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

Simply wonderful. Modern FF games have multi-million dollar budgets, armies of computer artists and farms of computers dedicated to rendering only the finest in CG cinema... and yet to this day nothing quite matches a few well-drawn sprites infused with a crack sense of comedic timing.


♪♪ Welcome to Our Town! ♪♪

Wait... you mean we should hang a scraggly beard off the front of it, drag it through a magnetic cave, strap a few kegs of explosives to the side and drop it down a bottomless pit, cram shitty dwarf-food into its exhaust ports, and then push it so far past its physical limits that no force in the universe could possibly explain how it hasn't fallen to pieces?

Sure, no problem, buddy. We can take care of that for you. Got any requests for the Enterprise, while we're at it?


♪♪ Land of Dwarves ♪♪

Very super best idea.

So riddle me this, dear viewers...


♪♪ The Airship ♪♪

Q) Why is the Falcon Sarah Palin's favorite airship?

A) Because...


...DRILL...


...BABY...


...DRILL!!

I refuse to apologize for that joke.

Next: "This onion makes my eyes watery!"

Okay. Did you know there's a tiny strip of land in the Underground with unique monsters you won't find anywhere else? It's true!

Technically speaking, you probably won't see most of the Underground monsters anyway. It's Final Fantasy tradition to always park one tile away from the entrance of whatever town or dungeon you're visiting so as to minimize overworld combat. But if you were to wander around aimlessly, you would still never encounter the monsters I'm about to show you!


See, they only exist on this tiny, three-tile strip of land along the Underground's westernmost wall. In dungeons, each individual floor has its own roster of random encounters. But on the world map(s), encounter lists are delegated to individual "chunks" instead. This is why you find different monsters on each continent. (It's also why the famous Peninsula of Power trick from the original Final Fantasy works; a tiny bit of the starting continent carelessly ended up in the bounding box for a much later, much tougher one.)

The western reaches of the Underground, though, are mostly just huge lava oceans. Which means there's one "chunk" of Underground you mostly can't walk on -- except for these three squares.

So what kind of legendary beasties are you liable to find here?


First up is the Gorgon, a somewhat beefier version of the Medusa. (Oh, and also Medusa herself, in case you wanted to fight her some more after leaving the Tower of Bab-il. Both of these creatures can drop Medusa Swords, if you really want to spend hours fighting them... but Medusa Swords kind of suck so I wouldn't do that if I were you.


Next is the Talantla, a sort of off-brand Arachne. Like her sister, all she can do is spam Quake at you, so you can neutralize her by Floating.

BlackCats, of course, can still OHKO you with Bluster. Like Medusa, I'm pretty sure this is the only spot you can find them now that Bab-il is locked.


Finally we have the elusive GlomWing. This creature would be totally unremarkable except it is one of the few easy monsters Edge can Sneak Ether1s from. Which, hey, you know, free Ether1s. Spend a few minutes here and Rydia will be able to cast Levia with impunity!

Unfortunately, while you can buy Ether1s for 10,000 GP, they only sell for 1 GP each. So GlomWings aren't a bottomless source of money. A damn dirty shame, that.

Anyway, it's ridiculous to think you could ever play a 16-bit game on a Game Boy, and so it's probably a pipe dream to ever see this game remade on a handheld system, and a wet dream to see new content added to it, like new dungeons or a collect-a-thon style Bestiary. On the outside chance that ever happens, though, and you feel like you'd been super diligent in killing at least one of every kind of monster, but you still had a few holes left in the Underground section... well, now you'd know where to look. (Hypothetically.)

I will never get sick of this moment.

Never ever.

"Don't make me jump and spin at you, boy!"

I've always loved this bit. It's like Cid is saying, "So you think you can spend your time lollygaggin' with the ladies when there's work to be done on my ship, huh? Well I will knock you down dead! And then I'll do a little celebratory dance over your body!"

The way you turn away from the screen and also how excess rope is clearly coiled on the floor made that pretty obvious to me.

Say what you will about FF4DS, and you have. And you shall again, but at least it had the decency to make Trapdoors vulnerable to Slow. It's entirely possible to take them out before they kill anybody.

That cave was where my attempt to solo Cecil ended with a thud.

"WELL, ACTUALLY," says the obnoxious know-it-all

you can also find the same encounters right around here!

so you could find them by wandering aimlessly, but only if you're really dedicated to the cause of aimless wandering

1. Put Draw Attacks on Cecil
2. Give him whatever that shield is that protects against instant death
3. Trap Doors is chumps

Seriously, the Sealed Cave is like a whole 'nother dungeon in FF4DS.

LOLaugments.

Totally hearing this in Cave Johnson's voice right now.

Since that key belongs to the Dwarves, one must assume it's theirs. And I think someone already established that Dwarves don't quite get treasure.

It's probably where they store food and other perishables.

huh, how have I never read that LP? It's a Brickroad RPG LP of a game I've always been interested in but know nothing about. What's not to like?

EDIT: Maybe at the time I ignored it for spoilers in case I tried to play it later or something.

Brickroad, as a concerned citizen I have to ask - are you sure you want to issue that challenge on this forum? You might not like the results.

Why have you never played this before!? That just blows my mind...

Don't worry guys, I've got this.

That's it! For upstaging me in my own LP, you owe me two hilarious Photoshops!

I... I think I need to go in a dark corner and weep now. How have I managed to play this game once a year since it came out and not know this?

I didn't know. I swear I didn't know!

(actually this sounds like something I've heard before but I don't think I've ever actually put it to use since it's been a while since I played through FFIV)

I've known about Wall for a while, but I always just buy 99 life potions instead before going in. The effect is generally the same if they don't target Rydia the first time and it's cheeper to just throw out a Cure II/III/IV or two (especially since Cecil can often cover it for the girls).

Cid knows how to deal with goldbrickers.

Three things:

1) You imply that the Long Sword is stronger than the Ninja Sword when, in fact, the reverse is true.

2) You tackle this cave after beating Asura, so you must be at least level 34 going in. How the hell, even fighting every battle, are you needing multiple Ethers for Rosa? And Cure Potions? The only Potions you should need at this point are Life and, maybe, Heal.

3) You walk out of the Sealed Cave instead of using Warp?

I'll admit, you've taught me some things I didn't know about FF"II", but still...

Wow, Issun. My most sincere apologies for not livinf up to your exacting standards of quality. How many lashes have I earned myself?

1) I Dart the Ninja Sword and Mute Dagger so as to kill EvilWall as quickly as possible. I like to have a lot of space in that fight.

2) I think I used one Ether1 in the whole cave. I use Cure2 potions because I have a ton of them and they aren't good for anything at this point but conserving Rosa's MP.

3) I walked out of the cave because I wanted Rydia to have Lit-3 for an upcoming boss fight. Unfortunately she's still too low level.

Is that satisfactory? Because I'd hate to put you out any more.

How did I never know about this!? And Trapdoors yield more exp. then the monsters that they transform into! I feel like a total rube.

Rosa is Cure4ing the crew of the Enterprise! Does this count as my Photoshop, even though I didn't create it? No? OK, I'll make another one, I guess...

Just add some green numbers under them and you're set.

Or booze. They are dwarves, after all.

Jeez, a guy can't even initiate an FFIV e-peen contest without getting barked at anymore. What is the world coming to?

Do you remember what happened with Echidna during your Dawn of Souls LP?
We can make that sort of thing happen again if you want.

Demon Wall Percy now.

Kay.


Sorry Boss, I dropped myself. ON YOU!