FF2 Magic-Only Challenge Part I

Final Fantasy II is undoubtedly the black sheep of the series. It presents you with the ability to develop your characters however you like, much like a SaGa game. Your characters have no levels, they instead develop their stats as they go along. An acquaintance of mine was playing through the PSP version of the game with only magic. Since I was been looking for an excuse to play the NES version, I've decided to undertake the same challenge.

Before you get into this, there are two pieces of reading that are highly recommended. The first of these is a sort of algorithms guide for FF2, which is a highly useful resource for the game in-general and should help in navigating it should you dare play through it. The second is a particular Let's Play by Gabriel Pope, which basically makes up 80% reason why I wanted to play through the NES version.


We have four characters to name here and need some kind of theme, so - even though the cast is not all female - I felt like, hey, why not name them after Touhou characters? Marisa is our main character. Danmaku is all about firepower with her. Ergo, we will be using that character as the name of as our character who will primarily focus on Black Magic.


Here's Alice. She likes to use more strategy in her magic...so I guess that's our primarily White Magic user for lack of anyone else, because that involves a lot of buffing and such?


Patchouli, aka Patchy, also known as the One Week Wizard. She can do a bit of everything, so we'll use this character as our hybrid.


Then we have this character who we won't see for ages, and has associations with the demon realm, so we'll name her after Byakuren Hijiri. Actually, if we're naming after abilities in the games, she would technically best as white mage due to possessing skills to make herself stronger, but meh.


One tutorial curbstomping battle and a couple cutscenes later, we gain control. Let's quickly go over the base statistics in this game.

- Power represents the ability to do physical damage. It's raised by physical attacks, and occasionally lowered when you raise Soul. Obviously irrelevant for this playthrough.
- Agility represents the ability to go faster in battle and evade attacks. It's raised by having high agility and evasion. Yes, you read that correctly.
- Vitality represents defenses and the ability to gain HP. It's raised by taking hits in battle, and occasionally lowered when you raise Intelligence.
- Intelligence represents the ability to cast black magic. It's raised by casting black magic, and occasionally lowered when you raise Power.
- Soul represents the ability to cast white magic. It's raised by casting white magic.
- Defense is the defense rating of your equipped armor.

- Attack is weapon power.
- Hit% is divided into two sections: number of hits and accuracy. It generally goes up as your weapon level goes up.
- Evade is much the same: number of evasions and chance to evade. It goes up as you make successful evasions.
- M.Pwr is...magic power. It increases as you use magic, and also represents the ability to gain MP.
- MDef is just like the above: number of evasions for magical status and chance to do so. It goes up as you're targetted by magic.


Our magicians begin with a mere 400 Gil. As it turns out, magic is...kind of expensive. No problem though, selling off all our equipment save for a Buckler and pair of Clothes gets us enough money to afford Cure for Alice, Bolt for Patchy, and Ice for Marisa.

But why sell all our equipment? Well, there's two aspects of FF2 that often go unnoticed, but are very mechanically important. The first of these is the spellcasting penalty. The mechanics guide talks more about it, but in summary, almost all equipment in the game (particularly heavy weapons and armor) carries a penalty to Int. and Soul, that can really cripple a spellcaster - especially in the status department. This is particularly bad for anyone, but especially for our party.

So we're going to just have to get wrecked by physical attacks, right? Not exactly.


In Final Fantasy 2, characters in the back row are completely untargettable by physical attacks. At least one person must be up front though. The flipside of it is, they can only themselves physically attack if they have a bow. The tradeoff of only having one character up front is worth it in how they gain evade at a high rate. Evasion is a very important stat in FF2, and I'd say is actually more important than actual physical defense. Later on, we'll gain access to lightweight armor that will mitigate any potential problem with attacks that do get through for Alice.


I'll be primarily using this opening post to go over some of the mechanics of the game, so it'll probably be a little more long-winded and descriptive than later installments in this report. So here's how stat levels work: the first time you select a spell or use a weapon in-battle, you gain some experience for the spell proportionate to its level and the strength of the enemies you're facing. All subsequent, you gain just a little. Casting a spell outside of battle, if possible, always gives 2 experience. The same applies to weapon skills, although this will only be relevant to shields for this variant.

There's a famous trick called the select-cancel glitch, based on the fact that it's _selecting_ the command the brings experience, not executing it. I may make use of this for this playthrough, but won't be relying on it.


Since our characters only begin with 5MP apiece, the early going is a bit on the grindy side. Kill some enemies, return to the inn, repeat. The cost of inns is based off your missing HP and MP, so it's generally more prudent to heal up with Cure before heading in.


The first quest is to head to the occupied city of Phin. I do enough training near Altea to get Patchy a Cure Book before proceeding. Along the way, Marisa levels Ice to 2. As spells grow in power and level, so do they increase in MP cost. I had to make a retreat to Gatea before heading to the town, to fill up everyone's MP.


Random encounters continue inside Phin. Patchy gets Bolt to level 2 in the town. On the way back, Alice would get her Cure and Shield skills to level 2. Shields are an important part of evasion and agility gains, despite their spellcasting penalty, so for the early game, Alice and Patchy (for now) have two each.


