💍 Final Fantasy 2 - Week 4

[simias]

Final Fantasy 2 Beginner Club W04

Week 04	2026-01-23T15:00:00Z
Previous week	💍 Final Fantasy 2 - Week 3
Next week	💍 Final Fantasy 2 - Week 5
Home Threads	FFBC / FF2BC

Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

Final Fantasy II script

Stopping point

Once you return from your mission to the Dreadnought. You can return to Altea afterwards but don’t enter the rebellion アジト just yet, you risk triggering next week’s content.

A little protip to prevent some frustration this week and in the future: if you see chests in rooms that appear to be completely inaccessible, there’s probably a fake wall nearby that you can go through. This game loves fake walls.

The time has come to inaugurate a new section in these weekly threads that’s probably going to become standard in the future: a list of missable content:

週刊完璧主義通信

In FF1 there wasn’t any really missable content. The entire game remains available all the way until you trigger the final boss battle, so if you realize that you’re missing a chest in a previous dungeon or an entry in your bestiary, you can just backtrack at any time.

As these games are getting more complex and story-driven, we’ll encounter “points of no return” more regularly, where some content becomes permanently unavailable if you don’t get it before a certain milestone in the story. It could be a side-quest that’s only available temporarily, a location that becomes permanently inaccessible after it’s completed, or a certain item that can only be stolen from a specific one-time boss battle for instance.

If you don’t care about this and want to figure things on your own, then close this fold and move on. Otherwise, read on:

A trip to Gatea

Some version of the game have an achievement for visiting every location in the game. This of course includes optional locations.

You probably stumbled upon Gatea already, but if you haven’t, do remember to drop by eventually if you want the achievement. There will come a “point of no return” late in the game where you won’t be able to visit the city anymore.

A potion in Altea

In the rebellion hideout in Altea there’s a chest in the main area (off to the West of the big room with the tables, in a small closet). This chest only contains a potion, so no big deal if you ignore it, but do remember to fetch it if you want the achievement for opening all chests in the game. There will come a point late in the game where this chest will become inaccessible.

The Dreadnought

This week is your only opportunity to loot the Dreadnought. Any of its 10 chests left unopened will become unreachable after that. There are a few unique items in there, and you’ll have to open every chest for the achievement if you have/care about it.

More details

Summary of previous episodes: we must find a way to destroy the Imperial Dreadnought. Apparently we can use something called the Sun Flame to set fire to its engines. The Flame is kept in Kashuorn Castle and we needed the Goddess Bell in order to retrieve it. We managed to retrieve the Bell from the Snow Cave, but it cost Joseph his life…

Out of the snow, into the flame

With the Goddess Bell in hand we can go straight for Kashuorn, but you may want to drop by Salamander and Altea to share the news of Joseph’s passing first. You don’t stand to gain anything from that, besides Japanese proficiency!

At any rate your next objective is Kashuorn Castle, in order to retrieve the Sun Flame. You can go there by foot if you walk Southwards from Bafusk, but the easiest way is to ask Cid in Poft to take you there directly.

Kashuorn Castle

The Sun Flame is right here! But… you can’t take it with any old torch, we’ll have to explore the Castle to find something capable of withstanding it.

Go to the door at the back and use the Goddess Bell to unlock it. Explore the dungeon to find Egil’s Torch, which you’ll be able to use to take the Flame (remember that you can use the teleport spell to return to the Castle’s entrance whenever you want).

The boss of this area can seem extremely daunting at first because it will immediately start casting very powerful spells, but the good news is that it will run out of MP after only a few turns, becoming fairly harmless. Just try to survive until then…

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Fantasy

It’s technically optional but at this point you probably want to return to Altea to see what’s happening with that cutscene you got when you left Kashuorn. Or maybe you feel like speedrunning this and go straight for the Dreadnought instead.

At any rate, Kashuorn is in the middle of nowhere and walking all the way back to civilization is going to be tedious. Fortunately, there’s help nearby, in the form of a Chocobo Forest. Look at the “Big Bird” section below if you need more assistance with that.

You can ride the Chocobo straight South through the desert to return to Altea. You’ll also pass the place where the Dreadnought is docked, in the middle of a crescent-shaped forest. Make a note of it, that’s our next objective.

