nosimpleway
(he/him)
Exdeath being molasses-slow in his fight at the end of world 2 is reflected in his appearances in Dissidia, where he moves and fights... well, like he's still a tree, really. He's got a short-range teleport that tends to get spammed a lot because it's a ton faster than walking. He's also a defensive/counter kind of fighter, which is weird, because turtling is more Ghido's style.
Though speaking of Dissidia it's kind of neat watching Exdeath and Cloud of Darkness bounce off of one another, since they both have boners for THE POWER OF THE VOID. Both of them have EX bursts where they harness THE POWER OF THE VOID and CoD has to bring a meter up to 120% to do maximum damage -- for CoD the Void is ultimate power. Exdeath also has a meter to button-mash, but he drops it down to 0%. For Exdeath the Void is absolute nothingness. It's a nice touch.
During one of the 4JF I fought that Exdeath at the end of world 2 and... had some trouble. Lenna was a zerberker and Bartz a... red mage? I forget what Krile and Faris were because they got Vacuum Waved to death and Bartz got zombied, so there was nothing I could do to revive them. So Bartz was going nutshit on Lenna and Lenna was zerberking at Exdeath. But I foresaw some difficulty with this fight and gave Bartz the Healing Staff, so while his zombie AI was set to "bonk Lenna at every opportunity" it just brought her HP back up from whatever Exdeath had just done to her. (Bartz himself, being a zombie, was stuck at 0 HP and functionally invincible). It was a long battle where I basically got to put the controller down and watch, but I won eventually. Fights in Final Fantasy games don't often go that wrong and still end up in your favor.
The Gargoyles are odd in that they're exactly the same every time you fight them. Outside the Pyramid they're a major pain but by the time you get to the Deepsea Trench or Istory Falls they're barely speedbumps.
The Pyramid is still the worst.
I usually call the monster that possesses Lenna Mousseline but if it was previously translated as Meringue that makes the joke better imo
If you hit the wrong Stalker/Wendigo in the shrine does a counter. It's the Sandworm fight again, only there's no visual indication which target is the correct one. (The trick is that his counter is Ice-elemental, Flame Rings trivialize it and let you blast all the targets to win.)
The trick to Omniscient is that his MP is finite, if you're patient enough. And all his spells are reflectable. And he's vulnerable to Silence Sword. Silence Sword is a physical attack, so he'll try to cast Reset to start the battle over... but he can't. He's silenced.
A combination of Monk's Counter and the Knight's Guard can trivialize Minotaur. You miss the bit where he tries to cast Holy, though, since it's a death counter and you killed him with a counter and you can't counter a counter.
Syldra + Magus Rod works fine, but since there's only one Magus Rod if you want more than one you can buy some Air Knives from Istory and use those. Air Knife boosts wind, Syldra is wind, it works great. (Magus Rod also boosts Leviathan though so it's superior in the few instances that boosted Syldra doesn't work, like if the enemy absorbs Wind.)
The Deepsea Trench bosses have a neat exploit. The Magic Lamp version of the Odin summon is bugged and doesn't determine immunity quite right. Regular !Summon Odin just throws his lance since they're immune to Zantetsuken. Magic Lamp Odin can Zantetsuken them to death in one hit. I found this out by accident in another 4JF. You can also use the bug to instakill the backmost part of Neo Exdeath. You know, the part with the most HP that likes to cast Meteor a lot. (idk if this works in not-GBA versions. Presumably if it worked before they'd have fixed it for the Advance rerelease so probably not.)
The Chicken Knife can force you to run away from fights if you use it to attack, but it's coded as an activation of the Thief's !Flee. But you can only use one kicker ability with an attack, so if you use it with a different skill, like !Mug or !Aim or yes, !Dance, you get the attack power for free. (If you max out your strength and agility with !Sing and manage to land a Sword Dance with the Chicken Knife it's possible to run into a damage overflow bug. Chicken Knife can be the strongest weapon in the game. And it's Spellblade-able!)
