Corpse Run 745: The Gyshal stick
So yeah, playing Final Fantasy 9 again, super awesome game!
The best combination of characters and setting of any FF game in my opinion.
I’d totally type more, but I’m tired and am going to sleep, will type more in the morning!
OK IT’S THE MORNING NOW!
Little bit of housekeeping: I’ll be heading to New Jersey on Friday so there won’t be a game stream Friday night. The Sunday morning comic stream should happen on schedule, however!
Also, cast of FF9… you’re the best. Everyone (except Amarant) goes through believable and significant changes in character and personality… this was the best writing the series has had thus far.
OMG ME TOOO!
I’m replaying it for the first time on the Steam version.
I’m going to go through twice, once to be the insane completion I am, and once to get all the other WEIRD objectives like having Vivi win the festival (you literally have to get Zidane and Freya killed by Zaghnol) and getting Excalibur2 (which is way easier because they fixed the lag issues with the battle system, AND gave the game high speed options that don’t affect cutscenes or music, weird, right?)
I’ve got this weird obsession with defeating Ozma at below level 60 and without doing the friendly critters quest. Yep, I know, I’m totally fruitloops.
Ark=best eidolon
Yeah I really love all the cast… Except Amarant… And Quina is kind of annoying, frankly speaking. I never change any of the names except Amarant’s; I always name him Icecube.
So he goes by “The Flaming Icecube”. I love it.
I feel like Amarant only exists AT ALL to lampshade the fact that Zidane is bizarrely overpowered for an everyday thief in terms of sheer ability, and to contrast him. Zidane takes things that aren’t his, he’s a thief, sure, but he’s a kind and caring and honorable person. While Amarant “doesn’t work with kidnappers”, he seems to live just for the idea of power for the sake of power. I think they added him strictly to serve as a foil for Zidane; the point in the story where he comes into the plot would have been perfectly fine if it had centered around Lani alone, and his character feels very random, out of place, even more than Quina.
I mean, Quina does get a lot of believable character growth and is an interesting character, but I always avoid bringing him/her with me for the Burmecia story art. Quina’s stupid food gags always seem to ruin the moment for me, the Burmecia/Cleyra arc is supposed to be dramatic and chilling and sad, and I completely missed out on getting Quina during that part of the story the first time I played. I’m glad I did, honestly.
I also missed the synthesis shop and tried to beat Gizamaluke while Zidane was wielding a mage masher. Power grinding Ironites near Chocobo’s Forest brought me to level 20 and I did managed to beat Gizamaluke…
I was later a little freaked out by the power of Freya’s Dragon’s Crest when I first got it as a result. (9999? It’s only early disc 3 right now and this spell is only 16mp! What the hell, game? Why are the eidolons not this badass?)
An interesting thing about power grinding Grand Dragons. It can be done without Quina and Level 5 Death, you just need to make sure Dagger buys the Reflect Ring from the Treno auction house before switching back to Zidane, and have everyone have Antibody equipped. Between autoreflect and antibody, only one of the grand dragon’s single-target moves can actually LAND, out of its set of four possible moves. Vivi and Freya both get Ability-Up early, so teach it to them first and let Zidane hold the dang thing (he can’t get ability-up until the Brigandine is stolen from Soulcage). The dang grand dragons almost kill themselves with their own lightning. It’s pretty funny, and since he can only take out one character at a time with his claw move, all you need are some phoenix downs.
Another interesting thing about autoreflect. When a spell targets multiple enemies, the power is divided in half, regardless of the number of targets. If you have the whole party with reflect status and have Vivi target the party with a spell, it will bounce back at a power of 1/2 X 4, which comes out to double the spell’s usual power. And then later in the game he gets the passive ability “reflectX2″…
Another awesome thing I just barely learned? Eiko can be glitched to be insanely powerful or insanely weak. Her starting level will be whatever the party’s current average is, BUT her stats will be… whatever Marcus’s stats were when you last had him. You can cheat up Eiko’s stats by keeping the party low level and power-leveling Marcus, making her potentially the most powerful character in the game, giving her level 25 Marcus’s stats at, say, for example, level 15 to start off with. She grows as normal, though.
This explains why Eiko is always a huge wus for me. I always completely neglect Marcus, and I go grand-dragon grinding for a bit before entering Fossil Roo.
Still one of the best Final Fantasy ever.