Let's play Final Fantasy Mystic Quest again, because *shrug*

I really like that Dullahan's horse is also headless, and that Medusa loses her hair. There's a surprising amount of flavor in these enemy designs.

Yeah, both Mystic Quest and FFL3 are really good for that.

Chapter 8: Rainbow Road



Dullahan is the only non-major boss with any dialogue, but he dies silently. Why did we come to Mount Gale, anyway?

Upon our return to Windia, we find that the wind isn't blowing anymore, which I guess is what we were looking for. I was going to take a picture, but you can't really see the wind in stills anyway, so you'd have to take my word for it either way.



With the wind calmed down, Otto is ready for some Mario Kart.



Hooray!

Let's stop and reflect on the wisdom of an invention that relies on calm winds in a town named "Windia."



We set off to rescue Norma, but Otto stops us and tells us to hit the elevator switches with our axe. This is important information: you can't finish the next dungeon unless you do that. How Otto is familiar with Pazuzu's Tower is another question entirely.



Pazuzu's Tower peeks out of the clouds, but we can't see the Rainbow Road, which is a real shame.



The girl (presumably this is Norma, but she refuses to confirm) is visible immediately on entering the tower. This is not a complicated rescue operation. However, we've received a hot tip from a headless man that Pazuzu is the one ruining the Crystal of Wind, so we'll hang around here a bit longer.



Pazuzu is on the first floor of the dungeon... at least, he's there briefly. Apparently, someone mentioned we were coming. Pazuzu teleports away.

Pazuzu's Tower is seven floors. The seventh is the roof. At this point, Pazuzu has teleported randomly to another floor. Our objective in this dungeon is to disable the elevator (teleport-elevator? it's not really clear) so that the next time we confront Pazuzu, he can't escape. Depending on where he landed, this can be relatively quick or extremely drawn out. It's this kind of late-game RNG that makes FFMQ such a joy for world record speedrun attempts.



This dungeon is home to some very old returning faces. Like the Gathers from way back in the Ice Pyramid, these one-eyed fellas are weak to explosives. Unlike the Gathers, we can't kill them in one volley, and they have an instant death move. They also reflect magic (as did the Gathers). So... not as fun. On the plus side, sometimes Beholders self-destruct, saving us the trouble.



Another face we haven't seen since the ice chapter is this recolored Sphinx, now called Manticor. These are too bulky for Kaeli to kill in one hit, and they can petrify and confuse on top of dealing respectable damage. Good times. You can encounter Manticors in sets of three, which is basically a boss battle for us at this point, and it's not uncommon to die on the first turn of that battle. SHORTS can exile a Manticor with Exit, but he has to survive that long. (Spoilers: that is not something that happens.) Kaeli can less reliably kill a Manticor with Life, which is the only realistic way to survive the three-Manticor battle.



Dullahan is back as Thanatos. He retains his original moveset (including Doom Dance), but he also dies way quicker and is vulnerable to Exit.



Pazuzu's Tower has an unusual layout: you skip a floor most of the time you go up or down. After reaching the roof, you can go down a floor to 6F, which is where we spot Pazuzu. This is ideal: the only switch we need to flip is the one on this floor.



Not far from there, we find our first Wizard spell, which happens to be the last one in the game. We can't cast Flare, which is a shame, because it's real good.



"Hey dummy, Pazuzu is the other way." Okay yeah sure, but check out this sword. Excalibur is the strongest weapon in the game.

Well, sort of. FFMQ does a decent job of keeping all four weapon types relevant. Let's do a quick review.

Excalibur is our newest addition. We started the game with the Steel Sword, which quickly became outclassed. In the Ice Pyramid, we found the Knight Sword, which was never really useful for SHORTS, and it was outclassed for a long while, too. Excalibur is the sword coming back into its own. Nothing is weak to swords, but it's usually the best general-purpose weapon. Like the Knight Sword, Excalibur confers +5 Speed, which matters not at all because we are never outspeeding anything ever.

Giant's Axe is the best axe. We got regular ol' Axe from Kaeli way back when she first left us, and we skipped the second axe. While it doesn't provide any stats, there's a decent number of enemies weak to the axe, so it gets a chance to shine every now and again.

