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

Some sort of point buy, perhaps? Prevents completely broken teams and forces some creativity.

An auction draft would be interesting, if impossible to administer.

No, serpentine draft is the best option. Works out best for the thread, too.

ASSUMING six participants:

Group One - Knight, Monk. Blue Mage, Thief, Black Mage and White Mage. Each can be picked by one person.

Group Two - Time Mage, Berserker, Red Mage, Summoner, and Sorcerer. One can be picked twice.

Group Three & 4 - Trainer, Geomancer Ninja, Hunter and Bard. One can be picked twice.

Group Five - Samurai, Dragoon, Dancer, and Chemist. Two can be picked twice.

What's interesting about this setup is that I can definitely see someone reaching for the Red Mage in the 1st round to make their lives easier in the early part of the game and regretting it later as they're stuck with low-level magic. Unless you go RM / BM in the first two rounds, which would leave you short on physical attacks but with lots of screen-clearing magic.

(The quirky thing is that I'm quite sure after looking at this that the White Mage would go in the first round, probably ahead of all the "big" job classes like Ninja or Hunter. FFV is physical-attack-class heavy; you can only get healing from a couple of sources.)

Now someone get RH in here so we can start arguing about VORAvatar for a Ninja vs a Hunter.

Anyway, let's un-derail Brick's thread now. Please move discussion of FFV playing to here.

See? I knew if I went forever and ever without updating my FF1 LP that you guys would band together and entertain yourselves by planning a community FF5 project. "Brickroad," I told myself, "whatever you do, don't update your LP. Nobody's claimed FF5 yet, and the more frustrated and bored your readers get, the liklier they are to take those frustrations out on FF5."

Really, if I'd updated my LP at any point in the month of December, all I'd have accomplished is depriving Talking Time of an awesome FF5 LP in the future. Would any of you ever have forgiven me? Of course not. In fact, it's possible I might have been banned for life. Which would have led to nigh-suicidal depression, which would have led to drinking, and who would have known where that might have went. Probably fan fiction. And nobody wants that.

Anyway, like I already explained, I managed to override almost all my screenshots from the second-to-last update with screenshots taken for the actually-last one. That (and NaNoWriMo) really killed my momentum, but I decided to turn the misfortune into my favor. "I'll just draw the update!" I said. "It'll add a bit of variety to what was becoming a very homogenous LP, and there's no way it'll take longer than actually replaying that dungeon to get more screenshots."

I talk to myself a lot.

As it happens, the update did in fact take longer than just replaying the dungeon. In fact, it probably took longer than if I'd replayed the entire game. I can say with confidence that this one update took more time than any update I've ever done in an LP ever. Drawing is hard, and I'm not very good at it, which was supposed to be part of the joke... but what I learned was is even shitty drawing is time-consuming. Which is my way of saying, "This was fun, but I won't be doing it again."

Whisperwind Cove has lots of "fun" gimmick floors. That's right, "fun". Some of the gimmick floors are fun, but no, most are merely "fun".

Most floors, though, are just generic dungeon floors. Zach, Percy, BlBelt and Ika marched through many, many generic dungeon floors in search of their ultimate goal.


Some floors are way up high in the air.


Some floors are flooded with lava.


Some floors are carved out of ice.


Eventually they arrived on an earthen floor without any random encounters. Their way, however, was barred by a purple giant!

This purple giant, just like the previous one, demands a ruby before he'll let you pass. How do we get a ruby, you ask? Well...


...you get it from a random dwarf. This whole floor is just lousy with random dwarves. There is, of course, a catch: the random dwarf won't give you a ruby unless you help him find his house key.

Another random dwarf found the key, which he'll trade for some tools.

Another dwarf has tools, but he'll only give them to you if you help him settle his stomach.

Etc. etc. etc.

The whole floor is just a boring fetch quest chain. On average, you'll have to talk to every dwarf three times. On your first pass you'll find the beginning of the quest chain and sort of make a mental note of what everybody once. On your second pass you'll make a few trades and get some of completely identical dwarves mixed up in your head. So you'll run back and forth in a third pass to finally get everything straight.

