FF1 WSC Iron Fists Part III

A'right so. Part of the reason why I was doing this variant was to see just how long it took to do all the grinding. Answer: it took me four hours to go from about level 19 to level 25 grinding in the sea shrine. It's dull, it's boring, and that's why this was taking so long. Yes, I wanted to go higher, get it all done now. I left it undone for a long while, despite trying to keep it up one level a day, it just took so long and I didn't end up doing it. So I decided in the interest of not having enough time and not wanting to spend it on this, but wanting to not abandon something again, I'd "expedite" the process.

This involved downloading something called Mednafen - the only emulator that did WSC and cheat search that I could find - getting through its esotericness, and also pretty much breaking the Alt key on my laptop keyboard when trying to lift it up to clean under it since I needed to use it. It was filthy and it fixed it, but I couldn't get it back in properly unlike other keys I've done this with. At that point I felt committed...least the thing still/now works.


So is it cheating? Hell yeah it is. No regrets, but this is all I'm doing - speeding things along in the interest of finishing, not hacking in stats or items or anything egregious. Sorry if this delegitimizes it to some, but it was that, I guess use weapons for the grind (which would remove the point of intent above too), or leave it unfinished due to burning out on grinding hell. No idea how Sullla made it all the way to 50 on NES. I'm actually worse off for it: I had been watching the Red Wizards' strength gains to maximize them (or as close as I could), and I couldn't do so. Well I could've, but I took the hit.


Run, run, run, run was the usual strategy from here on out. No point in fighting things, got all the levels I wanted. Blue Dragon was slightly obnoxious just because Acel didn't have a Ribbon yet, but he'd be getting one in the Floating Castle.


One thing to note about it compared to different versions: WSC has only three layers: foreground, background, and sprite. Because of this the graphics are simpler here than in later versions: no scrolling cloud background. There's really nothing to note about it. I got the Ribbon, ProCape, and White Shirt and moved on..

Well. I'm not not fighting Warmech. So I'll be back later.


Nothing to say about Tiamat. Between the Aegis/Dragon Armor on Whak and Ribbons on everyone else, her attacks did little damage.


Once buffed, mine did a lot. The real litmus is going to be in the ToFR when I can't throw out all of the buffs willy-nilly due to spell charge limitations. So let's prepare to--




Okay, what the ACTUAL fuck!? Yes, in this version and beyond there is no room that you enter to reach Tiamat's chamber, therefore random encounters can continue. It jumped me on the way out. Lucky for me I anticipated this possibility and healed after Tiamat (of course it hit me on an ambush), but I'm spell charges down. And that could be the difference-maker.


Well I'm here, so may as well try. What dissuaded Sullla from doing this on NES is that buffing does not work there, and you would have to outlast its NUCLEAR attacks. Here, you can buff. So it's a race against time. Buff and kill, or be killed.


It can as usual dish out insane damage. It's also worth noting that regeneration was fixed in this version of the game. Enemies with the property now properly heal 5% of their HP at the end of every turn. Yes, that's right. Your math isn't wrong: Warmech got bumped to 2000HP starting from this version. Not a big deal for Sofia, but it is here!


One nuclear wiped out Powr and took Acel near-death, but the Knights ate it handily.


And Tuff's retaliation strike was strong. I'd gotten off enough Tempers, but would it really be enough?


Oh shit that's bad. I was buffing him and only because of the ambush on Whak and to just get my numbers up as fast as possible. But because of how things shaped out, if he went down that was it. Game over, climb the tower raid the castle and fight Tiamat again.


Tuff hulked out, but this wasn't enough! Whak was doing 7hits/7 damage, and I had no time to buff him.


Physical on Acel. Okay, have at least one more turn to do this.


Tuff goes first, and I did it. Jesus christ, it doesn't get any ruder than that..


Well no need to hunt it then. Just need to get ready for the final assault. Here's everyone's stats. Nothing special or out of the ordinary worth nothing.


I do have to say. It was kind of cathartic running into these things and being able to outlast them. Only ran into one set though, compared to like three White Dragon groups. Still the same thing: buff/attack and heal. Other things I just dipped against where possible.


Nothing to see here. I have enough Haste casts to give Tuff and Whak one for each of the bosses. However, only one can use the Giant's Gauntlets per turn.


The Earth floor proved annoying. Ran into Earth Elementals twice! No problem fighting them, but just obnoxious unrunnable encounters. What's more, look at this. 3/256s are alive and well it seems.


