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

If the fanart is to be believed, White Mage is 16 18.

Red Mage is 40? Man that's a shocker, I didn't know Square-Enix knew how to make characters over 30.

Considering 8 bit theater and how destructive black mages are normally, plus the fact that you can't easily tell by their face being hidden, I would have to guess around... 300 for them :P
What, you expect some middle age man to cast extremely destructive spells?

Red Mage isn't 40, he's just the first of Square's albinos.

Well, Lina Inverse is about 15...

*Slayers Reference Respect Knux*

Where'd you get those numbers?

Off the top of my head. There's really no canon source for it. I originally actually had RM as female, just to see what the reaction would be, but I decided not to because I'd inevitably screw up when responding to questions about him and use a male pronoun.

So those ages are completely non-canon.

THE MORE YOU KNOOOOW

But hey, according to canon, Kevin Smith is a mute guy with a knife, no shirt, and the power to turn invisible. And we all know that's not true.

Yeah, they don't let him own knives.

I'm glad you guys found a better use for thread downtime than lolcats and misspelling "more".

Speaking of more: update tomorrow! (I mean, like, late tomorrow. Don't be all F5-ing at 8am thinking you'll see something. Unless you just naturally do that anyway, in which case, carry on.)

Jack Hammer Finger could be a black belt special attack. Does double damage against electronic devices!

Should we be all F5ing at 8pm?

By which I mean, is there a time estimate for when the update will be?

Here's a visualization of the FF1 characters' ages, in MS Paint because I don't give a shit:

For the love of $DEITY, give Brick a BRAK. Have you ever done an LP? Because if you haven't, I'm going to propose you have no friggin' idea how much work it is. I'm just saying, if it were me, I'd almost be tempted to delay it a day or two on account of nagging.

I thought the mspaint age pictures really helped me get the developers intentions in my head, so I made one for Garland in case you guys were wondering.

This imagery.

It's stunning.

M'kay. I don't know what that means.

Garland wears pink and blue?

Garland has blue eyes?

Garland doesn't wear gloves?

That depends. If you don't want images you can have it right now! Otherwise I might have to delay until tomorrow morning after I get home from work.

*facepalm*

the joke is that he painted over an actual picture of Garland (from Dissidia).

HA.

HAHA.

Hilarious?

"Hey Brick! Didn't you say you were gonna update yesterday!"

I did say that! And I was totally gonna! In fact, the update was 80% written when I made that post saying "update tomorrow lolz". I polished it up when I got back from work, processed and uploaded my images, then went to bed. When I woke up I went to start posting, and it's a good thing I use the preview button because all the images looked like this:



"Augh! What happened!?"

Well, I had processed a bunch of photos for work over the weekend, and the wrong resizing macro set up in Photoshop. By the time I realized what'd gone wrong I didn't have enough time to reprocess the images and re-upload them and eat dinner/shower/etc. before I had to go to work. So instead I just posted some cryptic bullshit about "hey do u guyz want imgs" and stormed off.

But there is light! For everything is fixed now, and all is wonderful. Let's go light a crystal, yeah?


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Since the boys have pretty much taken care of their "dealing damage" problem, all that remains is solving their "staying alive" problem. And make no mistake -- this is a problem without a White Wizard on board. What are a hapless band of Light Warriors to do? Why, stock up on items that increase their Max HP, of course! With enough applications of Giant's Tonics and some quick application of an item we don't quite have yet, Zach and his cronies will be able to rock HPs up in the 990s. There's really only one boss fight where this will be crucial, but hey, it's not like we're hurting for cash.


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

The last of the four fiends hides at the top of this rather impressive double-dungeon out in the middle of the desert. In vanilla FF1 the Mirage Tower/Flying Fortress combo is one of the most lucrative places in the game by weight. There's so much great swag in here that most parties need to make two trips just to clear it out.

These are also rare examples of dungeons that are locked up tight. You can't get into the Mirage Tower without the Chime (which requires you know Lufenian, which requires the Rosetta Stone from the Sunken Shrine), and you can't get into the Flying Fortress without the Warp Cube (which was in the Waterfall). In the natural flow of the game, it's much easier to "find" Mirage Tower than the Sunken Shrine or the Waterfall. Just flying around the world in your Airship you're bound to find this huge manly desert, and therefore the single landmark in the middle of it. It sits there, taunting you, while you wrangle together all the endgame fetch quests.

But let's be clear: if you're doing a vanilla run of the game, or a solo run, or a DoS run, you want to loot the Mirage Tower and Flying Fortress ASAP. In fact, I recommend not even touching the challenge dungeons until you've mined this place for all its worth. The stuff here is so goddamn swank I actually make it a point to kill this fiend second rather than fourth in my normal rotation.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

The first floor of the dungeon couldn't be simpler... just a few steps from one stairway to another. Of course taking that straight shot means passing up all the treasure.

