HSUP B TCELES - Let's Play FF1! Again!

Consumables! The Dry Ether restores a ton of MP, and the Megalixer completely refills everyone's everything. Still, though, not exactly what you'd expect as a prize from a bitch-hard superboss.

Three down, one to go. (Which requires another Earthgift run, naturally.)


Didn't I already use this screenshot once in this update? Oh well.


Another Elven Cloak! However, the minor trade-off in offense isn't worth the hit Zach would take in defense. And everyone else already has one of these! So it's gonna go on that giant stack of Kenpogis and Black Cowls we've been accumulating.


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Didn't I already use this screenshot as well? Sheesh.


Actually this fight was entertaining as shit. Echidna simply could not get Quake to stick on Ika, no matter how hard she tried. Now, in NES-FF1 your heroes have a hidden stat that governs magic defense, used to determine whether status ailments stick to you or not. It doesn't seem to mitigate damage though, or if it does, it doesn't do so to any noticable extent.

My guess? Dawn of Souls has this same hidden stat, and black mages absolutely rock it. Reviving the rest of the gang is absolutely not worth it, since they just go back down after a Quake or two. But Ika? Ika eats dozens of them over the course of this fight.


The downside? Echidna has pretty amazing magic defense too, which means Ika's Blizzagas kind of wash over her. His Hasted hits don't do much better. It's pretty much a race to see if Ika can nickle-and-dime her to death before one of her Quakes gets lucky.

Partway through the fight Ika sucks down the party's sole Elixir because he ran out of MP.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Eventually Ika wins an X-Potion!

Wait... X-Potion? Really? In a fight I needed an Elixir to win? This fight was a net loss! ARGHBLARGLE.

Anyway that's the last we'll ever see of Earthgift Shrine. Woo?

Next: A staff that casts Heal when used.

So... the QAKE is a lie? I'm so sorry.

The QAKE has BANE a lie since FF1. The RUB is that so many enemies resICEt it (all undead) on top of it having a crummy hit rate. <- please fit LOCK in there somehow
In fact, most XXXX spells are BRAKen like that. That's why I didn't ever buy FADE when I was a kid, because the players guide description made it sound like another spell for ZAP!ing things away. Boy was AICEurprised when it did damage like HARM, but without the only-undead requirement. I believe it was one of Brickroads LPs that CUREd my CONFusion.
RUSE LIT FIRE HEAL FAST SLOW SLO2 AFIR ALIT WARP EXIT TMPR SABR NUKE LAMP. All from memory, btw.
Do you suppose WALL would protect against Quake and Scourge like the ribbon does, or would it require the resist special attack flag?

Dude, you don't have to try so hard. You might strain something.

Best post ever.

When I read that post aloud, it sounds exactly like what I imagine constipation would sound like if it were something that afflicts the brain instead of the bowels.

I don't think Ribbons protect against Quake and Scourge, going by my experience with Scarmiglione's crazy-ass Poison Gas move and the assumption that it has the same type as Scourge.

I was actually able to use Scourge on Tiamat the other day. I've been playing FF1 on my cell phone.

I know that's not quite on topic... but at least we were sort of discussing Scourge.

And soon after, your boss swung by offering you a week off work and a free check-up.

♪♪ Airship ♪♪

The next superdungeon is Hellfire Chasm, which opened up upon defeating Marilith. I'm telling you right now, though, that the boys won't be able to kill the bosses there without some better gear. So let's get looting!

First stop is the Citadel of Trials, formerly known as Castle Ordeals. As you can see there is nowhere nearby to land an airship; it's impossible to touch down on marshland, forest or desert tiles. So where's the closest parking spot?


Why, way over here of course! Just how long of a hike is it...?


The first map shot shows the Citadel. The second shows our parking spot. Yeah, you pretty much can't get anywhere on the northern continents without a long walk.

Note that the designers were a little clever, what with putting a small lake with a river right next to the Citadel. This means you can dock about six steps away from the dungeon if you come by boat rather than airship. This doesn't really save any time; you still have to sail all the way here then all the way back. But the journey is a lot easier since you're fighting pissant ocean monsters and not hardass Eagle-continent monsters.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Anywho, in the interest of doing things the "right way" this playthrough I've decided to park two towns over and hoof it. I forget what it was that planted BlBelt in this shot, but Zach leveled up on the fight so I guess it all evens out.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

Even though there are no convenient parking spots, you still spend a lot less time wandering around the northern continents than you did on the southern ones. As a result you never really get a feel for the monsters here. Which is a shame because there are a lot of pretty cool-looking ones! See where I got attacked by a whole family of tigers? Pretty awesome!


