FFR: WAR/MNK/DNC/LNC playthrough
Nov. 9th, 2023 06:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sirsystemerrorFour jobs left to use in Final Fantasy Renaissance v1.3.3. Two of the vanilla game's original jobs would be joining two similarly physical jobs on this final adventure of questionable balance decisions in World A.
They may have new names in line with modern sources, and I may be using names inspired by the old ones anyway, but Warrior and Monk behave how you remember them. Very capable physical fighters who wear the heaviest armor, and very capable physical fighters who hit very hard with any sort of normal leveling. Warrior gains two new abilities: the SHOUT world ability is a joke. It causes non-stationary NPCs to move and plays a silly SFX, but pushing against them moves them anyway. Their combat command, WARCRY, is much crazier: a 50% boost in physical damage for all party members for this and the next turn. Monk meanwhile gets a chi mechanic. They can use BOOST to charge it and spend some to do various things. It's set for a rebalance in v2.0.
Lancer is much like Warrior. Heavily armored, just use spears instead. They have the series' trademark JUMP command, spending a turn in the air and dealing a critical hit in return. Then it inflicts fatigued, because we can't have every class breaking the game into tiny little pieces. It remains to be seen how effective it is. Dancer is like Bard: they learned dances from NPCs around the world. They had quite a bit of AGI too.
And yes, I have been waiting to use that memetic name in the FF1 community from the moment I started this naming scheme.
In addition, I would be imposing some additional restrictions on this run.
- No RUN.
- No spellcasting items.
- No deaths.
- No going out of my way to grind experience.
- TENTs, etc. can only be used in front of dungeons on the overworld or after landing on the airship. Been abusing this too much, let's not.
This party had no magic to worry about, so my funds could go entirely to weapons, potions, and armor. Arylon in Coneria taught Dan his first dance: DRAIN SAMBA.
Dances are selected from the MAGIC menu. Each one has a success rate which is increased by landing physical attacks. The rate could exceed 100% which increased the potency of the dances. This one performed a physical attack and converted any damage into healing. It could not drain more HP than the enemy actually had.
GARLAND was beaten at level 1 without incident. I tried out WARCRY for the first time: it went first and lasted for the current and next turn. Not as good as I thought, you sort of need the right party to abuse it. Which I have, mind you. The Monk had two things she could do with her chi: COMBO doubled her hits, and CHAKRA healed her and removed certain status.
PIRATEs fell easily. Another dancer in Pravoka got me the second dance: QUICK STEP. Reduces enemy hit% and evade. I tried this one out and it just wasn't that effective. But the third in the Elves' Castle was: HEALING WALTZ. It restored 33-66HP at base and could heal minor status ailments.
I did so some minor cash farming before heading into the Marsh Cave. I had about 33 HEALs and 10 PUREs. Because of my restriction on TENTs, I had to fight a pack of 5 GrWOLFs and 3 WOLFs along the way. HEALING WALTZ helped me save on potions both outside of and in the cave. I saw it heal for over 100HP with enough percent built up!
The Marsh Cave would take several attempts. All came to an end in one of three ways: an early reset because of something bad, getting killed by the WIZARDs, or getting killed by GHOULs. I would normally run from the latter, but I'm pretending the Brave Blade exists. SCUMs weren't a problem, by the way. JUMP deals an automatical critical hit, piercing their extremely high defense.
I had four runs make it to the WIZARDs. The first had four. I somehow managed to defeat them through JUMP attacks and luck with only Lana and Dan left standing. This was before I settled on committing to the No Deaths restriction. However, a pack of GHOULs came around. I actually managed to defeat them with only Dan dying, against all odds. I would not be so lucky against the next group. The next got there against two WIZARDs, only to see them perfectly coordinate to kill my warriors one my one. I was down to Bebe and Dan and neither could damage them. Another group of four WIZARDs killed me, but the fourth time was the charm.
There would be four encounters on the way out from this cave. The first was two SCUMs, no problem, just waiting for Lana to recover from each JUMP attack. The second and third were GHOUL/ZOMBIE groups. The first had four of the damn paralyzing things, but my warriors dodged or quickly recovered from most of the paralysis. Fiona brought them down one by one mostly on her own while Lana spent most of it paralyzed and Dan spent most of it missing. Only Dan got paralyzed on the second. I held my breath as I ran into one last encounter one step from the stairs. Four BONEs. An easy win.
I now had enough gold to purchase a Silver Spear in Elfland. 4500 but otherwise very similar to the Silver Sword. I would be getting swords of similar power to hold Fiona over, so she could go without until I could sell them. ASTOS wasn't too difficult, not with JUMP's ability to deliver a guaranteed critical hit. He can be a roadblock boss for physical parties, especially in a version of the game where the critical hit bug is fixed, but Lana just said "no" and shattered his 40 absorb with her special attack. Fiona finished it off with her turn of WARCRY.
