I had heard rumors of a massive Iron Giant who lived under the ocean, and I wanted to try my hand at fighting it. I had a hunch where he was. We had passed over a black circle in the ocean a few times. I’m guessing that is where the creature lies.

Sure enough, we enter the Iron Giant’s realm and face off against him.

Um, ouch?

The thing wipes us out in one round. That was interesting.

Status: Dead

Our Devout didn’t get off her heal first, but our Summoner got off her attack before the Cloud of Darkness attacked us. Our Summoner cast a final Tidalwave that shook the Cloud and sent it to oblivion!

Whew! That was amazingly close! I thought we were doomed. But we did it! Woot!

With that, it appears as if we have restored balance to the world. We get a victory tour where all of the five friends get dropped off at their respective homes. All the small back stories get wrapped up. Everything is puddle happy. We’ve done it! We’ve saved the world! The game is complete!

Status: Victory, Level 63/64

The secret, light path leads to a confrontation with the last boss. The last boss turns out to be the massive Cloud of Darkness that killed us in one round a while back. This is it: the final battle. Lose and we go all the way back to the beginning of the Crystal Tower, which is probably two hours of fighting behind us. Win, and I think the game is over.

The Cloud of Darkness is nasty tough. She’s got a large snake over each shoulder. Between the three of them, they can attack us four times per round. Our strategy starts out simple: cast Haste on our Devout for quick healing and hit hard with everything else.

The battle gets underway. Within two rounds, I can see we are in deep trouble. The Cloud has several area spells that hit our Black Knight and Ninja for more than 1,000 points each, and our Devout and Summoner for more than 500 each. The Cloud often gets off the first attack in a round, despite our Devout’s Haste spell.

Quickly, our Ninja drops. Our Devout revives him at full strength, but when that happens our Black Knight falls. We don’t have time to revive him, and leave him dead for the moment. We do manage to get some quick heals off that bring our remaining three party members to full strength twice, but all it would take is one bad round and we could be in serious trouble.

We are pouring on damage with our remaining two offensive characters. We are landing almost 15,000 hits per turn on the Cloud, and our Summoner’s spells hit the snake on the right shoulder as well. The one on the left shoulder seems impervious to all attacks.

Twice more our ninja falls, and twice more our Devout manages to bring him back to life at full strength. We also gain some small hope: the snake over the right shoulder of the Cloud falls to our attacks. We still don’t have breathing space to get our Black Knight back up. I simply can’t risk losing our Devout. If she goes down, it’s over.

Suddenly, a misfortunate series of attacks leaves us in deep trouble. Our ninja goes down, and our Devout and Summoner find themselves at the end of a round with less than 2,000 hit points each. As the next round starts, if the Cloud of Darkness gets off the first attack, we are screwed. …

(To Be Continued)

Ok, this place is confusing. It’s like driving in Boston. The Land of Darkness consists of walkways in space, and they go every which way. There are teleporters that send us all over the place. I could be going in circles for all I know. I really don’t know where I am supposed to be going anyway, which doesn’t help.

The good thing is that you can’t get lost if you don’t know where you are going, so we’ll just keep randomly walking around and see what happens.

After a bit, we arrive at an area that seems to send us in four directions. We pick one direction and set off. At the end of this route, we run into a large two-headed Dragon. The battle is moderately challenging, but we overcome the beast with only minor damage. We head back and explore the other three options, and each route ends in a major boss. Humm. We kill the remaining three—once of which was a large yellow thing that looked like an eyeball from Monster Rancher. Most of the fights go smooth enough. Fortunately, after each fight we are restored to full health and full magic strength. This allows us to hammer the bosses with all our best spells, and makes things significantly easier than if I had to conserve our spells.

After we kill the fourth boss, a secret route appears, lit by a strand of light, that heads out from the level that leads to the four bosses. We follow that route. I have a distinct feeling that we must be approaching the end.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 63

Whoa! Lots of events happening. We approach the mirror and promptly get stuck in some sort of a trap. However, just when we think all is lost, long lost Doga calls five of our friends to free us. This gets us through the mirror, where we encounter one easily defeated boss. Brimming with confidence, we are promptly attacked by a massive Cloud of Darkness. This looks dangerous. She’s like really big, you know, and she’s got two snakes over her shoulder.

I’m right about the dangerous part: she wipes us out in one round. Crap. Just goes to show you how much Final Fantasy is like real life: If you ever got attacked by a Cloud of Darkness with snakes over her shoulder in real life, you’d likely be killed instantly, too.

Or so I thought we were killed, but tricky Final Fantasy 3 was just messing with us! Once again Doga comes to our rescue, as she magically resurrects us. We are now in the Land of Darkness, more like the Land of Purple. We are getting lots of speeches from our friends now. Everything feels as if we are approaching the end.

I’m a bit concerned, as I was hoping to get to Level 65 before getting here. I’ve heard amazing things about the final boss and how difficult it is. I would hate to lose all this work in the Crystal Tower.

Still, we have no choice now. Nowhere to go except forward, and we can’t teleport out. Onward to victory or doom!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, Level 62/63