FFL2 Solo Monster Part I

WARNING: The following variant contains mild emulator abuse, one instance of rule-bending, and serious player abuse. Discretion is advised.

Unlike its predecessor, FFL2 is not really suited for solo variants in its natural form. You're forced to start with four party members, and they automatically recover from being reduced to 0HP after every battle. Getting around that isn't too hard though: you can just petrify your characters with codes and be on your merry way, challenging this game in a way it was not meant to be challenged.

Like in the first of the SaGa games, the first of these I'm choosing to tackle is the suicidal solo monster challenge. As my disclaimer at the top suggested though, this is technically impossible. So what I'll be doing is going through as best I can. If there is an impossible situation, I'll get by it through other means. If there is a highly-improbable way through a situation, I will use emulator functions through it and note any such instances. We'll find out just what it takes to beat this challenge.

Though on savestating's note, they aren't as useful as you might think for this game due to how the RNG works. While the RNG at the start of a battle is somewhat randomized, it's from there on out determined by the actions that are taken in battle. In other words, if you're going to be hit with something on a particular round, you're going to be hit unless you take an action on the previous round or can somehow prevent it this round.

As before, I'll direct you towards Amuseum's site for information. His monster evolution guide on GameFAQs is also useful, for a more in-one-place way of knowing how monsters change when they eat meat in this game. For monster locations, the Enemy Data guide there is also supremely useful. I'll be using several terms and abbreviations in this variant report, so I'll explain those before setting off.
- DS: Someone did research into how the levels of monsters is determined. His name was dragonspirit. Guidewriter Amuseum thusly coined the DS-Level term in his honor.
- ID: Part of the workings behind the monster mechanics.
- Family: Every monster is placed within group of three. These are all loosely related to each other in some occasional stretch of the way. They could all be plants, they could all be undead, they could all be made of hard material, and so on.
- Class: Within the each family, there's a Class-A, Class-B, and Class-C. In the first few worlds of the game, this serves as a rough power gauge, but DS-levels are a more accurate representation of power.
- Species: An individual monster class.
- Type: The guide calls this their level, but there's enough potential levels running around that I'll simply call it the type of monster.


I named my character after Mamizou Futatsuiwa, the shapeshifting tanuki from Touhou. Really was scraping for names, and she was basically the only thing I could find that fit the bill and worked in four characters. Even if it's a bit of a stretch. While Bakeneko and Kitsune are known to transform in culture, Chen and Ran which do fit haven't been depicted doing as such.

Also, I was playing around with the status code here, and found that the menu is strangely coded to show statuses that otherwise wouldn't show - you're supposed to recover from Stun after every battle!


Instead of slapping on the stun status, I petrify everyone else (including Mr.S) and head out into the field, instantly encountering a group of Jaguars! This should be no problem, Mamizou has Flame to massacre them.


Except they massacred her instead, due to their agility and being able to two-shot her. Um. Uh-oh?


This bad omen proved itself against the BabyWyrm. For every other party in the game including the other solos, this is a preposterously easy encounter not even worthy of being called a miniboss. For most parties, Mr.S will instantly kill it. If he's out of abilities, then your party is probably strong enough so that they can pick up whatever slack there is. For Mamizou, this is a brutish brick wall. It always two-shots her, and she cannot two-shot it.

So Mamizou has to become another monster. There's two sets of encounters with only a single monster, however. A single Spider and 1-4 Jaguars. The latter, even with the draw of one, proved equally impossible. Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough at this point in hoping for better turn order or misses. In the end though, it wouldn't have helped much. A Spider it is.


This sent Mamizou down to Class-B and made her a Beetle, a monster with much higher Defense and able to tank several hits from the BabyWyrm. Except it only has 4 Strength, and the BabyWyrm can tank everything she does!! I need another option. Down to Class-A it is.

Most families' monsters of Class-A are of DS-1 in their first type. These monsters are very bad, and almost unusable in casual play let alone for this challenge. However, a few species are not like this.


