sirsystemerror | FFL3 Low Level Game Part III

A few side-diversions later, and I get the last two Mystic Swords. All classes use these with a Skill of 2, except monsters which can't use them. For whatever reason, the most convoluted to get - the Emperor Sword, is the weakest at 75. Durend is next at 90. Masamune is 120, and as the cursed Muramasa it's 100. Xcalibr is a sick 170.

The next boss is protected against Mystic swords, unfortunately, until Dion suicide bombs him leaving us to deal with another abomination that would feel right at home in the Cthulu mythos

Agron has two big tricks. Petrifying me, which I had to go back and get some equipment to defend against, and wiping me with White, which...I couldn't do anything about...except having Dune and Milfi cover Polnareff and Shiryu, who were doing the most damage with nukes and Xcalibr respectively. Once Polna ran out, I switched over to having him cover Dune.

Took me way too long to beat this guy with everyone surviving. Milfi becomes a fairy with the last bit of experience we'll see. After this fight, Borgin, our final fifth party member joins us. It's his job to make us money by killing stuff, while everyone else gets stoned (which some evil clown enemies are capable of doing to us) and sits around not collecting any experience at all

The legitimate cash grinding goes much faster than before, to speak nothing of not having to kill everyone off!! First, I get everyone petrified. Since while there is autorevival from death, there is no auto-depetrification. Then, I can have Borgin fight alongside the Talon, which attacks at the start of every non-ambush battle (which I don't get with all the low level characters as statues). That plus a single White wipes everyone out.

I even take him in and actually fight the battles in some mini-dungeons, picking up this gem along the way!! It protects against all status, but doesn't protect against all the elements regrettably. Borgin is tough, but he's not perfect...

This group in particular can inflict a bunch of status on Borgin, and it's one of the more common groups.

Which is why I get him some equipment. Mirror Shield gives resistance to silence, and Earring gives resistance to paralysis, the two biggest offenders. I could've equipped that Ribbon instead, but preferred to save it for my party members. Diamond Gloves give ice and thunder resistance, Hecate Helm and Hermes Sandles give boosts to Agility and Magic respectively.

And eventually, 999999!! After that, it's time to do it all over again for more money. Once I do that, I make one final check.

It's worth noting that the ultimate equipment isn't all that. In regards to the armor, speed boots are actually weaker or just as good as the purchasable Hermes Sandles, except for one point of magic defense. Mirror Gloves give oMute like all of its class, but are statistically weaker than the Samurai and Power gauntlets and Ribbons will protect against that anyway. Armlets only offer 1 point of defense and magic defense over Bangles. Speed Shields are legit with their +5 Agility, but do note that if you want a piece of Diamond equipment on for its resistances, Diamond Shield/Power Gloves actually give more evasion and just as much defense, though less magic defense.

Of the weapons, Samurai Bow is probably the best. 170WP and not tied to the Damage element, the formula on its class of weapons (which includes the Ninja Boomerang, which is with 220WP) is Damage = skill x (WP + 2 x Att.) - Def.

Skill is again 2 for humans. You may have noticed earlier that agility is part of regular weapons' formulae...though it isn't here or for Martial Arts, which are Damage = 1/2 x skill x WP x Att. - Def.

Skill is 1.5 for Beasts, 1 for everyone else. So yes, this means that Diamond Shield/Power Gloves make no damaging difference unless these classes of weapons are involved. What about the other two weapons? They have elements attached to them, but are ultimately weaker than purchasable weapons like Gungnir and Defense - the latter of which gives +5 to all stats and has 190 power.

Enough padding, though. Let's do this thing. Since I probably won't be using non-Mystic Sword weapons anyway, I go with 2 Speed Shields (which go to Dune and Polna, Milfi has an Ice shield for omnielementalresistance along with the rest of her equipment and Shiryu holds the Aegis which gives the same on its own) and also get a Samurai Bow to play around with. That uses up all my forged weapons.

The trip through is leisurely. With everyone still a stone statue, Borgin has no trouble running away from every fight. Because statues are faster at getting away than not-statues. Seems legit, game. I don't even need to save at any point.

PLOTHOLE ALERT: There is no way that Borgin should have known that his father's brain is in the Talon2, because Dune hasn't even been born yet in this timeline...plus he never knew his own father. The remake turns this into a plot twist in an awesome way...but here, it's just something nobody who plays this game seems to otherwise notice. Check here and there if you want to read up about how it's handled there and more on these discrepancies, and maybe the FAQ there. It's really fascinating

There's three Ribbons in Xagor's Palace. These, along with the one from before, are very important on the next boss, Ballor.