One interesting thing about the WSC version: in later versions, the fiend music plays against them in the ToFR. In this one it just plays the regular battle music. Note Powr's HP. There was a slim chance for them to get utterly ruined against Lich. Except, it seems at least, magic defense seems to be a thing starting from this version. Or I just got lucky, most likely.


I wanted to scrooge as much as possible here, so I just hasted the knights, had them use the Power Gauntlets once each, and went in. Most of Lich's attacks are status from there on out, and he just kept on using them to no effect. On the other hand, it meant getting back to Flare faster.


Thankfully everyone stayed alive through the first two. The reds healed with the items throughout this, and I won before the third..


Agama being my next encounter helped a lot. When it was down to just one I had Whak heal too as Tuff stalled with the Giant's Gauntlets, just to see how much he'd do at the very end.


Marilith was mostly boring. Each Knight used two Giant's Gauntlet uses this time. She hit Powr hard enough to worry about them...


But no worries. And here's my brain being cosmic: I waltzed around here after the fight to get another Agama encounter which I used to heal back up.


Water Elementals were obnoxiously relentless. They were so bad that I swiftly realized I would have to use the White Shirt just to survive in these encounters. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to keep up on healing. And I ran into three groups of these! I tried confusing them, but they're immune. Ffs.


Speaking of White Shirt though, the first two turns of the Kraken battle consisted of the Reds casting Invis2 and Whak the White Shirt. As usual, Tuff used the Giant's Gauntlets.


Now you can see he still hit Acel with a critical hit. I actually had him cast Curaga on himself to get some buffer faster. Still, once the evasion buffs were up, this was a done deal.


As for Tiamat, the script was the same. I actually threw a few Tempers out during this fight: three went onto Whak and one onto Tuff. Felt I was close enough to the goal that I could safely use this much. Still, I could've buffed with the Gauntlets some more.


I again used some Curaga in places when Acel got low on health. Though my offensive line was weaker than I wanted it to be, I just kept going and eventually won.


That just left Chaos himself.


His attacks are really elaborate on this version of the game, even more than they are on PSP. These did manageable damage.


Well, I'll open up here on turn 4. My party looked like this. Tuff had used the Giant's Gauntlets thrice, and had four Tempers cast. Whak had used the White Shirt thrice, now he was buffing himself up as the Reds supported him.


Next turn, more buffing and attacking from both ends. Tuff ripped out this one on the turn after that, but Chaos fully healed. By now my buffing was more or less done, though. One Temper left on each Red, ready to start the asskicking anew. 4000 to tear down in this version, let's go!


Tuff started off with 869. Chaos retaliated with this. Um, should I have been healing instead of full on buffing? No time for regrets though. Whak did 861. Already over a third of the way there!


Tuff did 754 next. Got in a bit of healing on him, but...


...Tornado/SWIRL killed the Reds. It was just a damage race from here, and Whak continued it with 550.


Tuff doing like nothing (257) worried me, but Whak did a solid 869.


And that ended it!

So closing thoughts? Please let me off the grinding train for a while, or at least make it fun. I can put up with grinds to a point, but when they get too much is when I start to lose my mind. I feel a bit dirty for accelerating the grind, but I just knew there was no other way I was going to finish this with my time and general mood these days.

Besides that, this was an interesting challenge. Probably one of my stranger ones, between that incident, restarting again from the beginning, and making use of 15 tile puzzle. A stark contrast yet very similar to Sullla's original version of the challenge. Both centered around exploiting buffs to get around the deficiency of no weapons. But where the offensive ones were broken on NES, they're functional here, changing the situation entirely. Instead of becoming invincible and grinding things down, at times it felt like I was powering up and killing things before I could be killed.

The restart was the right move, I feel. The extra Haste charges definitely made a difference in the end. Strength grinding on the Reds when I was keeping it up turned out to be irrelevant - they usually spammed the healing items in ToFR battles, and when they didn't the battle was already won. There just wasn't enough time/spell charges to buff them up too.


Cool thing about this version, you get to see several shots like these of the world in the ending.


Glad this one is behind me. Didn't dislike it, but that grind nearly killed my interest.

As I alluded to, I think I have one more FF1 challenge in me before I feel I've done all I can with this - short of NES solos which I'm a bit shrug on. So hopefully that next. And I'm going to spoil it now: it's called "No Start Menu". Look forward to it!

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