To become one such monster from Beetle, and get a leg up on the enemies, Mamizou needs to beat a Lizard and Goblin. Not as easy as it sounds, as due to her own strength, she can only chip away at them. She needs to fight as small a group of them as possible as so not to run out of uses of Horn, and then Lizard meat needs to drop.


After grinding that out, Mamizou is able to become an Octopus. This monster should have the strength and endurance to get the job done.


And indeed she does get it done. Mamizou does need a bit of luck with the damage rolls, but is able to deplete the BabyWyrm's 81HP before it can deplete her own 99HP.


I know there's a more dangerous miniboss coming up, though. So I had Mamizou eat another Spider to become a Pebble. This species of monster is one I feel is seriously underrated by people of this game, who cling to fairies as if they're the best monsters ever. And make no mistake about it: fairies are good. But you miss out on a lot of neat stuff locked away in the monster system if you strictly make use of them.

Pebbles sport very high defenses, what with being walking stones and all that. They universally have the O-Change trait. What this does is combine several of the game's immunities into one neat package. O-Para: which prevents status ailments besides poison and petrification. O-Poison, which defends against both the element and the status. O-Stone, which protects against petrification. And O-Weapon, which halves the final damage of most physical attacks.

Mamizou first goes through the Hidden Ruins, running from everything along the way. Then she goes through Ashura's Base doing the same, up to the miniboss.


The Rhino would instantly kill any other monster Mamizou could become. A Pebble could survive the assault, however. She needed a Power MAGI equipped to do damage back. But this wasn't working. Rhino kept killing Mamizou over and over and over again. It could do around as much damage to her as she could do to it, or just slightly less. And it has higher HP.

The Rhino could always kill her in three hits, and would sometimes do it in two if it rolled high enough. Even if Mamizou rolled high on all her hits, of which she could get in three if she moved before the Rhino on the third round, 50x3 is not enough to deplete the Rhino's 170HP.


I tried testing with the Octopus' Ink to try to make it miss more often, but it still eventually hit and murdered her. Similarly, Slime (the DS-2 one, not the starting one) was of no help despie Dissolve. I briefly experimented with a bug to try to power up to insane heights early in the game via the Red Bone's Poison. But doing that requires a specific setup. Red Bone wasn't the answer either, even with O-Weapon.

There's really only one strategy I can do, here. The Rhino's Tusk needs to miss once. Which is rare, but can happen. Mamizou's Bashes cannot miss. Which is more common. She needs to go first on turn four, and if everything lines up, victory! Just need to endlessly repeat the battle until it happens. Odin will endlessly revive the party so long as he lives, so all I need is time, speedup, and wishing bgb had autofire.


Law of averages caught up with the Rhino after around an hour and a half of this.


By contrast in the next world, the Woodman required no additional setup. Mamizou was fit to just Bash it apart as a Pebble...but, the next boss, and first true boss of the game, Ashura, posed a problem.

How monster parties typically deal with him is via getting Baby-D monsters (Class-C) to eat the meat of the Class-B monsters in Ashura's World to become high-level Class-C monsters. Specifically, a Medusa would be able to instantly petrify Ashura. But since I had to downgrade to Class-A just to beat the two minibosses of the first world, I have only one way to become stronger than DS-2, and that's through the Woodman.

Even if I do, for example, somehow beat it as a Jaguar without dying to become a Cobble, I'd still need to rely on Ashura avoiding using Flame and futily using Sleep a lot. Clearly, this isn't going to happen, if only because of the prerequisite.


I tried my best with that first option, really, hypothetically bypassing to problem of getting to Cobble in the first place. The odds are way too far out there, though. Can't say I didn't try.

So I have no real choice but to make a solo exception here. Well, there is one other thing I could've done - say I'm allowing to use any [i]one[/i] character, so long as it's simply a solo monster. With this, Baby-D can defeat several things to get Class-B meat and a Defense MAGI on - single Zombies, single Flowers, and most easily, Beetles. Just like Mamizou couldn't do any damage as one, they wouldn't be able to damage her. However, this wasn't an option for this playthrough anyway - because I chose Imps instead of Baby-Ds.

