![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
FF1 Solo Monk PSP Part I
Jul. 4th, 2015 03:47 amI was still in the mood for FF1 after the Capitalists, but the game is more or less varianted out. I can't think of any challenge that isn't named Solo Thief or Solo White Mage. However, that's only as far as the original NES version is concerned. The game has received a number of rereleases over the years. It's not Ys 1 tier, but there's a fair number of them, starting with the only slightly graphically enhanced MSX release, and I believe most recently at the time of writing, a 3DS rerelease. It's as far as I know, identical to the PSP rerelease, which in itself is an enhancement of the GBA rerelease.
There's also the WSC rerelease, which is graphically enhanced and the first to introduce new music and I believe stronger fiends. It was later used as the basis for the Final Fantasy Origins PSX rerelease. These two are notable for their fixing certain bugs, while optionally allowing you to retain several aspects of the NES version, such as no auto-retargetting. They're the most faithful ports. The latter at least also includes an easy mode, making the level cap 99 and making you level faster. If you thought Black Belts were nasty at high levels before, just think of how bad they are with 198 attack.
I figured I'll take a few variants through the newer versions of the game, in order to see how differently they play out in this new, changed environment. Which I actually already have: I did a solo Fighter/Warrior run several years ago, done on a message board for a month asking members to play through Final Fantasy 1, though I didn't document it very well. So now, let's see how Solo Black Belt, or Monk does in comparison to how it did on the NES. Similar to the 1990 venture with Sullla, this 2007 adventure will never equip any weapons or armor. Well, hopefully. The good news about the latter was, the Monk starts with 5 defense and more attack in this version of the game. There was no need to equip the Leather/Wooden Armor as an exception.
To be specific, the Monk mechanics were changed up quite drastically. Their Stamina is now much more important, as it helps determine their attack and defense values, instead of their level doing so. As it pertains to attack, they get a bonus equal to half their Strength stat like any other class, but they also get an unarmed bonus equal to 75% of their Stamina.
One of the neater things about the latter is that while they still get natural defense, each slot of head, body, and arms has its own defense value. The gloves and helmet slots both get 1 point of defense for every 8 Stamina, and their body 1.5 per 4 Stamina. What this also means is, for example, you can equip a Ribbon without sacrificing all of your natural defense.
For this reason, the first little bit wasn't too bad. Punch stuff to death and occasionally heal, that's the way it goes. Garland is more bulky than he used to be, but a few levels solved any issue. 4-hits were enough to bring down the swordsman. His blows did around 20 damage on average, though they could critically hit. But they did not, and Solo had Potions, so he won out.
It's worth noting that the leveling mechanics are different in this version of the game. First off, you level faster due to changed experience requirements. Second, the cap is 99. Third, while the system of fixed stat gains at certain levels still in-place, you only have a 1/8 chance of seeing an unmarked stat go up, instead of 1/4. Fourth, said fixed stat gains are different. And fifth, HP is factored in as a possibility, so it's possible to gain strong HP ups at any level, not just the fixed locations.
The trip to Provoka wasn't bad at all. Everything died in one hit, except sometimes Ogres. Then I hit the Pirates. Yeah. Solo was at level 9 here. He had a mere 6 defense, which is more than the Black of old had, but still wasn't going to save him from the inevitable.
Sheesh. If this were the Solo of 1990, he would have more than enough natural defense to tank these goons. Or, he'd have enough natural HP to simply outlast the onslaught due to fixed strong HP ups - he'd have nearly double at this point in the original! Midas, my solo Fighter/Warrior from back in the day, simply tossed on the Iron Armor and laughed as the attacks bounced off. Steve, my solo White Mage who I never took beyond beating Lich, had Ruse to abuse. Solo just has his fists and Potions, which are better in how they heal a fixed 50HP in this version. This meant it was time to level up.
The only notable thing about this was running into an Ogre Chief/GrOGRE, a 1/64 encounter. At level 13, Solo had suddenly jumped up to 10 defense. He also had gotten two strong HP ups over the past two levels, for a total of 166HP. With this, I decided to have him take on the Pirates again. His added HP allowed him to take out the first row of them, before chugging Potions to heal. After this, he then was able to take down the rest.
