Rainbow Chara X
Impossible to gauge!
- 129
- Posts
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- Age 27
- Shiny Hunting in Sinnoh
- Seen yesterday
Well then. I have nothing to say for the opening bit, so just have this instead:
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter 10 (Normal) - Adrammelech, the Wroth[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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Oooh nice, we start this one off with some Jerky. This is fortunate because we'll use it soon.
Hmm. Not many battle missions aside from the main course.
Oooh yes, this is also a thing. Reserve Missions are, to the best of my understanding, extra missions that require linking up with another player to get the appropriate item to complete them. They are not essential to complete as they don't count as part of the 300 required to get 100%. I think they're just in the game to encourage multiplayer.
Also, since Zod was mentioned:
... Kids, am I right?
You want us to go to the site of an active volcano to clean chunks of lava off the road. You expect this to end well.
This is immediately suspicious and we must investigate.
Ooooh this could be interesting enough for what it is. Let's see what this nets us.
A... love potion that you'll use to make yourself famous. Surely, this won't be abused.
Oh what the hell, we're still getting paid.
"I told him it was real and the kid's dad handed me a gun and a bomb shell for breaking it up. I feel accomplished."
(The Lost Gun teaches Silenshot. It's not the best but what the hell we'll take it.)
"It wasss really creepy, though. They all had thesssse big sssmiles and made me feel really awkward."
Despite the reserve missions not counting towards the max, you still get money and AP from them so there's no real reason to ignore them.
Well would you look at that, the Neighbor Pin immediately comes into use. Time to break 'em apart from the inside.
"To think of all of the nasty things we could do with this." [Galor chuckles as he observes the potion]
Boy, please.
Randorf was too dumb to know about anything that wasn't blowing things up with Fire/Ice/Thunder.
Speaking of which, jesus fucking christ. That is immaculate damage for something that can only miss 5% of the time.
Growing up as a Time Mage really kicked his magic growth in the right direction.
Nobel fought off some pirates with magic fists and got a medal for it.
Damn, I didn't expect the jerky to get used already.
Randorf is gonna take a shot at it and hope he either doesn't die or burn the treasure with his uber powers.
... Interesting proposition. This requires the Bomb Shell, by the way.
"I wanna go, kupo!!"
I can't blame him because he's not only getting paid for watching a crummy show, he gets more AP to learn Ultima Charge somehow.
Also, Bombs are invading and we have to go put a stop to it. It makes you wonder about how consistent a problem this might be if it happened in Cyril too.
Ardin cracked down on the Neighbors, got a cheesy badge and some delicious AP for helping.
Sonia managed to clean up the road with ease thanks to her ninja speed.
Oh, and we get a fancy gun for it too. The Giot Gun teaches Iceshot, so I guess that's nice.
"It was really funny, kupo. They also gave me this weird lamp!"
... Oh god they gave him a Tonberry Lamp? Maybe we should hide Rodrigo just in case Tonberries start showing up.
We also get some Dragon Mail for a skill going up - it cuts fire attacks by half but that's about all it does.
(This requires the Tonberry Lamp)
Hmmmmmmm.
"They'd better not do any funny stuff with my statue."
Rodrigo proves to be smarter than Randorf by actually knowing the value of these coins. He learned about it in school, don't you know.
There goes the game, everybody.
Ultima Charge + Gunner = Living Nuke Machine.
We just have to level him up to the point where his MP can stomach more than one use.
"My statue looked pretty badass, really. I wished you could have seen it. It involved me doing a chokehold on some poor nerd."
The Stradivari is used to make a violin of the same name, with the instrument itself being named after an Italian crafter known as Antonio Stradivari. I figure it was good enough to include.
This skill up came with a fancy blade that looks really cool but can only be used by Defenders. Boo. It's a good thing there's more classes in A2 that can use these weapons, but we'll save that for when we're actually there.
The Cadoan Bomb Genocide of 2017 begins now.
