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

They look more like bike gloves to me.

So on the subject of Final Fantasy...

I did a palette swap of the Red Mage!



I call it the Pimp Mage.

Super Metroid just called, and you know what it said? "I really don't get the love for Shivam. He's kinda boring!" Pretty harsh, bro!

Mickey Mouse was a biker!

AAAHHHHH IT SEES INTO MY SOUL!

How appropriate that such a terrifying image was post number 911.

b-but

i

i made a picture

T_T

Man, I seriously need to finish this update tonight. You people are like this close to eating each other's faces.

Your mistake was posting something even remotely related to Final Fantasy.

Holy shit, I thought you'd abandoned the thread to its own devices to turn it into some kind of petri dish of frothing demand to see just how insane it could get in some sort crazy social experiment.

(not really, I just thought that sounded amusing.)

I am sorry for causing almost an entire page's worth of discussion about straws.

I know a good recipe for roast face.

it's too late for us

we have gazed into the void of percy gendo

and the void gazed back

save yourself

Purple is the color of Tellah and Fusoya, both of whom are more balanced than FF1's Red Mage. If changing FF1's Red Mage to purple makes him play more like them, that is, without the weapons and armor, FF1 would have been a more balanced game.

As for being black, Keith David played a purple-clad dude in "The Princess and the Frog" and he sounded like he had more fun in that role than playing Chaos in Dissidia, so I'd like to see the Pimp Mage in FF1 with Sage stats and equips and Keith David's voice replace the Red Mage. Do any of the FF1 remakes have voice acting?

No they don't, and also holy shit are you thinking too hard about this.

Or perhaps you are not thinking too hard enough!

One of Brickroad's hidden goals for this LP : minimize or postpone cannibalism between updates.

Oh no - this is not a drill. Parish has gone Marathon Infinity on us. Administer 50cc's of Halo XBoxLive random matchmaking chatter STAT!

It's strawright, anything is bendter than starting a pun train.

We can exploit this.

ITT Talking Time reenacts Cormac Mccarthy's The Road.

Roles I'm not interested in playing: Catamite

Roles I'm interested in playing: The Road

To accurately convey the depths to which Cecil's mood has plummeted at this point in the game, this update comes at you in Dreadful DKnight Black.


Helpfully, Cecil has washed ashore pretty near to a quaint little village. Really, he should be counting his blessings that he washed ashore anywhere at all
considering all that heavy armor he's wearing.


♪♪ Mystic Mysidia ♪♪

...oh dear god no. Of all the villages near all the beaches in all the world...

Yes, welcome back to Mysidia -- the very town Cecil sacked during the prologue, back before he grew a conscience.


The villagers don't exactly give him a warm welcome. Five steps into town and someone's already turned him into a toad.


This pinnacle of mortal intelligence seems to have forgotten that we attacked by airship last time.

This cowardly white mage leaps away from Cecil whenever he draws near.


Talk to her repeatedly, and she leaps right out of town. That's right; she'd rather abandon her homeland and the only life she knows than stand next to Cecil.


This scene plays out all over town. The black mages seem content merely with scolding Cecil, while the white mages go straight for the guilt trips.


They've even got propaganda plastered on the walls at the Mysidian pub.


Cecil shoves off his survival instincts long enough to order a drink, and is poisoned for his efforts. But only a little bit. Any more than that would simply be rude.


♪♪ Dancing Calbrena ♪♪

Mysidia's town dancer seems friendly enough, though. And oddly tantalizing. I dunno about you, but I like some good hypnotic titillation after I've had a poisoned lager or
two.


Unfortunately the dancer is really a mean old crone who turns Cecil into a pig. That's right -- our hero is now a poisoned toad-pig. He is officially the most
wretched creature on the planet.


Well? Which is it? House of Wishes or House of Prayers? IT CAN'T BE BOTH. WISHING AND PRAYING ARE TWO TOTALLY DIFFERENT THINGS.

