Last time, we went on a little detour and fought giant monsters who miraculously fit into treasure boxes. No, I don’t know how that works.
We also discovered that the Baronian military are lovable buffoons.
Today, we’re going to go to Atelier Toroia! Super sorry for the lengthy update, but all of this stuff should be put into one entry, really.
Troian Beauty
This game is the sole reason why I tend to slip and call Troia “Toroia” instead. I’d played it so many times that it ended up sticking. If you’re Italian, you certainly know what “Troia” means and I don’t think they meant it as such (I believe it is now a bannable word in any context?). “Troia” in Greek is Troy.
I kind of like using Clerics more than Epopts. I’m not sure if it’s obvious that Troia is a play on Troy and ruled by women, but some of the uninitiated might now know that an epopt (
epoptes) in Greek would be someone who’s instructed in the ways of a secret system (or those who joined the
epoptia to learn about the mysteries of Demeter). Er. Yeah, FFII US kind of wins this round, imo… >.>
Anyway, Troia is ruled by women. Government, military, health, policies… everything is controlled by women. You’ll later see a callback to this in Final Fantasy IX’s Alexandria, where women are typically in charge, and most of the army is controlled by women (outside of Steiner’s very small contingent of knights).
When I was little, I had no idea you could do this. A friend of mine came over and was just goofing around and realized that he could go into the moat to talk to frogs. Things were so awesome and unbelievable before I started using the Internet. :lol
That one frog, though… either it was a guy who cast Toad on himself to spy on the women, or he’s one of those toads from Silvera who somehow made it here just because.
That’s what military training, multiple drills, stationing troops across the country to patrol borders, etc. are for. You
do do that, right?
They tend to get pissed when you treat them as a sex object. To be completely fair, to move better and faster, it’s better to wear less or things that make movement less restricting. It’s what you do at the gym, anyway.
They’re sisters of eight what? D:
Let’s talk to the Clerics.
Soooo… that’s why Golbez didn’t want to get the crystal by himself (and to be honest, I think he really could do it on his own but he’s just lazy). By the way, the clerics don’t seem to like using articles when describing the Dark Elf.
They also bring up something interesting that was never brought up before: the crystals affect their surrounding environments. Apparently the entire Tororian forested area used to be a desert until they had the Crystal of Earth imported there or something. Why isn’t this really the case (outside of arguably Damcyan) for other countries? It makes little sense.
Of course, Batman could just be making things up as we go along.
Also, Batman knows that we’re never going to be able to give the crystal back so he’s
lying to them. Paladins aren’t supposed to lie!
Drat. And what do they mean they don’t have a need for jails anymore? Whatever.
Must be a crazy dude.
Really?
Really? We’re really doing this right now? You kidding me?
Hey, let’s review what happened.
- We got attacked by Leviatan and got shipwrecked. I presume that the sailors and their captain are dead and/or eaten.
- Clair got swallowed and digested by Leviatan. She’s probably dead. Or is living in its stomach.
- Donnie jumped in and somehow got washed ashore in Baron, and was perfectly fine… so much so that he got hired into Baron’s army of goons.
- Batman had to protect Bolton from getting hurt, was washed onto a beach and was able to
start dreaming up until his death wake up from his weird Earthbound dream and walked perfectly fine.
- Bolton just tripped and fell down and he’s bedridden, but somehow was washed aaaaaaalllll the way to Toroia for no reason.
Game, you’re not making much sense here.
Nothing about this makes sense.
What the
fuck, Batman? Desperate much?
Yeah Bolton! Lie in bed, Bolton! They don’t need more dead weights in their party! That’s my job! Am I loud enough for ya?!
(I think Abe’s hearing is about to go. We should buy him a hearing horn.)
Yeah, really. Like, there were so many arrows going into her body. I couldn’t do anything to stop it. Every time I hid behind her, she kept grunting because she knew she was saving me by trying to be a Hedgehog-esque pincushion.
(Bolton doesn’t know what tact is.)
She’s dead. You let another woman die for you, Bolton.
Blah blah blah here let me introduce myself lalalalala my enterprise does more work than you will ever do you useless kid
This game.
Bolton asks about Beer, and Batman recites his damn sob story yet again about how he can’t find any booze in any country that was as good as the beer that Golbez is holding hostage. He notes that the Dark Elf has the Crystal of Earth which he needs to exchange to get his beer back.
Music stops, btw. Kinda cryptic.
It’s just as useless as you are, isn’t it?
As a female in the sciences, this makes me
Awright, let’s go to town.
I guess in Batman’s mind, Bolton is alive so we have to go resurrect the Bolton gif.
Genso Suikoden Tierkreis – Home of the Porpos
Toroia sometimes feels like it has one of the bigger town maps in the game. Probably isn’t true, but it’s one of the better towns in the game.
The town conveniently sells non-metallic gear but it’s really crappy. We have better stuff, so we’re going to use that rather than waste money here.
Let’s go pay for a lap dance.
