Off to Beat the Emperor
...or get beaten down by him, more likely. I just got to the end battle of Final Fantasy 2 for the very first time, and--
Yeah. I see you out there, you nonexistent readers, laughing/smiling knowingly to yourself. I hear the equally-nonexistent disbelieving cries of "WHAT?! She JUST NOW got to the end of Final Fantasy 2? And she claims to be an RPG fan? What's wrong with her?! Is she like, 12 or something, is that it?" You're sitting there picturing like, Cecil, Rosa, Rydia, Kain, Xeromus, the Land of Monsters, the "spoony bard", etc. well GUESS what. I don't mean Final Fantasy 2 for the Super Nintendo--which was of course actually 4. I mean REAL 2, bitches! Which has, okay, been available in legitimately buyable, English-language form for a while now, but this is my own first time coming to the end of it, and I'll bet it's still rather obscure to a lot of people. There are definitely less people out there for whom the names "Firion and Maria" would mean anything, as compared to "Cecil and Rosa". I mean of COURSE I know from Final Fantasy 4. One of my usernames is after Rydia, for one thing. I also recently named a pair of Sim-twins Cecil and Rosa. (for reasons that made sense at the time.)
The Emperor of Palamecia is BADASS, by the way. For being one of the lesser-known villians of the series, he's easily also one of the most successful. Unlike many other villians who just threaten and bluster, he DELIVERS, baby--and by the end of the game, many towns are ruined and tons of civillians are dead!
There's also an insanely high death-count of actual player characters and notable NPC's, and they're REALLY dead. As I went along, the number of scenes where somebody actually faded out in front of me--instead of going missing/being left behind in a Doomy situation and just being ASSUMED dead (and yes, FF4 I'm looking at you) started to freaking blow me AWAY. I was not expecting anything quite this dark or Epic this early in! The only more successful FF villian I can think of right now is Kefka. Lots of bad guys talk about destroying the world--he's the only one to actually DO it.
There are two ways to take down His Royal Emperorness: The normal, hard way...and the "secret" easy way if you've got a certain weapon. Which I do. But, I'm gonna TRY to do it the real way first, at least once. This version of the game oddly lets you save in dungeons--even right in front of the final boss!--so I have saved, in case I really can't take him down the normal way and HAVE to give up and use the weapon. I was trying to make it through this game without ever using a spot-save, despite the fact that I'm using an emulator--I depend on those WAY too much. Trying to break myself of the habit. But it IS an incredibly long and annoying dungeon--a DOUBLE-dungeon, with no break between the two parts--and since the game itself lets you save wherever then, okay, I'm gonna count it as "legal". I've never saved while inside a dungeon at any other time in this game, however. That's just...not how RPGs work.
Here we are on the tenth level of Pandaemonium (no, it's really called that), about to get our asses handed to us in the name of SAVING THE WORLD!! (ting!)
And here are our final stats. Perhaps an expert on this game could look at that and go "HOLY crap, you gonna die." but unfortunately nobody like that is reading this. So, yeah. All I know is that the monsters in Pandaemonium seemed to be about the right level of difficulty for a final dungeon--hard enough to where you have to take them seriously, sometimes even a bit scary--but not SO hard you get reduced to your component molecules as soon as look at them.
Of course, FF2 doesn't have standard "levels" at all, anyway. Yes, this is the game where you infamously "level up" (raise HP, anyway) by deliberately HITTING YOUR OWN TEAMMATES. Or even yourself! (I always found it funnier to beat each other up than to be Emo, though.) Later on the battles start being hard enough to where you get stronger over time at a more or less natural rate by fighting the way you would've done anyway, like in other games--but to begin with, you wanna raise your HP, against those wimpy goblins and mosquitoes? You HIT YOUR FRIENDS! And they'll thank you for it. Really. C'mon over here, Firion, I wanna help YOU level up. (sinister smile)
It's especially funny when you're trying to raise HP and also magic at the same time--one of the main spells you'll be working on is of course Cure. So you quite often get these situations where one character heals another, and what's their reward for this good deed? SWORD TO THE FACE! :P Or, for a metaphysical lark, try Swapping life-force with...yourself. BUH?
The names here aren't anything clever. I kept trying to think of cute references or naming them after previous RPG characters of my own, etc. but nothing quite worked, so they're just name-names. Except for Firion, who kinda reminded me of David Bowie. ;)
And speaking of Sims...this actually happened back in February, but I didn't hear about it until June and am posting it only now because...well, I'm depressed, and didn't feel like updating this thing much, since nobody's reading it.
HAPPY TENTH BIRTHDAY, SIMS!!
Ten years' worth of funny moments, sad moments, surprises, drama and colourful characters I never would've met, otherwise. Thank you, Sims. You haven't ruined my life--you've added to it. :) (Yes, I'm sentimental over a video game. You think that''s weird? I don't care.)
All three of the screenshots here are from my own playing, of course. The top one contains my versions of Dee and Billy (from when I used to like the new Battlestar Galactica), Mortimer Goth sitting in the chair, and Bella Goth, my mom's first Sim character Sycamore Thames, and Daria Morgendorffer talking about pizza in the corner. The middle one has Kaylynn Lothario nee Langerak sitting down to eat a grilled cheese sandwich in her business outfit while her alien stepson Allan and her daughter Penelope both dance to the radio.
And the third one is NOT my selfsim. Really. She just turned out to look more like me than I intended. Anyway, she is making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich because it's PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! Sorry. (But that is what she's making, really.) Thanks to the Create-A-Style tool in Sims 3, every single last colour or pattern in this room was either picked out or tweaked by me! See that pink granite-marbley textured fridge? I did that. Why? For SCIENCE!--I mean, because I could. :)
Wish me luck against the Emperor!
...Notorious