Over to Elfland, also known as Elfheim in this version. The Marsh Cave is the same as always. One of the annoying things about the solo challenge are the paralyzing enemies, which stunlock you and murder you from there. I had the fortune of getting a Hi-Potion drop from an enemy here. I came close to beating three Piscodemons (WIZARDs), but Solo only did 76 damage against the last one, and it retaliated with a 62 damage attack that was more than his remaining 60. I kept trying from there, but kept failing. Eventually, I had Solo gain some levels to reach 6-hits, where he had a decent shot of killing them in one hit. With this, he was able to win without too much difficulty.
He had to gain the levels anyway. Astos is a bit more lenient in the respect that he has much less defense (18 to be exact), but he has 420 HP to make up for it.
This aside, he's still the same old Astos. He uses Death (RUB) followed by Slowra (SLO2), both of which were particularly devastating. The latter was even nastier than it would be on the NES, as Solo's damage potential dropped to around 20 damage, compared to over 100. He delayed using it on my winning attempt, and it did actually hit. But by then, the damage was done - three powerful physical attacks that brought him to the critical range. Solo popped the Hi-Potion that had dropped to survive the Fira (FIR2) that was inbound, and finished what he started with a few more blows.
Opening the sea also opened Crescent Lake, which allowed Solo to buy more Hi-Potions. These things heal 150HP. Pretty useful. He stocked up on 99 of each type to prepared for the Earth Cave.
But alas, the Earth Cave was basically same shit, different dungeon. I only got a taste of it in Marsh Cave, but here it was in full force. Those potions were nice, but they didn't stop the status effects that pained me so. There were still plenty of paralyzing undead to go around, joined by their new friends and the nemesis of the penny-pinching capitalists: the Cockatrices. At least Solo could save anytime, any place, anywhere, but that still didn't stop them from being a huge pain. And as for the Vampire at the end, he was actually rougher than I thought he'd be. He too, could inflict paralysis, and the battle had a tendency to go sideways. So once again, it was time to gain some levels. He's also gotten a buff in this version, though not as much as Astos has.
I settled on the old standby, the Hall of Giants. Solo could take down each Hill Gigas in two attacks, occasionally one if he got lucky. The bad news was, that 10 defense was starting to catch up to him. They could kill him if things went awry. When hit hit level 26, he got his eighth hit thanks to an agility point giving an extra point, but he went up to level 27. This extra level and extra point of Stamina gave him 15 in defense. His attack was 28.
The extra levels turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. A pair of 170+ damage 8-hit criticals put the Vampire in the ground.
Next boss...well. Are you really surprised that leveling up was needed? Last page, he was talked about a bit in the Realms Beyond topic, which was part of my inspiration to do this. Lich has 1200HP in this version of the game. He has all his old tricks and old spells, including paralyzing you with his physicals sometimes, and inflicting it with the Hold (HOLD) spell. Look at this damage output. No way Solo was going to be able to outlast all the BS this guy can muster.
The Hall wasn't too practical anymore, so Solo made his way over to the Peninsula of Power. He had no troubles fighting on it. His attack could one-shot anything but the Allosaurus (TYRO), and the only thing that had a decent shot of killing him before he could kill them were large Winter Wolf (FrWOLF) groups. Even though the bosses have been inflated, most of the regular enemies have not been.
He did hit level 35 eventually. Meanwhile, Steve the White Mage was laughing, having completed this dungeon at level 23. Actually, is it really that much grinding compared to the NES version? To reach this level there, you need in the realm of a half million experience. You only need just under 140k here.
So 10 hits...really didn't make all that big of a difference. Solo was just doing around 100 damage on bad hits instead of 70ish. But more attacks means more chances for critical hits. After a while of smashing my head against the wall and trying to heal with Hi-Potions...I decided I may as well keep doing that because grinding more would be silly.
Finally, I just decided to go big. Attack, attack, attack! One attack did 256 in particular. It certainly helped that Lich did physical attacks himself, and avoided paralysis n any of them. That, as well as his sleep and paralysis spells, are huge threats to the Solo Monk. But with the luck that he never used them, and after enough of these physical blows, Lich fell. YOLO strats for the win!
