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

But Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky are my most favoritest of authors D:

That "amateur hour" crack was actually half hyperbole and half accurate reflection of how it feels to be thinking of Gods and Men for two years straight before reading novels again. The freshman reading list for that college starts with Iliad and Odyssey before diving deep into the likes of Aeschylus, Euclid, Thucydides, Plato, et al. Good ol' Greeks.

The way the classes go there, I didn't notice when I stopped looking at Homer's epics as required reading and started taking them seriously like I would have if I had been intelligent in the first place. Then you spend an entire year with Greeks discoursing on gods, fate, virtue, and death; and since you're doing it in honest-to-god ancient Greek you're approaching these topics with Greek instincts and receptiveness rather than with those supposedly undesirable and incorrigible "modern lenses" of ours. I had to take a few months afterward to come back down to earth before I stopped looking down on novels and human stories as if I were an Olympian.

Here's a quick and dirty list of the books nearest and dearest my heart:
Dao De Jing; Iliad, Odyssey; Euclid's Elements; Apollonius' Conics; Plato: Republic, Meno; Aristotle's Metaphysics; Genesis, Exodus, Job; Augustine's Confessions; Dante's Comedy (especially Paradiso); Kepler: Mysterium cosmographicum, Astronomia nova, Harmonices mundi; Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov; To Kill a Mockingbird.

Shakespeare and (most of) Dostoyevsky are hanging out with Plutarch, Rabelais, George Eliot, Flannery O'Connor, and a hundred others in the "just barely missed my impressionable age" club of Best Authors Ever. Shakespeare was actually a lot more fun to read after Chaucer's Middle English made the Bard much more comprehensible than he was in high school.
I liked Dubliners. :c
And that.
OH GOD KILL IT WITH FIRE

I know, right?!

Right!

We can be friends again!

Also, is FFII great or what guys?

Oh, there's nothing wrong with Joyce's work, it's just that people always seem to hold him up as something greater than everything else, instead of one of the greats who tried something different. I get what you were talking about, now, though.

Also: Final Fantasy.

As everyone knows, airships are incapable of landing on water, even though early airships just ships with propellers. What is less known is the reason: they are hydrophobic. With the Sea Power monitoring the ocean, the Red Wings can be deployed to less... frightening areas.

Or maybe they're hydrophilic enough that they'd dissolve if they landed on the sea.

As a more serious answer: there's nothing preventing the Red Wings from bombing them. The heroes are taking just the one ship because they're trying to sneak into Baron, not invade it openly. They're probably counting on the Red Wings being engaged elsewhere.

Which raises the question: exactly what were the Red Wings doing between the bombing of Damcyan and the deal above Toroia? By gameplay terms, yeah, they couldn't even land near Toroia because of the forests prevent more than one ship at a time from landing, and even then, the Crystal was elsewhere. But what was keeping them from bombing the city anyway? And why was Fabul spared Damcyan's fate?

Don't attempt to understand the mind and designs of Golbez, for his intellect is legion.

Obviously the pornographers of the FFIV world lace their publications with LSD. Hook 'em any way you can!

Damcyan was bombed only after it's crystal had been stolen away, afterwhich the Red Wings returned to Baron for services to the fleet, re-stocking of bombs, and planning of how to extract the crystal from Fabul. Surely, they had planned on bombing Fabul after its crystal was claimed, by Golbez's encounter with Cecil changed that. Golbez COULD have bombed Fabul, as easily as he COULD have slain Cecil. But he did not, for the same reason he kidnapped Rosa - he has dastardly plans for Cecil!

Exactly! "Mind and designs," etc.

...air support after the infantry assault? Madness!

What, you never heard of that method? You send in the most expendable as a ground troop distraction, so the important people who are in no danger can drop the bombs on the enemy (and any surviving ground troops too). Baron's military tactician is secretly Jigo from Princess Mononoke, you see.

But... during the war bit the Red Wings DO bomb the castle. I always just assumed that the castle was better built to withstand air attacks. Or the castle defended itself with KARATE.