♪♪ Long Way to Go ♪♪

Rather than press the whole wish/prayer issue, Cecil wisely decides to throw himself at the mercy of the village Elder, who is fully within his rights to transform Cecil
into a Saltine cracker or some manner of centipede. Cecil lays out the whole sob story about how his girlfriend got kidnapped by a super-villain and all his friends were
eaten by a sea dragon.

(Pro tip: this scene is especially funny if you imagine Cecil talking in a croak-y high-pitched voice.)


Cecil expresses his sincere wish/prayer to get his amphibian ass to Baron and give Golbez some serious warts, but the Elder puts on the brakes. He has the same reservations
as King Karate about Cecil's dark sword, and suggests scaling a nearby mountain for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform himself instead into a sacred knight.


♪♪ Palom & Porom ♪♪

Since the mountain is crawling with undead, there's no way Cecil could do it alone. The Elder therefore entrusts him with two of his apprentices. Thus does Cecil meet his
second pre-pubescent girl-child ally whose village he had previously burned down. There's a pedobear joke in there somewhere, but I'm too much of a classy motherfucker to
make it.


She is quickly joined by her twin brother, who materializes in a puff of smoke.

Cecil tries to protest, but the Elder dismissively reminds him that beggars can't be choosers.


Porom is just a delightful little bundle of etiquette, isn't she?


She does her very best to keep her brother Palom in line and on task...


...but he just doesn't get it.


Fortunately for our spunky twins, Cecil's still a poisoned pig-toad and therefore in absolutely no position to argue. Will the children prove to be the valuable assets the
Elder insists they are? Or will they end up being a two-headed albatross dangling around Cecil's already-troubled neck?

~~~



Porom - Wh.Wiz
Palom - Bl.Wiz

The twins are right on Kain and Rydia's heels when it comes to listing fan favorites from FF2. Though they are relatively minor characters in the overall course of the
plot, they are the focal point for some absolutely unforgettable scenes.

Command List:

• Fight: Palom uses rods and Porom uses staves, which is to say, neither of them can Fight. Their weapons still play an important role as we head up Mt.
  Ordeals, though!
  
• White/Black: The kids are straight-up mages, through and through. Leveled high enough they will learn everything in their respective magic sets... although that's
  only possible with weeks of brain-dead grinding or some manner of cheat device.
  
• Twin: In addition to regular spells, the kids can team up to launch powerful super-attacks. They will pick one of two attacks at random: Comet, a moderately
  powerful attack that hits every enemy; or Flare, a really powerful attack that hits only one. If you could pick your spell, and if Flare were a bit more powerful,
  this command would be wonderful. As it is, it really just does with two characters and 40 MP what Palom can do alone with 30.

Twin magic is a nice novelty, and is no doubt the precursor to countless combo-based RPG systems, but where the twins really shine is their ability to use standard spells.
On one hand, they're not as powerful as Rydia or Rosa, who each have other unique abilities going for them. On the other, you never have to take them to the endgame where
magic-users work at something of a disadvantage. It's a moot point anyway since neither pair of mages ever shares a party with the other. What's important is that the kids
make Tellah look like a sack of wet shit.

~~~

♪♪ Mystic Mysidia ♪♪

The twins start of weak, but they level up quickly. At the moment they don't have the spells required to help Cecil, but by the time we reach Mt. Ordeals they'll each be
more powerful than any mage we've seen so far.


Unlike FF1, which had a separate item for each status effect, FF2 just has one catch-all Heal potion. This isn't that big of an advantage, honestly; FF2 came out long
before status effects started to actually mean something in this series. Even so, there's no use trying to conquer a sacred mountain as a poisoned pig-frog, so down the
hatch.


Palom wears green coveralls and has a red cape; Porom wears red coveralls and has a green cape. This will be on the exam.


Time for shopping!