Dreadnought

It’s finally time to face the great ship of war! From Altea, head North-North-West past Finn along the narrow strip of land that wraps around the map. You’ll eventually reach a crescent-shaped forest with the Dreadnought landed in the center.

This is going to be a bit of a difficulty bump compared to what we’ve faced so far: even simply reaching the Dreadnought won’t be a piece of cake since you’ll meet your share of Magicians and Ogre Mages on the way there.

On top of that you can’t use the teleport spell in the Dreadnought. Worse yet: at some point you won’t be able to leave it at all until you’ve finished the quest! Make sure to stock up on healing items before going in.

Once you enter the Dreadnought you’ll find that an Imperial Captain is blocking your way. You can show him the laissez-passer you found in Bafusk and he’ll let you through. Alternatively you can tell him のばら and he’ll attack you.

You have two objectives in the Dreadnought: rescue Hilda who got abducted on her way to Kashuorn and then blow up the engines. After you’ve rescued Hilda you won’t be able to leave the Dreadnought until you’ve dealt with the engines.

Map

The Dreadnought will be found in the middle of the crescent-shaped forest to the North.

Miscellaneous

Big Bird

This week we finally have the opportunity to meet our first Chocobo! These creatures will become a staple of Final Fantasy going forward, appearing in nearly every title. Even the bad ones:

They also pop up in some other game series like Legend of Mana. Here’s one in 聖剣伝説 on the GameBoy:

The name apparently comes from a Japanese snack called チョコボール:

In order to encounter the very first Chocobo ever made, walk straight South from the entrance of Kashuorn. In the Pixel Remaster you’ll find the Chocobo Forest showing like a glowing hole in the middle of the trees (more like Chocobo Clearing I guess?):

In the Famicom version the forest is completely invisible, you have to blindly walk into the right forest tile:

Inside the forest you just have to “talk” to the Chocobo to be able to ride it on the world map. In the Pixel Remaster it’s very straightforward, you just walk to it. On the original Famicom version the bird is a little more playful: it keeps moving around and popping in and out of the thick grass:

Be careful that the Chocobo will run away as soon as you dismount it.

The Chocobo theme also make its entrance! Well, sort of. In the Famicom version it’s just the first few bars looping forever:

https://youtu.be/vj5PWi2k2Xc

Fortunately the Pixel Remaster decided to go with the longer melody from later games:

https://youtu.be/TomvAmhG2Lk

We demand to be taken seriously

You may encounter one of these bad boys around or inside the Dreadnought:

The magicians are the first in a family of enemies that will appear throughout this game. Later you’ll meet sorcerers (wearing blue) and finally wizards (wearing green). These enemies cast powerful spells and are therefore some of the most dangerous in the game (I died to wizards more than any other enemy in this game, including bosses) but they’re still worth fighting because they’re a source of some very useful tomes for spells that can’t be otherwise accessed until much later in the game:

• Magicians: Berserk (boosts attack power)
• Sorcerers: Haste (increases the number of hits)
• Wizards: Aspire (regenerates MP from enemies)

As a result they’re well worth hunting down just to get access to these spells early. Note that berserk and haste stack, being a very powerful combo for your warriors (you hit more and harder).

And if you’re low on money these tomes can be sold for thousands of gil too.

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

[simias]

I’m curious, are my more detailed instructions useful?

• I read them and play along
• I try to play blind but from time to time I check them
• I never use them

• I think the level of detail in the instructions is fine
• I think they should be more detailed
• I think they should be less detailed; they spoil too much

[Daisoujou]

I think your detailed directions are great! I check them quite a bit, with FF1 I couldn’t keep the shape of the world and what we were up to in my head, which I blamed on the club pace and sure that’s relevant but I think it’s also the way Pixel Remaster speeds everything up and takes away any friction because the FF2 world feels way more like I’m actually learning it. I guess all the return trips in 2 help as well. Little of everything. Regardless, yeah, they’re very helpful. Your mention of us seeing the Dreadnought on the way back helped me catch that I forgot to actually grab the fire which it turns out is pretty important to do.

This is my halfway progress report again after finishing Kashuorn

I felt so overprepared for the Ice Cave, and here I am at the next location, feeling just barely adequate to scrape by. Things ramp up. We survived but I’m afraid with the Dreadnought being the actual difficulty spike.

