Final Fantasy I, The End... Already?

Yes, already...

As anticipated, the game was much shorter than I recalled and once I started rolling last night, I couldn't put it down until it was finished around 2am. Was just too much fun. You never get tired of seeing your guys just pummel the crap out of something. My Ninja Ikorid and Master Yorik quickly became my hard hitters of the group, but Yorik began to outpace Ikorid by quite a bit with his hands of fury and was the first to break a 1000 damage. I recall now that my monk in FF Tactics was also my hardest hitter. But all was well because Ikorid was still one shotting most opponents as was Nick from time to time. That is... until Ikorid got his hands on Masume near end game, then it was lights out. Ninja FTW, dropping 1300 bombs on Chaos with Temper and Haste up, just destroying shit. It was a fine sight to see.

I pretty much used the same strategy for the bulk of the end game bosses, I'd haste and temper Ikorid and Yorik with Nick, toss up Wall, and Nul(element) with Loke and go to town. Kary, Kraken and Tiamat all fell in about 3 or 4 rounds of fighting. Once Yorik had haste and temper up, he was usually hitting bosses with 24 hit combos for over 600. Chaos took quite a bit longer and turned out to be Garland (who woulda thought), the first boss I fought 2000 years in the future; that sneaky son of a bitch... At one point after I had done about 10k damage, he cast Curaja for 9999 ><. That started to worry me, but by then I had the whole party Temper/Hasted and with Ikorid smackin' him for 1k-1300 every round, he went down fast.

It was a gratifying win and even after all these years the game was still very fun, in all it's 8-bit glory (prolly 16 bit on the GBA tho..). Can't wait to start II tonight.

Some things of significant note:

-It was cool to see things like dinosaurs and mech warrior robots, I'd forgotten that those mobs had their roots all the way back to the beginning. I wonder when cards and jars and weird mobs like that make their first appearance.

-It kinda sucked not being able to get things like Flare and the other level 7/8 black mage spells, I would have liked to see them again. I also missed not having the black mage because of nostalgic value, since to me, there is no better icon for the Final Fantasy series than the blue robe and straw hat with glowing eyes of the Black Mage sprite.

-Late in the Mirage Tower I was walking down the hall toward my boss when I was suddenly put in combat with 'Death Machine'. I thought nothing of it until he survived two rounds and dropped Nick with a hit for 500. OMGWTF??? I definitely didn't remember this guy. Even though he eventually fell as I pecked at him with hits ranging from 60-100, he was still probably the only mob in the game to actually kill one of my characters w/o using a Rub or XXXX. Not only that but he yeilded a whopping 10k exp, the most in the game by a long shot. I found out afterward that you only have a 1 in 64 chance of running into him in that hall. Lucky me I guess. =)

-After each of the four fiends died, it moved to a cut scene in another area where a statue of that fiend disintegrated and revealed a doorway. I didn't bother to check those out, but I don't recall them AT ALL from my other FFI experiences. I imagine it's something like a uber mob area where you can put your skills to the test against mobs harder than Chaos or Death Machine, but I didn't take the time to check them out. I wonder if those zones were in the original game or new in this GBA version.

-The first appearance of Cid occurred in the final town before the last battle. Well not appearance, but rather they mentioned him as the creator of the Airship. Thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, onward! We have much work yet to do. Here are some pics of my crew in the end.



Sorry it's a little blurry. If you're wondering: does that say 13hrs played? didn't he just start the game the day before? does this guy have a life? is he insane?... The answers are yes, yes, not for the next 100 days, and yes. =D