Final Fantasy V Community Playthrough

[ForceStealer]

I'm really hoping that some new thermal paste will be all it takes to fix my computer tonight so I can finish chapter 10 and beyond

 

[Tennyo]

What is with you and your computers/consoles always dying in the middle of a game?

 

[Lex]

Maybe he just takes forever to finish them

Or doesn't clean the consoles or something? XD. I've never had a console die.

 

[ForceStealer]

As you'll find in the shit that annoys you thread, the cat knocked over the computer tower and the heatsink was knocked off the processor. (I'm hoping that's all it is.)

 

[Jason Tandro]

Woo! Finished Chapter 10!

Journal 10: No Fantasy For Old Men


Edit: No point in double-posting.

Journal 11: Mergers And Acquisitions

 

[Tennyo]

Chapter 5: Sinking in the Quicksand

Time: Monday 08/02 to Thursday 11/02 (sorry I'm posting it a bit late)

Target: After the airship has appeared.

In case you've forgotten what to do at the start of the chapter, go find Cid.

Discussion: This is uncharted territory for me - I've never played further than about a quarter of the way through this chapter - so I don't really have any discussion topics. If someone else wants to suggest some, that would be great, but otherwise, just answer this in as much or as little detail as you like: what did you think of this chapter?

Edit: it looks like the chapter after this one is going to be pretty heavy, and also something of a point of no return, so you might want to do your exploration with the airship at the end of this chapter to balance the load a bit.

Just finished this chapter a couple of days ago.

Spoiler

Am I supposed to be able to get into the pyramid at this point? I wandered all up and down that thing and around the desert in circles. Couldn't find a way in so I eventually gave up and moved on.

Other than that it was a fun chapter. I was kind of sad that I lost the Fire Ship pretty much the moment I get it, but the airship I have now seems cool. I do kind of wish I could have spent more time with the Pink Black Chocobo, though. However I did use the Balck Chocobo to go to Tycoon castle as well as Bartz's home town. Nice little side pieces there.

I had some trouble with the sandworm until I played around with my jobs and got the AquaRake from the Quadraharpy/Chimera/Whatever. Then that thing was a piece of cake.

OH. AND. I TOTALLY CALLED REINA/LENNA and FARIS BEING SISTERS.



Current party setup:

Bartz
Level 22
Blue Mage Level 3 122/250
Secondary command is Red

Reina/Lenna
Level 22
Monk Level 5 90/150
Secondary command is Summon

Galuf
Level 22
Time Mage Level 3 20/50
Secondary command is White

Garis
Level 22
Ninja Level 2 40/50
Secondary command is Steal

 

[Jason Tandro]

The pyramid is just foreshadowing. You won't get there til much later.

 

[AvecAloes]

I am still playing, despite my lack of posts. I'm in the midst of Chapter 12, I think.

 

[Flare]

Chapter 7 is finished!

Spoiler: Chapter 7

You'll probably want to follow the little critter before saving - just don't enter the forest.

Discussion: What did you think of this chapter?

My first thoughts... Galuf, you are such a badass. I mean you're stuck on a bridge with an army, trying to storm this evil dude's castle, and then you hear he's captured your friends?
What else to do but jump on a dragon, fly to the castle, and single-handedly storm it and rescue said friends? Like Galuf... that was awesome.

I'm enjoying having a whole new world at my fingertips to explore. Yeeesss <3 Surprised at all the marshland that wasn't in the other world, but it's cool because it helps to distinguish that there are differences in the worlds.

Anyway I loved Galuf storming the castle, he was a Ninja at the time he did so. Very fitting.

Gilgamesh is a comical villain, makes me smile every time he shows up. XD I liked hearing the 'Battle on the Big Bridge' song from it's original game and iteration finally! It's a very energetic song that encourages you to keep on fighting and pushing forward.

So then the party gets blown away to the northern continent, and thankfully there's that little remote town Regole. I love how surprised townspeople are to see you. Bought a few new spells and whatnot from there and farmed in the forest for gil (like 1000 gil from each fight with those pink aquatic creatures!) so I could buy it all and stock up on items.