Solo picked up an X-Potion as the spoils from a random battle on the way to his next destination: the Ice Cave. What's there to say? It's the freaking Ice Cave, that much hasn't changed. Not only are the usual suspects of Mindflayers and Dark Wizards around, but the undead remain huge threats for their ability to paralyze Solo. Ugh. He ran like the wind to get through the cave. What wasn't a threat, however, was the Eye. A single hit blackened it. Unlike the other bosses, it hasn't been given any buffs. Also, I probably should've healed so Kill (XXXX) didn't own Solo.
Ordeals was next, and it went uneventfully. I ran into Rakshasas (MANCATs) along the way, who have been nerfed in how they only cast Fire instead of Fira. One difference between then and now that I'm 100% on: class change is a go.
Unlike the NES version, in which a Black Belt class changing is actually destructive due to the Master gaining less Magic Defense per level (4 vs. 1, no doubt a bug of some kind), the GBA/PSP remakes change the situation drastically. Remember how I was talking about how the stat gain system was switched up slightly? Well, you see, it's not just because of the higher level cap: every class but the Red Mage/Red Wizard get improved Accuracy and Magic Defense gains after class change! Master in particular gets double the Magic Defense growth, which remains the lowest of the other classes and is important for a solo character. This is what led to the infamous Level 11 Class Change Challenge, which can actually be done at Level 10 on PSP. Of course in a casual setting, a Solo Red Mage up to Class Change is a good way to sidestep the issue. Though that said, you don't need to do either of those to max out those stats...except for a Monk/Master's Magic Defense.
Furthermore, and more importantly, Master itself gets roughly a 25% damage boost (in effect, their attack is now half Strength plus Stamina), and they get more natural defense as well (1 Defense per 2 Stamina in the body slot). The Magic Defense is the reason why our party of corpses included another Monk. That's right, Solo's time in the limelight is over. His identical twin sister, Sofia, will now be taking the reigns. Copyright infringement is dead! Is this some sort of violation of the spirit of a solo challenge? Probably yes. But we're still only using a solo character of one class, so technically no. Besides, I went through with it anyway, under a misconception that it improved stat gains as well, though they turned out better. So we'll roll with it.
Unlike the original Sullla challenge, I also decided to unrestrict any uses of casting items. It just didn't make sense to watch a bunch of animations against a large group of enemies. However, the good old (Zeus) Gauntlets are now not nearly as useful. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing different to tell about them. They're still a piece of equipment that you find in Ordeals that cast the second-tier lightning spell when used as an item. The difference is in magic itself. If you've read my Spellslingers report, you remember how I was talking about what people have speculated how Intelligence was supposed to be used in Final Fantasy 1? I do mean that, by the way. It's speculation. The stat is just as broken on Origins and Wonderswan, so there's no way to tell how it would've worked on the original system. Well, on GBA and PSP, the stat and magic in general are more akin to how they are used in traditional Final Fantasy. Ergo, the spell only did around 40 damage when Sofia used it! The flip side of this is, magic can be more effective than it was when cast at the hands of a mage.
Anyway, for the leveling, I took Sofia to 4-hits, then leveled her up around Elfland up until she hit 6-hits at Level 16. From there, she went to the Hall of Giants. I actually did do a bit of stat manipulation/resetting here, though I did do a few CWCheated tests without any at all. The results there were...well. I'll get to those in a moment. So I took to watching my stat gains as I went along, and resetting if I didn't like what I got. Since you can save anywhere, you can reset just before a level-up and possibly get different additional results. It was a bit of a pain, so I had to settle sometimes - generally if Sofia got a Strength, Agility, or especially Stamina increase that wasn't fixed, I accepted it. Once she hit 8-hits, she went to the Peninsula of Power. This was just as easy as with Solo. She also ran into 1/64 Wyverns here, who didn't last very long.
So here Sofia is at the same level as Solo. She ended up with somewhat better stats than him! Guess looking after them works. But, he got some insane luck on a few level-ups (including about 3-4 five stat increases), so it's not as big a difference as it could possibly been. Still, she has the aforementioned Magic Defense boost, which will make the no armor part of the challenge a lot more plausible.