The Mombomb is the root of this mission and probably the other one in Cyril but isn't too much of a threat herself. She's just a regular bomb in this game, but just take a look at her appearance in Final Fantasy 4:
Like yikes. Damn Mombomb, you scary.
Monotype enemies that are generally weaker than the other monsters we're used to dealing with at this point? Of course it was gonna be a cakewalk.
Randorf cooked a turtle and snatched the Beastsword from its back. I like to imagine he whistled his way back home while lugging that giant thing over his shoulder.
A skill level increase wound up in us getting five ethers. Cool, but I don't really need them.
Oooh that's right, I almost forgot about the Redwings. Borzoi is far from done even after the beating we gave Gukko and pals.
They're immediately making their presence so we have to reply in kind.
Meanwhile, we deal with a giant worm and get some leestone. By the way, they're not in this game, but just take a look at one of these fucking things:
Final Fantasy 4 has some scary monsters, guys.
Finding out the significance of the gil unlocked this new mission. What awaits us there?
This mission only lets us use four characters for some reason. Then again, there's only really two enemies.
They're also supposed to be Mog Knights, which explains why this molotov cocktail is flying towards Sonia's face. (It induces berserk on a unit, which removes control from your character and forces them to attack a random enemy.)
I mean, what were the Redwings going to do with only two Mog Knight scouts?
The Red Robe is supposed to be for Red Mages, but it doesn't teach anything and isn't that good in terms of armor.
Randorf is the monster hunter extraordinaire.
The coin mission involves strongarming our way through some monsters.
28 / 62 / 105 / 80 /128 / 116 / 124
These little guys are among them - they're called Titanias and are the stronger counterpart of the Sprites from earlier. They're one of the fastest monsters in the game and have incredible healing abilities - unfortunately, they also have the power to back it up. They come with a more potent counterpart to White Wind called Angel Whisper that not only heals but also casts Re-raise on the lucky son of a bitch that gets it.
Then... there's Level?D Holy. It is a blistering light-elemental spell that hits anyone whose level matches up with the number of the current day. Neat concept, but I wish it was available to players.
Oh yes, to complete the coin mission you need to destroy these two statues.
Unfortunately, we never actually get to see the rest. Wow, what a cop-out.
For completing the mission we get a gold hairpin that could come in handy for magic and a FLAME ROD. Firaga already, ladies and gentlemen. You remember the 120+ damage Galor did earlier? Either that was with another Flame Rod or this will act as a direct upgrade.
At this point I'm just worried about being the literal manifestation of forest fires.
Rodrigo learns how to fix guns if he ever needs to.
Rodrigo immediately goes into Mage territory to boost his MP so he can use Ultima Charge. His first weapon of choice is the Flame Rod because of course.
Oh boy this is gonna get kinky. We must shame them.
So she's a Lamia that can turn into a human. Huh.
Randorf is into it.
In all seriousness, holy shit she's tough. She's about 12+ levels higher than us and comes with Twister to halve our health. She can stomach a lot of hits before she goes down, but the plus side is that there's only one of her and due to how experience scales in this game...
... You get over 30 per hit, even if you only do like one damage.
She's like my favorite enemy to level grind on for this very reason because if all you do is stay away from her and attack from a distance, she can't kill you. Twister can't reduce you to zero.
That said, Galor's impressive magic power is enough to do more than just a scratch... but for the sake of gaining some levels, I'd rather not kill her too quickly.
Twister in action. It's a pretty-looking purple tornado.
About an hour later, I gain more than my fair share of levels and punch her to death. Oh well, I guess we freed that dude from his crazy Lamia mistress.
We get some rapiers and not much else. Then again, given the circumstances, it's likely these were family heirlooms that we're just gonna wind up selling anyway. Oh, the glory of having no context of what we're getting.
I'm starting to wonder what would have happened to Ivalice if we didn't set up Clan Crimson. In fact, what the hell is the royal military doing? Sure, they're in the process of looking for Marche, but I'm pretty sure a foreign invasion would be high on the priority list!
Well shit then, I probably shouldn't have opened my mouth.
