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

Anyway, the fight is not difficult. Calbrena can hit pretty hard, but so can Yang, especially once he gets his standard-issue Bersk on.


Calbrena's other trick is Glance, which confuses one hero. Cecil is particularly amusing while confused because, as a spellcaster, he will spend his turns using magic rather than attacking. But since he only has a few crappy spells, he does shit like cast Peep and Sight over and over.


You know, just in case you needed a look at Yang's vitals.


When a confused hero is healed (either by the Heal spell or a physical attack), he will still execute whatever random command the game had already queued up for him. This leads to bizarre cases such as this one, where a perfectly healthy Cecil casts Cure2 on the enemy for no clearly-defined reason.


There's no trick to this fight, unless you count killing the dolls before they merge. I don't precisely know the mechanism that governs this. It might be a fixed amount of time, or a fixed number of turns, or a counter that starts ticking down after a certain number of the dolls are dead.

Speaking of dead, yeah. Yang's dead. I told you, Calbrena hits hard. It doesn't really matter, though.


♪♪ Golbez, Clad in Darkness ♪♪

Oh come on! Didn't we just deal with you, like, last update? This is the very definition of unfair!


Huh. Looks like maybe Golbez was scared of Meteo, after all. A little, teeny tiny bit, I mean.

Well, okay. If an old done man like Tellah can hold his own against Golbez, certainly the four of us have at least a fighting shot. Right?


Oh dear god no.

Golbez does not waste any time. He immediately paralyzes the entire team, all while pointing at them menacingly.

Then, he Calls up an evil dragon to murder all of Cecil's friends, one by one... with an attack called Demolish.

Not "Death". Not "Fatal". Demolish.

There is a small, small chance that Kain can avoid this attack. To do so, you have to put him in the middle rank of the party; whomever is in that middle slot tends to act first in battle. It also helps if Yang is dead, like he is here, because Yang is often quick enough to take the first action regardless of what rank is where.

If the planets align, it's possible to get Kain to Jump before Golbez uses Hold Gas. If he manages it, he'll stay in the air until the scripted portion of the battle is over. This gives you a slight edge in the upcoming fight, but not for the reason you might think.


Welp, looks like the jig is up for our lovable Paladin, guys. Good LP! Thanks for reading, see you next time for--


What!? No, dude, it wasn't me! I'm just as surprised as you are...!


♪♪ The Dreadful Fight ♪♪
Oh Rydia, you are a wonderful, beautiful, incomparably green deus ex machina.

And that's it. The time for tricks is over, and with the switchover to the more dramatic battle music... it's go time. This is no longer a scripted battle; from this point, you have to win.



There is no trick to this fight. Golbez launches Lit-3, Virus and Fire2 just slowly enough that you can keep pace with Life potions. All three of those spells will one-shot a newly-revived hero, and Cecil's Auto-Cover does not trigger on magical attacks.

He also has an absolutely stupid amount of HPs. There is no bludgeoning Golbez to death, as with the last handful of bosses. There's really only one reliable way to cut him down.

Rydia has the staying power of tissue paper in a rainstorm, but she does not come unarmed. Her attack spells are a step above even Tellah's, for the same reason Palom's were; she's got the Wis. stat to back them up. Plus, she brought with her a whole cartload of new Call spells, not the least of which is our dear friend Titan here.


It only takes a few applications of Titan to bring Golbez down. Your job, therefore, is to keep Rydia up on her feet at any cost. The only purpose served by any other character is an alternate target for Golbez's attack magic. This is why you might want to try and get Kain in the air; he'll land and join the fight right after Rydia shows up, offering his services as a lightning rod. (Or a Virus rod, as the case may be.)


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

Really, two Titans is all it takes. It would take forever for Yang and Cecil to rack that damage up with their attacks, but Rydia makes short work of it. Also, her chanting animation sort of looks as though she's licking her lips, creating the amusing illusion that her magic is powered by fried chicken.


As with Tellah, Virus is one of Rydia's best bread-and-butter attacks. Difference is, she's got enough MPs to use it reliably through most of a decent-sized dungeon. Unlike Tellah, though, Rydia's spells don't come to her in a windfall; she's got to earn everything she gets through level-ups.

This scene marks another first: this is the first time a hero has joined the party right in the middle of combat. Until now, everyone who has joined and re-joined has done so after politely introducing themselves, complete with fanfare and a text box declaring their name and class. Indeed, FF2 was actually pretty clear about the rules: this is how characters join your party. Combat is too structured and rigid to work any other way.

Which is another thing this game well and truly pioneered: it laid the groundwork, established its rules... and then it breaks the rules. Just when you figure you've seen every type of thing the game can do... the game gives you a new type of thing. Six caves and then BAM!, techno-tower. Airship plus a mastered world map, then BAM!, new world map. And so on. It just keeps jumping up out of the cartridge and throwing surprises at you.


♪♪ Rydia ♪♪

First thing's first: it seems as though we have defeated Golbez. So though it pains me to do so, it's only fair:


After that, it's Tearful Reunion TimeTM. But wait -- Yang told us he saw Rydia get eaten by Leviatan. What's up with that?


Aha, so Leviatan gobbled her up and pooped her out in a magical universe full of Summoned Monsters. Well, okay, that makes perfect sense.

