Fetch Quests - A Six Pack and 70,000 Random Battles

I started my journey through the world of Final Fantasy late last night after a few hours imbibing some high alcohol beers, which really helped to dull the monotony of hundreds of random battles. The random encounter rate of this game is ridiculously high. I mean, you can walk about three steps before you run into another enemy. I will admit that this version of the game, the Game Boy Advanced version, is way easier than the original. Nonetheless, it does take an amazing amount of patience and a good memory for the world map to navigate the first challenges of the storyline.

I remembered this portion of the game from previous plays. I have probably played through this series of events so many times, yet I never really got much further. The events I am referring to are mainly a bunch of fetch quests. After saving the princess and defeating the pirates in Provoka, you will acquire their ship and gain access to a much greater scope of the world map. From there, you will find a sleeping elf prince who can only be revived by the jolt tonic. In order to acquire the jolt tonic, you have to return the crystal eye to a witch named Maedula or something like that, but to get the crystal eye, you have to first get the crown for the king in the Western Keep. After exploring the depths of the marsh cave and acquiring the crown, the king will reveal himself to be Astos, the dark elf. When you kill him, you get the crystal eye. When you return it to the witch, you get the jolt tonic. After you awaken the elf prince, he will give you the mystic key! There are locked doors in pretty much every location you have visited so far that can only be unlocked by the mystic key, so this means, now, you will revisit every castle, town, and dungeon you have previously explored. Finally, when you revisit the very first castle, you will receive some nitro powder. The nitro powder must be taken to the dwarves where they will blow open a section of the continent near their cave, allowing you to explore further out into the world map.

Wow, thats a lot of shit...

Anyway, at this point it was about 2am and my brain was becoming dominated by the amount of alcohol flowing through my system. To be honest, I couldn't really remember where to go next or what to do. So with my characters up to level 20, I retired. I know that next I need to save one of the crystals, but I can't remember which one.

Someone else has totally stolen my idea!

Well, maybe not... but I was very interested to see that a blogger by the name of Josh Hurley is posting his mission to beat ALL Final Fantasy games on goozernation.com. And I'll have to admit, he is doing a much better job at it than me. For starters, he has a very comprehensive list of EVERY Final Fantasy game and his sight are much greater than mine. I really only intended to play through the number FF games from 1 - 13. But this dood is literally playing every game. Its seems impossible, but check it out for yourself here: http://www.goozernation.com/video-games/index.php/news/blogs/101-josh-hurley/1316-the-final-fantasy-challenge

In other news, I finally got my Wii hacks working again, so I started playing the GBA version of Final Fantasy, the original. For the record, this re-release of FF is way easier than the original NES version. The main differences are simple things like being able to buy multiple items at one time, giving you the "Optimal" option when equipping your characters, running with the B button, and not losing your turn if your character was slated to attack an enemy who was killed before the character got to fight. Long story short, all the logistical oversights are totally fixed up. And while one can argue that this diminishes the challenge of playing the game (which I would have to argue is true) it definitely makes the game much more fun to play.

For the record my party is:

A Warrior named Cleeko
A Monk named Zippy
A White Mage named Lija
A Red Mage named Fluks

I don't know how long I'll keep at this one before I decide to bounce around, but I was excited to learn of a website called backloggery.com which will help you track your progress on whatever games you happening to be playing or have played. I will update my status as I move from game to game.

Until next time!
Peace
Phil

Crystal Shards from the Wind Shrine

So I got my first crystal shards from the Wind Shrine last night. I took the time to grind out a few job levels before I fell asleep. I set up Reina as a Blue Mage, but I really didn't realize how many skills I was missing even right from the beginning. I found this guide that lists every skill for the Blue Mage and where to get them: http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/snes/ff5/bluestrat.shtml

I'm considering going back to my save point just after I first got the crystal shards and starting over, but I can't decide if I really care that much. I love FFV, but I am really hating that there is really no update to the PSX version. It really makes me wish I had a GBA, but I have noticed it seems like this version of the game moves at a faster pace. My characters are all already at level seven and I have a few job levels on each as well.

