![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xyzzysqrlYou know, blogging this game has really rekindled my love for JRPGs. I had completely burned out on the entire genre, but I feel like my interest is powering up to the maximum after a long dormancy. I mean, heck, I just bought myself a copy of Final Fantasy 13-2.
(Can I shill the Square-Enix Winter Sale for a moment? Right now you can get a copy of Nier for $10. That is -crazy good- for what is easily one of the best and most internally metacritical games I've ever played. Also you can roll around in nostalgia and/or completely ignore Romancing SaGa. Sorry, Romancing SaGa! Nobody is ever going to play you! Isn't it sad?)
Anyway, that rekindled interest is making me think of sprinkling some more of the older, obscure, mediocre JRPGs (hi, Legend of Legaia 2) that I've got laying around into the Hat list. The thing is, would you guys read that if they came up? Would y'all support another multi-month project like this one is shaping up to be? I have this itching feeling like nobody is going to give a crap and I've already overstayed my welcome. Maybe I should start a spin-off blog, like "The Bland RPG Playthrough Blog Does All The Non-Hits of the PS2 Era" or something. ...Maybe I should do screenshots?
TELL ME HOW TO IMPROVE, INTERNET.
Well. To get to that point requires crossing this bridge, and I am loving Final Fantasy 12 so much more now that I'm writing about it. It's really forced me to slow down, pay attention, and look at the story not just from a "whatever, I want to kill more monsters" standpoint but an analytical and critical standpoint too. I'm really noticing all the foreshadowing, character development, and whatnot I had missed on my previous and abortive attempts to just bumrush through the thing hamhandedly. Playing the arguably improved version helps too.
...Whatever, I want to kill more monsters. Let's get the show on the road. Last time, Ashe got a Sword of Plot Advancement, and the Empire responded by blowing up a refuge camp/place of worship. Let's hustle back there and check out s'up.
On the way there, I get jumped by The Trickster. Okay. I promised I'd talk about this dude, and here it is: He is a giant white chocobo. Chocobos are sort of... wild horsebirds. Or birdhorses. Either/or. This particular model is snow-white, often invisible, moves at mach 3, and likes to attack once and sprint away into crowds of waiting enemies. In this example, he attacked my party while I was hovering next to the zone line and buffing up to fight him. Dick move, attacking before I'm prepared.
What other tricks can the Trickster pull? Well, he has a Paling. Palings, as Alicia alluded to in the comments to a previous entry, are Bad News. Big nasty enemies can toss up a Paling, which means that for a set period of time... usually about two minutes ... they are completely/almost completely immune to incoming damage. Naturally they will use this time to screw you up. Trickster, for example, spends his Paling period hurling meteors at the party. Don't ask me how wildlife learns the ability to huck Meteors around at will when Sephiroth took a whole game just to summon up one. Clearly chocobos could kick his warking ass.
So how do you defeat an enemy that turns invincible and insta-gibs the party at half health? Well, if you're me, you get him down to half+1 health and then drop a Quickening train on him. MASSIVE OUTGOING UNINTERRUPTIBLE DAMAGE delivered in multihit combo form seems to be solving a lot of my major bad-guy issues. I worry about a time in the future when it will not. That time, however, has yet to come. (Don't think it was easy, either. Took several tries and at least two game overs.)
Which is all very hooray and yay, but it isn't going to get me anywhere when I get to Bur-Omisace. Those guys have just been bombed, you see. The tent city is aflame, most of the population is dead or wounded, and there are Judges in the temple. In particular, there is Judge Bergan, who has shown up in a few cutscenes here and there, and just murdered the Dreamsage. Upon the entry of the party he starts to rant about things like how the TRUE Dynast-King will be VAYNE SOLIDOR, and how Vayne can put the reins of history back in the hands of Man instead of the gods (funny, I've heard that line before) and then he starts glowing and emitting Mist.
He's using manmade nethicite to power himself up. Fran doesn't like the look of that. However, Ashe was ready to kill when he started claiming "There is no place for Dalmasca in the new future", so she's already off and running out of the gate. First the party takes care of the three lesser Judges around Bergan, then they rush down the man himself.
Even with him wielding two giant swords and in plate mail, he doesn't last long. When Bergan starts to lose, he panics. He swipes at the air. Then something in his armor, probably the nethicite, EXPLODES violently and he's hurled to the ground. Balthier is the only one with the stomach to look and he looks visibly disgusted. Apparently Bergan had augmented himself right down to the -bones- with manufacted nethicite, and when it went off...
