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Soul of Rebirth Part One Let's do this.  We begin right as Minwu died in the main game.     I think I like him more than Gordon already.   Black Knight Rank 6, HP 1140, Attack Power 30, Attacks 3, Accuracy 80%, Defense 20, Evasion 1-70%, Magic Defense 5-40% And we are thrown right into it.  Oh crap. Minwu's in the front row. He has no business in the front row. All I can hope to do is get a blink up on him and hope that keeps him alive.  This is going great.  Fortunately, our mysterious buddy who is totally Scott and I'm going to stop pretending is quite a fair bit better than his brother.  For one, he comes with a decent assortment of spells. If nothing else, he'll win this fight, since these guys don't do too much damage to him and he's got level 4 cure. It takes a while, though, especially since his spells and his attack do roughly the same amount of damage, and that damage isn't great. Now he could revive Minwu, but every time I attempted it Minwu refused to stay alive. So Scott has to limp across the finish line alone.  I think his MP gives you a decent idea of how long that took. Scott gains all the stats from this fight.  Scott and Minwu confirm that they are, in fact, dead.  Yes it was.   The afterlife, I suppose. : And Hell, at that, judging by the scenery. I did take the lives of many foes while fighting the empire... Minwu recognizes a lazy flipped recolor of the final dungeon when he sees it. : The passage to Hell?: I don't know. Let's find out. And we begin Soul of Rebirth.  Now that we can use Minwu, let's talk about him. When you get him in the main game, Minwu is fantastically overpowered and he serves as your baby sitter. For right now, he has one specific but very important task: blink. His level 5, soon to be level 6 blink is going to be cast at the start of every battle. That's going to instrumental in keeping Scott alive, who in turn is going to be keeping Minwu alive. Obviously, Minwu's scooting to the back row and staying there.  Minwu default equipment is very barebones. The copper cuirass goes off, and that's all the adjustments I make there. Unfortunately, without a bow Minwu cannot attack. He's not going to be doing much for offense. However, Minwu doesn't have to start at factory default here. One of the interesting things about Soul of Rebirth is that these characters come in with whatever they had in the game before they died. Depending on how you used these characters and what they had equipped when they left the party, you can make Soul of Rebirth a bit easier. Unfortunately, Minwu being an early game character means there's only so much you can do. If you managed to trek your way to Mysidia before he left, you could have him bring some Thief Gloves and a Holy spell or something. Alternatively, you can also have your characters come in naked if you didn't realize how Soul of Rebirth worked. That's fun.   Scott is, however, the one exception. He will always start with the same stats, same spells, and the same equipment. He's a lot like Gordon, in that he's very balanced, but unlike Gordon he starts with some drat weapon levels and spells. Unfortunately his huge, huge problem is that he only has a single evasion level. And he is going to be our tank, since Minwu sure as hell can't do it. At least his evasion percent is good, considering he's covered in mythril armor. Sadly, I can't take that off, since without any defense Scott will die in an instant.  As for saving, I can't do old school saving rules, since there is no world map in Soul of Rebirth. So the rule for this is: one save at the beginning of every floor. That sounds generous, doesn't it?  Bigfoot Rank 1, HP 150, Attack Power 35, Attacks 8, Accuracy 80%, Defense 5, Evasion 1-30%, Magic Defense 4-80% Soul of Rebirth hates you.  Rather stupidly I didn't blink Scott.  If Scott dies, I've lost. I did save after that black knight fight, so at least I don't have to repeat that.  The game does show you one mercy, however.  You start with ten ethers and five phoenix downs. You probably won't use all those ethers, but if you wanna survive you have to dip into the stock.  Gigas Worm Rank 4, HP 300, Attack Power 30, Attacks 8, Accuracy 90%, Defense 10, Evasion 1-75%, Magic Defense 5-70% Sometimes, if you apply blink, you'll still die. Well, I guess that was my fault for not fully healing Scott after a battle.  Glasya Labolas Rank 5, HP 700, Attack Power 60, Attacks 10(!), Accuracy 80%, Defense 15, Evasion 1-70%, Magic Defense 4-50% And don't bother running, it never works. If running success works off of Minwu's evasion percent, that would explain why I never managed to run once.  You get ambushed?  You're dead.  No you can't leave Minwu stop trying.  I mentioned that this was just a flipped recolor of the final dungeon, and I wasn't kidding. All they did was flip the layout, put new monsters in, replaced the treasure, and called it a day. While the treasure is different, it's all in the same spots. If you remember the layout of the jade passage, this makes your life a lot easier. Since the floors are flipped it'll mess you up a bit, but it's really not that hard to remember where things are. Alternatively, just get a map. Honestly, I would say maybe it wouldn't even be worth it to go out of your way for the treasure. I did anyway, but let's just say you wanna get to the end as soon as you can.  Gil Snapper Rank 5, HP 200, Attack Power 40, Attacks 9, Accuracy 75%, Defense 15, Evasion 0, Magic Defense 1-50% Some of the enemies here are really nasty, but they did throw in some gimmes. Gil snappers usually come alone, and die to a single Blizzard from Scott.  