It’s All Upstairs From Here…Let’s Overanalyze Final Fantasy Legend

Krby unleashed everything his form had and then some, but the Creator had apparently seen fit to protect himself against monster abilities.




But we prevailed. Bloody, battered, but victorious. This evil, capacious god was no more.


Sana: I think…it’s finally over.

Xavr: The Creator was the one controlling Ashura. He was the source of all the monsters, he was what made the fiends evil. Remember what Ryu-O said about Sei-Ryu? They weren’t naturally that way.

Brda: He had such power. It’s a shame he used it in such a way.

Krby: What happens to the Tower and the various worlds now? We saw, he was able to remake the Tower and transport its inhabitants in the time it took us to recover from that fall. Are those worlds gone?

Xavr: They are…but in some ways, they aren’t. This is the Creator’s World, his place of power. With him gone, that power is ours now. We could use it to re-create the worlds, only without his evil influence.

Brda: That would burden us with being gods. I’m not sure I would call that paradise.

Krby: Hey, what’s that door over there?


Sana: That’s the choice, isn’t it? Do we abandon this world and keep exploring? There may be a paradise out there somewhere.

Xavr: If we did, then Demon Tower Island would disappear.

Krby: Arguably, it was artificial to begin with. Then again, so is everybody except Sana. And possibly her too, if there are other Creators out there.

Sana: Or do we take the Creator’s mantel and turn this world into a paradise, if we can?

Brda: I don’t believe this is truly a choice. You cannot hope to simply stumble upon an ideal paradise. Our journey has taught me that: We must create our own.

Xavr: Our actions have inflicted suffering on others, even if those actions were played out within the Creator’s machinations. We have the ability to restore what we destroyed; it would be immoral to do otherwise.

Krby: I’m just looking forward to the chance to play god, really.

Sana: It’s agreed, then?






We restored Ashura as a new being with a new purpose: To guard the realm of the Creator from anyone else who would seek his power to remake the world.


Sayaka was our guide in recreating her world, but she only knew it in its ruined state: No one remained who had seen that world before Su-Zaku destroyed it—assuming that it once existed in that state at all, and the Creator had not simply built a ruined world. We restored Su-Zaku as a symbol of rebirth, and charged him with turning the ruins into a thriving society.


Byak-Ko was restored with his leadership abilities intact but his lust for conquest removed. He would be charged with ruling the Sky World with a fair and just hand, so there would be no need for an army or a resistance. On a more personal level, Jeanne and Mileille would be reunited, though healing their relationship would likely take a very long time.


Every treasure hoard needed its dragon, every species needed their king. The reborn Sei-Ryu would end the feud with his brother, and Ryu-O would once again be King of the Dragons. We also opted to reunite the people living above and below the sea, and end their fear of pirates and monsters.


We thought long and hard about whether to lock the Tower and hide the small worlds away from our true one, but eventually decided that the statue of hero deserved to stand complete, and the door should stand open to all who wished to make the climb. The danger was past, the game was over. Gen-Bu would stand as guardian of Demon Tower Island against those who would seek to break the peace, and he would be able to share the true history of the Tower.

Finally, the friends we made came to see us off. Just because we’d chosen not to pursue paradise didn’t mean we wouldn’t do any more exploring. Rumors told of other worlds the ancients had created, those built on celestial pillars or ruled by other aspiring gods.


And while we were creating a new world, I made myself a cute guy in a silk hat to come with us. I deserved some reward for all this hard work, right?

FFL Mechanics Update – The Final Ascent


The Power armor I bought in Base Town is equivalent to the Parasuit in FFL2: It grants 70 defense, but prevents you from wearing any other armor. It’s pretty much tailor-made for mutants in both cases, but the FFL2 version protects from elemental damage, and this version does not, which is why I didn’t “upgrade” my human characters.


The Band helmet does provide elemental (as well as status) defense, so Sana could upgrade to the Arthur armor, not that it really made much difference at that point. In the final ascent, if monsters are taking more than one round to kill, you’re going to have some problems. Overpowered humans (with either the Catcraw or a legendary sword) for solo monsters, and mutants with Death books for stacks of monsters. You could also use the Hyper to take a few things down, or Flare books for large groups. But really, if you made it to and past Ashura, you’re ready for just about everything, and the game will throw you a few more bonuses on the way up. The time for grinding was back in the Ruins World. Now is the time for pushing solidly forward.


