Orbonne Monastery – Fourth Level
-Yay! I get to start at the fourth level. No need to fight through the first few floors again.
-Loffrey orders some Templars to wait here. He and Folmarv continue below.
-Orlandeau’s Hallowed Bolt is my all-star.
-After, we hear Loffrey chanting something below. Summoning something.
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Monastery Vaults – Fifth Level
-Loffrey leads this fight with a scary backline. Black mages, summoners, a time mage.
-Ramza feels something familiar here to his fight with Celia and Lettie. Loffrey’s not a human.
-We take Loffrey out. Time to see his Lucavi form?
“For you, Ramza… I shall cast open the very gates of hell.”
He finishes his summoning. “Zomal, Reeve of Time, by oath unto you am I bound.” I don’t remember Zomal from FFXII’s esper list, but my memories of the XII esper list is fuzzy.
-Loffrey teleports Ramza to the necrohol of Mullonde. I really hope this isn’t another solo fight.
-This is SUPER cool, graphically.
He summons a portal of some sort in the ground below us. Alma awaits. I’m more certain than ever now that Alma will possessed by Ultima.
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Necrohol of Mullonde
-It seems like Loffrey wasn’t actually a Lucavi. Huh.
-Cletienne is here with samurais and ninjas, all of which fold like paper before Orlandeau.
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Lost Halidom
-Another templar is here, Knight Templar Barich. I’m sure I met him before, but I don’t remember him.
-There are some awesome… creatures?
Three-headed dragons, or maybe demon chimaeric chocobos.
-This is a tougher fight than the others. Barich is a machinist and keeps his distance.
-So both Barich and Loffrey seem to be more than human, but less than Lucavi. Barich also goes down without any transformation.
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Airship Graveyard
-The music here is tinkly, mystical.
-Folmarv is down here with Alma. The High Seraph’s spirit is down here too, according to Folmarv.
-He’s frustrated. The Virgo Stone that resonated with Alma when Folmarv first found her is not doing anything.
-I don’t quite understand where we are. Some other dimension? Loffrey said he was opening the gates of hell after all, so this is probably the Lucavi home dimension.
Wherever it is, it’s super cool. A rotted, broken, overgrown airship.
-Folmarv thinks he’s solved this conundrum: it’s about blood. “The Angel of blood must slake her thirst ere she rise again.”
-Folmarv starts to transform himself. Lucavi time. He’s Hashmal, Bringer of Order. A lion-looking dude.
-He used Stop. If I wipe, I’ll have to get some anti-Stop protection gear.
-Phew! Victory, but a tough fight. He landed Stop on Orlandeau and Balthier early. Ramza’s fists of steel came through.
-Alma wakes. Something tells me this isn’t a good thing.
-She seems herself…
HASHMAL: “Too far we’ve come… to taste now of defeat… Angel… of Blood… That you should rise… my life I gladly give!” He thinks blood will wake her. He couldn’t draw our blood, so he’ll sacrifice himself.
-He impales his own chest, dropping the stone. Alma’s stone reacts.
-Alma transforms. But not into a Lucavi. Not yet at least. Saint Ajora. Yikes.
-I got a sword from the fight: Ragnarok.
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Airship Graveyard, Continued
-Saint Ajora seems disoriented.
“Ughhh… Ramza… please. Help me…” Ajora knows Ramza?? This must really be Alma still, only mostly possessed by Ajora (who I now assume is the High Seraph).
-This is weird. A light blasts over Saint Ajora, and now Alma materializes as her own person.
-The good: Alma’s free. The bad: So is Saint Ajora.
-Ajora summons a quartet of demons. “I suffer spite… from neither lord… nor serf!”
-She transforms. She blows apart much of the airship, and transforms into Ultima, the High Seraph.
-My objective here is to defeat Ultima. I’ll try the same strat as the other “Kill target” fights. Bee-lining for Ultima and ignoring the demons. I’m not expecting to win, but I want to see how it goes.
-We take her out in one round of attacks.
ULTIMA: “I see it now, too late. In you… his blood, my vanquisher in times… long past.”
Uh oh. Phase change. She transforms.
HOLY SHIT SHE LOOKS COOL! I can’t remember – was the Ultima fight in XII two-phase also? Did she have this second form in XII?
(This must be the final boss btw)
-Like a crowned robot skeleton demon thing.
-Alma helps in the fight! Buffs herself with Aegis.
-Ultima’s job is “Arch Seraph.”
-Victory! It took a few rounds but Ultima’s only attack was a physical attack that my Golem summon absorbed.
[Later edit: I know these last few fights weren’t really challenging, but I’m okay with that. I was pretty high level, and my abilities were pretty strong. This was probably balanced around a more haphazard and lower level party, and that’s TOTALLY fine by me.]
-She explodes. The airship we’re on too.
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Afterward
-A funeral. High Confessor Marcel’s maybe.
-Alma died?? Btw, the priest’s prayer – “May the grace of Saint Ajora lead Alma’s soul to the eternal shores of Paradise” – is hilarious in light of that last fight.
Ah! They must not know we survived.
WAIT WHY THE FUCK DID I ASSUME WE SURVIVED? THAT AIRSHIP BLEW UP IN THE HELL DIMENSION WHILE WE WERE ON IT. Is this the first FF game where the main cast dies? Holy shit holy SHIT
[Later edit: I’m getting memories of one of my favorite FF endings ever, the gutpunch of an ending to FFVII: Crisis Core.]
-DELITA AND OVELIA ARE WED
KING DELITA YAAAAY
That’s… good, but also kind of anti-climactic given all of Delita’s pronouncements.
-Orran and a woman whose name I missed visit the graves. He wonders if we’re truly dead. I wonder that too.
-All of a sudden, Ramza and Alma race past on chocobos. I guess we’re alive but just hiding out. Makes sense, if we’re labeled heretics.
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Closing Cinematic
-The gameplay fades out and we get a beautiful cinematic.
-Ramza and Alma never seen again. Orran was left to wonder.
The true hero of this tale was the man forgotten. Orran gathered everyone’s stories after, writing the Durai Papers. A history.
-As the story rolls, we follow Ramza and Alma on the run through Ivalice. Atop chocobos, through fields and streams.
-A new High Confessor was selected. And Orran was burned at the stake as a heretic lol. Even until the end, the game retains that typically Ivalician bleak view on the persistence of power.
-The Paper lay hidden for a long time, now rediscovered by that scholar from the beginning telling our story. Arazlam… AHA! ARAZLAM IS ARAZLAM DURAI! This whole story has been narrated by Orran’s descendant. Very cool.
-And that’s it! Credits roll.
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Post-Credits
-Zeltennia ruins.
-King Delita and Queen Ovelia are here. God, that’s weird to say.
-Ovelia rages at Delita, that he used “the others” and will cast her aside. She’s had this fear for a while, with good reason. She’s been constantly ill-used, manipulated.
-She charges him angrily, making him drop his bouquet of roses he was giving to her.
-She… collapses? And he drops a knife? Did he just kill her?
DELITA: “I… I got this.” I’m pretty confused tbh.
-Fade out to a fairly bleak end.
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Post-Game
-Got “Somebody To Love” achievement for completing Chapter 4, and now new items are apparently available in the Poacher’s Den.
-Logged back into my last save, and there’s a TON of new stuff in the Poacher’s Den. Really elite level gear, some of which is specific for Onion Knight.
-DARK KNIGHT IS A JOB?? Some of this gear is specific for Dark Knight. Maybe it unlocks now that I beat the game? Idk.
-All this new gear tells me that there’s stuff I missed. I know I never solved Nelveska Island, never figured out how to unlock it. I never found the Cancer Stone, and thus couldn’t progress with the Goug story.
That’s okay. I’m done for now.
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Next time: Final thoughts on Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions. Either next week or the week after, I’ll continue my journey through Ivalice with Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.