Rydia is the only character in the game whose command list is actually altered; her ability to use White Magic isn't merely stunted, it's removed entirely. It's never explained why this happens, not even as a hand-waved tidbit of Caller lore. It doesn't even really make sense from a gameplay standpoint; the only time Rydia is the only White Magic user in the party is the short walk between Kaipo and Tellah at the very beginning of the game.


Yes, Kain, welcome to the conversation. Good to have you!

Likewise, the matter of Rydia's age remains something of a mystery. Rosa comments on how grown-up she looks now, but Rydia's only explanation is that time in the Land of Monsters flows differently. Ergo, she's aged about ten years in the couple weeks since the Leviatan attack. Obviously, this was just an excuse to add another heroine to the game who wears a combat bikini and stiletto heels. Personally, given the option, I would have liked Rydia to have stayed a child. The game has already established that children in this world are capable of heroism and fearlessness. Why backpedal now?


Ah well, enough about Rydia. Nice to have a five-man party again, in any case. LET'S BOUNCE.

Oh, but first, Cecil? Do you think you could do the most brain-dead retarded thing in history, real quick? I mean, we all love you, but we're just not convinced you're stupid and ineffective enough to be a true RPG hero.

That'll do, Paladin. That'll do.

This bizarre scene has to be the low point in Cecil's heroing career. Golbez literally turns into a severed hand, which proceeds to stumble along blindly on its fingers until it just happens to find the stairs leading to the crystal. This takes longer than you can possibly imagine. And Cecil just stands there. And watches.

This isn't like back in Fabul, where Cecil had just been pummeled in the face with Dragoon feet. And it's not like Zot, where he'd been blasted into a wall. What's stopping him from stomping on Golbez's hand like a worm? Is he afraid of hands?

I'm taking Cecil's point away and giving it to Golbez. Even when he gets his ass kicked, he wins.

♪♪ Giott, the Great King ♪♪

Giott rewards the valiant heroes who let his Crystal get stolen by telling them where the last Crystal is: a Sealed Cave that cannot be entered without a special key. You might think his next step would be to hand this key over, but no, there is exactly one lick of sense in this entire castle and by god Giott is going to sieze it.


We are regaled with tales of the Tower of Bab-il, the enemy's fortress, far to the north of Dwarfland. While Golbez is devoting his energies to opening the Sealed Cave without the key, it should be easy enough to sneak into Bab-il and recover the seven Crystals he's already taken. To that end, Giott is going to draw the tower's fire by sending in a squad of tanks.

"Brick, that's all well and good, but shut up and break the game already!"

Okay.


♪♪ Prelude ♪♪

While Rosa's Exit spell removes you from a location entirely, Rydia's only takes you to the previous dungeon floor. In game terms, the spell teleports you back through the last map transition you crossed. So if you cast Warp immediately after getting your orders from Giott, you are taken back into the Crystal Room; a map there is otherwise no entrance to.


This map coincides with one later in the game (the one in the Sealed Cave, actually), so you can actually take the Crystal of Darkness and put it in your inventory. This has some weird effects on the game state later on, enabling you to skip a rather irritating dungeon and shave a good hunk off time off your clock.

That's cheating, of course. I made sure to use savestate trickery to get that Crystal out of my inventory and back into the ether of Unacquired Game Tokens where it belongs. I just wanted to show you it could be done.


♪♪ Giott, the Great King ♪♪

How much Black Magic Rydia has when she rejoins the party depends on how many levels she's gained while she's away. Typically, though, she'll at least have made her way through the *-2 spells and Virus. Virus is nice, as always, but the *-2 magic is quickly becoming obsolete.

But that's no matter, because her Call magic has expanded far beyond the borders of the noble Chocb. She now has powerful attacks that hit every element, and a couple nice alternative selections aside.


Like Palom, she can equip the Dancing Dagger. This gives her a reliable 0MP back row attack, if you care to use it.


That's all boring, though. What's really exciting is that the guardsdwarves have been recalled, and we can explore the rest of Castle Dwarfland! First up, we can slip through this narrow hall between the equipment shops and visit Cafe HOWDY!

Cafe HOWDY! is empty except for a single dwarf who dances around the room. He is the best dwarf.


There's also this crack in the floor. I don't know what this is. It doesn't mark anything and nothing is hidden here. My guess is that dancing HOWDY! dwarf just sleeps in this corner, and over the years the horns on his helmet have chipped away at the masonry. Anyone who tries to convince you it's at all important is lying to you.

New castle, new treasure rooms. Time to get our loot on.

CRITICAL HIT REFRESHER COURSE: As you'll recall, there are two theories on the table that explain why characters lose their ability to crit. The first states a character loses this ability when they leave the party. Supporting this theory (so far) is that neither Rosa nor Yang have scored a single crit since coming back on board. (Yes, you can crit with a bow. Cecil did it in Cave Magnes.)

The other states that there are certain classes of weapons which cause a hero to lose the ability. Whips are one such example, and since Rydia comes with one by default upon her reappearance, she is destined to never ever crit. (But she can Titan instead, so who-the-crap cares.)

Axes are, supposedly, another class of weapon that remove crits. Axes such as this Dwarf Axe, which is currently the most powerful weapon in my inventory. I think it is very likely that players will reach this point in the game and slap this Dwarf Axe on Cecil without really thinking about it.

Towards the end of the game I will run a more in-depth analysis. I'll avoid using axes for now, but I'll keep it around for the sake of experiment later.


Oh yeah? Then I want this suit of armor. Why can't I take this suit of armor!?

