A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…
Father: Luke…Luke!
Luke: Mmm..hmm.. Dad .. What is it?
Father: I have to leave now. Will you keep.. .. Hey! Luke! Wake up!!
Luke: I'm sleepy..
Father: Listen! Do not lose this! Got it?
Luke: Dad! Are you Leaving again?
Father: Yep. Take care of Mom.
Luke: Okay …. Come home early.
Father: ...Yeah. Be good, Luke.
And dad jumps out the window, into the night.
Luke: Why does he always go out through windows? What is this….?
Luke: Mom, .. I ..um...
Mother: What? Tell me, Luke.
Luke: I want to go look for Dad.
Mother: Oh.. I knew you would say so someday. You're adventurous like your father.
Luke : But …. I’m worried about you, Mom. You'll be alone.
Mother: Don't worry about me, Luke. I'll be okay. …. Go ahead.
Luke: …. Yeah.
Mother: Tell Daddy that I’m doing alright.
Luke: …. I will.
Mother: Take care!
Luke: Mom,.. I ….
Mother: Go to school and tell Mr. S that you're leaving.
Luke : Okay.. Mom, I’ll be back with Dad!
Mr.S: So you're leaving…. Then I have to tell you this. The ancient gods made this world.
Luke: Yes. I know.
Mr.S: Their legacy is left all over this world in form of MAGI.
Luke: ......
Mr.S: What you have received from your father is one piece of it. 77 of those MAGI make a statue of a goddess, Sana.
Luke: This….?
Mr.S : Each MAGI has its own power. Some are using the power of MAGI and trying to become new gods.
Luke: Why did my father have such a thing?
Mr.S: Preventing MAGI from being abused for wrong purposes.
Luke: Like a hero?!
Mr.S: Well….yes....Kind of. If you wish to find your father, search for MAGI.
Luke: I will!
Mr.S: Your MAGI is called the Prism. It tells you the number of MAGI in the same area. It will help you.
Luke: Thank you very much, Sir! I will study more about MAGI also.
A crowd of other kids comes in.
Luke: What should I do, Sir?
Mr.S: It’s good to have reliable partners. Take 3 with you.
I’ll take my good buddy Han, and Princess Leia, and my faithful droid R2D2…wait, I can’t put numbers in his name. Um. Okay, Two Rs and two Ds it is!
Mr.S: You should go to a town beyond the Cave of North first.
Luke: Thank you! Good-bye, Sir!!
And with that, our party sets out.
Luke comes with a Hammer, the ability to conjure blizzards, and a suit of bronze armor. Han has a Long sword and a suit of bronze armor. Leia has a Bow, the ability to create Flame, and her own bronze armor. R2, because he’s a very capable droid, has a Colt revolver and a natural immunity to paralyze and poison effects.
We can wander around town and say our goodbyes before leaving.
Chewie is understandably skeptical about us bringing Han along. He gives us a Cure potion for the road.
Bail wants us to make sure Leia behaves.
And C3P0 is shockingly on-brand.
And mom will let us rest at home for free if we need it.
On our way out of town, we’re stopped by Mr. S.
Mr. S joins the party as a fifth character, who can act in battle just like our regular party members. He’ll never get stronger, but that doesn’t particularly matter given how much he outclasses us.
The manual spoils a bunch more NPCs joining our party. This is hardly the full list, though.
Nintendo Power also talked about Mr. S.
He’s our crutch character for the very beginning of the game; significantly stronger than any of our characters at this point.
This opening area of the world map is just a valley with the single small town and a cave to the north. I’ll discuss the geography of this game and the ramifications later on.
We head into the Cave of North, and our very first battle is against a Spider. All of the enemies in this cave are relatively weak and every one of them can be one-shot by Mr.S, with Dissolve hitting one enemy and refilling his health, and Fire hitting a stack of enemies.
Leia, as a mutant, gains her very first new ability in our very first battle: Immunity to poison.
As I implied above, monsters can come in “stacks” in this game, where the single tiger image here is actually three tigers. Single-target attacks always hit the top enemy on the stack.
We head into the second part of the cave, and on the upper level here we find some equipment.
The bronze shield isn’t actually very useful to my team—shields waste a turn that you could be killing things before they kill you—but we can equip it on R2 for a mild stat boost.
He gets 2 DEF and 9 HP from the shield. When I de-equip it later, he’ll lose those stats and the shield will go down to 12 uses. I’ve just removed any real resale value from this shield, but there wasn’t much to begin with.
This is a big battle and where mutants can be really useful: Flame and Blizzard are weak, but they hit all enemies. Skeletons are even weak to Flame and will die in one hit. Note that each of those three enemies shown can be a stack, so the theoretical max enemies in a single battle is 27. (Not that I think I’ve ever seen that.)
Leia gets a second immunity to poison. This…is worthless.
Gangs are humanoid enemies that never drop meat, but sometimes drop Punch items.
An extra Bow and an extra Hammer are here. They’ll eventually get used.
The boss monster is a Babywyrm, which is also one of the options for a starting monster, and that should give you an idea of how strong it is. Even without Mr.S, you’d be four times as strong. (Mr.S kills it in a single hit.)
I putter around the cave for a bit, earning money and using up Mr.S’s skills. Leia gets some more Mana, Han gets some more HP.
I get meat drops, but they’re useless to me because I don’t have a monster in my party.
Leia learns Warning, which prevents surprise attacks. It’s still better than an extra immunity to poison, so I move the second oPoison to the bottom of her list so it’ll get replaced.
Luke also learns Warning. Then we head out.
Mr.S: I must stay and guard our town. Good luck!
Luke: Thank you. I will come back with my father. Good-bye, Mr.S!
And with that, the training wheels are off.
And we walk into the town ten minutes away from home and the very first person we see is wearing a distinctive hat.
Luke: Dad? …Oops, mistake!
Man: Huh? Who are you? ….By the way! MAGI might be left in the relics of ancient gods. Do you happen to know where it is?
Now, if you look at that sprite, you can come to one of several conclusions: That Luke is an idiot who sees any man in a hat and thinks it’s his father; or that dad was in fact ten minutes away from home and slapped on a fake beard and glasses when he noticed Luke there. I lean toward the former.
The townspeople tell us about an important geographic feature that we really already should be aware of: The Pillar of the Sky.
The world of FFL2 is a special sort of place, and deserves some in-depth discussion and speculation. I'll discuss it more later when we get there.
We also hear about Ashura, one of the new gods.
Buying a drink from the bartender in some towns will give you hints. Here, it’s a waste of money.
Luke’s Log, Day 1: Today we set out on our journey. Mr. S was really kind to come with us through the Cave of North, because the monsters are scary and all I have is a hammer. I’m having some real trouble keeping up with Leia but I’m sure we’ll all learn to contribute equally. I thought I saw Dad, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because if he was just on the other side of the mountains this whole time, I’d be really upset that he didn’t come to visit.