You can say "Yes" to cutting out Hiryuu's tongue in the flashback, but the king comes out and stops Lenna. Apparently her heart wasn't in it anyway.
The trick to Odin is Break Sword; 60% of the time it works every time. Calofisteri is basically Magissa all over again; Reflect Rings and Silence Sword can both trivialize her. I think Iron Giants can be killed with Dark Shock and L5 Death. It's something like that. They're weak to water, too.
Catastrophe's exploitable gimmick is that if anyone is Floating, he'll prioritize bringing them to the ground with 50 Gs so he can hit them with Earth Shaker next turn. So if you keep casting Float, he'll never attack, just un-Float people.
Apocalypse is Azulmagia in the GBA rerelease, so if you speak Spanish you know his schtick right off the bat. As described above he can learn Blue Magic that your party hits him with, and will counter by using the same spell as soon as he learns a new one. He won't use Moon Flute or Transfusion but you can swap any other spell with him. Including Explode. No, it never gets old.
I think King Behemoths can be minied. Or toaded. One of the transformation spells works, eventually.
Hiding the game's Even Worse Optional Superboss in an unmarked chest in the final map of the game with the last save point being the one Azulmagia was sitting on is the jerk move to end all jerk moves. Hey, the last chest that looked like this had an Elixir in it, let's see what's in thi-- OH GOD DRAGON BOSS IT USED TIDAL WAVE FOR LIKE 8000 DAMAGE TO EVERYONE WHOOPS YOU LOSE TOO BAD BRING SOME CORAL RINGS BEFORE YOU GO OPENING CHESTS NEXT TIME LOSER
Gilgamesh basically never talked to Krile. I figure all he knows about her is that she's Galuf's granddaughter, so that's all he can say to her. "Well bye, person I never met, but hey, I knew your granddad and he was a pretty cool guy." In the GBA translation he tells Lenna to never lose her compassion, does that come out worse in the other translations? I've got no defense for how he talks to Faris or basically shrugs off the girls in favor of treating Bartz as his personal buddy.
Regarding Bartz as not having a love interest: Once we get to Mobliz I have opinions you guys.
Though speaking of Dissidia it's kind of neat watching Exdeath and Cloud of Darkness bounce off of one another, since they both have boners for THE POWER OF THE VOID. Both of them have EX bursts where they harness THE POWER OF THE VOID and CoD has to bring a meter up to 120% to do maximum damage -- for CoD the Void is ultimate power. Exdeath also has a meter to button-mash, but he drops it down to 0%. For Exdeath the Void is absolute nothingness. It's a nice touch.
During one of the 4JF I fought that Exdeath at the end of world 2 and... had some trouble. Lenna was a zerberker and Bartz a... red mage? I forget what Krile and Faris were because they got Vacuum Waved to death and Bartz got zombied, so there was nothing I could do to revive them. So Bartz was going nutshit on Lenna and Lenna was zerberking at Exdeath. But I foresaw some difficulty with this fight and gave Bartz the Healing Staff, so while his zombie AI was set to "bonk Lenna at every opportunity" it just brought her HP back up from whatever Exdeath had just done to her. (Bartz himself, being a zombie, was stuck at 0 HP and functionally invincible). It was a long battle where I basically got to put the controller down and watch, but I won eventually. Fights in Final Fantasy games don't often go that wrong and still end up in your favor.
The Gargoyles are odd in that they're exactly the same every time you fight them. Outside the Pyramid they're a major pain but by the time you get to the Deepsea Trench or Istory Falls they're barely speedbumps.
The Pyramid is still the worst.
I usually call the monster that possesses Lenna Mousseline but if it was previously translated as Meringue that makes the joke better imo
If you hit the wrong Stalker/Wendigo in the shrine does a counter. It's the Sandworm fight again, only there's no visual indication which target is the correct one. (The trick is that his counter is Ice-elemental, Flame Rings trivialize it and let you blast all the targets to win.)