Soul Eater Rank 3, HP 40, Attack Power 15, Attacks 3, Accuracy 95%, Defense 3, Evasion 0, Magic Defense 1-50%  Sea Serpent Rank 2, HP 100, MP 100, Attack Power 10, Attacks 5, Accuracy 80%, Defense 10, Evasion 1-70%, Magic Defense 4-40%  Death Horn Rank 3, HP 400, Attack Power 50, Attacks 4, Accuracy 85%, Defense 4, Evasion 1-35%, Magic Defense 6-30% And here are some more enemies. You'll notice they're all palette swaps, but did you expect anything different? Soul Eater are as weak as they look, Sea Serpents can do a tsunami attack but have low HP and come alone (for now), and Death Horn can be pretty nasty but for this dungeon are middle of the road. Actually, while I didn't realize it at the time, a lot of enemies here are weak to fire. Scott's level 4 fire probably could have taken some of these enemies out quickly. This version has an in-game bestiary, so this one's my fault. This wouldn't have prevented all the bullshit deaths, mind you. Just some.  I've never been so happy to see a stairs in a video game.  Saaaaaaaaaaaaaveeeee.  Hallefuckinglujah. Now, Scott still needs blink, but maybe he'll die slightly less.  And yes, it's such a lazy recolor that all of the secret passages are still in the same spot.  The idea is nice, but... no. I like Scott being able to hit things.  And then some Gigas Worms killed Scott before I could even put up a blink. Yay!  Oh, hey, he looks familiar...  Kill him.  Zombie Borghen Rank 7, HP 2500, MP 370, Attack Power 30, Attacks 3, Accuracy 95%, Defense 5, Evasion 1-60%, Magic Defense 10-100% So this Zombie Borghen is slightly different than the one in the main game. He's got a decent amount of HP, but no flare (thankfully) or anything, really. It takes a while, but he's not difficult.  But he does have paralysis touch, and this meant that Josef didn't do anything in this battle. This is going to be theme for him, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, a few fire spells and we won.  Again, they all establish they are, in fact, dead.  And that there's a common theme in their deaths. Minwu also posits that there might be a reason why they're dead/undead, but no idea what that is. Hm. Anyway, now we've got Josef.   Yikes. Unlike Minwu, Josef wasn't overpowered when we got him. All he has going for him is level 2 fists, and that's pathetic. Even if you do try to train him up, you only have him for a single dungeon. Maybe some of you had different experiences, but it is very, very hard to make Josef useful.  At least he's near some pretty useful armor. I guess you can give it to Josef to help his lagging eva- yeah, no. Scott gets it.  Death Knight Rank 2, HP 150, MP 30, Attack Power 30, Attacks 10, Accuracy 80%, Defense 20, Evasion 1-80%, Magic Defense 4-60% Frankly, for the moment I'm just going to let him die and stay dead (well, dead-er.) Josef simply has nothing to offer, and it would take more resources to keep him alive than I'd care to use.  But while Josef is a bust, I did get a very interesting drop. Unfortunately, Scott only has level 2 axe skill, which would normally make it pointless to switch, but...  Holy moly. His attack will be kind of hampered for a few battles, but he'll gain levels quickly enough for that to be a minor problem.  Onto the third floor! We're making good progress here!  Flan Princess Rank 5, HP 85, Attack Power 10, Attacks 4, Accuracy 80%, Defense 45, Evasion 0, Magic Defense 3-50% Pyrolisk Rank 4, HP 90, Attack Power 20, Attacks 4, Accuracy 70%, Defense 4, Evasion 2-50%, Magic Defense 3-50% And the enemy formations have changed up a bit. Hm, Pyrolisks. Aren't they in FF1-   OH gently caress YOU.  Same defense score as the Mythril Armor, fraction of the weight. This brings Scott to 98% evasion.  There's still a shop behind the waterfall.  And it sells the same spells, except with Holy instead of Death. I got some stuff to sell off, but that only nets me about a couple thousand gil. I buy two Berserk tomes, with one of them going to Scott. Holy would be nice to give Minwu some offensive power, but in the end that won't be necessary.  The fourth floor is pretty unexciting.  Treasure room!  It's not as good as this room is in the main game. A demon spear is a hefty upgrade to Scott's starting Mythril Sword, but it's not as good as the Poison Axe. There's also a Golden Shield, a decent upgrade from the Mythril Shield, and eye drops. Woo.  Miss Vamp Rank 3, HP 100, Attack Power 25, Attacks 6, Accuracy 85%, Defense 10, Evasion 1-75%, Magic Defense 6-30% Miss Vamps have drain touch, which you'd think I'd freak out about, but not really. Scott needs Blink to survive anything already, so what's one more example on the pile?  I have no idea why they think I'd use this. But yeah, no death on this floor. Onto the fifth floor!  Oh, and I revive Josef, stick him in the back, and give him a Berserk tome. Josef really, really just isn't going to work as a front line fighter, so I'm going to attempt to make him into some sort of half-decent mage. It's really the best I can do with him.   Oh, another E- wait, what?  So Josef met the man who took his life, and Ricard... gets a worm that inconvenienced him once?   Roundworm Rank 7, HP 2000, Attack Power 25, Attacks 4, Accuracy 95%, Defense 10, Evasion 1-10%, Magic Defense 4-50%  Some epic grudge.  Cool.  And they all just say what we already know: Ricard recaps the plot for Minwu, they continue to establish that they're all dead, and that traveling with Charlie and Co. is a recipe for death.   Unfortunately, since Ricard's at default he's not as great as he could be, but getting him is a boon anyway. His HP is on the low end, but he's a strong fighter who comes with decent equipment. That Knight Armor has to go, though. Now I would think about putting Scott in the back, but Ricard really can't carry the party himself, and I'd rather not lose Scott as a fighter. We're gonna rock two front liners. The game actually kind of expects you to have three, with Josef in the front, but noooope.  Nice! Richard gets it, and Scott gets his Giant's Gloves.  We're on the final floor. So... is Pandaemonium on the other side?   ...huh. Camel Pimp fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Nov 21, 2014 |
| ← # ? Oct 16, 2014 04:45 |
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