I love how before you talk to the guy who says the show’s about to start, you notice that there’s just this one old dude there waiting for the show to start. Oh my. Either the dancers aren’t good at their job, or barely anyone except for rich guys like us can afford the pass.
I love how Batman just takes a seat in almost the very front. That’s verging on the ‘no touching’ area.
Ginuwine - Pony
…ok, you’ll get
Sonic Generations – Casino Night Zone if you find this too
scandalous.
Oh no! Batman, what if Beer sees these pictures? D:
They’re treating him like a king.
I’m wondering why he’s animating the sighing/sad/looking down/sleeping sprite, though. You’d think he’d be enjoying this. I imagine that he’s quite the womanizer.
Oh, I didn’t know Hideo Kojima was part of the audience.
Batman, you pervo.
I don’t get it.
…Oh, I’m in a brothel, aren’t I? The first guy’s enjoying himself, and the other guy is being cheated on, or something.
Wait, they censored “pray/prayer”, that one dancer in Baron who was part of a rebel group, and probably some other stuff, but they left this in? LOL
Please join my band of brothers. We need you. <3
Bawwww… :lol
Let’s hope she can’t cast Toad, or can’t turn her husband into an oglop.
When I was little, I always thought she was dead.
There’s also a Chocobo Farm here which specializes in Black Chocobos that cannot fly. They’re a new breed of Chocobo here, and I bet we’re supposed to use them soon knowing this game.
Alright, let’s figure out what we’re going to equip.
I could give Batman a bow and arrows but it isn’t worth it. It’s a waste when Beer isn’t handling them. We’re going to equip everyone with a Karate to make them become as powerful as a Karate except Abe because he doesn’t deserve it.
We’re going to equip everyone with RubyRings because it protects against Piggy, something that the boss casts. Yeah, they don’t tell you that in this game.
Chocobo Village has regular chocobos, white chocobos, a way to call the Fat Chocobo, and black chocobos. We need to get a black chocobo because we cannot use the airship to land on the island with the metallic cave. That Enterprise isn’t the answer to everything, it seems. Way to go Captain Haddock.
Samba de Chocobo
Yeah, whatever. I believe this was the first time the “____ de Chocobo” format was used for Chocobo themes.
Tales of Symphonia – Underground Passage
You can’t do enough shit with your magic, Abe. You suck.
I will be honest, this is one of my favourite sound effects in the game. Truthfully, a lot of sound effects in this game are pretty awesome, like Virus, Fire-3, Lit-3, the Metallic Cavern SFX, etc. Chrono Trigger is also one of my favourite games on the SNES with respect to SFX.
I hate this dungeon. I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m not alone in that regard. You can’t use all of your high-powered equipment, you’re stuck with the shittiest mage in the world, enemies hit harder with your equipped gear, you’re stuck with the shittiest mage in the world, you have to screw around with your attack formation, you’re stuck with the shittiest mage in the world, the party dynamic you have to use for this cave is boring, and you’re stuck with the shittiest mage in the world.
Did I mention that Abe is the shittiest mage in the world?
It’s almost like you were supposed to get a new party member in Toroia but you didn’t.
Grandia II – Fight!! Version 1
The funny thing about the battles in this dungeon is that Batman, the guy who cleaned things up for you before, is rendered useless as a support character. Also, Batman sucks at healing party members. He is terrible. He’s worse than Abe and that says something. So, stick a Cure cane on him, and have him cover people during battle. He’ll be fine.
Abe, Donnie, and Hadock are your primary damage dealers in this dungeon. Also, you have to be kind of frugal with your magic. The problem with Abe is that his magic stats are kind of bad, he’s weak, and he doesn’t have a lot of MP. Be conservative about it because Abe is terrible.
I also like that the backgrounds for the caves finally changed. Finally. It’s like we were fighting in the Watery Pass for almost the entire game up to this point.
Onto the enemies…
Pythons can cast Entangle to paralyze you… if you’re not already paralyzed if you decided to keep metallic equipment on. Other than that, Pythons are easy to deal with if you have Donnie equipped with the proper claws.
Panthers can be annoying if they like to use Bluster. We’ve gone into this already. They can probably get done in one hit by Donnie’s fists. Ogres are easy to get rid of. I personally think you should use Stone on them, tbh. CaveNagas are meh. They’ll counter with slow, but you can take them down easy.
Also, I’ve just noticed that the cave battle background finally changed.
This looks unsettling. Anyway, the dungeon is a different colour this time! We’re making progress. :O
Cure 3s, I feel, are a waste of space in your bag. You can’t buy them, you wouldn’t want to use them or sell them, but I think they’ll only be useful if you used Bolton’s Salve command to spread the healing power throughout the party.
We also get the Charm Claw for Donnie. This opens up another category of Claws to use in this game. First we had the elementally-based ones, and now we have the status effect ones. This one obviously inflicts confuse or charm on the enemy, which is very useful for this dungeon.
SaGa Frontier II - Feldschlacht I
More enemies!