Returning with the Ring we get from a dying rebel soldier in Phin allows us to proceed with the story. We also gain our first fourth party member in the process.


Minh, as he's known in this translation, is the series' first named White Mage. He fits right in with our party of magicians, and has a ludicrous list of spells at his disposal. A spelllist like this, even a party that heavily abuses the select-cancel bug will be hard-pressed to achieve. Though, most of the list is of questionable use...he's still incredibly overpowered.

With the Canoe he brings, we can cross the lake and reach Palm. The magic shop here has a selection of White Magic. These all do what would would expect them to do - Blink increases evasion, Safe increases physical defense, and Shell increases magic defense. The first of these is the most important, so we get a bit of money to purchase it before moving on.

But hm. Is there any faster way to make money? Well, yes. Wandering off-course in Final Fantasy 2 is easy to do. For example, if you head north if Phin...


Oh dear. The Soldiers are enemies we'll be seeing shortly. The Mages we'll have to wait a few dungeons for normally. This is certainly one of the less drastic ways to run astray, but it's quite manageable at this point. Marisa and Patchy are able to down the soldier, but the Mages' spells wipe all but Minh off the map. What can we do? His only means of attack is the wildly inaccurate Exit.

Well, enemies actually have MP in FF2. Their stocks eventually run dry. So a Blink spell to raise evasion and some stalling later, and the Mages can only fail to attack physically. Minh is able to rebuild the party from here. So why go through this trouble?


FF2 is the first game in the series where enemies can drop items, and in fact, is quite generous with it at times. The Mages dropped a Berserk spell and an Aero spell. The latter is a poison-elemental attacking spell in the vein of Fire, Ice, and Bolt. It has less applications, but is useful anyway. The former is one of the most notable spells in the game. It's quite rare unless it's dropped, but a few castings can turn a physical attacker into a powerhouse. It's sadly of only one use to us.


Cha-ching!!


With this lump of cash, I'm able to buy Bronze Shields for Alice and Patchouli, as well as Safe and Shell for Alice. Moving onto the snowy town of Salamando, there's another selection. Life does what it says on the can. Anti is what some games refer to as Rasp. Not particularly helpful for anything other than building our MP. Warp and Exit function much like in FF4; however, they can also be cast in-battle to (potentially) instantly get rid of enemies.

I pick up Life for Alice and Warp for Marisa for now. We don't need Exit, as Minh has it, and we'll be getting a freebie soon enough. We don't need Anti either, at least not yet.


A short trip later, and we arrive at Semitt Falls, the game's first real dungeon. I made sure to grind a bit of MP with Minh's Anti before heading inside.


A few enemies do have long-range physical attacks, such as the Soldiers or these Green Goblins. But even armorless, it still doesn't really hurt Marisa that much.


At roughly the halfway point, Patchy is nearly out of MP. Marisa was able to use some weaker spells to keep things under control, but her compatriot I only bothered to get Bolt for. I have a single Ether in stock that Minh brought, but I'd rather not use it.


Still, not all is lost. You get a free Fire spell on the fourth floor. So Patchy is able to keep on fighting for a bit. I chose to run from a few encounters, though.


So here's the first boss of the game, the Sargeant. He has incredible physical defenses, which is a non-issue for our party. Except we're nearly out of magic. Oops? Minh casts Fog on him to disable his Bow attack, while Alice buffs herself.


Bolt 3, a Fire 2, and an Ice 3 are still enough to take him down.


Before leaving, I go and grab this goodie. It's guarded by a monster-in-a-box, the Land Turtle (which has already been vaporized in the second screenshot) With Minh the only one with any remaining MP, however, he has to use his Exit spell to get rid of the turtle.

_________________


So a quick checkup on our magicks. Marisa has mostly been focusing on Ice magic, and through various use and mild select-cancel abuse (selecting only once in a battle) has managed to get the other elements to Level 2 at least. Patchy's Bolt has a bit more experience due to focused use; Cure is Level 2, and Fire is barely broken in. Alice's skills are a bit more spread around.


Patchy's spellbook is a bit empty, so I fight Mages until another Aero spellbook drops. Note the Dark status here. It's actually about as effective as in FF5 when it comes to crippling a physical attacker, but also stops skill points from going up. I had to remove the status eventually.


South of out destination after our next destination, Kashuon, is a Chocobo Forest. We can use this, along with some ingenuity, to reach the village of Mysidia. While a powergaming tactic for most parties, this is a _mandatory_ trip for this party of mages, for reasons we'll get to in a while.


So we're here, and this Holy spell is what we're looking for. This gives Alice an offensive option, beyond her Exit spell. It does decent non-elemental damage. The other spells are out of our price-range for the time being.

We also pick up two Thief Gauntlets while we're here, for 1000G apiece. These give a +10 to Agility. Recall that you gain Agility by having Agility, so their importance cannot be understated.


Now, the random encounters around Mysidia are highly dangerous for an early party. These Bombs are an exception. They mostly attempt an explosive attack, but if they're at full HP, it doesn't work. The solution is to use Minh's Exit spell until it procs and kills them instantly. Marisa and Patchy can do heavy damage with their Bolt spells, but not enough. I deal with the rest via save abuse. Save the game, get into an encounter, reset, move some more steps, repeat.


