Same, maybe I will try to complete some if I happen to stumble on them, but I donât go out of my way to âplatinumâ games. The only game I ever want to actually get all achievements is Expedition 33 (almost there), but thatâs mostly because they happen to coincide with simply experiencing all the game has to offer in one playthrough. No missable achievements or finishing the game on super hard or other similar things! As soon as I see those Iâm out
I currently have 81 platinum trophies on my PSN profile. When I was younger, I used to compete in global rankings but I donât have time to do that anymore. lol If itâs a game I really like, Iâll make the effort to get as many as I can because I know game devs track those metrics so itâs an easy way to directly communicate my positive sentiment to them.
Playing through it myself just now, the intro sequence is a flashback that sets up some of the narrative elements and shows a bit of the gap weâve missed between Interlude and TAY.
ăȘăăŁăąç·š thoughts
That introâŠgoddamâŠthey really out to make our girl suffer. lol It definitely got me hyped up to get out there and kick some ass though. I was a bit nervous when I entered the cave because I remembered the damaging tiles in IV but Iâm glad they showed us mercy since we donât have anyone with Levitate yet. I also forgot all about the moon phases until I decided to rest to regain some MP and immediately nerfed my only combat option. Oops. lol
I could not remember where the Sealed Cave was for the life of me. lol I swear I went to every other location in the Underworld before I finally found it. The weapon crafting is interesting. Itâs too shallow to call a âcrafting systemâ but trading in old gear and materials for new gear is nice. Just stepping up from a knife to a mythril knife is a huge upgrade. Itâs another small addition to the game that doesnât change much but keeps things fresh.
Decided to poke around in the Sylph Cave before tackling the Sealed Cave for some levels and in the hopes of recovering Sylph as a summon. Unfortunately, Sylph was also turned to stone and examining them showed that they were still thinking of Yang all these years later. Broâs got that himbo rizz or something. Iâm glad I took the time to do some grinding though because the Sealed Cave is definitely a step up in difficulty. I wonder if they decided to lower the number of door enemies because of how easy it was to boost your level off them in the original game. Though Iâm glad there arenât so many because I canât kill them before their instant death attack gets off and not having a White Mage in the party makes it way more annoying. lol I decided I was going to stop fighting them partway through since I was running low on Phoenix Down and really didnât want to leave to restock but as luck would have it, I never encountered another one. lol
The bosses were pretty hard this time around. The turtle killed me once. The gimmick is easy but the text went by too fast for me to read it the first time. Titan also killed me because he has so much HP that I ran out of potions. I tracked his HP the second time. I did like 12,000-13,000 damage before I triggered the event and ended the fight. It was such a simple, uninteresting fight that I have no idea why they decided to drag it out so long.
Iâm still having fun with the game overall. Doing the Sealed Cave for the 3rd time after doing it again in Interlude was a drag but the story is interesting even if it hits a lot of the same beats as the original. I suppose thatâs where the âbad fanficâ accusations come from. We still got a long way to go so weâll see if I continue feeling this good about it.
ăȘăăŁăąç·š story
Here we see Rydia in a salacious new outfit along with Luka, dwarven princess. Luka didnât play much of a role in IV other than owning the dolls we fought while failing to protect the Underworld crystals and giving us the key to the Sealed Cave so we could fail to protect another crystal. She becomes a party member in TAY along with her dolls.
The chapter opens with a handful of scenes. The first shows some villagers returning to Mist and praying before a gravestone, possibly Rydiaâs mother who died in defense of Mist when Cecil and Kain inadvertently destroyed it in IV. Rydia returns to the village as well and Gilbert arrives saying that he wants to help with the reconstruction. The scene shifts briefly to Eblan where Edge states that heâs been selling off the national treasures to support reconstruction efforts before taking off to parts unknown. We return to Mist to see Gilbert telling Rydia the Fabul has been sending supplies to Mist as well to aid in reconstruction. Then we switch to Baron and see Cid pacing back and forth. Cecil tells him to calm down and he yells at Cecil for being too calm. Rydia bursts in asking if the baby has been born yet. Moments later, we hear a babyâs cry and everyone rushes upstairs to see Rosa lying with the newly born Ceodore.
