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

Percos.

Someone with photoshop skills do that, and the cycle will be complete.

I'd make a comment about how this thread has limit broke us, but I didn't want to be seen as derivative. So lemme just say f(x): u!

Brick, this won't stop unless you update again.

lim(x->infinity) x, where x = this thread.

All these puns are really making me hungry for pi.

I wanted to add something to this thread, but all the lame puns I could think of would have just subtracted from its overall quality.

If they continue to multiply it's sure to divide us all! The risk is exponential. We only have a fraction of a chance of survival.

I've determined to within a .05% chance that the people in this thread are nerds.

Yes, but you can tell who the high-tier nerds are by how stringently they stuck to the trigonometry theme.

Oh, uh, math jokes. Angle-side-side, am I right, folks?

Careful, Mogri. I don't think we're ready for the Math & Science nerds vs. the Liberal Arts nerds throwdown quite yet.

You're reinforcing the nerd binary.

Eu gotta be clidding me!

If this hyperbole continues I'll have to log a complaint with the management.

It's only natural that you'd want to do that.

He somehow thinks we can return to the norm. I don't think that's a topological conclusion, though.

You're dealing in absolutes, but we don't live in your imaginary world.

What was the origin of these coordinated puns, anyway? I have to say that some of them are pretty derivative.

It's so standard for these pun threads to not deviate at all once the confidence of everyone who's posting has had an interval to gather steam. We all need to remember that Square is the root of why we're all here and just have a good time with the game! theory

Edward ^ ( Indra * pi ) + one to be born from a dragon = 0

Considering how big most parts of this equation are, Edward seems to be a major drag.

Ack! Er, man... What a downward slope this has become. Have Mersenne on us all!

The way I see it, there's a 50/50 chance they are.

And there's only a ten percent chance of that.

♪♪ The Airship ♪♪

Golbez may have all the crystals, but he doesn't have the power of legend on his side! Or maybe it was prophecy. I always get those confused. Either way, it's time to hit up Mysidia and see a man about a spaceship!


♪♪ Fabul ♪♪

Eh, I changed my mind. Think I'll fly around and do some lollygagging, instead.

Interlude the Fifth: Kitchenware and Dancing Girls

Man, if I'm not careful I'm going to wind up with more interludes than chapters. And come to think of it I'm not even sure that I know what "interlude" means.

First stop is Fabul. It only seems right that we let Mrs. Yang know that her husband is laid up in Fairy Wonderland with a(nother) debilitating head injury


Her solution to the problem is VIOLENCE. In Fabul they don't believe in medicine. The entire KARATE culture is built around the idea that every problem can be solved with the proper application of force. In this case, "force" is defined as "cast iron frying pan". We're supposed to re-visit Yang and batter him about the head with this thing.

This plan isn't as fantastic as something Cid would come up with, but I'm still pretty confident it will work.


♪♪ The Airship ♪♪

Next up on our agenda is to trade this nasty Tail we've been lugging around for a priceless chunk of Adamant ore. Which means it's back to Silvera!

...wait a minute, something's wrong here.


Heh, gotta switch airships! Too bad we're on a super important mission to save the world, or we could have a race!

Good to know the top half of the Tower of Bab-il is just as freaky as the bottom half.


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

There, that's better. Hey, I wonder what crazy mechanical wonders Cid could attach to our Hoovercraft! Maybe something in a mounted machinegun that fires in cadence to La Cucaracha?


♪♪ Into the Darkness ♪♪

Why yes, I'll take this priceless chunk of unobtanium off your hands in exchange for this mutilated and moldering rodent appendage!

I joke, but really, there aren't any rat monsters in FF2 so it's entirely possible that the nasty little creatures simply don't exist in this world. Maybe a Rat Tail is more valuable than rare and unworked ore. Imagine what we could get for a live specimen!

(Also I'm pretty sure I already made this "no rats" observation in one of my 47 FF1 LPs.)


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

"Hey Brick! Tell us something we don--"

Yeah, yeah, whatever. You can bring the Hoovercraft underground, and it still plays the not-underworld-overworld music when you ride around in it. Happy?


♪♪ Welcome to Our Town! ♪♪

Hey! Be careful with that, asshole! That's a priceless and ancient artifact we retrieved from the top of a secluded mountain that nobody had ever climbed before! It's worth at least half a Rat Tail!