To Bofsk, now. It has more spells for us. Fear is much the same as it is in FF1, that is to say, completely useless. "Peep", heals temporary status ailments in battle. Not very useful, since they can wear off by themselves. Heal heals permanent status ailments. I picked this up at Mysidia for Alice, but I get it for Patchy here as well for redundancy purposes. Mute is a temporary version of the Fog spell.


The Bofsk Sewers are the next dungeon. Unlike most sewers in video games, this one is short and straightforward! The resistance mostly consists of enemies from outside and a few imperial soldiers. Also some undead, which are highly flammable. Not very interesting.


We lose Minh after this dungeon. Bah. Oh well, we're strong enough now anyway. The next quest is to go to the Snow Cave to retrieve the Goddess' Bell. A character named Josef in Salamando joins us for this, who has no natural magic of his own. No problem, I give him some spare Fire and Bolts I got as drops from Mages. He proceeds to play no significant role in the dungeon that follows.


We need to make a quick detour to Semitt to pick up the Ice Sled, which we use to enter the cold dungeon.


The cave is half ice-themed enemies, half undead. Alice can break out her Cure spell as an offensive weapon on the latter, whereas Marisa and Patchy set to work burning everything.


There's a free Ice spellbook here, which goes to Patchouli. The guardian of the Bell is the Adamantoise. As you can see, hitting an elemental weakness is quite painful. The turtle only has 450HP to begin with, so this was essentially a one-hit KO.


There's another boss to deal with before leaving, if you want to call it that. Borgan is a complete nonthreat. A Holy and Bolt spell drop him.


On the trip back, now Josefless, we use our last drop of MP just before we reach Salamando. Phew. Any more fights, I would've had to run from.


All that use of Fire has gotten Marisa Fire to 4.18, and Patchy to 3.41. The former's other offensive spells have gone up one level. Alice's Holy is sitting at 3, and every spell but Peep - which is really only there to put Holy two spaces below in the battle menu making it easier to access - is at least at 2. At this point the first casting of a level 4 spell only gives one point of experience for a spell, so I've been spreading out the castings a bit.

Next | Index

FF2 Magic-Only Challenge Part II

Our next objective in-game is to go to the ruined castle of Kashuon to obtain the Egil's Torch, which can be used to obtain the SunFlame, which we can use to overload the Empire's Warship's engine and destroy it. A quick airship taxi takes us there.


Gordon joins us for this task. He too, has no magic of his own; this Bolt is another spare drop that I had on me. What he does have is 22s in all his stats including Magic Power, the latter meaning he gains MP fairly rapidly. I add a Cure spell to his collection from a freebie in the castle.

The opposition isn't too much to talk about. Enemy strength is beginning to ramp up a bit. Ogre Magi in particular have a Rank of 3. The first use of a spell in-battle gets you 3+Uses+R-Level experience. R is the rank of the lowest enemy in battle. It's possible for this value to be negative, but it doesn't decrease.

In layman's terms, the first time you cast a spell in battle will give more experience, but all subsequent uses of a spell in battle will always give 1 experience. Out of battle, spells that can be cast always can 2 experience.


Umm...oops. Out of MP by the end? This is a problem. I have an Ether, but I decide to just Exit out of here.


I do two things when I'm out here. First, I use the Anti spell to grind some MP. Recall that this skill, if it succeeds, reduces the target's MP. It seems to half it, to be specific (these two screenshots are from different uses of the skill, it doesn't always take). This should mitigate the problem of running dry.


While I'm at it, I decide to take my magicians on another trip to Mysidia in the process. My party is now strong enough to take on many of the encounters here. Marisa, Patchy, and Gordon are able to gang up on a Bomb and take it out. I get a Barrier spell and a third Thief Gauntlet while I'm here.


So after those festivities and another romp through Kashuon, I'm back at the boss. Much better!


So here's Red Soul. This is why I had to go to Mysidia in the first place. Red Soul absorbs all elemental spells, as you can see with this screenshot from the past (haven't been prudent on taking pictures). Holy is non-elemental though, and kills it just fine. The other option would be trying to get a Drain spell, but that's the tougher option.


A quick heal in Altea, then we set up north to where the Warship's docked. We're running into skill level 3+ enemies fairly routinely now. These Big Birds are a bit annoying. Magic isn't that strong when it's not hitting an elemental weakness, of which they have none. There's ways around this, though...and stronger enemies.


You're supposed to present a Pass item from the Bofsk Sewers dungeon. I skipped it, however. You can tell the Rebel password to the guard instead to fight your way on board and save an item slot.


These Captains are what we would fight in Phin if we attempted to talk to anyone there, as well as what we face if we talk to anyone else here. That let's play abuses these guys for their Toad spellbook drop - instant kills are actually quite capable in this Final Fantasy.