So yeah, stay off the nethicite, kids. It's bad for you.
...I wonder what would've happened if I had used the Sword of Kings on that dude. Ew. Nevermind.
The party checks him over, then the Dreamsage, then remembers Larsa. "Gone." confirms Al-Cid, limping in supported by his maid. "Spirited away, by Judge Gabranth." Gabranth took Larsa and left peacefully, then Bergan decided to start something and went nuts. Al-Cid barely fended off his attackers. He pleads with Ashe to let him take her to safety in Rozarria, where she can help him convince others not to start the war.
Ashe apologizes, but she has too much to do. She needs to take the Sword of Kings to the Dusk Shard, and destroy it. Balthier can guess where that might be: Draklor Laboratories. "The Empire's weapons research begins and ends there." Ashe nods, wishes Al-Cid luck with his home country, and stalks off to leave at once for the HEART OF THE EMPIRE.
Al-Cid stops her to deliver a message from Larsa. "The differences between our two lands will fade before the shared dream of men." Ashe seems to consider this for a moment, then nods and resumes her leave. Outside, refugees are rebuilding and sages lamenting the damage to the temple, but she doesn't care about any of that, bringing out a map to prepare a route. The air route is out with all the fleet activity, and the water route is guarded by the Navy, so she plots a foot path into the Imperial capital.
This isn't gonna be HARD or anything, no. The group hops a teleporter back to Rabanastre to prepare.
Gah. Something like eight hunts open up now. Luckily I can take all of them and then forget about them for a bit. I'll handle those later.
Right. The group will have to head north, through the "Mosphoran Highwaste" and the "Salikawood". Naturally, that's the direction we go.
The trip through the Highwaste is so uneventful I can't even tell you how uneventful it was, because anything I say would be more dramatic than what actually happened. Which was absolutely nothing of interest.
In the Salikawood, however, we get a subquest! Kind of! The gate to the next zone is closed and locked, and it needs repairing. The Moogle Boss exposits, "Oh, if only my 9 apprentices were here! NINE of them! That's NINE. NINE. Nine... you getting this?" Moments later, a big moogle head with "0/9" next to it appears on my screen.
Guys I'm not sure what I do here, can any of you help me figure it out?
I get the impression that what I'm SUPPOSED to do isn't what I end up doing, because I take a side turn, fight the Largest Bomb in the World, cut through the "Nabreus Deadlands" and discover the Necrohol of Nabudis. I'll be honest, I KNEW about this place, or at least the general description of it. In the vanilla game, this is where you get the OMG ZODIAC SPEER which is the single greatest object to grace heaven or earth and is of course missable forever because treasure chests are coded weird.
That's not the case here. Your Spear Is In Another Castle, Fran. However, it's still a land of treasures that are far beyond my level, and I'm excited to have a quick rifle through and see what I can get away with. As I approach, Basch steps in to give a speech. This wasteland is all that remains of Nabudis. Two years ago, it was destroyed by a mysterious force. Nethicite, of course. It's a dead wasteland corrupted with beasts and choked with doom. For the first time, Ashe seems to realize just what nethicite can -do- to a place.
"What we seek is not this way." Fran says, not QUITE facing directly into the camera. "We should turn back." When have I ever listened to common sense, though? WE RALLY. INTO THE MIST.
Thirty seconds later we come running back out, firmly chastised. Okay, let's try not fighting the enemies on the way in. We make RALLY ATTEMPT 2 and push in deeper, but it quickly becomes obvious that this is one of the worst ideas I've ever had. Dark magic and powerful enemies nip at the party's heels as I abandon all pretext of dignity and sprint for the zone line. Oh thank goodness, a save point.
The save point is a mimic. It comes to life and kills the entire active party in one lightning blast. Ten seconds later, as the backup trio tries to scramble out of the way, it kills them too. Game Over.
On second thought, let's not go to Nabudis. It's a silly place for babies.
NEXT TIME: We get the back on the plot train, toot toot.
(Can I shill the Square-Enix Winter Sale for a moment? Right now you can get a copy of Nier for $10. That is -crazy good- for what is easily one of the best and most internally metacritical games I've ever played. Also you can roll around in nostalgia and/or completely ignore Romancing SaGa. Sorry, Romancing SaGa! Nobody is ever going to play you! Isn't it sad?)