So some minstrel informs us of a Falgabird's location. She's not going to last long now that Rodrigo has enough MP to use Ultima Charge.
After the Inverlilith we just faced, she's practically a glass poodle. (Maybe don't put these missions back to back, game designers?)
[Rodrigo shoots a dirty look at Galor and aims his gun at Marilith]
(Yowza.)
: "You were saying, kupo?"
: "Oh, I was just building up their confidence for a fall." [He snickers]
I'd normally complain, but he did spend an hour or so training with one that's double his strength in every regard.
: "Oh just die already, kupo."
Holy shit, that damage is overkill and I love it. We roast her companions into Moogle Kebabs and cap off the mission.
"... How long do you think we'll remember them after we're done, however?"
You get a peculiar item called the Fire Sigil for defeating Marilith - it looks fancy but it's useless by itself. For now we'll keep it in mind.
We get a cool black lance that's named after one of the playable characters from Final Fantasy 4 - a Dragoon of all things. (This entire chapter has been full of references to that game, I swear.)
Lifebreak does more damage the less HP you have, making it rather risky to use. Then again, Templars are primarily mage-killers - hence why they have Silence and Soul Sphere (MP damage) of all abilities.
Nobel is properly re-equipped into his Gladiator clothes now that he has the MP to launch off Ultima Charge. I am honestly impressed at how much we have broken the game despite this not even being the Super-Optimized path.
I don't remember if this becomes important in the future, but damn we actually claim credit to a geological discovery. Nice.
Ah yes, this is how the Sigils come into play. The Redwings boss has a magic shield that protects him from conventional attacks (I assume), so we'd need a Spiritstone to defeat him. To get the Spiritstone, we'd have to retrieve more Sigils from the Falgabirds and combine them into one.
This is a neat sidequest if I'm gonna be honest with you.
But we'll worry about that for later. For now, we deal with the real plot of the game.
So we have to go ghostbusting. Hell, it's not like we're not used to dealing with the undead.
[A small white wisp appears in mid-air]
"But I don't feel scared at all."
Interesting. To be fair, if you were in his shoes, you probably wouldn't care either due to all of the crap he's had to endure so far.
... Now, just keep this line in mind and how many undead enemies he's faced so far because it'll come back to bite him in the rear like a pit bull with rabies.
Fun fact: Ghosts don't become an actual enemy until the sequel, so Marche is denied from bonking them into the afterlife with Sidewinder.
Son of a bitch. The ghosts around here are so powerful they can open rifts in space time.
[Marche is swallowed by the warp and taken to another temple area]
[Ghost briefly appears in front of him]
I'm surprised he really cares, to be honest. I thought this was part of his crystal fanatic phase.
[Current OST: Prison]
[A Totema phases out of the crystal and swallows the ghost]
So this Totema is some kind of dragon-looking monster that swallows wandering souls to power itself up.
"No one but my master may approach the world thread!"
: "I came here to destroy that crystal... or world-thread or whatever you call it. And I'm not leaving until I do!"
No, you did not. You came here to be an amateur Ghostbuster and it just so happened to turn into a Crystal hunt.
[The Totema summons some dragons]
Oh, this is gonna be fun.
"By my strength, I shall defend the world-thread... and destroy all who seek to harm it!"
Adrammelech, the Wroth!
This guy. Oh boy, this guy. Adrammelech is based on one thing as far as I can remember, and that's the Lucavi from the PS1 Final Fantasy Tactics. The Adrammelech from the original Tactics was the demon that bonded with [major spoiler character] in that game, and is notable for pushing past the censors of the day with this one infamous line: "Sh*t! It's still not right."
In this game, he's the representative of the Bangaa and is some kind of angry metal dragon man.
67 / 44 / 160 / 130 / 112 / 104 / 112
True to the species he represents, Adrammelech is the powerhouse of the Totema. He hits hard as fuck, not helped by his moves and Weapon Attack Plus - Lightspeed allows him to pierce reaction abilities and Firestream is a ranged physical attack that allows him to hit anything directly in front of him. You could be at the other end of the room and it could still hit you.
