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

No, it's been longer. I've even ignored how long I've been ignoring it.

Do you know why nobody's bitched about it, Merus?

BECAUSE AFTER TWO YEARS EVERYBODY WHO CARED LEFT THE FORUM.

i kid, i kid

Ooh, that is nice! This is my first time hearing it.

You're right!

Kraken!!!

♪♪ Shop ♪♪

First thing's first: we need to burn off some of this excess gil. Can you think of a good reason to not run around with a bottomless sack of Ethers? Yeah, neither can I.


♪♪ Airship ♪♪

Our next stop is Whisperwind Cove, which we first encountered en route to the Ice Cavern. Since it's been thirty-six months since my previous update, I'll remind you that this is the superdungeon we opened up by killing Tiamat.


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

Um, yeah, dude. I just said that.

Let us consider this Lufenian for just one moment. He's got... yeah, I'm pretty sure he's got the absolute most shit job Lufenian culture has to offer. Remember, this is an ancient civilization who is but a faded shadow of their former, infinite glory. They once had a flying castle, powerful magic, the miracle of flight and who knows what other wonders of technology at their disposal. Having been reduced to a single isolated community out in the middle of a long-forgotten wood, they still manage to send this one guy off to stand vigil here in Whisperwind Cove. A continent away from everything he's ever known, with no communication and no relief. Ever. This is the FF1 equiavalent of the poor bastard on Lost who has to push a button every 108 minutes. Watching the Tiamat statue was probably the most excitement he'd ever had, standing on his impossibly tiny sliver of rock amidst a lost cavern tucked away in a mountainous labyrinth of twisting rapids from which no non-Light Warrior human has ever returned.

But now that the statue is gone? His life has no meaning. The least the Light Warriors could do is offer him a lift home. But will they? SPOILER: No. They're dicks.


Right! So. Whisperwind Cove, then. This is the largest of the game's superdungeons: a full forty floors. About half of these are dungeon levels lifted directly from other tilesets in the game, such as this Ice Cavern level here. (Which is still populated by Black Goblins, for pete's sake.) The other half are gimmick-y levels, where the game makes you jump through some strange hoop or another in order to progress.

Whisperwind Cove is actually my favorite of the four dungeons, mainly because you only need to traverse it once in order to see everything. It's longer than Lifespring Grotto, sure... but that's misleading, since you have to run Lifespring Grotto twice in order to clear all the bosses. In reality, Lifepsring Grotto is forty floors long too: twenty floors which you run twice each.

It's more than that, though. I have a sneaking suspicion that all of the superdungeons pull from the same list of monsters, which get progressively tougher the deeper you go. Since Whisperwind Cove goes twice as deep as the other dungeons, this means more floors with fights against more interesting monsters. Oh, they'll still be piss easy -- don't get me wrong. But they won't all be Black Goblins.

Also, this is where the game's highest concentration of awesome treasure is... as we'll soon see.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

The next floor is a... town? Huh! How about that. This level comes complete with shops and a functioning Inn, so it's usually better to get it later in the run rather than earlier... but Zach is carting most of the world's Ether supply on his back, so it's not like the guys will be hurting for refreshment.


♪♪ Church ♪♪

The equipment for sale here is interesting -- and expensive. Nothing you'd need, though, if you'd cleared the previous three superdungeons. This strikes me as kind of a missed opportunity... it's not like this town is really accessible, you know? You can't pop in and out whenever you want. Why not put a really good weapon here, in this shop? Something comparable to the craziness that drops off of the throwback bosses? Price that bitch at 850k so it's impossible to buy more than one at a time. Would have been a much neater and more memorable addition to the game than the Duel Rapier that no one has any reason to ever buy.

Actually, it would be possible to buy more than one of an 850k item at a time... but figuring out how is left as an exercise to the reader.

Also pictured: the town church, as though any party who made their way here wouldn't already have all its revival needs well in hand.


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

Only having explored one dungeon floor the gang doesn't need to visit the Inn for any reason other than that's where the downstairs are. Onwards!