Next up was the KEY looting tour. The hardest part of this was the Marsh Cave again for the Silver Bracelet. Dan really wanted that, but two trips were foiled because the WIZARDs decided to gang up on him or double critical Bebe respectively. It was much easier to defeat them now that everyone had 2 hits and strong weapons, but they could still hurt my team just as much.
I got Fiona her Silver Sword before heading to Melmond. PALTRY POLKA was taught by the dancer there, lowering enemy attack and magic attack by 20%. I went to Crescent Lake for the next one, but I needed to defeat the VAMPIRE before I could learn that dance. I did see another spear for sale there, the Platinum Spear. 27/20/3.5. I double-checked on my old save to be sure, and the Arcane Spear I would be getting in Earth Cave B3 was just one point of power weaker and came for free. In fact, the Silver Spear was just two points weaker with 15 hit! So not worth the 8000G.
My first trip into the Earth Cave ended with everyone as statues after an ambush. That'll happen with my no RUN restriction. The second went better. I alertly tried to avoid a COCTRICE encounter, but they're either not in the same encounter slots here, the encounter table got rearranged beyond the beginning and certain spots, or it's skipping on its own without the Trainer in front. Luckily I ambushed the one that showed and wiped it on the first try, heh. It was on B3 that I was able to lay claim to the Arcane Spear and Mashmsh, new weapons for Lana and Dan. I hit level 10 along the way, so Bebe could fight with her fists and get 4 hits out of it. She was already getting 3 due to a bug in the current version of Renaissance. It's actually a nice unintentional balancing decision to make their power jumps less erratic, but it's getting fixed in the next version.
The VAMPIRE died in one round of WARCRY and attacks. After getting the ROD, I went and talked to the dancer at Crescent. SWORD DANCE was the reward. Far from the murder slice that is in FF5 but still very nice: a party-wide TMPR. Of course, because this is FFR, you need a weapon for it and it cannot stack unlike similar buffing commands. That meant it did Bebe no good.
I met with only one COCTRICE group on B4 which all died before they could do anything. LICH did a physical on the first round of combat and died before his second action. I didn't bother with JUMP but I did use WARCRY. Good stuff.
That meant it was time for the midgame. Ice Cave first was the logical choice. I'd banned spellcasting items so there was no point in going to Ordeals early. The Gold Bracelet would be nice, but most of the threats in the Ice Cave are either magical or instant death. I could go for Gurgu, but I do like getting the airship early so I can just land there and have done with it. This was going to be interesting with my restrictions to say the least.
My first run in ended the way you would expect: a lone SORCERER landed an early KO on Bebe. My next run or so made it to the pit and beyond, only to die in a stupid way: I went for all chests and the FrWOLF one hit an ambush. A bunch of FROSTs later and I was staring at the game over screen rethinking my life decisions. The next run in made it through, however. I proceeded to ignore that chest in the upper right of the room and just got the 12340G chest from below. I did run into more SORCERERs but they didn't do much of consequence. What about the EYE? Yeah, I was wondering how that'd go. Here's how it went: Dan attacked and did a bit of damage, Lana crit and killed it on the spot. I still had to get out of the cave after that of course, can't just WARP this time to save part of the trip, but I ran into nothing dangerous.
Ordeals next, for class change. I took a peek at the towns to see if there were more dances. One was in Onrac, but I'd need a weapon from Sea Shrine B1 to get it. Another dancer in Gaia seemingly had nothing to give me. Hm. Some other requirement?
It was weird walking to Ordeals for once. I usually try to avoid battles around there because they feel like a waste to fight, but my no RUN and no TENT abuse thing put the kibosh on that. My first trip into the castle was wiped by MANCATs. I beat the first set, then I got ambushed by another pack and Dan died. An unlucky SORCERER KO was the cause of my second reset. They tried again with TRANCE on the third, but my party recovered instantly. I even had Dan use a HEALING WALTZ on Fiona which made her launch an attack - I guess turnabout's fair play with getting to move when the status is healed - which killed the thing.
That led me to class change.
Paladin
- Gained the COVER command, taking physical damage in place of a selected ally for 3 rounds.
- LIMIT was INVINCIBLE, moving instantly and preventing melee damage for the next 2 rounds. It notably didn't say it prevented status though...
- Ugly white color.
Dragoon
- Gained the DRAGON KILLER trait, ensuring all of their attacks did extra damage to dragons.
- They learned the SUPER JUMP command. It hits all enemies instead and inflicts fatigued for 2 rounds. Big nasty AoE, huh? Nice since I'm not using spellcasting items.
- LIMIT was FLY HIGH, removing fatigued status, instantly executing a SUPER JUMP, and preventing fatigued for 3 rounds. Really cool.
Master
- They now started with 1 chi every battle. Furthermore, they gained the CHI BLAST command, expending all remaining chi to deal AoE damage based off amount spent and VIT. No element here.