Dragon Claw is the best claw. We got the disappointing Cat Claw from Phoebe, and we skipped the second claw. The Dragon Claw gives +5 Magic and can inflict Petrify. Anything that can be petrified would be easier to Exit, but there's the occasional marginal use case against bosses that we want to inflict with other statuses.

Mega Grenade goes way out of style by the end of a standard game. All three bombs are plot-mandatory in a normal game, and in our case, it's the same. We could have skipped the Mega Grenade, but we'd end up regretting it in a major way later on. Mega Grenades are thrown on the map, and we'll need that later. While Mega Grenades haven't really been as big for us as the previous two bomb types, they're still the weapon with the highest attack power for SHORTS. We just need a lone target to avoid splitting the damage.



Treasure in hand, we can get back to our regularly scheduled dungeon. Don't forget to hit the switch before talking to Pazuzu, or you'll just have to chase him down again.



I'm gonna level with you, Pazuzu. I already forgot about Captain Mac.

Bird Friend's most annoying attack is Stone Beak, which deals minor damage and can (but doesn't always) petrify. He has 25,000 HP, which is a good chunk more than Dullahan had.



On the other hand, he has one other thing Dullahan didn't: an elemental weakness. Both characters can deal over 1000 damage with Aero, though SHORTS can't keep that up.



Pazuzu's most recognizable feature is the PsychShield, which reflects magical attacks. Unusually, it reflects the damage we would have done, meaning we'll take double damage from Aero. This is uniformly fatal.

PsychShield wears off after three turns, but its presence in the battle means we need to pay a bit of attention before casting Aero. Fortunately, Pazuzu always acts last on the turns he uses PsychShield. Unfortunately, he uses PsychShield in addition to his normal move, which is very often Stone Beak for some reason.



OK, time to get used to seeing this. Stone Beak is the only really dangerous move in Pazuzu's arsenal, but as with Dullahan, we can't do much about it aside from hope it doesn't land.

The rest of Pazuzu's moveset is fairly predictable damage. Our one saving grace in this battle is that Pazuzu's multitarget Sky Attack doesn't deal double damage against a lone Kaeli, making it the only such attack I'm aware of. On the other hand, he doesn't have any truly wasted moves like Dullahan's Hypno-Sleep. The best thing we can say about this is that it's more consistent. However, it's more consistently bad. Pazuzu uses Stone Beak more often and more accurately than Dullahan used Doom Dance, and even if we could keep SHORTS on his feet, he can only survive to do so if Pazuzu misses or goes last thanks to PsychShield. And if Pazuzu goes last, then he's using Stone Beak after SHORTS goes, which means we have no opportunity to recover.

We're out of cute tricks, too, since Pazuzu is immune to every status save Silence, which wouldn't do anything for us. No, we've got to settle this one the old-fashioned way: try the fight over and over until the odds go our way.



Oh -- and Pazuzu's Piledriver can crit.

We can't afford to slow play this fight, though. If Kaeli is petrified, we lose -- end of story.

How do we beat Pazuzu? In a few dozen attempts, we don't even make it as far as the second phase.

There's one other option worth considering. Kaeli is supposed to be immune to Petrify, but she doesn't normally resist wind. Pazuzu has one wind-elemental attack: Hurricane, which currently deals 215 damage to Kaeli. Strip away resistance, and it's still only dealing a manageable 430. Hurricane can crit, but so can Piledriver, which is stronger even when Kaeli isn't resisting wind.

The only problem with this? I screwed up my save state. I'm stuck in the pre-battle dialogue. My backup save state is from back when we were playing in the Mine.



But I have PAR codes, so it's all good. The Giant Tree is empty of monsters now that Gidrah is long-dead, so I swing by on the way back and grab this. SHORTS is invincible and has unlimited Wizard spell casts at the moment. I have my revenge on Dullahan, and soon enough, we're back to Pazuzu's.



Kaeli has her Petrify immunity, and the cheat gloves come off. Without the Resistance Glitch, we're just a few Seeds and Sky Coins away from a totally legitimate level 1 run. The only real cheat we've still got to our names is the code that's keeping us from gaining experience.

