sirsystemerror | FFL2 Solo Monster Part IV

Let's take a look at Mamizou's stats as this new monster. You may notice the Counter ability there. If there's any time that's useful, it's during a solo challenge and on a tankish character, right? Well, I gave it a go. Mamizou kept dodging the attacks, however, so it's not as useful as I thought it might be. The ability does (2*Damage + Str) or (Str*5), whichever is higher and with Strength halved if the character is poisoned. It was fun, but not helpful

She was already set to take on Apollo's Minion. Every single one of its attacks is elemental, aside from Tornado. With O-Damage naturally on the Moaner, all it was left with was that 300 damage attack. Mamizou's means of offense was the Masmune MAGI, which slightly outdamaged W-Attack with 9 Power MAGI. The former did over 500 on average, the latter did around 500. All that MAGI is lost after this, unfortunately.

Damage comparision using W-Attack against a Nymph, with the 9 Power MAGI and without. Not a pretty sight. It also doesn't help that the next boss is WarMach, who sports an impressive 90 Defense as well as oPa/Po. So...

DOOR.

GIANT'S WORLD.

RHINO MEAT.

We're ready. The going through the Final Dungeon was the same as the going through every single dungeon in the game so far except those few times in Edo Castle. Run from everything!!

WarMach itself I fought much like I did the first time encountering him with the Spellslingers in FF1. Unlike that 3/256 freak occurrence, this is quite probable and very easy to pull off. The other option Mamizou had was fighting him normally with something that can heal and hoping for turn order didn't foil her and NukeBomb not to be too obnoxious.

Apollo is next. His 25000HP is hard to deplete. Thus the only solution is to outlast him after he transforms. So a monster with Cure. There's several options: Sylph is another type of fairy species, but has a bit too-low HP at 681 with 83 Mana. Spector the ghost monster has 83 Mana, and 756HP. Finally, there's Rakshasa. Only 68 Mana, the Werebeast monster with 781HP, plus a bonus +10% HP at the end of every turn from its Recover ability. That one seemed best just based on that, so...

Mamizou ate a Spider and became a Wight, then ate a Goblin to become a Squid and hit Class-A. Then ate a Lizard to become a GianToad, then a Spider to become a Pudding. Why all this? Because I misread and thought Rakshasa was a Tiger, not a Werebeast. Eating a Gae Bolg from Edo got me in business from there, though.

So this is an entire fight based around turn order. Apollo can use Flare, or he can use Masmune MAGI. Both do in the neighborhood of around 500 damage. Mamizou needs to either go lastt every single round, or if she does go first on a round, needs to go first every single round after and use the Heart MAGI to boot. Turn order is pretty silly in this game, and though lack of consistency is how I got by before, consistency is what I need here. I considered trying Giant which has 2 less agility, but it hardly made a difference. You can't get back down from DS-A, and even if I were to reset back to an earlier save or use the any one monster rule, it doesn't help. Everything with Cure either has too little HP to survive Flare or Masmune (e.g. lower tiered fairies) or still has enough AGL to occasionally go first (Naga).

Strategy here: I wish I could get a damn program to rapidfire the A button on the emulator and leave it on overnight, but every last Cure is needed, so I can't park the button over there when he's wasting turns doing nothing. I tried it by hacking in Naga speed to see if it'd be worth my time, and got pretty far several times. I got down to 6 uses of Cure - I need every last one of them to survive. So it looks like I had the right idea in mind to begin with...

Enough repetition later, amounting to around three to four hours (at 4x speed), and I get a fight where Mamizou moves last the first 13 uses of Cure...except then she moves first on the 14th turn, and dies on the 15th from getting one-twoed. At this point, I just hack down her agility so she moves last every time. Since I had that fight, and was robbed. That was close enough so that I feel comfortable doing such a thing. Gave it my best shot, now I grease the wheels of time for my own sake.

So here the battle stands with Mamizou having no Cure left, but this means the battle's won as he only has two attacking turns left. One more Flare to survive, and then the explosion. Dad takes it if he's up, and it had me worried...it's been so long since I've seen this in the original, and in the remake, it does 9999 to him. Also, check out those graphics. That's the stuff nightmares are made of, and if I'd actually gotten that far as a kid (I couldn't beat him, then my cart fell into the great abyss in my aunt's trailer), I'd probably be able to verify.