- Gained COUNTER, which triggered on enemy melee, interrupting with one of their own.
- FOCUS STRIKE was the LIMIT, a single target nuke that dealt a critical hit.
Rhythmist
- Gained the FLURRY command, dealing...hold on.
- Got the DUAL-WIELD trait. The secondary weapon (last on the list) added half of its damage and its full hit% to the total.
- DUENDE was the LIMIT. It executed a dance with guaranteed success and prevented bravery reduction for three rounds.
Sidequests mentioned were the Xcalbur, returning to the start (Arylon?) at the end for dancer, some final test for Masters in Ordeals, and a lone dragon.
Now. The Waterfall. Screw this place. The "no deaths" part of my run came into effect in full force here, way more than it had any right doing. This is also where I concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Renaissance's encounter tables are screwed in some capacity. I encountered way more random PERILISKs than I should've; they're normally the 3/64 and yet they were everywhere. I did notice a familiar two in three encounters spot, but besides that, it was horrendous luck between them and the spike. How else did I know the encounter table doesn't match up in some way? Well, with that two in three encounters thing, 5 encounters later? Is the 1/64. I was expecting and hoping to screenshot a random Gas D appearance, but it didn't appear. So my only conclusion is that A) the later parts of FFR's encounter table do not match up with what it should be, B) some encounters are not in their proper spots, C) a soft reset makes it jump around in unexpected ways, or D) some combination of the three. I had to make 17 attempts (!!) until I got through without anyone dying. That's some of the worst luck I've ever had in FF1 when I wasn't really asking for trouble via a variant setting.
I did find the dancer in Gaia too. What it gave was absolutely not worth the price tag: FORBIDDEN STEP did minor damage to all enemies and could sometimes inflict a bunch of status. But it was a L7 dance so it took some bravery to build up to use consistently. The only reason I bothered is because it was likely necessary for whatever the last dance would be, and that I'd have money to spare anyway. Good thing this party has no mages.
Speaking of, the Dragoon quest was located in Onrac: it was to slay 100 enemies with JUMP or SUPER JUMP attacks. Well, I just said no experience grinding, so I tried the Northwest Castle. However, the spike only contained IMAGEs and not MUMMYs, that or I got extremely unlucky in trying to see them. Seemed like a bug, so I'd have to test that out. I had 64 by the time I went into the Sea Shrine for the first time.
The first time in heading to the upper floors, I failed because of GHOSTs. Got through the second go, grabbing the SLAB and the Ancient Dagger. The dancer in Onrac then taught HASTE SAMBA. It was effectively a full party FAST. This is going to get ugly.
The last dancer was in Lefein and didn't need the SLAB to speak to. She challenged me to a battle and started off with this.
One reset later, she didn't just one-shot someone. But I one shot her by using Bebe's LIMIT. She had dancer mechanics of her own that I didn't give her a chance to use.
The next goal was to head into Mirage Tower for the goodies inside. Dragon Mail + Aegis Shield can give a Knight/Paladin resistance to 5/8 elements on their own. A ProRing adds death to the resisted elements. They would still be vulnerable to status and earth - that means CRACK - but I was keeping the Earth ring around for CHAOS later. There was also the Holy Lance, a weapon for Lana. 30/30/6 stats and holy-elemental.
I finished the Dragoon sidequest from the kills I accumulated here and was rewarded with the Leaping Boots: this changed JUMP commands to trigger and resolve at the start of rounds. Made them much more consistent. I capped it off by buying a pair of Catclaws for Dan - the strongest weapon he could use amusingly enough. Not like I had much else to spend the cash on. He was very close to 5 hits as a result.
I went to Gurgu next. It was nothing to write home about. I ignored everything and went straight for the fiend, who didn't last long. Instead I did some testing. With a buffed HASTE SAMBA that used 75% bravery, Bebe hit 18 hits (!!) and did 1273 damage.
I also tested the Master trial out. Bebe had to win this fight on her own. She could, mostly by LIMITing the STATUE and getting lucky, but the reward was hardly worth it: she gained a new trait that gave her a chi point for every enemy defeated. Only good for comboing with COMBO.
There was plenty to get in Sky Castle. I wanted to go there first for Xcalbur. Lana could wear the Wyrm equipment, but I wanted to give her a Ribbon, so I could only have her use the gauntlets and not the helmet. There was also the Tempest Spear. 35/15/6. This said that it made sure JUMP attacks would succeed. Except they always seemed to. It was stronger than the Holy Lance but would take her number of hits down. Not worth it, not yet. But soon.
All told, I had three failed trips up the dungeon. The first one ended at TIAMAT when she spammed her elemental attacks and killed Dan. This wouldn't have happened if I did it last like I was "supposed" to, since Dan would've had his Ribbon. The second one failed because of a bug in the game that makes the HEAL menu lock up when you try to use/cancel them too quickly. It had been periodically striking and, well, it did. The third?
