System Error's Video Game Variants

My blogs elsewhere keep exploding on me, so why not throw'em all down in a public place, I guess? To be filled in eventually!

FF4 Unprecedented Crisis: I | II | III
FF4 Playable Golbez: I | II | III

Etrian Odyssey Untold 2
Etrian Odyssey Nexus
Etrian 1 HD
FE Fates Nohr


Final Fantasy Renaissance
- RDM/THF/GEO/EVO: I | II
- DRK/BLU/TRA/BRD: I | II
- WHM/BLM/GRM/TIM: I | II
- WAR/MNK/DNC/LNC: I

My first stop in the midgame was Gurgu Volcano. There were two new pieces of equipment for Meeko to pick up on the bottom floor of the dungeon. I wanted Meeko to get those before doing anything else.


Scale Armor is something I technically could've used with my Dark Knight: only they and Trainers can use this 32 absorb armor. It's the same weight as and 2 less absorb than the Flame Armor in Gurgu, so it was inferior for Cleese. But it was a very nice boost for Meeko until she could grab the Opal Bracelet.

Meanwhile, the Lava Axe was in the upper middle room. This effectively had 26/25/2 offenses thanks to Meeko's AXE PROFICIENCY. So effectively, 1 attack point and 5 hit% better than the Silver Axe. Still, an upgrade's an upgrade, and it's indeed Fire-elemental. Note that this and the other new axes are currently Trainer exclusive: Warriors and Ninjas don't get to use them. I imagine this will change once Viking gets added, but in due course.

I then got up to level 33 by grinding off the FIREs. This would be good for 4-hits with the Lava Axe, and give Meeko 79 MDef for the Ice Cave – a good start for that. I decided to have Meeko take on KARY from there. No real reason not to.


There was a lot of plinking down going on. She was breaking KARY's defense, it was just slow due to the lack of criticals (until this last hit). Meeko got hit with DARK, but it didn't really slow her damage output. Thankfully, she dodged SLOW and managed to kill the fiend before the fiend killed her.

I went to the Ice Cave after that. No Ordeals yet, didn't think the stuff there would make a huge difference. Meeko had actually gained enough experience from the trip down to KARY that I got her level 34. Then from fighting on the river, got so much more that I decided to get her up to level 35 just so she wouldn't level up in the middle of the dungeon. 83 magic defense would be more than enough to make it through.


These jerks would be the major potential problem. Meeko died to them once, and when they popped up again, I decided to go for some revenge even if it wasn't the smartest move. They aren't humanoids, so here's what having a monster use MAGIC looks like – SPECIAL looks similar. You get a list of their spells and can cast any of them. Just like normally, monsters do not have spell charges, so you can use them however and as often as you like. I had this one zap its friends to death. Ha!

SORCERERs could also be manipulated: it's a shame that their instant death isn't very functional because enemy MDef is so much higher than player MDef. They're also a good example of the anomaly with monster attack damage: they have 1 attack, relying entirely on their instant death to do anything. They can hit for hundreds of damage when controlled. I actually had some comedy here: Meeko took control of one, and then got hit by TRANCE from the other. This freed the other, and they proceeded to run away.


There was another axe here on the upper portion of B1: the Frozen Axe gave a bit more hit% and 3 more damage. Didn't need it for the boss: the EYE fell under Meeko's CONTROL for an instant win, no big deal. No incidents on the way out. Hard to complain about a second try Ice Cave! This got the FLOATER, and opened up the rest of the game.


Something I had forgotten to pick up: Trainer can use the Buckler. This weak shield only has 2 absorb, but it exists. I bought it now that I remembered, because I may as well. I also learned that they could use the Silver Gauntlets here. I thought they were Beastmaster exclusive, but they aren't for some reason. It's weird since they can't use Copper or Iron, but can use this (and even Zeus/Power post-promotion). They're currently the only class that can use Silver but not the others, even after promotion. I'd be buying a Proring shortly though, so there was no need to buy it at this juncture. Off my game, clearly.