Unlike the dwarven smithies of yesteryear, Kokkol cannot finish tempering an unbreakable blade in the span of a single dialogue box. He's going to be stuck here at the forge until we advance the plot and come back.

♪♪ Illusionary World ♪♪

The next leg in our Yang-bludgeoning sidequest takes us for a third trip into the Sylvan Cave. (Or a fourth, if you forgot which way to go and take the wrong path. Heh.) And this is where I feel I owe you an apology.

Part of the reason there has been so much downtime between updates is, at the outset of this project, I committed myself to always bringing my A game to this LP. FF2 is like my favorite game ever and it would just be a damn shame to get like 40% of the way through the project and then start phoning it in, which is what happened during my 318th FF1 LP. Eventually this involved making lots of animated gifs, which is quite a lot of work, but necessary in preserving the flavorful quality you animals have come to expect from LPFF2.

But I did skimp, oh yes I did. Having gone six months without an update was a little extreme, and so I forced myself to get through that Sylvan Cave update even if it killed me. Which meant I wasn't in the mood to make many gifs, which means when this thread is finally finished in 2015 there will always be one lackluster update just kind of stinking up the joint.

What I'm trying to say is, apologize, and I promise it won't happen again. And by way of apology, here's the gif I should have made for that update, but didn't:


I hope we can still be friends.


Don't...? Don't what? Don't whack your injured patient in the head with this heavy-ass KARATE frying pan? Like this?


Okay, let's be realistic here: this plan's chances were about one in a million. (Which still beats the drop rates on those rare Call spells.)


I-- wait, what? Just... what?

Hahaha, no, I'm sorry, just, hahaha, give me a minute here, but, hahaha...

Ha ha he hee heeheh heh hoooo boy. Phew. Now that that's out of our system, where were we?


Ah, yes, more rad Call magic! It does seem a little... strange that the adorable little fairy spell is available only after the giant-sea-serpent-and-king-of-all-monsters spell, but that's biology for you.


Sylphs. How culturally insensitive!



Sylph is one of Rydia's few healing spells; it drains a moderate amount of HP for a single target and uses it to restore the party. This will never take the place of Rosa's Cure4 spell, the way Asura can, but it still has its uses. For one, its single-target property is useful in at least one very specific situation in the next update.

For another, because of a glitch in the game the spell is actually free. Move it to the top-right corner of Rydia's Call list, and Sylph becomes a free action as long as she has 25 MP. (She doesn't actually spend this MP, but if she doesn't have at least that much the spell is greyed out.) If you want to exploit this glitch to take care of all your in-dungeon healing, go right ahead.

(I doubt they'll ever make another version of this game, but if they did, I would think this wacky Sylph trickery would no longer work. Still, not a bad way to spend 25 MP.)


♪♪ The Airship ♪♪

We don't really need the Hoovercraft anymore. This is as good a place as any to stash it.


♪♪ Fabul ♪♪

Mama done taught me to always return the things that I borrow, even though I'm sure this pan is no longer any good for frying what with the huge skull-shaped dent in the middle of it. Regardless, Mrs. Yang does us a solid by trading one utensil for another. And while I'm sure there's a little bald-headed cryptically-spiritual karate-in-training kid somewhere in the castle who would say otherwise, there actually is a Spoon.

Groan...

♪♪ Kingdom Baron ♪♪

Last time we were in Baron, Cecil's dead king commanded him to return here once he'd been to the Land of Monsters. Cecil is a good boy who always does what he's told, and the ex-king welcomes him back with open arms.


And by "open arms" I of course mean "yellow screen."

And by "yellow screen" I of course mean "epic boss fight".


♪♪ Fight 2 ♪♪

Odin is weak to lightning spells -- one of the books in Leviatan's library alludes to this -- and so here's a rare case of Edge's Ninja magic put to good use. He can't even (usually) top this kind of damage with Dart in this fight.


Ideally you'd want Rydia to have Lit-3 by this point, but Indra is a worthy substitute. Call spells take longer than Black spells to come out, however, which means Rydia is only getting one Indra for two of Edge's Blitzes. Unless we want to grind EXP until Rydia knows Lit-3, this is the best we can do.