You guessed it. This was my fault too. It was a hard reset because of the game freezing, and I decided to get less chests just so it would take less time to get there. That unfortunately led WarMECH into ambushing me steps away from the end of the bridge. The robot killed Fiona before I could win, which I actually did thanks to JUMP and Bebe pulling out some critical hits. Even more hilariously, battles can sometimes happen in the fiends' rooms in FFR, so it could've hypothetically jumped me on the way out like it did before.
I didn't show TIAMAT mercy the fourth time and just pressed the "win" button. The Master's LIMIT is just as ridiculous as the Elementalist's with Blessed Bell. I wouldn't be using it again.
Sea Shrine would be different without itemcasts, but I didn't run into many big groups anyway. Those that did could be SUPER JUMPed on. It was absolutely worth using: it did monstrous damage and the Leaping Boots helped with the action economy issue. I haven't shown it off, so here's CHI BLAST in action. Yeah, those numbers suck. Even being at max chi didn't push this into be worth using. The same went for the dance I paid 300000G for. Maybe it was better with higher bravery, but by the time it would hit hard enough, most enemies would be dead.
Still, I almost failed due to GHOSTs yet again! They all ganged up on Fiona and chunked her through her massive absorb. Managed to beat them with her at critical health and had her chug HEALs after.
There was one last spear in a formerly empty room in B5: the Trident. 15/50/9. This wasn't quite enough for 5-hits, but it would be soon. However, the Tempest Spear would still outclass it: against 0 absorb enemies at level 25, the former did 185-370 across 5 hits and the latter did 228-456 across 4, and it could breakthrough higher absorb! Even factoring in JUMP, this math wouldn't change. Critical hits do (A...2A) + (A...2A - D) damage, and assuming JUMP works the same way, Tempest would still get more: it was hitting 3 times and Trident 4, which wasn't enough to change the math. KRAKEN was not a problem. By now my team was ridiculously hard-hitting and simply bowled him over.
That just left the final dungeon and payback. I actually failed this the first time because SORCERERs decided to be annoying. When the robot showed up, it kept going after Fiona with physicals. She tanked its attacks like a champ. It wasn't bad at all, and a JUMP ended its existence.
I really wish I had something interesting to say about the ToFR. But my encounters went smoothly aside from some SORCERERs on the air floor which died before they could move. I was a little worried that some bad ones could shatter my HEAL stocks and force me to use Dan's HEALING WALTZ - I was prepared for that strategy, actually - but it just didn't happen. LICH fell before his NUKE for that matter. KARY got off an attack but she didn't last long either.
KRAKEN was going to be the problem. I had Fiona use COVER on Dan to give at least one of my party members shielding from his massive physical attacks. Since Lana jumped, that left only criticals or a big hit on Bebe as possibly ruining the run. But I didn't get to see what would happen: Bebe moved and killed him with a massive physical of her own.
The Masmune went to Lana. Dan didn't have enough STR and I wanted to spend his first turn on hasting, just like I wanted to have Fiona WARCRY. TIAMAT did a THUNDER and got blown away.
Here's everyone's stats before I went into CHAOS. Take my word that I didn't RUN at all and suffered for it and let the equal experience be proof no one died. I switched the Earth ring onto Fiona; an untimely CRACK was the only threat, which this removed. Can't have anyone dying even in the last battle!
I kept Lana on the ground to receive the benefit of Dan's boosts. It would've been pretty perfect and in line with his memetic self if he chose that moment to faceplant, but he succeeded, albeit after the others had attacked. Lana kicked things off with this massive hit, and Bebe just chunked CHAOS for 1139 - that was three critical hits. He used ICE3, but he was already dead.
I just had to make it official. A hasted, boosted Master is no joke and this one hadn't even reached the lv29 threshold to make them busted without.
This was my first time in a while playing through FF1 with an all physical party. They really are as good some people say. Granted, I always felt like three/four Fighters was overrated just because of the weapon issue - there's only so many in the game for them to use. Besides the woefully underrated Black Belts (fkn FF Classic guy) which can keep up for most of the game (especially in FFR where critical hits are much more rare), FFR adds a lot more physical attackers and weapons for them as options. I wasn't expecting Dancer to be the perfect support for them though, which made this even easier, heh.
Having completed a playthrough with all 16 job classes in the current version, I have a lot of mixed feelings about Final Fantasy Renaissance as a whole. The balancing is way off, and some of the decision made are very questionable. The new jobs ranged from wonderfully simple like the Lancer here to seeming really out of place in FF1 with complex mechanics. There was stupidly bad like Evoker, balanced like the Lancer, and stupidly good like Time Mage. But that's how it goes with a project sometimes. Hopefully some of these flaws can be fixed in future versions.
