We continue our advance to the top of Final Fantasy Five’s desert pyramid. From our previous location on the seventh floor, we make steady progress and arrive at the top fairly efficiently. Once there, we pick up the first of four stone tablets which will serve as keys to the castle with all the ultimate weapons. I was expecting to get blasted here, but once again Final Fantasy Five let’s us off easy: no boss battle! There is a small scene where Bahamut, our long lost flying dragon friend, shows up and tells us that he is waiting at a mountain to the north, but otherwise we get off easy here.

We quickly march down the outside of the pyramid and head back for the Ancient Library. Once we get there, I figure we can talk with Ghido the Turtle Guy about where to get the second tablet.

Now, you’d think, after hacking my way through the last 20 minutes of the pyramid, then watching a cut scene, then getting to the bottom of the pyramid, that I would immediately do the singular most logical thing: Save The Game. This is Gaming 101. You save your game both periodically and after a hard battle. Easy. Well, I’m not sure if was cocky, lazy, stupid, or some combinination of all three, but I didn’t save. I figured I could just zip back to the Ancient Library and save there.

But I figured wrong. Very wrong.

In the small grove on the way back to the Ancient Library, our arch enemy Exdeath was waiting for us. He had Lenna, our missing fourth party member, with him. Even worse, Lenna was possessed by some evil spirit, and Exdeath thought that having her kill us would be great fun. Right before the Evil Lenna attacks us, our trusty dragon taxi Hiryu attacks her and frees the evil creature from Lenna’s body. I’m not sure in the grand scheme of things that this mattered all that much, as the creature attacks us anyway.

And what a creature it is! She’s a massive, semi-naked woman with a huge snake wrapped around her. Whoa! Final Fantasy lives up to its name! As the combat starts, our physical weapons do no damage to her, but Krile is able to blast her for over 5,000 points of damage with one of her spells! Nice! This should be cake, I’m thinking. But then evil woman does some sort of a Pro Wrestling tag team switch with another form of her that looks identical to the first form! Bah! Even worse, when Krile blasts her with the same spell, it now heals her for 2,500 points instead of doing damage. Argh. And then the witch switches to a third form, which creates yet another combination of potential confusion.

I’ll spare you the details, but what happens next is a comedy of stupidity, ending up in a dead party. Basically, I never quite figured out the pattern of tag team switches the creature makes, so I’d end up healing her about twice as often as I did damage to her. At one point, I healed her six times in a row. Yup, I’m a pretty nice guy. “Here, let me heal you back to full strength while we fight!” In the end, I ran out of mana, and the evil bitch wiped us out.

So now, instead of resuming from a saved game at the bottom of the pyramid, I get to go all the way back to the 7th floor.

Status: Both Stupid and Dead

We begin our second venture into the sprawling Final Fantasy V pyramid, and quickly reach the yet unexplored fourth floor. From there, the pyramid continues its winding ways. When we reach a save point on the sevent floor, the place branches out extensively yet again. We use the save point as a base, and explore as many of the corridors as possible. We collect more nice gear in the process.

The fighting is going very well in here. With a master samurai, master black mage, and a master ninja, we’re walking death, and can take out many enemies before they hit us. We rack up piles of experience, and before long we’re at Level 41.

I have to say that this duneon has to be my favorite in the game so far, and in my top five of the first five Final Fantasy games. The scale, trickery, and battles are just right. Very enjoyable place.

After exploring what appear to be all of the side trails, we’re ready for a push to what I imagine must be the top. We’ll continue on there tomorrow.

Status: Killing stuff with a purpose.
Photo Credit: Khalid Almasoud

Although potionless, we easily manage to make it back to the Ancient Library, recharge at the magic pot, and begin a hunt for a potion vendor. We don’t have far to go, as just to the north of the library is the Castle of Surgate, which has an extensive shop complex in its basement.

Restocked, we once again make our way towards the desert pyramid. This time we have much better fortune. Within a short while, we find ourselves on the first floor of what appears to be an extensive structure. We begin to hack our way around the place, but there are several options for directions, many of which end in treasure chests. As one would expect in a pyramid, there are also lots of hidden passages to explore. After a half hour or so of wandering around, we’ve managed to get a handful of solid items, but we’re still only about three floors up in the place. I decide to retreat, save, restock and return. This whole process only takes a few minutes, and shortly we’re back ready for a deeper journey into the Pyramid of Final Fantasy V. I believe we’ve explored all the dead-ends on the lower floors, and I’m pretty sure which way to go to reach the higher levels. I’ll continue with that tomorrow.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose
Photo Credi: Swamibu

We stomp into the Ancient Library and begin looking for clues to the locations of the four important keys to unlock the ultimate weapons that will aid us in our final confrontation with Exdeath. Well, at least I hope it’s our final confrontation with Exdeath, but with this game, who knows? Maybe when we kill him this time he’ll turn into a fingernail and come back to life yet again.