The first set pictured is a rather rare enemy (which I surprisingly encountered twice in Cave Magnes) called the Mage… or Mindflayer. They can paralyze characters. They have a very rare drop, but I don’t feel like grinding for those at the moment. What’s the point of it anyway?
As for the second, hey you know what enemy is super-annoying in this game? Zubats! It’s like I’m climbing Mt. Moon here! Their trademark attack, Vampire, isn’t a bad attack because it only takes off 15 HP and inflicts Sap on a character. But they use it
so damn much. The animation for it is slow, and they’re quick so they use it a lot in a battle. You’re stuck waiting to watch those damn animations before you can even execute an attack. It’s stupid!
Damn Zubats!
VampGirls aren’t hard to take care of. They’re weak against Fire.
This doesn’t look intimidating at all.
I SHOULD PROBABLY TALK IN ALL CAPS IN THIS ENTRY BUT I SHOULDN’T.
I HATE HOW THE DS VERSION EXCLUDES HOW WEIRD THE DARK ELF SPEAKS. THE TRANSLATORS DID NOT KNOW HOW TO HAVE FUN.
Fun fact: If you come here without talking to Bolton, the Dark Elf will hit your characters one-by-one for 9999 damage each.
By the way, he certainly does look like Astos from the first Final Fantasy.
Holy shit, talk about overkill! Why would you do that? :lol
Golbez figured he could kill two birds with one stone, didn’t he? I bet he could kill the Dark Elf no problem.
Run!
Not pictured: Bolton falling on his face yet again. Batman’s grammar in terms of tense is wrong. I think it’s hilarious that Bolton walking slowly to his harp that’s probably 5 steps away is super-difficult for the fragile little princess.
Here’s an idea: why didn’t they put him back in bed, and bring his harp to him? This makes no sense. His harp is obviously portable if he can bring it along with him on his journey (ok, is it a lute or a harp? A lute would make more sense.). No one makes good decisions in this game at all.
Melody of Lute
I dunno, man… that harp sounds pretty decent. Nasty music would be stuff like
this. Seriously, dude.
His magic barrier begins to mode 7 out, and I think this is one of the best SFX in the game. It kind of reminds me of old
dial-up sounds. It’s like the Twinharp is telling the Dark Elf to get off the damn phone!
His voice should not be able to carry through the harps like that. It’s too bad they couldn’t close his arc off in a better, more hands-on/direct way, though. Let’s change our gear.
We are keeping the RubyRings equipped because this boss casts Pig on characters.
GRRR-BAAAAH.
There are several ways to defeat the Dark Elf.
Method 1: The Second-Form Glitch
Now I was capturing this, but then I ended up getting kind of bored because it was taking a long time. I realized how futile it was, too, because I only have one mage in my party. I ended up ditching everything I ended up capturing. Sorry.
What is the Second-Form Glitch? Well, some bosses, like the Dark Elf or the Mom Bomb will go into a second form after a counter reaches zero. The counter goes down every time you directly attack it. What you do is cast reflect on one of your party members and bounce spells off of it to take down the HP so it doesn’t reach its second form. Theoretically you can have an easier time with the Dark Elf if you keep it up. But because Abe is a horrible mage and has the dual role of Black Mage and White Mage with a shitty pool of MP, we cannot do this in an efficient manner. Do not directly attack it.
I don’t want to waste Ethers on him either. If you want to exploit the glitch, go right ahead. Just know that the boss has 65000 HP. You’ll be here for a while. I will demonstrate this glitch towards the end of the game.
The glitch was fixed in the NA version of the GBA version.
Method 2: LOL, Weak
The Price is Right Losing Horn
Keep attacking the Dark Elf’s first form until it goes into the second form. Select Weak from Abe’s spell menu, use it, and then attack physically.
Done before the Dark Elf managed to change his name.
This is not possible in the DS version.
Method 3: Legit
Eternal Sonata – A Flicker Which Divides Light and Darkness
Ok, now we get into the meat of the battle. We have the freedom to use whatever equipment we want now, so use it to your advantage.
It’s a good thing we’re wearing RubyRings still because he’ll use Whisper to cast Piggy on us, and that’ll just set us back a little bit. Just nail the first form with physicals; don’t waste your MP yet, and eventually, it’ll shift to its second form. You could cast reflect and have his spells bounce off to hit him, but I find it tedious.
The second form is slightly stronger than the first form. It’ll attack physically, and it’ll use D.Breath in order to inflict fire elemental attacks on the party. It’s also weak against Holy, so use Batman’s Legend sword to your advantage. I imagine that if Abe had White, it would break this battle.
This form also has 4000-ish HP, meaning that the game wants you to beat this battle rather than exploit the second form glitch.
Is that why Golbez wants the crystals? To grant him everlasting life?
Also, I hope we never have to see that Dark Elf ever again in the history of Final Fantasy IV! LOL.
It’s selectable and everything.
Also, fuck walking out of the cave; we’re going to Exit outta here like normal people do.
Next Time: The next dungeon puts me to sleep, but the Sisterhood of Travelling Winds tries to spice it up.