None of the pots have anything, either. What a bogus room.


To get the treasures in this room, you have to feel around the walls for hidden tunnels. Tricksy dwarves!

The Strength Ring is good for a few points of Attack, making it a good choice for Yang in particular, but it's not good enough that I'd want to actually use it. When I was a kid I always gave it to Rydia, because she had the lowest Attack score and I figured she needed all the help she could get.


Outside the towers, the lookout-dwarves are on the ball. "Nope! No sir! No Golbezes in sight, ever since he teleported into the heart of our castle and absconded with our most precious treasure! Lali-ho!"

I subconsciously gravitate to the right when exploring game maps, apparently, because I always come out of the Dwarf Castle on the right-hand side here. So for a number of years I would talk to the "this side too!" dwarf first, and then not realize what he was talking about for a couple more seconds. In fact, you can see this very thing in action if you look at the filenames of these two images!


Once again, we are invited to take everything that's not nailed down. That the dwarves still have treasures laying around must be an indication that they've never had allies before.


The Bl.Belt Armor, named after an ancient KARATE-weilding hero who once suplex'd a train. Not surprisingly, it's Yang's best equipment.

I don't know who that that peckerwood is in the yellow hat is. And neither do you.


The pots in the towers were all empty, but this one by the Inn has just enough scratch to pay for a night's stay and a foot massage. Not that I'm the kind of stooge who would pay 600GP for a night's sleep. They're dwarven beds anyway; our feet would probably stick out over the end.


I do, however, need to stock up on Lifes. Up to now I've just been supplying myself out of treasure boxes, and using the Life1 spell when able. However, my need for these beauties is about to start outpacing that supply, so it's a good idea to stock up while I can.

"Out of the way, you Lali-hole!"


Dwarven armor is expensive, so it's time to sell off some of this junk. But I'm going to hang on to the Slumber Sword. I don't care about its sleep-inducing properties, but there's another character coming up who may be able to put it to good use. I'm hanging onto the Dwarf Axe, too, for future experimental purposes.


See? Told you armor here was expensive.

Rune Rings give a nice +4 to Mag.Def., the biggest boost we've seen yet.


We don't have any real use for the weapons here, although a few stacks of Darkness Arrows is a decent investment. Fire and Ice Arrows are still better for monsters with those weak points, but Darkness is better for dealing raw damage. Rosa falls into this weird kind of limbo state, where her damage potential using Aim always seems to just barely keep pace with what your front line was dealing out in the previous dungeon. It's actually more than a little frustrating, actually.


Three of these pots have Carrots in them, and you can summon Big Chocobo by stepping up onto the pedistal. The dwarves say it's some kind of holy magic bird, but we all know the truth: there are no forests in the Underground, and therefore no chocobos, and therefore unsuspecting players would be trapped down here with whatever equipment they'd previously shoved down the big guy's gullet.


None of the stone doors in Dwarfland have switches. They must all be triggered by highly-trained operator-dwarves, such as this strapping young lad here.


The passage leads us into some tunnels deep under the Dwarf Castle which -- rats and scallywags! -- has already been looted clean.


This dwarf needs to learn some fucking manners before Rydia earthquakes him in the face. Just because she's wearing boob socks, bikini bottoms and go-go boots doesn't mean she's easy, you lech!


At least his neighbor is a little more polite. Hmm... Super Cannon, you say? Why, how clever! That's just what I would name my huge cannon, if I had one!


All three of these chests contain Cabins. It's almost as though the game is trying to tell us something.

Okay, now, that's just sucking up. You don't have to try so hard, adorable little dudes! I already like you!


This... this is just the saddest thing I've ever seen.

I might... I might need a minute here, guys. Hold me.

...

Seriously, who could have done this? What unspeakable villain would have the sheer cheek!?


So here's a big middle finger to anyone who spent 600GP on an Inn stay after just barely edging their way through the absolute hardest boss battle in the game. Don't say I didn't warn you.

"Brick! I'm tired of dwarves! Can we be done with dwarves now?"


♪♪ Land of Dwarves ♪♪

Yes, we can be done with dwarves now. Well, except for in soundtrack titles, it would seem. The tunnels under the Dwarf Castle lead to this little cave just to the west, conveniently sectioned off from where the Enterprise crashed.


And we have a looooong walk ahead of us. Looks like we'll be spending some quality time in the wilderness of the Underground!


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

If it's hard keeping track of the party's power level in this LP, I apologize. Here's a little damage report to help you get re-oriented.

As you can see, Cecil and Yang are (unsurprisingly) our main damage dealers. Rosa lags just a little behind with her Aim command, and Rydia brings up the rear with the Dancing Dagger.

Kain's damage is actually fairly variable, and (thanks to the Drain Spear) is currently tied into his health level. At full HP he can actually miss entirely, even with Jump. He's a powerful boon in boss fights, but since we're going to be clearing most of the random encounters away with Rydia's magic, most battles tend to end before he does anything useful. It's not yet time for Kain's strengths to shine.




Rounding out Rydia's magical repitoire are the three elemental Call spells: Jinn, Shiva and Indra. These are considerably more powerful than the *-2 line of Black Magic, and can even beat Titan in damage if you hit a weak point. Most of the bad guys in this area of the game are weak to ice, so glam-rocker Shiva rocks the house, yo.

Rydia's MP total is off the hook. She can chain-cast these super-spells reliably enough to make Tellah backwash into his catheter.