Having survived the long trek, the boys spend a night curled up in a giant condom just outside the Citadel.


♪♪ The Ruined Castle ♪♪

After being greeted by the Citadel's crotchety old guardian, the boys locate the throne in question and teleport into the bowels of the castle. (Wait... do castles have bowels?)


This is actually one of FF1's cooler dungeons, and like the volcano and ice cave dungeons before it the graphical overhaul it received is quite impressive. In FF1-NES the pillars used to warp around the castle's innards used the same sprite as the white marble pillars found everywhere else in the game. In Dawn of Souls they look like hand-to-god teleporters instead, making the whole situation slightly less ridiculous.


The goal is to teleport from room to room, slowly making your way to the stairs. Some rooms, such as this little corner suite, contain two teleporters. In these cases one will send you forward and one will send you back. You could hammer away at this trial-and-error style... or you could exploit the trick: the correct teleporter is always the southernmost one.

Another upgrade from FF1-NES: when you teleport, you flash away in a beam of brilliant light. Very classy. Also, the music doesn't reset between screen transitions, so you get to hear more of it. (Are you listening to it? It's one of my favorite tracks in the game!)

The Citadel of Trials is where you can begin to explore a new dimension of FF1 strategy; this is where you find your first spellcasting items. As you can see nobody in the team can equip these Gauntlets just yet... at least not until after promotions. Not that you'd want to equip them anyway...


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

...when you use them as an item in combat, they cast Thundara! Free Thundaras forever! (Also the next round of level-ups is starting to kick in.)

There are a lot of changes to how spellcasting items function, which I may have touched on earlier in the LP. For one, you now have a communal inventory. This means all four of my dudes have access to this free Thundara, as opposed to only the one who is carrying them. I can have Ika use it one round and then Percy the next, if that's what has to happen. (I can't have two warriors use the same item in the same round, though.)

Second, another perk of the communal inventory, all four warriors have access to all of my spellcasting items all the time. In the original a warrior was limited to a max of eight, providing he didn't use any of his equipment slots for, you know, equipment. (Four spellcasting weapons plus four spellcasting pieces of armor.) Now, if I pick up a ninth spellcasting item, any of my guys can access all nine of them. (This is more of a curiosity than anything, of course; there weren't really nine spellcasting items worth using in the original.)

Finally, the working Intelligence stat does affect the power of spells coming from items. This means Ika's Gauntlets-induced Thundara will be much stronger than BlBelt's. This isn't really important when it comes to the Gauntlets, of course; Ika could already cast Thundara whenever he wanted. But it's definitely worth noting!


♪♪ The Ruined Castle ♪♪

It's a totally big deal with the item in the next room though: the Healing Staff!


Now the team finally finally finally has a reliable source of healing! Ika is far and away the team's best healer right now; Percy and BlBelt would be lucky to get half those numbers. Liberal application of the Healing Staff helps keep a lid on the nickle-and-dime damage a team tends to accumulate over longs dungeons. Such as, oh, Hellfire Chasm.



The rest of the treasure here is nothing to sneeze at either. New pieces of armor, a second Ice Brand, a little gil... all right on the main path. Veddy veddy nice.

Finally we get what we came for: the rat's tail. Just one last little hurdle before we can leave the Citadel for good...


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

The square in front of the magic chair teleporter home is spiked with Dragon Zombies. They hit relatively hard but are pretty good EXP, so if you have Firaga or Diaga you could do worse than to pop the fight over and over if you felt like grinding. (But you're playing Dawn of Souls, and grinding is stupid in that version, so you won't do that.)

By the way, Zach ate it really early in the dungeon and I didn't have anything to revive him with, so the rest of the boys just dragged his corpse around. He's gonna seriously be behind in the EXP when we get him perked back up.


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

That just leaves the long walk back to the airship. Pictured: super-hard monster that takes forever to kill and only gives 1 measly gil.


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Back in whatever-town-this-is, the gang revives Zach and then stocks up on enough Phoenix Downs to carry them through the rest of the game. Kinda embarrassing to have to drag your leader's corpse around like that.

This is another spot where a white mage is ideal: they can learn Raise. In the original the Raise spell (called LIFE) isn't that great, since it competes for charges with the incredibly useful CUR3, HEL2 and HRM3. Casting LIFE means losing a charge for one of those three other spells, and you'll always hesitate to use one of those other spells because what if you need that charge for LIFE later!? Going from a charge system to an MP system means situational spells like Raise are much more useful. Oh, and you can use it during combat now, which makes the souped-up L8 version Arise especially useful.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

On the way to cash in their rat tail, the levels just keep on comin'!