We return to Mist years later to see some kids looking for Rydia. A man tells the children that she just left to visit her âother hometownâ and we see her in the Land of Summons. We see the same scene from Interlude but a bit expanded as she visits Leviathan and Asura. Asura tells her she doesnât live here anymore and she should go back to the surface world. Leviathan argues that Rydia is basically their daughter and she should be allowed to visit from time to time at least before suddenly changing his tone and telling her to get out. He forcibly warps her away before an unknown girl arrives and demands their power. She says Bahamut is already under her control and turns the summons into stone. We get the chapter title card and Rydia wakes up at the entrance to the Land of Summons to find all of the other inhabitants have also be turned to stone.
Examining the statues reveals their thoughts and most of them are concerned for Rydiaâs safety. Returning to the royal chamber, Rydia sees what befell Leviathan and Asura and realizes they sent her away for her own safety. We flashback to the destruction of Mist in IV as Rydia relives her trauma and loses another hometown. She vows not to lose anything else and sets off on her quest for answers. In our first random battle, Rydia attempts to summon but realizes none of the summons are answering her call. She vows to save everyone and presses on.
We emerge to from the cave to find that Luka, who had been our ride with the Falcon, is nowhere to be seen. We get ambushed by a monster but then Luka rides in to our rescue and blasts it out of the air with cannons before landing and picking us up. Luka says she had been working on the Falconâs engine and took it for a test flight, revealing that sheâs become an engineer under the tutelage of Cid. Rydia asks if the crystals are okay and explains what happened below. Luka says she thought something was happening because she also noticed the number of monsters increasing lately and did some scouting during her test flight. The conversation is interrupted when an airship belonging to the Red Wings bombs the Dwarf Castle.
Rushing to the castle, we learn a single girl stormed the castle and stole the crystal. A mysterious girl who used the same summoning techniques as Rydia. Realizing that something must have happened to Cecil and that events of the past are unfolding once again, we decide to head for the Sealed Cave to see if we can finally successfully protect a crystal. The seal is still intact when we get there but Luka says if the Red Wings gathered all their strength and attacked, they would be able to break the seal. So the plan is the same as last time: grab it before they do then meet up with our allies on the surface. We snatch the crystal and, unsurprisingly, get jumped by the Demon Wall. We beat it and move on.
At the entrance, Rydia gets a flashback of Kainâs betrayal the last time we were here and then the mystery girl arrives to take the crystal. George Lucas would be very proud. We get beat down and the girl says that with that, all 4 dark crystals have returned to her hand. She leaves and we decide we gotta get to the overworld to fail to protect those crystals too. After we surface, we decide to circle around Baronâs rear to infiltrate. As weâre flying, we see a black chocobo carry Palom and and unknown girl whoâs not Porom. Luka gets mad since Palom has a big mouth and is always chatting up girls, including her.
Suddenly Lukaâs dolls attack. The girl beat them down so hard, they malfunction. While weâre distracted defending ourselves, the Red Wings sneak up and shoot us down. After crash landing, Lukaâs depressed and isnât sure she can repair the airship or the dolls. Rydia cheers her up with Cidâs classic âWho the hell do you think I am?!â quote and the two decide to search for materials. Here we get what I believe is another new dungeon. Itâs another cave but I donât remember it from IV. The walls are sparkly with minerals. At the end of the dungeon is a treasure chest with a turtle boss in it. FFII will never leave us. Beating the boss gets us the materials we needed so we bounce and get to work. Luka quickly realizes what we have isnât enough so she decides to use parts from the dolls, mementos of her mother, to finish the job.
Suddenly an earthquake hits. Titan is rampaging and the nearby town is in danger. He wonât listen to reason so we decided to attack. He shrugs off the assault and makes to seal the hole leading to the Underworld. We renew our attacks until he finally turns to face us. After a needlessly long fight, weâre saved by yet another mystery man. He tells us to head to Babil Tower which has started glowing once more. He seems to know what happened there in the past but doesnât elaborate and the chapter ends there.
@Akashelia The mysterious girl looks so different in the PSP version that I thought that last picture you posted was of Rydiaâs mom. lol Now I know why Cecil thought it was Rydia in Interlude.
Falling behind my own club. 
Simias-sempai would be so disappointed.
ăȘăăŁăąç·š
Loved that Luca is a playable character. Hated pretty much everything else about this section.
This party was really frustrating to play. Lucaâs creepy dollsâ only useful moves being RNG was so annoying - they never did what I needed. The Black Mage one was always whiffing status effects instead of doing any damage and the White Mage kept casting Raise while everyone was alive. Rydia was constantly running out of mana until the last hour when she finally learned Aspir. Luca was 10/10 no notes.