♪♪ Land of Dwarves ♪♪

The open cracks of magma don't actually pose a threat to you; our heroes can walk right over them. Maybe they're just painted on, or something.

As we approach, the Tower of Bab-il exchanges some ordinance with the dwarf tanks outside. This will provide us with sufficient cover to sneak inside.

Science Fact: You can walk on the tanks as though they were perfectly flat. Or, well, I dunno, they are dwarf tanks; maybe you're just stepping over them.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Golbez's home base is the absolutely gargantuan Tower of Bab-il. From its humble base here in the Underground, the tower reaches up through a hole in the planet's crust and thrusts high into the sky near Eblan.

No, I don't know what the Tower of Zot was. Maybe that was Golbez's summer home or something. (Or, well, you can actually see three towers from the world map. Maybe one of the ones in back is Zot, and the third one is Golbez's Luv Shack.)

There's a second treasure box just offscreen to the south that also contains Ice Arrows. Did I mention stuff in here is weak to ice? These might actually come in handy if Rydia didn't have a spell that rained frigid death.


Off to the northeast corner is a tiny, square shaft that doesn't seem to be connected to the rest of Bab-il. Clearly this is Golbez's privy shoot, which empties out below into the Underunderground.

Also, an Ether1 happened.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

One of the hidden benefits of Kain's Jump command is, while he's in the air, Cure spells aimed at the party cannot target him. This enables you to wring a bit more healing out per casting, since the healing only has to be split four ways instead of five. Right now Kain is keeping himself healed with the Drain Spear, but even if he weren't, his heavy armor and back row position tend to keep him pretty healthy. Timing this on purpose can be tricky, especially a few rounds deep into a long battle, but it's still worth considering.


Of course, Rydia's also got good old Virus to fall back on. It costs less MP than her Call spells, so it's a good choice for those fights filled with pesky two-shot monsters.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Just a few steps into 2F is a box containing Yang's best helmet. No, I don't know the functional difference between this and the Headband he's already wearing.


Bab-il features lots of these tiny little rooms full of trapped chests. This is a good thing, though, because these chests contain cool new toys, and a cool new type of monster!


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

The Alert doesn't do much of anything except sit there trying to identify you. Once you attack it, and it's satisfied you're a threat, it summons a monster to murder you with by using a special ability called "Alert".

This alert Alerts up a Stoneman.


Once its monster is in play, the Alert switches attack modes and sends laser beams at you. It keeps doing this until you destroy its monster, in which cast it Alerts up another one. This is one of those times where it's practical to take out the Caller before the Call'd; the Alert's monsters are usually pretty beefy, and you don't want to have to fight your way through more than one of them.

Oh, and Alerts are immune to pretty much all forms of magic. Even Titan only does a single pont of damage. (You might think this is because it's floating in the air, but it's not. No shadow, see?)

♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

Our prizes for the fight: a Cure3-flavored level-up for Rosa, and the Blizzard Spear!

Though this spear is considerably weaker than the Drain Spear Kain already has, it's a good choice for Bab-il if you want to avoid Calling Shiva for some reason.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

But yeah, no, I don't got all day, and this shit is an IWIN button for over half the fights in here.

Mythology Fact: Shiva is an Aztec ice goddess who rides a motorcycle. Don't ask me how these ancient, equatorial peoples knew what ice was. Or motorcycles.


Another treasure room, another Alert. This place is just lousy with 'em!


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

Fortunately Chimeras are astounding pussies, and this one dies about six seconds after it materializes.

Cecil's new sword grants a +10 to his Attack. Since it's an ice element, that translates to something like +40,000 to most of the monsters in here.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Up on the next floor, laying right out in the open, is a CatClaw for Yang. This is an interesting weapon in that it actually boosts Yang's Attack by one, where most of his weapons don't do anything.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

Cecil's new IceBrand kicks ass in this dungeon. Did I already mention that? I feel like I already mentioned that.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Just a few more potions to throw on the pile.

I tend not to use potions in RPGs, preferring to rely on magical healing. It makes sense; the resources powering your spells (MP, in this case) can be replenished -- often for free. But once you drink a potion, it's gone forever. It's just good conservation, dig? What ends up happening, then, is that I'll find myself hoarding potions for hours, then getting hammered by Back Attack or something, and using fifty of them all at once. Ten hours' worth of potion-collecting, gone in a blink.

There's an equation in there, somewhere, you could apply to determine how efficient it may or may not be to use, say, a single Ether1 in the place of fifty Cure2s. I've never come around to it, though, because my brain is always scrambling with the practical difficulty of being injured and having to somehow choke down fifty bottles of liquid.


Next floor up, and the new weapons just keep on coming. This one is a slight increase for Rosa.

Get a Life, Rydia.

"Brickroad! You used that joke like three updates ago! Twice!"

Get a Life, Talking Time.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

Back Attacks can be absolute murder on your squishies. They're not safe on the back line -- not by any means -- but on the front line they're dead meat. In addition, Back Attacks come part and parcel with a free enemy turn, meaning they can often load one of the now-front-line squishies with more damage than they can conceivably handle. Cecil's Auto-Cover comes in handy in situations like these, but it's not foolproof. Auto-Cover only triggers if a hero is at or below their Critical HP threshhold: 25%. If the monsters can conceivably knock you down in two attacks, like these BlackLizs here, said hero might die without ever entering that magic sweet spot.

