FF1 Four Monks (MSX) Part II

Here's a cool little tweak to this version; the canoe now shows in the inventory! This as an item actually existed before, it was just never put in there in the NES or Famicom versions. But it is here.


Let's otherwise open this part with some interesting/disturbing news. The run bug appears to have been fixed. Tetsuya here has 15 luck, but he still failed to run. This is going to make things harder. The flipside of it is, the last two characters have a better chance of running. And it gives Thieves their use back. Assuming running works the same way, of course.

As for the other bug, the critical hit bug? Well, it exists in some capacity for Monks. Koji with the Power Staff was still getting criticals way more than at 1%. I'm just not sure if they're always using their unique formula or if it's still bugged in the same way. I'd have to use another team to definitively check this.

Oh, and on one final bugs' note: there you won't see this encounter on the NES version. The reason being that the OddEYE/Big Eye enemy would show up in the wrong color palette. Formations were swapped around to get around this bug, although Sea Trolls still can get affected. This version fixes that and it shows up orange just fine.


But some bugs still exist. Castle of Ordeals first here. While the lack of magic really shouldn't be a strike against this team, at least any more than it should be for Fighters or Thieves, they still want the spellcasting equipment inside.


This went very smoothly for a while. The only encounter I ran into on the first floor was a set of Minotaruo Zombies (ミノタウロゾンビ), aka ZomBULLs near the end of it. The Nightmares (ナイトメア) on the spike weren't hard to dispatch, they just took a bit. Picked up the Staff of Healing afterwards. Of course there was also what is called the Ruby Bracelet (ルビーのうでわ) in the original Japanese. It's still the Monk's best purchasable piece of armor, whatever you want to call it.


Then these guys showed up. They're called Horned Devils (ホーンドデビル) in this version, but whether they're those, R.GOYLEs, or Hellbats, they start off with FIR2. I knew I had to dip as soon as I saw them, but they JUST took out Tetsuya exactly before I could escape. But there were no other encounters to bother me.


The Zeus Gauntlet, known simply as Gauntlet in Katakana (hold up, why's it in the game but not for names?!), is as good as always.


It did the majority of the damage against the single Dragon Zombie that showed up. It ultimately wasn't an issue even with a man down, Also, terminated does show up if magic lands the kill.

No problems on the way back, aside from MSX's seas that have an absurd encounter rate. Made it to the Elf Village to heal. Next up, the Cavern of Ice. I had switched the Mazin duo to the back because they were lower on levels. Daisuke got the Ruby Bracelet, Koji got the Gauntlet, and Tetsuya the Staff of Healing.


I fought mindfully through this dungeon, running from big groups of stunning undead, though still fighting those that I had to or weren't dangerous. I ran into a group of these before the end of the first floor. The Gauntlet cleaned them up quite nicely.


Small but nice change here: walking over a damage tile results in a single sound and flash, instead of the buzzing and screen blinking gray repeatedly.


One Mindflayer showed up in the pit floor. It stunned my leader, but died easily.


I also took the time in here to pick up the chests of money, as I would need to purchase the bottle soon. Showing this also to contrast the flashing palette with the normal one. Aside, the top right chest has very little cash in it and a spike in front. You can just ignore it and get the other chests from the bottom to save having to fight it.


And here it is, the Beholder. One of the more well-known changes from the original version of the game, what was in English and future versions the EYE was just straight up not even trying to hide the Dungeons & Dragons influences on the game.

Its script however, it no different. All it managed to do was miss Tetsuya with a physical, and ultimately died in one round. Got out without any incident, there was nothing else of note besides a Frost Giant. First try!


Now for yet another change to the MSX version: Ruby/Gold Bracelets cost only 10k, instead of 50k. Much more affordable. I promptly bought up three more for my remaining party members, as well as grabbing a Protection Ring on the side.


Decided to head to the waterfall next...but then Crocodiles got me. Not even the advanced ones, eesh. That meant a retreat back to Onrac.


Got to flex the Gauntlet in here, except against the MudGOLs, aka Clay Golem (クレイゴーレム). For them, I just attacked. Staff of Healing came in handy as it always does to save a few scrapes here and there


It could even wipe out a big group of Pyrolisks! Yeah, no big advanced spell charges needed, the item magic that you get is often enough for the likes of these. Criticisms of parties that don't get magic are almost completely invalid, or at least shouldn't be considered that big a strike. Magic isn't everything.


Here I am picking up the Cube. In the item menu, it's more fully rendered as the Warp Cube.


The Wizard Staff is usually the least of all the items you pick up from here. I gave it a try anyway, and if you know me, yeah, I'm totally using it on Marilith. Confusion is still bugged/strange: they still cast Fire instead of doing physicals or anything.

As an aside, it is also possible to read the weapon's name as the "Puzzler Staff". Makes sense given the spell it casts. It could very well be a pun that carries both meanings.