The dwarfs in Tomera seemed to be saying I needed to do Sylph Cave first so thatâs what I did. It was probably worth it for the exp since Sealed Cave was so brutal, but there werenât really any items worth getting there. Sealed Cave still sucks. Did not enjoy the threepeat. The whole time that ăăžă§ăł (how are we romanizing this? Dijon?) was locked as we had to go back up I was thinking about Golbez stealing our crystals with the power of plot, and then they actually just did that again. 
I honestly canât remember if the mine dungeon was even in the main game, but I guess thatâs better than the other two dungeons which were way too familiar. I was pretty checked out and just trying to speedrun, ignoring a lot of branches, which may actually be the better way to play. This episodic structure makes it really hard to care about optimizing your characters, which is supposed to be pretty key to an RPG.
The turtle in the chest was a pretty funny way to end it, at least. Maybe it was an intentional FF2 callback? I made a save state at the start of the fight which I was grateful for. I died twice before accepting that I just needed to play at the bossâs speed and not try to cram extra turns in. Poor Luca was mostly a hi potion bot for this and Titan.
The new character at the end feels very similar to the mystery man from Ceodoreâs tale. I feel like by the time we see him again Iâll have forgotten about him. Gonna take a shot in the dark and say itâs Golbez. Probably not, but itâll be crazy if Iâm right.
I finished this story in 4:12.
as a French person, thatâs hilarious.
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I had a completely different experience with the dolls lol. I upgraded Calcaâs weapon and just had him ăăăă for decent damage. Brina almost exclusively healed when I used her ăăłăč. I was surprised to learn it did other things when she used Protect. lol She even got off some pretty high level heals so it made things easy. Sucks that itâs basically completely RNG dependent. I must have taken all your good luck since you were behind. lol
I thought the game was pretty generous with Ethers in that section so Rydiaâs MP wasnât too much of an issue for me.
I think in later chapters you can load your saves from previous chapters so there is a point to leveling up more but the earlier chapters also have level caps so you canât get too overpowered. I havenât been doing them but each chapter also has an extra dungeon after you clear it. If I was waiting for new chapters to release, Iâd probably do them but being able to just move on immediately diminishes their value in my eyes. Even though I died a couple times this chapter, more levels wasnât what made the difference so itâs not like I need the extra grinding.
Per the FF wiki: âWarp (ăăžă§ăł, Dejon?), also known as Banish, Dezone, ZAP!, X-Zone, Degen, or Returnâ so take your pick. lol
Oh really? I had no idea. Do you just reload your save after the chapter is over? How do you find those extra dungeons?
Yeah, reload your save and talk to Namingway, the red rabbit from the moon in IV. He pops up in different locations for each chapter and explains them to you the first time you talk to him in Ceodoreâs chapter. After that, he starts granting access after clearing the chapters.
Okay, interesting thanks, maybe Iâll give it a try!
Dolls & Ethers
I may have made a tactical error because I moved Calca to the back row after he got two-shot in my first battle with him and never reconsidered that decision. Brina definitely did use her weak (~40hp) group heal at least 50% of the time, so she wasnât useless, but she did a lot of other random stuff too. She actually has an AOE haste which would be insane if it were at all controllable.
I saved about half of my Ethers in Sealed Cave for later, then it turned out they were completely unnecessary in the mine because it had a bunch of random recovery jars and Rydia learned Aspir. In hindsight she spent a lot of turns whipping enemies when she didnât really need to.
Iâm definitely not bothering with those bonus dungeons, lol. Maybe if there were a month of downtime between chapters like when it released, but not now when Iâve got tons of other games to play.
Version differences (spoilers through the end of ăȘăăŁăąç·š)
So Iâm learning some funny things about this chapter now⊠The final dungeon Agart Mine works differently in 2D and 3D. In the 2D version, there are two Macguffins to collect, and if you only get one of the two, Luca scraps Calca and Brina for parts so that theyâre never useable again. And youâll never guess what I didâŠ
So, uh⊠Good riddance!
There are some other version differences listed as well (possible spoilers, but it seems to just be location and boss names). Most relevant to what weâve been talking about, the Challenge Dungeons given by Namingway are completely gone in the 3D version! They were apparently replaced by a different postgame dungeon.
Another big change is that Bands donât need to be discovered by inputting the right commands in 3D. That seems like a nice QoL change⊠Iâve just been using the wiki to find the commands to input. 
