I didn't grind much - maybe an hour? But enough to get Flare (Maria),
Holy (Firion), and Ultima (Guy) up to around level 7-8. I really like
that the overworld monsters changed at some point to be higher level, so
it's not just goblins outside Fynn.
Turns out there wasn't a whole lot of reason to travel around to the
different cities, because most of them were destroyed. Oh well. It was
all worth it though, because in Deist Castle, the mother and child
there got a bit sentimental at bringing up Ricard's death, and gave me
freaking Excalibur. Guy was pretty happy to take it.
Back through the Jade Passage for another crack at the Pandemonium
Castle. I still think it's beautiful, that crystal and white and pink
aesthetic, but I'm pretty sure I didn't look closely enough last time.
The walls seem to be made of bones, and the pink seems to be some kind
of organ/muscle/organic compound. Good from far, far from good.
The monsters were surprisingly not too hard with one exception - DEATH
RIDERS. These guys hit like trucks and drain with their hits. When
more than one ambushed me, there was nothing I could do but die and
reload my last save. When I wasn't ambushed, I found that the best
defense was a good offense, and didn't waste time buffing or healing,
just attacked full throttle, and did pretty well.
Pandemonium's layout was (intentionally) confusing, with doors on one
floor leading sometimes to floors way higher or lower, so I just kind of
went with it. It makes me think I missed stuff, but this was just a
first run. Fought two mini-bosses as I went, Beelzebub (pretty easy)
and Astaroth (HOLY SHIT HARD). Astaroth's massive draining hits made
her feel like a Death Rider boss. She was touch and go, and it was a
LONG fight, but eventually won. Barely.
Quick note: the Pandemonium music? E P I C
[youtube hx_iswdWY-4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx_iswdWY-4 youtube]
The top floor was beautiful, and the Emperor actually wasn't too tough,
just resilient. Never felt in any real danger. His Starfall was
gorgeous - I was expecting little cartoon five-pointed stars to rain on
me, but he summons THE SUN instead. Did only 200-300 damage, so pretty
weak, but cool graphic.
And game!
Nice enough ending, and glad to see Ghost!Josef pop in to say hi, but
I'm still really confused about Leon. I thought at the beginning of the
game that he was running away with us and killed by the Empire, or
captured. Then, when I figured out he was the Dark Knight, I figured it
was like FFIV (the one game I played prior to this playthrough) where
Xnva jnf oenvajnfurq vagb jbexvat sbe Tbyorm. But this wasn't the case!
He seems like he joined the Empire all on his own. Which, okay, I like
that better than brainwashing, but from the time he was captured he
rose through their ranks AWFULLY quick. And it sounded like he was in
charge of the Dreadnought building for a while!
The only way it makes sense to me is f he was secretly the Dark Knight
working for the empire long before they ran. Or maybe I totally
misjudged the timeline. Or something else?
------------
A few miscellaneous parting thoughts:
-Cool villain! No tragic backstory, but I'm okay with that. He's
purely power hungry, and really good at his job if he was able to
CONQUER HELL. I like.
-Weak main characters. It's a step up - or sideways at least - from
FFI, where there's no character background at all, but I had no real
sense of who Maria, Firion, and Guy really were.
-Great side character. Minwu's loyalty and dedication was interesting,
Josef's was fun to be around, Gordon was fine in small doses, Hilda was
cool. Ricard was meh, but ok. Paul was great, and I wish we got more
of him.
-Oh, yeah.. I HATE the empty treasure rooms. They vastly outnumber the
rooms with treasure in them, and just slowed things down. Would've
liked to see the ratio reversed, even if the treasure the rooms
contained wasn't great - an ether or hi-potion or something would've
been fine.
---------
So that's FFII! Next up, FFIII. It's coming out soon for PC, so I'm
actually thinking about waiting for the PC version to come out and
moving onto IV in the meanwhile. This is....
Wait. Credits. What are you doing. THERE'S MORE FFII?? [Thank you SO MUCH, StungunMilly for pointing this out to me!]
NEXT UP: FFII - Rebirth of Souls, with 87% more Minwu!