His Magestorm includes the Templar skill Soul Sphere, allowing him to do MP damage to your units... but given his beefiness, he'd rather pummel you with Firestream all day long.
To make things easier on me, I removed both laws for the battle. The judge doesn't disappear either if you remove all the laws either, so you not only don't need to worried about dying for real but you also can't get sent to jail either. Everyone wins!
A difficult thing about this fight is that you not only have to deal with Adrammelech but also his three dragon guards - alone they're a pain to deal with, but combined they might be a game-ender. It doesn't help that the dragons know defense boosting abilities to help out the big man himself.
Since I felt cheeky, I doomed this one Dragon because the battle might end before he even dies.
Firestream in action. Funnily enough, there's a White Monk ability called Earth Render that allows you to hit in a straight line too, so props to the game designers for tying more stuff in like that.
This kind of power can drive a man insane with ambition.
Despite the fact that Adrammelech is clearly a robotic dragon monster that has far more strength than a puny humanoid, he is not counted as a monster for some reason... hence why Sidewinder has no crazy multiplier right now.
This is what Soul Sphere looks like - it's really funky looking and I like it. I just wish it did something more useful than just ripping some MP away.
Amazingly enough, a Nobel-powered Ultima Charge isn't enough to kill him outright. These Totema are tough, man.
But you know, it's better to end it with a big dumb combo.
That is a rad way to die.
"I heard the crystals were pure magic... but now I think there must be something more. Some kind of incredible energy... that could create the totema and all the different races."
Yes, you could even say...
[The crystal shatters and teleports Marche back to the cave]
Mission accomplished, we should probably leave before more crazy stuff happ--
Damn it.
: "Uh-oh, Babus!"
I can't help but imagine him saying this like Babus is Dennis the Menace or something when it's clearly the other way around.
: "The air here has changed... What have you done?! Acting against the prince's wishes again, are you?"
That or he purged the ghosts that were hanging around this place. Then again, given that this is Marche we're talking about...
[Another rift opens up]
: "Wha--?"
: "A seam! It must have been left over..."
: "Prince Mewt!?"
: "Where is everybody? I'm lonely! Where are you, Babus?"
How long has Babus been away? If he's only been gone for an hour or so, the boy needs a stern talking to.
: "The prince is looking for me...?"
[The distortion and the image of Prince Mewt vanish]
: "Let us say you are right and there are two worlds. How much, then, is this "other world" worth to you?"
"Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?"
Oooh damn, hitting them out of the park. Babus the Savage.
: "Well, I..."
: "What? Nothing? You would make the prince suffer over... nothing?"
I know, right? Marche is being too much of a goody two shoes boy scout to realize that he's acting like a selfish twat to someone he barely even knows.
: "I must return - the prince needs me. We'll meet again, and next time I shall not be so forgiving!"
[Babus teleports away]
The worst part is that Marche doesn't even have a good reason to begin with if he couldn't even reply against what Babus said.
Plus, the money and power thing? Marche has one of the most powerful clans in all of Ivalice even without player input if he's able to defeat all the Totema and confront the royal military in canon. It becomes incredible when you think about it like that because honestly?
Marche is really well off and almost everyone he knows has their lives improved by this place, so... I don't know what he's going for here.
But hey, we get one of the most badass Totema yet! Adrammelech is a great nuke "all-the-enemies" summon.
We get a Force Rod and the usual for clearing the mission. Good stuff.
Baguba Port, the city of the Moogles! It's a mercantile port town to boot, so that'll be fun.
We also get a pretty ribbon and some more beef jerky.
Ribbons in the Final Fantasy series have some wonderful magic attached to them that makes you immune to every kind of status effect in the book, but the catch is that they can only be equipped by females for some obtuse reason. They're honestly some of the best equipment out there even if they don't defend for much being, well, ribbons.
Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we return to the Super Optimized route. See you then.
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Missions completed: 92 out of 300 (+18)
Freed Areas: 10 (+2)
Team setup:
(Marche, level 16,
,
) - "Man, I have to think of a good reason for why I'm breaking Mewt's fantasy world..."