The battle against the Creator comes down to luck in a lot of cases, and your ability to pour out enough damage to take him out before he kills you or heals himself. (His attacks can blind or confuse the whole party, in addition to damaging everyone with non-elemental effects. When you hurt him enough, he just starts spamming Flare until you die or he does.) Playing “honestly”, the Creator killed off everyone except Xavr and then Xavr took him down in the next round (Twice! I fought the battle four times to get screenshots of things).

An interesting factoid: The lines in most parts of the game are position-specific, not character specific, so I could change who says what by rearranging my party. I have a whole set of screenshots of the final sequence with all the lines rearranged, because Xavr was in the first position (everyone else had died).


Krby was absolutely, totally, 100% useless in this battle. The Creator is immune to all elemental damage, which includes Elec, Flame and Quake. He’s immune to all status ailments, which includes Strict and Gaze. And his insanely high defense means that even 6Arms does no damage. If you want your monsters to be effective in the final battle, you can either switch them to healers (and try to keep the rest of the party standing longer) or get them into a form that has Melt or Drink, because the absorbing attacks ignore defense. You could also stay a Warrior (which has SAW as an ability) rather than switching to a top-tier form, which I believe is how the solo-monster challenge was completed.

Oh, right, the SAW. One more update to come!

Well done with this LP! I was a bit skeptical of the creative/diary element at the start, but it really won me over by the end. I think it added a lot of depth to the story without going off the rails and becoming what the LP was "about."

I played FFL a lot as a kid, usually on car trips, and usually up until the point where I saved while in an unwinnable situation. I either didn't use multiple slots or the game didn't have them, but I remember deciding that the save-anywhere system was more a curse than a blessing. I believe the farthest I got was just before the battle with Su-Zaku where you can actually beat it, so after removing the force field. I had a save in the train and I'm pretty sure you couldn't back out and grind more, but I wasn't in a state to face Su-Zaku, so I gave up.

I put the Game Boy in the closet, then came back months/years later and discovered that something had punctured the LCD and caused a leak, leading to a rainbow of colors across the screen. So that was the end of my Game Boy experience.

great LP!

FFL Mechanics Update – Instant Death

So, one more thing to talk about here, as I wrap things up. Instant death was game-breakingly useful in FFL3, and it's pretty much the same here.


Mutants get two instant-death spells, Stone and Death, which are functionally identical except for which enemies are immune to them. Once you pass the Sky World and a spell from a 99 Mana mutant won’t instantly-kill enemies anymore, those two books become your most effective way of dealing with stacks of monsters. (I kept a Fire book on Xavr much longer than I should have; his effectiveness tanked in the Ruins world.) Most monsters are not immune to instant death, similar to what we saw in late-game FFL3, so knocking them out in one shot becomes much more sensible than trying to land three attacks and chew through their HP.


Critical hits in this game deal instant death when the enemy is weak to the attack you’re using. Undead enemies are weak to the Sun Sword, and the reborn Fiends are coded as undead. Sana was doing virtually no damage with her pitiful strength score (20 damage per swing with the Sun Sword), but with three of the four fiends, she got a crit on the first round and killed them instantly.
Probably the most infamous bug in this game (and in RPGs in general) is the SAW bug. The original intent for the weapon is that it would hit 50% of the time, and if it connected, it would instantly kill any enemy whose Defense was lower than your Agility.


But the programmers made a sign error. The SAW will instantly kill an enemy whose Defense is HIGHER than your Agility. And it bypasses all other immunities. As long as you have a low-agility character to wield it, the SAW can kill any enemy. (Note that I needed Xavr to use the SAW in the final battle, because the Creator’s defense is 200, and Sana’s agility is higher than that!)

And with that, we bring my most involved LP to date to a close. These things are way harder when you’re trying to insert personality and additional narrative into them, let me tell you.

Thank you to all my readers, and to the Talking Time community in general for making this a great place to hang out.