With that in mind, we'll make the exception, because this is a fun challenge so far, and I don't want to abandon it because of some silly brick wall that exists because the dev team of SaGa can't make monsters viable in the early game. I consider this more something like what Sullla's Iron Fists did to bypass Astos. Just like him and his 40 Absorb, here we have something that's way beyond our level for the stage of the game it appears in.


Anyway, the game provides an NPC called Mask for this, and a weapon called the Battle Sword. He can solo Ashura with it, killing him in four swings of the weapon, making one question how he got captured to begin with. Remember if you ever play FFL2 and for whatever reason end up with a weak party that can't beat Ashura, you can rely on Mask to get you through.

If you're going with the any one monster rule, you can simply obtain an Medusa and use StonGaze on Ashura to attempt an instant victory.


Now in Giant's World and Ki's Body, I run into Crabs. These are Class-C monsters who are capable of leveling a monster up the chain...if I could beat them, that is. There are three encounter groups with them: one with a Silver, itself, and ROBO-28, one with multiples of the same, and one that can have 3-6 of them alongside 0-3 Worms. In most scenarios, I'll be either unable to damage them or take too much damage from them. One that does work that didn't occur at the time is DS-2 Slime vs. 3 Crabs.


I experimented around with Red Bone and Octopus too, hoping that maybe one of them could defeat a Worm or a Fiend to increase their level to DS-3. Neither of them could handle this group. Pebble could, but it would become a DS-1 Fly or DS-1 Lizard for each respective meat.


Nay, I need a better option. An option that's better based on the virtue of it actually working. Running from everything all the while up to the doorstep of Ki's brain. Mamizou eats the meat of a Fungus to become the low-level monster Toad. Now, against anything but this solo Grippe, she'd be dead in the water. But it only uses an attack to inflict Poison status, which can barely damage the Toad. Mamizou can thus slowly work down its HP.

This is the first (and actually only) time I resort to savestates. Enemy order is fixed, and I didn't want to pass up the opportunity of getting a solo one so easily. As stated, it isn't that big a help. Battles will always play out the same if you take the same actions. Toad only has Tongue as an action to take, and there's only one target in this fight. So what I need to do is take actions in the previous battle, by which I mean die in the previous battle and get revived by Odin because this is the only battle I can fight, then try again.


Whatever the case, I eventually get it to drop meat. This turns Mamizou into a Cobble, the upgraded Pebble!

That said, I did overlook something here, a much easier option that can tackle more of them - a Slime (either one) can take on multiples of these, although DS-2 Slime may need to be used (the only DS-2 monster that works). This can be used to become DS-3 Oni. Beating them as Jaguar to become an Amoeba is the final option, which also is a bit stronger than Toad. Still, it's what I went with, and whatever works.

But Cobble is not the goal. The boss of Ki's Body is the Phagocyts, who appear in a group of 4-8. They mostly use Wind-Up to no effect on a Cobble because of O-Change, but will occasionally use Dissolve for heavy damage and draining back 33% of what they dealt. Because of how many can spawn, better to use another monster.


I have Mamizou eat a Jaguar to become an Amoeba. Or rather, a Spider to become an Oni, and a Skelton to become an Amoeba, since they popped first. It has a multi-target attack called Acid. Mamizou equips a Fire MAGI - which has more or less the same effect as a Mana MAGI due to a bug, only it gives O-Fire and doesn't boost Cure spells - simply needs to get lucky enough to dodge the Wind-Ups (which they love using) and hope they don't use Dissolve (which they occasionally use) to get off two Acids.

Also if you do use the any one monster rule, you don't need to go through with this madness. Just become a monster that can group target the Phagocyts and be on your way.

Surprisingly, this only took in the neighborhood of two dozen attempts. Apollo's World lies ahead, and with this, things will finally start to look up for Mamizou. She'll be meeting up with playthroughs that do use the Turn the page to find out what's next for her!

