What's the Hold Up?

Yes, yes, I finished FF1 on Wednesday and still haven't started FF2. Why? I've been trying to get through all of the posting that I wanted to do in regards to FF1 before moving on to the next game. I admit that doing so has taken me much longer than I initially expected, partially because I've been interrupted by school work and a strange desire to sleep in of late, but I'm happy to announce that the final posts have now been written and will be available as soon as Brett edits them. I'll start FF2 as soon as I recover from the terrible Sounder's game.

A Partnership

You may have noticed that several of the most recent entries weren't made by me. That's because, after looking over several of my posts and cringing at the abysmal grammar, my good friend and room mate, Brett, has insisted on becoming my editor. I'm now writing all of my posts in notepad (for formatting reasons) and then sending them to Brett to edit and post. It's a good relationship, and one that offers me more time for actually playing the games. Brett is a published Journalism student and I have absolute faith in his abilities.

He is also responsible for the new look of the website. His blogging skills far surpass mine, and I'm not unhappy to let him take over management of the site. At this point I'm only responsible for playing and writing, and that suits me just fine.

Boss Battle: Chaos

Having restored the power of the elemental crystals you can now travel 2,000 years into the past, to the Temple of Chaos as it used to be, where the real arbiter of Earth’s distress resides. To reach him you’ll have to defeat each of the elemental fiends a second time, and to make things interesting, each fiend has been given increased stats and had their weaknesses removed. Still, the strategy for defeating them remains much the same. Cast Haste, Saber, Shield, Invis and Nul, and then tear into them with physical attacks and strong magic. Heal, rinse, repeat. In the Southwest corner of Tiamat’s floor you’ll find the Masamune, the strongest sword in the game. It’s usable by anyone, for a change. Make sure to snag it.

When you reach the heart of the temple you’ll discover that the monster who’s been causing you so much trouble is actually Garland, the Cornelian Knight that you killed in the opening minutes of the game. After his death the elemental forces sent him into the past where his hatred festered and Chaos consumed his spirit. From 2,000 years ago he sent forth the elemental fiends to enact his revenge, thus touching off a time loop that’s destined to repeat forever unless you can stop it. It’s really a fairly interesting concept. If only Square had developed it more during the game.

After revealing the mystery behind the game’s events Garland will transform into an embodiment of Chaos, and battle will ensue. Its go time! Chaos comes fully stocked with all of the major elemental spells that you’ve been seeing from regular enemies in the Temple: Blaze, Ice Storm, Lightning Storm, Poison Gas, etc. If you have a White Mage, please feel free to cast NulAll. If you’re like me, white mage-less, I would actually advise against casting Nul spells. You’re going to get hit with at least one large spell before you get all three Nul’s cast. Your time is more wisely spent casting Shield and Invis, or simply casting preemptive heals. Chaos doesn’t have quite the magic resistance that some of the elemental fiends did, so go crazy with your Black Mage and use up all the Flares and level III attack spells that you can.

Combine with Haste/Saber physical attacks and, with any luck, you’ve just beaten FF1. Congratulations!

Boss Battle: Tiamat

Reaching the Flying Fortress where Tiamat lives is the closest this game ever really comes to offering you a puzzle. Several steps are required, and you’ll need to obtain the Rosetta Stone, Warp Cube, and Bell Key items in order to succeed. I won’t describe the process here, if you’re stuck please feel free to use my link to Gamefaqs.com. If you make an effort to talk to all of the various villagers in the towns you visit and are able to put two and two together, you won’t get stuck.

There’s a good deal of treasure chests scattered throughout the fortress, some more valuable than others and not all of which you need to collect, but I wouldn’t leave without at least securing the Adamantite that’s lurking on the second floor. After exiting the fortress you can take said Adamantite to Smyth, the dwarven smith and he’ll reward you by forging Excalibur, the second strongest weapon in the game. Note: Only Knight’s can use the Excalibur, so if you don’t have a Knight in your party you don’t really need the Adamantite except as a completion item. This game is very discriminatory with its equipment.

Tiamat’s on, well, you know which floor. He generally opens the fight with Lightning Storm (or something to that effect), which looks impressive and can do a decent amount of damage, but can easily be mitigated by casting Nulbolt. He’s also capable of casting Fire II and Ice II, and you’re welcome to cast the appropriate defenses to these if you wish. Honestly, if you don’t feel like wasting a lot of time and effort on this fight, he’s susceptible to Break; cast it until he dies. If you don’t want to use Break then I recommend Haste and Saber for your physical attackers combined with your strongest attack spells. Heal when necessary and you won’t have problems.