At the Caravan...hello, new items! Giant's Tonic and Faerie's Tonic are mostly useless by the end of the game, and even questionable before then. They boost your maximum HP and maximum MP. The thing is, neither can exceed 999 even with these. Protect Drink and Strength Tonic do as you'd expect: boosting your defense and attack respectively. They're literally Fog and Temper in a can!
Speed Drinks are a bit misleading, but for the better. What they actually do is give you an extra hit per use, up to 8. Ordinarily, the hit limit is 8/16, which you hit at 255. But with Agility potions, you can go up to 16/32. And that's before doubling from any spell effects. These things are nice and all...but not really necessary for the main game and under most circumstances. You'll probably see them in the future, though!
Sofia was 1/64ed by a Green Dragon (Gas D) on the way out of the Waterfall Cave. Twice. Yep, we are totally seeing Warmech later. Neither put up much of a fight thankfully, what with being one-shotted and all. Also, an interesting thing about this version, while on the subject: the translation is mostly based on the GBA version, but a few things have been changed. In particular, Garland says his infamous "knock you all down line", and relevant to the robot who hates me so much, he goes by a translation of his Japanese name on GBA, Death Machine.
Sofia reached 12 hits in Gurgu Volcano, mostly due to taking the long road to gather treasure. On name changes, it's called Gulg Volcano in this version, which I don't like at all. Also, while I generally do like/don't mind the new music, the remix for this one is stupid. Xylphones + bounciness + completely changing the mood of the song is stupid. Even stupider, it's the version in Theatrhythm. Like, compare it to FF9's remix. That one is good. This one is trash!
Also, it only hit me here after changing the window color to a more fancy color that I spelled it Slajn. Good typo.
Marilith...no leveling up needed for her! Sofia did over 600 damage on good attacks, which was enough for a three hit kill. She didn't manage much of anything before dying miserably. Things are looking up from here to be sure!
So summary so far? This isn't nearly as big a cakewalk as it used to be. Monk got rebalanced, and it probably deserved the nerfs. Still, once it gains levels, it's still really freaking strong at taking out individual targets, and still gets plenty of hits. It has a much smoother start, but isn't as brokenly dominating at high levels. The class is still a very heavy hitter though, no mistaking it.
How will our new solo character fare in the rest of the game? Find out whenever I get around to it!
Next | Index
There's also the WSC rerelease, which is graphically enhanced and the first to introduce new music and I believe stronger fiends. It was later used as the basis for the Final Fantasy Origins PSX rerelease. These two are notable for their fixing certain bugs, while optionally allowing you to retain several aspects of the NES version, such as no auto-retargetting. They're the most faithful ports. The latter at least also includes an easy mode, making the level cap 99 and making you level faster. If you thought Black Belts were nasty at high levels before, just think of how bad they are with 198 attack.
I figured I'll take a few variants through the newer versions of the game, in order to see how differently they play out in this new, changed environment. Which I actually already have: I did a solo Fighter/Warrior run several years ago, done on a message board for a month asking members to play through Final Fantasy 1, though I didn't document it very well. So now, let's see how Solo Black Belt, or Monk does in comparison to how it did on the NES. Similar to the 1990 venture with Sullla, this 2007 adventure will never equip any weapons or armor. Well, hopefully. The good news about the latter was, the Monk starts with 5 defense and more attack in this version of the game. There was no need to equip the Leather/Wooden Armor as an exception.
To be specific, the Monk mechanics were changed up quite drastically. Their Stamina is now much more important, as it helps determine their attack and defense values, instead of their level doing so. As it pertains to attack, they get a bonus equal to half their Strength stat like any other class, but they also get an unarmed bonus equal to 75% of their Stamina.
One of the neater things about the latter is that while they still get natural defense, each slot of head, body, and arms has its own defense value. The gloves and helmet slots both get 1 point of defense for every 8 Stamina, and their body 1.5 per 4 Stamina. What this also means is, for example, you can equip a Ribbon without sacrificing all of your natural defense.