Ran into a Kuza Beast! After seeing the damage it inflicted I ran from the first fight, but was determined to see if I could beat one. So I found another, and had Galuf throw a couple shurikans, which took the thing out fairly quickly. Next I stopped off in that Sealed castle... Kuza Castle? I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be there or not, so saved it first, then proceeded... ran into some kind of zombie dragon, and was promptly wiped out and received a Game Over.

I concluded that might be an optional dungeon or something and continued exploring the continent to eventually come up to that moogle in the forest! Followed it through the underground (Moogle Eaters?! Eeek! Poor guy. o_o), saved it from the skeletal T-Rex, and then followed it to its forest.

I know that's the end of the chapter, but here's the next little bit to finish off the moogle part

Cue moogles running into objects everywhere to get away from me. Made me laugh. Ungrateful turds, I just saved one of you! Stop locking the doors!
But then the one I saved came 'round and vouched for us and gave us treasures. XD

And then of course they're telepathically connected to one another, allowing Krile to come rescue us with her wind drake.
And that's about where I've stopped it!

So they're all at level 26.

Bartz - Mystic Knight
Lenna - Monk
Galuf - Ninja
Faris - Just switched her to a Time Mage. She was a Knight before.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Journal 12: Take Four Tablets With Water

Time to grind grind grind in Chapter 13. I am OCD about my jobs in this game and I HAVE to master every one on every character. Like it's a need. I must. For those not in the know, a lot of inherent abilities transfer to your Bare character, so mastering more of them makes your Bare (Freelancer) class even stronger. By the Rift (N-Zone) you should be prepared to be going Bare for most of the way.

Thankfully I play the emulator version this time around which means I can (and will) exploit the "Speed up" button to facilitate the grind. Also I'm playing Advance which means I have some jobs that you all might not- Cannoneer, Gladiator and Oracle (and at the end of the game after I win I can get Necromancer).

 

[ForceStealer]

I am OCD about my jobs in this game and I HAVE to master every one on every character. Like it's a need. I must.

This will always be a foreign concept to me. For each character, I have abilities I want them to know, and so I will grind to the extent that is needed to get those (usually on the Movers right before Neo Exdeath before switching back to Freelancer for the final battle), but I see no need to give everyone every ability.

 

[Flintlock]

I've been meaning to do a final chapter write-up and game review for two weeks now, so I shouldn't put it off any longer.

Chapter 14: As final (ish) dungeons go, revisiting a bunch of old locations worked really well, I thought. Some of the boss fights were straightforward, others not so much. The lack of save points was annoying; I had to beat a panda - sorry, Apanda - multiple times, even though I never actually died while fighting it. Azulmagia, who guarded the next save point, was much tougher, and to make matters worse, the only way of getting Titan Gloves in the game is to steal them from him with about a 3% success rate (with Thief's Gloves). I guess I got lucky, in that it took me under 20 attempts. I probably shouldn't have bothered. The Alte Roite enemies guarding the other treasure on that level were pains in the backside until I looked up a strategy on the FF Wiki. Halicarnassus and Twintania were both difficult, but I managed to beat them on the first try.

To be fair, I had some great ability combinations by that point, like Time + Doublecast, which also came in handy in the Void. I decided attack was the best form of defence and concentrated on dealing as much damage as possible in as few rounds as possible, with healing a lower priority. That was a lesson I learnt in Final Fantasy VI, and it served me well in this game as well. I switched to Freelancer/Mime at the final save point (but not before I had been instantly wiped out by Shinryu - it's a bit cruel to place a super-boss in an oh-so-tempting chest) and went to fight Exdeath. The first phase of the fight was easy enough, but I had no idea what to do in the second. The optional strategy for fighting multi-part bosses is always one of two things: tackle it one piece at at a time or try to defeat it all at once. I went for the latter, but a bit half-heartedly, so some parts died before others. Still, it seemed to work, so, uh, yay. Not the most memorable final boss.

I got a heavy Final Fantasy IV vibe from the Warriors of Dawn showing up to lend their strength to the Warriors of Light before the fight with Exdeath. As for the ending itself, well, it was a bit cheesy in parts, touching in others. I liked Krile's letter to Cid and Mid, which reminded me of Vivi's letter in Final Fantasy IX. I didn't cry like I did at the end of IX, but hearing Dear Friends gave me goosebumps, and a few of the scenes made me smile. It felt a bit weird to return to the Merged World afterwards, replete with voids, because I was playing the GBA version. I didn't actually do any of the bonus content - I never do, since it always feels tacked on. Oh, and I have a question about the ending: how do Butz, Lenna and Faris travel between the worlds? Do they have to ride meteors like Galuf and Krile did earlier in the game?

