Groundhog Day, Starring My Final Fantasy Party
Posted by Mike Blitz on May 22nd, 2008
The Moon Palace’s Basement is such a sprawling place, and filled with such an amazing collection of bosses and enemies. Detailing each one of the boss fights would get fairly repetitive, but as we get lower, the random encounters are almost boss fights in and of themselves. On a couple of levels, we find ourselves battling robotic heads that put up a hell of a fight, and then randomly generated Behemoths, which are manageable now, but cause us to burn through our potions at a frantic pace.
However, I somewhere around the tenth level of so, we came to a series of three doors on our left. The first led to a badly needed save point, but the second led to yet another weapon on a dais.
This time we are attacked by some sort of floating death ball, which immediately casts a spell on us that sets a ten-second timer over all of our party members’ heads. When the ten seconds expire, so do everyone in your party. The first time I tried this, we all died perfunctorily. The second time, I was convinced I needed to attack faster, but we were unable to kill the damn thing before the timer reaches zero over our heads. The third, fourth, and fifth times, I played around with various ways to nullify the spell the thing casts on us, but nothing worked: dead, dead, dead.
Then I became convinced I could do something to prevent the ball from casting the spell in the first place, but that only lead to five more dead parties. Finally, I thought the only way to kill the thing would be to hit it hard enough to kill it before the timer ran out, so I started trying all sorts of ways to boost our damage output. Ten more tries later, I had ten more dead parties.
By now I was feeling like this was some sort of Final Fantasy version of the movie Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray, in which he is forced to relive the same day over and over and over again. Load, die, reload, die, reload, die, reload.
I got the bright idea to check the the third door, and got excited when we won two ribbons that “helped avoid various conditions.” Aha! I thought that perhaps these ribbons would prevent the deadly spell from triggering on a party member, but that hope was false and only led to a few more dead parties.
I resorted to all sorts of things, throwing everything I could throw, casting all sorts of weird spell combinations. Trying to turn the damn thing into a toad. You name it, I tried it. I even tried having Edge throw Excalibur at the thing, which actually did a ton of damage. Still, after each attempt, we only ended up as dead as the previous attempt. I was tempted to just pass the thing by, but I knew it would nag the hell out of me if I left it still alive, plus I wanted the weapon it offered. And so we continued to beat ourselves to death again and again against the thing.
And then, by chance, I tried chucking that damn Kitchen Knife from Yang’s wife. 9,999 damage! Whoa! Considering the actual damage might be much higher, I got pretty excited here. And sure enough, with two seconds to go on the counter, the death ball finally did the purple shake of death! We beat the thing! Yes!
I have no idea how many times I tried this. A conservative estimate would say 30, but I bet it was more like 50 times. Still, in the end I can sleep well, as we toppled the beast.
You’d think, though, after all that work that I’d have another story to tell about some great weapon. However, only Kain could equip the holy lance that we got, and on the whole it wasn’t as effective a weapon as the Defender sword he is currently equipping. Long story short: a whole lot of effort for a whole lot of nothing.
Status: Onward, Finally
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:20 pm
I think I remember this guy being a lot easier in the SNES version. (But then again, that was the Easy Type Version)
And you could always throw the lance at someone.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:21 pm
If you still have a save file before that battle I would suggest reloading it and just skipping the battle alltogether. That knife would be really useful in the final battle. It’s hard without it.
May 22nd, 2008 at 4:06 pm
If you find the Defender more useful than the Holy Lance, I guess you’re not much into making Kain jump.
May 22nd, 2008 at 8:36 pm
I loved your reference to Groundhog Day, it’s such a great movie and the dying scenes seems so much like your battle against this boss!
Congrats on the Holy Lance!
May 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 am
Yeah, the Jump command can keep Kain alive even through the most severe situations. It’s a mixture of damage and defend.
I’m still a bit bothered that you’ve missed a few things down on the earth’s surface. There’s still a hidden summon in Baron Castle and of course the new extra dungeon for the characters you left behind…
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 am
Ah yeah, I forgot about the summon!
The extra dungeon is not so important, maybe, since if he’s going to end the game with the “classic” party he might as well leave it for the post-game.
May 23rd, 2008 at 1:33 am
Another thing:
I know you don’t want spoilers. However, after, say, FFVI or FFVII, ther will be “secrets” that we will be almost forced to spill - because there is no human way you will discover them by yourself.
If your cynical side thinks those are designed so you *have* to buy the official strategy guide, your cynical side is pretty much correct.
May 23rd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
*Cough Zodiark Spear Cough*
May 23rd, 2008 at 10:09 pm
Drake,
I was afraid someone was going to say that about the knife.
Jaime,
Interesting about the lance and jumping. Maybe it was worth it after all.
Sami,
I can still get to those things later, can’t I? Or have I completely missed them by coming to the Moon?
Jaime,
Your comment reminds me of how I felt playing Breath of Fire. There were things in that game that no mortal could have figured out on his or her own. I’m going to be in Japan in a couple of weeks, so I may try to pick up the guides in Japanese for the next few games. They should be cheap in used book stores.
Big D,
I can safely say that this was the hardest fight I think I’ve had so far.
May 24th, 2008 at 1:03 am
Mike, you probably can get those things after you beat the last boss (since there’s the new post-game dungeon ahead), but what’s the point? You’ll probably want to move on ahead to FF V…
May 24th, 2008 at 1:14 am
Mike, yes you can get those things in your post-game. You’ll see why.
And if you want to do the post-game (which you should, as it’s fun), they’re pretty much needed.