Let's do this.



It's a mistake to think this fight is free now, but with petrification off the table, the big worries now are Pazuzu critting or screwing with turn order in a way that makes Kaeli very dead.



Which, to be clear, are things that do happen quite a bit. But hey! Look at that progress!

Now that I'm surviving past the fourth round, I find that Pazuzu foils my usual approach to battles -- namely, fast-forwarding through the animations -- because I really need to tell if he's under the effects of PsychShield, and although it's a very predictable cycle, that only helps if your attention span is more than five seconds.



Whereas wind-resistant Kaeli couldn't afford to slow-play this fight, petri-immune Kaeli couldn't afford not to. Very cautious application of healing sees us through this fight.

I don't mind saying that the resistance switch is easily the best strategy I've come up with so far. The fight might not have been impossible without Petrify immunity, but it was close enough for my purposes. After dozens of attempts with the old resists, never getting past the first phase, I got there on my first try post-switch and won in about ten tries.



Battle finished, we are ushered into Pazuzu's elevator, which takes us to the top. (I guess those elevator locks had an on-death release mechanism.) The Crystal of Wind appears there, but there's no dialogue, and the chest is only a Sky Coin. We have four of those already, sort of, and picking up another has no effect. Our work here is done.

Next: Re-rejecting Reuben

Makes for exciting races too! Anything can happen once players get to this point.

Great job beating Pazuzu. That was a crazy strategy. This game got real rough real fast.

Chapter 9: Why Are The Ocean Levels Rising Up?



We rejoin our party back at Otto's house, where Norma is taking a nap. For reasons that are still unclear to me, we're still concerned with Captain Mac.



The guy we abandoned back at the Rope Bridge has finally found his way back. While he was down there, he found stairs to the top of Focus Tower.

Focus Tower is the literal center of the world and was completely open and unlocked until very recently. You'd think people would be more familiar with the architecture, but then no one seems concerned that trade has been cut off, so maybe SHORTS and friends are the only ones who bother traveling.



Reuben's discovery somehow gives Otto the idea to save Captain Mac by way of devastating flood intentionally created by pinpoint explosion. This is fine?



There's a million problems with that plan, but the most pressing is that Phoebe caused the place to cave in last time we were there by doing the exact thing that Otto is proposing. We can still reach Spencer's Place via the bottom entrance provided we get another Key Item.



Reuben is really anxious to join our party for this fetch quest.



SHORTS tells Kaeli to take care of Norma even though Norma's father is right there



And Reuben joins our party (but, like, for real this time).



Reuben is the game's Fighter. He only has Life if you pick him up in Fireburg, and for his second outing, he gains only White. White is the second Wizard spell and the only one besides Thunder we'll see in our level 1 run.

Reuben's weapon of choice is the Morning Star, which is a reflavored axe that's ever-so-slightly stronger than the Giant's Axe.



Anyway, Reuben wants us to go talk to his dad, but we don't care about Reuben's dad. What we do care about is using up these Heal Potions.



And buying no Cure Potions.



And turning no Cure Potions into a Thunder Rock.

Yeah that's good.

Yeah it was in our pockets the whole time. (N.B.: If you grab the Thunder Rock before Reuben joins, you can softlock the game. Don't do that.)



Handy.



Sure enough, we can walk right to Spencer's Place. Here's what the Rainbow Road looks like when it's not covered by clouds.



Reuben is a take-charge kind of guy. I'm pretty sure he'll use a Mega Grenade even if you haven't acquired them by now.



The explosion lets loose a very convenient amount of water: enough to completely fill the canyon but not enough to drown Windia. SHORTS is eager to claim partial credit for this.



Not content with modifying the overworld, FFMQ also shows the effects of our ecoterrorism in Windia. It's a nice touch.



You'd think Kaeli would be in a hurry to see her dad, but nah, she's okay with us going on ahead. Here I was hoping we'd get away with a Reuben-free run. None of the companions is bad, but Reuben is the least good.



Here's the north end of Windia, which has no special significance but is nonetheless very pretty. Please enjoy this screenshot.