With this done and having looked at every job, variant/challenge ideas are in order. I have a few in mind, but I may end up waiting until v2.0 to do some of them. But I have at least one silly idea for the Original mode that you may see in the future. Thanks for reading.
Index
They may have new names in line with modern sources, and I may be using names inspired by the old ones anyway, but Warrior and Monk behave how you remember them. Very capable physical fighters who wear the heaviest armor, and very capable physical fighters who hit very hard with any sort of normal leveling. Warrior gains two new abilities: the SHOUT world ability is a joke. It causes non-stationary NPCs to move and plays a silly SFX, but pushing against them moves them anyway. Their combat command, WARCRY, is much crazier: a 50% boost in physical damage for all party members for this and the next turn. Monk meanwhile gets a chi mechanic. They can use BOOST to charge it and spend some to do various things. It's set for a rebalance in v2.0.
Lancer is much like Warrior. Heavily armored, just use spears instead. They have the series' trademark JUMP command, spending a turn in the air and dealing a critical hit in return. Then it inflicts fatigued, because we can't have every class breaking the game into tiny little pieces. It remains to be seen how effective it is. Dancer is like Bard: they learned dances from NPCs around the world. They had quite a bit of AGI too.
And yes, I have been waiting to use that memetic name in the FF1 community from the moment I started this naming scheme.
In addition, I would be imposing some additional restrictions on this run.
- No RUN.
- No spellcasting items.
- No deaths.
- No going out of my way to grind experience.
- TENTs, etc. can only be used in front of dungeons on the overworld or after landing on the airship. Been abusing this too much, let's not.
This party had no magic to worry about, so my funds could go entirely to weapons, potions, and armor. Arylon in Coneria taught Dan his first dance: DRAIN SAMBA.
Dances are selected from the MAGIC menu. Each one has a success rate which is increased by landing physical attacks. The rate could exceed 100% which increased the potency of the dances. This one performed a physical attack and converted any damage into healing. It could not drain more HP than the enemy actually had.
GARLAND was beaten at level 1 without incident. I tried out WARCRY for the first time: it went first and lasted for the current and next turn. Not as good as I thought, you sort of need the right party to abuse it. Which I have, mind you. The Monk had two things she could do with her chi: COMBO doubled her hits, and CHAKRA healed her and removed certain status.
PIRATEs fell easily. Another dancer in Pravoka got me the second dance: QUICK STEP. Reduces enemy hit% and evade. I tried this one out and it just wasn't that effective. But the third in the Elves' Castle was: HEALING WALTZ. It restored 33-66HP at base and could heal minor status ailments.
I did so some minor cash farming before heading into the Marsh Cave. I had about 33 HEALs and 10 PUREs. Because of my restriction on TENTs, I had to fight a pack of 5 GrWOLFs and 3 WOLFs along the way. HEALING WALTZ helped me save on potions both outside of and in the cave. I saw it heal for over 100HP with enough percent built up!
The Marsh Cave would take several attempts. All came to an end in one of three ways: an early reset because of something bad, getting killed by the WIZARDs, or getting killed by GHOULs. I would normally run from the latter, but I'm pretending the Brave Blade exists. SCUMs weren't a problem, by the way. JUMP deals an automatical critical hit, piercing their extremely high defense.
I had four runs make it to the WIZARDs. The first had four. I somehow managed to defeat them through JUMP attacks and luck with only Lana and Dan left standing. This was before I settled on committing to the No Deaths restriction. However, a pack of GHOULs came around. I actually managed to defeat them with only Dan dying, against all odds. I would not be so lucky against the next group. The next got there against two WIZARDs, only to see them perfectly coordinate to kill my warriors one my one. I was down to Bebe and Dan and neither could damage them. Another group of four WIZARDs killed me, but the fourth time was the charm.
There would be four encounters on the way out from this cave. The first was two SCUMs, no problem, just waiting for Lana to recover from each JUMP attack. The second and third were GHOUL/ZOMBIE groups. The first had four of the damn paralyzing things, but my warriors dodged or quickly recovered from most of the paralysis. Fiona brought them down one by one mostly on her own while Lana spent most of it paralyzed and Dan spent most of it missing. Only Dan got paralyzed on the second. I held my breath as I ran into one last encounter one step from the stairs. Four BONEs. An easy win.
I now had enough gold to purchase a Silver Spear in Elfland. 4500 but otherwise very similar to the Silver Sword. I would be getting swords of similar power to hold Fiona over, so she could go without until I could sell them. ASTOS wasn't too difficult, not with JUMP's ability to deliver a guaranteed critical hit. He can be a roadblock boss for physical parties, especially in a version of the game where the critical hit bug is fixed, but Lana just said "no" and shattered his 40 absorb with her special attack. Fiona finished it off with her turn of WARCRY.