Seeing everyone's abilities at the end was a nice touch, though my characters had learned so many that I couldn't really be bothered to pay attention.

My overall thoughts on the game: Consistently good, occasionally great, but not in the highest pantheon of Final Fantasy games. The gameplay, particularly the battle system, is the consistently good part. I don't know if I've made it clear already, but I'm really a gameplay nut. As much as I love the stories in the series, it's mostly the gameplay that keeps me coming back time and time again. It's one reason why I love VII and XII so much, because they're so customisable. By the end of the game, with a bit of grinding, every character can learn everything, but for most of the game I had fun playing around with the job system. The actual combat, however, feels a bit old and quirky, even on the GBA version. The way the ATB bars fill up seems very random - sometimes it would tick over from 50% to 100% immediately, other times it would go through much smaller increments - and not being able to skip a turn is a big frustration. I also really liked the delayed action mechanic from IV, which added a bit more strategy to battles, so it was a shame that it was removed for V. I also would have liked to have been able to equip two command abilities on each character in addition to a passive ability, just to add a bit more variety and reduce the number of times I had to open the menu after a battle (almost every time in some dungeons), but that's a minor gripe.

I appreciate the way the game doesn't hold your hand too much - aside from the brief and thankfully optional tutorials at the beginning of the game, it lets you figure out what set-ups and combinations work best. It has a decent number of difficult bosses and a few deadly random encounters in largely optional places: castle basements, deserts on the world map, etc. It gives you various means of transport early on and encourages exploration by not always having an obvious destination. I found the soundtrack a bit lacklustre, but that's with the benefit of hindsight; Uematsu's best work was from VI onwards, in my opinion. I do prefer the soundtrack to IV's for the most part, which is a more meaningful comparison, and there are a few gems like Battle on the Big Bridge and the aforementioned Dear Friends. I wish the GBA version sounded better though.

The first four main characters are a terrific bunch, diverse and interesting, and I love their group dynamic, as they frequently laugh at each other and themselves. It's definitely one of the more light-hearted Final Fantasy games all around, actually. I could have lived without Krile being a playable character, but I guess that would have meant no emotional death for Galuf. On the other hand, it would have been really cool for Galuf to save the world twice, as a Warrior of both Dawn and Light. He and Faris were my favourite characters in the game and among my favourites in the whole series. Exdeath, however, was a disappointment. As I mentioned in an earlier chapter report, I found him to be quite the generic evil villain who wants to be all-powerful, shows up whenever he likes, and almost but not quite kills the playable characters a number of times. Even his theme tune is obviously evil. Golbez was pretty much the same for most of IV, but he had a moment of redemption at the end of the game that made it a bit more forgiveable. I never felt interested or invested in Exdeath. Gilgamesh, though. Every bit as awesome as everyone says. And I think that's a good point to leave this mini-review.

My rating:

Spoiler

Listen to the Final Fantasy V retrospective podcast when it's released (next month, I think) to find out!

Last word: thanks to everyone who played along and made this an enjoyable event to run.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Okay here's my final journal. I know I skipped posting one on here but Journal 13 was basically a blurb.

Journal 14: Exdeath Is Still A Terrible Name

Woo! I finished! I demand cookies!

 

[RedFFWolf]

Oh, and I have a question about the ending: how do Butz, Lenna and Faris travel between the worlds? Do they have to ride meteors like Galuf and Krile did earlier in the game?

Did the worlds return to their separated states? I haven't seen anything suggesting this occurred. The power of the void was stopped, the crystals reborn, but seeing how the world was split 1,000 years ago in the first place to prevent the power of the void, there's no reason it would split again, right?

Okay here's my final journal. I know I skipped posting one on here but Journal 13 was basically a blurb.

Journal 14: Exdeath Is Still A Terrible Name

Woo! I finished! I demand cookies!

Props for the journal title. The name really is something nowadays would use as a spoof name.


I also never realised there were multiple endings. Krile sent the letter in my ending, as no one was KO'ed in the final battle. Gonna go have a look now at other variations.