For this reason, the first little bit wasn't too bad. Punch stuff to death and occasionally heal, that's the way it goes. Garland is more bulky than he used to be, but a few levels solved any issue. 4-hits were enough to bring down the swordsman. His blows did around 20 damage on average, though they could critically hit. But they did not, and Solo had Potions, so he won out.
It's worth noting that the leveling mechanics are different in this version of the game. First off, you level faster due to changed experience requirements. Second, the cap is 99. Third, while the system of fixed stat gains at certain levels still in-place, you only have a 1/8 chance of seeing an unmarked stat go up, instead of 1/4. Fourth, said fixed stat gains are different. And fifth, HP is factored in as a possibility, so it's possible to gain strong HP ups at any level, not just the fixed locations.
The trip to Provoka wasn't bad at all. Everything died in one hit, except sometimes Ogres. Then I hit the Pirates. Yeah. Solo was at level 9 here. He had a mere 6 defense, which is more than the Black of old had, but still wasn't going to save him from the inevitable.
Sheesh. If this were the Solo of 1990, he would have more than enough natural defense to tank these goons. Or, he'd have enough natural HP to simply outlast the onslaught due to fixed strong HP ups - he'd have nearly double at this point in the original! Midas, my solo Fighter/Warrior from back in the day, simply tossed on the Iron Armor and laughed as the attacks bounced off. Steve, my solo White Mage who I never took beyond beating Lich, had Ruse to abuse. Solo just has his fists and Potions, which are better in how they heal a fixed 50HP in this version. This meant it was time to level up.
The only notable thing about this was running into an Ogre Chief/GrOGRE, a 1/64 encounter. At level 13, Solo had suddenly jumped up to 10 defense. He also had gotten two strong HP ups over the past two levels, for a total of 166HP. With this, I decided to have him take on the Pirates again. His added HP allowed him to take out the first row of them, before chugging Potions to heal. After this, he then was able to take down the rest.
Over to Elfland, also known as Elfheim in this version. The Marsh Cave is the same as always. One of the annoying things about the solo challenge are the paralyzing enemies, which stunlock you and murder you from there. I had the fortune of getting a Hi-Potion drop from an enemy here. I came close to beating three Piscodemons (WIZARDs), but Solo only did 76 damage against the last one, and it retaliated with a 62 damage attack that was more than his remaining 60. I kept trying from there, but kept failing. Eventually, I had Solo gain some levels to reach 6-hits, where he had a decent shot of killing them in one hit. With this, he was able to win without too much difficulty.
He had to gain the levels anyway. Astos is a bit more lenient in the respect that he has much less defense (18 to be exact), but he has 420 HP to make up for it.
This aside, he's still the same old Astos. He uses Death (RUB) followed by Slowra (SLO2), both of which were particularly devastating. The latter was even nastier than it would be on the NES, as Solo's damage potential dropped to around 20 damage, compared to over 100. He delayed using it on my winning attempt, and it did actually hit. But by then, the damage was done - three powerful physical attacks that brought him to the critical range. Solo popped the Hi-Potion that had dropped to survive the Fira (FIR2) that was inbound, and finished what he started with a few more blows.
Opening the sea also opened Crescent Lake, which allowed Solo to buy more Hi-Potions. These things heal 150HP. Pretty useful. He stocked up on 99 of each type to prepared for the Earth Cave.
But alas, the Earth Cave was basically same shit, different dungeon. I only got a taste of it in Marsh Cave, but here it was in full force. Those potions were nice, but they didn't stop the status effects that pained me so. There were still plenty of paralyzing undead to go around, joined by their new friends and the nemesis of the penny-pinching capitalists: the Cockatrices. At least Solo could save anytime, any place, anywhere, but that still didn't stop them from being a huge pain. And as for the Vampire at the end, he was actually rougher than I thought he'd be. He too, could inflict paralysis, and the battle had a tendency to go sideways. So once again, it was time to gain some levels. He's also gotten a buff in this version, though not as much as Astos has.
I settled on the old standby, the Hall of Giants. Solo could take down each Hill Gigas in two attacks, occasionally one if he got lucky. The bad news was, that 10 defense was starting to catch up to him. They could kill him if things went awry. When hit hit level 26, he got his eighth hit thanks to an agility point giving an extra point, but he went up to level 27. This extra level and extra point of Stamina gave him 15 in defense. His attack was 28.