(Montblanc, level 15,
,
) - "[sigh]... I wonder how my little brother Nono is doing, kupo."
(Ardin, level 15,
,
) - "You know, I'm starting to get really nervous about the whole breaking the 'world-thread crystals' thing. What if we're causing irreparable harm to reality as we know it?"
(Nobel, level 19,
,
) - "Very likely, but who caresss assss long assss I have my vaunted Ultima Charge."
(Galor, level 17,
,
) - "So we have control over three Totema now on top of our already prodigious strength. At this rate we'll become the strongest force in all of Ivalice... and I won't complain one bit."
(Randorf, level 17,
,
) - "I can't get over that a Moogle child knows the ultimate Black Magic spell when he's not even a mage."
(Sonia, level 15,
,
) - "I got a statue made of me. I'm just appreciating it while it lasts before things get nuts."
(Rodrigo, level 18,
,
) - "Shoot, shoot, shoot your gun, kill them all right now kupopo~♫"
[FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Chapter 10 (Normal) - Adrammelech, the Wroth[/FONT][FONT=verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, sans-serif]
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Spoiler:
Oooh nice, we start this one off with some Jerky. This is fortunate because we'll use it soon.
Hmm. Not many battle missions aside from the main course.
Oooh yes, this is also a thing. Reserve Missions are, to the best of my understanding, extra missions that require linking up with another player to get the appropriate item to complete them. They are not essential to complete as they don't count as part of the 300 required to get 100%. I think they're just in the game to encourage multiplayer.
Also, since Zod was mentioned:
... Kids, am I right?
You want us to go to the site of an active volcano to clean chunks of lava off the road. You expect this to end well.
This is immediately suspicious and we must investigate.
Ooooh this could be interesting enough for what it is. Let's see what this nets us.
A... love potion that you'll use to make yourself famous. Surely, this won't be abused.
Oh what the hell, we're still getting paid.
"I told him it was real and the kid's dad handed me a gun and a bomb shell for breaking it up. I feel accomplished."
(The Lost Gun teaches Silenshot. It's not the best but what the hell we'll take it.)
"It wasss really creepy, though. They all had thesssse big sssmiles and made me feel really awkward."
Despite the reserve missions not counting towards the max, you still get money and AP from them so there's no real reason to ignore them.
Well would you look at that, the Neighbor Pin immediately comes into use. Time to break 'em apart from the inside.
"To think of all of the nasty things we could do with this." [Galor chuckles as he observes the potion]
Boy, please.
Randorf was too dumb to know about anything that wasn't blowing things up with Fire/Ice/Thunder.
Speaking of which, jesus fucking christ. That is immaculate damage for something that can only miss 5% of the time.
Growing up as a Time Mage really kicked his magic growth in the right direction.
Nobel fought off some pirates with magic fists and got a medal for it.
Damn, I didn't expect the jerky to get used already.
Randorf is gonna take a shot at it and hope he either doesn't die or burn the treasure with his uber powers.
... Interesting proposition. This requires the Bomb Shell, by the way.
"I wanna go, kupo!!"
I can't blame him because he's not only getting paid for watching a crummy show, he gets more AP to learn Ultima Charge somehow.
Also, Bombs are invading and we have to go put a stop to it. It makes you wonder about how consistent a problem this might be if it happened in Cyril too.
Ardin cracked down on the Neighbors, got a cheesy badge and some delicious AP for helping.
Sonia managed to clean up the road with ease thanks to her ninja speed.
Oh, and we get a fancy gun for it too. The Giot Gun teaches Iceshot, so I guess that's nice.
"It was really funny, kupo. They also gave me this weird lamp!"
... Oh god they gave him a Tonberry Lamp? Maybe we should hide Rodrigo just in case Tonberries start showing up.
We also get some Dragon Mail for a skill going up - it cuts fire attacks by half but that's about all it does.
(This requires the Tonberry Lamp)
Hmmmmmmm.
"They'd better not do any funny stuff with my statue."
