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

♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

The next floor utilizes tiles and music from the Chaos Shrine from 2000 years ago, which is the final dungeon in the game. Which is like... man, spoiler warning, you know? But I suppose anyone who gets this far in Lifespring Grotto is either already familiar with the game or has already finished playing the core of it, so maybe it's not a big deal.

You know what is a big deal, though? That the music track used in the Sunken Shrine is called "Chaos Shrine", and the track used in the Chaos Shrine is called "Sunken Shrine". I hope someone got fired over that. There actually were two "temple" dungeon tracks in the NES game; the main one used for the ruined temple in the beginning as well as the Sea Shrine, and then a darker, more ominous one used for the final dungeon. The only thing I can figure is that at some point in Dawn's development the more ominous track was going to be used in the Sunken Shrine as well, but that ended up not happening. As a result the track called "Sunken Shrine" never actually plays in the Sunken Shrine.

Things like this keep me awake at night. I am a very lonely man.


It looks like you can read this stone slab, but you can't. There's nothing interesting about this screenshot at all.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

The next floor is a mermaid village! Except it's not a village in the sense that it has shops or an inn or a church or even any houses. Just lots and lots of NPCs, and apparently a man carrying a halberd.


A lot handsomer, too! And a lot single-er! Rowr.


I cannot think of a good counter to this request. Thus the Light Warriors retired to Seahold, where they lived peacefully for the rest of their days. The end. Thanks for reading this LP guys! See you next year.


EPILOGUE: A dangerous-looking man has infiltrated Seahold! The Light Warriors have decided to come out of retirement for one last battle in order to forever safeguard their hot mermaid girlfriends from the forces of evil and tyranny.


...yes, even the ones with developmental issues.


The mistrustful mermaid with the blood-red tail isn't exactly the brightest bulb in Seahold. If you didn't want him in there, why did you lock him in? You're going to be spending all your time belly-dancing and serving drinks now that I'm in charge, toots.


So wait, the "dangerous-looking man" was inside the treasure chest? And who are these two other mermaids? Prison guards?

♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Gilgamesh, huh? Well, no reason to change tactics now. Let's get BlBelt Saber'd and Haste'd so we can call it a day.


In accordance with Gilgamesh tradition, he still has a super-powerful attack that deals only 1 damage.


...aaand that's it! I'm pretty sure Gilgamesh is a joke boss, to be honest. I would have loved to fight this guy back in Earthgift Shrine, rather than have my ass handed to me by the World of Darkness Gang.


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

The Genji Gloves are a pretty decent buff for Percy, but I have to give up the insta-death protection of the Protect Ring to make use of them. This is kind of a toss-up; there's no real correct answer here, it just depends on what type of protection you value more. Higher stats are more useful in the grind-fights as you're making your way through dungeons, but insta-death protection is more helpful against bosses that rely a lot on it. You also have to factor in your party's overall build when making choices like these. My guys have lots of Phoenix Downs, but those aren't very effective in a non-ATB system*, so keeping dudes alive is a more useful strategy than bringing dudes back to life. If I had a White Wizard on staff who knew Arise this would be much less of an issue, and the only person who absolutely needs insta-death protection would be him.

*Because you can never be certain what order your little pixel men will act in, it's not really possible to get someone revived and healed in a single round. No matter how you set it up there is some luck involved; you're either banking on the Phoenix Down going off before the Hi-Potion, or you're banking on your newly-revived guy surviving two potential monster attacks at critical HP. In an ATB system you could just wait until the monster acts then queue up the "revive" and "heal" commands back-to-back, ensuring success. Indeed, figuring out I could do that my first time playing FF4-which-was-called-FF2-back-then was one of the major mind=blown events of my young RPG-playing career.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Their spirits rejuvenated by a sudden exhilirating taste of adventure, the guys decide to leave Seahold and its braindead (though incredibly sexy) population behind and see what lay behind the locked door. A portal back to the overworld, as it happens, as well as a staircase leading deeper down into Lifespring Grotto.


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

The next floor is a giant library maze. It's cute how many variations of "maze" the developers came up with, considering the FF1 engine doesn't allow for a lot of wiggle room. This one is interesting because the height of the bookshelves obscures some ofthe passages, but is irritating because those passages are often blocked by the scholar NPCs.

Again, though, there are no random encounters here. Many of the gimmick floors are actually encounter-free, which means flying through one of the superdungeons doesn't really take as long as you might expect.


This guy is just a fucking idiot.


AAAHHHH IT'S TOO CROWDED LET ME OUT OF HEEEEEERE

♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Ah, back on a good ol' dungeon floor, where things make sense. All of these HP-raising Apple items, of course, are being shoved unceremoniously down Ika's gullet. Each one only gives a slight increase, but there are enough of them over the course of the superdungeons that they really do make a difference. (They're also infinitely farmable, if you have the patience for that sort of thing.)


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

We're deep enough in the dungeon that we're starting to encounter very-slightly-more-powerful palette swaps. Nothing a touch of Thundaga can't handle, though.

(Another quirk of the non-ATB system: when Ika queued up this Thundaga there were lots of Queen Sahagins alive. Unfortunately by the time Ika acted his friends had already punched the rest of them to death, ensuring this supercharged multi-target attack would be complete overkill.)


♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

Another Chaos Shrine level. I'm pretty sure that tiny room is supposed to have a treasure box in it, but I guess we're still not low enough to keep from getting screwed.