Oh boy oh boy oh boy! What'd we get!?


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Zach is now a Knight, which confers upon him a very stylish crown-and-cape ensemble (remniscient of Cecil's Paladin attire from FF4), the ability to equip damn near everything in the game, and the gift of low-level white magic. Note that his while Magic Level is capped at L3 he doesn't actually have any MP. Like other magic-using classes he must earn his MP naturally through level-ups. This means if you promote at max level you screw yourself out of the ability to use magic. (The original game had an issue like this as well, but with spell charge progression rather than MP.)

Though limited, Zach will be able to cast useful spells like Blink (RUSE), Cura (CUR2), and Silence (MUTE). He'll also get NulBlaze and NulShock, but not NulFrost, which is an L4 spell. (And just as well, since there's nothing in the game that really bombards you with Ice magic anyway.)

(Also, am I seriously just now getting around to uploading the Menu Screen music? Weird. It just... didn't seem appropriate until now.


Percy is now as close to a ninja turtle as anyone in the FF series has ever been. Cowabunga, dude! First and foremost, Percy now gets access to a ton of equipment he couldn't touch before, which means he can put that second Ice Brand to work. I honestly don't think his ACC can even get any higher.

He gets spells too! Ninjas have access to all black magic up to L4, which means Percy can cast all three -ara spells as well as the almighty Haste. Two Haste-casters on the team mean both Percy and BlBelt are ready to kick incredible amounts of ass as early as round two of a fight.


BlBelt has slicked back his hair.


Finally, Ika is promoted to Black Wizard. There are a few spells Wizards can cast that Mages can't, such as the incredibly useful Teleport. In addition, Mages cannot use L8 magic. So even though Ika had already attained Magic Level 8 through level-ups, it's not until promotion that he can actually make use of it.

If we had a White Wizard, it'd be the same situation, what with the few new low-level spells and access to L8 magic.

Red Wizards... uh... don't get anything, so far as I know. However, if we had one, we'd be noticing a serious hole in our party. His INT would be too low to put any bite to his magic, and his equipment selection would leave him lagging far behind our Knight and Ninja. Since stats actually matter in Dawn of Souls, the Red Wizard is essentially handicapped going into the second half of the game.


♪♪ Airship ♪♪

Enough about stats and boring stuff. New magic slots? New equipment capabilities? Time to go shopping!

♪♪ Shop ♪♪

First up is the weapon shop in Gaia, where Ika can now equip the Cat Claws. The weapon still pretty much sucks compared to anything Zach, Percy or BlBelt can do... but it's not so terrible that his regular Attack is useless. Ika's actually a pretty versatile character now, what with a middling Attack command and access to the Healing Staff.


The magic shop in Gaia doesn't have a lot to recommend it. All three of these spells are just some variety of "kill the bad guys, maybe". Needless to say these spells simply won't work against most bosses, and random encounters are better dealt with through traditional means. Of course, Gaia doesn't seem to sell all of the L8 black magic. Hmm...


Next stop: Cornelia, where Zach can get his first taste of white magic. Blink is an unbelievably great spell; stack enough of it, and monsters will simply be unable to hit you with physical attacks. This makes Zach an even better tank than he already was!

None of the other three L1 white spells are really worth getting. Cure doesn't restore enough HP to be worthwhile, Protect raises DEF but not enough to be worth casting, and Dia harms undead but only for a fraction of what Ika or Percy could do with Fira. Best to just pass them up. Percy doesn't bother with L1 black magic at all; we've long since left that part of the game behind.


Both of them get some L2 magic in Pravoka, though! Zach learns NulShock, which will be helpful in reducing Lightning damage before we've decked ourselves out in Ribbons. He also learns Silence, a situational spell that can turn some spellcasting monsters into pussycats.

Temper is one of the most powerful spells in the entire game. Percy and Ika can both learn this, and it stacks. The amount of damage BlBelt will be able to do with Haste and a few Tempers piled on is pretty downright scary.


Next, there's L3 and L4 magic in Elfheim. NulBlaze and Cura for Zach, Haste and all three -ara spells for Percy. Might be I'll never need these magics, but it'll be better to have them on hand just in case. (The -ara spells, that is, not Haste. I'm going to be spamming Haste so frequently I might wear it out.)


Finally we stop over in Melmond, where Ika can learn Teleport, which was previously denied to him. Would have been nice to have this in the Earth and Ice Caves, eh?

♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

In search of more delicious, nutritious magics to consume, the team makes for Onrac on the northwestern continent. Again there's nowhere nearby to land, so the team parks way to the south and hikes it.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

Folks in Onrac are really obsessed with legs. It's... more than a little creepy, honestly.