And it think it's pretty clear that they were sneaking into Barron. Since you never get to actually see where they would have docked, I bet it wouldn't have been right on Baron's front lawn.

You have no idea how long and hard I laughed at this

I figure the Red Wings focused on Eblan before they tried Troia. If you go to Eblan right after you get the airship, it's already in ruins. Golbez probably wanted to open the way to the Tower of Bab-Il sooner rather than later.

I'm trying to remember if the game tells you when Eblan is attacked. I always kind of wondered if Cecil helped sack it before Mysidia, but just keeps his mouth shut when no one recognizes him with his helmet off. Considering how everyone relocated by the time you get there, it always gave me the feeling that it had been a while.

Nothing, but they know about the Titanic Rule, and so aren't bothering with it.

IIRC, Edge says that it was Rubicante that attacked Eblan and killed his parents. As for the castle being destroyed that early, I suspect one of two reasons; it either happens crazy early in the story, or lazy coding because they didn't think anyone would explore that early.

And I can't believe I didn't mention this before now, but going back through the posts reminded me about the renaming games, and how Edge and Kain(Kane) are two of my favorite wrestlers. =)

The first internet forums I ever frequented were for a Wheres site created by a guy whose handle was "Edge", and the whole thing was JRPG centric. Everyone always assumed he chose Edge because FFIV, since most of the rest of us had handles of JRPG origin.

Turned out he'd never played FFIV, he just chose Edge because it was his favorite wrestler and he thought the artwork for FFIV Edge was cool.

I spent quite a few years on that board, but when I found TT I realized how puerile that board really was, and left it. But that's a whole other story.

After a few threads of lurking, finally a thread I can relate to and (hopefully) contribute...

FFII was the first RPG I played. In fact, it was the only reason why I asked for a SNES. Same with Brickroad's timeline, I got my copy when I was at fifth grade. Bought with a slew of games: Link to the Past, Super Castlevania IV, ActRaiser, this game standed out. It was THE game to beat! The other games had to wait, this was the first cartridge to be played.


I remember gloating to my brother that I found the "secret" room in Damcyan, even though I learned about it through the printed maps that came with the game

And I also remember that I went WTF! when I finally got the black chocobo, flew it back to Baron, landed on the chocobo forest, and found myself stuck in Baron, while Enterprise was parked at Toroia

This brings back memories...

I don't think that's possible...Is it?

That's what I want to confirm in this LP... I remember that I did something like that some 15 years ago. I was stuck in the Baron continent and can't fly back to Toroia without the black Chocobo. I'll just wait when Brickroad leads us to Toroia

Along with that, I loved the fact that the manual had a complete walkthrough from the very start to when you went underground - due to us Americans not being able to comprehend this 'role playing' nonsense. Bonus points for one of the section headings being called Palom and Porom are Spies - immediately after they join your party!

I was under the impression that it's impossible to strand yourself with a Black Chocobo, because the thing stays sitting on the forest where you landed until you mount it again, at which point it automiatically flies back to its origin forest. It's been a long time, though. (And I wouldn't necessarily put it past any of us, as kids, to *forget* - or not notice - there was a lone black chocobo still hanging out on a forest tile somewhere while trying in vain to walk back towards our airship...)

This is correct. I just finished a playthrough.

It is also correct that kids are dumb. I have a story of my own about this topic that I will tell when Brick gets to the relevant point.

I thought getting the first black chocobo flipped a switch to make them start appearing in every chocobo forest in the world. Seems like this is something Brick needs to investigate when the time comes... far too many theories flying about.

My personal myth is busted! I replayed the game and found that one side of my story is true: After getting the black chocobo, I tried to land in the middle of a chocobo forest, so that when Cecil dismounted, he immeidately went inside. However, being a kid during that time, I thought I was stuck and the chocobo was gone forever because I cannot reach the chocobo without going inside the forest. You had to reenter and exit the forest so that the Cecil tile would overlap the chocobo tile and he could mount it again.

this myth has been killing me after I brought it up.

Apparently Final Fantasy II was way too complicated for Americans, even with the guide. We can't comprehend anything past the level of Final Fantasy USA.