Oh boy, deciphering next week’s dragons’ dialogue was rough when I played through it. They’re long-winded, and speak in a strange, archaic way. If you think the circle of sages was bad…
I do want to say the more we play the more I get the urge to become a filthy preplayer because I need more
Time to find out what that weird stone is for:
I am REALLY sad to learn that レイズ can miss…
…either that or I selected the wrong person. Been marathoning the game to catch-up 
The hot dungeon was exhausting. So many status effects. If only those teleport spells were available…
I also kinda forgot you can toggle more equipment descriptions and kept the hot dungeon armor equiped into the cold. This game trolls a bit, in that armor to help with the other dungeon is in the dungeon too. 
this week
My first game over 
Good thing this game has autosave. I love living in the future! I realized at this point that I probably shouldn’t have been ignoring all of the status buff spells so I skedaddled back to town with encounters off to buy the defense spell for the white mage. Well, with a bit of buffing the boss then only took like 3 hits to kill.
I really enjoyed the silliness of the ice cave, the dungeons overall are bigger than I thought they would be in an old game (not sure why I thought old game = small dungeons but we all have our implicit biases I guess). The ice wolves packed a punch when all of them cast blizzard on you, had some ギリギリ moments and was glad I had stocked up on items. Killed the 
in like one hit, but then I wanted those two treasure chests in the same room so I turned off encounters because I’ve become a filthy cheater and ran through the entire dungeon to get to them. OK it turns out one had dark wizards in them and I promptly got my second game over 
Trying again on the dark wizards, I managed to hit them with my strongest black mage spell and then they died instantly. So I guess it’s really just down to which party members the enemy manages to wipe out before I can get a few hits in.
The fact that the first dungeon you encounter is the minuscule Chaos Shrine probably helps set wrong expectations. And after that you don’t get any dungeon until you reach the Swamp Cave quite a while later. I was pleasantly surprised when I entered the swamp and realized it was a proper, multi-level dungeon. And then less pleasantly surprised when I got bullied by the mobs there.
Okay
Hot and Cold
I had a lot typed but it all got deleted. The fire cavern was insanely annoying, and falling through the ice multiple times had led me to taking a break yesterday. Finally finished the ice cave today.
Happy new year y’all!
Hey you can’t win em al
Thought I had completed this when got the fire sword until I read the next section. Turns out the only crack I had avoided was the one that got me to the stone. Okay on to the next now.
Summary
That also took me a couple of tries!
Week 8
For one glorious day, I was caught up on my Anki deck. At least there wasn’t too much dialogue this week so I only added a handful more. Got my first game over(and second, and third) against the Dark Wizards in the chest in the Ice Cave. They got an ambush on me and proceeded to AoE me to death. Then they did it again. Then I got a preemptive strike and killed them before they could hit me. But then I ran into a group of them in a random encounter and they hit me with an AoE instant death spell and wiped my entire party. The two bosses were ridiculously easy by comparison.
On my way back to town, my thief couldn’t get rezzed before the battle was over and joined my red mage in being about 1k exp behind. Other than that, pretty uneventful week. Finished at level 31 and 7:47 on the clock.
Enemies jumping out of a chest and giving you a quick, unavoidable death? Sounds like they’re just giving you an early taste of FF2!
Oh boy, something to look forward to I suppose.
Weekly progress
Not much to report on this week since it was a pretty typical dungeon crawl.
I fell down the ice in the room with the float stone before I could loot the chests, so I had to come back into the dungeon to fill my bags. These cracks were pretty hard to see on the small PSP Go screen, but I grabbed a screenshot on the second pass to post how well they blended in.
Much easier to notice when it’s blown up like this, but still blends in well.
I also had my first proper game over that needed a reload. Ambushed by a group of 4 dark wizards which took out my fully healed party before I could get a turn. That’s just how it goes sometimes.
And since there isn’t much to talk about language-wise, I’ll just toss in some sprites of this week’s baddies.
Wow, yeah, that’s questionable tilework, especially when this dungeon already has the reputation to be pretty hard…