The usual goodies were over in the Waterfall. I'll only have Meeko use them sparingly this run. One of the more interesting ones was this new weapon. The Control Whip is unfortunately exclusive to promotion. It has identical stats to the Stun Whip, but if it doesn't kill something, it will roll for a CONTROL on it. It's neat, but if you want to actually use the monsters against the others, keep in mind that it still damages them and that means they will be that much closer to dying at the hands of the other enemies.

My time in there also exposed an interesting quirk of CONTROL that I had a feeling about for a while: the number of hits are based off the Trainer's. It seems to be tied to level specifically: Meeko had 4-hits currently, but monsters were only doing 3. She would later get 4-hits with them at around level 39, even without a weapon. How is this relevant? If I controlled a MudGOL that used FAST, it would not get extra hits. But if I had it use FAST on Meeko and had her attack it would do 7-hits for some reason. Why an odd number? FAST is currently bugged and doubles hit% instead.


Hey, what?! Get controlled, jerk!

The Sea Shrine upper portion was the next stop. Spellcasting items came to the forefront for one reason and one reason only: Mage Staff on GHOSTs. It was either do that or die. And I didn't mind doing that in this specific case. Not going to go all in on them, mind you – I do try to rein them in even when not promoting because otherwise every class homogenizes in the back half of the game. But screw GHOSTs in particular.


I ran the quests from there and entered the next dungeon before lighting the Water Orb. Unfortunately, most of the equipment in the Mirage Tower and Floating Castle duo is Beastmaster exclusive. The Beast Sword, the Bane Sword, the Wyrm Helm and Wyrm Gauntlets (+10 for what they're worth), and they could even get the Dragon Armor! But one exception is this. For a Trainer, this is a 32/35/3 weapon. Basically a better Sun Sword (32/30/2.5)! Meeko was very close to achieving 5-hits with this weapon, and she was so high level that whips weren't making much of a difference with CONTROL, so I swapped over.

Granted, most of her battles still did consist of controlling something then having it kill its friends. But these two dungeons had a lot that couldn't: VAMPIREs, the machines, BADMANs, and GrMEDUSAs. For these enemies, I just had Meeko run. She was gaining experience insanely fast anyway. So fast that she was going to hit the level cap without much extra effort.

The only thing to do in the tower was grab the ProCape and prepare for the inevitable WarMECH. I was prepared to use Defense to fight it. But uh, it was a no-show. Both times I went up. I almost died to SORCERERs somehow despite having over 100 MDef: TRANCE and the MudGOLs behind them were the culprits.


In an earlier challenge, I mused that maybe it was a good thing that the Power Gauntlet's SABR ended up broken because it can easily unbalance the game. The corollary of it is that if critical hits worked as intended like they do in FFR, then maybe it was actually the intended solution. The fiends' defenses are massively high, so Meeko had to rely on critical hits to kill TIAMAT before she killed her. She got a grand total of zero the first try at it. The second, she got enough to win, but was still at critical health when she won. And keep in mind, most endgame weapons don't have a lot of critical hit chance. I'm really not sure how to feel about it.


That just left KRAKEN to take care of. I did pick up the Power Gauntlets just in case. Even without Zeus abuse, the Sea Shrine went fairly smoothly with CONTROL. I continued to just fry GHOSTs on sight. KRAKEN himself also wasn't a big deal. Meeko endured most of his blows and dealt solid damage in return, winning the damage race pretty cleanly.


Just needed to gain the last four levels to reach level 50 from there, which I did by controlling the Blue D spike repeatedly. I wasn't necessarily intending to level cap with Meeko, but it just ended up happening by itself. I dropped a point of STR because it wouldn't have made a difference in Meeko's damage.