The trick to Omniscient is that his MP is finite, if you're patient enough. And all his spells are reflectable. And he's vulnerable to Silence Sword. Silence Sword is a physical attack, so he'll try to cast Reset to start the battle over... but he can't. He's silenced.
A combination of Monk's Counter and the Knight's Guard can trivialize Minotaur. You miss the bit where he tries to cast Holy, though, since it's a death counter and you killed him with a counter and you can't counter a counter.
Syldra + Magus Rod works fine, but since there's only one Magus Rod if you want more than one you can buy some Air Knives from Istory and use those. Air Knife boosts wind, Syldra is wind, it works great. (Magus Rod also boosts Leviathan though so it's superior in the few instances that boosted Syldra doesn't work, like if the enemy absorbs Wind.)
The Deepsea Trench bosses have a neat exploit. The Magic Lamp version of the Odin summon is bugged and doesn't determine immunity quite right. Regular !Summon Odin just throws his lance since they're immune to Zantetsuken. Magic Lamp Odin can Zantetsuken them to death in one hit. I found this out by accident in another 4JF. You can also use the bug to instakill the backmost part of Neo Exdeath. You know, the part with the most HP that likes to cast Meteor a lot. (idk if this works in not-GBA versions. Presumably if it worked before they'd have fixed it for the Advance rerelease so probably not.)
The Chicken Knife can force you to run away from fights if you use it to attack, but it's coded as an activation of the Thief's !Flee. But you can only use one kicker ability with an attack, so if you use it with a different skill, like !Mug or !Aim or yes, !Dance, you get the attack power for free. (If you max out your strength and agility with !Sing and manage to land a Sword Dance with the Chicken Knife it's possible to run into a damage overflow bug. Chicken Knife can be the strongest weapon in the game. And it's Spellblade-able!)
You can say "Yes" to cutting out Hiryuu's tongue in the flashback, but the king comes out and stops Lenna. Apparently her heart wasn't in it anyway.
The trick to Odin is Break Sword; 60% of the time it works every time. Calofisteri is basically Magissa all over again; Reflect Rings and Silence Sword can both trivialize her. I think Iron Giants can be killed with Dark Shock and L5 Death. It's something like that. They're weak to water, too.
Catastrophe's exploitable gimmick is that if anyone is Floating, he'll prioritize bringing them to the ground with 50 Gs so he can hit them with Earth Shaker next turn. So if you keep casting Float, he'll never attack, just un-Float people.
Apocalypse is Azulmagia in the GBA rerelease, so if you speak Spanish you know his schtick right off the bat. As described above he can learn Blue Magic that your party hits him with, and will counter by using the same spell as soon as he learns a new one. He won't use Moon Flute or Transfusion but you can swap any other spell with him. Including Explode. No, it never gets old.
I think King Behemoths can be minied. Or toaded. One of the transformation spells works, eventually.
Hiding the game's Even Worse Optional Superboss in an unmarked chest in the final map of the game with the last save point being the one Azulmagia was sitting on is the jerk move to end all jerk moves. Hey, the last chest that looked like this had an Elixir in it, let's see what's in thi-- OH GOD DRAGON BOSS IT USED TIDAL WAVE FOR LIKE 8000 DAMAGE TO EVERYONE WHOOPS YOU LOSE TOO BAD BRING SOME CORAL RINGS BEFORE YOU GO OPENING CHESTS NEXT TIME LOSER
Gilgamesh basically never talked to Krile. I figure all he knows about her is that she's Galuf's granddaughter, so that's all he can say to her. "Well bye, person I never met, but hey, I knew your granddad and he was a pretty cool guy." In the GBA translation he tells Lenna to never lose her compassion, does that come out worse in the other translations? I've got no defense for how he talks to Faris or basically shrugs off the girls in favor of treating Bartz as his personal buddy.
Contexts that are also indefensibly shitty!Maybe even add a "preferred target" programming flag in battle to underline whoever he deems a nemesis; this is a feature that already exists in the game in other contexts.
Regarding Bartz as not having a love interest: Once we get to Mobliz I have opinions you guys.