Battling Book Bugs
Posted by Mike Blitz on August 7th, 2008
We enter the library, which we are quickly told is suffering from yet another monster infestation. They also babble something about three books, but I had a bit of difficulty figuring out that part. Hope it’s not important! To add more difficulty to the task, Mid, Cid’s grandson, needs rescuing from the depths of the library as well. What would these people do without us?
Anyway, we waste no time and advance into the depths of the library. As with Cid’s ship, we quickly find that this place is much bigger than we would expect. The place is a veritable labyrinth of books and sliding shelves and trick doors. Within a few minutes we are completely disoriented and lost. And it doesn’t help that every five steps or so a group of random bugs come hopping out of the books to try and obliterate us. We are fighting for every step we take in here.
Eventually we come upon a boss named Ifrit. We put up a good fight against this creature, and take him out with relative ease. Even better, after the fight he teaches us the Summoning Spell of the same name! At this point, I thought we’d be nearly done with the library, but it seems to continue on and on, with many splitting pathways. We continue to fight on, but quickly find ourselves doubling back over routes already traveled. Humm. We are once again totally lost.
We’ll continue on tomorrow with our random wandering. There’s got to be an end to this place somewhere.
Status: Lost, but in a contained sort of way.
August 7th, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Actually, Mid is Cid’s grandson. Ain’t it good to find old friends like Ifrit? What’s cool about that battle is that if you summon Shiva while fighting Ifrit, Ifrit will freak out and go all “They have Shiva as an ally???” (I don’t remember if that ends the battle faster but I think not)
August 8th, 2008 at 12:01 am
Ifrit also does that in a later FF game. *Hope that didn’t spoil anything major*
August 8th, 2008 at 1:16 am
Now you got me wondering if I did screw up and misremembered it. But I know that in FFV a certain boss freaks out if it sees a particular summon.
August 8th, 2008 at 8:49 am
What has surprised me a lot as I read some battle walkthroughs on different sites from the first four Final Fantasy games (after I’ve finished the games, of course) is the amount of subtlety in the boss battles.
Most of the time I’ve been just hammering away on things in the hopes of winning, but I’ve been reading that in some battles the enemy will only use certain spells in response to certain types of attacks, and you can increase your odds of winning in a lot of different ways.
The idea that Ifrit would freak out if attacked by Shiva is just another example of the creativity the developers put into these games. Good stuff.
August 8th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Jaime,
Thanks, by the way for the correction with Mid’s relation to Cid. I’ve fixed it. Much appreciated.
August 9th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Yeah, there is a lot of creative FF boss battles. Like there is one in FFX (hope this isn’t too big a spoiler for you), where there is several possible outcomes. You don’t need to win, but if you’re defeated by being knocked off a ledge, you don’t get a Game Over, but you lose the battle and begin from that point. But if you defeat the foe by knocking it over a ledge, then you get an extra reward. It’s quite clever!
August 9th, 2008 at 11:14 am
It would be fun if by using some sort of cheating program, to win an “unwinnable fight” in FF, to see what the heck does happen? Does the game just crash or have the developers put in some kind of a funny note insulting the players for cheating? No one will ever know.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:13 am
That’s a good point, I suppose people could find out. Interesting
August 10th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
Jamie, you’re right, Shiva does freak out if you summon Shiva in that battle. Also, if you have Ramuh, the elder summon will convince Ifrit to aid Bartz and co. as the fight ends.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Hum, Drake, I don’t know if you can have Ramuh at that point, but that scene you describe *definitely* happens in another game in the series as well.
August 11th, 2008 at 1:50 am
(Sorry for the double post, but just to clarify: the game which reprises the scene between Ramuh and Ifrit is *not* the same game which reprises the scene between Ifrit and Shiva. The FF developers really like to recycle scenes between games…)
August 11th, 2008 at 10:58 am
You can have Ramuh at this point, after getting the second set of jobs you can go and get Ramuh. I actually wound up getting Ramuh before Shiva, then backtracked to get Shiva right before I fought Ifrit.