My first run through the temple went awful! Believe it or not, Gas Ds were not involved in it. It was just a ton of accumulated damage due to bad turn order. The Earth floor was the worst: three groups of EARTHs all in a row! Even with controlling them, Meeko took a ton of damage when they kept dying immediately. LICH did a big NUKE and KARY got a bunch of licks in.


My HEAL stocks were so shattered (this is when I got the Masmune) that I was forced to use Defense/Heal Staff after TIAMAT just to go into the final boss at full health! I did do so: better that than dying. I also decided to Defense against KRAKEN, but I didn't against TIAMAT and almost regretted it. It was capped off with a bad CHAOS that finished it off. Well, any time SLO2 lands is bad unless you're a magic class or one that can otherwise counter it.

The next run went significantly smoother. As a point of comparison, I had 40 HEALs remaining at the end, without ever having to Defense and Heal. I still used Defense a couple of times against KRAKEN and TIAMAT. But that was it. It was a much smoother final dungeon, and hopefully, the prelude to a smooth final boss.

Second go at the final fight, I had Meeko Defense twice then start swinging. Still no Power Gauntlet yet. She was at 555HP after those first two turns between a big CHAOS physical and an ICE3, and her first shot did 193. CHAOS LIT3 did 56. Round 4: physical for the text box disappeared too fast, Meeko did 145. SLO2 missed! Meeko did 106. Then 33 as CHAOS missed a physical.

CUR4 reset things and Meeko decided now was the time to start doing real damage: 474 to be exact. 179 followed on the next round, as a CHAOS FIR3 did 39. The next swing did 165, CHAOS finally tried CRACK which of course fell ineffective. 129 damage, and INFERNO did 53. ICE2 did 28, and Meeko did 96. Over halfway now, but that last 957 needs to go fast. Because after FAST, that's going to be NUKE.


SWIRL is now Water-elemental due to FFR changes, and Ribbon resists it. It just did 38 damage. Meeko kept poking for 122.


Then, this! ...wasn't enough. CHAOS used TORNADO for 40, Wind-elemental now. Funnily, in earlier versions, Ribbon didn't resist these two spells. Even when it didn't or that change is reverted, you can still resist them with the new Wind and Water Armlets. In any case, if Meeko can attack once more, that'll do it. This should be it unless CHAOS physicals and does a critical hit.


Yup, done! That was very lucky at the end.

As I wrote in my job comments, the big problem with Beastmaster in FF5 is that you needed to constantly catch new monsters to get a single shot of something. Having the focus be on CONTROL and giving you incentive to use it did wonders for the class concept. Similarly, Relm in FF6 had a similar issue of needing a relic slot to use her control. No worries about that here.

The class is also decent when it's not controlling things. It's above the likes of Red Mage (before buffs), though it doesn't quite reach the level of the dedicated physical attackers. All in all, it's actually quite simple when you boil it down: CONTROL something juicy and beat it up. It's sort of like an instant death spell in that sense. It's pretty effective, too. Though it will be lower level in a party setting (higher than usual with their bonus experience), so you might actually have to weaken things or use whips for longer. I like this one overall.

But speaking of CATCH, it's available on promotion, so let's talk about it briefly. CATCH works on the same mechanics as CONTROL, the only difference being the monster is removed from the field entirely. You can then RELEASE it later in any other battle where there's room to place it, whereupon it works like a controlled monster with no time limit. They're automatically retrieved after battle if they or the Beastmaster isn't dead (the latter of which can cause them to escape or even become an enemy!). It's also possible to CATCH them again to restore their HP (the only way to do so). This is a major change for a solo that would be more interesting to explore from the beginning: i.e. New Game+ where you start promoted and every monster is stronger. Their LIMIT sucks though: it just guarantees the next CONTROL if it can work at all. The odds are so good that it's better to try it twice.

What's next? Probably another vanilla class, or maybe a full party challenge idea I've been floating in my mind for a bit. But immediately: more hot days. Until then, screw summer, and thanks for reading.

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