Next | Index

FFL2 Solo Monster Part II

With the first three worlds behind Mamizou, she can now head into Apollo's World, where the monsters are DS-4. Thanks to Dissolve and how many of them are solo, she can take on Class-C monsters and successfully upgrade herself. A bit later than I would've hoped, but it'll make the forced encounters from here until now go much more smoothly.

Only thing is...I need to pay attention to what I have her eat. The game may be getting easier from here on out, but it's getting no less interesting or convoluted.


See, for example, there's these monsters called Big Eyes. They're nearly helpless, only able to paralyze Mamizou which she can eventually break out of to kill them. But...if she were to eat their meat as an Amoeba, she'd become a Flower. A weak monster from the second world! Similarly, after eating the first of the meats she ate below, I tried to have her eat one again, and she herself became a Big Eye. There was absolutely nothing she could do in battle anymore, so I had to reset.


So I needed to find a path of eating that takes Mamizou up to Class-C without her hitting any "landmines". I settle on her first eating a Raven from Dunatis' Cave, which she can beat one-on-one and rarely with Acid if two show up. This turns her into a Rhino. I then have her eat a Moth to become a Moth herself. From there, she eats a Rhino to become a Crab, then heads back to Ashura's World to eat a Zombie.


Now I'm set for a while. Sprite is one of the game's most notorious monsters. If a starting Baby-D eats the meat of a Wererat in World 2, it becomes this beauty. There's numerous other options to branch out to from here - so long as Mamizou continues eating meat strategically in a way so that she always goes to a species that has a type at DS-5, she can become any of them I want - but Sprite is a good monster and will do what I need until the next big boost in a few worlds. It has a status spell, a mass-damage elemental spell, and can even heal.

About the only thing that could compare as far as Mamizou is concerned would be the DS-5 Baby-D with its Flame, due to it being able to damage all enemy groups. But with Mamizou running from everything and all the major encounters being single groups, it's of no benefit.


So now that Mamizou is ultra-strong, the game got bearable! Hooray!! Granted, I still ran from every single random encounter because fighting them would be foolish since Mamizou has everything to lose and nothing to gain from fighting them. To highlight how easier the game was though, I forgot to equip the Mana MAGI on her to boost her magic damage and healing. If I had, she would've been able to kill Dunatis in one hit. If the game was not bearable, this mistake would've been a fatal one until corrected. But it was not, since Sprite is just too good. Mamizou was able to survive a hit from Dunatis and finish him off with a second Thunder next turn.

There is little to note in the Undersea Volcano and Bright Cave, since neither has a boss. The former has damage tiles, but they're no big deal since Mamizou is running from everything. They strangely damaged her petrified companions down to 1HP, however. The latter threw the first enemy of an enemy having Surprise at Mamizou. This ability allows the appropriate party to potentially get a preemptive attack, and a SabreCat triggered it, wiping her out! Still, with Odin still around to revive her and the game recalculating whether a Surprise is gotten at the start of the redone battle, nothing lost at all.


Guardians' Base gives the opportunity to upgrade into DS-6 monsters thanks to this Ogre and the Mantcore monster a floor above. However, nothing on that level is too significant an upgrade to consider doing it - one possible exception being Ogre itself. With that in mind and enjoying my newfound ability to plow through the game, I moved onward! After getting plowed twice by the Ogre due to bad luck.


The humanoid enemies, including the Ninja miniboss on the next world, have some nasty attacks and abilities. To deal with the first of these, the Magician, Mamizou used Sleep followed by two Thunders. Her only other option was hoping he used his own Sleep spell and failed, as either of his offensive spells would one-shot her. The Commando mercifully has some abilities that are worthless or may as well be, including X-Kick (which did no damage) and Fire Gun (which did managable damage). Mamizou was still wiped out a few times by his using Bazooka for over 400 damage, however.