Man, I miss this oldschool style of dungeon design. Nowadays, and by "nowadays" I mean absolutely everything from the early SNES era onward, dungeons are linear paths with a few side areas where the treasure lives. FF1 has entire floors of dungeons you can ignore, like this one. They're designed so beginning players need to make multiple trips. You have to unravel these dungeons, see? Does any series outside of Etrian Odyssey even try to capture that sensation anymore?


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

The bad part about waiting so late to get into Mirage Tower is that I really have no most of this sweet gear, and none of the monsters pose even a passing challenge to me.

Yes, that includes that monster. You know the one I'm talking about.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

This Healing Helm will be a nice backup plan in case we need more than 50 HPs restored in a single round. The Vorpal Sword would be a nice find, too, if I hadn't already cleared three uberdungeons. It was bugged in the original game; it was supposed to get a critical hit bonus, but due to FF1's code being mostly comprised of spaghettios it was utterly borked.


It's okay, Suzannah. I'm here now. Show me on the doll where the fiend of air touched you.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Oh yeah, that's right. Ika can cast Flare now, for free, whenever he wants. This place is a freakin' EXP farm.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

The rest of the treasure in there was either trash or gil, so let's head up to the next floor where another vast treasure room awaits us.


It's... it's just so... beautiful.

Again, though, three uberdungeons' worth of gear has kind of made everything here obsolete. Thor's Hammer allows someone to cast Thundara in combat which, you know, hey, free Thundara! But I already have some Gauntlets so I've really no use for it. Plus, yeah, Ika's Judgment Staff. This box kind of might as well be a roll of toilet paper for all the good it's going to do us.



More incredibly awesome endgame gear you would never hesitate to equip in vanilla FF1, but have no use for in DoS.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

HA HA HA HA! BURN, VILE COCKATRICES! BURN FOR IKA!


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

If you don't have the Warp Cube already, here's your hint that you need one. You need to combine this with Koppe's "UFO" clue from Onrac if you want to make the jump from the Mirage Tower to the Flying Fortress. (Or, uh, just read my Let's Plays. Because that works too.)


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

Up on the third floor is the tower's sub-boss, who is actually pretty nasty if you aren't friends with Bruce Lee.


I'm on it, Jackson. Just point us towards that warp-whatever doohickey!


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

Whoa.

Every area in the game received a graphical upgrade in the FF1 ports, but the Flying Fortress received a veritable overhaul. It's like Xhibit was all up in this bitch pimpin' shit out.

In the NES version this dungeon was a barren collection of rooms and platforms suspended in outer space. The music sounded very hi-tech and computer-y compared to the rest of the soundtrack, giving the feeling that the whole section was imported from some other game. It was a weird place where the rules seemed different... even the treasure boxes were funny shapes!

In DoS, though, the dungeon is clearly in the regular ol' sky, not way up in space. It's empty and abandoned, but not utterly desolate like the grey expanses it originally consisted of. It's still very otherworldly, but in a fantasy-style way. This is a place that is clearly not part of FF1's world, but neither is it totally divorced from it. The music is hollow and forboding rather than noticeably beepy. The whole package feels much more like the end of the game you're already playing, rather than the dredged-up leftovers of some other game.


The treasures are still super-cool though! Or at least, they would be if (and I know I'm repeating myself here) I hadn't already cleared most of the uberdungeons. The Razer casts Scourge in combat, which is an insta-death spell that hits everything and has a pretty decent stick-rate. The boss of the dungeon is notoriously not immune to this particular attack, making it my preferred method of dealing with her in most cases.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

"Guys, I think Ika might be going mad with power."

"...what did you call me?"

"Shit! I mean Emperor Ika the Awesome, First of His Name, Macker of Ladies and Rocker of the Judgment Staff!"

"That's right. Don't you forget it. Put that fried black flan on ice for me. I shall fancy it later for dessert."

"Yes sir, right away sir, please don't kill us all sir."

♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

A few more noteworthy, if not particularly useful-by-this-point, items.


Now here's something we'll use! This is our fourth Ribbon, which means Zach will finally enjoy the same resistance to special attacks his friends have known for quite some time. He takes quite a hit to his core stats when he equips it, but trust me, that added protection is worth it.


Speaking of things being imported from some other game, I was wondering where all those Lavos Spawns managed to land. We can transform this one into Excalibur, if I remember to do it. It's a nice, powerful sword, sure, but only Zach can use it... and he's already using the superior Braveheart. Maybe I'll make a pit stop at Mt. Duergar before the final boss just to tie up the loose end.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Seriously, the dudes are just choking to death on EXP up here.