Of note: you can see the cracks in the seams of the level design, here. It looks like Zach should be able to walk between those two pillars just outside the room, but he can't. This is what happens when you try to draw modern-style maps with archaic tilesets. The map designers knew that these pillars would only look right if they were two tiles tall, and probably also knew that it'd look really slick for the heroes to walk "underneath" the top part of them. But the FF1 engine isn't really built to handle that sort of thing, so you end up with pillars that block off areas they shouldn't. If you want to explore to the west of this little room, you have to walk all the way around it.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Another floor, another water level, another tasty Apple for Ika.


B10 is a hard-coded boss floor, which means Percy's gonna need some of that precious Temper-delivering MP.


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

One of the problems with Dawn's "four classic bosses per superdungeon" setup is that the "four classic bosses" routine kind of breaks down after FF4. FF5 has lots of bosses, but it doesn't have a group of four you could really section off and say, "These are the bosses it makes sense to put in the FF5 superdungeon." Case in point: Atomos is kind of a cool boss, I guess, but he doesn't really spring to mind when I think of iconic boss fights from that game.


In FF5 Atomos was kind of a trick fight. I forget what the trick is, but FF1's engine wasn't built to handle it, so we're pretty much just going to fall back on the "buff BlBelt and let him handle it" routine. Atomos can bust out some pretty nasty fire spells, though, so getting my Null-Fire on certainly isn't a bad use of Zach's first turn.


Zach's second turn is pretty much a waste of time, unfortunately. BlBelt, show that loser how shit gets done.

This is the best way they could get Atomos's "kill you and then slowly drag your corpse across the battlefield" gimmick to work in FF1: an eat attack that causes insta-death. Taste that floor for us, Zach! Surely you're good for nothing else in this fight.


Here's that fire spell I was afraid of. Keep in mind that Ika is wearing a Ribbon, has the Black Wizard's natural higher resistance to magic and is rocking Null-Fire. It's also entirely possible he's eaten 70 HP worth of Apples by this point. Still alive, thanks to layers and layers of redundant protection!


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Eventually BlBelt has enough and hurredly punches Atomos into pixelated oblivion. Judgment Staff...? Hmm...


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Holy shit! And you thought the Thundara-casting Gauntlets were bad ass!

Next: "You should consider changing jobs to become a dancer!"

I honestly think these dungeons would have been so much cooler if after beating all four bosses you were allowed to fight the final bosses of those games.

Also, FF 5 doesn't really have many memorable bosses. Aside from the obvious (Omega, Shinryu, and Gilgamesh) there's...

Um...

Melusine?

EDIT: Actually, I think the Wave Cannon or Necrophobe might have been better.

Or at least Leviathan.

I thought Liquid Flame was in that dungeon.

GUESS I'VE GOT BRAIN PROBLEMS!

The trick was that he didn't attack while someone was unconscious, so you just left the first person dead and BlBelted him as fast as possible. If he wasn't down before they were about to be devoured, you rezzed the dead guy, with any luck he'd double-comet someone else, and you repeated the process.

I imagine they went with Atomos because he can be a pretty annoying roadblock if you don't know the gimmick. At that level, surviving two comets per turn is nigh impossible. Annoying is like memorable, right?

I've never played the bonus dungeons in FFoS but since I've looked at GSF rips I assume they don't use Gilgamesh's awesome battle theme for that fight?

Missed opportunity, joke fight or no.

I don't really think Liquid Flame could work on the FF 1 system.

Neither could Atomos or Rubicante.

Rubicante, who was Liquid Flame: Zero.

Not to mention BUTT PROBLEMS. And FACE PROBLEMS.

The only reason I can think of why they stuck Atomos in as one of the Final Fantasy V bonus boss representatives is because it got its own summon in Final Fantasy IX. Really, its gimmick move just doesn't work in a standard turn-based engine. We already saw how three quarters of the Elemental Lords got screwed. Speaking of which, I've always been so annoyed that the FFIV bosses got such kickass paint jobs to fit into Dawn of Souls style but Final Fantasy IV's GBA remake and cellphone WiiWare sequel just add additional monochrome shading to their already monochrome sprites.

Also, that judgement staff's like a big game-breaky WIN switch that tears apart most random encounters once you get it.....and you'll have extras to spam it every round after a few failed attempts at the FFV Superboss Duo. O.O

Man, my butt's awesome.

Man what are you gonna do butt all your problems?!

You may think otherwise, butt butt jokes aren't ass good ass most others.

Regardless, this is a cracking good LP so far.

Oh!

Oh-ho!

I see what you did there!

He looks like a vagina.

Huh.
Huh-huh.

The gimmick to Atomos is that he dies to two Blue spells.

See, Atomos is level 51. If you successfully use Dark Spark to halve its level, it will be level 25, since it rounds down. Once you do that, it will die instantly to L5 Death.

It's the classiest way to kill any boss.

You can do that with any boss if you have a Chemist.

Fairly certain there's a mix that lets you double levels.

The levels cap at 255.

Yeah.

I dunno, I've always had a soft spot for the ol' Vanish-Doom combo. Then again, I'm a sucker for the classics.

Ooh, and can't forget using a Phoenix Down to kill the Phantom Train. After Sabin suplexes it.

That Gilgamesh fight was more like a Siegfried fight.

Yeah, but that one's a bug. L5 Death works because it's supposed to.

You're all wrong. The classiest way to kill any boss is through repeated and powerful application of pointy things.

No magic.

How is it a bug? Vanish, in effect, gives you 100% physical evasion and 0% magical evasion, makes perfect sense that it works if vanish sticks.

They removed vanish/doom from FF6 advance, whereas they didn't remove level 5 death from ff5 advance.

I tend to think that that is the bug.