Bartz, Butz, and Boco

So, last night after opting out of yet another episode of Mad Men, (we are down to the last two episodes of season four--- we're trying to stretch it out now) I was able to get in a few minutes of play on Final Fantasy V. This game has always been like a foggy memory from a drunken night to me. I feel this way mainly because I have played numerous different versions of FFV but never actually finished the game. Originally, this game was never release in the United States on the Super Nintendo, but it was later released on the Playstation as well as the Gameboy Advanced. When I first played this game, it was as a hacked ROM on an SNES emulator. This translation of the game from Japanese was by a completely independent and unofficial editor of the original Japanese release. Almost like fan fiction. Then the later official releases on GBA and PS1 were translated by Square Enix and things were slightly different in each translation. One glaring difference I remember was the name of the main hero Bartz (and/or Butz.)

I love sprites! 

I always think of this dood as Butz which is kinda funny to some people. I don't know. It just never really occurred to me that his name would be anything else, but the official translation of FFV calls this dood Bartz. Anyway, I just got to the wind shrine and I gotta quit. Back to FFXIII for now.

FFXIII: Chapter 6

OK, so I finally made it through Chapter 6 and I'm pretty proud that I could stick it out through the whole thing. The story has shifted back to Lightning and Hope, but I'm taking a break before I try to play anymore. Here are some highlights of Chapter 6:

There are quite a few heavy duty monsters that you should try to avoid. There is one large beast I decided to face that killed me twice: The Wyvern.

I had to use a few different buffs before the battle and then just focus on staggering it when not healing. Then there was the final boss of the chapter, which was quite a pain in the ass. Enki and Enkil are like two giant dogs or something who both seem to use a lot of powerful magic.

And so it begins... again!

I think I have been trying for at least 10 years to go through every final fantasy game in existence. And of course that quest only gets harder with every new game that they release. I haven't actually finished a Final Fantasy game since the release of the now legendary FFVII. That game was not only one of the best Final Fantasy games to ever come out of the franchise, it also came out during a time in my life where I had both the time and the enthusiasm for Japanese turn-based RPGs. Rest assured, my brothers always got a kick out of the fact that I was playing Final Fantasy when they would rather be playing Madden or NCAA football games. And I can remember getting Final Fantasy II (FF4 in actuality) for Christmas one year, and my family joking about how many of these games there would be. I think I can actually remember someone making a joke that I would be playing Final Fantasy 50 at some point, and as far as I can tell this might come true. But regardless of the history I may have had with this game, I am going to recommit to trying to actually beat every Final Fantasy game. From PS3 all the way down the the Gameboy, I want to play and finish every Final Fantasy game. Can I do it? Probably not. But I'm still going to give it a try with this blog as my witness!

So, let's get started. Thanks to my brother Brandon I now have a PS3, which I wanted solely for the purpose of playing FFXIII. Its great for watching Netflix, don't get me wrong, but I really wanted to play this game as it was the only FF that I had yet to get my hands on. I finally had the chance to try it out at least a year after the release, probably more, so I had already heard all the criticism about this game. Nonetheless, I had to play it, and I think with my expectations already lowered, the game actually turned out to be more enjoyable. As it stands at this moment, I am currently in chapter five of the game and stuck at a boss called Aster Protoflorian in the Whitewood. I have Lightning and Hope in my party, but I really can't wait to get throught the intensely long "tutorial" section of the game so I can choose my favorite party. I really fell victim to the fact that this game very slowly opens up all the options for you. I wasted all of my components that I should have used to upgrade my weapons. Since I had collected so many for no purpose as far as I could see, I sold nearly every piece of gear I should have used to upgrade my weapons. I basically thought this stuff was simply loot because the game had yet to open up the upgrade options at the save points. Boo...

Anyway, I finally beat this boss by doing a librascope so I could see the enemy changing his elemental weaknesses. It really made a big difference, and I suppose that strategy should been obvious. I had to get into a rhythm of switching between the "Dualcasting" paradigm to stagger him, then to the "Slash & Burn" paradigm to really let Lightning deal the heavy damage.

Not much left of the story with Lightning and Hope after defeating the boss. I picked up a new story advancement based trophy here called "Instrument of Survival." Looks like we're heading into Chapter 6. The story shifts to Vanile and Sazh here. And I got about 5000 crystarium points with each one. This should be fun. I'll log another game update as soon as something remarkable happens.