I'm going to be playing through without use of it, partially because the final boss absorbs instant kill spells of all types - and thus I would rather train spells that can kill him through HP damage. That's not to say it's not on the table for certain cases, however. Alice and Marisa take off all their equipment to negate the spellcasting penalty, Gordon takes up the position of meatshield, and the duo unleash a Warp and Exit at the Captain. Marisa gets the kill with Warp. Patchy casts a revival spell on Gordon, in case it takes too long to level.


And yes, select/canceling each spell once is very very nice for our spell gains. They're skill level 5. Our level 5 skills gain a total of 4 experience from these encounters at first use.


For the Imperial Warship, there are surprisingly few Imperial enemies. The Mine enemies were some of the more common ones. There's these Stunner rats who do what their name suggests with their physicals, assorted undead, and that jolly green giant, a monster in a box.


Whoa, how did I run out of MP on the last floor? Thankfully, Gordon had a sizable stock left, and had enough mojo to carry us the rest of the way.


After blowing the Warship to smithereens, we return to Altea to hear the king's final words. Minh has to go and break the seal on ULTIMA, THE FORBIDDEN MAGIC. Gordon is to be commander-in-chief of the rebel army, so he's not with us anymore. We are to go to the island of Dist and strike up contact with the Dragoons. Which means procuring a ship.


Like in FF1, we end up engaged with pirates. And just like in FF1, these aren't much to talk about. A single barrage of spells ends this fight, and gets us our ship and next party member.


Layla comes with a free Bolt spell, and it's at Level 2. Hooray!!


I end up getting lost on the way to my destination, and end up here. This is the Black Mask Cave. You're ordinarily not supposed to come here until a little later on in the game, but it's a simple enough dungeon and fully doable at this stage (much like the Ice Cave/Ordeals situation in FF1), so I go ahead and do it.


The enemies aren't necessarily that strong...these slimes are pretty weak, and the Stunners and Wererats show up as well. Notable are the DualZombs, two-headed undead ogres who die quickly to fire and have a skill level of 5. Again...wasn't really prudent with picture-taking. >_>


A side-path in here allows us to access this shop, which has these Ruby Plates for sale. They're a much-desired defensive upgrade, are lightweight, and have only a -1 INT/SOUL spellcasting penalty. Not that the latter matters much with dual-shields...but still!


The Big Horn is the boss of this cave. Its got 1140 HP and no real weakness, so I just blast away until it croaks.


Checkup time, this time with stats as well. Marisa's magic is at level 5, with Ice at 6.23. We haven't yet located some of the magic I'd like Marisa to have, but what's there is good enough for now. Intelligence is coming along nicely.

Alice has really benefitted from the probably-pointless select/canceling once in each battle with a skill level 5+ enemy...and seriously, what the _hell_ is with that Soul growth? 8 more points, and she'll be maxed out. This is apparently what happens when you select/cancel a lot of magic spells; since the game keeps track of how many you cast in a fight, she gained a ton of it all at once.

Patchy, not specializing in either school of magic, has kind of lowish stats by comparison, but for this stage of the game, it's by no means terrible. Definitely going to look into getting more spells for Patchy.

_________________


So take a look at this. Recognize the weapon? Anyone familiar with Final Fantasy V should, even though it has a slightly different name in the SNES translation - the Guardian. Base Evasion is determined by Agility. You then gain a bonus equal to (L + 1) * B depending on equipment, where L is the level of your equipment and B is the bonus it gets. Then subtract out equipment weight.

Most every weapon in the game, with the exception of this little dagger (5), the Defender Sword (8), and Masamune (2) have a bonus of 1. They also all happen to have a small(er) spellcasting penality than shields, at 5%, 50%, and 0%! The catch for our specific case - there's exactly one Main Gauche in the game.


So Dist Cavern. Before going in, I take a trip to Mysidia and get Patchy a Holy spellbook.


There's hordes of undead in here, along with Souls. Like the Red Soul boss from before, these guys absorb all elements you throw at them. Holy does just fine though, so they go down easily enough.


The Chimeras are the boss of this dungeon, Their main attack is this party-wide flame, which manages to bring down Marisa. Still, nothing my magicians can't handle.


On returning to Altea, we find Princess Hilda has been replaced by a Lamia!! I save before jumping into this boss, as she has a drop that I want. To quickly dispose of her, I have Alice and Marisa take off their equipment aim their Exit and Warps spells at the snakelady.


Don't want the huge pile of cash. This is also known as the Protect Ring. It's part of what I consider the mage equipment set. All of it is lightweight and offers a +21% boost to magic defense, Protect Ring has a weight of only 3, has 18 defense, and offers death protection. Tempting, but not what I'm looking for.


There we are. The Ribbon stands as a fantastic piece of equipment. With resistance to all elements, all status ailments, 21% magic defense, no spellcasting penalty, and even a pleasant 10 defense, this is undoubtedly the ultimate headwear. Genji Helm? An overweight amateur. Alice ties this into her hair, and we set off.


But not before I somehow found a way to freeze the game. Remember how there must be at least one person in the front row? Well, everyone was in the back row for the Lamia Queen fight, and Gordon - who rejoined us - was in the back row when he left. He rejoins in the back row, so everyone is in the back row. The game just locks up here.