Yeah, they made the baffling decision of having the dolls start at level 1 for some reason. By the time I got out of the Slyph Cave, they were fairly sturdy and he remained a frontline fighter for me. I can see why youâd make that choice though.
Basically my thoughts on the bonus dungeons. Although, I did fail to beat the super boss in my last playthrough so maybe Iâll do them for some extra levels/gear and try again. lol
Today I learned. lol I got the same scene in my other playthrough as well, even though I thought I was being pretty thorough this time around. Not sure what the success scene looks like but this failure scene was pretty emotionally impactful so I like it. Thereâs a similar item collection sequence in FFVI where fans argue that failing is the better result narratively but Iâm sure weâll have plenty discussion about it when we get to that game.
Sorry, @Akashelia I guess I accidentally lied to you. lol Iâm glad that there arenât too many changes so I donât have to add it to my list of alternate versions to play and then post extensive write ups on. Iâm already near the end of another FFII playthrough so I can play Soul of Rebirth and Iâm planning on playing both III 3D and IV 3D after that. lol
Dolls
It was kind of muted for me because it felt like we just kept mourning them over and over. First they got bodied by the Mysterious Girl, so Luca mourned them. Then they turned evil on the Airship and got bodied by us, so Luca mourned them. Then we defiled their corpses and mourned them a third time!
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Haha that is very true. What made it different for me personally this time is a small detail that wasnât given a lot of attention: the dolls were left to Luka by her mother who I think, if I remember IV correctly, was mentioned to have been killed some time ago. The dolls, along with the necklace used to open the Sealed Cave, were the only mementos she had left. So the fact that Luka was willing to not only sacrifice them, but tear them apart with her own hands, was what made it work for me. I do agree that it would have been even more impactful without the other two instances of them getting beaten down happening so quickly in succession, though.
Scripted boss fight
Itâs really just the little fight on the airship that made it cross the line into comedy for me. Itâs over so quickly that it didnât even make the wikiâs plot summary of the chapter. I guess maybe it was just so that it didnât feel like a contrivance when the airship crashed? Like Luca should be a good enough pilot that the only way sheâd be shot down would be if she were distracted.
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I can agree with that. It did seem rather contrived that, even though we attributed the malfunction to the Mysterious Girlâs lightning attack, they waited until that particular moment to suddenly malfunction. It seems like the more elegant solution would have been for the Red Wings to outmaneuver her with a pincer attack or something. Sheâs been shown to be brash and stubborn so then it could be explained as her so focused on the enemy in front of her that she didnât see another airship had circled around her until it was too late. Then the guilt of her failure weighs on her and she feels compelled to sacrifice her motherâs dolls to make up for it. Thatâs my take, at least. lol
Somehow I had missed this post. Oops! That makes sense, cause I couldnât find anything xD
Wow, that sounds like a nightmare 
glad I donât have that one!
Yeah I ended up not using the Bands too much in my last playthrough because of it. lol I knew that Luka and Rydia have one but I wasted a couple turns trying to figure it out. I selected Band with Rydia then had to choose Luka as her partner. I had the option of including the dolls but I just chose not to. Then I had to choose which command specifically Luka would use. I chose her throw command, forget the term in the Japanese version, but since that wasnât compatible, they both just did nothing. Next turn, I had Luka initiate and chose Rydiaâs Black Magic command and that unlocked it. After that, it appears as menu option and you can just use it whenever. Itâs an interesting system but the ambiguity of it kind of makes it a pain. I used that particular Band a lot during the end of chapter boss fight but it only did about 100-200 more damage than the girls acting separately so Iâm sure I could have easily won without it, making all the trouble of experimenting not really worth it. Maybe there are stronger ones out there but I donât feel particularly compelled to seek them out.
Interesting. I was thinking that it was a system that made a lot of sense. In my head I call it âbondâ rather than âbandâ; because when you get a new party, it takes 5-6 fights of fighting together (bonding) before the band becomes active. Then as you keep fighting together (bonding), the band levels up. At first I thought you needed to use it to level it up, but actually fighting together is enough (doesnât count if someone is dead for example).
At least thatâs how it is in my version!
Interesting. If I recall correctly, they were called Bands when I played it in English. I assume because characters âband togetherâ to execute the techniques. I think theyâre all immediately available if you have the requisite members but you need to do a bit of trial and error to find them. Or look up a list. lol If they level up in my version, I havenât seen it yet. I think I prefer your âbondâ interpretation over the system that I have. lol