Finally, the Ninja. Going in, I felt there was no way Mamizou was going to be able to do this without Sleep, and she certainly wasn't going to be taking on any more than one. The game cooperated, however, and gave up the single Ninja the very first time at the battle. Then it was merely more of what we've been seeing before, albeit far more lenient. Mamizou first tried Sleep again, which proved too unreliable, so she settled for the old standby: attack relentlessly until he used the futile Mirror and Blind, rather than simply killing her with Katana or Ice Sword.


Next in Venus' World is our next chance to power up against this DS-7 Hermit. Since I do want to be this level, considering this world's namesake is fought at the end of it and Sprite isn't going to cut it against her - and not just because it only lets Mamizou use an elemental attack which Venus is immune to! So she strikes the crab down with two Thunders. One is barely not enough to do it, and she has to survive a round which is not unreasonable in this day and age especially since it can use Shell to fail to protect itself. Then she eats its meat to become Mantcore!

...oh. It's only DS-6. No problem. Just eat the meat again...and become a Baby-D. The stronger one that's DS-5, who uses Flame, which this is immune to. Reset! Still, no problem.


RUN ACROSS THE TOWER OF THE SKY


KILL AND EAT AN AMOEBA TO BECOME A TRICERAS.


RUN BACK ACROSS THE TOWER OF THE SKY.


With Triceras, I can kill the Hermit again after several attempts. It's somewhat harder with a physical monster, but if two out of the three hits of 3-Horns lands, it can be one-shot. It actually needs to land and Hermit can't use Shell on the same turn, but this sort of thing is old-hat for this variant by now. A note for interest's sake. Because of how the meat system works, eating any Class-B or Class-C monster as a rhino (or snake, which also works with Class-A) turns you into the same species as that monster. So Mamizou is now herself a Hermit! Those Taoists are mere amateurs compared to her!


Also, with her presently very high defense, lots of monsters can't harm her.

Okay, so now I want her to be a certain type of monster for Venus. That monster is the Boulder, a DS-7 Class-A monster. If you've read up on it above, you'll know in how in the meat system, eating Class-Bs does not change your Class, but changing Class-Cs will increase it if possible and eating Class-As will decrease it if possible. So she has to work her way down to a DS-7 Class-B and then the DS-7 Class-A Boulder.

There's three of the former: Stoneman, Anaconda, and Mephisto. Since the former is in the same family as the Boulder and would thusly require an extra step, and Anaconda slipped my mind, Mephisto it is. Crab is ID-14, Mephisto is ID-31. She needs to eat a Class-A monster that changes her ID by +18. So a Skeleton species or a Mushroom species. Easiest one to get is Skelton. Red Bone is too far out of the way, all the way up Ashura's Tower, and comes in groups. Hermit only has a single-target attack. Warrior meanwhile comes later in this world.


RUN ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE PILLAR OF THE SKY


OVERKILL THINGS IN WORLD 1 AND GET THE WRONG MEAT SEVERAL TIMES.


RUN OUT OF SKILL USES ACCIDENTALLY.


GET EVERYTHING I CAN GET BUT WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR.


CHANGE LOCATIONS TO GET WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR EASIER.


Phew...anyway, got her as a Mephisto. A good monster, but again, this is just a preliminary step on the road to the true goal. Next I need another Class-A monster, this one that changes her ID by -27. Mamizou gets another Skelton meat drop while leaving before this happens from fighting the group with a Jaguar in it. But thankfully, Jaguars are outside in the overworld all by themselves, so I don't need to go crazy looking for it again. She gets it with much more ease.


BACK ACROSS THE TOWER.


One thing that was mildly irritating about this: by this stage in the game, I'd built up a muscle memory to quickly scroll down to Run at the start of every fight. Since this new monster has the Surprise ability, Mamizou got pre-emptive attacks from time to time. Which threw me off as I went back through the Sewers - and in retrospect I really ought to have gotten them done when Mamizou was still a Hermit since she was there and is running from everything anyway - and through the Ancient Volcano


You can see it there on the ability screen. The Boulder is the latest species of rock monsters that served Mamizou well in the first three worlds. But as fantastic a defensive line as it has, it's not why she wants to be one. See, Boulder has this attack. It's called StoneGas. It targets groups of enemies, and petrifies them if it successfully hits.