Anyway, the real princess got kidnapped, and she's in the Empire's Arena. However, a giant behemoth is also competing for her. What exactly this thing wants with her is unclear, but it's a toughie: no elemental weaknesses and 1620HP. The boss theme of this game plays for the first time in this fight. It's more bark than bite, though. With Alice dodging its purely physical attacks, the magicians simply chip away at it until it collapses.


The jail beneath the arena isn't worth talking about. This rare encounter shows up as I'm leaving, which I'll be exploiting in a bit for its drops, in a far better place to find it.


I get my first 1000+ damage hit on the walk back, from Marisa blasting an Antlion with Ice.


Time to retake Phin Castle!! Layla rejoins a bit in. Those Sorcerors and Wizards are about twice as common here as they were back in the Arena. And um, highly dangerous. Wow.


Luckily, Alice is a beast.


The drops I get from the first several though...aren't really that good. Aura, as I've learned gives you bonus damage when physically attacking certain enemy types. So, still useless to us. Drain is nice to have around; I end up with several of these. Two go to Marisa and Patchy, the rest get sold. And there is a lot of junk I get before it's over.


The Ribbon drop I get puts in work!! The bad news is, Alice's Heal needs a bit more training before it can remove petrify.


Seriously, those mages are nuts. Here's their attack "script". They choose one of these each turn at the specified odds.

Sorceror: Drain (20%), Flare (20%), Osmose (20%), Toad (10%), Fire (10%), Stop (10%), Warp (5%), Break (5%)
Wizard: Drain (20%), Blizzard (20%), Fire (20%), Haste (10%), Stun (10%), Confuse (10%), Death (5%), Curse (5%)

Break, Toad, Warp, and Death are all very painful, and the rest are pretty bad too. But finally, after about a dozen of those big fights...


Booya. The Flare spell is essentially the Black Mage counterpart to Holy. Aspil is the MP counterpart to Drain. I only get one, so I have to go around hunting more.


The only thing worth noting about Commander Gotus, the boss of this place, is that he actually smacked Alice around a bit. Still, he was blasted into submission before he could do too much.


With Phin now reoperational, so opens its magic shop. Which actually has some unique stuff in it. Alice picks up Fog and Slow, just because. The castle basement is the next stop.


The first few floors have monsters from several dungeons ago. Another Soul enemy shows up a few levels down. The Green Souls throw Cure at us while we wail away. The Brains are weird enemies with a peculiar vulnerability to Mind spells. Alice hits them with it to neuter their magic, because why not?


These guys, a monster in a box shortly before the White Mask, are highly dangerous...their breath skill inflicts petrify. They never get to use it though, as Alice Barriers up her comrades while they Aspil away their MP.

Next stop: Mysidia, when we're actually supposed to be going to Mysidia. Now seems a good time for a skill checkup.


Most of the status skills Marisa has are there for the fun of it. Flare is already starting to get broken in, and Ice is nearly at 8. Intelligence is nearing the ceiling...

Holy wasn't select canceled, unlike some of the support stuff. It really did get that strong just through constant use, and those solo battles Alice ended up win certainly helped. Her HP really went through the roof because of those encounters.

Patchy's skills are improving. Holy's gone up to 4, which is good. Bolt is also nearing level 8. Stats still leave a lot to be desired, though...but they should get to where they need to be by the end.

Next | Index

FF2 Magic-Only Challenge Part III

We can place the White Mask on a maiden's statue in Mysidia, then make a long walk to the next dungeon. Shortly into it, we get this beauty. The Black Garb has 40 defense, just under the Diamond Plate's 43. It shares a 1% magic penalty, but also has a +10 to Agility and a _zero_ evasion penalty. It even gives resistance to the Matter element. Needless to say, this is fantastic for anyone, but especially Alice - even with her ribbon, this can give her a setup that gives the desired agility and lacks any spellcasting penalty.


This is a really dull dungeon. Only exciting thing is another Aspil spell at the end, which Alice takes up. Her Intelligence is lacking, but it's more consistent than trying to use Change.


Holy 9, coming from 99 Soul...is really really strong.


One long-ass roundabout ship trip later, we finally reach the tower only to be swallowed up by a sea monster. Taunting us inside are these ElecFish, which absorb lightning. I mostly start to stick to my non-elemental spells here.


Richard the (sword-wielding) Dragoon joins us partway in this VERY short dungeon. His magic stats...suck. They suck. All I have on me is a Drain spell, which I suppose is one of the better spells to get stuck using, but still.


Guarding the way out is the Worm, also known as the Land Worm, also known as the Round Worm. 2000 HP aside, this is a complete non-threat.


Mysidia Tower!! A feature of this place is the pools of lava and frigid water on certain floors, which are much like the lava/spikes in FF1.


Before long, we bump into this fellow. His Rock special can hit back row targets for heavy damage. Marisa really feels this (you can see the damage it's done).

Against these types of enemies is where elemental weaknesses really shine. That, my friends, is just short of a one-hit kill - a bit more luck on the damage and it would've been. Fire Gigas has only 1800 HP. Who needs Toad?! Failing that, don't forget that we have a 1000+ damage attack in Holy 9.