Rodrigo proves to be smarter than Randorf by actually knowing the value of these coins. He learned about it in school, don't you know.
There goes the game, everybody.
Ultima Charge + Gunner = Living Nuke Machine.
We just have to level him up to the point where his MP can stomach more than one use.
"My statue looked pretty badass, really. I wished you could have seen it. It involved me doing a chokehold on some poor nerd."
The Stradivari is used to make a violin of the same name, with the instrument itself being named after an Italian crafter known as Antonio Stradivari. I figure it was good enough to include.
This skill up came with a fancy blade that looks really cool but can only be used by Defenders. Boo. It's a good thing there's more classes in A2 that can use these weapons, but we'll save that for when we're actually there.
The Cadoan Bomb Genocide of 2017 begins now.
The Mombomb is the root of this mission and probably the other one in Cyril but isn't too much of a threat herself. She's just a regular bomb in this game, but just take a look at her appearance in Final Fantasy 4:
Like yikes. Damn Mombomb, you scary.
Monotype enemies that are generally weaker than the other monsters we're used to dealing with at this point? Of course it was gonna be a cakewalk.
Randorf cooked a turtle and snatched the Beastsword from its back. I like to imagine he whistled his way back home while lugging that giant thing over his shoulder.
A skill level increase wound up in us getting five ethers. Cool, but I don't really need them.
Oooh that's right, I almost forgot about the Redwings. Borzoi is far from done even after the beating we gave Gukko and pals.
They're immediately making their presence so we have to reply in kind.
Meanwhile, we deal with a giant worm and get some leestone. By the way, they're not in this game, but just take a look at one of these fucking things:
Final Fantasy 4 has some scary monsters, guys.
Finding out the significance of the gil unlocked this new mission. What awaits us there?
This mission only lets us use four characters for some reason. Then again, there's only really two enemies.
They're also supposed to be Mog Knights, which explains why this molotov cocktail is flying towards Sonia's face. (It induces berserk on a unit, which removes control from your character and forces them to attack a random enemy.)
I mean, what were the Redwings going to do with only two Mog Knight scouts?
The Red Robe is supposed to be for Red Mages, but it doesn't teach anything and isn't that good in terms of armor.
Randorf is the monster hunter extraordinaire.
The coin mission involves strongarming our way through some monsters.
28 / 62 / 105 / 80 /128 / 116 / 124
These little guys are among them - they're called Titanias and are the stronger counterpart of the Sprites from earlier. They're one of the fastest monsters in the game and have incredible healing abilities - unfortunately, they also have the power to back it up. They come with a more potent counterpart to White Wind called Angel Whisper that not only heals but also casts Re-raise on the lucky son of a bitch that gets it.
Then... there's Level?D Holy. It is a blistering light-elemental spell that hits anyone whose level matches up with the number of the current day. Neat concept, but I wish it was available to players.
Oh yes, to complete the coin mission you need to destroy these two statues.
Unfortunately, we never actually get to see the rest. Wow, what a cop-out.
For completing the mission we get a gold hairpin that could come in handy for magic and a FLAME ROD. Firaga already, ladies and gentlemen. You remember the 120+ damage Galor did earlier? Either that was with another Flame Rod or this will act as a direct upgrade.
At this point I'm just worried about being the literal manifestation of forest fires.
Rodrigo learns how to fix guns if he ever needs to.
Rodrigo immediately goes into Mage territory to boost his MP so he can use Ultima Charge. His first weapon of choice is the Flame Rod because of course.
Oh boy this is gonna get kinky. We must shame them.
So she's a Lamia that can turn into a human. Huh.
Randorf is into it.
In all seriousness, holy shit she's tough. She's about 12+ levels higher than us and comes with Twister to halve our health. She can stomach a lot of hits before she goes down, but the plus side is that there's only one of her and due to how experience scales in this game...
... You get over 30 per hit, even if you only do like one damage.
She's like my favorite enemy to level grind on for this very reason because if all you do is stay away from her and attack from a distance, she can't kill you. Twister can't reduce you to zero.