But it seems there was nothing to worry about. Seriously, this is the big nuke Dad sacrifices himself to take? And even if it was more damaging than this, I still could've found the addresses to keep the rest of the party petrified in-battle so I could use Heart on the last turn...

Not out of the woods yet though, with the latest roadblock downed. The descent down poses a problem! Namely, in that my strategy of running from every single fight I run into? Not going to work anymore. So I want Mamizou to become a monster who's capable of dealing with this, as well as the first of the two minibosses.

I decide that monster has to be a fairy, so Mamizou becomes a D-Turtle by eating a Big Eye from Apollo's World, and then a Sylph by eating a Fiend from Giant's World. Then...fighting is still catastrophic, so Mamizou sometimes does need to save her way though certain situations.

TianLung is that first miniboss. 2000HP and several powerful attacks. Mamizou has to use Cure a lot and more than likely die, because many of its attacks can do more than half her HP in damage. And Aegis is no longer an option.

Okay, so maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. I can get by the randoms, same as always, just a bit different. Just save periodically and reload if I get into a fight. What I really need is something that can resist most of what TianLung has to throw at me. Or you know, just repeat the fight a lot. This monster also needs a non-elemental attack to get by the annoying O-All. TianLung's attacks besides Tornado include Tusk, Lightng, and Gas. Something that resists those would be nice.

Moaner is a good option, as is Spector. They both can absorb HP from TianLung repeatedly with Absorb and Touch respectively. They both also have O-Change, though the latter doesn't have O-Thunder. I try the latter first, as it's simple enough to hunt down a Rhino in Giant's World. And it works: Mamizou sucks TianLung dry, though she does die once when Touch refuses to hit several times in a row.

Now Mamizou is the highest level of monster, DS-B. Now I have to think about how I'm going to take down Arsenal with a lone monster. Healing is absolutely required. Whatever I choose will need enough attacks to last through the machine's 10000HP, plus the 4000 from the Cannons. They must be magical in nature, since it has O-Change. The best options are Titania (Fairy), SlimeGod (Slime), and maybe Kirin (Chimera) for something more esoteric. Titania will all but guarantee she won't run out of moves. SlimeGod answers with 15 use P-Blast and Dissolve.

Since Fenrir is an upcoming miniboss much like TianLung, I decide to give SlimeGod a try first. Back to the first world, eat a Jaguar to become a Scarab, eat a Toad to become SlimeGod.

Thanks to P-Blast, it was actually possible for Mamizou to fight many of the encounters. Unless a Musashi (2000HP) was in the mix, Mamizou could two-round any encounter here. And with a stock full of Elixiers, she wasn't running out of the move anytime soon. Together with O-Weapon, it was a leisurely trip down the escalators. Fenrir was similarly no threat. Mamizou could Dissolve it to death, or just blast in into oblivion.

Now to explain the first phase of the Arsenal fight in slightly more detail, since I didn't when my robots blew it away before it could do much of anything. First, you need to get by the cannons. These have 1000HP each, and you always damage them in order. After around five turns of being destroyed, a cannon will repair itself back to full health. However, any damage done to the cannons behind it will remain.

As a SlimeGod, Mamizou had no trouble with this phase. When she got low on health, she simply used Dissolve to restore it back. Assuming Dissolve didn't miss, she could cleanly take out the cannons.

But Dissolve missing was exactly the problem. At best, I could get to the second phase of the fight with about this many skills left in stock. The second phase was not a problem. For some reason, across all the solo monsters I attempted to take there, Smasher did paltry damage. It barely broke 100 at the best of times.

It's that third phase, where it launches the Smasher, that things get tricky. Repeated bad turn order, too high damage, or Dissolve missing at the wrong moment would spell the end of Mamizou. She ran the very real risk of running out of skill uses before she could defeat Arsenal, and in fact that's exactly what happened on one attempt.

So Mamizou had no choice but to Door back up to the surface, become a Titania, and try again. This monster has more than enough moves to last the fight. It wasn't too much more difficult to descend, though with Flare's more limited uses and not having O-Weapon, she had to be careful and save/Elixier more often.