Another Gigas is a few floors up, on an Ice-themed floor. Note that while the minibosses and treasures are ice-themed, the enemies are not. A few Fire spells does this one in.


The weakness of the Thunder Gigas is the poisonous Aero spell. Don't ask how this makes sense. Each Gigas has successively more HP that the last one, and with Aero being not trained as high, it takes a few casts to get him.


There's a couple of nice pickups in this place. There's a Flare book, which I'll be saving for later. And the Black Robe. Counterpart to the White Robe below which protects against status elements and gives +10 to Soul, this bestows protection from damaging elements and gives +10 to Intelligence.


Also, this thing guards it.

It's worth noting that if you've played the remakes, you're probably familiar with how there are two boss themes. In this version, there's only one, and it's more exclusive. Behemoth uses it, this Dragon uses it, Lamia Queen and the Gigas don't use it despite using the same boss theme as the others in the remake.


Anyway, it's an ice dragon, so fire burns it up quite good.


And then...wow, 5% drop! These are the Genji Gloves, otherwise exclusive to a well-guarded chest in the final dungeon. They have 45 defense, the highest in the game, but -47% defense and an absurd 100 magic penalty. We won't be using them for the latter aspect, needless to say.


And at the top, Ultima!! Ultima is touted as the ultimate magic of the game. However, it has a few...issues. Related to coding.


How Ultima is supposed to work: take the entire cumulative magic and weapon skills your character has, add them up, then use them to deliver heavy damage.
How Ultima actually works: nobody knows. Even that site I linked to. Some people say it does like 1 damage, some people say it does 100-200 regardless of level, that site says it does 100 at lowest level and 500 at highest.

So let's try to narrow it down, shall we? When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
- Your cumulative skill levels. I removed all of Patchy's spells, leaving only the 4 on Shield and fired off Ultima 1.
- Ultima's skill level. I pumped it up to Ultima 16, it did nothing more. I broke the game with cheats and pushed it all the way to Ultima 200+, and it did the same amount of damage (other spells did peform as expected).
- Spellcasting penalty. Doesn't seem to have any effect at all!


- Stats. Richard, with his lame 26 Soul, could sometimes do more damage than Alice, who has 99 Soul.


There's really only one thing I found to affect the variable damage, and that's enemy magic defense. These Imp enemies have a magic defense of 3x100%. Meaning they will always block three hits of magic. I couldn't get Ultima to do more than about this much damage against them even with repeated use. My theory as for the rest: the game pulls data from some changing variable to determine number of "hits".


By the way, a bonus: that blue fellow there is the DesAngel, aka Goblin Prince. It's one of the rarest enemies in the game, exclusive to just outside Kashuon and the first floor of the keep. Found these while testing Ultima's damage on those weak LegEaters (1x60% magic evasion). You'd expect such a rare encounter to be highly dangerous...but they're not. So why is it so rare...?


Stats. Alice and Marisa have maxed their magic stats. Thanks to repeated use of their non-elemental spells, they're really starting to get up there. Patchy is catching up, and will probably hit 99 in both by the end. Alice's evasion is nearly maxed out while the Main Gauche is equipped. Also good.

Note Marisa's Soul. Due to a bug with multitargetted spells, they sometimes cause the first character's Soul to increase, rather than anyone's magic defense. That's why it's as high as it is, despite Marisa never using White Magic.

_________________



After Ultima. The lands are now being ravaged by a Cyclone. Four towns have been destroyed. The random encounters have almost changed. Some of these you never have to see yet prove interesting, like the Sand Worms and their incessent Quakes.


We have to get our Dragon from some random mirror and fly right into that bad boy.


As usual, the randoms aren't worth talking about. Alice stands in front and dodges all the physics while I chip away with magic at everything. At this point, I abandoned everything else and just started casting the nonelemental magic.


Another Dragon lies as a monster in a box. Again using elemental weaknesses, it's not much of a contest. It doesn't have nearly as cool drops as the other one, but this is a welcome semi-reusable spellcasting item.


Before facing the Emperor himself, you have to fight two sets of those Corpse enemies, which are surprisingly not undead. The Emperor himself is so lame, the boss music doesn't even play. Nay, the real nasty opponent is technically the Wood Golem. It's got 14x100% Magic Defense. Alice's Holy only did 600 to it...but Marisa's Fire 8 ignored that all and hit for 1752 damage.


Blah blah blah Dark Knight takes over and is really Hijiri, and we got an Airship.


Time to crash Paramekia Castle. There's a new flavor of Golem here, as well as those Generals. They have a 10-hit attack, which Alice is able to dodge.


This guy is actually a rare random encounter, but also serves as fixed a monster in a box. He's a bit more difficult than the standard Emperor and is actually the only undead enemy in this game not weak to fire. Non-elemental stuff gets the job done.


I get some insane drops while traversing this dungeon. First, from a Lamia Queen in a box containing a Sun Sword (the third-strongest sword), I get a second Ribbon! This will definitely come in handy. Then I get a Yoichi Bow off a General at 10% odds. The strongest bow in the game, it casts a Berserk 3 spell when used as an item. Then they drop another Sun Sword at 5%. I have no use for the latter two, sadly..