The way to Captain Mac's ship is through the basement of a random house in Windia. I'm sure an NPC mentioned this somewhere.

Note that the Mobius Crest is required once again.



Two things I love about this ship: its size relative to SHORTS and that it turns to face him when we board.



Captain Mac's ship is a rogues' gallery of dead bosses, containing palette swaps of Gidrah and Dullahan. It's not a particularly lengthy dungeon, especially if you know where you're going, and it's one of very few that doesn't have a boss.



The very best thing about the ship is that you can climb up the mast. The dungeon requires you to climb up one mast and cross the rigging to descend the other mast. It's great.



Most of this dungeon, real estate-wise, is the underdeck.

The game has lots of these monster-filled corridors that cap in a disappointing brown chest. This one's particularly bad because the correct path has no monsters at all.



The music changes to the overworld theme as we enter the last room of the dungeon. Mac's here, but so is this chest.

Relative to the Noble Armor we already had, Gaia's Armor provides +3 Defense, +3 Evasion, resistance to wind, and immunity to Sleep. The extra status immunity is very handy.

This is the second-to-last piece of equipment in the game. What do SHORTS's resistances look like?

SHORTS resists fire, wind, and water. This does not matter one bit, because anything that deals damage will kill him.

SHORTS is immune to Paralyze, Sleep, Confusion, Poison, Blind, and Silence. That's every status except for Instant Death and Petrify. The final shield of the game will provide Petrify immunity.

The first thing Captain Mac says to us is about the Captain Cap. This suggests that SHORTS or Reuben is wearing it over of one of their helmets.

Kaeli suggested that the cap was necessary to show that she sent us, but you'd think Mac would be happy enough just seeing another human. Incidentally, I don't know if the Captain Cap is required in order to board the ship in the first place, but I cheated it out of existence to see what would happen in this cutscene, and the answer is that it doesn't change a darn thing.



Even then, Kaeli is hot on our heels, so we needn't have bothered with the cap.



Captain Mac brings us tidings about the destruction of all humanity, but that can wait, I guess.



Reuben takes a tumble and claims it's because he's still not over the Rope Bridge Incident. SHORTS tells him to get plenty of rest and drink lots of fluids, and with that, we're teleported out of the dungeon.



Spencer and Tristam meet us here and tell us that Phoebe is looking for us. This is good, because Phoebe is in the inn instead of in Otto's house along with the entire rest of the game's cast.



SHORTS tells Phoebe that Reuben is hurt, and Reuben makes a big display of it. The odd thing is that Phoebe shouldn't have any idea who Reuben is. Characterization



With an ominous introduction, Phoebe rejoins us.



Phoebe is our final partner. For the moment, she's still rocking Kaeli's Petrify immunity, which means she's vulnerable to wind, Paralyze, and Sleep, but I think Petrify immunity will be more useful for us in the long run. I can always switch back to Phoebe's resists, but once I do, the Petrify immunity is gone forever.

Phoebe has the best spell collection we've seen so far. Since we last saw her, she's learned Blizzard and White, and she has plenty of spell charges to back them up. With Phoebe in tow, we're ready to tackle the final dungeon.

Next: A Case of the Plot Dumps

The last couple updates took me a while to make sense of. So you got stuck with a bad save state against Pazuzu, reloaded a much earlier state, cheated to make getting back to where you were easier, turned off the cheats, then saved and reloaded to get the resistances Kaeli normally has? And now you still have those resistances but you have the option to make a one-way switch back to Phoebe’s if you need to?

Right.

The way the resistance glitch works, we're stuck with the resistances we currently have until we load a saved game. We got endgame Phoebe's resistances at the start, and in order to beat Pazuzu, we used Kaeli's intended resistances. Until we hit a roadblock, we'll keep those.

How many save slots does Mystic Quest have? If it is 3, then couldn't you keep an old slot around that has Kaeli in your party, in addition to the late game Phoebe save and the current playthrough save?

It has three or four, but resistances are reset when you load the game, and there's no way to load a different file's resistances into your current save. The only reason we can "borrow" resistances at the start of the game is that a new game doesn't count as loading.