And hey, is it just me, or is Odin holding his sword menacingly above his head?


Oh bollocks.


When Odin uses, uh, Odin, it's essentially a full party wipe. Without tons of levels and/or endgame equipment, there's simply no way to survive this attack. The key to beating Odin, then, is avoiding the attack, or killing him before he has a chance to use it.

The only way to do the former is to skip Odin now and come back once Kain rejoins. He's safe from Odin's Odin while he's in the air, and can win the fight solo if your timing is decent. Waiting is for chumps, however, so that option is off the table.


Turning the fight into a race is definitely doable. Odin only has about 20,000 HP, so you only need four lightning spells (some combination of Blitz and Indra) to do him in. Unfortunately, Odin uses Odin right around the time you've taken your third action, so that doesn't work.

Having Edge Dart our shiny new Spoon is one way to win the fight. It deals a guaranteed 9999 damage, allowing you to mop up with only two lightning spells instead of four. The Spoon is a one-time-use item, though, and can be better put to use later in the game. So let's rewind time and find another option.

The best way I know of to beat Odin is to cheat a bit and turn the Battle Speed all the way down. This causes battles to run slower, which is excruciating, but it allows for more efficient command input and therefore acts as a sort of unofficial difficulty setting. (Hear that, BioWare? Square was pioneering your breakthrough innovations in 1991.)

Casting Fast on Rydia is just a formality; Rosa doesn't actually have anything useful going on in this fight, so why not, right? You could also have her Slow Odin, but that doesn't seem to actually delay his Odin attack appreciably.


♪♪ Fanfare ♪♪

With the speed cranked down, Rydia has just enough time to squeeze in that crucial Indra spell for the win. And now she can summon Odin! That looks a bit like this:


Mmm... theraputic.

Odin is an all-or-nothing spell. It either destroys every enemy onscreen, or it does absolutely nothing. I've never seen it kill some enemies but leave others alive, and I've never seen it work against boss-class monsters. I don't get much use out of it, but hey, if you want to invest in a 45 MP coin flip, be my guest.

And remember to turn your Battle Speed back up, unless for some reason you want do die of boredom.


♪♪ Toroian Beauty ♪♪

One wonders if, in the history of Final Fantasy II, there has ever been a player who, upon visiting the Sylvan Cave and exiting the Underworld, thought to come check up on Edward before going to see Mrs. Yang. I'm certain no such player exists, but just in case, here's your clue.


♪♪ Welcome to Our Town! ♪♪

Say, now that we're back in Toroia and stinking balls-out rich besides, how about seeing what this Pass does?


Oh my god you guys! It's a secret underground club! This is going to be so awesome.


As names go, Saloon KING isn't quite as catchy as Cafe HOWDY, but still, I'm sure this is a quality establishment chock full of high-class entertainment. I can't wait!

♪♪ Welcome to Our Town! ♪♪

This old man got off on my happy ending! Weird.

Pro tip: put Rosa on point for this scene and Saloon KING turns into a lesbian cabaret.


Did you... did you eat the rest of the girls? Because 1) that's ghoulish as hell, and 2) how do you manage to keep such an amazingly trim figure!?


Next: "But his thoughts were still awaken."

I, I...I never tried that. I guess young me never saw any purpose in taking the hovercraft underground and missed out on an amusing bit of trivia.

The Slyph summon also has glitched numbers: it heals more hp than the game displays.

That is clearly some species of hedgehog that has been named after a mythological or long-extinct creature... much like our modern komodo dragon.

I didn't know about the PAN for the first few times I played the game, so I would always have to wait for Yang to wake up on his own later. And even though I know about the spoon, I don't know that I've ever picked it up. Probably in my last playthrough, but I may have forgotten.

Does she give you the spoon later if you don't use the pan?

I also had no idea that Sylph was bugged! Oh man, all the free healing I left on the table.

Does... does it bite a gazelle and then follow it around for a month until the gazelle eventually collapses from poison, at which point it and its buddies eat the gazelle alive?

Because that was a seriously unpleasant documentary.


Nope. And there's a really narrow plot window to do that sequence, too. I think once you've gone to the moon for the first time you're SOL, spoon-wise.