So I stocked up on Life1s back at Dwarfland. Take that, game!


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Next on the agenda is the first of two save points. Now that Rosa and Rydia have been enlisted we have officially graduated from Tents to Cabins. Tents are fine if we're just missing some HP, but they don't completely replenish MP. Rosa and Rydia have a lot of MP, and I've been casting a lot of Shiva and Cure3.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

Sometimes you'll run into Chimeras as random encounters in here, independent of any Alerts. For some reason, their Blaze attack will occasionally leave one or more heroes miraculously unharmed.


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

This floor is a pair of bridges, with a triple-threat treasure room pit stop in between. And just when we least expect it: a useless spell for Rosa!


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

The first room contains an Alert that Calls Nagas. I don't think there is a Naga-type monster anywhere in this entire game that is even the slightest bit threatening. The prize is an Ice Shield, which is exactly the same as the Fire Shield we already have, except with the elemental protection flipped.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

The next door isn't a treasure room at all. Rather, it is a tiny, empty space, not unlike a closet. I suppose, as a thought experiment, you could imagine Golbez storing some of his extra monsters in tiny closet-like rooms such as this one. Furthermore, you could imagine he has so many monsters that he stores them in hallways of unmarked, identical closets. The next logical step would be to force curious heroes to fight tedious-but-not-particularly-challenging battles in order to escape these hypothetical "monster closets".

Of course, that would be extremely terrible and unfun. Luckily for us there is absolutely nothing like that anywhere in Final Fantasy II. Basically you just poke your head in, go "oh man cool empty room" and then leave.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

The last room is an Alert that Calls FlameDogs, who are so easy to kill now they might as well be Imps. Our prize this time is the Ice Armor, a very slight improvement over Cecil's old Fire Armor.

I believe, but am not certain, that you can stack elemental bonuses by mix-matching your armor... say, equipping Cecil with Ice Armor and a Fire Shield. I am not sure how to test for this, though, because I cannot think of anywhere in the game where you would be subject to more than one kind of elemental attack at a time.

♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

The Tower of Bab-il already won the prize for "longest dungeon in this game" like three floors ago, and yet still it wears on. The treasure box at the end of that long, zig-zaggy dead-end path contains 2000GP.


The middle of the floor contains a large, important-looking locked room, and another dead-end path leading to a Cure2.


Someday, when I'm all grown up, all the baseboards in my house are going to look like that.


The second save point.

I wonder how much time went into thinking about the spacing of these save points. Remember, they don't simply act as spots where you can turn off the game if you want; they are also MP recharge stations. This was one place where FF2 had to totally retrain me. Up until now, in my RPG-playing career, magic was a rare and precious commodity. You had to treat it lightly, and it had to be budgeted very carefully. This was especially true in FF1, which used spell charges. There have been times in my FF1 career where I would have sold a kidney for a few more spell charges.

In FF2, though, you don't have to be nearly as stingy. (Well, once Tellah is gone, anyway.) You can use magic as part of your overall battle plan throughout the whole dungeon, not just against boss monsters. It was actually some number of years before I slowly dawned on this realization, though; for my first couple playthroughs, I really did drag my mages around with full MP, plinking away with their whips and bows, dragging out battles for no reason, because I was so used to treating my MPs like $100 bills.

Actually, it might not have been until FF3 or Chrono Trigger where I finally came around on the "use your magic, stupid!" front.


Another Ether2 laying in our way.


Through the wall here is a section of Bab-il we cannot reach. Ominous! And slightly frustrating! Locked doors and solid walls stymie us at every turn!


At long last, we reach the top of the tower. (Well, okay, not the top. But as close to the top as we can get from where we entered.) Golbez is nowhere in sight, but there two -- count 'em, two! -- brand new villains to thwart!


The first is Rubicant, the last of the four Fiends of Elements. (He's the fire-flavored one, for you kids at home keeping score.) He apparently has somewhere to be, though, so he hops into a teleporter and zips off to lands unknown.


♪♪ Dancing Calbrena ♪♪

The other is Dr. Lugae, a god's-honest mad scientist working in Golbez's employ. Lugae is a little unhinged, and goes drunk with power as soon as the bosses are away. He celebrates his impromptu promotion with a little dance and the obligatory monologue.


I love this little exchange so much. The idea that Rosa still needs to play mother to Rydia, though they are supposedly the same age, is just delicious to me. More than that, though, I love that this is what blows our cover -- even though we were standing in a big group about twenty feet away, not trying to be at all stealthy. In fact, there are moments in Dr. Lugae's little dance where he is staring right at us.

I realize this is one of those moments where I'm supposed to just accept that there are limitations on what crude little sprites can convey, and that I'm only watching a close approximation of the scene as it's actually playing out. I still like the version in my head better: Dr. Lugae is so addled that he doesn't take any notice whatsoever of the obvious interlopers until one of them mutters a playful, G-rated insult.

Classic.


Once he does notice us, Kain steps forward and gets his licks in.

(Er, I saved the wrong screenshot from this scene. Kain says something like, "Why don't you run for help, doctor?")

You'll recall Kain had a little t�te-�-t�te with Valvalis as well, in the previous techno-tower. It makes sense; as their former ally, Kain would already be acquainted with all these villains. Perhaps he's familiar with Lugae's propensity to hide beneath Rubicant's skirts when the going gets rough, and is trying to bait him? Perhaps he's still trying to impress Rosa with his manly repartee?