I’m really happy we have Gordon now; I wanted him to find the confidence to do something after all his moping around. It’s amusing how he kinda sucks and it’s now the inverse situation from how previous guest members were a lot stronger than the base 3 members. Now we’re the ones who have to help train Gordon up, which is definitely my first objective when I start up the second half of this week’s content.

The boss though, lmao. Alright so after 2 times in a row the boss that can only be hurt by magic is an old trick. So what if, hear me out, we make a boss that can’t be hurt by anything? Truly an experimental golden age. I mean I’m sure you could squeeze out more optimal equipment and stats than I have but my melee people are running mythril weapons and Guy especially is at the stats that an entire game up to this point spent pressing only attack in one single weapon type has gotten him to. The boss wasn’t really threatening so we grinding through it but it’s a real pray for crits situation, lots of hits for like 0-4 damage with some 10s when we’re lucky but without crits. The fight genuinely probably took like 10 minutes. At this point it’s kind of just funny honestly, though it still has me worried I’m gonna hit a wall sometime.

The reward was worth it though, the chocobo popping its head out of the grass constantly is amusing and its little animations are absolutely delightful. Love the song too, don’t care how repetitive it is in this version, it’ll always be good. This point I’m especially glad to have the guide on because I don’t think I would have taken a straight line path that far down and ever found it myself. The trip back with us all worn out would’ve been hell too…

[simias]

I don’t recall exactly how I found out about the chocobo forest but I think I was completely wrung dry of HP, MP and items after the dungeon and I had no idea how I was supposed to return to civilization in that state. I didn’t even know in what direction I needed to walk because I got there with Cid.

So I think I googled a map and saw the forest indicated.

It’s definitely a strange choice to hide it like this. Apparently an NPC says this in Altea:

カシュオーンの南の森に、チョコボという名の妙な鳥が棲んでいるらしいぞ。

I saw it while browsing the spreadsheet, I don’t remember reading that when I played the Famicom version but maybe I just missed it. Still, with no visible features from the outside, the likelihood that I would have stumbled into it is pretty much zero.

[VikingSchism]

Halfway through

I finished the castle. TP’d out and went back to Altea. Then Hilda refused to talk to me because Gordon was in the party. This is when I realised that I hadn’t picked up the flame with the torch. So I had to go back and do the trek again, except without the airship on the return journey. Anyway I then headed for the 大戦艦, which took a bit to find because I forgot about the map wrapping. Anyway I fought one of the captains in there and managed to beat it more or less. However when exploring deeper in, フィリオニール died after those self destructing enemies hit him twice in a row. These enemies have consistently been failing that attack until now so even seeing one self destruct go off was a shock. Then had to trudge my way back to town to res フィリオニール and buy a few フェニックスの尾 to avoid getting into another situation like this

[JupiterJesus]

Don’t forget to buy a raise spell for next time

[simias]

Having raise on all your characters (even the non-mages) can be extremely valuable.

[JupiterJesus]

Luckily I took my own advice about Raise. I had one, but I went and bought two more. I died for the first time today’s first dungeon… and the second, and the third, and the fourth…

First Half

I spent most of the level blinded, because I only bought 3 blind cures and no one has ANY of the status healing spells. Enemies used strong magic, dodged a lot and took many hits to kill. One of the toughest fights was a bunch of rats in a box. I used magic to get around my blindness and to kill turtles, but between that and healing weak-ass Gordon I was burning through MP fast.

By the time I reached the boss, my guys were at ZERO mp. Fortunately, I was able to autoattack him down. His massive spells knocked me down but didn’t quite kill me, and once he ran out of magic I wore him down with autoattacks. Blinded auto attacks. Fun!

Here’s the best part. Firion was the only one with teleport. Fortunately, he got 2 mp from somewhere, probably from a level up, since I’m pretty sure he was at zero. I used it and nothing happened. Oh no, I accidentally selected わすれる, not つかう. So now I had no teleport spell to get out, no MP on anyone, and dozens of encounters required to exit manually.

For the first time and hopefully the last, ENCOUNTERS OFF.

Now I just need to get another teleport spell, and probably some status healing.