Like Rydia, Porom can equip a bow and arrows if you really have some burning desire to waste shitloads of arrows. A better option is to buy her a Cure Staff, which lets her
cast Cure for free whenever she wants. This is a good way to keep the twins' HP up as Cecil takes down monsters for them.

Palom can't use a bow, but he can use the IceRod you already have in your inventory. A better choice is to purchase this FlameRod, though, which will pile damage on most of
the undead in the dungeon ahead.


The black mage in the armor shop warns Cecil that he won't be able to use any of this sicknasty Paladin gear until he, ya know, is actually a Paladin. Which is good because
he can't afford to buy it all anyway! And is actually double-good because his inventory is too crammed with useless shit to hold anything more!

After selling off the pile of useless gear he's been lugging around, Cecil is about to afford some Gaea Gear and a Silver Ring for each of the kids. I actually bought a
third Gaea Gear in anticipation for my next recruit, which turned out to be a waste of money because he comes equipped with one. D'oh!

I'm able to get all my Paladin gear except for a shield. Which is actually pretty good, considering how gorram pricey it is.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

Porom starts with ten more HPs than Palom does, because she eats her Wheaties.

Selecting the Twin command with either twin puts them both into a casting state. The spell doesn't actually go off until the off-twin's turn comes around (or s/he finishes
executing his/her previous command), and it will fail if either twin is KO'd, Muted, or drained of MP before it goes off. There is therefore a considerable amount of risk
in using Twin.

The game takes pity on you, though, and greys it out if your poor sibling isn't in a state to use it. So while you can end up losing a turn to bad luck you can't lose one
to stupidity.


Comet is great against groups of monsters, and can pretty much slaughter anything you'll see between here and when the twins eventually leave your party. It's a bad bet,
though, because half the time instead of wiping out every opponent they'll instead launch a fucktardedly powerful attack against a single one. Either way, they use 20 MP a
piece, so this kind of offensive is not sustainable.


The carebear section of the game is pretty much over now. Where Rydia could have survived a year or more in the Antlion's Nest, you have to watch the twins' HP levels very
closely. Porom's freebie Cure spell is a nice boon in this regard.

♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

It's a long walk to where we're going. Mysidia is just barely visible along the left edge of the screen; Mt. Ordeals is the jagged brown thing sticking out of the right.


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

The long walk serves to bolster the kids's spellbooks though! They learn fast when they're so young, don't they?

Palom's ability to cast *-2 spells makes him by far the strongest character we've seen yet. He pretty much carries the party through most of the fights on the way up the
mountain.


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

The Chocobo Forest just south of Mt. Ordeals is a welcome sight after the long walk. Porom can recharge the party at the white chocobo, and you can catch a yellow one on
your way back so as to avoid making the trip a second time.


♪♪ Mt. Ordeals ♪♪

Mountain dungeons in FF2 are weird. This one is blocked by a wall of fire, that one was blocked by a wall of ice... I'm sure if there were a third one it would be like a
pile of tapioca pudding or something equally ridiculous.


Upon inspecting the blaze, Porom concludes it's Palom's job to extinguish it.


♪♪ Palom & Porom ♪♪

A job he accomplishes with great gusto!


Porom immediately punishes her brother's bravado by physically assaulting him.

Whoops, bet you thought Porom was the mature one, didn't you? Turns out she's just as much of a brat as her brother.


Cecil just watches the scene play out numbly. He's either wondering how he got himself into this mess, or contemplating which of the kids he's going to eat first after
they're inevitably trapped on a rocky outcropping for the winter by a freak avalanche.

Or maybe, just maybe, he's thinking, "Gee, I sure wish I had a loving sibling whose job it was to pick on me all the time, ever driving me to be better than I am.
Alas! Even if I had a brother, which I don't, I don't even know what he'd be doing right at this moment."

Completely unrelated to that frank display of sibling rivalry, here's Golbez in some manner of bizarre techno-tower! Because Golbez is awesome, he knows that captured love
interests only cause problems when locked up in unguarded cells somewhere in his villainous base, so he's got that heffer lashed to the fucking wall. And because
he's awesome, he already knows precisely what Cecil is up to re: Paladin times.