Or maybe Kain's just a jerk. Whatever the case, the good doctor hollers for his giant robot and attacks us.



Balnab opens by punching Dr. Lugae right in the schnoz. This is already the pinnacle of comedy, so I don't have to make a joke about it.


I wish there were a strategy to the Lugae/Balnab fight, but there's really not. Titan, Bersk, keep your HP up.


If you don't take him down fast enough, Lugae will say something like "I shall operate him directly now!" and hop on Balnab's back. This acts as an alternate form of Balnab, called "Balnab-Z".

If you actually see Balnab-Z, it's because you weren't Titaning hard enough. What's wrong with you?


♪♪ Fight 2 ♪♪

Balnab isn't the end of Dr. Lugae's tricks, though. He immediately attacks again, this time queuing up the boss battle music.


Lugae transforms into some manner of hideous skele-robot, possibly ripped off of blueprints at the bottom of Dr. Wily's recycle bin. He immediately sets to work Poisoning the entire group, then shooting lasers at them.


Aside from that, Lugae's other attacks are Gas (a Sleep spell that hardly ever works) and Emission (a fire spell that does so little damage you could safely pour it on your breakfast cereal).

And then, for no reason, he Heals you.

I don't know if this is a joke fight, or what. The repeated Beams definitely hurt, especially when fired at Yang, but he doesn't use the attack often enough to conceviably kill you. What's the plan of attack, then?


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

...did you really have to ask?

Punching Dr. Lugae into the floor nets us a Tower Key, which sounds exactly like the thing we need to open that locked door a couple floors below. Surely that's where the crystals are kept!


Ah, fudgesicles.

Okay, so the crystals have been taken upstairs and the dwarf tanks outside are about to get hit with the full brunt of the Super Cannon (which has not been employed until now for some reason...?). That leaves us with a stunning moral dilemma: go back down and rescue the dwarves? Or follow Rubicant and seek the crystals?

Before you answer that, remember we're talking about a guy who traded away what he thought was the very last crystal for a hot piece of ass.


While Cecil contemplates this chain of events, Dr. Lugae explodes and Rydia throws in a vote for rescuing the dwarves.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

It turns out to be a moot point; we can't use the teleporter Rubicant zipped away on even if we wanted to.


Which is a damn shame because there are treasure boxes in this stupid tower we can't reach! Come on, game! This isn't even cute anymore!


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

There are Medusae in the tower too. They're not dangerous or anything, but there are a couple reasons to mention them anyway:

• They're somewhat rare, and you can go through the entire tower without ever meeting one.
• They have a very, very small chance of dropping Medusa Arrows, which turn enemies to stone.
• You can kinda see their butts.

Fast, of course, is a great "fire and forget" spell for Rosa to throw around any time she doesn't have a more pressing concern at hand.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

Passing the save point on the way down, you can get an idea for just how long this dungeon is. I've been plugging away at this dungeon for about an hour now! Most dungeons in the game are this long, from here on out, and the space between story sequences is considerably stretched. In this way it more accurately matches up with what I was used to in FF1.

In fact, this was one of my only complaints about the game as a kid: most of the characters you use during the course of the game come and go long before the halfway point. Though the game has a fairly large cast of diverse heroes to explore, you end up using the same five for the bulk of the game. Sure, these just happen to be the five most powerful and versatile characters. But still. It's the principle of the thing.

Another RPG available at the time was the first Breath of Fire. In a lot of ways it's a kind of spiritual sibling to FF2, and in this one key area I always thought it excelled: in Breath of Fire, you could mix and match your heroes however you want. I really appreciated that, and wished FF2 had given me the option.



After unlocking the door to the large, interesting room, Yang suddenly had an overpowering urge to be naked. And when a KARATE has the overpowering urge to do anything, you god damn let him.

It turns out to be the Super Cannon control room -- and it's manned by three more of Golbez's henchmen! Lugae was such a pushover, perhaps this is the tower's real boss fight!


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

lolwut

I am of two minds about how to best deal with this fight. On one hand, you could make everyone Parry except Rosa and Rydia, who can take down the Dark Imps with regular attacks. This, I feel, humiliates them thoroughly and lets the girls feel big and strong, if only for a few fleeting moments.

On the other, you could Call Titan and devastate the Dark Imps in an impressive display of stunning overkill, for no reason other than you can. This tickles the same sadistic part of my brain that had so much fun casting NUKE on IMPs outside of Coneria.



In either case, it takes about eight microseconds to squash the feeble Dark Imps. They retaliate by sabotaging the Super Cannon controls, which something something something NOW THE DWARVES SHALL PAY.


♪♪ Run! ♪♪

Thus does Yang, a man who has shown no aptitude for technical tasks whatsoever, takes it upon himself to solve the Super Cannon dilemma.


When Cecil refuses to clear the room, Yang knocks him the fuck out the door using what, in KARATELAND, passes for a mere handshake. The blow is so devastating it knocks Cecil clear through the goddamn map transition.


Repeated pleas for sanity fall on deaf, KARATE-laden ears. Yang thanks his comrades for the pleasant trip, implores them to tell his wife to live for him, and then--



There's nothing for it, except to walk back down the tower in a state of forlorn shock. The hole in the party where KARATE once stood seems so large. So distant. So... cold.


♪♪ Fight 1 ♪♪

The sad music sticks with you until you get into a random encounter. My next random encounter happened to be an Egg. The heroes helped to alleviate their grief by making omelettes.