Anyway, that rekindled interest is making me think of sprinkling some more of the older, obscure, mediocre JRPGs (hi, Legend of Legaia 2) that I've got laying around into the Hat list. The thing is, would you guys read that if they came up? Would y'all support another multi-month project like this one is shaping up to be? I have this itching feeling like nobody is going to give a crap and I've already overstayed my welcome. Maybe I should start a spin-off blog, like "The Bland RPG Playthrough Blog Does All The Non-Hits of the PS2 Era" or something. ...Maybe I should do screenshots?
TELL ME HOW TO IMPROVE, INTERNET.
Well. To get to that point requires crossing this bridge, and I am loving Final Fantasy 12 so much more now that I'm writing about it. It's really forced me to slow down, pay attention, and look at the story not just from a "whatever, I want to kill more monsters" standpoint but an analytical and critical standpoint too. I'm really noticing all the foreshadowing, character development, and whatnot I had missed on my previous and abortive attempts to just bumrush through the thing hamhandedly. Playing the arguably improved version helps too.
...Whatever, I want to kill more monsters. Let's get the show on the road. Last time, Ashe got a Sword of Plot Advancement, and the Empire responded by blowing up a refuge camp/place of worship. Let's hustle back there and check out s'up.
On the way there, I get jumped by The Trickster. Okay. I promised I'd talk about this dude, and here it is: He is a giant white chocobo. Chocobos are sort of... wild horsebirds. Or birdhorses. Either/or. This particular model is snow-white, often invisible, moves at mach 3, and likes to attack once and sprint away into crowds of waiting enemies. In this example, he attacked my party while I was hovering next to the zone line and buffing up to fight him. Dick move, attacking before I'm prepared.
What other tricks can the Trickster pull? Well, he has a Paling. Palings, as Alicia alluded to in the comments to a previous entry, are Bad News. Big nasty enemies can toss up a Paling, which means that for a set period of time... usually about two minutes ... they are completely/almost completely immune to incoming damage. Naturally they will use this time to screw you up. Trickster, for example, spends his Paling period hurling meteors at the party. Don't ask me how wildlife learns the ability to huck Meteors around at will when Sephiroth took a whole game just to summon up one. Clearly chocobos could kick his warking ass.
So how do you defeat an enemy that turns invincible and insta-gibs the party at half health? Well, if you're me, you get him down to half+1 health and then drop a Quickening train on him. MASSIVE OUTGOING UNINTERRUPTIBLE DAMAGE delivered in multihit combo form seems to be solving a lot of my major bad-guy issues. I worry about a time in the future when it will not. That time, however, has yet to come. (Don't think it was easy, either. Took several tries and at least two game overs.)
Which is all very hooray and yay, but it isn't going to get me anywhere when I get to Bur-Omisace. Those guys have just been bombed, you see. The tent city is aflame, most of the population is dead or wounded, and there are Judges in the temple. In particular, there is Judge Bergan, who has shown up in a few cutscenes here and there, and just murdered the Dreamsage. Upon the entry of the party he starts to rant about things like how the TRUE Dynast-King will be VAYNE SOLIDOR, and how Vayne can put the reins of history back in the hands of Man instead of the gods (funny, I've heard that line before) and then he starts glowing and emitting Mist.
He's using manmade nethicite to power himself up. Fran doesn't like the look of that. However, Ashe was ready to kill when he started claiming "There is no place for Dalmasca in the new future", so she's already off and running out of the gate. First the party takes care of the three lesser Judges around Bergan, then they rush down the man himself.
Even with him wielding two giant swords and in plate mail, he doesn't last long. When Bergan starts to lose, he panics. He swipes at the air. Then something in his armor, probably the nethicite, EXPLODES violently and he's hurled to the ground. Balthier is the only one with the stomach to look and he looks visibly disgusted. Apparently Bergan had augmented himself right down to the -bones- with manufacted nethicite, and when it went off...
So yeah, stay off the nethicite, kids. It's bad for you.
...I wonder what would've happened if I had used the Sword of Kings on that dude. Ew. Nevermind.
The party checks him over, then the Dreamsage, then remembers Larsa. "Gone." confirms Al-Cid, limping in supported by his maid. "Spirited away, by Judge Gabranth." Gabranth took Larsa and left peacefully, then Bergan decided to start something and went nuts. Al-Cid barely fended off his attackers. He pleads with Ashe to let him take her to safety in Rozarria, where she can help him convince others not to start the war.
Ashe apologizes, but she has too much to do. She needs to take the Sword of Kings to the Dusk Shard, and destroy it. Balthier can guess where that might be: Draklor Laboratories. "The Empire's weapons research begins and ends there." Ashe nods, wishes Al-Cid luck with his home country, and stalks off to leave at once for the HEART OF THE EMPIRE.
