FFIII - Game Over

I continued on my journey yesterday with my four Warriors of the Light, slaying and pillaging my way through many a dungeon, cave and castle. All done in an effort to aid the two sages in their quest to kill Xande. I did their bidding and in the process, unlocked my fourth set of classes. This was what I had really been waiting for. I eagerly switched Rhek to Summoner and Nazomi to Devout. I also switched Ikorid from Knight to Ninja. The Knight was cool, but he was quickly losing pace next to Yorick, doing only about 1/4th the damage; even Nazomi was out DPS'n him with special ability staves. I tossed a full Genji set on him and two bad ass katanas I'd been saving. And watched his hits go from 500 to 6000, holy fuck, I love Ninja.

Even though I'm on a time table here, I still couldn't resist going back and retrieving every summon in the game for Rhek. I started with buying Chocobo, Shiva, Ramuh, Ifrit and Titan. Then I went to the main castle catacombs to defeat Odin, an old world lake to defeat Leviathan, and an old world mountain to defeat Bahamut. It was a little reminiscent of my FFXI days of being a level 30 SMN and doing battle with all the summons with only my little Carbuncle to get my godly companions; especially Fenrir, my favorite. And it was all worth it, if Ikorid and Yorick were hitting for 5k-7k a hit, well.... Rhek was hitting EVERYONE on the board for 4k-7k a pop, doing up to 22-23k damage at once. Nazomi didn't change at all. it moved some MP points around, like I can cast more Curaga, Curaja and Raises now which is cool, and she can definitely take a hit a lot better than the WHM. Other than that I don't see any difference from WHM.

I continued my journey, and ended up having to fight those two sages I'd been helping so I could use their souls to make a key to get into the Crystal Tower (hey it was their idea, not mine!). I pressed on into the Ancient Maze, working my way through to a small area right before the Crystal Tower, my ship with it's Inn and shops on board left behind (oh yea I got an airship that goes under water and an airship with an inn in it <.<). I was at my final save point before entering the final dungeon. I had full HP/MP, lot's of Elixirs, maxed out on Hi-Pots, lots of every other kind of item. I was ready...

I stepped into the Crystal Tower and worked my way down eight or ten levels, on the way there were end game weapons on pedestals scattered about. Trying to pick up each weapon initiated a boss fight, each boss had between 35k-50k HP. Some were more difficult than others, but nothing too problematic, and I got full HP/MP restored after every fight, which actually helped a bit. After about six of these bosses I encountered Xande with his 50k HP, and proceeded to smack him around quite nicely. He went down, but it was too late, the Cloud of Darkness had already been summoned and was going to consume the world, so I had to fight that. And I died.... but I was supposed to. I got resurrected by the five souls of pure heart to fight again. This time I was set in a room with four areas, each led to another map with two things somewhere in the map, a chest and a boss. Each chest contained a Ribbon, which I needed, and a Xande clone. So I had to beat Xande 3 more times. I left the final Ribbon because I already had one from before. I also had to fight four more very tough bosses who had 99,999 HP each. After finally defeating all these millions of bosses (like 14 I think), I was ready for the final encounter with Cloud of Darkness who was now in a much more weakened state from killing the mini bosses and enlisting the aid of the old Warriors of the Dark. It had taken me at least 3 hours to get to this point I think. I barely noticed the red light on the DS telling me my battery was about to go out. I quickly reattached the charger and was relieved. I almost lost all that work to a dead battery, can you imagine?!

I snapped my photo of the final boss for the blog and prepared to fight! Cloud of Darkness had two tentacles casting things like Protect, Haste, Lightning and Bad Breath. And the cloud bitch herself got to go twice per round, two attacks each time; so I'm getting hit with six attacks per round. I lasted about four rounds and did maybe 20k out of her 120k damage before I wiped. Frustration....

I began to recall the time period, 1990. I was 12 years old. It was a good period in video game history, but a different period. Those were the good old days of something which has been lost on this generation, something called... DIFFICULTY. That was a time when your three or four hours of game play could easily be dashed with one misstep. And somehow that made the rewards all the better, because not everyone could beat a game, there wasn't always a Noob level. The game was how hard it was, and if you couldn't hack it, you couldn't beat it, period. I guess I just gotta suck it up, go level another 10-15 levels (I hope I can, and am not stuck somewhere with no return to the old world), and come back for another 3 hour trek and crack at the bitch.

I'll be back for you shortly Cloud of Darkness, you will not defeat me so easily the next time we meet!