The extra levels turned out to be just what the doctor ordered. A pair of 170+ damage 8-hit criticals put the Vampire in the ground.
Next boss...well. Are you really surprised that leveling up was needed? Last page, he was talked about a bit in the Realms Beyond topic, which was part of my inspiration to do this. Lich has 1200HP in this version of the game. He has all his old tricks and old spells, including paralyzing you with his physicals sometimes, and inflicting it with the Hold (HOLD) spell. Look at this damage output. No way Solo was going to be able to outlast all the BS this guy can muster.
The Hall wasn't too practical anymore, so Solo made his way over to the Peninsula of Power. He had no troubles fighting on it. His attack could one-shot anything but the Allosaurus (TYRO), and the only thing that had a decent shot of killing him before he could kill them were large Winter Wolf (FrWOLF) groups. Even though the bosses have been inflated, most of the regular enemies have not been.
He did hit level 35 eventually. Meanwhile, Steve the White Mage was laughing, having completed this dungeon at level 23. Actually, is it really that much grinding compared to the NES version? To reach this level there, you need in the realm of a half million experience. You only need just under 140k here.
So 10 hits...really didn't make all that big of a difference. Solo was just doing around 100 damage on bad hits instead of 70ish. But more attacks means more chances for critical hits. After a while of smashing my head against the wall and trying to heal with Hi-Potions...I decided I may as well keep doing that because grinding more would be silly.
Finally, I just decided to go big. Attack, attack, attack! One attack did 256 in particular. It certainly helped that Lich did physical attacks himself, and avoided paralysis n any of them. That, as well as his sleep and paralysis spells, are huge threats to the Solo Monk. But with the luck that he never used them, and after enough of these physical blows, Lich fell. YOLO strats for the win!
Solo picked up an X-Potion as the spoils from a random battle on the way to his next destination: the Ice Cave. What's there to say? It's the freaking Ice Cave, that much hasn't changed. Not only are the usual suspects of Mindflayers and Dark Wizards around, but the undead remain huge threats for their ability to paralyze Solo. Ugh. He ran like the wind to get through the cave. What wasn't a threat, however, was the Eye. A single hit blackened it. Unlike the other bosses, it hasn't been given any buffs. Also, I probably should've healed so Kill (XXXX) didn't own Solo.
Ordeals was next, and it went uneventfully. I ran into Rakshasas (MANCATs) along the way, who have been nerfed in how they only cast Fire instead of Fira. One difference between then and now that I'm 100% on: class change is a go.
Unlike the NES version, in which a Black Belt class changing is actually destructive due to the Master gaining less Magic Defense per level (4 vs. 1, no doubt a bug of some kind), the GBA/PSP remakes change the situation drastically. Remember how I was talking about how the stat gain system was switched up slightly? Well, you see, it's not just because of the higher level cap: every class but the Red Mage/Red Wizard get improved Accuracy and Magic Defense gains after class change! Master in particular gets double the Magic Defense growth, which remains the lowest of the other classes and is important for a solo character. This is what led to the infamous Level 11 Class Change Challenge, which can actually be done at Level 10 on PSP. Of course in a casual setting, a Solo Red Mage up to Class Change is a good way to sidestep the issue. Though that said, you don't need to do either of those to max out those stats...except for a Monk/Master's Magic Defense.
Furthermore, and more importantly, Master itself gets roughly a 25% damage boost (in effect, their attack is now half Strength plus Stamina), and they get more natural defense as well (1 Defense per 2 Stamina in the body slot). The Magic Defense is the reason why our party of corpses included another Monk. That's right, Solo's time in the limelight is over. His identical twin sister, Sofia, will now be taking the reigns. Copyright infringement is dead! Is this some sort of violation of the spirit of a solo challenge? Probably yes. But we're still only using a solo character of one class, so technically no. Besides, I went through with it anyway, under a misconception that it improved stat gains as well, though they turned out better. So we'll roll with it.
