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

YAY!

Final Fantasy Legend 2 would have a quibble with that. There, KARATE is nowhere near as good an attacking option as Meteo. Or Flare, which is its equivalent there.

Luckilly, an old surveying error allows dancing on the other side of the railroad tracks just outside of town. Just watch out for John Lithgow.

♪♪ Kingdom Baron ♪♪

Cecil knows how to be careful alright. He's so careful he goes back to bed.

(I promise that made sense in my head.)


Now that Baigan is taken care off, Cecil and co. are free to explore the rest of the castle. For one thing, they now can get into Baron's treasury, which was previously guarded.


Unfortunately the full sum of Baron's treasury involves six potions. Well nerts. But hey -- wasn't there also a tower?


There was! There was! And look! More treasure!


Well okay so this stuff is nothing spectacular either.

Fun fact: the only way to reach the Cure1 next to the stairs is to go down and then come back up, so you can examine the treasure box while standing on top of the downstairs tile. Why the box wasn't simply placed on any other empty tile in this room remains a mystery.


This Elixir is probably the best treasure in the whole castle. Hurrah!


Ah, but what's this? There is yet another basement level to explore! Let us make haste, comrades!


Er... yeah. A profound magical purpleness blocks the way forward. Whatever is slumbering deep in the bowels of Castle Baron, it's going to have to wait until we've dealt with Golbez's cronies.


The top floor of the tower has some more potions.

...and that's it! Castle Baron is now completely looted! Doesn't that make you feel extra Paladin-y?


Here's that little room again. You know, the one that serves no purpose and has no tragic connotations whatsoever? We should probably just ignore it.

Incidentally, you know how I've been stripping people of their gear before they leave the party so as to profit of of them once they're gone? This is where you'd want to do that to Palom and Porom. I typically don't, since there's a boss fight ahead, and equipment is generally helpful during boss fights. It's important, though, to make sure they're not holding anything unique, such as the Tiara or the Change Rod.

Finally, Cecil stands once again before the King of Baron. Who is apparently schitzophrenic? And racist against Paladins for some reason? Wait... why are Palom and Porom scrunching up their noses?


Oh snap! You guys, I don't think that's the King of Baron at all! I don't think that's the king even one tiny bit!


Jesus hell that is horrifying.

This little graphical effect is one of the most brutal happenings in the world of 16-bit games: an evil demon turtle literally projectile shedding its fleshy human husk. Sure it doesn't look that graphic, but the simple 16x16 sprites mean you just have to fill in the blanks for yourself. And those blanks are grotesque.

I can't help but feel as though, in a modern 3D game, this scene would be much more tame. Like, the king's visage would just sort of... fade away, revealing Kainazzo underneath. Lamesauce.


♪♪ The Dreadful Fight ♪♪

So! Kainazzo, then! His gimmick is erecting a wall of water around himself, then spamming Wave over and over until you are dead. Don't believe me? Look here:


Ow ow ow.

As you can see, the team can't take very much of this. Fortunately, there's an easy way to turn the fight in your favor:


Aw, poor widdle Kainazzo-poo! Is him scared of Lit? Pwecious widdle guy!

Hitting Kainazzo with any Lit spell will cleave off his barrier and stop the relentless Waves. But lo! There's a second reason to spam Lit spells!


Being an aquatic monster, Lit strikes Kainazzo's weak point and strikes it hard. As long as Tellah comes into this fight packing the 30 MP he needs for a single casting of Lit-3, Kainazzo is by far the easiest of the four Elemental Fiends.


I didn't get a shot of it, but Yang contributed quite a bit to this fight as well by hitting Kainazzo's weak point with his Thunder Claw. Beware though, because while this will do extra damage it won't break the boss's watery shield.

Kainazzo also has a defense mode where he will retreat entirely into his shell and spam healing magic on himself. You almost have to purposely be trying to push him into that phase, though. I believe he only does it when he's below a certain amount of HP, and that threshhold is certainly smaller than the damage caused by a single casting of Lit-3.

♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

Cecil learns two pretty useful spells! Hooray! Or maybe Porom did. You... you know what? It kind of doesn't matter. Time to find Cid!


Well that was a short search. No sooner is the fake king dead than does Cid come barging in all a-hollerin' bloody murder. Which is weird because, like, where was he being held? He wasn't in the dungeon, and the only room in the castle we didn't look in was protected by a crazy purple shield.


♪♪ Hey, Cid! ♪♪

Cid was already plenty pissed about the whole "mean ol' king a-usin' mah airships fer daggum evil" situation and yes that is how Cid talks in my head -- learning that the bad guys have also been manhandling Rosa is the last straw. He rants about it for a while before Tellah finally interrupts him, and man, if there's one thing Cid hates more than villains manhandling his airships and/or ladyfriends, it's being interrupted.


See, Cid's job in the story is to give everyone the business. Of the extended cast, only a few characters dare to give Cid any lip, and both of those fellows get put in their place with calculating efficiency.


Porom steps in between the two geezers before they rip each other apart, but it's Cecil who finally remembers they came to Baron for a specific purpose. He's here to get his airship on. Cid, of course, has one primed and ready to go, hidden right here on the castle grounds. Handy! To celebrate this, he does the signature CID DANCE, which involves him spinning around and waving his hand in the air.

...god dammit, I knew there was a .gif I forgot to make. Maybe we'll all get lucky and Kishi will do us a solid.


Just as with Baigan, we again have this nagging problem of Too Many Party Members. That's where the evil, disembodied voice of Kainazzo's vile ghost comes in.

I love the wording of Kainazzo's taunts here. It not only implies there are other Kainazzos out there somewhere, but also that defeat would mean something to at least a few of them. For the next inter-update Photoshopsplosion, I recommend attaching a variety of props and silly hats to Kainazzo's battle sprite, signifying the true breadth to what is doubtlessly a rich and varied species.


♪♪ Run! ♪♪

What a twist! It turns out that this tiny, nondescript room with no plot relevance whatsoever in fact turns out to have plot relevance! Specifically, it is a magical shrinking room that will eventually squish our heroes into a fine paste.


What's worse, the doors seem to have magically sealed themselves somehow. Damn the bad luck!


Wait, what? What are you guys--

NOOOOOOOO!!


♪♪ Cry in Sorrow ♪♪

With the walls held firmly in place by the pair of petrified kindergarteners, it seems as though the day is saved... after a fashion.


Tellah scolds them for their brash heroism and attempts to bring them back with Heal. Alas, in the world of FF2 one cannot restore self-induced petrification via magical means.

Remember way back in update two or three where I complained about the pointless "use a plot item" mechanic during the SandRuby debacle? I mentioned one part of the game which actually integrated that mechanic with the plot in an interesting way, and here it is: if you return here later and examine the twins' statues, the game prompts you to use a Heal item on them. However, just like Tellah's spell, the item will be ineffective.

There's no coming back from a noble sacrifice. This is one of FF2's truest and most elemental axioms. *snicker*


Cid is officially crazed with thoughts of vengeance. First his airship? Then his best friend's gal-pal? And now two little kids he only just barely met? You've gone too far, Golbez!!

I would be remiss if I didn't mention what a profound effect Palom and Porom's "death" had on me as a young'un. The first time I saw this scene (and remember, I was only watching someone else play) it really got to me. I mean, I knew it was coming -- Nintendo Power had spoiled that much. But I don't know, I guess I was willing it to not be true. Kind of like how you always watch the first half of The Lion King expecting Mufasa to miraculously survive this time, and be Simba's best pal forever.



Back at Bad Guy Central, Golbez and Kain brainstorm ways to get their grubby mitts on the last crystal. Unlike the three they already have, the Earth Crystal isn't just laying around behind some lightly-guarded throne room. The full story of what's going down with the Earth Crystal will have to wait for the next update, but suffice it to say it's a problem that can't be solved by simply throwing airships at it.

Also, this sort of raises the question of what Golbez and Kain have been up to since Fabul. We'll find out the answer to that in a couple of updates, too.