 

[Flintlock]

Did the worlds return to their separated states? I haven't seen anything suggesting this occurred. The power of the void was stopped, the crystals reborn, but seeing how the world was split 1,000 years ago in the first place to prevent the power of the void, there's no reason it would split again, right?

Dorgann says, "Go, return to your world", and by "your world", I assumed he meant Butz's world, but looking at the game script again, I guess I was wrong about that.

 

[Jason Tandro]

Did the worlds return to their separated states? I haven't seen anything suggesting this occurred. The power of the void was stopped, the crystals reborn, but seeing how the world was split 1,000 years ago in the first place to prevent the power of the void, there's no reason it would split again, right?

Dorgann says, "Go, return to your world", and by "your world", I assumed he meant Butz's world, but looking at the game script again, I guess I was wrong about that.

By "your world" he means the world of the living- the Warriors of Dawn being dead. We can see even from the shots of the world map in the end credits that the world remains merged (for one thing how the hell did Krile know what was going on as there was no permanent gateway between two worlds).

Also we know that Krile isn't just in Bartz's world because the Wind Drake is with her

Spoiler

(the only Wind Drake left in Bartz's world - Hiryuu (HERE YOU!) ) died (at least if you did the Phoenix Tower).

---


A side note, relistening to the soundtrack to celebrate my victory (and getting nostalgic feels of the game already) I have to say that FFV's soundtrack seems to have really influenced Final Fantasy 8's soundtrack in many many ways.

Spoiler: The Ancient Library / The Castle

You'll want to skip ahead to about the 1:40 mark to hear what I'm talking about but the basic melody is there, albeit expanded in the 8 track. The dead give away is the percussion which follows the same beats. Not a direct motif drop so much as a spiritual successor (think Musica Machina and Mako Reactor).

Spoiler: Exdeath's Castle Theme / Fithos Lusec Wecos Vinosec (Parade Theme)

Again you might want to skip ahead just a bit and again this is more a spiritual successor than a motif carry but you can hear elements of Exdeath's melody throughout and about 1:40 you begin to hear the same percussion. Maybe I'm crazy, but I hear a connection here.

Other things I noticed which I am too lazy to post youtube vids for:

The Castle In The Dawn bears a similarity to Movin'

Waltz Clavier and Waltz For The Moon (though this may just because they are both waltz's some of the melody seems to be shared).

Not FF8 but Book of Sealing's motif pretty much is Sephiroth's Theme.


====


And while we're talking about music the Ending musical sequence here is absolutely astounding. I'd say in terms of emotions it's probably #3 or #4 (ask me after I've played FF9 again). #2 is FF7 and #1 is FF6.

But no first we get that absolutely beautiful "Dear Friends" :

Which plays during the ending bit of story and, like Home, Sweet Home is a wonderfully simple and authentic guitar piece. It has a lulling effect as we learn what has happened to our heroes.

Then we get a brief reprise of the Final Fantasy Anthem before going into the End Titles theme:

And god damn does this hit me hard man. The arrangement of the Wind Drake's theme is so unexpected as it was, imho, one of the more forgettable themes in the game. But hearing it given this treatment turns it into something spectacular.

(It's worth nothing FF6 later did something very similar with Setzer's theme in almost the same treatment including the visuals as I mentioned in my journal).

Just a really powerful endgame gaiz.

 

[ForceStealer]

I've been trying to play just to beat the last boss of this chapter all week. Finally got to it.

Chapter 10: Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires

This chapter was brutal, yo. Two very long, difficult dungeons. Both the Moore Forest and Castle Exdeath have frequent encounters with tough/annoying enemies. Lots of status effects, lots of MP usage, lots to reviving dead characters.
Also, is it just me, or does this game dole out a lot more Elixirs than it does Ethers? I got down to below 10 Ethers and noticed I had over 20 elixirs, so when I ran out of MP I started just using Elixirs to recover it.

Anyway,

Spoiler

Once you get to the tree and Exdeath shows up, shit gets real of course. Flinging Krile around like a rag doll while zapping the shit out of the party. I said before, I really like how powerful and intimidating the game makes Exdeath seem despite just working with tiny sprites. I'm sure the bitchin' music isn't hurting matters, though.