That said, Galor's impressive magic power is enough to do more than just a scratch... but for the sake of gaining some levels, I'd rather not kill her too quickly.
Twister in action. It's a pretty-looking purple tornado.
About an hour later, I gain more than my fair share of levels and punch her to death. Oh well, I guess we freed that dude from his crazy Lamia mistress.
We get some rapiers and not much else. Then again, given the circumstances, it's likely these were family heirlooms that we're just gonna wind up selling anyway. Oh, the glory of having no context of what we're getting.
I'm starting to wonder what would have happened to Ivalice if we didn't set up Clan Crimson. In fact, what the hell is the royal military doing? Sure, they're in the process of looking for Marche, but I'm pretty sure a foreign invasion would be high on the priority list!
Well shit then, I probably shouldn't have opened my mouth.
So some minstrel informs us of a Falgabird's location. She's not going to last long now that Rodrigo has enough MP to use Ultima Charge.
After the Inverlilith we just faced, she's practically a glass poodle. (Maybe don't put these missions back to back, game designers?)
[Rodrigo shoots a dirty look at Galor and aims his gun at Marilith]
(Yowza.)
I'd normally complain, but he did spend an hour or so training with one that's double his strength in every regard.
Holy shit, that damage is overkill and I love it. We roast her companions into Moogle Kebabs and cap off the mission.
"... How long do you think we'll remember them after we're done, however?"
You get a peculiar item called the Fire Sigil for defeating Marilith - it looks fancy but it's useless by itself. For now we'll keep it in mind.
We get a cool black lance that's named after one of the playable characters from Final Fantasy 4 - a Dragoon of all things. (This entire chapter has been full of references to that game, I swear.)
Lifebreak does more damage the less HP you have, making it rather risky to use. Then again, Templars are primarily mage-killers - hence why they have Silence and Soul Sphere (MP damage) of all abilities.
Nobel is properly re-equipped into his Gladiator clothes now that he has the MP to launch off Ultima Charge. I am honestly impressed at how much we have broken the game despite this not even being the Super-Optimized path.
I don't remember if this becomes important in the future, but damn we actually claim credit to a geological discovery. Nice.
Ah yes, this is how the Sigils come into play. The Redwings boss has a magic shield that protects him from conventional attacks (I assume), so we'd need a Spiritstone to defeat him. To get the Spiritstone, we'd have to retrieve more Sigils from the Falgabirds and combine them into one.
This is a neat sidequest if I'm gonna be honest with you.
But we'll worry about that for later. For now, we deal with the real plot of the game.
So we have to go ghostbusting. Hell, it's not like we're not used to dealing with the undead.
[A small white wisp appears in mid-air]
"But I don't feel scared at all."
Interesting. To be fair, if you were in his shoes, you probably wouldn't care either due to all of the crap he's had to endure so far.
... Now, just keep this line in mind and how many undead enemies he's faced so far because it'll come back to bite him in the rear like a pit bull with rabies.
Fun fact: Ghosts don't become an actual enemy until the sequel, so Marche is denied from bonking them into the afterlife with Sidewinder.
Son of a bitch. The ghosts around here are so powerful they can open rifts in space time.
[Marche is swallowed by the warp and taken to another temple area]
[Ghost briefly appears in front of him]
I'm surprised he really cares, to be honest. I thought this was part of his crystal fanatic phase.
[Current OST: Prison]
[A Totema phases out of the crystal and swallows the ghost]
So this Totema is some kind of dragon-looking monster that swallows wandering souls to power itself up.
"No one but my master may approach the world thread!"
No, you did not. You came here to be an amateur Ghostbuster and it just so happened to turn into a Crystal hunt.
[The Totema summons some dragons]
Oh, this is gonna be fun.
"By my strength, I shall defend the world-thread... and destroy all who seek to harm it!"
Adrammelech, the Wroth!