So he summons the first of his four lieutenants to head down and clean up that mess.


Enter Milon, the Fiend of Earth. His command of the undead is legendary, and what better to throw against a DKnight in his last frantic days than a legion of Zombies and
Skeltons he can't hope to damage with his woefully black sword?


After Milon warps away to get the job done, Kain pipes up about how he wanted the pleasure of killing Cecil. Because Golbez is awesome, the poor Dragoon is
immediately reminded at how badly he cocked that particular task up last time. Whatever Kain's ambitions were in Golbez's evil army, he's since been demoted to guard duty.


Why Golbez may have left Rosa's mouth un-gagged is left as an excersize to the reader.

~~~

♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

Back on Mt. Ordeals, Palom has begun to outpace Porom when it comes to gaining spells. Fire2 pretty much wrecks the undead here, solidifying Palom's spot as undisputed MVP.

The white magic set has three fewer spells than the black set, but that's just trivia considering neither twin is going to be leveled up high enough to notice.


♪♪ Mt. Ordeals ♪♪

There are a few scattered treasures on the mountain, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Both of the boxes in this shot are Cure1s.

Speaking of Cure1s, they're now officially obsolete. The Item Shop in Mysidia sells Cure2s, which are far more effective.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

Spirits, and all palette-swaps thereof, only look like undead creatures. They're not, though, which means they're not weak to fire and they're not protected against
darkness. Palom can deal with the Skeltons, but Cecil's got to kill the Spirits the old-fashioned way.


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

These are probably the most useful spells the kids can learn. There's a lot of nonsense between here and the third-tier spells, so Palom and Porom have functionally
plateaued.


♪♪ Mt. Ordeals ♪♪

A short ways further up the mountain, Cecil runs into a familiar face. The kids know the old Sage too, as Tellah is particularly famous in Mysidia. Tellah, of course, is a
pretty terrible magician, so it's up in the air what he's famous for. It's entirely possible he's famous for sucking, kind of like a Mysidian Carlos Mencia.


The starstruck kids dive right in and introduce themselves. Palom lets something slip, and gets another knock in the head for his efforts.


Tellah seems ambivalent to the idea of magical kindergarteners. Maybe he's wary that this is the second time he's run into Cecil escorting someone else's kids through a
dangerous monster-infested dungeon. Or maybe he's just upset that the five-year-olds are better at magic than he is.


Cecil once again rattles off the series of hardships that has brought him here.

Tellah seems genuinely concerned about Edward's well-being, despite wanting to shank him in the neck last time they met. It could be the old Sage has a malfunctioning
vengeance gland, and can only hold one nemesis in his head at a time.


EWWW CECIL HAS COOTIES!!

I've always been baffled as to why "girl friend" is two words here. In any case, this particular interjection just earns Palom a "Hush!" rather than an all-out pop in the
nose.

So what is Tellah doing on Mt. Ordeals, anyway? He was drawn here in search of Meteo, the most powerful black magic. With this spell, he hopes to destroy Golbez once and
for all.

Hilariously, I had misremembered the next line as being Palom's, not Porom's. See? Told you she was every bit the brat her brother is!

And double-hilariously, remember how I mentioned that the twins could, in theory, level up high enough to get every magic spell in the game? That includes Meteo. If
you wanted to spend eighty hours killing Skeltons and Liliths, you could break the plot by getting Palom the "ultimate black magic" long before Tellah undertakes the
incredible journey to the mountain nobody's ever returned from alive to unlock the spell he's been unable to master after an entire lifetime of study.

Or you could just have him team up with Porom and cast Comet, which is kind of like Meteo Jr.


For the second time in Cecil's quest, his goals align strongly enough with Tellah's that the old Sage joins him.

There is no point in the game where a hero is weaker than Tellah is on the ascent up Mt. Ordeals. He was valuable during his last stint with us, since our only other backup