See, he has this attack. It's called Dk-Virus. It's basically Grand Cross, randomly inflicting two of the eight statuses in this game on everyone in your party. With Ribbons though, you laugh at this. This is also why the aforementioned person couldn't finish a solo monster challenge. Monsters can't use equipment, and the highest-level monsters don't have O-All to resist this. The highest that does can't handle the rest of his attacks.

What you don't laugh at are his Nukes, which can level you. He has 34000HP. If you do the math, we need to hit him with at most 20 nuclear bombs to take him out. For contrast, the strongest Mystic Sword, XCalibr, checked in at 710. The strat was simple: two guard against the nukes, two chuck nukes.

Humorously, I once did win this fight with only Polnaref left standing. But this is a low level game, so this was an unacceptable result. Had to repeat until only Borgin was left. Things got hairy though, because he actually had to HIT him to finish him, which Dk-Virus inflicted blind was not helping that regard.

This took up a lot of our Nukes, so much so that I decide to spread them across three party members and give Shiryu the XCalibr.

Finally, the final boss. It has three phases to it - four on the remake, which we're not on. The first is against Sol, who just sits there. Once enough turns pass and you attack him, the next phase against Xagor begins. Of course, if you never attack him, you're free to buff as much as you want. I use this time to buff Shiryu enough so XCalibr does very high damage.

The bad news about this fight, he resists Nukebomb damage, until his third phase. Buffed, the Masamune and XCalibr do more even at our absurdly low levels, though it still does as much or more than the other two Mystic Swords. His attacks include various hit-all attacks that are painful. Dk-Force which basically flatlines a target for 900 damage, and a few others. There's a few tricks we do have to aid us in this struggle, though.

First, the Talon joins in the fight. This deals around a fair amount of damage, around 600 each turn.

Second, CHAINSAWS!! This doesn't instantly kill Xagor, but it does lower his defense a bit each time.

So what about his third phase? It triggers when he takes enough damage late into the fight, where he opens his mouths. This raises his natural defense slightly (XCalibr did roughly 100 less damage), and probably does some other things, it also gets rid of all his resistances. So still a problem for us?

Well..when trying to win, something strange happened that I haven't seen documented anywhere (not that there's much places to look) or seen on any videos. I found that Xagor will open his mouths early if he defends.

This made him vulnerable to Nukebombs. Of course, it meant that I had to keep them equipped and thus do no damage in the meantime, but that was fine, as only three people could use bombs anyway due to my stocks being drained, and I wanted two of my main party defending anyway. With this in mind, I stalled out, having Polna and Shiryu use the Saw and XCalibr respectively.

I did this. A lot. Masamune might've been better than the Saw, dealing more damage right then and there rather than allowing me to do slightly more damage later, but hindsight. I would've done this if the strat didn't work.

Eventually, around a dozen rounds into one fight, where I get a streak of nothing dumb happening...we in there. I have Borgin and Shiryu defend the nukers...then the fight quickly gets out of hand from there. I get caught in a revival loop, and eventually Xagor decides to LitX when I'm trying to revive.

Only Borgin left. All I can do is have him Cure3 himself, hope the Talon finishes the job, and hope I don't get one-twoed.

Things go well for a while. Then Borgin moves first one turn, healing nothing and then being damaged. If Xagor rolls first and uses Dk-Force next turn, I'm dead...

But then, the Talon gets a critical hit, and so it doesn't even matter!! This death scene, which would've been better if the nukes had done the job, brought to you as the previous two times, with ANIMATRONICS!!

Dune names himself because time paradoxes are cool...we don't confront Borgin for being a giant jerk because that's not in this version...

And that's all the Final Fantasy Legend games on the Gameboy completed with some sort of variant. Final thoughts here? This was a fun, if sadistic-at-almost-all-times challenge. Especially those last three bosses, who I had to have racked up around 500 tries between the three of them. Most of the early bosses had some sort of strategy or way to deal with them, though some of the later ones became "just hope it doesn't use the wrong move". I was surprised by that Xagor defense thing, though. The whole game really played out in an interesting way. Even if some of it amounted to bashing my head against a wall until the wall broke.

There may or may not be more FFL3 here in the future. I wrote I had some ideas for it in-mind, but I didn't write any of those ideas down. So I'd have to remember them for that. So until next time...

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