Al-Cid stops her to deliver a message from Larsa. "The differences between our two lands will fade before the shared dream of men." Ashe seems to consider this for a moment, then nods and resumes her leave. Outside, refugees are rebuilding and sages lamenting the damage to the temple, but she doesn't care about any of that, bringing out a map to prepare a route. The air route is out with all the fleet activity, and the water route is guarded by the Navy, so she plots a foot path into the Imperial capital.
This isn't gonna be HARD or anything, no. The group hops a teleporter back to Rabanastre to prepare.
Gah. Something like eight hunts open up now. Luckily I can take all of them and then forget about them for a bit. I'll handle those later.
Right. The group will have to head north, through the "Mosphoran Highwaste" and the "Salikawood". Naturally, that's the direction we go.
The trip through the Highwaste is so uneventful I can't even tell you how uneventful it was, because anything I say would be more dramatic than what actually happened. Which was absolutely nothing of interest.
In the Salikawood, however, we get a subquest! Kind of! The gate to the next zone is closed and locked, and it needs repairing. The Moogle Boss exposits, "Oh, if only my 9 apprentices were here! NINE of them! That's NINE. NINE. Nine... you getting this?" Moments later, a big moogle head with "0/9" next to it appears on my screen.
Guys I'm not sure what I do here, can any of you help me figure it out?
I get the impression that what I'm SUPPOSED to do isn't what I end up doing, because I take a side turn, fight the Largest Bomb in the World, cut through the "Nabreus Deadlands" and discover the Necrohol of Nabudis. I'll be honest, I KNEW about this place, or at least the general description of it. In the vanilla game, this is where you get the OMG ZODIAC SPEER which is the single greatest object to grace heaven or earth and is of course missable forever because treasure chests are coded weird.
That's not the case here. Your Spear Is In Another Castle, Fran. However, it's still a land of treasures that are far beyond my level, and I'm excited to have a quick rifle through and see what I can get away with. As I approach, Basch steps in to give a speech. This wasteland is all that remains of Nabudis. Two years ago, it was destroyed by a mysterious force. Nethicite, of course. It's a dead wasteland corrupted with beasts and choked with doom. For the first time, Ashe seems to realize just what nethicite can -do- to a place.
"What we seek is not this way." Fran says, not QUITE facing directly into the camera. "We should turn back." When have I ever listened to common sense, though? WE RALLY. INTO THE MIST.
Thirty seconds later we come running back out, firmly chastised. Okay, let's try not fighting the enemies on the way in. We make RALLY ATTEMPT 2 and push in deeper, but it quickly becomes obvious that this is one of the worst ideas I've ever had. Dark magic and powerful enemies nip at the party's heels as I abandon all pretext of dignity and sprint for the zone line. Oh thank goodness, a save point.
The save point is a mimic. It comes to life and kills the entire active party in one lightning blast. Ten seconds later, as the backup trio tries to scramble out of the way, it kills them too. Game Over.
On second thought, let's not go to Nabudis. It's a silly place for babies.
NEXT TIME: We get the back on the plot train, toot toot.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-14 06:23 pm (UTC)I did in one run. It's not nearly as good as the weapons you currently have. It may do extra damage as compared with the vanilla weapons one would have at that point if one wasn't doing hunts, etc., but seeing as how you'd have to be a manic OCD RPG nerd to make it as far as Bur-Omisace, it's like a green weapon in Borderlands 2 - a step up but you've gotten something better by then.
If you want to increase your
sillinessbadassitude, you could go after the Vorpal Bunny in Golmore Jungle for lightning arrows."I take a side turn, fight the Largest Bomb in the World"
Did you summon Belial for this? Fire vs.... FIRE!
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 01:09 am (UTC)I think I'll go after the hunts once I've progressed just a little more. I'm still feeling like I don't wanna 100% this thing, but I keep worrying I'm going to 99% it by accident or something.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 01:16 am (UTC)I'm greatly enjoying your recounts and I'd be happy to read more from other games if the urge strikes you. Screenshots optional. I'm also exceedingly jealous as none of my computers have the power to support PS2 emulation.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 02:47 am (UTC)oh dear lord, the Wyrmhero Blade. Yeah, that's not happening. That's a whole planet of not happening.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 03:14 am (UTC)I have not studied.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-14 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-15 01:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-18 07:36 pm (UTC)