A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 14: To the Peak

By The Rocketeer Posted Wednesday Apr 13, 2022

Filed under: FFXII 60 comments

Once in the courtyard of the tower, the gate shuts behind us and the party is attacked by some sort of gray-brown smear on the floor. At least, that’s what it was after the battle; I didn’t get a very good look at it beforehand, and it’s existence had no bearing on anything. I do have to ask: are we not officially ‘in’ with the Occuria at this point? If Ashe and her cronies all get eaten by a giant tortoise on the way up the Pharos, what’s the Occuria’s backup plan? Do they have any other fallen heirs of the Dynast-King to half-manipulate into preventing their traitor from assuming absolute power over Ivalician affairs? Sure, they need some way to verify it’s us climbing the Pharos and not some very lucky shipwrecked Seeq, but the door to the Pharos’ interior doesn’t even open until the Dynast-King’s heir stands in front of it, so you’d think that would be a system they could rely upon.

Fran neglects to mention how she knows the age of the message. I mean, everyone should already know because all the structures on the island are clearly ancient, but maybe radiocarbon dating is yet another unadvertised feature of the viera olfactory facilities.
Fran neglects to mention how she knows the age of the message. I mean, everyone should already know because all the structures on the island are clearly ancient, but maybe radiocarbon dating is yet another unadvertised feature of the viera olfactory facilities.

Standing before the entrance, the party stops to examine a message carved into the wall. Fran says it looks very old before reading it, but it seems the last 1,100 years has done little indeed to change the written word of Ivalice, because the grammar, spelling and diction are all indistinguishable from the party’s own. That’s lucky; if I found a note written by King Arthur in 1100 AD’s Middle English, I’d be pretty well fucked.The message is actually written in English, merely with a stylized font. The words with double letters stand out easily, in particular the signature, “In Blood, Raithwall.” Check the double-L by Fran’s elbow in the image above. The Galteans make the Al Bhed look like expert cryptographers.

The note starts off, and I’m paraphrasing here, “This tower is tall.” Eureka. Then it sermonizes for a bit: “He without power, want it not; He with power, trust it not; He with sight, heed it not. Rend illusion; cut the true path.” Ashe is content to space out and pick her nose until Fran reads that it was signed by Raithwall himself. Wait, so Raithwall thought the whole, “Hey we’re the gods, we’ll give you nukes since you’re fucking aces in our book,” deal was sort of sketchy, too? And he still went on to found a four-hundred-year golden age followed by seven hundred more years of relative peace that we’re only now just shitting up? Let’s never take that into consideration, okay, Ashe? Awesome, you’re the best.

They ponder the last bit for a moment, “Rend illusion; cut the true path.” Of course, in thematic terms, it simply a tip from Raithwall to ignore all the bullshit various supernal entities are pushing around at the moment and übermensch your way to the brightest future possible, Ramza Beoulve style. In game terms, however, it simply means the tower is filled with various illusion-esque puzzles.

Hey, Rocko has a better mystery for you, Ashe: when and why did Raithwall ever come here? Raithwall's three nethicite shards long predated him; he received them from the garif, who seem to have received them directly from the Occuria. He never cut any stones from the Sun-Cryst.
Hey, Rocko has a better mystery for you, Ashe: when and why did Raithwall ever come here? Raithwall's three nethicite shards long predated him; he received them from the garif, who seem to have received them directly from the Occuria. He never cut any stones from the Sun-Cryst.

Holy shit, more proving our worth? We’re on the doorstep of the weapon the Occuria definitely want us to have, holding the tool they gave us to acquire it with, for us to accomplish tasks they deem invaluable! At what point do we stop proving our worth? Did the Dynast-King have to clear time off of his busy schedule of drinking Ordalian wine by the half-cask and having his Dynast-Beard fluffed by a team of young viera beard-fluffing maidens to attend to various tasks of regular worth-proving? Were all the various waypoints and trials left behind by Raithwall the product of constant badgering by spectral visions of his high-school sweetheart, pantomiming the Occuria’s will to him?