[simias]

Bruh get yourself some esuna. I even wrote an essay about it smdh.

[simias]

By the way for some weird reason your characters stop gaining experience if they’re under the influence of any non-temporary spell (at least in the original version, not sure for the others). So for instance you may think that is not big deal that a spellcaster is blinded given that they don’t use physical attacks, but you still want to heal them because otherwise they won’t grow at all.

[VikingSchism]

The remainder of Week 4

So I managed to destroy the 大戦艦. Was a bit surprised to find there was no boss there - I’d popped a few エーテル in preparation for one, and then felt like I’d wasted that money. Oh well. Overall I did enjoy that the dungeon was objective focused (get to the engines and blow them up). Also looks like (speculation) ダークナイト could be レオンハート maybe? マリア seemed to recognise the voice.

Finding out how to get to that one chest behind the bars was annoying - I generally don’t love stuff that’s not signposted at all.

I did buy Raise for all my characters, and thanks to fighting those wizards or whatever I now have Berserk on everyone too.

[simias]

@VikingSchism

Finding out how to get to that one chest behind the bars was annoying - I generally don’t love stuff that’s not signposted at all.

One thing that I fully expected they’d change in the remasters would be indicating the fake walls one way or an other. I was surprised that they decided to keep them completely invisible.

There are going to be a bunch of those in future dungeons. I’ll try to indicate the most important ones as progress (those that let you reach treasure in particular). Sometimes they’re just used for shortcuts in dungeons which I guess is fine. If you know about them you save yourself some trouble, but even if you don’t you don’t miss anything important.

[JupiterJesus]

Well I was blinded nearly the entire dungeon and had plenty of growth, so it seems like this doesn’t apply to PR.

[Daisoujou]

エスナ練習場

We bulked up for a bit then took on the Dreadnought. First trip in ended quickly when curiosity made me try talking to an NPC who was, of course, an enemy again. We might’ve been able to scrape through the fight but it was dragging on and eating so many resources.

On that subject, I gotta say, the resource pressure has me going through dungeons not as thoroughly as I’d normally like. I knowingly passed up a few treasure chests after taking a wrong turn and definitely missed others. Is what it is, it’s tough out there. While MP and all stays super valuable, I think we reached the point where money is flowing and I can spend freely. At least until we run into more expensive stuff, if the costs will catch back up? Who knows.

The status effect thing is really consequential and mean on the famicom. Like those cats hit hard enough that they should be buffing our HP every fight, but their hit is paired with a status to ruin it. So many things here inflict so many status effects it feels hard to get much growth at all despite how rewarding you’d expect hard fights like this to be. I can’t imagine doing this place without esuna. We’re just running with every single person having heals and basic white magic for outside fight situations now.

Anyway it fits with how much I think this game is playing a mean joke at my expense (but one that I’m increasingly finding funny, stockholm syndrome or whatever), but I found some of the level design pretty fun here. Especially that last room with the guys blocking every junction. Very memorable.

I got no berserk books at all. Might have to try for those in the future, wander around outside where the dreadnought was a little or something…

The lack of a boss is indeed a little surprising but I like the vibe they’re going for with us passing a ton of enemy soldiers to get here. You have to let your imagination play with it but the pieces are there for this to be a cool setpiece. Love seeing it blow up, a new peek at a villain, etc. Playing the way I am now more knowingly around the systems’ quirks I’m finding the game quite fun again, though I definitely have to go “oh you!” whenever it pulls some shit. Which tbh I’m often happy to do, that sort of thing gives it a lot of character.

The end result of our mission.

[simias]

@Daisoujou

knowingly passed up a few treasure chests after taking a wrong turn and definitely missed others.

One difference that I found interesting between the original and the Pixel Remaster is that, on Famicom, it’s quite hard to 100% the dungeons due to generally higher difficulty and lack of a minimap to plan your route, but at the same time it doesn’t feel as significant if you miss something because lack of inventory space means that you’re going to get rid of whatever item you would have gotten at some point anyway. It’s more “realistic”, in a sense, you can’t just hoard dozens of weapons and full sets of armor with you at all times.

I still find the modern version more pleasant overall in that regard, I hate inventory management in games. It’s never fun.