There's no boss at the end, only Byakuren Hijiri. The former Emperor comes back. In the novelization of FF2, I should mention that the Emperor sold his soul to the devil for the ability to summon legions of the damned. After dying, the devil tells him he will claim his soul, but the Emperor isn't having any of that. He proceeds to kill the devil and take over Hell. A true badass.


Hijiri is a master of weapons. Notsomuch magic, but the high Magic Power stat means Byakuren gets high MP within a few battles of grinding. I teach Flare and Ultima, because why not?


Checking up on the stats of our other members. I plan to stop using Shields on Marisa and Patchy heading into Jade, meaning they won't be as fast, but their damaging magic will be comparable to that of Alice. Really, besides the elemental stuff and Aspil, the rest of the skills weren't of much use to train up.

Alice's Evasion is essentially at its peak. The most number of hits any enemy in the game gets is 12 (really rare Iron Giants, essentially the Warmech of this game). In second place are those Generals at 10, and nothing else goes over 8. There's a few enemies that can counter it with Haste, but I can counter that with Blink. Her Holy hit _11_, since I've been using it so much.

Because of the White Robe, Patchouli actually has more Soul than Alice (94 + 10 from the robe). As with the rest of them, I've pretty much only been focusing on Holy - which has hit 10. Heal's at 5, which is good, since it can cure any permanent status but KO (which Life can).


A ton of money. What to do with it all.


Oh yeah. We ready for that final run now.

Next | Index

FF2 Magic-Only Challenge Part IV

Into the Jade Passage, the only way to reach the demon castle of Pandemonium. We essentially have two long dungeon romps on the way to reach the Emperor himself.


This is what most of the fights end up looking like. Malboros inflicts a lot of status ailments if they hit. Which they don't.


This is what I want most of the fights to look like. These guys sling Tornado 13 our way, which is perfect for building HP needed to survive the nastier pure damage spells. I actually had to hurt my own party members with spells, just to get enough buffer room.


There's a magic shop here behind a waterfall. We don't need any of the spells here. We already got what we need!


There's a few monsters in boxes here. The two dragons are dealt with by hitting their elemental weaknesses - Poison and Ice respectively. The golden Behemoth, I simply hurl nonelemental spells at.


The Red Dragon also drops us this. It's of no use to us - the only purpose it would fulfill is giving Patchy elemental protection, but there's a freebie along the way and it would mean giving up the White Robe - which is far more important for its status protection.


Speaking of Status protection, also with the Dragon Armor is the Aegis Shield. Hijiri holds onto it, giving the full monty of protection along with her Black Robe.


Into Pandemonium. The first thing that happens: Defense Ring drop from a Lamia Queen!! Hijiri got hold of a fixed one in Jade Passage, but having another doesn't hurt.


Yes, full protection from status elements really is nice. Other enemies, like those Death Riders, couldn't hit Alice. With the front/back row mechanics, evasion stands as the killer stat of FF2, to FF5's speed. With most of the threat being physical, you can end up with virtual invincibility.


What's not nice are these guys. Their Blast 10 special inflicts paralysis on the party, and it is non-elemental. That means if it hits, it works regardless of any resistances.


Within the crystalline walls of Pandemonium are four optional bosses, three of which guard a piece of Genji equipment and one of which guards a Ribbon. The first I take on is Tiamat. This dragon has level 16 breath skills of all four basic elements to sling at us. With everyone but Patchy having resistance to them, it's not much of a fight.


Next is Astaroth, who guards a Ribbon. Astraroth has a nasty supply of spells, an 8-hit physical, and 7000HP. And he likes to single-target your characters with level 16 spells. The biggest threat would've been the non-elemental Drain 16, but it never showed.


On the way back, I run into a Lamia Queen who drops _another_ Ribbon. So I guess everyone's getting a Ribbon. I later get another Defense Ring drop, so everyone but Patchy (the one with the highest magic defense) gets one.


"Satan", as this fanslation calls it, also has level 16 spells, including Flare 16. I just keep blasting the overgrown lord of the flies until it dies, not accomplishing anything helpful.


Finally, the worst for last - Zombie Borgan doesn't even get the honor of the boss music playing. I kill him with fire and move on.


And hidden near him is the Masamune!! Shame that we don't get to employ it, because it - having no spellcasting penalties - is the best weapon for any mage...well, anyone, really.

There's not much else to say about the trip through here. Everything gets blasted into submission with Holy or Flare, except large groups of Krulls, who I opt to take out with multitarget Exit or Warp. It took about three hours in total. I felt like streaming it and I did.


The last boss awaits.


My inventory, just to show how I didn't even use most of those Elixirs, thanks to the Aspil spell being around.


Marisa didn't manage to hit Flare 11, though Patchy did hit Holy 11. I mostly used Patchy's Cure through Jade, hence why it went up to 8. Hijiri didn't disappoint, Flare 7 isn't half bad. That aside, I hardly used any of the other spells. Alice's agility hit 70, boosted to 80 from her Black Robe. With just the Main Gauche on her, she has 99% evasion.