The next major boss of the game is Venus. She has 2500HP. Her abilities are Blitz Whip, Flame, Charm, Erase, and O-Damage. The last one protects her against elemental attacks. The first two deal damage, and the next two deal status. Mamizou can protect against Flame with a Fire MAGI. By merit of O-Change, she's also immune to Charm and Erase and well-protected against Blitz Whip.


By merit of Venus not having O-Change herself, she is not immune to status ailments. This includes petrification. It's not perfect: Mamizou was eventually killed from accumulated damage from Blitz Whip the first time. The second go-around, it took nine StoneGas attempts to get the job done, but she got it done. An ironic fate for the goddess of beauty, preserved forever in the form of a statue.

For Mamizou, the first three worlds were a desperate struggle to scrape by with whatever she could muster. The four worlds after that were far easier with the right planning and a bit of luck. The good times aren't going to last forever, but they're not quite over just yet.

Next | Index

FFL2 Solo Monster Part III

The Dragon Circuit provides yet another opportunity to increase Mamizou's DS-Level, this time as far as 9. To do that, I need to get through the Watchers with a monster that can be upped to DS-9. There's a couple of DS-8s on the track that I can take advantage of, at least. But Boulder can't do that, since it can't hit DS-8 from Adamant or Lamia.


BACK WE GO THROUGH THE PILLAR OF THE SKY. to eat a Medusa to become an Anaconda...only to realize once I get BACK to the circuit that type of monster can't take advantage either! So BACK AGAIN Mamizou goes again to Giant's World to eat a Fiend, which thankfully gives up its meat without too much trouble, to become a Mephisto again. Then it's BACK AGAIN.


Mamizou chooses the third-fastest Dragon, since it skips two fights that she needn't do (though could easily do) and nets her an extra Mana MAGI due to a bug in how the Race is coded to boot. Might come in handy down the line.


She first fights the Lamia to become a Gazer, a DS-8 Eye. She can get 1-4 of them at a time. She resets until she gets one, because even though she CAN take one more than that at once, why bother doing that? It's far less likely to kill her.


Then she goes eye-to-eye with the eye miniboss at the end, the Watcher. It was written in that Robot Guide on GameFAQs I mentioned when doing the robot party playthrough that you need four really good party members to stop four Watchers. Well, Mamizou is just one party member, and depending on what they use (anything but Beam and a successful StonGaze), she can take out a group of four with her own Beam, all by herself!


She becomes a Nymph from this, a DS-9 fairy and the third type of its species. Excellent monster to be, and the one that I want her to be for the foreseeable future.


Whirl is a fun ability. It rockets the enemies into the air, as if their planet needs them and they must go. It does heavy damage, and if they die from it, they don't come back down. Because of this, taking on the Hatamotos was easy. Adding EchigoYa into the mix didn't help them either, as Mamizou was able to cleanly take him out in a single round as well.


What was interesting about Edo Castle was that this was served up the first random encounter where Mamizou could not get away. I'm presuming that escaping in this game works much like in the third game. That is to say, these statues that I've been carrying around the whole game are fast at getting away. I mean, it's possible to fail to run, what other explanation can there be? These unrunnable encounters would be terrifying before and entail saving by them...but that was for the Mamizou of the past. The one of the present could use Whirl to wipe out anything here but a Ninja in a single hit.


The Sho-gun is usually an easy boss to deal with, and for the solo Mamizou this was no exception. He has only 2000HP which she can deplete in four attacks. From here on out, bosses have O-Change instead of O-Damage, so the elemental attacks of the fairy species are perfectly usable!


