Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta 2012 Fridays Episode 4

Previously on Final Fantasy 5 Four Job Fiesta 2012 Fridays, I defeated Ramuh and obtained his summon (that I cannot use).  Since I didn’t get a new job that time, I have nothing to really preface.  So I guess I’ll jump right in.  Be warned though, the road to the next job is a rather long one.

After obtaining the summon Ramuh, I could explore almost all of the world.  Well, I did have to find a forest to land in, but other than that, it was time to go exploring.  With my destination set as the south-west most town on the map, I set out to discover whatever secrets it held… except I found out that the town didn’t have much, so I went to the nearby cave instead.  This cave was rather peculiar, as it had some switch-based puzzles.  There were also two types of enemies in the cave, some really weak enemies that I faced before, and some not-so-weak enemies.

Okay, after spamming the flee command about thirty times, I got a unique weapon, the Blitz whip.  I remember using it a decent amount when I was playing the game normally, but it’s obviously quite useless to my party now.  Well, whatever.  That can’t be all to this cave, can it?

After that, I set out to Bartz’s home town.  The town felt rather melancholic (like pretty much every town in Nier, or the entire game, for that matter), but there wasn’t anything plot related in this town, save for some backstory for Bartz.  The town was also the subject of a hilarious unintentional pun.

Anyway, enough with the tomfoolery, the plot’s calling.  At this point, I have to try and cross the large ass desert.  With the desert’s shifting sands sending me back to where I started, the only thing I can do is…

Pretty outrageous, I know.  This boss likes to spam gravity (which halves my current HP), making long battles with this boss annoying.  Luckily, the boss can’t outright kill a character as often.  Despite that, he wasn’t amazingly tough.  All-out attacking with a ninja plus rod spamming killed the boss off faster than I expected, which is great, because I was getting sick of the gravity spam.

After crossing the sandworm bridge, crossing the rest of the desert didn’t take any time at all.  After getting out of the desert, only the next town was in front of me.  Luckily, the next town wasn’t much of a town, and instead a location of plot advancement.  Well, one thing led to another, and I winded up finding the old fire ship again!  Wow, it actually wasn’t wrecked.  More plot, and now the fire ship has some serious flight capabilities.  Or, well, it would, if the next boss weren’t latching onto it.

Like Karlabos before it, this boss was very weak to lightning attacks.  I needn’t explain how I fared.  With the end of that battle, I was free to explore the world!  Except, as it turns out, I’ve pretty much explored everywhere.  Nonetheless, approaching the city of plot advancement made it take off and become a laputan nightmare filled to the brim with anti-air guns and cannons.  Before we could tackle that monstrosity, we first needed to reinforce the airship.  You know, so it doesn’t crash just as quickly as it did last time.  After gathering a sufficient amount of adamantite from that very first meteorite, another boss wanted to mess.

Aaaand immediately after that boss there’s yet another special encounter that leads to a boss.  Well, this one’s pretty unique in that you have to take out the laputan city’s anti-air defenses.  What that entails is fighting the cannons in a regular sort of battle.  Unfortunately, unlike normal battles, these cannons don’t drop any money.  Sure, it makes sense that automated turrets wouldn’t have any money, but that doesn’t explain why regular enemies drop money.  Sensible, my ass.

These encounters were pretty tough.  It took me about three thunder rods to both turrets.  During that time, however, I was subjected to a number of high-damage-dealing and charm-inducing attacks.  After each fight, I had to go back and rest up at Lix.  Fortunately, resting there was free.  Unfortunately, I was burning through thunder rods pretty fast, and these turrets (of all enemies) weren’t exactly in the business of… well, anything, really, since they had no money to drop.  To make matters worse, after I defeated the fourth turret, a new boss turret wanted to mess.

Anyway, this boss really packed some serious firepower.  It’s not immediately apparent, but there are three components you can attack.  One is the body, and the other two are yet more turrets you can attack.  These turrets are annoying, and constantly do damage.  Fortunately, I still had some thunder rods to break.  Those thunder rods took out the auxiliary turrets, and even did some damage to the main body.  The main body isn’t defenseless, however.  It will spend a few turns charging up, but after it’s done, it will unleash its wave motion gun, which does a ton of damage to everyone in the party.  Naturally, it was imperative I finished this battle quickly, and finished quickly I did.  Destroying the Soul Cannon opened up a path into the flying city.

Here I am, the last stretch of the journey to the earth crystal.  I found the dungeon pretty easy.  I was pretty much able to breeze through every normal encounter.  I’m not sure if the place was supposed to be pretty easy, or if my party’s just really strong (I don’t think it’s the latter though).  What I found rather interesting about this place was the second moonring blade.  Having already equipped the first one on my ninja, I decided to equip the second one on him, as well.  This way, I can place the ninja in the back row, and reduce the damage he takes, without curbing any of his.  Combine this with Image, and the ninja survive quite a few blows, and still dish out major amounts of damage.

This boss was also really annoying.  It starts out with a lot of defense, which forces me to use magic attacks for a while.  Which, of course, means breaking even more rods and throwing a lot of scrolls.  Notice how I said “for a while though”?  Yeah, the boss soon performs a giant “fuck you”.

Basically, the boss starts absorbing certain elements.  In fact, as you do more and more damage, the elements he absorbs changes.  This led me to healing him yet again.  Boy, I sure do love healing the enemy and dicking myself over.  My one saving grace was his high defense disappearing.  My ninja was now once again able to do the large amounts of damage it deserves to do.  However, I think this boss has a habit of performing “fuck you”, as it soon activates its trap card.

Fortunately, he doesn’t absorb anything this time around.  Doing more of the usual killed it pretty quickly.  With that annoyingly desperate boss dead, it’s time to claim my rightful prize, the earth crystal!  Kind of anticlimactic for the final crystal, I know, but the game is kind of far from over.  Besides, the boss’s sheer struggle to survive made it pretty memorable.  Memorably annoying, sure, but memorable.

And as the screenshot clearly states, the new job I gain access to is the samurai job!  Tune in next time for the first adventures of what I’d describe as the capitalist party, finally fully assembled!