Not only that, but they're seeing UFOs and things all over the place. Is... is Onrac some kind of asylum? G-gulp.


Yay magic! Onrac sells the other half of your L7 spells. Saber is pretty potent in that it ups your ATT (more damage per hit) and your ACC (more hits). The downside: you can only cast it on yourself. Since it's L7 black magic, this means only Black Wizards can cast it. (Red Wizards can only learn Blizzaga at this level.) Now, Ika would be able to do pretty respectable damage if he were to Haste and Saber himself, especially if he had Percy backing him up with Temper. And indeed, this is how I did the bulk of my damage when I played an all Black Mage run of Dawn of Souls. There is, however, a neat little quirk to the Saber spell which we'll discover down the road that makes it much more useful.


Correction: dude isn't seeing UFOs, he's seeing UFO robots. Ooookay, buddy!

I sure do, Incredibly Cute Blonde Girl! I got it from a faerie I bought from a desert caravan who got it from a pirate, who lives in a town I could only reach thanks to my magical flying boat!


Incredibly Cute Blonde Girl implores me to save her mermaid friends, then floats away and fades out of existence. (You can just barely see her floating above the docks there.)


Well, I'm certainly not going to say no to mermaids. What kind of heartless bastard do you take me for?


Next: If the light of the sea is not restored, we will vanish as foam on the waves...

Nice composite!


It's such a good track that I didn't get far before I switched to the best version.


Cecil's attire being based on that of the FFIII Knight, the cape has come full circle.

I spent my entire morning reading through the twenty pages of this thread and listening to every clip of music along the way. It's been a pleasure, too!

Aww, Black Wiz no longer looks like Baigan! He looks like a taller Vivi, though.

And this is the first time I notice that Bahamut replaced his endless rows of candelabra with massive swords driven into the ground. His dragons must've complained once too many the hundreds of scented candles they had to light every day.

Hey, when you live at the bottom of the sea, every time you look up and see a boat you start thinking it's an airship too.

It doesn't help when you arrive in an airship that IS a boat.

Also:

I'm on Wii Browser now so I can't show a direct comparison, but I always loved how Remake Bahamut's a sprite edit of Hiryuu from Final Fantasy V, like those shaded and tweaked villager sprites. Try overlapping the dragon sprites sometime; you'll be surprised how well they synch up for the most part.

As for the lower level magic the Knight and Ninja get access to, while I know most of it has outlived its usefulness, I buy it up anyway to fill the slots. It's cheap stuff by that point, even just as slot filler.

For those of you curious as to what happens to the White Mage and Red Mage graphically upon promotionizing:

White Wizards take their hood down to show off their blond hair and get a red cape thing and a clasp to their hood. I find it to be an improvement.

Red Wizards continue the tradition of "who cares if it actually provides physical defense think of all the PLUSSES" with the addition of a silver amulet, some kind of mantle thing, and... thigh socks? Maybe it's supposed to be chainmail pants. I dunno.

Red Wizards also get an exclusive sword in one of the new bonus dungeons, which is why I was using one in my DoS group this time.....at least, until the cart started freezing up with inverting colors around when I returned to loot the late Astos's Magic Key-locked horde. >.<;

I'm pretty certain it's just an old cart having some issues, though it's the first time I've tried playing Dawn of Souls on a DS Lite. Don't see any "Nintondos" on the cart. =/

I've always found it weird that the old sage types in the remake don't look anything like they did in FFI-V. They're all skinny now instead of shifty-eyed fat dudes.

I still think the Red Wizard is a stronger link than the White Wizard. He can't ruse/blink (isn't there an item for this?) or use offensive magic properly but he can heal (useful in DoS!) cast Life (not useful in DoS) Haste, Exit or Nul-whatever. And unlike W.Wiz he can hit things. There's ice brand, sun blade, defender and at least a couple of those crazy DoS swords.

And his clothes look like a breastplate/cuirass and metal greaves to me. I cannot explain the high-heels.

Do you deny it? Do you?

She wanted it.

Mega Ran is so awesome.

So is this LP, but still. Mega Ran.

Superadvanced technology in an otherwise low-tech magical fantasy world seems more ridiculous to me than, well, magical columns. It's also less funny.

So you don't like Final Fantasy or most other products from Square. Your opinion has been noted.

Besides, the technology in these games is always powered by magic. No matter how stupid the implications are.

When did I say that ridiculous is bad?

The only pre-Magitek "powered by magic" technology I can think powered by the Crystals. Nothing in FF1 is powered by the ORBs (except the planet).