♪♪ Tower of Bab-il ♪♪

But at least the dwarves are safe. This... is what Yang would have wanted. At least now we know where the crystals are; it's just a matter of figuring out a way back to the surface world, then figuring out a way into the tower, then cutting a path through Rubicant and Golbez wide enough to claim them.

Oh, yeah, and speaking of Golbez...

Just before getting splattered all over the outside of the Tower of Bab-il, Cid swoops down in the newly-renovated Enterprise and snatches us out of the air!

Don't bother asking why hitting the deck of an airship is better than hitting the floor of the Underground. Hey, Cid! is playing, remember? The laws of physics currently don't apply.


And, in fine FF2 tradition, the game makes sure to fill Cid in on the party's comings-and-goings since he's been gone.


♪♪ Run! ♪♪

The reunion is short-lived. I'm not sure if it was because of all those Alerts we triggered, or because of the massive foundation-shaking KARATE-fueled explosion, but the Red Wings are onto us. Cid frantically flies circles around the Underground trying to lose them, but to no avail.


As they near the volcanic vent that serves as the exit to the Underground, Cid cooks up an incredibly crazy plan that just... might... work.


Yes. YES. Cid is the fucking man.

There is no indication whatsoever that this could ever conceivably work. But it doesn't matter. Where Yang is powered by the essence of pure KARATE, Cid instead taps his innate mortal wellspring of unspeakable awesome. This is a man who solves all his problems with explosives; a man after my own heart.


I like to imagine Rydia's reaction here is less "No, Cid! Don't do this!" and more "Dude, is this guy serious? Come on!" And I like to imagine, if the scene had been a little less hectic, Cecil would just put his hand on her shoulder and reassure her, "Yeah, no, I don't know. He does this kind of fucked up shit all the time."

Note that, at no point in the conversation, did Cid actually go retrieve a bomb from anywhere. This leads me to believe he spends all his time wandering around with dynamite strapped to his chest, you know, just in case.

Alley-oop! Over the side of the airship he goes.


Well of course it fucking worked. What do you expect?

With Cid blown to smithereens, the mountain outside of Agart crumbles in on itself, sealing the Underground behind them. The Enterprise is safe from the Red Wings, but the people of Agart must be flipping the hell out.


♪♪ Red Wings ♪♪

Then, for the first time in the game, Cecil meets tragedy head-on with something other than his typical helpless mixture of despair and confusion. He lifts his head, puts on his Resolve Face cues up that dramatic music, and pushes onward.

Next: "Can't keep this pretty girl crying."

Okay. Did you know characters gain EXP even when they aren't in your party? It's true!

This explanation is going to get a little technical, and is going to be a little more personal-experience-y than I usually get. So bear with me please!

Most FF2 players, even seasoned veterans, don't understand the power levels of returning party members outside of "they are a little stronger than when they left". And indeed, this kind of knowledge is not even particularly helpful in the game. When Rosa departs at Fabul she is right at the power level she needs to be for combat in that section of the game, and when she re-enlists in Zot she's been brought up to speed just in time to face Valvalis. It's seamless, and it works pretty well.

In terms of their relation to their ability to gain EXP, a hero can exist in one of four states:

• A hero can be unintroduced. Unintroduced characters have a fixed level; they have not yet started gaining EXP. This will be especially noticable in the next update when Edge joins the team with his laughable 790 HP. Characters in this state gain no EXP whatsoever; for all intents and purposes, they do not exist yet. (Kain and DKnight Cecil are never in this state.)
• A hero can be in the party. Within this state, there are two substates:
  • A hero can be alive, in which case he earns EXP from every battle. The amount of EXP you get is, of course, displayed at the top of the screen after you win. We'll call this value displayed EXP.
  • A hero can be KO'd or Stoned, in which case he earns zero EXP. Each dead hero increases the amount of EXP the rest of the team earns, because they are splitting the EXP total fewer ways.
• A hero can be out of the party. This is a character who has joined up at one point, but has been removed. The game still awards these characters the displayed EXP your living heroes earn, from every battle you fight.
• A hero can be dummied out. This is used in rare occassions where the game needs to run through a story battle without actually altering your party. Characters in this state gain zero EXP. Of course, most story battles don't award EXP anyway. The one exception is Edward vs. WaterHag in Kaipo, which awards 800 EXP. Edward gets this EXP, and so do Kain and Tellah, but Cecil and Rydia do not -- that's how I know "dummied out" is a distinct party state.

So that's the big bad secret: whenever you win a fight, you're not just earning EXP for the dudes who happen to be hanging around at the time... but also every dude you've ever hung out with, ever. Even if that dude is never going to join the party again.

The more interesting story is, why do I know all this minutiae about EXP? I researched it. By lowballing the game.

A lowball run is a type of challenge run where you attempt to finish a game with as few resources as possible. In RPGs this translates into finishing the game on the lowest experience level you can possibly manage. In most RPGs this means avoiding combat as much as possible and, in the fights you can't avoid, strategically killing off certain characters so the EXP is absorbed by heroes that "don't matter".

Well, FF2 is pretty generous in that regard! In the long-run, only five characters really matter: Paladin Cecil, Kain, Rydia, Rosa and Edge. You can run from all normal encounters, but not from boss fights, so my early strategy was to win the boss fights with only "throwaway" characters standing. For example, I killed the Mist D. with DKnight Cecil alone, so Kain wouldn't get any EXP. I let Edward, Yang, Palom and Porom do the brunt of my work in the next few boss fights, leaving Paladin Cecil's level at 1. The plan was to continue this trend all the way up to where Edge joins, at which point I would distribute the EXP as evenly as I could.