♪♪ Town ♪♪

Now that the town level's behind us... welcome to the town level! Someone on the Dawn of Souls staff decided it would be a good idea to get some extra mileage out of that fairy sprite.

Actually, this isn't really another town level, but one of the gimmick levels I mentioned. What's the gimmick, you ask?


Allow me to pose a philosophical question. You are a tiny and mischevious tree fairy. Four almost impossibly buff dudes wander into your wood, covered in battle scars and decked out all in ancient, glowing armor. One of them is so muscular you are positive he could crush your tiny, hollow bones with a single contraction of his pinky finger.

You have the option of being "helpful" or "tricksy". What do you do?

You're goddamn right.


Oh for the love of fuck. This is precisely what I didn't need on floor three of the longest dungeon in the game.

Fortunately Ika can cast Flare as much as he wants for free, so he cooked this particular fairy and BlBelt made a meal of her. "I think it filled up all my hearts!" said BlBelt. But it turned out to be regular ol' indigestion.


Of note: Feyhome is a rare case of a map containing new assets. You can't enter the little fairy dollhouses, nor interact with them in any way, but I don't think they exist anywhere else in the game. They also look kind of out of place next to the rest of the game's graphics, which makes me think some bored art designer was just doodling on his lunch break and his boss was like, "Cool, let's use that."


Let's be honest. Is there any comment I could make here that would improve upon this particular reference? No, unless you can magically think of one that makes it not happen. But it did happen. It did happen, and there's nothing you or I or our a boat full of Jesuses can do about it. All we can do is move on from it.


Conclusion: Feyhome is a stupid floor, and none of my dudes have any MP now. I guess I could have everyone chug some Ether, but there's nothing dangerous to fight up here and I already have an infinite amount of Heal and Flare on tap. So let's just gun it and hope the next floor has bullshit monsters instead of bullshit NPCs.


♪♪ The Ruined Castle ♪♪

Hey look! Best of both worlds! The zombies on this floor all trigger fights. Aside from having to canoe around it, though, there's not really a lot going on here. I did find an Ogrekiller, which is an axe so unremarkable I didn't even bother taking a screenshot of it. And anyway, we have thirty-some more floors to get through. Can't linger over every little thing, can we?


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

Another wackysack gimmick floor? So soon? Golly, it must be my birthday.

This desolate floor is peopled entirely with malfunctioning robots, presumably of Lufenian design. One has stopped working entirely, which means Zach and the boys are tasked with scouring the local buildings for salvage.


In addition to a Stamina Plus found from a nearby box, the guys dredge up enough material to get the friendly, broken robot up and kicking again.

By the way, there are more * Plus items in this dungeon than any other. If you have the time and energy, making a couple runs is a great way to beef-ify your stats. I've never done Whisperwind Cove more than once on a given playthrough, but I know there are some stat whores out there who have literally ground the game into dust by replacing every digit on their status screen with a nine.


It's easy to consider the superdungeons to be pocket dimensions, utterly disconnected from the rest of the FF1 world. I mean, there's not really a Feyhome in FF1, or whatever that mermaid village was called. Right? Every so often though you'll see a link between the bonus content and the main game, tenuous though they may be. These forgotten, crumbling robots were obviously abandoned here eons ago by their Lufenian designers. For what purpose, we may never know. The Light Warriors could deliver the good news to them, about how the vile Tiamat has been eradicated and their precious Flying Fortress is just waiting to be repopulated.

But they don't. Because they're dicks. (I think I may have spoilered that, above.)


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Speaking of the Flying Fortress, some level-ups happened on the next floor, which was Flying Fortress-ish in design.

♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

The next floor contained a Protect Drink, a Red Fang and lots of empty rooms. I think these rooms probably would have populated with treasure, if the floor had been generated deeper in the dungeon.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

Next is another town floor, but this one is unique: every single magic spell is available here for sale. This kind of takes a bit of the novelty away from the "hidden" magic shopts in Lufenia; I'm almost certain that a first time player will stumble across Flare and Full-Life here before finding them there. Still, kind of a neat idea if you're one of those players who likes to fill up all their available spell slots for every level.


A couple wandering mages pontificate on other colors of magic which may or may not exist. I love the first guy because he is, himself, a red mage. And of course the first step in deciding to become a red mage is realizing there is no such thing as red magic. It's sort of like becoming a doctor in order to not practice medicine.

The second guy is a red mage too, and he wasn't about to take this "no red magic" bullpucky laying down. This guy devoted his life to finding ancient magicks, and though his search for red spells came up empty he did unearth lost texts describing blue magic. This forbidden knowledge is beyond the ken of we lowly Light Warriors, though. We'll have to find some way to destroy Chaos without the aid of Matra Magic and 1000 Needles.


Next up is this green(?) mage who is selling spellcasting weapons. Extra Healing Staffs are a decent investment as an insurance policy if nothing else, but the rest can probably be passed up. I already have at least one of each of the rest of this guy's inventory, and even if I weren't I'm beyond the point where casting Fira or Dia are useful options. (And casting Confuse was never a useful option.)


Across town is a shop selling magical armor. The White Robe is the most powerful of these, and Invisira is a totally good spell, so I waste no time picking up a few spares. The rest is stuff I already have, or have no use for. How crazy would it be if this cat sold Ribbons, though?


The Innkeeper here in Mageville is a price-gouging son of a bitch, but a fairy ate all my MP so my hands are kind of tied here. Hilariously, this means I've come across two recharge points so far in this dungeon, and I'm not even a quarter of the way through.


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

The next level is a return to normalcy: an Ice Cavern level. Turbo Ethers and Stamina Pluses are totally decent loot... much better than the Potions and Fangs and Curtains I found in the prior superdungeons. Forty floors with this kind of common treasure is bonus content I can get behind!

♪♪ Boss Battle B ♪♪

Boss floor time! Having been through the FF3, FF4 and FF5 dungeons, Whisperwind Cove serves up some bosses from FF6. Like FF5, though, FF6 doesn't really have a pack of four bosses that can be neatly sectioned off, so they had to make do by trying to just pick four iconic ones.

And I really think they should have skipped over Typhon. (Who you may know as "Chupon", if you haven't played FF6 Advance.)

Typhon is not really a boss, see. He's just a game mechanic. He appears in one fight for the sole purpose of ending it in the most anti-climactic way possible, and then shows up again later to make sure you can't bet stupid shit at the Coliseum. You can't really kill Typhon in either case... at least not through any conventional method which the game recognizes. I can think of at least one boss more deserving of representing FF6 in these bonus dungeons than Typhon, and probably more if I put my mind to it.

(I can't be the only cat on the block who likes Chadarnook... can I?)


Anyway, this fight was six assholes past fucked right in the very first round. Typhon's main and most frequent attack is Sneeze, which is a devastating insta-kill. BlBelt got all snotted up before anyone even realized a fight had broken out, so Zach ended up pouring a Strength Tonic out over his gross, slimy corpse... and then got snotted himself right at the start of the second round.


This means it falls to Percy to be our primary damage dealer... but long gone are the glory days where his ACC advantage made him stronger than his compatriots. He can improve his output a little with Temper, but every round he's not attacking is another round Typhon can sneeze on him.


...which is, in fact, precisely what happened.

And that's when things got weird.

See, I've been making allusions to a hidden magic defense stat throughout the LP. This is a hidden trait that is innate to each class, and which (as far as I know) cannot be affected by equipment outside of Ribbons and Protect Rings. It just so happens that Ika's magic defense is way, way higher than his friends'... which is why he's taking less damage than they are from those powerful multi-target attacks the bosses keep slinging at me. This usually isn't a major advantage; Ika takes less damage from Flare (or whatever), but he also has way fewer HPs. The result: two Flares equals death for him just as it does for Zach.

However, this stat also governs resistance to insta-kill attacks. Ika is essentially immune to them.


And so began a mad scramble through Ika's skill list in search for something that can actually damage bosses. Flare isn't going to cut it; Typhon's own magic defense is too high. And even with Haste and Saber up, Ika's regular hits are pretty wussy. Plus, though he is immune to Typhon's runny nose he is not immune to the vanilla damage from his standard attacks.

Which is where the Orichalcum I picked up earlier comes into play. This knife has a unique property: a drain effect that restores your HP whenever you connect with it. I had forgotten about this property, but as soon as I saw it in action I remembered how intregal it was to my victories in my previous Black Mage and Thief runs.


So what could Ika do? He stacked a few Blinks and then self-buffed with Saber and Temper until his damage output wasn't embarrassing. The returns on Orichalcum are about 25% of what you dish out, which means after a few rounds of buffs its weilder will be completely restoring his HP every single round.

And thus did Ika solo Typhon, here in Whisperwind Cove, after many applications of Temper and many whiffed Sneezes. Probably the most hilarious victory I've ever achieved in this game! At least it was a nice break from the "wind up BlBelt and set him loose" strategy that's been my bread and butter for the past four dungeons.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

The reward for killing Typhon is the Genji Helm, which gives some amazing defensive boosts but eats up your Ribbon slot. It's a tough call, and you could make a good argument either way. I left him with the Ribbon, personally. If I had a White Wizard handy I might have gone with the Genji Helm, since Curaga and NulAll are never far away.

♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

A few Phoenix Downs later, the boys are back on their feet and ready to continue their trek downward. These Marsh Cave levels are something of a rare treat!


♪♪ Matoya's Cave ♪♪

In case you're wondering why I bother to hunt down all the treasures on every single floor -- this is why. Megalixers are practically a necessity for most any Omega-killing strategy that doesn't involve a White Wizard spamming Healaga every round.

Megalixers aren't the only ultra-rad things you'll find in these random chests... but they're the most ultra-rad.


♪♪ Dungeon ♪♪

Gah! Not fair! I don't know what is in that box but WHATEVER IT IS I NEED IT MORE THAN I HAVE EVER NEEDED ANYTHING EVER!!


fffffff


If the theme of the first quadrant was town levels, it looks as though the theme of the second quadrant is Marsh Cave levels. X-Potions aren't as great as Megalixers, but still absolutely worth finding. Giant's Tonic + X-Potion = 999 HP. With enough of these, anyone can solo anything. (Well, at least, anything that can't Sneeze. Noses in FF1 are really deadly.)


There weren't any more gimmick levels between here and the boss, in fact, so I'll speed things up a bit. Here's a random assortment of max-out restoratives and permanent stat-ups I found laying around between Point A and Point B. Each treasures is like a perfectly-shaped jewel to me, and I could treasure hunt for hours and hours. I have, in fact, done exactly that, considering how many times I've played through these dungeons. There's just not a lot to say about the treasure-hunting' levels, though. Hopefully from this little montage you can see how all these little stat-boosters add up over time, though.

Oh, and somewhere in there level ups happened.


♪♪ Flying Fortress ♪♪

Wait a minute. What FF6 boss could possibly love puns as much as Talking Time does?

♪♪ Boss Battle B ♪♪

Oh my god it's Ultros.

"No it's not, Brick! It's Orthros!"

Wait, what? Oh hell no. Hold on, I'll fix that.


There, that's better. Nobody pay any attention to Kishi -- this is correct. Forever.


Anyway, Ultros is pretty much just a souped-up Kraken. He's got two tricks: he can Blind you, or he can attack you for lots of damage. As such, we're skipping the Blink and going straight for the Invisira. Everyone gets a few layers of protection this way, just in case Seafood Soup here decides to get frisky with our back line.


Lacking any sort of insta-kill or any multi-target attacks, Ultros pretty much just has to sit there and take it. If anything, he and Typhon should have appeared together, forming the closest thing to the canonical FF6 boss fight that the Dawn of Souls engine could muster.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Ultros can't even shove a 500 lb. weight off of an opera house rafter, let alone withstand more than a couple rounds of BlBelt punishment. (Bits and pieces of my Light Warriors are vanishing in these shots because, thanks to the Invisira effect, they're blinking in and out of existence.)

The reward for killing Ultros is the Rune Staff, which is one of the most amazing items in the game, and probably the single most important spellcasting item I will find...


Free Healara. Whenever I want. Finally I have something to take the bite out of those planet-destroying multi-target spells I keep running up against. Ribbons are nice, but nothing beats dedicated healing in situations like that. We're finally nearing the power level we need to be in order to take on Omega!


...and Whisperwind Cove is only halfway over! Wow! What most excellent goodies await us in the bottom half of the dungeon? (Spoiler: ALL the goodies!)

Next: "Do you have a Trance Kuja action figure?"

Damn straight it is.

Stuff like this is why I kind of dread the idea of a full-on FF6 remake on the 3DS or whatever. Sure it would be kind of awesome in some ways, but just not the same without the Woolseyisms behind it.

Oh wow. I guess seafood soup is on the menu.

No love for the Styx reference!? Like the meme says, I am disappoint.

A whole 1000 GIL?!

This guy. This guy has been waiting hundreds of years for that dual rapier. And then you go and shit all over his dreams. I hope you're happy, sir.

I can vaguely, VAGUELY understand how Chupon became Typhon (or Typhon became Chupon, or whatever)... but I'll be consarned if I can ever understand how Orthos makes sense as a name for the Purple Octo-Man.

I recall FFIII has stuff like formless tumor monsters with the names of Biblical angels. Ahriman isn't a cycloptic ball with bat wings. Shiva isn't an ice princess. Orthros is not remarkable in its mythological inaccuracy.

Given Ika's fancy knife work, I'd say that sushi is more likely.

EDIT:
To be fair, a number of the biblical descriptions make angels out to be eldritch horrors.

Eh, I guess the point could be made that someone saw Shiva's blue skin and thought it was related to water and/or ice and/or coldness... and yet another one heard about Sheba, the Queen, and got them mixed up somehow.

I have no idea how anyone can confuse a two-headed demon dog for an octopus, so Ultros can stand safely enough as his own character (FFXII's perverted neon slime has little defense, though.)

Shiva's iconography has him living in the himalayas, surrounded by ice and snow. But this is because he's a god of fire and heat, which allows him to sit in the snow practically naked. oh japan.

Your cultural/religious beliefs aren't the only ones violated horribly by Japan. I can't stand seeing Christian symbology in JRPGS or teh Animes because it drives me batty how badly they screw it up.

I had always just assumed that Shiva being ice-aligned was purely for the pun of it.
(I believe "shiver" would be transliterated with identical kana.)

But sometimes that's half the fun! Like seeing Norse God Thor playing lackey to the Abrahamic YHVH's genocidal Archangels so that the Greek Echidna and her demonic offspring (which include gods from all over history and culture) don't take over the world.

Sometimes, you just gotta roll with it. People from all around the world (not just Japan) enjoy transplanting foreign myths into their own narratives for flavor and namedropping, even if they usually get everything about them wrong. Otherwise, why would Quetzalcoatl be a vaguely bird-shaped lightning elemental in FF8?

oh, it doesn't offend me. at least, not anymore. they just don't know any better.

But to be fair, Square's version can turn into a motorcycle. I can't wait for FF15 and the Jesuscopter.

Yeah, Japan can get creative with foreign religions.

FF VIII Quetzalcoatl is totally the post final boss of Parasite Eve.



Also, thank you forever for mentioning Uncle Ulty. :3 I'm curious to see if the other 2 FF6 bosses are what I expect.

I can't help thinking, "D'awww," whenever I see Ultros!

This LP encourages me to make plushies of our eight-armed friends, for some reason, too.

Am I the only one who liked the inclusion of Chupon? It was damn satisfying to finally be able to beat him down after getting knocked away without a fight so many times in FF6.

I learned long ago that Japanese takes on other religions might as well be from Bizarro World, especially in RPGs. And all this talk about religion's suddenly making me wanna look for a English patch of Bio Monster JESUS. O.O

They probably could've found a boss better that Typhon(Valigarmanda, The Painting thing, Sabin himself), but, i must admit, nothing tops ultros in pure
suckitude.