[Sisthra]

Week 4

This week was pretty light on actual Japanese content, more gameplay than anything but there were still some interesting moments. I started giving some healing and status magic to Guy, who despite being docked in full heavy armor is a surprisingly good white mage.
Does magic interference only influence offensive magic? Because a Cure 3 of his heals for a whooping 350 or so, which is better than anything I have at the moment.
I guess it plays with into his “gentle giant, friends to animals” character archetype.
(Apparently the in game manual says he was literally raised by wolves or whatever until Firion & co found him and brought him back into civilization, which is why he doesn’t speak much)
I also gave him Berserk, because he still goes in axe swinging. Really like that Berserk in this game is still simply a attack boost like in FF1 and not the actual “Berserk” status of future games.

Final Fantasy 2 sure LOVES its physical resistant surprise bosses… The fire spirit absorbing everything caught me off guard, but between setting up by casting Blink, Protect and Shell on everyone he couldn’t do much after the first couple turns… So it was a lot of auto attacking for barely two digit damage and wondering how many HP it had.

Also turtles… I did not remember FF2 having so many surprise turtles…

I also completely forgot about the permit we got and simply went into the Dreadnought weapons swinging lol, that Captain was quite though but he dropped a really sweet Fire bow that I gave to Firion that absolutely destroyed all the undead enemies that were roaming around.
The Dreadnought was fun! I’m glad it actually didn’t require you to sneak around avoiding the guards line of sight because that plus random encounters would have been annoying, but still walking through the ship crawling with soldiers set a nice vibe. I really loved the maze where you had to avoid the soldiers right before the engines! I assume you could simply fight your way through but I didn’t really want to do it.

[simias]

@Sisthra

I assume you could simply fight your way through but I didn’t really want to do it.

Surprisingly you can’t actually! They don’t despawn even if you defeat them, unlike the one at the entrance. You have to do the maze.

[Daisoujou]

@simias

I still find the modern version more pleasant overall in that regard, I hate inventory management in games. It’s never fun.

Honestly, I know I’m being weird again but I think I prefer a game being overly restrictive. I’m not too bothered by it and at least I’m being pushed to engage with what’s in the inventory and make choices to use or sell regularly. What happens a lot with modern games is they give you so many items and you just get an enormous list of 70 variable size stacks of junk you’re never gonna touch and it’s like my eyes just glaze over when I see it.

Oh, and I forgot to post my appreciation for the enemy sprites. Those mice are absolutely deranged. They’re probably my favorites now.

[JupiterJesus]

See, I’m playing this game for the language practice. For friction I have other games I’m in the middle of; SMTV, Silksong, replaying Etrian Odyssey on the pc re-release, etc. You want friction? The last time I played Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, I spent 2 hours just trying to find or afford clothes that weren’t covered in shit and or blood. I finally got attacked by bandits that I couldn’t fight off, but ran like hell and ended up being saved by some traveling caravan guards. I then looted the dead bandits and finally had nice clothes and a real weapon!

Twenty minutes later, I died by falling too far into a ravine and breaking all my bones. I had no save, because you have to save by sleeping (I don’t have the money to afford an inn, still) or using a special item. Sometimes it auto saves after special story events. Now I’m back to wearing stanky, torn clothing and wielding a stick. Also, I got my ass kicked by a hobo because I’d forgotten how to block and parry properly, and my guy gets winded easily.

[Daisoujou]

Which I don’t fault you for at all, but until we get into later FFs the actual density of Japanese is pretty low with these hours spent in dungeons. If I wasn’t here for the game part I’d read a visual novel.

Honestly I was thinking, I totally recognize that the ways original FF2 work are just not something almost anyone these days wants, especially fans of later FFs sampling the old ones, but I do agree with what was said before that the way it really took a sledgehammer to every system is probably too much. Not just from some games should be hard perspective but these systems really ARE my experience with FF2, the resource strain and the cruelty of constant status effects taking away all level up chances, hedging every decision against risk calculation knowing my save is miles away, etc. For better or worse I think a streamlined FF2 would feel so totally different as to be unrecognizable from the time I’m having playing it.

I have heard good things about Kingdom Come Deliverance 2; it’s not quite my type of game usually but I might have to give it a try one day. Your description certainly sounds fun.