Next up was the KEY looting tour. The hardest part of this was the Marsh Cave again for the Silver Bracelet. Dan really wanted that, but two trips were foiled because the WIZARDs decided to gang up on him or double critical Bebe respectively. It was much easier to defeat them now that everyone had 2 hits and strong weapons, but they could still hurt my team just as much.
I got Fiona her Silver Sword before heading to Melmond. PALTRY POLKA was taught by the dancer there, lowering enemy attack and magic attack by 20%. I went to Crescent Lake for the next one, but I needed to defeat the VAMPIRE before I could learn that dance. I did see another spear for sale there, the Platinum Spear. 27/20/3.5. I double-checked on my old save to be sure, and the Arcane Spear I would be getting in Earth Cave B3 was just one point of power weaker and came for free. In fact, the Silver Spear was just two points weaker with 15 hit! So not worth the 8000G.
My first trip into the Earth Cave ended with everyone as statues after an ambush. That'll happen with my no RUN restriction. The second went better. I alertly tried to avoid a COCTRICE encounter, but they're either not in the same encounter slots here, the encounter table got rearranged beyond the beginning and certain spots, or it's skipping on its own without the Trainer in front. Luckily I ambushed the one that showed and wiped it on the first try, heh. It was on B3 that I was able to lay claim to the Arcane Spear and Mashmsh, new weapons for Lana and Dan. I hit level 10 along the way, so Bebe could fight with her fists and get 4 hits out of it. She was already getting 3 due to a bug in the current version of Renaissance. It's actually a nice unintentional balancing decision to make their power jumps less erratic, but it's getting fixed in the next version.
The VAMPIRE died in one round of WARCRY and attacks. After getting the ROD, I went and talked to the dancer at Crescent. SWORD DANCE was the reward. Far from the murder slice that is in FF5 but still very nice: a party-wide TMPR. Of course, because this is FFR, you need a weapon for it and it cannot stack unlike similar buffing commands. That meant it did Bebe no good.
I met with only one COCTRICE group on B4 which all died before they could do anything. LICH did a physical on the first round of combat and died before his second action. I didn't bother with JUMP but I did use WARCRY. Good stuff.
That meant it was time for the midgame. Ice Cave first was the logical choice. I'd banned spellcasting items so there was no point in going to Ordeals early. The Gold Bracelet would be nice, but most of the threats in the Ice Cave are either magical or instant death. I could go for Gurgu, but I do like getting the airship early so I can just land there and have done with it. This was going to be interesting with my restrictions to say the least.
My first run in ended the way you would expect: a lone SORCERER landed an early KO on Bebe. My next run or so made it to the pit and beyond, only to die in a stupid way: I went for all chests and the FrWOLF one hit an ambush. A bunch of FROSTs later and I was staring at the game over screen rethinking my life decisions. The next run in made it through, however. I proceeded to ignore that chest in the upper right of the room and just got the 12340G chest from below. I did run into more SORCERERs but they didn't do much of consequence. What about the EYE? Yeah, I was wondering how that'd go. Here's how it went: Dan attacked and did a bit of damage, Lana crit and killed it on the spot. I still had to get out of the cave after that of course, can't just WARP this time to save part of the trip, but I ran into nothing dangerous.
Ordeals next, for class change. I took a peek at the towns to see if there were more dances. One was in Onrac, but I'd need a weapon from Sea Shrine B1 to get it. Another dancer in Gaia seemingly had nothing to give me. Hm. Some other requirement?
It was weird walking to Ordeals for once. I usually try to avoid battles around there because they feel like a waste to fight, but my no RUN and no TENT abuse thing put the kibosh on that. My first trip into the castle was wiped by MANCATs. I beat the first set, then I got ambushed by another pack and Dan died. An unlucky SORCERER KO was the cause of my second reset. They tried again with TRANCE on the third, but my party recovered instantly. I even had Dan use a HEALING WALTZ on Fiona which made her launch an attack - I guess turnabout's fair play with getting to move when the status is healed - which killed the thing.
That led me to class change.
Paladin
- Gained the COVER command, taking physical damage in place of a selected ally for 3 rounds.
- LIMIT was INVINCIBLE, moving instantly and preventing melee damage for the next 2 rounds. It notably didn't say it prevented status though...
- Ugly white color.
Dragoon
- Gained the DRAGON KILLER trait, ensuring all of their attacks did extra damage to dragons.
- They learned the SUPER JUMP command. It hits all enemies instead and inflicts fatigued for 2 rounds. Big nasty AoE, huh? Nice since I'm not using spellcasting items.
- LIMIT was FLY HIGH, removing fatigued status, instantly executing a SUPER JUMP, and preventing fatigued for 3 rounds. Really cool.
Master
- They now started with 1 chi every battle. Furthermore, they gained the CHI BLAST command, expending all remaining chi to deal AoE damage based off amount spent and VIT. No element here.
- Gained COUNTER, which triggered on enemy melee, interrupting with one of their own.
- FOCUS STRIKE was the LIMIT, a single target nuke that dealt a critical hit.