Titania, however, was somewhat tougher to crack this fight with. Because of having to spend a turn on Cure that wasn't dealing damage, she has a MUCH harder time beating the Cannons. What she had to do was tear throughh as best she could, eventually weakening Cannon4, then doing the same to Cannon3, Cannon2, then letting loose as Cannon1 is brought back up, That beat the first form, and the second form was a non-issue as it was before.

Except the problem here was again that third phase. If Arsenal launching the Smasher does too much damage repeatedly, Mamizou has to Cure repeatedly. And when she runs out, that's it. Luckily, I kept a save with the SlimeGod, so I'm free to choose my poison for the final battle. But is either really a good choice? Maybe there's another poison out there, a poison for Arsenal itself.

Unfortunately, everything with Absorb and Touch - which are more accurate - don't have a magical attack to take advantage of. Well, except Spector, but it doesn't have the Mana to keep up. I'd have to reload for that one. Then a thought occurred to me: am I overlooking something here? I checked over the monster list again. There was one possibility, one shining beacon of hope here.

I doored out with Mamizou as a Titania, back to Apollo's World, had her eat a Griffon, and...save abused her back down because she had no multi-target attacks.

Kusanagi is one of the more special monsters, and certainly one that seems innocuous at first glance. Belonging to the sword species, it has O-Damage with O-Change like most of its fellow blades, and is one of the few monsters to pack a unique ability exclusive to it. Critical has the potential to instantly kill any non-boss monster (just like hitting an enemy's weakness physically), and "only" do extremely high damage otherwise. How high?

Over 700 will do quite nicely. The move itself only has 10 uses. On the defensive end is the aforementioned Absorb. It cannot drain from the Hard and Plant families of monsters. Furthermore it does undead reversal on Gods and Undead. But Arsenal is not any of those. Now, this is mentioned in guides to only absorb 25% of what you did...but it was certainly absorbing more than that! But those two attacks are not enough to get through. It has a few other attacks in Stab and W-Attack, but they can't break O-Change.

Then I tried Counter. It worked on Smasher, and ignored O-Change. It didn't work when the Smasher was launched, but regardless, Kusanagi has everything it takes to get the job done against the final boss!

Mamizou started off with seven Criticals in a row. This damaged Cannon4 just as Cannon1 was repaired. She Absorbed twice to destroy Cannon1 again, as Cannon2 became repaired. She finished off the two cannons with her remaining three Criticals.

Next, she Countered nine times in a row, tuned to 430 damage each time, before her HP was too low. Mamizou thus Absorbed. dealing/healing 571HP as Arsenal Smashers her for 67. She does Counter, Absorb, and Counter...the last one being a mistake, as Arsenal swapped over to Launching the Smasher. Wasn't properly counting its health, oops. It only hit me when looking at the images that Counter was doing 430 every time. Either way, all that was left to do was Absorb away. She has 11 uses. It's enough, but...

The first four hit after Arsenal launched the Smasher. The fifth time, she moved before it and took 315. This could be bad if it rolls high and it moves first...which it does! Arsenal attacked...dealing only 135! Three more Absorbs from here seals the deal.

And that's the Monster SCC of FFL2, or as much of it as the game would allow! Overall, I'm not too upset about the whole Ashura thing, and glad that I made an exception to play beyond it. As mentioned, he's kind of a unique case, where you can't get to him without giving up what you need to get through him I got through using emulator functions only twice. Neither was strictly necessary, but they were done to preserve my sanity after being worn out. They were doable, but I succumbed to impatience against them. Maybe justifiably so in Apollo's case, though if I could go back, I would at least try when grinding meat with the Toad.

Overall, I enjoyed this challenge. It took everything I knew about FFL2 and all of my perseverance to get through to the end. Monsters take a lot of game knowledge to employ effectively. But when you do, they'll hold up their end of the bargain and then some.

Having done this, I'm certainly not going to back down from doing solos of the other three races in FFL2, which should be far far easier. I'm going to do one of either Human or Mutant next, followed by the other. I'll save the solo Robot challenge for last. Look forward to seeing them in the future! And that said, whatever challenge I do next is going to be something on the easier side.

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