was Rydia, whose MP was low and spellbook was empty. Now, though? Porom's got our healing covered and Palom's got stronger attack magic. Hell, Edward's ability to remove
himself from the party is better than anything Tellah can do for us right now.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

More undead fights. Cecil is so useless that sitting through his attack animation is a waste of time; better to just have him Parry and let Palom fry everything.

I particularly love how Porom's defensive pose is to turn around and cover her eyes.


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

I probably should have snapped a shot of that Lilith before killing her, considering the grief she put me through. Liliths are pink snake-women who can use a special
ability called Slap that will inflict a status effect on you. In this shot we can see Cecil is Cursed and Palom is Muted. Curse reduces physical stats while Mute blocks
magic-using, which is pretty much the worst possible situation to be in for this fight. Reducing the effectiveness of my main damage-dealers meant the battle dragged on
longer than it should, leading to Porom eating a few criticals and getting knocked out.

But hey -- at least Palom learned something totally useless!


♪♪ Mt. Ordeals ♪♪

Both of the treasures in this section of Mt. Ordeals were Ether1s.


Upon reaching the summit the kids start arguing about the source of a strange hissing sound.


There's also a save point up here. Which is great, because if there's somewhere I'd want to pitch my tent it's on a rocky outcropping separated from the main mountain by a
rickety bridge, completely surrounded by sheer drops into the terrifying ravine below.

Oh, and the mountain is also infested with zombies. Sleep tight, kids!


The hissing persists on into the next morning. It's a miracle anyone got any sleep! Which means it's a slightly larger miracle that Palom didn't experience an "accident" in the middle of the night and go rolling over the edge of the cliff.

Oh, right. Milon. Yeah, this guy.

The game never explains what the hissing noise was. I like to think Milon's purple teleportation effect takes twelve hours to accomplish and sounds like television static.


♪♪ Fight 2 ♪♪

Milon attacks the party with a small cadre of Ghasts. Cecil can't do anything to the Ghasts, so he starts off by chipping away at the boss.


Ghasts remain Palom's specialty, though; he torches the whole lot of them with a single Fire2.

Porom and Tellah both have an offensive option against undead in the form of Cure2... but it's not a very good option. Cure2 was fine against the pissant Zombies in the
Watery Pass, but the undead on Mt. Ordeals are a bit meatier. It takes two Cure2s to do the job of a single Fire2, and costs 18 MP rather than 15.


Milon himself isn't weak to fire magic. I don't think he's particularly weak to any kind of magic. I think I finished him off with Ice-2 because I intended to turn the rad
spell animation into a .gif, but then forgot about it. Whatever. Milon moans something about his hideous, deformed body, then melts away.

Not too tough for a so-called "Fiend". He had the same old boss music, even!


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

OH BOY!! MUTE!!


Putting the mages in the front row is a smart move. Of this I am certain.


♪♪ The Dreadful Fight ♪♪

See? What'd I tell you? This only saves me one round, but in case you couldn't tell from the upjumped battle music this is the first frr-rllz boss fight in the game.
Time to put our game faces on, kids!


The four fiends usually open with some pithy comment about how you all are doomed, etc.


But, uh, no, I'm pretty sure we got this.

Milon Z. can hit hard, but that's nothing to worry about provided you can get your squishies into the back row. His only other trick is the ability to poison you, but
poison is kind of a joke in this game, so you can simply ignore it.

Twin magic is, in truth, a pretty poor strategy. Flare is the hardest-hitting spell available at this stage of the game, but there's only a 50% chance you'll get it. The
rest of the time you'll get Comet, which is pointless if you're trying to hit a single target.


This is all Tellah's good for in this fight... and he's only good for it because I used Porom's turn to cast Flare. If I were playing this battle in a normal run I'd
probably just have him Parry, because sadly there isn't a "Stand There and Drool on Yourself" command.