When we last left off, the party had cleared the awful and boring desert to finally reach the Ronkan Ruins. Here they encountered a ghostly figure that resembled King Tycoon. Chasing him around the ruins, the party falls into an underground industrial area that doesn't feel far off from Metal Man's stage in MM2; and one of my favorite tracks playing Musica Machina. The party finds a teleporter that sends them back to Crescent Island where they find the Fire Ship, and Cid and Mid who also clumsily stumbled upon the place. In addition to all of this, the team discover an airship docked here as well, so I finally have full access to the world map.
I should be heading back to the Ronkan Ruins, but we need to make a few stops first. With the airship I can finally reach Istory, the town next to Istory Falls. Here, I can acquire a few really neat things. If you talk to the little girl near the inn, she mentions running around the flower bed to receive something good. Doing so wakes up a sleeping frog who leaves behind the Toad spell for my Black Mages. In the area with the sheep, one sheep turns out to be a girl playing pretend, but another sheep gives Butz some attitude and kicks him over the fence to speak with a Bard who teaches Romeo's Ballad, which is a song that casts Stop on all enemies. The other thing to do hear is talking to an old woman by the river gives you the information about a strange old man wandering the woods to the east that likes to fling lightning at everyone. Changing Butz into a Summoner with Blue magic as a sub-ability, I head into the woods.
After a few encounters, I finally encounter Ramuh. He's not terribly difficult compared to his brethren but he also doesn't have any particular weaknesses either to any element available to me. It's also not wise to let this battle drag on because he can weakne your party pretty badly and there is one enemy in this area you need to watch, so some bad RNG can make this a quick trip to the title screen. The easiest way to take out Ramuh is to use Death Claw (told you it was useful) to knock him down to single digits. Afterwards, summon Ifrit to finish him off and Ramuh and Ifirt will engage in a bit of friendly banter which is poorly translated in this fan version I'm playing. Afterwards, Ramuh drops his summon item which you'll need to use from the item menu screen to learn his summon. I now only have one summon left to learn in Butz's world.
The other two things for those who like to power level is to point out two specific enemies. In these same woods as Ramuh, there is an enemy called the Mini Dragon that appears in groups of five to attack you. These guys are a pain in the ass to kill because they have ridiculously high evasion and defense, but hitting them with Ice, Water, and Lightning damage like summons, black magic, or blue magic will allow you to kill them in three rounds or so. These guys drop the highest amount of EXP in the first world, so they are worth fighting for that, even if they are one of the most dangerous creatures in the world. As a note, I also flew back to Walse Castle and explored the basement to acquire both the Drag/Speed spell and a second Elven Cape accessory. The basement is filled with an enemy called Jackernapes that have high stats, always back attack, and outside of the Moonflute Blue spell, nothing else worth fighting them for because their EXP/Gil/ABP drops are insultingly bad for the amount of effort it takes to kill them.
If you fly to the islands southwest from Crescent Island, you'll encounter an Omega looking enemy called Prototype. He has ridiculously high stats that make it nearly impossible to hurt him without power-leveling or using the Dark Spark blue spell to halve his level a few times. Or... you can just use Control to make him use Exploder/Self-Destruct on himself. This guy also teaches two other Blue Mage spells: Emissions, which is a single target fire spell; and Missile/Rocket Punch, which does gravity style percentile damage and occasionally causes the enemy to be confused. This guy also drops a pretty decent amount of Gil, EXP, and ABP so he's not a bad farming target, but more importantly, he always drops Dark Matter with 100% success. Dark Matter is an incredibly useful and powerful Chemist item that is not easy to come by, so farm a couple from him because it's one of the most important ingredients for the class.
With the sideshow over, we head to the Ronkan Ruins where we witness a pretty cool sequence where the Mana Fort...er the Ronkan Capital rises from the desert and moves high enough in the atmosphere that the airship can't reach it. With nowhere else to go, the team heads back to see Cid and Mid, who discover through the Catapult Ruins a bunch of convenient information about the Ronkan Empire and their technology. We need Adamantium to give the airship a power boost, but they have no idea where to get some. Conveniently, Galuf remembers he had some on his Meteor. So the team heads back to Tycoon Castle to check out Galuf's meteor and sure enough, the Adamantium is there, so is an Adamantoise boss. This guy is a push over that's weak to ice elemental damage. Course, if you're feeling particularly lazy like I am, you can also just cast Lv. 5 Death and be done with it.