Anyway, the answer comes from two ancient tomes—one from each world—that we can now fuse together. Once together, they give hints about the various locations of the Four Keys. Of course, all these keys are apparently in godawful, out of the way, heavily guarded places. I’m not really sure what people are thinking when they put their keys in these kinds of places. “Oh, look, I’m on top of a pyramid. Here is an evil monster with seven heads. I think I’ll put my key here for safekeeping!” The First Key is somewhere in an ancient Pyramid in the middle of the desert, guarded by who knows what kinds of vicious creatures.

We waste no time in heading out for the key. In retrospect, we actually should have wasted some time before heading out, because I got halfway to the pyramid before I realized that I had neither of the following: a healer (Lenna, our only healer, is apparently under the rubble of a castle) and healing potions (remember that point I mentioned yesterday about using all our potions in the Antlion fight?).

After a couple of rather challenging random encounters, we’re pretty much dying. I realize that there is no way I can make it to the First Key in the pyramid without a bit of healing power. And so I do two things: I make Bartz a healer and I turn us around. Retreat! Bartz can heal well enough to get us safely to the Ancient Library. Once there, we can recharge and try to find a town or castle that sells high potions.

Status: Running Away!

Well, so much for being stuck. In an effort to get Final Fantasy V rolling again, I rode all over the place on that Chocobo again last night. I thought I had explored every possible route that the thing could take, but it turns out that I was wrong. I had missed one valley. And that one valley was a Very Important Valley, because it contained the trap. Traps aren’t usually good things, but when your game is stuck and you’re getting nowhere fast, any change is a welcome one.

You see, as I explored this little out-of-the-way Final Fantasy V valley, a great hole opened up in the ground. Bartz and Krile, our two party members at the moment, tumbled into the hole and were stuck. Before we could explore the surroundings, an Antlion popped out of the ground and tried to eat us.

This fight was a royal pain in the butt. The Antlion kept casting this “half-leveling” spell, which would essentially halve the amount of damage that Bartz and Krile would do. This meant that no matter what I hit the Antlion with, it end up doing less than 100 points damage. On a boss creature with upwards of 40,000 hit points, this makes for a long fight. Even worse, without Lenna, our healer, I was forced to resort to potions in order to survive the fight and kill the Antlion. So we are now completely out of potions. Remember this, as it will be important later.

After the fight, Faris, of all people, shows up and pulls us out of the hole with a rope. Turns out she got tired of dancing and decided to join us. This is all good, as it now gives us three members in our party. The world is wonderful now, except that Krile is complaining that she has a thorn stuck in her. This may seem unimportant, but remember this too, okay? It may save your planet someday.

Our three-member party continues on. I’m not sure where we’re going, but very shortly we come to a cave. This cave turns out to house Ghido, our turtle friend from the previous world. He fills us in on the back story, which essentially says this: Bartz’s World and Galuf’s World are now one. The crystals were actually used to split the original world into two parts to keep some mega-evil entity called Enuo from destroying everything a thousand years ago. When we beat Exdeath and the crystals shattered, the two worlds mushed together and became one world again. Real Estate concerns aside, this sounds like a bad thing, as it will most surely involve some sort of a fight against Enuo to save everyone.

In order to beat Enuo, we need to collect the 12 ultimate weapons. Aha! In order to do that, we have to collect four keys from various places around the world. Yes! Something to do!

But get this: before we can do that the thorn in Krile’s side turns into Exdeath! He had transformed himself into a thorn to be able to travel with us. Excuse me while I chuckle at the silliness. What follows is cut-scene battle that ends with the Castle of Tycoon getting destroyed with Lenna still inside, Exdeath getting zapped off to parts unknown, and our party—plus Ghido—getting zapped off to yet a different place. And, oh yes, I think it’s actually Exdeath, not Enuo, that is seeking to get the ultimate power (called “Nothingness”) to be able to destroy the world. Whew! I’m dizzy now!

Anyway, when we wake up, Ghido realizes that we’re near the Ancient Library and suggests that we go there to see if we can figure out how to get the keys to beat Exdeath/The Nothingness/Enuo, or whoever it is that is attempting to destroy the world.

Humm. As I reread what I just wrote, something feels off with the order of events, but I think I’ve got everything there.

Status: To the Library!