What's That Bug

Your first reaction might be, "Well, that's silly! Why is New Game treated any different from loading the game?" Honestly, there's no reason to check partner resistances when you start a new game -- you have no partner. The real bug here is that partner resistances aren't changed when the partner is changed.

That's quite the oversight, and the result is that this bug has probably affected almost everyone who's ever played the game to one degree or another (but particularly people who play via emulator exclusively using save states).

Chapter 10: Finale, Part 1



Welcome back to Let's Play Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. We join Captain Mac now for an important announcement:



The game has a final dungeon.

Mac tells us to go to the steering wheel of his boat and press A.

This is the shortest plot dump ever, but then FFMQ isn't really about the plot.



Reuben is here, so we prod his wounds.



The ship is monster-free now. Did you know that it has a rockin' dragon mast with glowy eyes? I didn't!



The ship is self-driving. It takes us to a cave beneath Focus Tower. Those of you with sharp memories remember what's in the basement of Focus Tower. For the rest of us...



...here we are, in Doom Castle.

This is the last dungeon of the game. It does not resemble a castle whatsoever.

In this, the lowest floor, the center of the room is filled with shifting sand, much like the sand found in Bone Dungeon. Unlike Bone Dungeon, we can't jump while walking in this dungeon, so we can't take as many shortcuts.



The enemy assortment in Doom Castle is extremely... eclectic. It includes monsters that we haven't seen since the start of the game, and when I say that, I don't mean palette swaps. SHORTS can kill enemies like this in one hit without breaking a sweat.

Then, at the same time, we have death-dealing Shadows (not pictured), who can survive multiple hits from Phoebe's arrows and are immune to Life. SHORTS can potentially petrify them with the Dragon Claw, and Exit also works. Phoebe has attack magic for dealing with Shadows, fortunately. Blizzard and White are both effective, depending on whether she needs to kill one or two Shadows.



Screw up your sand navigation, and you'll find yourself at the bottom of the room. Fortunately, the Aegis Shield is here.

Unfortunately, at this point, I notice I don't have my no-XP code on. Time to load an earlier save state.



Did you know there are vendors in Mac's ship? I didn't!

And here's where we'd be roadblocked without a Mega Grenade.



The stairs lead up here, where it looks like we should be able to sneak past this recolored Flamerus Rex. We can't.



Oh, good. I was really afraid I wouldn't get a shot of the Shadows.



White plus Aero is enough to take out the Shadows. As for Skullrus Rex...



...it suffers an unfortunate lack of Petrify immunity.

So that was a boss.



The next two floors take us through Focus Tower proper, uninterrupted by combat. This is also the check for the Sun Coin we've been carrying around for half the game.



And now we're in a more castle-like Doom Castle. Don't be fooled: this is just the belly of Focus Tower.



Oh hey! It's a Best Of montage. Here in floor 4, we have the Ice Pyramid remix. Since the last area aped Bone Dungeon, you can probably guess how the rest of this is gonna go.

Note the double Shadows. Shadow is the only threatening standard encounter in this dungeon. We'll see a lot of 'em.



The Ice Pyramid floor is a mess of switch-activated doors. You get to the end of the thing and then realize you needed to go the other way back at the start to open the door in front of you.

The enemy guarding that switch? It's Freezer Crab, the second boss that we fought with Phoebe the first time she was with us. Of course, it's accompanied by a Shadow or two.



In a very small room is the Stone Golem, who is flanked by the only other remotely contemporary monster: Cerberus was introduced on Mac's Ship.

Stone Golem loses Ice Golem's fire weakness. In fact, it's not weak to anything, and it resists fire and earth.

The adds in this fight aren't decoration. Cerberus can cause confusion, petrification, and instant death, and they can outspeed Phoebe. This makes for an annoying start to the fight. Life and Exit are recommended to get them out of the picture quickly.



With only Stone Golem left, Phoebe's White does just short of 2000 damage, which is quite nice.

Stone Golem deals nearly 900 damage with Stone Block. That's really frustrating when dealing with the Cerberus at the same time, but it's not too bad on its own. The bigger threats are Stare, which confuses, and Corrode Gas, which just misses but according to legend is an instant kill if it should ever connect.