Kain's idea is as treacherous as it is effective: force Cecil into doing their dirty work for them. Surely Cecil will weigh the fate of the world as being less important than the woman he loves. (Who, by the way she squirms back and forth in these scenes, evidently hasn't peed in days.)


Rosa tries to stop Kain by futiley talking some sense into him, but he snaps back with an empty taunt. "Surely she won't resent me once I've done away with the man she loves!" thinks Kain to himself.

He's got one thing right though: Cecil is pretty sweet.

♪♪ Red Wings ♪♪

Meanwhile again, back in Baron, Cid leads the party to his secret airship hangar within spitting distance of the fake king's throne room. That's a pretty ballsy construction project, if you think about it, but then Cid is like 86% balls.


The Enterprise is Cid's masterpiece, and now it's mine all mine! Gee, I sure bet the twins would have loved to ride around in this thing.

Note that getting in the airship makes the world all tilt-y and Mode 7-y. This would have caused my tiny brain to melt down and leak out of my ears as a kid, if only the previous few hours of gameplay hadn't already done that.

Also note that the Enterprise is yellow, perhaps in cheerful realization of Cid's desire to set it apart from the Red Wings that had been so cruelly snatched away from him. That wasn't the first thing I noticed about this airship, though; the first thing I noticed was that it is shaped like an actual boat, rather than the flying hot dog from FF1.


No sooner do we get our new chariot in the air than are Red Wings spotted on the horizon. Before Cid is able to clarify whether he means to fight or flee, Yang uses his amazing KARATE eyesight to spot a white flag flying from the incoming vessel.


♪♪ Suspicion ♪♪

Kain shows up with a crew full of hooded goblins to parley with Cecil. Unlike the fake king, who had nothing but awful things to say about Cecil's new Paladin duds, Kain doesn't seem at all put off by Cecil's class change.


♪♪ Somewhere in the World... ♪♪

In fact, he doesn't say much at all. He simply puts Golbez's terms on the table, then flies off. Cecil makes a few limp pleas for Kain to wake up and come to his senses, which are predictably ignored.



Hey, can you guys do me a favor and bicker for three or four pages about whether or not this airship-flying is tutorial is necessary? I'd really appreciate it.

Enough about that. We need to figure out what this Earth Crystal business is all about. To the nation of Toroia! But first...


FLY AROUND THE WOOOOORLD!! FFFFFUCKK YEEEAH AIRSHIP!!

Next: "YOU CANNOT USE METALIC WEAPONS. YOU CANNOT DEFEAT ME."

Thank god there are no underbelly shots of Cagnazzo, or else I'd be obligated to make a not-shitty version.

Tellah didn't like how the twins were showing him up in the magic department. Obviously he wasn't trying to save them very hard.

You remember how the Serpent Road was blocked off at the beginning of the game?

Hint: do not, under any circumstance, attempt to cram more than five Red Wing troopers into the hole. Mysidia didn't close their end for fear of invasion, they closed it because of the lingering smells even after they hosed all the... remains back down again.

Oh no! Baron has been taken over by John Lithgow!

...it's taken me until now to realize that the little black circles to the sizes of 'nazzo's head are his EARS and that his EYES are baby-blue and in front of his face.

Mind: BLOWN

Yaaaay! I'm sure she'll get a lot of mileage out of those brand new spells she learned! Look how happy she is!

And EXIT, too! No doubt that will come in handy if they need to get out of somewhere in a hurry!


Crazy purple shield, Tellah's ass. Cecil was literally thrown back by the force of Cid's belching in the basement. You do NOT approach a Ghibli runaway turned Trekkie airship engineer when he decides to get smashed.

How "convenient" that Tellah just happened to forget to use his wood-burning Fire-3 or his wood-splintering Lit-3 or his wall-breaking Yang-1 before the twins decided to use a spell one of them isn't even equipped to learn.

"Sorry, Bozzlbez, I dropped the water I gathered!"

"Whatever happened to that brooding assassin, clad in death-black armor and commanding the very force of darkness itself? He seemed like a swell guy."

