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

So here's the thing about Mad Ogres in the sequel; they're in every single character's Challenge Dungeon.

This isn't bad if you're using Ceodore's party, where you have three dedicated physical attackers and one White Mage. This is bad if you're using Porom's party, where you only have one physical attacker who is completely unable to take a hit. This is VERY bad if you're using Palom's party, where you don't have any physical attackers.

And if you're using Edward's party, you may as well just do yourself a favor and reset the game.

Don't you know? Every RPG location by law has to feature "bottomless" oil wells for their torches and automatic re-lighting mechanisms for when some gust of wind or jerkass adventurer puts them out. Damcyan and Eblan's torches being lit have nothing on the torches in the Tomb of Raithwall in FF12: those things have been burning non-stop for over a thousand years.

That would have been all sorts of great, except the long buildup left me with impossible expectations.

Wait, there are actual fire-burning torches there? I thought all lighting in FFXII was magicite-based.

I never succeeded in looting Eblan early and usually forgot about it until much much later.

I always thought the everburning torches were the result of poor communication. The map designers figured this place would be populated and scattered lit torches around accordingly.

Hooray! (And congratulations!)

I always thought they had -face belt buckles.

Those are pretty clearly torches.

I always try to take out any ogre-types by charming the one in the back row. They are really, really vulnerable to it.

I believe all the tough enemies there (Staleman, MadOgres, BlackCats and Lamia's) are vulnerable to Break. Is that in this version? I forget!

It's not 100% chance, but particular in the future where there are remakes and Staleman and MadOgres hit for twice as much, being able to wipe them all out in a single spell is helpful when trying to get them early.

- Eddie

Cecil... Go to the land of summoned monsters and then I'll help you... You do have a shovel, right? Gonna need one. And some rope.

Oh Brickroad...

Unfortunately, it also looks like he's taking a dump.

Oh, Brickbroad. It pains me to tell you how wrong you are. But I must. The Mad Ogres don't have an elemental weakness you can exploit and most status spells don't help but Tellah has a spell that can make this fight much quicker and (relatively) easier : Weak.

If you single target Weak against a Mad Ogre it will drop its HP so low that a single follow-up attack can take it out. Repeat three times and you've won the battle (as long as you can keep Tellah alive).

For the Staleman and Skulls I liked to equip the elemental claws on Yang (I wish I had known about the trick that would have let me use both the fire and the ice attributes at the same time).

Hey Brick, tell us something we don't know!

The Ogres are the ones keeping the torches lit. Just because they're mad doesn't mean they want to sit around in the dark.

That's fair. Ogres have low-light vision, not dark vision.

Wow... an update after so long! *sniff* It's like... a drink of cool water after weeks in the desert!

Hooray, it's back!

Brickroad...Update?

No. No, I don't believe it. This is obviously Kainazzo disguised as a Brickroad update.

Nice to see an update, though! Even just the random sidequesty stuff.

Break wrecked the place when I recently played FF4DS.

Course, with Tellah's MP, it still took a couple rests to get through all the enemies.

Yay! Another update! Callooh! Callay!

These treasures in Eblan I would always go for at the first opportunity. I could usually get the first two monster-chest items without too much difficulty but the Mad Ogres would kick my butt and throw my ass right back out of that castle.

Going back to the Something We Don't Know about crits, I just had Kain land a critical hit in the final dungeon. Playing the VC version of the game and it's been the only non-Edge crit I've seen all game. Whatever it is that prevents the others apparently doesn't affect Kain.

I'm pretty sure the critical bug happens when a specific INSTANCE of a character is removed from the party for whatever reason, but that instance is put back into the party later. The Kain you get back near the end of the game and the Kain you get at the start of the game aren't the same character in the game's database, you see. And once Kain joins the party for the end, he doesn't get removed from the party for a story battle until the end, much like Edge.

Wait, why would that be? He's exactly the same except for levels and equipment. Having the game treat Dark Knight Cecil and Paladin Cecil as two separate "characters" makes perfect sense, but this doesn't.

Does the final Kain have a preset level and equipment? If so, then there's your answer.

I'll explain why it works that way in detail: each character in the database has a specific set of stats, equipment, and level. And when the game needs to put a character into the party, even if they've been a party member in the past, it loads up a new instance with pre-determined stats, equipment, and level.

They could ostensibly do the math to level up the previous otherwise-identical incarnation up to snuff and change their equipment by force, but that's not how Squaresoft programmers thought at the time. Instead they just copy/pasted the database entries for cycling characters like Kain and gave the duplicates appropriate stats, equipment, and level for when they re-join. Sure, it's a waste of ROM space, but it's also less programming-intensive to just call up a template instead of re-define an existing one.

It should be noted that this isn't the case in the GBA version; that one actually does do proper updating of existing characters when they rejoin instead of using database carbon copies.

I think it shows just how badass Golbez is that even the power of hammer and karate combined barely faze him.

So basically, the final Kain is a "new" character, while Cecil is unchanged and removed from the battle at some point. I think that works as an explanation why Kain and Edge work, but Cecile doesn't.

It also explains why cycling characters "lose" their equipment, which is a pain in the ass in any RPG. Grumble.

When does Cid get to fight Golbez?

No.

Oh? So I'm mis-remembering from when I edited the game's character database and found duplicate entries for Kain that matched up with his reappearances, then?

FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT!

Sorry, Brick, my money is on Sky Render here. You know, cause he edited the game's database...