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

I agree, and I think that, Yiazmat notwithstanding, a lot of the optional Esper battles in FFXII do that. Particularly Ultima, who shifts through different battlefield restrictions as the fight goes on - really keeps you on your toes and means you need to have the gambit system down if you want to keep things from getting out of hand.

But hey, we were LP'ing FF1...

Oh, yeah. I forgot. HURRRRRR

Off-topic, I think someone (by which I mean Brickroad) should LP FF1NES with the Game Genie code VYUOKITE. It essentially lets you choose any block of data as a character. I like NUKE because its stat changes are random (from living up to his name to 1 hp damage in a single level-"up"). And the 3rd ANOE (CANOE w/ a space) looks like a pirate on the map. CUBE is overpowered beyond belief.

If that works in emulators I'll definitely have to try it out.

I know what I want the next FF1 LP after this one to be!

Seconded!

One of my favorite things about VYUOKITE is that when selecting "jobs" in the beginning, item names will overwrite only the characters that are defined for them. Meaning that, since the spells are after the chest gil counts, you get names like FAST0 G. Representin'. They don't show up on the status screen, though.

I haven't tried it, but apparently you can walk away and save whenever you like and his health won't reset.

Unless you stand just outside his range for a while, in which case he casts Regen or something.

That's not a spell effect....

Yup. Basically, as long as you don't try to partially retreat, you can keep the fight in a state of suspended animation (I've seen the fight, but didn't actually get to it in my FFXII run).

Sure, it doesn't make any sense that he doesn't just heal himself between your trips out there, but it's not like logic has any place in FF anyway.

LP PLZ KTHXBAI

Please don't do that ever again.

Yeah, I'm, uh, pretty sure that offense generally earns a biscuit-punching. Parish might let you off easy this time, but don't let it happen again.

It would have gone much worse for anyone with more than 14 posts, yes.

Allow me to summarise:

1. Boring Bonus Dungeon
2. Weirdness with dancer spirites
3. Flooded town
4. Death at the hands of Shinryu, back to your regularly-scheduled beatdown of Tiamat.

Phew, looks like I can skip right to the last dungeon now. Thanks Sven!

After beating Shinryu with a team of four Thieves I expect you could beat him with this team while both your arms are tied behind your back.

No, "Playing FF1 on the iPhone with his penis" is his next FF1 LP.

I know he can beat him with this team (shit, I did it myself a couple months ago), but at the current levels... I don't think it's possible for BBelt to survive long enough to start landing the killer hits, and I'm not sure how many Elixers Brick has stashed away to try and just win a war of attrition. Without savescumming, I can't see a way to pull it off right now.

Get BlBelt over 800HP and then we can have a discussion, I think.

Well if there's one thing the bonus dungeons are good for, it's grinding.

Failing that he could always kill off the other three and grind BlBelt at the PoP.

My latest escapade is running through the (iPad) game with a party of four Black Belts/Monks. Bowing to pressure from my 16-year-old self, they are called Quad, Damage, BFG10K, and BRRNN! (yes, with the exclamation point.) I'm about to enter the Marsh Cave. So far so good - except that swapping them around results in Damage BRRNN! Quad BFG10K.

...Will that be a video LP?

OK. I suppose there is a thin line between "harmless joke" and "annoyingness". I'll be careful in the future.

*blinks*

You see Lilfut, this is the acceptable way to prod Brickroad for more content. By running away with his thread and digressing into idle speculation regarding his penis.

Oh, hey, did Brick update his ...

*backs away slowly*

I bet he calls it the Screw Attack.

IT's A SECRET TO EVERYBODY

(and it should stay that way, please).

To be fair, that is also a perfectly acceptable way to further ANY Talking Time thread.

Oh god.

You guys just made my day.

♪♪ Sailing Ship ♪♪

Well, I'd forgotten where I'd parked my gorram ship and needed to use the world map to find it. This is the price I pay for attempting to make this game fresh and exciting for you cats.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

With that curiously Kraken-shaped statue out of the picture, Zach and the boys are now free to enter the mermaid's paradise on the other side of the whirlpool.


♪♪ Castle Cornelia ♪♪

...which turns out to be some kind of castle-in-the-clouds! Well, no. Not exactly. Welcome to the third superdungeon: Lifepsring Grotto.

Looks like we can get one of the more unique floors out of the way right up front. See, those shiny white tiles over open space are only visible for a few moments at a time. If you step off of them, you are teleported back to the starting room. This floor is huge and it takes a long time to slowly navigate through all the empty space because you have to stop every few seconds to re-orient yourself. There are no random encounters, though, so maybe it's a wash.


Also a wash are the treasures here. This Feathered Cap might be useful to us if 1) Zach wanted EVA more than DEF or 2) everyone else weren't already decked out in Ribbons. The other treasures here were a couple of Dry Ethers and a delicious Mind Plus for Ika.


Plus a bed that doesn't work. Such a perfect place for a nap, too!

Actually, there are a few restore points in the last two superdungeons. You know, Inns and things. These are pretty handy if you find them halfway through, say after one of the rough-and-tumble boss fights, but completely worthless if you find them only one or two floors in.


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

Lifespring Grotto has a lot of floors which are Ice Cave rips, similar to how Hellfire Chasm had a lot of volcano rips. I dig the scenery of the Ice Cave so that's no big deal to me.

There's a decently even split between "real dungeon levels" and "gimmick levels" in these final two superdungeons, with various sizes of each. Some floors cover only a few screens, others are huge sprawling messes. Most dungeon-y levels have a few random points where you can spawn on them, as well, giving the illusion that some floors are smaller than they actually are. Whether or not you feel cheated if you spawn within eyeshot of the down-stairs depends on how OCD you are about collecting treasures.

Here we see Zach standing in an empty treasure room. This happens a lot in the early floors, since boxes there have a larger chance of failing to spawn entirely. Nothing you can do about this except grin and bear it.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

The early floors also still spawn these easy-ass monsters. The random encounters in the superdungeons not only don't match up with the incredibly tough boss fights -- they don't even match up with the monsters in the vanilla areas of the game. It's not like the creatures in the Sunken Shrine could even tickle my scrotum, but they could at least do more than 30 damage to me.

"But Brick! That second shot isn't even an Ice Cave floor!"

Well, no.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

See, there are a lot of Sunken Shrine rips down here too. (Another favorite tileset of mine.)