Upon seeing this, Master Time Mage Galuf pushes through Exdeath's attack and opens dimensional portals to the outer reaches of space all around the evil being, pelting him from all sides with comets. Ignoring Exdeath's attacks, he puts all his life force into keeping the rifts open as the repeated impacts wear Exdeath down and his forced to flee. Unfortunately the spells took their toll on Galuf, the first permanent main character death in FF.


Then, as stated, Exdeath's Castle was even harder, and you don't get any sort of break in between. All of the encounters suck in here. But it is a cool/creepy looking dungeon with walls made of skulls that seem alive. Ick. THE classic battle with Gilgamesh however, I really like how he is saddened by Galuf's death too. Gilgamesh is famous not only because he's funny, but he does have something real about him. And of course that line always makes me smile.
And when Exdeath's voice booms "Gilgamesh!" and his awesome theme song starts and Gilgamesh just says "Erk." I love this game.

The battle with Exdeath was double tough too. Loading my party down with black magic and casting Carbuncle to reflect 4 Firagas at him every turn was a good strategy, though he still killed me a couple times. Definitely had to tap into those Elixirs as well. I still have like 12 or 13 though. Elixir hoarders - use them!!

 

[Flare]

Spoiler: Rest of Chapter 8

So it was a shorter chapter in terms of story, but I actually took some time on it which I'll explain in a moment.

Anyway, I'm more than happy to go on a quest to save a dragon.
Also, werewolf town, kind of cool!

So I get to the mountain, travel up in, and basic gist is I reach that room with the switch on the lower level but see no way to get to it. I end up thinking I missed something, and went back down the mountain to the very bottom. Nope, I didn't miss anything. So I go back up the mountain and finally look up online what the heck am I missing.
Like seriously. I had to wander around the floor until I fall down a hole? Thank you FFV for making me truly flabbergasted and not sure what to do for the first time while playing. *grumble grumble*

Anyway I got some extra EXP and AP going up and down and up the mountain.
I did find Golem too, what an interesting fight that was. Didn't expect I'd have to save the bugger, but I did.

Anyway the Dragongrass boss fight was very easy for me. I used Golem in the fight and I think that prevented all the status effects from hitting me. Whatever he did, it works amazingly well!
I was happy to see we get the dragongrass and save the wind drake. <3 It's interesting how they depend on a grass to survive.

One note about the Dragonvale mountain that I liked... there were undead dragons to fight. See this is something I always felt that FF games do well. They show things in the games, and have no one explain it or comment on it, because no one needs to. You don't need anyone to tell you that these undead dragons were the Wind Drakes that became poisoned and died on that mountain. They're just the enemies you fight, but to me it tell the story. It tells me that this mountain was home to a large population of drakes, and that somehow their food became poisoned and they ended up all dying out. It's the thought of all these dragons dying, and no one knowing why and thus not stopping it, that makes me feel sorry for them. An entire race of creatures unknowingly poisoned with their (seemingly essential) food source and dying out. Yes I find these things sad.
And I love how FF games can put these details into the game by only showing it.

Anyway that's my thought's on that chapter. I'll write up 9's summary sometimes soon too, as I just finished that chapter.

 

[ForceStealer]

Another one down!

Chapter 11: Pyramid Scheme

So first Faris looking apparently super hot in her dress. Bartz is beside himself
Also, Boko~~~! "You stud, you," haha. The GBA translation is excellent.

Another awfully hard dungeon in the Pyramid. Constantly running out of MP, especially with Lenna gone. As I have Bartz as my White Mage/Summoner, Krile as my Red/Time/Black Mage, and Faris as a Dragoon. It soon became clear that Dragoon did not do enough damage quickly enough to be my main fighter. So I bumped her over to Samurai with Two-Hand, which made a normal attack do a bit more than Jump without the delay. (Although against those mummies and robots I made her Mystic Knight for the first time in awhile to take advantage of elemental weaknesses, but that did not help my MP problem.
And is it really necessary that every freakin chest be a monster-in-a-box? That was my probably my biggest drain on resources for awhile - getting me down to 3 or 4 ethers and ~12 elixirs. However, things became considerably easier after Bartz killed himself but using the Dancing Daggers Jitterbug on one (), because it made me realize that the Damned and a quite a few enemies in here were undead. It sounds obvious in retrospect, I wish I had thought of it sooner, because moving Bartz back to Bard, which I hadn't done since Chapter 3 or something, made things a LOT easier. The Requiem dance does around 2800 damage to undead things, that makes all the monster-in-a-boxes a complete non-issue. Word to the wise.