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

The White Robe is pretty great armor even if you never plan to equip it (not that anyone in this team can, anyway); Invisira is a L6 white magic spell that casts the equivalent of half of a Blink spell on the whole team. A few uses of this item and your whole troop is immune to all but the most powerful critical hits.


The Black Robe is... slightly less stellar. Its Blizzara effect isn't even that good in the original game, since by this point you'll already have Thundara- and Fira-casting items and, really, why bother with the redundancy? I usually give it to someone thinking, "Cool, that guy can cast ICE2 all he wants now!" and then never, ever actually cast ICE2 with that person.


The last of the "normal" floors of the Flying Fortress involves some out-of-the-way-treasures like this Sasuke's Blade. This would be Percy's best weapon if they hadn't added new ones in the uberdungeons.


In vanilla FF1 this was all you got: a textual description of what the four elemental forces are doing, and where. But in Dawn of Souls...


Sweeeeeeet.

What you're seeing is the handily color-coded elemental forces of earth, fire, water and wind flowing out of their respective habitats at the Earth Cavern, Mt. Gulug, Sunken Shrine and Flying Fortress... only to converge in the exact center of the world: the Chaos Shrine.

"But Brick! There is no "center" of the world! Longitude is completely arbitrary!"


Yeah, because that looks real impressive. I'll tell you right where you can shove your science, Mr. Logicface.

♪♪ Victory ♪♪

You know what's awesome? Level-ups are awesome. And there are so many of them in here!


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

Here's that weird floor that just scrolls endlessly in all directions. I've just kind of "always known" how to solve it, by going two-up-two-over, but I bet a lot of players wandered it for a while without really figuring out how it works.


The final floor is just a single, straight catwalk leading directly to the boss. Instead of just being a lonely column of grey tiles amidst the naked expanses of space, though, Dawn of Souls actually gives it some pretty neat decoration along the sides.

Anyway I feel like just walking back and forth for a while. Have I mentioned this is a great place to level?


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Of course, I'm not grinding for EXP. I'm looking for something. I'm on the hunt.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

It's on, biznatches.

The nigh-indestructable WarMECH is now called the Death Machine and it is every bit as fucking insane as it's always been.


Zach and the boys are pretty fucktastically insane themselves, though. A Knight scoring 383-damage against this particular monster just does not happen in vanilla FF1.


Death Machine's most dangerous attack is Flare, which (as always) burns through your chocolatey Ribbon'd crust to melt your rich, gooey caramel center.

Note that Ika's naturally high magic defense very nicely offsets his lackluster HP. Since he's on the back line and I now have access to Invisra, he's probably the most survivable member of the team.


Before long, the repeated blasts of Flare take their toll. But make no mistake, the monster is just as worn down as I am. In fact...


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Yeah, that's right. You just got BlBelt'd!

So anyway that's how I stomped the absolute hardest monster from the original FF1. I should point out that I was playing it pretty sloppy... I wanted to see if I could just pummel it to death without any buffs. I eventually used Haste on BlBelt in order to speed the last few rounds up... otherwise things would have gotten pretty hairy. If I'd gotten Haste/Temper/Saber up in the first round, and had Ika, Zach and Percy use Healing Staves/Helmets every round thereafter I would have come out in much better shape.

♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE NINE

I don't even have a clue what I could possibly spend that much money on.


I decided to see if BlBelt was manly enough to kill Tiamat in one shot. Ika and Percy opened with the standard Haste/Temper combo, and BlBelt used the Giant's Glove to cast Saber on himself. Zach has no means to buff damage output, so he's using a Strength Tonic instead.


God damn but that was a sexy-ass hit. This hit is strong enough to outright kill Three TIAMATs stacked one on top of the other, if you got them from the original game. (The fiends in Dawn of Souls had their HPs more than doubled, for all the fat honkin' good it does them.)


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

And lo, the last crystal is restored to light. Good job, boys.


♪♪ Mt. Gulg ♪♪

Elsewhere, a curiously Tiamat-shaped statue evaporates. Thus is access granted to the longest, grindiest, most slogtastic of the four uberdungeons.


I wish RPGs would finally settle once and for all what colors earth and wind should be. They seem to use yellow and green interchangeably. Golden Sun makes one of them purple for some damn reason.

Next: "Though there are red mages, there's no such thing as red magic."

HOLY FUCK YOU ONE-SHOTTED TIAMAT. FUCK.

Zach can also do that by using the Ragnarok, just in case you need another Flare. There's no kill like overkill, after all.