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

I've always preferred having Rosa on top.

So does Cecil

*badumCRASH*

I'm curious about the other extreme of the Edward battle - is it possible to suck so badly that Edward dies horribly while fighting the Waterhag?

Hey Brickroad, I think you should use the original Japanese names for everyone, otherwise you're just a silly gaijin. Why do people get so worked up about translated names? I mean really...

I don't know if I ever knew that Edge's name was actually Edward. That's pretty cool actually, as I thought it was odd that a royal couple would name their kid Edge, what would their next son's name be, Bono?

According to the dude who ran FF2 during the Speed Demos Archive marathon, if you manage to miss four times, the Water Hag can kill you. The battle is pretty much treated as a normal fight until you actually land a hit.

"But it has to be a mistranslation due to the R/L Invelsion! It's classic Engrish! In Japanese, the letters R and L are always switched because their characters are so similar! And I can totally read Kanji! And I only play imports while listening to dk.smile and eating Ramen with chopsticks! And--"

"Then how do you explain Rosa?"

"...shut up.... ignorant Gaijin... *sniffle*"

Which is why Yuna being the summoner in FFX makes so much sense, of course. It gives her something to do for most fights, since otherwise she's just damage control.

Learning Fire is one of the high points of the game for me. Along with the Titan outburst in Mist (and many more examples to come), it's an ingenious marriage of story and mechanics, which the early entires in the series (and FFIX) generally use to great effect.




I'd never noticed this before, but this tidbit nicely justifies his job class being "Royalty" rather than "Bard" in the Japanese version. Even though he is, obviously, a Bard.


As simple as it is, this is one of my favorite tracks in the game. It's not complete without that opening jingle.



She's not a man or a grown-up. It's understandably disillusioning to find that one of those she expects to be stronger than her is actually no different.




There's something bizarrely distinctive about FFIV Antlion's sprite. I saw it on fan pages long before I ever played the game, and it made a permanent impression.

Maybe it's that it looks freakin' weird.




It's also a holdover from FFIII, where it was used a bit more consistently. (Give an old man in the first town a Potion to get an Elixir, etc.) I kind of wish it had become a series mainstay, because you could come up with some pretty creative applications for it.

Well they were a family of Ninjas who ruled a Kingdom of Ninjas, so it never seemed that strange to me.

Of course in TAY he runs around with Zangetsu, Izayoi, Gekkou, and Tsukinowa, which makes Edward make even less sense.

While that would make sense, Edward's story in After Years (which was actually pretty much a complete copy of the part of the game you just covered) has him returning to the Antlion Cave for another Sand Ruby because someone else got sick.

And the Antlions don't attack him; you can walk up and examine them and everything and have nothing happen.

And at this point, the Crystals are getting stolen again.

My best guess for everything going badly was Zemus/Golbez's control over the Archfiends, who are hinted in After Years to be a normal and essential part of the Planet.

::snerk::

Is it just me, or does the Hoovercraft suck?

I always took this as another element of the world-building. It's more to set up that Things Are Not Right in This World than it is to push you forward.
*hi-five*

Also, I won't lie: first time I played this game, I died at the WaterHag.

I like to see Rosa as forming a very tight relationship with Rydia early on. After all, she's the first adult female Rydia has a chance to meet after her mother's death, and being a white mage, she's already predisposed toward healing and compassion. Rosa's the one who's able to reach out to Rydia and give her the emotional support she so desperately needs, which culminates in her gaining the courage to cast Fire1.

Sue me--when I was 10, this was one of my favorite scenes in the game. It was the height of drama! Plus, the novel I've been writing hinges on a similar relationship, which is probably why I'm so quick to read this kind of thing into FFII. Or maybe the scene had a deeper effect on me than I thought. I dunno.

Edward really is a great name.

Like Edward Cullen, right?

Hmmmm.

Which I guess means that when Rydia gives up White Magic in the Land of Summoned Monsters, she's saying "Fuck you, mom! I'm going to live my OWN life!"

I used to do that with everyone. Glenn, Janus, R66-Y... it's weird how half your party goes by assumed names while having 5 letter real names really.

What, Holy and Meteor from FFVII don't count?

Of course they do. ♥

I made Bartz a White Mage with !Barehanded for most of FFV and it was good times. Final Fantasy Tactics doesn't offer the same level of satisfaction, but it comes close.

I like how Rosa asserts herself when she comes out of her early coma and really moves the party forward. Cecil's still too full of doubt and self-loathing to step into the leader role so she carries him and initiates the journey to Fabul. And when the time comes to melt that ice, she's the one who mans up and tells it to the kid straight that she's got to face her fears for the greater good.

Possibly worse is that Edward is older than Cecil.

Also WOW Rosa has breasts. Could they have made those any bigger? (...not like the Japanese outfit is much better...)

I need to buy Final Fantasy V. I remember playing Advance through an emulator, but I kinda cheated the expirience by grinding w/ the speed up capabilities of VBA.

Naaaaaaaaaaame drooooooooooooop!

The whole Edward/Gilbert thing reminds me of that old webcomic 'Adventurers!' which had a bard character named 'Gildward'.

Also...

I had no idea about this. I don't think I've ever cast Slow in a FFII playthrough. Does it work on the final boss? I loaded up my VC FFII game the other day and got my butt handed to me in that fight. I guess I was only barely leveled up enough to beat it back when I played it last summer, I remember dying a few times, walking away from it, and coming back to it later because holy crap that final sequence from the last save point to the actual start of the final battle takes for-freaking-ever. I think my average character level was around 40, Rydia didn't even have Nuke.

Two things:

1) Edward is an awesome name. I should know, I've had it for a while now.
2) Edward is secretly one of the best high-level characters due to a quirk in how stats grow past level 70 (or was it 80?). Of course, you're highly unlikely to bring him up to level 20 let alone 70, but if you were playing the GBA version... (consequently, Yang sucks in the GBA version because his HP becomes capped very early and they didn't fix that).

- Eddie

It always seemed to work for me. It even seemed to reduce the damage caused by Big Bang.

SLOW cured my diabetes!

My dad changed his name to Edward because kids in school made fun of the "grr" sound in his birth name, Edgar. Kids in the 1950s were not very creative.


I didn't finish the postgame content but is there a reason to grind to the point where this becomes a problem? In my endgame save Yang has over 6000 HP and the rest of the group is hovering around 4000.

Slow is doubly awesome in this entry of the series. The old turn-based system is still partially in effect, so Slow also has its old effect of reducing the enemy's number of attacks along with halving the speed their ATB gauge fills up at. Meaning a lot of enemies will also do less damage when under Slow, too.