Bahamut's rise was freakin awesome, I forgot all about that.
Melusine was a little annoying, what with the constantly rotating weakness, but getting the right guess just a couple times after bouncing an -aga off the reflected party made fairly quick work of her. (Also Samurai criticals do ~3000 damage, so that's nice.)
But...it wasn't a

Spoiler: bad view

. Design those enemies, Nomura

No huge changes to jobs. As I said Bartz is doing some moonlighting as a Bard, but otherwise mostly sticks to Summoning and White Magic.

Krile is my black mage, but I've been keeping her as Red Mage as much as possible, to minimize the grinding I'll have to do for DualCast. And having a backup healer is nice.

And Faris spent most of the chapter as a Samurai. Might keep her there, could go back to Dragoon, we'll see.

 

[Flare]

Spoiler: Chapter 9

Finished chapter 9 now (Also halfway through 10 so I'll write that up when I finish it, as usual). I've been playing it more again this weekend so it's been nice. <3

First thing I did with my wind drake was explore, of course Happened to overhear some soldiers in castle Surgate talking about King Xezat taking a fleet to Exdeath's castle. I went and checked but saw no fleet, so figured I really did have to go to the island first.

Which sinks.

Then I'm just flying around and think again of the fleet and go to check it out, which now it's of course magically appeared. Funny thing is if I never heard that one soldier mention the fleet, I'd have been so lost as to where to go next.

Anyways, fighting on the ship, woo! I was a bit worried Xezat would be taken out here but he wasn't.
I can say now that he dies at the end of the chapter and I was actually kind of sad for him, but for some reason he seemed like he wouldn't make it when I first met him.
So there's Gilgamesh again, and now he has a sidekick in the fight too, Enkidu (I wondering when his dog sidekick would show up!) I wiped out Enkidu first before taking out Gilgamesh, didn't have much trouble with the fight, and was entertained by his dialogue at the end of the fight and then outside of the battle screen, where he tries to jump into the ocean with your group. And fails.

Moving on, I liked that the fleet was a decoy because they're actually using a submarine and digging a frickin' tunnel on the ocean floor up to one of the towers. Like damn.
The tower was gnarly, enemies were a bit irritating to me but I had no trouble overall. Two red dragons in treasure chests was a cool addition, kind of tough. Thankfully I never died fighting them though. Is it just me or did the encounter rate seem a bit high in this tower?

Holy fuck on that Atomos fight. Took me a bit to realize that once he KO's someone he stops attacking and slowly pulls the KO'd character to his mouth. So I got to a rough system where I'd cast haste on Bartz (who was a dragoon this whole chapter and still is) and made him jump as often as I could. I juggled with the character deaths and somehow managed to keep everyone out of Atomos before I beat him, so no one was eaten! Galuf and Lenna were close though. They were cuddling up to Atomos by the time the fight was over. Basically my strategy became 'Don't let anyone get eaten and keep jumping and attacking when possible'. It worked.
Not counting the only boss I've died on so far (Soul Launcher Cannon), Atomos is probably the hardest fight I was in. If not for the Aging missiles from the Cannon, that boss fight wouldn't have been very hard at all for me. In this sense Atomos was harder, because I couldn't find a really good strategy, I just made something work and barely got it to work in the end. Whereas once I learned Esuna that Cannon wasn't too hard to beat (It did take a bit of time though).

Final thoughts: Xezat's death was a bit sad like I said before, and also the affect on Galuf. I like that he still waited at the sub for a minute. It's keeping the promise he made and probably still hoping that somehow his friend would walk into the cave, even when you know he's dead.

I think my character levels were at 31 at the end of this chapter (they're currently at 33 in my latest save). I'm 90% positive on the secondary abilities, but my jobs were for sure ~

Bartz - Dragoon w/Blue Magic abilities
Lenna - Monk w/Geomancer abilities
Galuf - Red Mage w/Summon abilities
Faris - Knight w/Time Mage abilities

 

[Ryushikaze]

Finally got back into the swing of things with this, continuing my gimmick run and I just finished Drakenvale. Tomorrow I'll try and get through the first Exdeath fight if I can. My LP will continue!

 

[Flare]

Spoiler: Chapter 10

Biiiig chapter this time.
So I did a bit of exploring with my sub and got to that strange little hidden place with the Catoblepas summon and a chocobo forest with only a female chocobo... Okay probably something else gonna pop up with that chocobo forest later on. Got the summon, visited the turtle sage, and moved on to Moore. Nice little town, bought some more spells and whatnot here.

Then Moore forest--why the frick is the encounter rate so high here? I literally wouldn't walk more than 5-7 paces without being in a fight!
But treasures everywhere, and yes I had to look for them all, I couldn't let the encounter rate discourage me! Though I'll admit I ran from a few fights as I was getting sleepy. Anyhow, good stuff in there.
The sudden firestorm was kind of cool; very sudden, you get rescued by a moogle, then climb out the cave to see the forest burned down. I like that sudden change of atmosphere.

Of course Exdeath is waiting for us at the tree. And he really hits the shit out of the party, too. Even if he doesn't seem to have much depth as a villain, he does seem powerful.
Then there's a battle with Exdeath and Galuf, and pnce you see his HP at 0 but him still fighting... Galuf is again, kind of a badass.
So I was already spoiled by Galuf's death a long time ago, though I didn't pay it much heed, because like Red I'd stumbled across a (picture, in my case, not a video) that had a screenshot of them trying to use a Phoenix Down to bring him back to life. Some meme saying "The only FF game where the party tried to save them". Also I got re-spoiled by it while reading some of the write-ups here, but anyways, wasn't a huge deal.
Kind of sad, I'll admit, but I was happy to see him kind of pop back for a moment to speak to Krile, and also to give her his levels and abilities OH THANK GOD

So we left that and I headed pretty much strait to Exdeath's castle. The castle seems fine at first, feel sorry for the guards though all wounded right in the entryway... then I come to that room with no way forward. But wait, it's an illusion! Kelgar helps to dispel it and (not to my surprise) ends up dying because of it as well.
And then I see the real castle and I'm like WTF is this place. Like seriously, not gonna lie, the moving/breathing bodies on the walls were creeeeepy. I was playing the game at night again too. Anyway, some pretty strong enemies here. Only one I couldn't beat was the 3x Blue Dragon. Holy smokes. So built up my characters some more in here, and I got Carbuncle (love that he's this big hulking beast in this game <3) and some cool weapons, like the Hayate Bow and a giant shurikan, it looks like, I forget the name.

Fighting Gilgamesh was fun; as Force says, I like that he even seems to show remorse for Galuf's death. I felt kind of sorry for him when he was sucked into the Void by Exdeath...
Reach Exdeath, and the battle goes okay; beat him on my first try and no major panic moments, but he wasn't really easy either.

And then as you say, back at Tycoon Castle. Hmmmmmmmm

I cba to write party levels and jobs out. I'm really sleepy now and it's time for bed.

 

[Tennyo]

Chapter 6: The Last Crystal

Time: Friday 12/02 to Sunday 14/02

Hangout: Saturday 13/02 at 15:00 Los Angeles, 18:00 New York, 23:00 London - click here to convert to your timezone. A link to the Hangout will be posted in this thread shortly before it starts.

Target: When you find yourself on this mysterious island. Save as soon as you arrive.

Discussion: What did you think of this chapter?

I finished this chapter a week or two ago. Never got around to writing a post about it until now. I'm actually as far as the bridge in the next chapter. Not sure where that puts but, but anyway.

This was a fun one. The canons were tough, but then I realized I could leave, heal, and save between each one. That made it a lot easier.

I managed to get all the chests in that one room in the flying ruins. That dungeon was kind of a pain, though. I ran away from most fights that had more than one monster.

In any case, I actually didn't save as soon as I reached that island, but I seemed to make it out okay anyway.

And to be honst I can't remember much else. I shouldn't have waited so long to post. :/

 

[AvecAloes]

Oh man, FYI I finished the game like 2 weeks ago but I keep forgetting to finish my chapter posts >.>

I'll try to get that taken care of early next week. The rest of this weekend is going to be pretty damn busy for me :/