This guy. Oh boy, this guy. Adrammelech is based on one thing as far as I can remember, and that's the Lucavi from the PS1 Final Fantasy Tactics. The Adrammelech from the original Tactics was the demon that bonded with [major spoiler character] in that game, and is notable for pushing past the censors of the day with this one infamous line: "Sh*t! It's still not right."
In this game, he's the representative of the Bangaa and is some kind of angry metal dragon man.
67 / 44 / 160 / 130 / 112 / 104 / 112
True to the species he represents, Adrammelech is the powerhouse of the Totema. He hits hard as fuck, not helped by his moves and Weapon Attack Plus - Lightspeed allows him to pierce reaction abilities and Firestream is a ranged physical attack that allows him to hit anything directly in front of him. You could be at the other end of the room and it could still hit you.
His Magestorm includes the Templar skill Soul Sphere, allowing him to do MP damage to your units... but given his beefiness, he'd rather pummel you with Firestream all day long.
To make things easier on me, I removed both laws for the battle. The judge doesn't disappear either if you remove all the laws either, so you not only don't need to worried about dying for real but you also can't get sent to jail either. Everyone wins!
A difficult thing about this fight is that you not only have to deal with Adrammelech but also his three dragon guards - alone they're a pain to deal with, but combined they might be a game-ender. It doesn't help that the dragons know defense boosting abilities to help out the big man himself.
Since I felt cheeky, I doomed this one Dragon because the battle might end before he even dies.
Firestream in action. Funnily enough, there's a White Monk ability called Earth Render that allows you to hit in a straight line too, so props to the game designers for tying more stuff in like that.
This kind of power can drive a man insane with ambition.
Despite the fact that Adrammelech is clearly a robotic dragon monster that has far more strength than a puny humanoid, he is not counted as a monster for some reason... hence why Sidewinder has no crazy multiplier right now.
This is what Soul Sphere looks like - it's really funky looking and I like it. I just wish it did something more useful than just ripping some MP away.
Amazingly enough, a Nobel-powered Ultima Charge isn't enough to kill him outright. These Totema are tough, man.
But you know, it's better to end it with a big dumb combo.
That is a rad way to die.
"I heard the crystals were pure magic... but now I think there must be something more. Some kind of incredible energy... that could create the totema and all the different races."
Yes, you could even say...
[The crystal shatters and teleports Marche back to the cave]
Mission accomplished, we should probably leave before more crazy stuff happ--
Damn it.
I can't help but imagine him saying this like Babus is Dennis the Menace or something when it's clearly the other way around.
That or he purged the ghosts that were hanging around this place. Then again, given that this is Marche we're talking about...
[Another rift opens up]
How long has Babus been away? If he's only been gone for an hour or so, the boy needs a stern talking to.
[The distortion and the image of Prince Mewt vanish]
"Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?"
Oooh damn, hitting them out of the park. Babus the Savage.
I know, right? Marche is being too much of a goody two shoes boy scout to realize that he's acting like a selfish twat to someone he barely even knows.
[Babus teleports away]
The worst part is that Marche doesn't even have a good reason to begin with if he couldn't even reply against what Babus said.
Plus, the money and power thing? Marche has one of the most powerful clans in all of Ivalice even without player input if he's able to defeat all the Totema and confront the royal military in canon. It becomes incredible when you think about it like that because honestly?
Marche is really well off and almost everyone he knows has their lives improved by this place, so... I don't know what he's going for here.
But hey, we get one of the most badass Totema yet! Adrammelech is a great nuke "all-the-enemies" summon.
We get a Force Rod and the usual for clearing the mission. Good stuff.
Baguba Port, the city of the Moogles! It's a mercantile port town to boot, so that'll be fun.
We also get a pretty ribbon and some more beef jerky.
Ribbons in the Final Fantasy series have some wonderful magic attached to them that makes you immune to every kind of status effect in the book, but the catch is that they can only be equipped by females for some obtuse reason. They're honestly some of the best equipment out there even if they don't defend for much being, well, ribbons.
Next time on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, we return to the Super Optimized route. See you then.
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Missions completed: 92 out of 300 (+18)
Freed Areas: 10 (+2)
Team setup: