis is a little more vulnerable, with only level 4 evasion. Blink completely neuters the threat, but there's three members that need it. A full party blink is actually useful, though, if not foolproof.  Oh, and guess what Death Riders can drop. The Ribbon goes to Charlie. The Death Rider were also really fond of throwing Thunder Spears at me. That was kind of weird.  Again, I grab all the Genji stuff even though I never use any of it. Oh, and this would almost be one-hit kill from Dee's fire spell here. drat.  Mac gets the Masamune. Mac's attack power with the Masamune is 164, which is just fifty or so points shy of Charlie dual wielding the Excalibur and a Rune Axe. The Masamune is great, folks.  This is all Tiamat manages to do.  Oh hey that's cool. (Although Tiamat can drop the life scroll but oh well.)  Even with no buffs applies the Masamune can still do decent damage. Also, Beez here doesn't get a single turn in. Sorry buddy.  Astaroth got a drain spell in on Charlie and a scourge on Dennis. Got two hits in, go Astaroth! Gave me a Mythril Mirror after the battle, which... something. The ribbon I got here goes to Dee, who trades in the venerable White Robe for a Black Robe. Dennis would get her White Robe, but the strength bonus from the Power Vest is too nice to give up. After the mini-boss squad, the dangerous (and interesting) part of this dungeon is over. All that's really left is the final boss.  I have zero doubt I can beat this boss, so I'm not going to even bother making this a challenge. However, I do wanna test something, so I'm gonna use a one-handed Blood Sword. I was trying to kit him out with as much strength as I could, but I felt like he needed a ribbon, too. The Twist Headband and Power Vest would have protected him from whatever the emperor can do, so I could have easily had +30 to strength. Oh well. Before we end this, let's look at the party we ended up with. All these stats are sans equipment, although I didn't fight the emperor with a naked party (sorry).   Charlie was a pretty poor secondary spellcaster, that's what happens when MP and items are so tight that you can't really practice, but as a fighter he's quite decent. The fact that he has weapon skills in pretty much everything meant that at least it was easy to keep his attack power high. You definitely couldn't have those weapon skills in the original, not without some hellacious grinding, anyway. He ended up pretty solid.   Like Charlie, Dee's stats suffered early on due to a lack of MP or MP restoring items, but once she got osmose her intelligence really blossomed. Considering that bows don't give evasion bonuses, her agility's not bad, either. Obviously her stamina is on the low end, but due to how this version handles HP gains her HP is quite sufficient. Wish she had more spirit, but that's not a major issue. By this point, she's mostly good for casting berserk, toad, or healing, but she does that well.   Mac, on the other hand, ended up disappointing. How the hell does a character who did nothing but attack have such low strength?! He didn't get the Mysidia bonus, true, but a strength of less than 40 for a melee only character is sad. If I had to guess why this happened, I'd guess that battles were simply over too quickly to trigger strength gains. Strength is harder to gain than intelligence or spirit, after all. Yeah, that's one problem with this party's efficiency. At least his agility score is good.   And Dennis. Man, his strength blows everyone else's out of the water. I should have had Mac train up Haste instead. Oh well. Dennis at least comes with decent enough intelligence to be a back-up spell caster, even if his MP is tiny. He ended up being decently useful in the last dungeon. However, since his evasion level is so low, he's gonna have to hang in the back row for the final boss. Wasn't going to use him in the front row anyway.  Oh shut up no one cares. So, emperor fight.  The emperor has been given 5000 extra HP, which is substantial, but at least not as bad as giving Chaos ten times as much HP. (As a matter of fact, the emperor here as less HP than DoS Chaos. Yeah. Even without the blood sword it's way easier to do higher damage in FF2. Also the emperor can't heal all his HP in one go.)  But I'm curious about one thing; could I replicate Vivian's blood sword one-hit kill? Does the game allow for five-digit damage?  Unfortunately, without hacking that's hard to do. The Blood Sword has zero base accuracy, and since Mac's base strength is pretty low he's only got an accuracy of about 50. And keep in mind in that screenshot he's already been hasted. (Although it's not as though 6,000 damage is bad...)  I actually don't really bother much with defenses, and for the most part everyone just keeps hasting and berserking Mac. As you can see, his attack is still pretty gnarly, although wearing armor helps.  And his Meteor/Starfall attack hits everyone for 250 to 300, which hurts much more than it did for Vivian. Also it has a ten second animation now.  While I never managed to break 16 hits, but 11/16th of 15,000 is over 10,000, so it's obvious that, yes, your damage is capped. It is impossible to one hit kill the emperor. You could still two hit kill him, but with his higher HP and the blood sword's inaccuracy that's a bit trickier to pull off. Although this was only four rounds, so it's not like it was a slugfest or anything.   And then he explodes.  So, mostly I wanted to do this run to see how it was like in FF2. To be honest, it more or less went how I thought it would; drat hard in the beginning, and got progressively easier as the game went on. By the end it really wasn't different from a regular run, just with slightly less effective spellcasters.  Ugh! Stop being happy Dee!  Oh, and the final monologue is put over some images. Yeah. Anyway, you might be wondering how a living off the land challenge would work in the original FF2. Your number one problem would definitely be inventory space. Vivian didn't really need to skip the pass and get rid of the wyvern, but in for a LOTL you need all the space you can get. You'd have to be choosier about what status restoring items you carry.  You'd also have to be a lot more careful in how you train your characters. You couldn't have a character train in everything like Charlie did; he'd have to choose two or three weapon types and stick with them. Also, the invisible int/soul thing is really going to restrict your choices. It would have been hell for Dee, since bows were hit the hardest, but once osmose comes into play she could have just stop using weapons entirely. While the early game would be harder, I think it would still be pretty easy by the end. Although one thing that would make a LOTL so, so much easier would be Minwu. Not only would the lack of healing in the first dungeon be a non-issue (although the snow cave would still be nasty) you also wouldn't have to worry about status ailments in the early game. Moreover, depending on whether you consider it in-bounds, you could have him use Sap on your party to get some MP early on.  Still, it feels like it needs more restrictions. I guess forbid all the overpowered spells like Berserk and Toad. Then again, you could combine LOTL with this LP's solo challenge. That would be honestly quite hellish, especially the lamia fight... I'll have to try it some time.  But we've got one more thing to do. And, it's uh, well... I don't wanna give it all away, but those of you who think this LP hasn't contained enough suffering should be pleased. Next time: Soul of Rebirth. Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Oct 13, 2014 |
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Oct 13, 2014 04:52
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I'm sure base-stats Josef will provide all the asskicking you need.
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Oct 13, 2014 07:24
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Oh god, what awaits people who come into Soul of Rebirth is literally hell. ENJOY WHAT HAPPENS PEOPLE, IT'S A PAIN IN THE rear end. But seriously, you get to play through it with the dead people who died in the game. So, yea, base stats is gonna be painful.
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Oct 13, 2014 07:27
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The Emperor didn't know Dennis very well, I take it. Anyway, fun and interesting run. Looking forward to seeing the bonus dungeon!
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Oct 13, 2014 09:47
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Don't worry, there's plenty of fun for you there. SoR isn't as hard once you know where the bullshit is, but it's definitely there.
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Oct 13, 2014 11:52
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It's also where the PSP's extra dungeon comes in handy. Getting an almost-ultimate weapon to 3/4 of the characters before they cark it really helps at the start of SoR. Of course, by virtue of this they've already been hella overleveled in order to fight the final boss of said extra dungeon but whatever!
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Oct 13, 2014 11:59
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Raitzeno posted:Look on the bright side, it means the Emperor no longer holds the record for highest victim count! ...Wait, that's not bright at all. But it IS completely in character for the gang. As is Mac somehow not gaining any strength despite spending all his time exercising. Everyone knows he only works out his glamour muscles. chiasaur11 fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Oct 14, 2014 |
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Oct 14, 2014 07:30
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Hey, I was wondering before I posted the first Soul of Rebirth update if we could get to the next page?
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Oct 16, 2014 04:01
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Sounds like a great plan! I remember vaguely going through Soul of Rebirth and thinking it was ok? Maybe it was the apathy of finishing FFII kicking in.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:04
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There's no better word to describe the entirety of FFII past "apathy".
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Oct 16, 2014 04:22
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KataraniSword posted:There's no better word to describe the entirety of FFII past "apathy". Oh, I don't know... It's better than III. I actually enjoyed playing both the original and this soon-to-be-seen extra content. III remains the only Final Fantasy main or side game up to and including X which I have not finished, because it kinda sucks.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:24
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I played a bit of II, but when I got Dawn of Souls I played I a lot more. I never finished either. I'm the kind of gamer who plays 80% of a game.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:28
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I dunno, III does feel when Final Fantasy starting feeling like Final Fantasy, although it wasn't until 4 that the games starting really good. All of the first three Final Fantasies are deeply flawed, and I think the original isn't poo poo on as much because it gets shielded by nostalgia. (Although I dunno if I'd say any of the first three FFs are bad games, necessarily. Especially for the time period.)
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Oct 16, 2014 04:28
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My only time playing III was the DS remake, and I kinda lost interest around the Garuda boss battle. Didn't have the money for 8 Wind Lances and lost all interest to grind.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:30
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The DS remake also has that severe difficulty boost in giving it's bosses multiple turns, and having it be a coin flip whether or not they spam full party attacks on you three to four times in a row in a single turn. It had some nice features like making half the useless classes actually worth playing (Bards in particular got a hell of an uplift), but on the other hand also nerfed most of the overwhelmingly good classes (Ninja and Sage, specifically). Also, unlike the 1 and 2 remakes, 3 sticks with it's awful overworld-saving-only method which really adds to the frustration, especially on a handheld device. Original 3 isn't perfect by any stretch of the word, having to manually unequip things to change equipment, or everything manually to change classes not being particularly fun, but it also doesn't have severely overpowered RNG bosses killing you at the end of aforementioned unsavable dungeons.
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Oct 16, 2014 04:41
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