I noticed something strange, though, when I got to the end of Zot: Rosa and Kain were both much higher level than they should have been. Neither of them had earned any EXP at all while in the group, but here they were at a higher level. But "higher" is relative, in this context; they were still much weaker than they would have been on a "normal" run. Clearly, they were getting EXP from somewhere.

So I ran a quick experiment: I started a new game and kept careful track of Tellah's EXP level. After he left in Damcyan I logged all the EXP awarded from battles between there and Mt. Ordeals, when he returned. The difference was, to the digit, exactly what I had earned in the interim.

I had to change my strategy somewhat. My goal was still the same: keep the "final five" on the lowest level possible. However, since out-of-party characters were gaining the same amount of EXP as living in-party characters, my method had to change. I now had to win every single boss fight with every single character alive, to ensure the lowest possible EXP gain from each fight. And, because Kain is in the final five, I had to do this with every single battle in the game. This came as a harsh shock, since it meant even "throwaway" characters like Cid and Yang were going to be completely underleveled.

Over the next couple weeks I managed to piece together strategies that toppled all the bosses in my way. MomBomb was a considerable challenge. Golbez was a fucking nightmare. But I made it exactly to the point I figured I would: all the way to the last boss. Who was, of course, absolutely unbeatable on my tiny bullshit levels. But still! It was a pretty neat feeling.

It wasn't until after I'd completed the run that I realized it wasn't completely pure. While my "everyone alive for every boss fight" strategy did, in fact, ensure the lowest EXP gain possible, I realized there were exactly two bosses in the game where it's not the best way to keep my gains down.

The first, of course, is Mist D. Kill it with DKnight Cecil alone, and Kain doesn't gain any EXP. Nobody else has been introduced yet, and Cecil loses the EXP upon promotion, so it kind of just evaporates.

The second... well, would anyone like to venture a guess?

It would have to be a battle where no member of the final five is in limbo and gaining xp. So just Dr Lugae then? 4 of the final 5 are present, and Edge is unintroduced so you can do a little better by winning with just Yang standing.

Actually, the Golbez fight should also work that way. Since Rydia rejoins mid-fight, she should be getting in on the direct-battle exp tally. And of course, you already have 3/5ths of the Final Five at the start of that fight. Hard to say for sure if that's how it actually works, and I'm not playing through 6.5 hours of FF2US just to test that.

Out of curiosity, what happens (if it's even possible) if a character is KO'd or stoned when they leave the party?

The Calbrena are beings born of nightmare. I quit FF4DS before going into the underworld because I was too terrified what would become of me.

I wonder if the empty room was at one time slotted to be a third save point. And for some reason when they decided against it, nobody thought to put a Life1 potion there.

Being rescued by Cid always struck me as weird. We're already at the bottom of the tower. The stairs explode but falling probably wouldn't do more than twist someone's ankle. Trying to crash our newly repaired airship into the ground isn't a great trade for a twisted ankle in my book.

It's kind of amazing seeing how wimpy the bosses were in this version as compared to FFIVDS.

Especially with Dr. Lugae, holy nuts.

So Dark Knight Cecil and Paladin Cecil are explicitly separate characters in the game's data, but Child Rydia and Adult Rydia are not?

Weirdly enough. In fact, if you're utterly insane, you can actually learn the level 2 spells for Rydia before she learns Fire during the story. "I hate fire! I hate it I hate it I hate it!" *casts Fira in battle* "...What?"

I equally love Land of Dwarves, but my impression of it is entirely different. It doesn't sound cheerful or playful to me; it's mysterious and serene. Between the lava quietly underlighting the landscape and this track, the underworld is the most beautiful place in the game.



In retrospect, the weirdest thing about the Lugae Borg is that he was a Treasure in FFTactics and name-dropped in a major story scene in Tactics Advance. Of all things.

You mean it's not? My mind is now officially blown.

Re: The Calcabrina fight: If you kill all the Brinas (red) before you kill all the Calcas (blue), you have to fight Calcabrina the Cabbage Patch Kid from Hell.

So the idea is to keep at least one Brina alive while you massacre the Calcas. This can be tricky, because Brinas are far weaker than Calcas and will all die easily if you multi-target anything. Then you need to finish off the last Brina ASAP before she goes Power Ranger.

When I first started playing the game, the Calca and Brina dolls would assemble, then DISASSEMBLE, then ASSEMBLE AGAIN over and over. Just to screw with me. This was especially agonising when/if I lost the subsequent fight to Golbez and had to start over.

Well, now I know the secret of Calcabrina. Ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha!

I assume he blocked the ground for everyone else.

Dr. Lugae has always weirded me out. Not just because I still don't know how to pronounce his name, and not just because he's a mad scientist in a mostly sword-and-sorcery setting, but also because...

... he looks like a crazed muppet.



See? For most of my life, I thought he either had an abnormally large nose or was some strange creature Golbez or Rubicant or somebody had recruited. Or maybe a misplaced Simpsons character (sorry, don't have time to draw that).

But now that I get a better look, I think I can see Dr. Lugae for the horrible person he is:



Something like that.

Also:
This seems like a Deptford comic waiting to happen.