Boss Battle: Kraken

Warning: The process of reaching the Sunken Temple will cost you a minimum of 50,000 gil. Just FYI.

You’ll enter the Sunken Temple on the third floor, and from there can either go up or down. I highly recommend you go up first, as the fifth floor is home to the Mermaids and thus devoid of enemies. There’s also a good deal of treasure, including a full set of diamond armor that’ll make you smile if you’ve got a warrior along. I didn’t, so the whole set was useless to me and I did not smile.

Backtrack to the third floor and continue down. You’ll find the Kraken on the fifth floor, which seems to be the standard floor for boss battles in FF1. I recommend healing as close to full health as possible before battle begins.

The Kraken is ugly and he hits like a truck. I highly recommend casting Shield II and Invisibility II at the onset of battle, if possible. That aside, cast Haste and Saber (or use the Giant’s Gauntlets to get the Saber effect) on your primary physical attackers and go to work. It's sort of a race to see which of you can deal out damage faster, but with Shield II and a decent amount of HP you should come out on top.

The Airship and the Dragon King

After defeating Marilith in Mt. Gulg you’ll notice that the snoozing man in the Northwest corner of Crescent Lake is now awake and, what’s more, has some useful information for you. He’ll confess with little coercion that he’s been looking for the Levistone for some years, and is convinced that it resides in the Ice Cavern to the North. He won’t tell you what to do with it once you have it. In fact, I couldn’t find anyone who knew what to do with the stupid thing, and I confess that I opted to look it up. Gamefaqs FTW.

Go get the Levistone. Take it to the desert south of Crescent Lake and use it. Voila, Airship!

Your first stop in your new sky vehicle can and should be the series of small islands situated between the two Northern continents. The caverns on these islands are home to a race of friendly dragons with much treasure to share. More importantly, their king, Bahaumut, will divulge clues to upgrading your character classes.

Take Bahaumut’s advice and seek out a token of courage from the Citadel of Trials and he will reward you with shiny new character sprites and upgraded abilities that will make you feel invincible, at least for a little while.

Boss Battle: Marilith

Marilith resides on the bottom floor of Mt. Gulg, a volcano located on the South Eastern continent, and reachable only by canoe. Much of the floor inside the volcano is covered with lava, as you might expect from such a place, and walking through the lava will deal a small percentage of damage to each of your party members with each step. You can't be attacked while walking through lava, however, so you have something of a choice between taking random amounts of damage from encounters or taking fixed amounts of damage from the environment. Either way, I would argue that reaching Marilith is actually more difficult than defeating her.

My Monk bit the dust about 60 seconds before I reached the boss. As I chose to undertake my quest using a Red Mage rather than a White Mage, I was unable to cast a Life spell to revive him. (The Red Mage cannot learn Life until he upgrades into a Red Wizard.) I'm sure you can understand why I was loath to exit the dungeon, row my way back to town, revive the Monk, row back to the volcano, and climb all the way back to the bottom floor. So I decided I would simply kill the boss with only three players. Marilith is capable of casting Fire II as well as some specialized ability that causes Blind (I can't think of its name now,) but the only thing you really need to watch out for is her physical attacks. She hits five or six times per swing and can deal upwards of 200 damage.

Fortunately for you she has a single, easily exploitable weakness.

Marilith is susceptible to paralyze. It took me four or five tries to figure this out, and another four or five tries to get her successfully paralyzed before she had killed one of my three surviving warriors. Once I got her chained down with everyone still alive, however, I was able to dish out enough damage to kill her before the paralysis wore off. Obviously Ice I and II are the strongest black spells, and hopefully you found the Ice Brand tucked away in one of the treasure chests earlier in the dungeon. I recommend casting Nulfire while in the processing of trying to get her paralyzed, just to mitigate her Fire II spell. Don't be upset if it takes several tries to get your Bind spell to work; it will eventually, and after that she's cake.

Congratulations on restoring your second elemental crystal.

Post Explosion

I have to apologize in advance for the multitude of posts that are about to appear over the next hour or so.

It eventually dawned on me that, due to the relatively short length of FF1 and the sparse story detail present it was somewhat silly of me to try and find something useful to post after every single play session. I would be better served, I decided, simply trying to beat the game and move on. So that's what I've been doing for the last day and a half, and making good progress at it I might add.I'm still going to post boss fights, important story developments, hidden goodies that one might otherwise miss, etc, but in general I'm focused on beating the game and moving onto number two in the hopes that there will be more worth actually talking about. That said, since my last post I've covered two bosses and a class upgrade, so I'm about to slam the site with several more posts. Sorry.