"One to be born from a dragon..." -- Let's Play Final Fantasy II

That's true, but the misspelling almost turned out to be very fortuitous for Squaresoft, who nearly brokered a deal with Chef Boyardee to put out a licensed Meaty-Os product. (It would have been like Spaghetti-Os, but... well, you know.) The deal was cancelled when Boyardee discovered that Final Fantasy 5 wasn't going to make it to the US; apparently, they were concerned about the long-term viability of the brand.

Square-Enix would later approach Malt-O-Meal with a proposal for Marshmallow Matey-Os, a prospect that never got off the ground.

What about stealing from Zeromus' first form - before using the Crystal - to reduce the damage from Big Bang in the next form? Or is that only in some versions of the game?

It's always great to see a fun (and educational) LP done by someone who really loves a game, so you did good, Brickroad.

The Dark Matter you can steal has no purpose; it does not reduce the damage of Big Bang in any version of the game. Only in the DS remake does it serve any purpose.

There is no gif or image that can truly convey my appreciation for this LP. Congratulations Brickroad! A winner is you!

Yes. What a long strange trip road it's been. Unus nasci e dracone.

Thanks!

Great LP!

Zeromus is the final fight every other RPG tries but fails to have. The impact isn't diminished by spending the whole game trying to destroy this ultimate evil but oh wait, this other optional monster happens to be way more powerful than the embodiment of darkness that rests in the hearts of men. Zeromus has the dignity of actually being the most powerful enemy you meet. And there's no gimick to the fight. You've spent the entire game cultivating a party of walking gods, and the last fight welcomes you to just completely unleash them. It's a matter of being able to stack your most devastating abilities on before you get Big Bang'd into the ground. And you really can't say enough about that music. Like everything else in FF2, the fight with Zeromus is simple and straightforward but incredibly endearing.

It'd make for a nice piece of narrative symmetry if this one happened to be Mysidia's Crystal of Water; the object of Cecil's darkest and bloodiest hour now becomes the instrument of the world's salvation in his hands. Sort of a final note of Cecil's redemption arc that otherwise basically ends a third of the way through the game with him becoming a Paladin. In fact, I think I'll start believing that right now.

Actually, come to think of it... which crystal could this even be? Aren't they all accounted for? The light and dark crystals were all used to power up the Tower to open the way to the moon, and since Golbez and FuSoYa didn't go with you on the Whale, they must all still be there to allow the pair to have gotten there ahead of you. And the moon's crystals are still all on their pedestals when you descend to the Subterrane, so it can't be one of them either. A PLOT HOLE IN A FINAL FANTASY GAME WHAT IS GOING ON HERE HELP POLICE

I never really thought about this before, but isn't it sort of odd that FuSoYa suddenly regards the moon as an entity capable of granting or conveying blessings? Humanity obviously sees it as an enigmatic and unknown celestial body, so of course it gets incorporated into our mysticism. But FuSoYa knows full well it's just a big colony ship - it's where he lives and works. I guess getting conked on the noggin by a ghostly space hedgehog of hate does tend to fuzzy your thinking.

Why does Giott believe that castles and tanks share building materials? And why are his subjects going along with it? And most importantly, why does this mysterious terrible fanfiction not then depict our heroes returning to the underworld to find the dwarven nation in ruins after its people decided to make their home IN A CASTLE MADE OF TANKS?

Whoops. Sorry everyone!

Brickroad, this LP was a thing of wonder and beauty. My most secret places already throb for the next adventure.

FINE SHOW, BRICKROAD! Like all your LPs, this was a joy from start to finish.
I eagerly await the next LP, Final Fantasy or otherwise!

I don't know if I would say that FFII/IV is the best, or that it's my favorite, but it wins so many categories against the rest of the series (which means basically the entire genre). Best Final Dungeon is probably the clearest. Lunar Subterrane looks and sounds awesome, is well-mapped, the treasure is the best of everything, and you can but don't ever have to leave it. And, as someone else noted, Zeromus is not overshadowed by any other monsters (except possibly Ogopogo, who may not be as tough but did feature in some deceptive advertising back in the day).

Great LP of a great game. And I'm totally right about Thunder claws in the Giant.

And be left-handed! ...

No, no, no. Wait. The enemy ability is (in the SNES version) called Meteo, not Meteor, and it looks different (more like FFII Meteo, I think?), and also functions differently. Er, right? I seem to recall them being distinctly different. Not sure about the sound effect, maybe I am finally due for a replay....

Also! Gogo has X-Meteo, which is also different.

Because they do! That castle is actually made of iron (stony color courtesy of rust and magma-based 'daylight').

Great job Brick! and everyone else who added to the discussion! Whenever an update surfaced the thread would be restored to the prior level of liveliness. That made it all work despite the pace.