Porom and Palom's bravery always makes me teary-eyed. ='(

I've said this earlier in spoiler-vision, but this is where I thought (thanks to the *cough* wonderful translation) that Cid was the most cynical bastard ever. First there's him being ornery, but then, right after the kids turn to stone...

Tellah: "I shall avenge!"
Cid: "I'll avenge you!"

See, until I played the translated version, I had really thought that Cid was directing that at Tellah, in a sort of parental-casual-abuse that is the hallmark of both good parenting and being passive-aggressive towards someone in a sitcom-laugh-track-inducing way. It made more sense to think of Cid as saying, "Shaddap about those damn kids! Airship! Now!" Thus, Cid became the most cynical bastard ever, not caring a whit about the six-year-olds who gave their lives to save him.

And if I remember right (I can't find any scans online to corroborate my childhood memories) Palom and Porom's sacrifice (along with everything that happens until you go to the Dwarf Castle for the first time is spoiled in the manual. Yeesh, it's almost as bad as Earthbound in that respect!

A subtle yet insidious translation gaffe here.

"Son, I could've been your daddy - but a dog beat me over the fence."

I think besides the Kainazzo bestiary the between-update photoshops should also insert the FF2 characters into Footloose. And maybe other Kevin Bacon movies.

It's a classic tactic - turn your enemy's greatest strength against them. And as you've stated there's no greater strength than the power of KARATE.

Grooaannnn...

Storm: "What happends to a Water Fiend Turtle-thing when it gets hit by lightning? Uh... It gets scared and stops gathering water?" *shrug*

I agree. *snicker*

Fixed that for you.

I don't know if it's been mentioned before but these two songs, especially the Red Wings theme, are Conqueror's anthems. Those are are songs that say "Kneel before me or be destroyed. You can try to fight back if you wish, but you'll just die tired."

Well, we have a simple solution for that. Fire up the Bat Signal!

I like to think he kept the key on his kickin' foot and didn't notice it until he looked down.

The Japanese just says "Tellah the sage. Edward's..." Which is almost even more awkward.

Also, I don't think I knew until today that Porom's "Can't you act any better?" wasn't her scolding Palom for going on about a nasty smell. Indeed, the exchange would have been better translated as "Man, you stink [pun intended]!" "If you're going to act, you should do a better job of it." (This and a couple Japanese versions are the only ones I've played; this ambiguity might have been fixed in later translations.)

Likewise, Cecil and Cid's "It's a surprise." "They obviously didn't understand!" struck me today as especially strange. This would have been better translated as "Really? Here?" "Yep! Right under their noses!"

</translatormode>

For some reason, Kain's threats to Rosa and Cecil here always used to put a chill down my spine. They still do, a little. Dude's cold.

This one always made me scratch my head.

They obviously didn't understand... that Cid is a genius!

He trails off because he realizes it's really difficult to describe Tellah's relationship to Edward if you don't know who Anna is. "Edward's abusive unwilling would-be ex-father-or-possibly-grandfather-in-law!"

So that's what killed the king! Kaignazzo was innocent! But why didn't Cid retain that ability when he joined the party? He could have pushed back the walls and saved the twins! He could have beaten Golbez and saved Tellah the trouble! He could have collapsed the entrance to the underworld without jumping off the airship!

Heck, he could have pushed the red moon away at any time and saved the world the trouble of dealing with Zeromus!

Dangit, Cecil, fire up Baron's brewery! The future of the world is at stake!

Cid was foreshadowing. He knew he'd be helping Cecil's party one way or another far longer than Tellah would.

Edward's Meddler-in-Law?

Edward's Crap-out-of-Beater in Law?

"...Yes, O Great Sage. There are walls."


It's definitely one of the most memorable scenes in the series. I've always been particularly struck by one of Porom's lines in the PlayStation version: "We would've followed you forever, Cecil."


Cain's appraisal of said duds is another favorite line in the PS script: "Heh! That drag suits you well."

Heh!


Have you seen his Amano art? It's pretty great.

... ... ...

What this forum needs is a Citizen Kane applause emoticon.