With this done, may as well head to the volcano next. It's had many translations over the years. If taken literally Gurgu is correct (グルグ). However, Gulug could also be appropriate, and is what FF9 and the Japanese translation script goes with. Here's another small change while we're at it: you appear under the airship instead of over it


It's a fast dungeon as always if you're not going for the loot, and a lot of it is questionable anyway. I broke up some of the monotony by actually fighting some of the encounters in it for once. Didn't get much of a chance to use the Staff of Healing.


Eek. That color for a flash is annoying here. It's not even like that on the first two floors either, it's more of a white that seems to light the place up.

There really was nothing to this one. None of the enemies here were remotely threatening, at least the ones I ran into. I saw an AGAMA, aka Fire Lizard (ファイアリザード) right at the end. I ignored it and beat it down, I can just heal with and don't have the mojo to fully restore against their damage yet anyway.


Well, here's the second fiend, Marilith in the original Japanese - another thing that was likely changed due to copyright reasons. Again, here I am running into the problem with Monks in this version of the game: they are bad at breaking defense. It's an issue with them on NES too, but one that isn't nearly as prevalent due to their criticals and scaling damage.


Making matters worse, the stupid Wizard Staff did not want to inflict its status. To remind: the base chance for a spell to hit is 148. If the target is resistant to the element, you set it to 0, and if it's weak, add 40 - these can go together for a 40. You take that number, add it to the spell's accuracy, and subtract enemy magic defense. Then roll from 0-200. If the number is less than or equal to the chance to hit, it hits (or does double damage). And 0 always hits, 200 always misses.

CONF, or Confu (コンフュ), has a base accuracy of 64. Her magic defense is 184. So assuming that's right and I did the math right too, there should be roughly a 1/3 chance of it hitting. Yet I just kept missing and missing and missing.


Finally I did hit, but she just immediately recovered. She proceeded to kill off Ryoma after previously having hit him with a huge physical. At least the staff was doing a lot to keep me going in this fight.


You might say that it might've been better to just attack her outright. And you may have been right, at least in hindsight considering the atrocious luck I had. I never have this much difficulty hitting her with status magic, sheesh! Yet eventually I landed it again, and this time, it stuck. She ended up killing herself in the end. Worth it!

Also oddly, her resistance to fire didn't seem to be applied here. In fact she was doing more damage with Fire than she should've, once hitting herself for 48.


I think there's room for one more here. After a bit and back and forth because I forgot to get the OXAYLE - called the Airwater (くうきのみず) here, I moved onto the Sea Shrine. It's known as the Temple of Onrac in dialogue in the original Japanese version, a nuance that's been lost from every other English version. Even later Japanese versions call it Undersea Temple.

What a makeover in this version of the game! It's gone for a lavender color instead of blue. Furthermore, it uses the song for the past version of Temple of Chaos. As usual for any party that allows it, the electrical weapons carried the day.


And here's the Mage Staff (まじゅつのつえ) to make it that much better. Again, it could be more literally translated as "Sorcery Staff", but it's an acceptable translation. Another thing you'll notice is that the upper floors aren't brighter on this version of the game.


What's there really to say? Whatever you want to call this place, the only trouble you can really run into here are GHOSTs/Ghosts (ゴースト) attacking you, ganging up on someone, and dealing tons of damage. That didn't happen, so it was smooth sailing indeed.


Preparations were in order for Kraken, now in his purple glory. I had Ryoma use the Defender repeatedly to cast RUSE/Blink to boost his evasion. This fight was very dangerous, he was able to overkill my leader. Tetsuya used the...Giant's Gauntlets? I read they were fixed in this version of the game, and figured why not here to try them out. Koji stuck to LIT2 itemcasts? Anyway, I wasn't anticipating too much danger from this fight. I mean come on, it's Kraken.


But he still hit 7 times anyway! I was using the Defender right, I just got horribly unlucky - Dark status didn't help either, effectively giving the octopus much more Hit% that cancelled out my buffs. Should've given him a Ribbon...


The octopus then cherry tapped him with one hit.


Soon thereafter, he landed another massive hit on another warrior, and it was down to one. Ugh. Come on, don't make me repeat this all over again!


Yes! But, that was strange. There were no critical hits here, which were otherwise needed to do damage. Tetsuya was using the Giant's Gauntlets. But...they seem to act weird in this version. I tested them out before on a shark and after on goblins, and they didn't seem to be increasing his damage to crazy heights through repeated use. However, they evidently were here, as he was able to deal damage without a critical to get me the win here.

Which is strange. I've seen at least one source directly say the magic bugs were fixed in this version, and another indirectly say so. Here it was working...yet it wasn't working. What is going on here??? Well, I won. As far as some bugged spells are concerned, I can say through some quick no effort testing that LOCK/Shape (シェイプ) was fixed and can now hit. I hope Temper works at least...it's important for another variant I have in mind after this.

This is what I get for playing on the MSX version, I guess. Running headlong into things like this. Hope it actually works out the same way on future bosses though, it'll save me a lot of hassle.

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