In *ahem* The After Years (is our time bubble over now?), Luca and the Mysidia Elder are playable. In the PSP complete collection they changed the final ending scene of the original game so that they also raise their hands at the ceremony. They didn't have all the NPCs raise their hands though (not even Giott). You can interpret it as a some clever foreshadowing even if it is just because they finally had the art assets.

You spend enough time on a vessel, you think of it as a person. Like on Star Trek, they sometimes talk about to the Enterprise. And maybe FuSoYa is invoking the strength of the sleeping Lunarians along with the Moon itself.

Cecil already did the pale hair reveal earlier so it didn't seem out of place to me. I guess Baron's the land of blonds.

I'm kidding, that was great! Thanks again for another great LP Brickroad.

Thanks for another excellent and entertaining LP, Brickroad.

Fantastic LP, Brickroad!

Finished with time to spare too!

I should finish my LP next but... oh dear gods I have to do so much grinding in an unbearable game. And not even for levels!

Its still 2012. The world can end now.

This has been an awesome, wild ride for one of my favorite games of all time. Really nice job, Brick.

See also FFVII's W-Item, W-Magic, and W-Summon.


Happy New LP!

I've always wondered why they didn't use x2 instead of W. or W-.

This sounds like a hack to get around technical limitations of the game's battle system. 65535 is the largest possible value a 16-bit unsigned integer can have. It's possible for computers with 16-bit architectures, like the SNES, to deal with bigger numbers, but in this case the game's engine probably allocates two bytes to each monster to serve as their max HP count. I'm not sure how the game's internals are set up, but simply saying "we want Zeromus to have 100k HP" probably would've required making every monster take up slightly more room. Given the strict limitations of cartridge sizes back then, they probably had size at the forefront of their minds at pretty much all times.

Another amazing LP Brickroad -- Thank you!
I think FF4 was touched repeatedly, but consensually by angels during it's development.



(from: http://nealbombad.deviantart.com/gallery/29118155)

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what's going on. Enemies in FFV and VI never go above 65k HP either, but the final bosses there get around the limitation with multiple forms and targets.

Because the Japanese are quirky like that. Since the pronunciation of W starts with "double", they use it as a sub-in for that word.

Brickroad, your LPs are a major factor in me coming to this forum and subsequently stopping lurking and attempting an LP of my own (which I will finish someday! Really!). All of your LPs are great and this one is no exception. Thanks for this wonderful experience of watching someone else play a video game.

Thanks for a great LP Brickroad!

I just want to watch this gif again.

Phantasy Star IV makes a great study in contrast. That game also features great 16-bit fantasy/sci-fi RPG storytelling, with snazzy manga panels even, but the dungeons are terrible. Just one blind passageway after another where you think "I hope I pick the way that leads to treasure and not the exit."

Congratulations!

I wanted to post a GIF of it instead, but Google didn't turn up one.

You mean I did Final Fantasy Tactics right by staying clear of it and leaving it to you? =P

Thank you all for your kind words. It was my pleasure serving up FF2 for you guys. For this game I wanted to really try and convey not just the game itself, but also my strong personal attachment to it, and I hope I've done that... even if some of you were annoyed at the whole "ff4 whats that" charade.

I've thought about whether or not I need to apologize for the long wait between updates, and I don't really think I do, but maybe I do need to explain myself. When I started this LP I wanted to do everything in my power to bring my A-game with each and every update. That meant never skimping on a .gif, or phoning in the commentary, or scaling back the historical gameplay analysis. The only way I know to do the best work I know I'm capable of is to only do the work when I'm in the zone, so to speak. That wasn't as important to me with past LPs (and certainly not with most of my YouTube content), but for FF2 it was a priority.

This philosophy was... quite taxing at times. Most notably during the Sylvan Cave update, which is my least favorite section of the game, where I really did just have to power on through it. And the PinkPuff update, which was boring and labor-intensive both to play and process. It took longer to make those images than it did to farm up the goddamn Pink Tail.

I would like to say I've learned a lot about making animated .gifs from this experience, but I really haven't. I sorta just winged it from update to udpate. Still got a long way to go before the likes of Kishi and _L_ would accept me in their company. In particular I never really got a good handle on when an image should be static and when it should be animated... looking back through the updates I see lots of images I would have went the other way on, if I were doing the update tonight. Oh well.

The next task is to go through and collect all those amazing and hilarious Photoshops, and stick them in a bonus udpate, so they can be enjoyed by future generations without having to slog through 100+ pages of LP. I hope you guys bring those mad skillz over to the DW4 thread.

As to the elephant in the room -- whether I'll ever revisit this game for another LP -- hard to say. In my opinion each individual version of FF4 is worthy of the love I showed it, and I don't think I really have the energy to do it all again. I'm also not proficient enough with the game to tackle it from another angle, like I did with FF1. So I think I'll just step aside and let some other tyrant tackle the Advance, DS, and Complete Collection versions when the time comes.

Anyway, thanks again to everyone for letting me put crazy shit on the internet. I'll keep doing this as long as people are amused by it! plz like comment subscribe