Unlike the original Sullla challenge, I also decided to unrestrict any uses of casting items. It just didn't make sense to watch a bunch of animations against a large group of enemies. However, the good old (Zeus) Gauntlets are now not nearly as useful. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing different to tell about them. They're still a piece of equipment that you find in Ordeals that cast the second-tier lightning spell when used as an item. The difference is in magic itself. If you've read my Spellslingers report, you remember how I was talking about what people have speculated how Intelligence was supposed to be used in Final Fantasy 1? I do mean that, by the way. It's speculation. The stat is just as broken on Origins and Wonderswan, so there's no way to tell how it would've worked on the original system. Well, on GBA and PSP, the stat and magic in general are more akin to how they are used in traditional Final Fantasy. Ergo, the spell only did around 40 damage when Sofia used it! The flip side of this is, magic can be more effective than it was when cast at the hands of a mage.
Anyway, for the leveling, I took Sofia to 4-hits, then leveled her up around Elfland up until she hit 6-hits at Level 16. From there, she went to the Hall of Giants. I actually did do a bit of stat manipulation/resetting here, though I did do a few CWCheated tests without any at all. The results there were...well. I'll get to those in a moment. So I took to watching my stat gains as I went along, and resetting if I didn't like what I got. Since you can save anywhere, you can reset just before a level-up and possibly get different additional results. It was a bit of a pain, so I had to settle sometimes - generally if Sofia got a Strength, Agility, or especially Stamina increase that wasn't fixed, I accepted it. Once she hit 8-hits, she went to the Peninsula of Power. This was just as easy as with Solo. She also ran into 1/64 Wyverns here, who didn't last very long.
So here Sofia is at the same level as Solo. She ended up with somewhat better stats than him! Guess looking after them works. But, he got some insane luck on a few level-ups (including about 3-4 five stat increases), so it's not as big a difference as it could possibly been. Still, she has the aforementioned Magic Defense boost, which will make the no armor part of the challenge a lot more plausible.
At the Caravan...hello, new items! Giant's Tonic and Faerie's Tonic are mostly useless by the end of the game, and even questionable before then. They boost your maximum HP and maximum MP. The thing is, neither can exceed 999 even with these. Protect Drink and Strength Tonic do as you'd expect: boosting your defense and attack respectively. They're literally Fog and Temper in a can!
Speed Drinks are a bit misleading, but for the better. What they actually do is give you an extra hit per use, up to 8. Ordinarily, the hit limit is 8/16, which you hit at 255. But with Agility potions, you can go up to 16/32. And that's before doubling from any spell effects. These things are nice and all...but not really necessary for the main game and under most circumstances. You'll probably see them in the future, though!
Sofia was 1/64ed by a Green Dragon (Gas D) on the way out of the Waterfall Cave. Twice. Yep, we are totally seeing Warmech later. Neither put up much of a fight thankfully, what with being one-shotted and all. Also, an interesting thing about this version, while on the subject: the translation is mostly based on the GBA version, but a few things have been changed. In particular, Garland says his infamous "knock you all down line", and relevant to the robot who hates me so much, he goes by a translation of his Japanese name on GBA, Death Machine.
Sofia reached 12 hits in Gurgu Volcano, mostly due to taking the long road to gather treasure. On name changes, it's called Gulg Volcano in this version, which I don't like at all. Also, while I generally do like/don't mind the new music, the remix for this one is stupid. Xylphones + bounciness + completely changing the mood of the song is stupid. Even stupider, it's the version in Theatrhythm. Like, compare it to FF9's remix. That one is good. This one is trash!
Also, it only hit me here after changing the window color to a more fancy color that I spelled it Slajn. Good typo.
Marilith...no leveling up needed for her! Sofia did over 600 damage on good attacks, which was enough for a three hit kill. She didn't manage much of anything before dying miserably. Things are looking up from here to be sure!
So summary so far? This isn't nearly as big a cakewalk as it used to be. Monk got rebalanced, and it probably deserved the nerfs. Still, once it gains levels, it's still really freaking strong at taking out individual targets, and still gets plenty of hits. It has a much smoother start, but isn't as brokenly dominating at high levels. The class is still a very heavy hitter though, no mistaking it.
How will our new solo character fare in the rest of the game? Find out whenever I get around to it!
Next | Index