I had her take on a Dolphin too, because she could. It tended to stick to using Blitz several times which simply reduces agility. Mamizou did have to heal herself from time to time in this encounter, particularly to protect against their own dangerous Whirl, but got it done on the second try. It took too many resources that I forgot to buy though, so Mamizou saved beforehand and reset after claiming victory.


Now the Magnate is a very tough boss. He has a non-elemental Tornado attack that does just under 400 at most to Mamizou, a Vulcan Cannon that does just over 400, and more. First I tried fighting him with the Ice MAGI equipped, to protect against his Thunder attack. That's another bug, by the way: elemental MAGI is buggy. Fire and Poison boost all offensive magic (though not Cure), though give the proper elemental protection when equipped. Ice and Thunder boost the power of Fire attacks only, and instead, their protections are swapped.

The idea was to beat down Magnate, healing with Cure, and hoping he misses or uses Thunder a lot. This worked, until Mamizou ran out of Cure uses and died. Close, and certainly doable with repetition as I've proven in the past!


But then something from the remake came to mind. The Aegis MAGI in that version applies O-All to everyone for the remainder of the battle. Guides for this version that I've read claim it only applies for the turn it's being used. If it does work same as the remake though, even just for one party member...


My theory turned out to be correct! Check out the difference in damage. Now, Mamizou didn't have to heal every time she was struck by Magnate, and got Thunder protection to boot! Now all she had to fear was Tornado and turn order. I made sure she always had enough HP on hand to tank a Tornado if need be by healing when her HP was within kill range. That just left turn order to kill her off, which didn't happen.


That's one more river crossed. As for Nasty Dungeon? That's a paradise of equipment for just about anyone, but Mamizou lives free of materialistic needs. And it only now hit me that kind of fits the Buddhist-allied tanuki kind of works for our solo monster in that way.


Valhalla it is. Decided I may as well show this screen that I saw an awful lot, better late than never, since it's going to be the last time I get to see it. He'll even do it in the battle against him. With Odin's death, falling in battle simply kicks you back to the title screen. In other words, now I have to stop running through at 4x speed and actually save the game every now and then.


Odin is a tough fight. I need to get up an Aegis wall on the first turn. This thankfully blocks anything that they have to offer aside from Gungnir as it's being used. Getting speared by the Gungnir is instant death if Aegis is not up, and even with it up, it is incredibly painful. What needs to happen on the first three rounds is: Odin cannot use Gungnir at any point. It does too much damage to deal with before everything else is down, so he needs to use Lightng, Ice, or Cure instead. The underlings aren't too bad, but the Sleipnir using W-Kick too often can accumulate too much damage. Flame/Breath do no damage. OdinCrow can use Tornado, though I never saw it. Blind is nice to see from them, as it does not help their cause. But before said three rounds, the OdinCrows' Surprise can't trigger.


Mamizou will be using Whirl twice to dispose of the underlings. If she lives, no matter how low health she ends up with, she can then settle into a pattern against Odin, using her spells against the god, who feels he's existed for too long and last wish was to duel with the best and greatest warriors (or warrior?). She cannot be killed in one hit, so she needs to rely on him not using Gungnir twice in a row before she can heal. He has 3700HP to get through.


Oh, I forgot to mention, one more thing. Sleipnir has meat to drop. This will take whoever eats it DS-A. I want Mamizou to be at DS-A for what's coming up. In an act of what can only be described as mercy, this happened the very first time Mamizou defeated Odin, after 70 or so goes at the fight. Many of which died way too soon when Gungnir landed early or Sleipnir used W-Kick to deal too much damage.


And yes, to reiterate as Mamizou becomes a Moaner (a corruption of Mourn Blade) of the sword species, death is now game over. And since there are monsters who can Surprise around, I make sure to toss down some saves every now and then. Mamizou is reasonably well-protected with O-Damage and O-Change at present, but that's no reason to take any chances.

This seems like a good place to make our final page break. Only one world and the Central Shrine left. How will Mamizou fare in the endgame? The fourth and final part of this challenge report tells all!

Next | Index

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.

Index