This week two new dungeons become accessible: a very hot one and a very cold one. Finish both. One will progress the story, the other will give you a mysterious key item.
People familiar with the game will know that a third, less accessible dungeon also becomes reachable (a temperate one, I suppose). Ignore it for now.
If you want more details, read below:
More details
With our brand new canoe we can now explore the river system around Crescent Lake. Two locations await you there:
Gulg Volcano
Ice cave
You’ll have to use your boat to reach the Ice cave since the northern river system is not directly connected to Crescent Lake.
Feel free to do the dungeons in whichever order you prefer. Ice cave is shorter but its enemies are stronger. Its layout is also more confusing and puzzle-like. Take your time. As you can imagine the ice dungeon has enemies that are weak to fire and vice-versa.
Both these dungeons contain special tiles that damage you (similar to poison) every time you step on them. It’s not all bad though: you can’t trigger random encounters while stepping on those tiles.
The Evil Eye is going to become a recurring enemy in future games. On the other hand if you’re playing the original Famicom version, you’ll see this instead:
The Beholder! A different name, and a different sprite. Why did they change it? Well those of you familiar with Dungeon & Dragons can probably already tell: this is a carbon copy of the iconic D&D monster with the same name:
It’s pretty clear that western RPGs like D&D were a huge influence on Final Fantasy, but in this case it seems that the devs didn’t realize that this isn’t some kind of generic fantasy creature like a troll, a goblin or a vampire, this is actually somebody else’s intellectual property. Somebody must have noticed and the sprite was changed for the American NES release and all subsequent ports and remasters (even in Japan).
Participation
I’m playing along
I will catch up later
I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion
Thanks for the lore on the Evil Eye of the Beholder, didn’t know also I do remember this cutie from FFX but not sure that I would have noticed that it’s the “same” monster
No, it’s in all versions. I won’t cover any of the bonus dungeons, mainly because I focus on the original release and the Pixel Remaster, and they don’t have those.
Then I’m stumped. Besides the two dungeons for this week, the only ones I’ve done are the waterfall cave for the cube, the underwater shrine for kraken and the castle with the class change item, and I think you need the airship for all of those. What am I missing?
I used the area where you can kayak next to Crescent Moon to grind and level up, it was great for that, can easily just go back and forth left and right on a long stretch, then could go back in town to heal / fill up MP whenever it was needed.
Then set up to find the Volcano but got lost in the maze and never made it there.
Set up to explore the world instead. Found the temple we’re not supposed to go to instead, oops.
After I was done with that, eventually found the volcano after all. Nothing mention-worthy for the bosses as I’m always over-leveled and bags are full of all items :x
Like I said before, I did the ice cave first. Since I’m stupidly strong at this point, even the hard enemies were all pushovers. I found some great ice swords that are more powerful than anything else, and a powerful armor too. Warrior is eating good, and Thief gets some powerful hand me downs from him too.
I went on to do the airship and class change stuff, but that technically isn’t part of this week’s material. Once I came back to the volcano, I was able to just land there with my airship, walk in, run straight to the end and beat the hell out of Marilith/Kali in like…one turn? Two turns?
Not a whole lot of Japanese this week, and none of it especially complicated.
You know what, I thought I got the gauntlet in the ice cave and the heal staff in the castle (I did both in the same session), but I looked it up and I guess you get both in the same dungeon, thereby DOUBLE breaking the game.
Yeah that’s why many players sequence-break at this point in order to get those OP items early, but I don’t think it makes sense to do that in club format. We’ll collect those next week.
I think it’s interesting that the game lets you do that though. It increases the replay value. You can postpone the hot dungeon for a very long time if you want.
I don’t know if it makes sense or not that it’s allowed but I think that it’s nice to have several options.
Do A, so you unlock B. Do C, so you unlock D. Do E, so you unlock F, is a bit too linear. It’s funnier if an NPC in week 1 tells you where to go in week 7. (sorry, too soon? )
Oh I absolutely like the non-linearity. What I dislike is when doing something causes some random old geezer on a different continent to suddenly offer you a canoe for no discernible reason.
Two more dungeon dives under our belt. The fire one was pretty fun – I had some items but didn’t really go out of my way to load up so the attrition still hit ok. Some of these dungeon designs definitely make me feel like they intend you to pop your head in and out a time or two. This was clearer than ever with the enormous mazelike treasure room that is ultimately close to the entrance and can be bypassed in five seconds, so I did just that. Cleared it out, popped outside to rest up, then went back in.
The boss was easier than the last few for me, though I was getting genuinely a little annoyed at how the game always instantly reacts to my buffs by disabling that specific character with status effects. Probably coincidence but it’s obnoxious. Luckily the paralysis wore off quickly and I assume our party wide defense spell was paying off, we never really got in danger. These bosses tend to die faster than I’m expecting.
The canoe sprite with a silhouette person rowing is super cute.
Ice cave was pretty easy but I fell for the trap of the stairs back out of the place while specifically noticing and dodging the hole you need to go back down to get to the key item. One way exit is pretty mean. So while I’m not grinding, I’m getting in some unintentional extra fights from things like this that are keeping us pretty levelled anyway. The economy is also currently spiraling hard in my favor so I couldn’t resist the call to stock up on more items, which might cut some of the resource management I’ve been enjoying. We’ll see. That boss, uhh, sure died in one hit.
Oh, and I do appreciate that these caves included swords the local enemies are weak to! One of the most exciting treasure box items so far.
Definitely, without the grind I would probably be doing fine thanks to just getting lost all the time x) the game is probably harder if you follow a guide and always go straight to the next destination.
Oh genuinely, when we talk about how it’s balanced vs the need to grind or not I think some vague direction and the need to explore is 100% part of that conversation, and an intended way to get you doing some extra fights. Obviously that can go too far and I especially agree the canoe guy is a problem since he doesn’t direct you to come back if you’re early, but I’m at least sympathetic to how I imagine it happens. Back then there was probably little to no outside playtesting and it’s hard when you work on a game for a while to step back and understand how the things you can never forget might be unintuitive in places.
On that subject, I looked it up and this was allegedly for sale something like 9 months after they started developing it, which is really crazy to think about. I really, really miss how in older eras you could get a game in a year or two.
also I do remember 
)