And yes, the floor is huge, convoluted and full of rooms. Why do you ask?


Eventually you'll get your ruby, which sates the giant's hunger and convinces him to move out of your way.

For the record, it's not possible to use the regular quest-line ruby here. Whisperwind Cove doesn't open up until after you've dispatched Tiamat, and obviously that's impossible to do without completing the Melmond quest line. Even without the Tiamat statue, you can't physically reach Whisperwind Cove without the canoe.


The next dungeon floor was the famous "Floating Continent" map. It uses a palette swap of the world map tileset that makes the continents look like they're floating high up in the air. The colors are actually pretty crazy, what with the urine-colored grass and the rivers of grape Kool-Aid.

Like the overworld levels in Hellfire Chasm this floor is huge. It isn't as intricate, though, as there are no vehicles to discover and nothing out of the ordinary to do. There are still treasures, of course!


Here's what I managed to pick up through the first half of the second half of Whisperwind Cove. The random treasures in this dungeon are actually very, very awesome; there are tons of "Plus" items. I only ever explore Whisperwind Cove once during a playthrough, but if you wanted to do multiple runs you could increase your stats fairly quickly. This is most useful in solo runs, of course.


Eventually the boys come across a graveyard level populated entirely by zombies and stone statues. The zombies are surprisingly talkative, and are quick to inform you of the unbearable agony of their hideous unlives. The culprit, they say, is the Phantom Train, which recently pulled into town and is ripe for being destroyed.


Unlike the FF3, FF4 and FF5 throwbacks, none of the FF6 bosses really present a decent challenge. Maybe that's because Whisperwind Cove is the ultimate endgame dungeon, by which time your dudes are ridiculously strong. Or maybe it's because FF6 was a little light on the memorable superbosses. Maybe it's a combination of those things. In any case, it's BlBelt's job to wreck this boss just like he's wrecked so many before.

Actually, no. You know what? Fuck it. BlBelt didn't punch the Phantom Train to death!


In the version of Dawn of Souls drawn by me with colored pencil, Monks can totally Suplex a train. Up Down Up, motherfucker!


I have no idea how accurate (if at all) any of these numbers are. They're probably pretty close though.

The prize for killing the Phantom Train is a Megalixir. We'll be getting use out of the few Megalixirs we've been unearthing later on.


Also with the Phantom Train dead, all the cursed townsfolk revert to their normal, happy human selves. More importantly, the downward stairs open up, revealing another series of "fun" gimmick floors!


Like this one, with the beavers! This is one of the most absolutely pointless floors in the entire DoS post-game. You can really tell that some poor level designer was instructed to design puzzles for the bonus dungeons, but not given any resources to expand on FF1's base code at all. Oh, and they were given the most unreasonable deadline in the universe.

The result is floors like this. There is an old man and a bunch of beavers. The old man asks you to help him by corralling his beavers into one of the two pens behind him. He'll tell you how many beavers he wants in each pen, and won't reveal the staircase until you've met his exact specifications. When you talk to a beaver, you get the option to send him to either the right pen, or the left one. So as long as you can remember two one-digit numbers for about two minutes, you can solve this floor without any effort whatsoever.

We saw this same problem in the dwarf fetch quest, and it crops up again here in the Hide & Seek level. FF1 really can't do anything more complicated than make you fight monsters or talk to NPCs, and most of its event flags are triggered by checking your inventory.

This floor is populated with children, and you're told you have to find the kid with blue hair. This guy must have had a more generous deadline, however, because he decided to jazz things up by adding random-ish teleports all over the place. Entering one door will cause you to re-emerge on the other side of the map, and going in a door you just left won't necessarily take you back where you came from.

So you run around aimlessly until you find a kid with blue hair, then you're done.

The real problem with these gimmick levels, in truth, is that they are very light on treasure. I really would have prefered just having forty regular dungeon floors, because that would have about doubled the amount of X-Potions and Power Pluses you can amass.


The other kind of gimmick floor you'll come across are the ones that have fun or interesting dialogue, such as the dancers in Lifespring Grotto or the librarians in Hellfire Chasm. Whisperwind Cove's version is Monster Heaven.

This map contains ghosts of all the mooks and grunts you've plowed through over the course of the game. Each is represented by a pillar of purple flame, and each has been given a smidge of personality. Goblins complain about always being cannon fodder, Hill Gigases talk about how they're manlier than the other elemental gigases, and so on.

The highlight of this floor, however, is...


Good ol' Astos!

Unlike the surrounding mooks, Astos is still hostile towards the heroes. He bellyaches a bit about the Crown you "stole" from him, then attacks with all the ferocity an early-game boss can muster.


It goes about as well as you could imagine.

The funny thing is, who needs a Crown? As far as I'm concerned the dude can have it. We've already murdered him once and cleaned up that whole Elf Prince mess. It's like, bygones are bygones, you know?

I decided it was fitting to let Percy make the one single attack it takes to put the ghost of Astos down once and for all. For FUKT's sake.



Here are the treasures I picked up in the second half of the second half of Whisperwind Cove. Ika is subsiding on a steady diet of apples, of course, in order to increase his already excellent survivability. The Enhancer is a sword that isn't anywhere close to any of the swords I'm already using.

(Un?)fortunately, I still had the last few screenshots from this set, so we're back to regularly scheduled programming for the final FF6 boss: Death Gaze.


Death Gaze would be a rough fight if my lads weren't already gods in mortal flesh. The strategy still hasn't changed: Zach and Percy soak up the damage long enough for Ika to turn BlBelt into an invincible death machine, whereupon BlBelt pummels the boss into oblivion.


Hmm... can we just pretend this was a Suplex too?


Rewards for killing Death Gaze are twofold. First, the boss itself drops the Lightbrighter. This weapon casts Holy, but can only be equipped by Red Wizards. As far as I know this is the only Red Wizard-specific piece of equipment in the game. The combination of working stats and a traditional mana pool make Red Wizards incredibly weak compared to the other classes, so I guess they figured they'd throw the poor class a bone with this endgame weapon.

In actuality, Lightbringer is no better than any other endgame sword option. Plus, its free Holy can be triggered by anyone, at any time. Sorry, hypothetical Red Wizard! You still suck ass.


The real prize is in a treasure box located next to the dungeon exit. The Ultima Weapon is the most powerful weapon in the game, and gets stronger the more HP its weilder has. Look at the unbelievably huge boost to dead-ass Percy's ATK!

Just how powerful is it? Well...


That's un-buffed, folks. At long last Percy joins Zach and BlBelt in being able to one-shot everything but boss monsters, who I'll remind you have all had their HP buffed from the original NES version.

With that, we're closing in on a full set of uber-powerful endgame weapons. Say, wasn't there one I forgot about?


Back at Mr. Duergar, we can have the smithy forge the Adamantite we found in the Flying Fortress into Excalibur, one of the most powerful swords in the world.


It's nowhere near awesome enough to compete with the Ragnarok Zach's already carrying, though. And, uh, nobody else can use it. Cue trombone sounds!

Well, we've officially covered everything but the very last dungeon... which I've already covered twice in previous LPs. That means we're one short dungeon trek away from finally completing Dawn of Souls!

Just one loose end to tie up first...

Next: Rematch with Omega, and then...?

Zach's looking a little bit horse-faced.
Just like in real life...

This made the wait worth it. I'm rating this thread six stars.

The really special thing about Lightbringer is that it's Illumina.

Actually, the Death Bringer is another Red Wizard specific weapon.

Clearly the Red Mage is actually Cecil.

So there are only two FFVI bosses? Weak.

Also, I couldn't help but laugh at corralling beavers. Yes, I am that immature, why do you ask?

How dare you forget OrthrosUncle Ulty and TyphonChupon!? And they showed up just for you, too!

Nah, he beat Typhon and Ultros eight pages ago last update.

Oooooh, yes, how could I have forgotten about the last update.

I was actually greedily hoping Minecraft would consume enough of Brickroad's time that he'd beat my longest gap between updates in my LP. Alas, he updated mere days before he would have tied me.

Curse you Brickroad! I'll beat you someday!

- Eddie

Dangit, I wish I had minecraft...
Nice suplex on Thomas the train engine The Phantom Train, BTW

Have you ever tried beating this version without even going into the grottos? I'm curious how the boosted bosses play without the broken loot.

The bosses are easier even without the game breaking equipment.

Well, except for Chaos, who's basically Nxy Avatar from Persona 3. Really flashy ineffectual attacks and way too much HP.

But so worth it.

I don't understand this floor. Are there even any beavers anywhere else in the game, or is the sprite just pulled over from FFII? But still, why beavers? Why not anything else ever?

This is probably one of the greatest updates ever.

Zach's mouth.... Oh god, Zach's mouth looks amazing.

I'm betting on Final Fantasy II pullover. And as for beavers, yeah...they could've just swiped Chocobos from FFII or Moogles from FFV,* but I guess they wanted a watery background.

*You know, since they already edited a bunch of other FFV NPC assets and all.

EDIT: I was bored, so side-by-side comparison! Obviously the pixels have been altered and the coloring style's different, but they're definitely similar enough not to be just a coincidence. Especially Bahamut's Hiryu edit.

The weirdest thing about the field sprites in the FFI remake is that the fat old men, a standby from FFI all the way through FFV, were changed to skinny old men. Why do that?

It's a message to gamers.

Even if you're wise and old, that's not an excuse to be obese.

That was a pretty epic update! I'm not sure if I'm sad or not that it's back to regular updates after this.

Incidentally, it was through your FF1 LPs that I found out about Talking Time, and eventually decided to stop lurking.

Welcome aboard!

That sure is a nice EVERYTHING you have there.

We're in the home stretch, gang! Two more major boss fights, and we're home free!

I'm a little emotional, actually. This is likely to be the last FF1 update I ever write. What will I ever do without it?


♪♪ Main Theme ♪♪

Obviously the first thing on the checklist was to remember that I'd parked my ship in this wacky, out-of-the way river mouth. What a crazy goofball I am.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

Next on the agenda is to run back through Lifespring Grotto. And yes, this means fighting Gilgamesh and Atomos again. But at least it will give me the chance to score a few more nifty treasures!


The random chests on a typical Lifespring run aren't as profitable as a typical Whisperwind run, but at least Ika gets a +10 HP buff out of it. And X-Potions are always nice.


♪♪ Victory ♪♪

Gilgamesh and Atomos pose even less of a threat this time around than they did last time. I didn't bother buffing or anything, I just beat them to death while Ika waved the Rune Staff around. This nets me another pair of Genji Gloves and another Judgment Staff, neither of which are the least bit necessary.

When I was a kid, if you told me I could cast NUKE twice every round as much as I wanted, I'd have called you a dirty liar and probably kicked you in the shins. Now, though? I'm just like "meh".


Level ups are still happening, too, but being unable to catalogue them at all in my last update kind of broke me of my habit. Just assume all my dudes are Level KICKASS and you'll be fine.


♪♪ Chaos Shrine ♪♪

The run through Lifespring Grotto is actually pretty quick, once you can curbstomp everything. It's also the only of the four bonus dungeons that force you to re-fight bosses, too, as you really do have to destroy Gilgamesh and Atomos on every single run.


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Time to fight Omega!

The strategy for this fight is a bit different than the FF6 bosses I just mowed over. Before I can let BlBelt run wild, I have to get my defenses up. Since Ruga got left on the bench for this outing, this means delving into my item screen. The plan is threefold:

1) Use the White Robe whenever I can to cast Invisira on the party. This will help take some of the bite out of Omega's regular attack by reducing the amount of hits he can land. I'll also be using Protect Drinks on BlBelt and Ika to cut the amount of damage they take from physical attacks in half. (If Ruga were here, she could just cast Protera on the entire group and be done with it.)

2) Use Giant's Drinks to raise Percy and Ika's HPs up over 950. No matter what I do, Omega's Wave Cannon attack will chop 300+ HPs off of everyone, and I don't want to have to scramble to get the squishies back on their feet.

3) Use a Lunar Curtain to cast NulDeath on everyone, to help survive Omega's Quake spells. Protect Rings should already help guard against this, and everyone's innate magic defense stat is higher than it was, but it never hurts to have the extra layer of protection in place.


The boys are invisible here because Invisira has that effect on people. Anyway, this is Wave Cannon at work. It's Omega's nastiest attack, and if he decided to use it every round there is no way I could get ahead in the healing game with what I have on me.

If I really wanted to have more healing, I could run Whisperwind Cove again and get a second Rune Staff from Ultros, but even with Zach and Ika both using it every round I would fall behind. Really, the only way to get ahead of mega-spells like this is a White Wizard casting Curaja.

Fortunately, Omega has more than just Wave Cannon in his attack list, so one Rune Staff each round should be sufficient to keep everyone up.


The animation for NulDeath is actually pretty cool, in my opinion. Can't get me, evil ghost skulls!


Even with all that protection in place, Omega is still an absolute damage-dealing beast. Remember: Zach is in the best, heaviest armor in the entire game. He's also got Protect, Blink and Invis up. And he still took 300 damage from Omega.

Keeping Zach alive is usually not a priority of mine, because meatshield lawl, but this fight is going to take a long time to win and I need his HPs working for me. That's what X-Potions are for!


With everyone all immune to Quake 'n junk, this is like getting a free round. You can see Percy is chanting a spell here, because I've finally started stacking Haste and Temper buffs on BlBelt.


Here's the other reason Omega is tricky: usually, Haste + Temper + Saber + BlBelt = LOL DED. But here? Not even a thousand damage. And Omega has a lot of HPs.

Let's see about putting this into perspective: in Dawn of Souls, Chaos has 20000 HPs -- ten times as much as he did in the NES version. Omega puts that number to shame by bringing a whopping THIRTY FIVE THOUSAND. It's actually effectively way more than that, too, since Chaos doesn't have nearly the defenses that Omega does, nor does he have anything that compares to Wave Cannon.

(He does have the regular Flare spell, which is more damaging than Wave Cannon, but he almost never uses it.)


When two people dipped below 400 HPs I knew it was time to bust out a Megalixer. There are only a couple of these in the game, and Omega is one of the few fights that actually warrant their use.

♪♪ Victory ♪♪
Whoa! I caught those damage numbers mid-bounce! Righteous!

Many, many Tempers later, BlBelt's damage output finally reaches something respectable. Omega has no way to restore his HPs, so once the buffs are in place it's just a matter of keeping BlBelt alive long enough to see the damage done.

Thus did our heroic lads finally topple the strongest monster in the entire game. You know what? Fuck it. Bring on Yiazmat.


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

The reward for killing Shinryu was a sweet Knight sword, so it stands to reason Omega would net you a sweet Ninja sword. Unfortunately, it's not sweet enough to top the Ultima Weapon Percy's already carrying.

Perspective time again! In vanilla FF1, Sasuke's Blade (called the Katana on the NES) is the most powerful Ninja sword. You can get two of them: one in the second-to-last dungeon, and one in the very last dungeon.

In Dawn of Souls, the ninja sword you get in Hellfire Chasm makes Sasuke's Blade look like shit.

The question is: why don't you get the best weapon from the hardest boss? I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me either. For some reason, putting the boss monsters in their "correct" progression relative to game release was more important than making them progressively stronger as the game went on. In all honesty, to achieve proper balance you'd kind of have to mix and match. That might look something like this:

Earthgift Shrine
B5F: Gilgamesh, Ultros, 2-Headed Dragon and Typhon

Hellfire Chasm
B5F: Death Gaze and Cerberus
B10F: Atomos and Barbariccia

Lifespring Grotto
B5F: Rubicante
B10F: Ahriman
B20F: Phantom Train and Echidna

Whisperwind Cove
B10F: Scarmiglione
B20F: Cagnazzo
B30F: Shinryu
B40F: Omega

Of course you'd have to adjust their HP levels to match, but that's a rough outline of how difficult these bosses are, and how early in the game you can be equipped to take them on. It's easy to protect yourself against physical attacks and instant death, a little harder to protect against multiple types of elemental attacks, and there's no defense against high-end magic like Poison Gas, Tsunami, Flare and Wave Cannon except for Ribbons.

And a lot of this depends quite a bit on who you have on your team. A White Wizard with sufficient MP can pretty much insulate you against anything any of these bosses can throw at you.

Warning! Opinion time!

Once upon a time, I was convinced that the best possible party in Dawn of Souls was four Black Wizards. After this playthrough, I realize that was incorrect. The best possible party is two each of Black and White Wizards. You'll coast right through to Lich on Blink and Thundara alone, Lich himself is a pushover thanks to Firaga and Diaga, then you start amassing spellcasting items. By the time you get into the bonus dungeons you're relying on Haste and Temper for most of your damage, and by the time you're ready for Omega, Shinryu and Chaos you'll have both the Ultima Weapon and the Masamune, which anyone can equip.

Well, that's enough pussyfooting around. Let's go save the world.


♪♪ Town ♪♪

One last Inn stay at Coneria, and the boys are ready to tackle the Chaos Shrine... 2000 years in the past.


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Here's what the team looks like going into the final dungeon. Because it's such a retardedly rich XP farm, everyone's going to gain at least a few levels between now and Chaos, as if they needed to be any more awesome than they already are.

Exposition time now? Well okay.

This is actually a pretty cool little plot twist, in my opinion. The player has been encountering bats the entire game as passive dungeon fixtures; there's not even a bat enemy to fight. So to find out you not only have to come full circle back to the Chaos Shrine to win the game, but also that the unimportant NPC bats there are failed adventurers from 400 years ago... it's at least a little bit mind-blowing, right?

It was at this point I forgot I never went back to Crescent Lake to get the updated dialogue from the ring'o'sages, but they don't really tell me anything the bats didn't already mention. Let's do what they say and open up this time portal!


This is it: the final dungeon. It's a blinky transparency effect and therefore a little glitched-out in my screenshot, but Dawn of Souls makes one concession the original game didn't: you get a portal back to the present so you can exit the dungeon without magic.

This dungeon is very long. It starts out with several floors full of the hardest (and most profitable!) monster encounters in the entire game. Halfway through you fight a mini-boss, then enter the elemental floors. These floors have enhanced encounter lists from the Earth Cavern, Mt. Gulg, Sunken Shrine and Flying Fortress, as well as rematches with beefier versions of the four fiends. Only then can you challenge Chaos and win the game.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

The mini-boss is not really worth mentioning, and neither is his loot. At least he's easy enough to kill.


♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

What is worth mentioning is that some of the chests in this dungeon have had their contents upgraded! These two chests contain items not found in the original game, which is actually pretty exciting. It would be even more noteworthy if the chests in the four bonus dungeons didn't contain this kind of stuff almost exclusively.

The path forward lay beneath that stone plate in the floor. The Earth Rod won't help us this time, but we may have something else that might. Hmm...

The lute! Of course.

Actually, this was at least kind of a puzzle in the original game, since you had to remember you had the LUTE, then go into your menu and use it. In DoS you just have to click on the stone plate, and your party leader will bust out the lute all on his own.


Ah... so soothing.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

One of the keys to making it through this incredibly long dungeon is knowing how to heal yourself without expending resources. In the original game both your MP and your potion supply were severely limited, which means you'd spend a lot of time in easy fights like this just using spellcasting items over and over to keep your HP up.

Zach's gang is working under no such limitation, though. Simply by having Ika use the Rune Staff as his default action in every combat is more than enough to keep everyone fit and healthy.


The rematch with Lich awaits us on a spiked square at the end of the earth floor.


♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

The fiend rematches are dangerous fights, but of the four Lich has received the most impressive boosts in power. He now knows the Flare spell, which... uh... kind of pales in comparison to some of the stuff the boys have shrugged off in the superdungeons.


It only takes a few rounds of regular attacks to put him down. Percy and his Ultima Weapon do the honors. (Also note that Ika's Rune Staff has all but reversed the damage done by Flare. Sorry, Lich!)

♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

The fire floor is one of the longest individual dungeon floors in the whole game... but it's also one of the easiest. Monsters here are mainly rehashes from Mt. Gulg, after all. It is one of the few spots in the Chaos Shrine with worthwhile treasure, though!


In addition to a Protect Cloak and a Protect Ring (as though you hadn't already purchased four of each), this is where you get your second Sasuke's Blade. The last chest obviously wasn't a Megalixer in the original game, but it's nice that DoS gives you something so useful right on the cusp of the final boss.


♪♪ Boss Battle B ♪♪

The rematch with Marilith goes about how you'd expect. She can cast Firaga now, for what it's worth, but Percy makes sure she doesn't get the chance. The team heads down to the water floor at full power.


♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

The water floor is characterized by a series of rooms you have to navigate, sometimes in strange directions, in order to reach the end.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

It's also characterized by having large packs of monsters, similar to the Sunken Shrine. Ika has no problem mopping everything up with the Flare-casting Judgment Staff.

Since none of the monsters on this floor are particularly dangerous, and because the spiked square containing Kraken isn't right next to the staircase down, it's a good spot to recover your HP by stalling in combat and invoking Heal-casting items. See, look:


Kraken lurks just about halfway down this hallway. Every square to the right of here is battle-legal, so you can recharge during a fight on any of them and then head down to the air floor at full power.

Keep that in mind next time you play the NES version.

♪♪ Boss Battle A ♪♪

Kraken is one of the most dangerous foes in the original game, since he's powerful and tends to land lots of hits. Zach's game-breakingly good weapons and armor pretty much put him to shame, though.


♪♪ Sunken Shrine ♪♪

Finally there is the air floor, which is one of the most dangerous areas in the game. Lots of powerful monsters lurk here, including several who can use insta-death attacks on you. (Not that we care about those anymore.)

It's mercifully short, as long as you can stomach the Tiamat refight... but we're going to go out of our way to get our final piece of treasure, first!


Yes, this little zig-zag hallway looks familiar...


Hurrah! The Masamune is ours!

In the NES version this was the pinnacle of the equipment arms race. It was far and away the mightiest weapon you could equip, and it was usable by any character of any class, promoted or not. But... how does it stack up against the insane gear from the DoS superdungeons?


♪♪ Menu Screen ♪♪

Well, Zach certainly doesn't want it. The Ragnarok he got from destroying Shinryu is superior in every way.


Percy doesn't want it either, since he's still rocking Death Gaze's Ultima Weapon. Stat-wise, though, Masamune is at least exactly what it's advertised as: it's the most powerful katana in the game, coming ahead of the Murasame, Kikuichimonji and Sasuke's Blade.


It looks like BlBelt gets a slight boost from equipping the Masamune, but this is misleading. Remember, equipping a weapon means he will lose the invisible attack boosts he gets from fighting unarmed.


Ika doesn't mind having the Masamune, but honestly, his Attack command won't ever get touched. His Item command is where he rocks the house, with the Judgment Staff in one hand and the Rune Staff in the other. Still, there's no reason not to give it to him, so at least one vanilla FF1 weapon will find a home in my endgame team!


And if I ever wanted to use his Attack command? Well, it's at least pretty respectable. He's strong enough now to one-shot most non-boss monsters.


The rematch with Tiamat lay here in this unmarked hallway. Chaos is just beyond.


♪♪ Boss Battle B ♪♪

The worst Tiamat can do to me is spam this Thunderbolt attack over and over, but as you can see that wouldn't even get through my thick layer of Rune Staff. Once again, Percy steps up to wipe the villain away.

I thought it was curious that BlBelt didn't get the killing blow on any of the four fiends.


This is it... the final room in the game! Just on the other side of this door is the mastermind of this evil time loop plot!


What what whaaaat!?