I’d love to request some feedback about this LP (and thank the folks above who already offered some). Did people like the format? The material? This was the most in-depth and time-intensive one I’ve done so far, and I hope it was worthwhile.

And now I need to figure out what to do next!

I don't usually like LPs that turn the game into a fanfic. There were elements of that here, but there was also your interweaving of exposition with the actual barebones dialogue in the game, which was fantastic. The mechanics updates were nice, too. Great LP overall.

So, question: early on, in the Mutant Growth interlude, you said that a four-mutant party can complete the game just fine, and you demonstrated how a mutant can outpace others in stat growth early in the game. But, by the end, your mutant was way behind everyone else with no possibility of further growth. How would you tackle the late game with an all-mutant party? Lots of SAWing?

Mutants end up with a ton of spare money, since you're not pouring it into stat-booster potions and you can often use talents instead of weapons/spells. Load up on Death books, Flare books and Vampic swords in the cloud world, and you'll do just fine. Xavr's damage to the Creator with his Flare book wasn't that far behind Sana or Brda's with conventional weapons. Keep in mind, also, that mutants can take a lot more damage than humans, even if they can't match their output: Xavr's HP hit 999, and he can use a Cure book or Rod to heal himself or other party members. An all-human party wouldn't have that option, because those healing methods depend on your mana score.

An interesting method I've seen floating for beating the game with a solo mutant, actually, is to get the RNG to give you the POWER ability, which raises your strength by 99 (and appears to be uncapped), and use that on top of a maxed strength score to mimic a human and fight with the Glass sword.

As a kid I ran from all of theencounters in the final area because I figured the humans weren't getting anything out of it, mutants had already maxed out, and monsters only got anything from bosses.

I'm annoyed at the ending. I really wanted to see what was behind the last door. Oh well.

I think there was a remake for this game for the Wonderswan, sadly. I would love a remake that expanded on everything, as so many things could be fleshed out, but for a gameboy game it's pretty good.

Great LP, by the way.

I'm skeptical of whether or not the added narrative would work for most other games, but for this one it definitely added to the experience.

The added narrative made this much more enjoyable. I have a higher tolerance than most for "fanfic LPs" (is that a genre or does that only apply to 8-bit RPGs?) because I'm used to fleshing out the story myself for games this old.

Another fine LP thanks Beo!

Great LP, Beowulf. Similarly to other comments I wasn't sure about the diary aspect at the beginning, but you pulled it off well. The mix of story and mechanic updates worked well.

A friend of mine owned this in elementary school and we'd play it on the bus together. We were shocked that after we collected the armor set and beat Gen Bu in the first world that there was more to the game.

I remembered the next few worlds, but we must not have finished it, because the last world and creator fight weren't in my head at all.

I'm happy you included a monster in the mix. They were always kind of too irritatingly random for me, but it's nice to see one in action for a bit.

Thanks for the feedback, folks! I really appreciate it.

Sorry if I'm late to the party, but as a fan of narrative LPs, I must say that this is a good one. Thanks, Beowulf.

I really enjoyed this LP! I'd love to see you tackle Final Fantasy Legend II, Beowulf.

There's a FFL2 LP on-site, one of the first ones ever on the site, but it's haphazardly written and kind of starts in the middle of the game and loops around. I'd love to see it get a proper treatment.

I'll give some thought to doing an FFL2 LP. If I do, I'm going to want to do it right, which will require a bunch of research and hunting through the Nintendo Power collection, among other things. I've got a bunch of other things I want to do in the interim, though--there are a bunch of games that deserve showing off because they're not very well-known, and I have an idea for a narrative, interactive LP that could be great or could really crash and burn. So...yeah!

I am, however, totally flattered by this suggestion.

I dunno if I mentioned this or not, but I thought this LP was really enjoyable. The way you just filled in these rich personalities for these characters who have none, was really cool. The in-game dialogue for each of them seemed to really fit well with the way you expanded them.

Not only that, but it was super informative. Reading through it, you learn everything you'd need to know to beat the game yourself. The overall way it was organized was perfectly spot on, with mechanics in one section, flavor/story in the other. Even within the story arch, anyone who didn't care to read the parts you "made up" could just ignore it (why would you want to?), and just look at the screenshots.

Two thumbs up. Would read the sequel.