That's a full list of single-target attacks, though, which means that Stone Golem is the first boss in, like, forever where it makes sense to keep SHORTS operational. Because he's immune to Confusion, he isn't just insurance in this fight!

(I mean, technically, SHORTS dealt the killing blow to Skullrus Rex, so maybe this is the second boss in, like, forever.)



White makes quick work of Stone Giant. We're on a roll -- that's two consecutive bosses with no retries.



There's nothing else to see in the Ice Pyramid floor, but when we return to the grand stairway, the roadblocks are gone.

Next: The End?

You can also kill him with Life. I think they just straight up forgot to make him immune to anything.

I just started reading this LP and I'm already fascinated by the glitches and the tease for further glitches to be revealed.

What manner of heresy has befallen these 2 screenshots? Did a brief accident turn off the game genie magic?

Note that you can only gain one level per fight.

Chapter 11: Finale, Part 2



Hello, place we've never seen before.

This floor of Doom Castle mimics Lava Dome, which I popped into so I could pick up Life. It's come in handy exactly once, and even then, I could've worked around it, so we might as well be seeing this area for the first time. The gimmick in this floor is that you have to hop across stones in the lava. It's much shorter and way more straightforward than the Ice Pyramid floor.



The bonus enemies in this battle are recolored versions of the other bosses in the Fire Crystal chapter. It's a nice touch, even if they're horribly out of date. Stheno can still petrify and confuse, though, so maybe get her out of the way.

Twinhead Wyvern is a recolored Dualhead Hydra. Since we skipped that boss, we didn't get a chance to appreciate its lack of weaknesses. Amusingly, Twinhead Wyvern is weak to Blizzard and Aero, but even with weaknesses, Blizzard is weaker than White, and Phoebe doesn't know Aero, so we won't get a chance to appreciate that, either.



The era of free ride bosses has come to an abrupt end. Twinhead Wyvern is no joke. Fire Breath takes just over half of Phoebe's maximum health, and Para-Breath shuts her right down. That's bad.

I take a look at the upcoming bosses and do something that I hope I won't regret.



Phoebe is back to form, invulnerable again to Paralyze and Sleep at the cost of Petrify immunity. She's also resistant to wind again, which doesn't matter in this fight, but it'll be very handy before long.



Not helping things is the fact that Twinhead Wyvern has a clear speed advantage on Phoebe. It's time to break out a tactic that we haven't actually used in earnest: auto partner AI.

Auto allows Phoebe to react to Twinhead Wyvern. Most often, this means casting Life on SHORTS, but she can also heal herself in case she gets Flame Pillared. Relegated to healing, Phoebe relies on SHORTS to deal damage with Aero. SHORTS gets one shot of Aero between refills, but even at 1300 every other round, Aero outdamages Mega Grenade.

Left to her own devices, Phoebe will cast Thunder, evidently a weakness that my sources don't list. Even with the weakness, White is stronger, so thanks for that, auto AI.



At this slow pace, very little can go wrong, but "very little" isn't the same as "nothing." A critical Bite kills Phoebe if she isn't absolutely full on health. This ends my first run.

There's also the low-key issue of Phoebe running out of spells. The battle probably doesn't last that long, but it can easily slip your notice if she's on full auto.



With the proper strategy in hand, Twinhead Wyvern falls easily on the second attempt.

Let's take a moment to appreciate this fight. Phoebe definitely couldn't have soloed Twinhead Wyvern unless we knew ahead of time what it was going to do. In the end, SHORTS contributed most of the damage. If you thought this adventure was about SHORTS keeping his face on the floor while the partners did all the work, let this be the battle that redeems our hero.



We can't leave via the route we entered, so Phoebe's new resistances make this fight a minor issue.

We approach the end of our journey. The boss is in view soon after you enter this floor, but if you turn to take a good look, you'll fall to the previous floor. That's the Ice Pyramid gimmick, not Pazuzu's Tower!



Zuh is our boss this time. He's surrounded by two boss-swaps that are less threatening than a Cerberus on average, but since they still have their own ways to ruin your day, you'll want them out of the way fast.

Zuh retains Pazuzu's signature PsychShield, but he trades Stone Beak for Doom Dance, which we know well from our travails with Dullahan. Will this be a repeat of that fight?