It's go time.


The festivities kick off with Alice casting Blink on herself. This is actually pointless - the Emperor gets 8 hits at 100% odds, but Alice gets 10 dodges at 99% odds. The Emperor has a nasty array of spells, though. Slow 16 can cripple a physical attacker, as can Blind 16. Curse 16 reduces Attack and Defense by half if it lands. Dispel 16 is as worthless for him as it is for us.

Then there's Flare 16. This does 800-1000 damage to a single target, which is why I needed the higher HP. Finally, he rounds it off with Meteo 10, which does around 300 damage to all targets.

The Emperor is resistant to six of the eight elements, and absorbs Death and Matter. There's a way to abuse killing him by casting Wall followed by Toad, Exit, or Warp on him. The animation of those spells is what kills the opponent, and when a black magic spell is blocked by Warp, the full animation plays. But we don't need that.


The Emperor has only 540MP. A few castings of Aspil wipes his stock clean, and he's left with his physicals. Which can never hit Alice.


Game set and match. All that's left to do is to blast away. Hijiri's Flare 7 does around this much. The others do over 600. The win is inevitable.


Goodbye, Emperor!! This is actually one of the harder final bosses in the series if you don't know what you're doing, but if you do, he's among the easiest. As a bonus, here's a video of the Emperor battle.


FF2 NES completed!!


So, closing thoughts? Playing through FF2 NES was definitely an experience, to put it one way. It's a game riddled with issues and abuses, but I wouldn't say it was not worth my time. I'm interested in seeing how a solo character would perform; even though it would be fairly straightforward late game, the early game is what would be interesting. That definitely about describes this as well. Once I got hold of Holy/Flare, the strategy just became throwing those out all the time except when elemental weakness was available - both for efficiency and in preparation for the Emperor. I think the most I came to being threatened in the final runthrough was with the Abyss Worms, but they were irritably rare and chose not to all throw out their spells at once. The Krulls were annoying, but they could never hurt Alice physically.

And of course besides a solo playthrough, we can swing the other way and go melee only. This would rule out several of the abuses the game has to offer, including Evasion and Aspil abuse, and make healing difficult aside from potions, though the Blood Sword would still be an option. Or cross the streams and do both.

We'll see what happens though, and if I feel like embarking on another trip through FF2. There's still that other challenge in FF5, and that other thing I want to do. If I'm able to do that in a few days, that's what it'll be. If not, we'll see.

Index

FFL2 Robot Party Playthrough Part I

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

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

This is a run I did on the request of T-Hawk, and inspired by his 12-year-old self's love for the robot class, who knew they were "the awesomest and best characters ever." He made a party of four of them, but was unable to beat the game with them due to having difficulties on Arsenal, the final boss

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


So I'll just take the main character and name it...umm...uhhhhh...four letters...Robo, Artu...


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

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

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


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


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

It's worth noting that one of the things the remake fixes is the game's weird system of giving you GP. For a group of enemies, you get gold equal to {33 * (DS level) * Group Size} + {3 * (DS level) * Group Size * (Group Size - 1)}. This applies to all groups, but it can be reduced based on various factors in this version, such as an enemy dropping a weapon or meat. What this means in practical terms, is that there's some enemy groups that are inefficient for to fight.


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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

Next | Index

FFL2 Robot Party Playthrough Part II

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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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


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


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

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


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


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


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


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

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


Hi again, Warmech!!


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


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

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




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

However, it's possible to break through with Flare, never-miss weapons, and XCalibr/Gungnir. With enough STR (Dragon Swords, Sun Swords, the otherwise pointless for a robot 1-use which becomes 0-use Glass Sword), you can remove this before he transforms. End result, Dad dies for no good reason. Shoutouts to breaking the game!!

This is why I did all that cash-grinding before. Granted, I cash-grinded too hard and didn't actually need that much, but whatever. And I always wanted to try doing this.


Isis the Goddess joins the team, I fix the robots' equipment, then head go down th-wow. RUDE. Once I heal from this mess, and go get a few Tents for the road which I'd forgotten to pick up anyway, I head down for real. Nothing really stops the robots along the way, not with every party member able to obliterate groups.


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


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


Wow.


WOW.

Haniwa is one of FFL2's rarest encounters, sort of the WarMECH - or perhaps more accurately, the PinkPuff/Flan Princess of it. It's only found in the final room of the game. It has 10000HP, recovers 1000 of it every turn, and possesses lots of dangerous attacks. But there's a reason to seek them out: they can rarely drop the 7-Sword.


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

So why's this rare drop from a rare enemy sadly worthless? Well, you need AGL to hit. And robots can't have both STR and AGL in excess short of glitch exploitation. It can still be used to do some really heavy damage on a balanced robot (5000~ with no resistances), but for the purposes of demonstration, since it's really inaccessible, I won't be using it. I also had to pull out of the dungeon anyway after that.


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

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


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


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

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

Simply put, it's up to luck with Smasher's very variable damage, and your own damage. Kill it before it can kill you. All there is to it! Honestly, I went pretty far with loading down to power up. You honestly don't need as much.

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


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


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

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

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