Rhythmist
- Gained the FLURRY command, dealing...hold on.
- Got the DUAL-WIELD trait. The secondary weapon (last on the list) added half of its damage and its full hit% to the total.
- DUENDE was the LIMIT. It executed a dance with guaranteed success and prevented bravery reduction for three rounds.
Sidequests mentioned were the Xcalbur, returning to the start (Arylon?) at the end for dancer, some final test for Masters in Ordeals, and a lone dragon.
Now. The Waterfall. Screw this place. The "no deaths" part of my run came into effect in full force here, way more than it had any right doing. This is also where I concluded beyond a reasonable doubt that Renaissance's encounter tables are screwed in some capacity. I encountered way more random PERILISKs than I should've; they're normally the 3/64 and yet they were everywhere. I did notice a familiar two in three encounters spot, but besides that, it was horrendous luck between them and the spike. How else did I know the encounter table doesn't match up in some way? Well, with that two in three encounters thing, 5 encounters later? Is the 1/64. I was expecting and hoping to screenshot a random Gas D appearance, but it didn't appear. So my only conclusion is that A) the later parts of FFR's encounter table do not match up with what it should be, B) some encounters are not in their proper spots, C) a soft reset makes it jump around in unexpected ways, or D) some combination of the three. I had to make 17 attempts (!!) until I got through without anyone dying. That's some of the worst luck I've ever had in FF1 when I wasn't really asking for trouble via a variant setting.
I did find the dancer in Gaia too. What it gave was absolutely not worth the price tag: FORBIDDEN STEP did minor damage to all enemies and could sometimes inflict a bunch of status. But it was a L7 dance so it took some bravery to build up to use consistently. The only reason I bothered is because it was likely necessary for whatever the last dance would be, and that I'd have money to spare anyway. Good thing this party has no mages.
Speaking of, the Dragoon quest was located in Onrac: it was to slay 100 enemies with JUMP or SUPER JUMP attacks. Well, I just said no experience grinding, so I tried the Northwest Castle. However, the spike only contained IMAGEs and not MUMMYs, that or I got extremely unlucky in trying to see them. Seemed like a bug, so I'd have to test that out. I had 64 by the time I went into the Sea Shrine for the first time.
The first time in heading to the upper floors, I failed because of GHOSTs. Got through the second go, grabbing the SLAB and the Ancient Dagger. The dancer in Onrac then taught HASTE SAMBA. It was effectively a full party FAST. This is going to get ugly.
The last dancer was in Lefein and didn't need the SLAB to speak to. She challenged me to a battle and started off with this.
One reset later, she didn't just one-shot someone. But I one shot her by using Bebe's LIMIT. She had dancer mechanics of her own that I didn't give her a chance to use.
The next goal was to head into Mirage Tower for the goodies inside. Dragon Mail + Aegis Shield can give a Knight/Paladin resistance to 5/8 elements on their own. A ProRing adds death to the resisted elements. They would still be vulnerable to status and earth - that means CRACK - but I was keeping the Earth ring around for CHAOS later. There was also the Holy Lance, a weapon for Lana. 30/30/6 stats and holy-elemental.
I finished the Dragoon sidequest from the kills I accumulated here and was rewarded with the Leaping Boots: this changed JUMP commands to trigger and resolve at the start of rounds. Made them much more consistent. I capped it off by buying a pair of Catclaws for Dan - the strongest weapon he could use amusingly enough. Not like I had much else to spend the cash on. He was very close to 5 hits as a result.
I went to Gurgu next. It was nothing to write home about. I ignored everything and went straight for the fiend, who didn't last long. Instead I did some testing. With a buffed HASTE SAMBA that used 75% bravery, Bebe hit 18 hits (!!) and did 1273 damage.
I also tested the Master trial out. Bebe had to win this fight on her own. She could, mostly by LIMITing the STATUE and getting lucky, but the reward was hardly worth it: she gained a new trait that gave her a chi point for every enemy defeated. Only good for comboing with COMBO.
There was plenty to get in Sky Castle. I wanted to go there first for Xcalbur. Lana could wear the Wyrm equipment, but I wanted to give her a Ribbon, so I could only have her use the gauntlets and not the helmet. There was also the Tempest Spear. 35/15/6. This said that it made sure JUMP attacks would succeed. Except they always seemed to. It was stronger than the Holy Lance but would take her number of hits down. Not worth it, not yet. But soon.
All told, I had three failed trips up the dungeon. The first one ended at TIAMAT when she spammed her elemental attacks and killed Dan. This wouldn't have happened if I did it last like I was "supposed" to, since Dan would've had his Ribbon. The second one failed because of a bug in the game that makes the HEAL menu lock up when you try to use/cancel them too quickly. It had been periodically striking and, well, it did. The third?