Zuh occasionally "attacks with PsychShield," dealing 1 damage to one or both heroes. This feels like a bug. I won't complain.



And by "occasionally," I apparently mean "all the time," because he's really not doing anything else on this attempt.



What could have been another showstopper ends up being a trivial fight. With his amazing ability to survive PsychShield, SHORTS once again manages to contribute here. For her part, Phoebe can pump out the damage with White, but if we leave her on auto, she'll attack with her bow instead, once again dealing less damage in order to take advantage of a weakness.

I really thought I'd be stuck for an hour on this one, but Zuh had other things to say about it.



That brings us to the summit of Doom Castle. One more battle keeps us from the end of this quest.



The Crystals call him one of the Knights of Light, but at level 1, SHORTS more closely fits the profile of a farmer's son. We respect the lore around here.



So said, the Crystals give us a bunch of random consumables. ...Thanks?

Hold on, though. About those Heal Potions...



...err, never mind. I guess we don't need our inventory anymore.



We step through the door into... uh, this.

A last-minute boss reveal set in an inexplicable starfield? This is a real Final Fantasy!

Dark King, we meet at last!

Indeed, and now you will serve me...

I don't think so! We won't allow you to ruin our World.

Alas, silly humans, I must share a terrible secret! That Prophecy? Ages ago, I started that rumor! Welcome to the power of Darkness!

To the extent that FFMQ has a plot twist, this is it. The prophecy that bad things would happen to the Crystals and that someone would rise up and fix everything? The Dark King made it all up.

And I want to talk about this.

Why?

What's the point? You go and do this thing and then spread the rumor that someone will kill all your dudes and defeat you. You're just inviting someone to try! You're giving them instructions, even!



So let's bring this prophecy to its logical conclusion.



If there's one glitch everyone knows about FFMQ, it's this one. Cast Cure on the Dark King, and he drops dead. We can keep SHORTS alive if Phoebe uses Defend.



The result is that the Dark King gains 32,000 health. That's not what you usually see when you do this.

FFMQ delivers our run one final twist in this battle. Let's talk about the bug and what we should be seeing here.

As mentioned way back at the start of the LP, Cure heals for (50 + 1.5 x Magic)% of the target's maximum health. Dark King has 40,000 HP, and with the Dragon Claw equipped, SHORTS has 20 Magic. 80% of 40,000 is 32,000, so that's what we'd expect to see. We could unequip the Dragon Claw and heal for 29,000 instead.

But what if SHORTS had a bit more?

At 22 Magic, SHORTS would heal for 33,200. The maximum value for an integer in the SNES hardware is 32,767. By exceeding that value, the healing overflows -- instead of healing for 33,200, SHORTS would deal 32,336 damage.

If SHORTS had two more points of Magic, we'd deal the maximum possible damage value, killing Dark King in two rounds. Instead, we can heal him for 80% of his health.

What about Phoebe? She has 99 Magic -- pretty impressive! At that value, she restores 199% of Dark King's health in one shot. That's 79,400, which is plenty to overflow -- but it's too much, and it ends up positive again, healing for 13,864.

SHORTS is too weak, and Phoebe is too strong, and we've got to kill Dark King legit.

Next: Heaven or Hell, Let's Rock

My theory is that he is inviting someone to try...and fail, because the prophecy is pimmcred. So, basically, it's giving the people a source of hope, only to snatch it away and bring them even deeper into despair. Alternatively, it's just a game to him, or even some combination of the two.

Kind of reminds me of a the Creator from FFL1, who creates the tower and the bosses and the prize on top to goad people into playing the game he invented.

So hey, that's another asset they borrow from SaGa!

It's a shame that you can't chainsaw Dark King in the face.

Pimmcred?
Is that like a Pimm's Cup?

Due to another of this game's amazing bugs, Phoebe 2.0 can actually sometimes cast Aero when controlled by the AI.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that one. In this case, she doesn't, though! The AI is a multitude of wonder and disappointments.

I love this.

Oh wow. What a twist!

It's Al Bhed for...shall we say, the excrement of a male bovine.