With the Adamantium in hand, Cid and Mid make adjustments to the airship. Now if we press the A button, we have the option to fly higher and reach the ruins, in additon, if you press down, the airship converts to a boat. Cid and Mid warn we have to be careful about the Ronkan Ruins cannons, but the party assures them it won't be a problem. These sequence is pretty cool looking and you actually get to control your airship to guide the party to attack the guns. I would also like to point out how stellar the background animations in the fight screens are. If you look in the background, you can see that the fortress has monorails on the outside as well as seeing the party's airship docked on the fortress in the background. Pretty neat details. You're going to want to make use of that new Ramuh spell here and equip a summoner with a Thunder Rod to pull off 1500 damage on the gun parts. Be careful as these guys are pretty fast with a high battle speed set and the Missile/Rocket Punch move also casts Old on the party which will make them practically useless after a few rounds with the status effect.
Once all four guns are taken out, the fortress pulls out the big Soul Cannon to take out the airship. This is the first boss fight I actually died to, and the one that teaches the player how Battle Speed actually works. There is three parts to this boss, with two Launcher enemies attached that like to use Missile to make your party have a bad day. Using Lv. Death will get rid of both of them, and thankfully the boss doesn't revive them. The actual Soul Cannon works like Bahamut in FFIV. He does a type of countdown that's presented as arming preparations, so it rakes it a few rounds before it launches it's powerful Pulse Laser attack that hits the whole party for high damage. At battle speed 1, which I'll remind you only effects how often enemies get there turns, he can fire this cannon sometime between your party's second set of turns. So it was a pretty nasty wipe when it took me out around round four. Now, understanding how this guy is just moving too fast, I could easily just adjust the battle speed in the menu to make this fight manageable, but the point of this Let's Play is to show off the brilliance of the battle system. Instead, I go back to my last save, beat up the four cannons and before engaging the Soul Cannon, I give Lenna Time Magic. Earlier in the game, I acquired the Speed/Drag spell. It's description is pretty awful, and if you didn't bother adjusting the Battle speed to a higher setting, it's completely useless. What this spell does is pretty neat, it will change the battle speed to 5 (slow) for the duration of the battle. Not useful for casual players, but if you're playing on higher difficulty settings or doing a challenge run, this spell is invaluable for bosses like Soul Cannon and Atmos, or against enemies that Slow won't work on. As expected, the spell slows the enemy turns to a crawl and lets me wallop him pretty badly. With that we enter the Ronkan Fortress.
This is honestly one of the coolest looking dungeons with some cool Mode 7 layer effects and the moving gears, not to mention Musica Machina is still the theme music of the place. I switch my party around to get Learning back on as a sub-ability, control for Blue spells., and I turn Lenna into a Bard because they are actually quite useful in this dungeon. There are quite a few enemies in this area you'll want to keep an eye on. The Enchanted Fan can be both Controlled or Charmed and he teaches both Aera and more importantly, the White Wind blue mage spells. He's pretty common too, and if you're lucky like I was, one of them may drop a Dark Bow for your Hunter. Ronkan Knights are brutes that carry Hi-Potions and Power Potions that can be stolen. They also occasionally drop Mythril Shields. Lamia is an enemy that you need to control, she has two really important things. First, she has a really good helmet called Lamia's Tiara that is a rare steal from her. Secondly, she has the Blowfish/1000 Needles Blue spell. It is imperative to learn this from her cause it's going to make the next boss less of a headache. Ra Mages have Bard's Coats to steal for easy money.
Finally there are two hydra looking dragon enemies to watch out for. The actual Hydra (misspelled in this translation) can easily be charmed by the Bard's song, which is incredibly useful because this guy has some incredibly powerful attack you don't want to deal with including Quake and Poison Breath. Ethers can be stolen from him, and if you're incredibly lucky, he has Dragon Fangs as a rare drop which is the other super useful alchemy item you'll want to farm for. The other enemy is called Ghildra, which is an undead palette swap of Hydra (which is mistranslated as Hydra in this version). This guy is an asshole and if you don't care about a perfect run or power leveling, then I would advise you to avoid fighting him because he's designed to drain your resources. He can't be controlled or charmed, so get ready to be hit by a lot of the spells his living counterpart has. He has really high health as well. The easiest way to kill him is to use a Phoenix Down to instant kill him but since they are actually both expensive and hard to come by in this entry, you may not want to. The other strategy is to use Death Claw on him, but it has low accuracy against this boss. Missile will also land most of the time, but since it's percentile damage, you'll probably have to outlast him at that point. When he dies, he casts Lv. 4 Graviga on your party, which is a pretty useful Blue Mage spell, so you'll want whoever is on your team that's divisible by 4 in levels to have Learning as their sub-ability. Finally, for the completionists out there, this guy also has the excellent Killer Bow as a rare steal. Thankfully, it doesn't carry any other items, so you're guaranteed to get it if the steal is successful, but the probability without the Bandit's Glove is something like 3.9% success rate. After getting thumped a few too many times by this guy, I broke down and used saved states to finally get both this item and keep my party levels down since this guy is also the best enemy to fight for levels in this dungeon.