You guessed it. This was my fault too. It was a hard reset because of the game freezing, and I decided to get less chests just so it would take less time to get there. That unfortunately led WarMECH into ambushing me steps away from the end of the bridge. The robot killed Fiona before I could win, which I actually did thanks to JUMP and Bebe pulling out some critical hits. Even more hilariously, battles can sometimes happen in the fiends' rooms in FFR, so it could've hypothetically jumped me on the way out like it did before.
I didn't show TIAMAT mercy the fourth time and just pressed the "win" button. The Master's LIMIT is just as ridiculous as the Elementalist's with Blessed Bell. I wouldn't be using it again.
Sea Shrine would be different without itemcasts, but I didn't run into many big groups anyway. Those that did could be SUPER JUMPed on. It was absolutely worth using: it did monstrous damage and the Leaping Boots helped with the action economy issue. I haven't shown it off, so here's CHI BLAST in action. Yeah, those numbers suck. Even being at max chi didn't push this into be worth using. The same went for the dance I paid 300000G for. Maybe it was better with higher bravery, but by the time it would hit hard enough, most enemies would be dead.
Still, I almost failed due to GHOSTs yet again! They all ganged up on Fiona and chunked her through her massive absorb. Managed to beat them with her at critical health and had her chug HEALs after.
There was one last spear in a formerly empty room in B5: the Trident. 15/50/9. This wasn't quite enough for 5-hits, but it would be soon. However, the Tempest Spear would still outclass it: against 0 absorb enemies at level 25, the former did 185-370 across 5 hits and the latter did 228-456 across 4, and it could breakthrough higher absorb! Even factoring in JUMP, this math wouldn't change. Critical hits do (A...2A) + (A...2A - D) damage, and assuming JUMP works the same way, Tempest would still get more: it was hitting 3 times and Trident 4, which wasn't enough to change the math. KRAKEN was not a problem. By now my team was ridiculously hard-hitting and simply bowled him over.
That just left the final dungeon and payback. I actually failed this the first time because SORCERERs decided to be annoying. When the robot showed up, it kept going after Fiona with physicals. She tanked its attacks like a champ. It wasn't bad at all, and a JUMP ended its existence.
I really wish I had something interesting to say about the ToFR. But my encounters went smoothly aside from some SORCERERs on the air floor which died before they could move. I was a little worried that some bad ones could shatter my HEAL stocks and force me to use Dan's HEALING WALTZ - I was prepared for that strategy, actually - but it just didn't happen. LICH fell before his NUKE for that matter. KARY got off an attack but she didn't last long either.
KRAKEN was going to be the problem. I had Fiona use COVER on Dan to give at least one of my party members shielding from his massive physical attacks. Since Lana jumped, that left only criticals or a big hit on Bebe as possibly ruining the run. But I didn't get to see what would happen: Bebe moved and killed him with a massive physical of her own.
The Masmune went to Lana. Dan didn't have enough STR and I wanted to spend his first turn on hasting, just like I wanted to have Fiona WARCRY. TIAMAT did a THUNDER and got blown away.
Here's everyone's stats before I went into CHAOS. Take my word that I didn't RUN at all and suffered for it and let the equal experience be proof no one died. I switched the Earth ring onto Fiona; an untimely CRACK was the only threat, which this removed. Can't have anyone dying even in the last battle!
I kept Lana on the ground to receive the benefit of Dan's boosts. It would've been pretty perfect and in line with his memetic self if he chose that moment to faceplant, but he succeeded, albeit after the others had attacked. Lana kicked things off with this massive hit, and Bebe just chunked CHAOS for 1139 - that was three critical hits. He used ICE3, but he was already dead.
I just had to make it official. A hasted, boosted Master is no joke and this one hadn't even reached the lv29 threshold to make them busted without.
This was my first time in a while playing through FF1 with an all physical party. They really are as good some people say. Granted, I always felt like three/four Fighters was overrated just because of the weapon issue - there's only so many in the game for them to use. Besides the woefully underrated Black Belts (fkn FF Classic guy) which can keep up for most of the game (especially in FFR where critical hits are much more rare), FFR adds a lot more physical attackers and weapons for them as options. I wasn't expecting Dancer to be the perfect support for them though, which made this even easier, heh.
Having completed a playthrough with all 16 job classes in the current version, I have a lot of mixed feelings about Final Fantasy Renaissance as a whole. The balancing is way off, and some of the decision made are very questionable. The new jobs ranged from wonderfully simple like the Lancer here to seeming really out of place in FF1 with complex mechanics. There was stupidly bad like Evoker, balanced like the Lancer, and stupidly good like Time Mage. But that's how it goes with a project sometimes. Hopefully some of these flaws can be fixed in future versions.
With this done and having looked at every job, variant/challenge ideas are in order. I have a few in mind, but I may end up waiting until v2.0 to do some of them. But I have at least one silly idea for the Original mode that you may see in the future. Thanks for reading.
Index