With all that out o the way, I grab all the loot, including a very useful Power Armband, the Ancient Sword, and Gold Armor and Shield. I then approach the last floor where King Tycoon is battling the guardian of the fortress, Archeoaevis. This guy is easily going to be the first boss battle that is going to test the patience of the player, and much like Soul Cannon, you'll need to really know what skills you have to make this obnoxious fight into a cakewalk. So a few interesting tidbits about this boss, he's actually five bosses in one that just all have the same sprite and only the final one has an onscreen transition. He has four normal forms, and then a final undead form just to screw with you. All four living forms have 1600hp a piece, and their stats are all slightly different, with each form having different elemental strengths and weaknesses. The rule of thumb with this fight, if you fight him fairly, is that his early forms have really high physical defense, but low magical defense; and then these stats are inversely changed as you go through the fight. So basically his first form is weak only to magic but strong against physical, while his fourth form is weak to physical but strong against magic. Course this goes out the window as it uses Wall Change to alter it's elemental weakness. This boss also gets some powerful group hitting attacks like Air Wind and Lightning so this is not a fight you'll want to drag out. His final form has 2500hp, is undead, and gets contractual boss immunity to phoenix downs. He also has access to the powerful Maelstrom attack that will instantly knock your whole party to critical health, so yeah, he's and asshole overall and the first boss that really gives players a hard time.
So what to do? As usual, the Blue Mage comes to the rescue here. 1000 Needles does unblockable damage and ignores all of those pesky stats, and with a competent fighter and mage on the team, you can potentially knock out a form every round with this strategy. When he finally reaches his undead form and casts maelstrom on your team, counter him your own "flashing the bird" move by taking advantage of his zombie form being level 25 and use Lv. 5 Death to instantly kill him. If you really want to be saucy, bring a few monk into your team with counter equipped and use 1000 Needles to knock its first form to 500hp. Then just wait for it to use a physical attack and get countered. If you're lucky, the Monk will do enough damage to kill him and the game bugs out for some reason the boss won't transition to any later forms and you can call it good. Even more interesting is that each form does actually drop it's own alchemy item.
With the boss defeated, the King of Tycoon rushes ahead to the crystal chamber. The party follows and realizes the king is being controlled by ExDeath. Butz and Galuf prepare to knock some sense into him but the daughters won't have any of it. Instead it takes the untimely arrival of Krile er I mean Cara to crash her meteor into the ruins and casting Thunder on the King to snap him back to his senses. Talk about a dramatic entrance. The girls have a tearful reunion with their father, Galuf hilariously regains his lost memories thanks to Cara and smacking his question mark bubble off screen, and Butz sits there all teary eyed by all these emotional family reunions until it hits him that he's an orphan and will never experience anything like this. Of course with all these teary eyed reunions, no bothers to check on the Earth Crystal which is powering up this whole fortress and before anyone knows it, it shatters and the thing we've spent all of the first third of the game trying to do has been for naught. ExDeath makes his grand entrance, corrupts the shards of the earth crystal to keep the party trapped there while he uses his magic to return to Galuf's world to wreck havoc on everything. King Tycoon then makes a heroic sacrifice to purify the crystals at the cost his own life. The party obtains the last four non-game breaking jobs, and with the crystal gone, the fortress decides to go back to being an earth bound city instead. The party escapes and we watch the fortress crash back to the planet. The sisters mourn their father's passing and Galuf tells Butz a very short version of why ExDeath was sealed on their world to begin with. With his own world in danger, Galuf and Cara choose to return home, but don't wish to drag Butz, Lenna, and Faris into their drama anymore, you know despite the fact that their world is totally screwed now without the four crystals, and most of the major world governments are in shambles. After the duo leave, the other three converse and decide to follow after Galuf even if it means leaving behind their smurfed up dying world forever.
We'll do the quest to reach Galuf's world and I'll probably play up until they escape ExDeath's castle for the next segment. I now have the last four classes of Samurai, Dragoon, Dancer, and Chemist so I'll likely do the second to last Job Class write up for the next entry. I'll take suggestions for the next classes to play as, though I'm down to three people at the moment.
Last edited by Wolf Kanno; 05-27-2019 at 05:48 AM.
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