[Rocketeer’s Note: if an image of Raithwall drinking and having his beard fluffed does not appear here, chances are good that Shamus has stolen the budget I set aside for this and flown to Atlantic City.]

I guess we shouldn’t expect an express elevator to the top of the tower, then? And I guess we would be somehow fucked if we had tried just flying to the peak in the Strahl, right? The answer to both of these questions may shock you.

I'm guessing this entire Pharos thing is little more than a practical joke by the flight-capable Occuria.
I'm guessing this entire Pharos thing is little more than a practical joke by the flight-capable Occuria.

I’m actually going to spend some time talking about this dungeon, since it alone consists of more than just running through every room slaying monsters until you get to the boss. I mean, it’s not more by much, but still.

The ground floor— and many of the floors to follow— consists of a large, circular central chamber surround by a labyrinth complex on the perimeter. Enemies in the labyrinth are unique in that black orbs will appear upon their deaths, which are used to power various ancient doodads around the Pharos. What are these doodads for? For the highest calling known to RPG characters: opening a door. Each of the devices on this floor take only a single orb, but in addition to the tower itself, there’s a postgame area beneath the Pharos that requires scads of dark orbs to access some of the game’s best equipment, so it’s worth gathering a bunch of them up.

Once three of the devices have been given a black orb, a door in the back of the labyrinth unlocks itself. Stepping through it seems to take us somewhere different entirely… the Sandsea, in fact. Wandering around a bit, a few shapes recognizable as the large tortoise-type enemies are scattered around, dormant in their shells. Approaching most of them merely warps the party back to their starting point. One of them, however, comes to life for a boss fight.

Most of the turtle enemies have a head or face on the front of the shell. Pandemonium seems to have overslept the day they handed those out.
Most of the turtle enemies have a head or face on the front of the shell. Pandemonium seems to have overslept the day they handed those out.

Now, here’s the thing about the tower: there are threeactually five of these bosses, and each corresponds to one of the guardian deities of the Chinese/Japanese cardinal directions. This one is the black tortoise of the North, Genbu. Ironically, though Genbu is said to represent water and the Winter, this boss is seemingly earth-element, due to its weaknesses and immunities. But in both the original Japanese and its translations, this turtle is called ‘Pandemonium,’ a recurring name in Final Fantasy lore. In fact, none of the other guardian deities of the tower will be named for the mythology they are referencing.

Upon beating the great tortoise into submission, the party finds themselves in the small, rectangular room the labyrinth door actually led to. I get that you’re trying to leverage the ‘illusion theme,’ guys, but if it’s effectively just a boss fight anyway…

Raithwall pointed out in his note that the Pharos is pretty tall, and while that could have gone without saying, boy he weren’t kidding, neither. Altogether, the tower is 100 stories tall, Outer Heaven style, with the Sun-Cryst set in its dais in the penthouse.

However, most of the floors aren’t like the labyrinth on the first floor. There are a few of those scattered about, but in between each of these levels are the so-called stairway ravels, which rapidly ascend the tower. Having beaten Pandemonium, we are free to use the teleporter to the first of the stairway ravels, which actually begins on the tenth floor. The stairway ravels don’t cotton to those dark orb shenanigans, and enemies here do not drop them. Rather, these levels have their own set of tricks: “fool’s facades,” which are merely false walls that can be knocked down, usually for treasure; and illusory bridges, which are required to progress. Throughout the tower, there are enemies called Brainpans, which look like stone statues with green flames spurting out of them. Defeating these will cause sections of bridges to to appear over otherwise impassable gaps. There are also red-flamed statues called Deidars, which will counteract your progress if you slay one while building a green bridge, but will build red bridges of their own which lead to bonus treasure.

Maybe I'm not the only one having my art budget embezzled. Instead of a dragon deity, we get this gnarly goggle-eyed dorkfish.
Maybe I'm not the only one having my art budget embezzled. Instead of a dragon deity, we get this gnarly goggle-eyed dorkfish.

The stairway ravel will lead us all the way to the 49th floor, after which we pass through a door to another illusory landscape: a series of shallow terraced pools. They don’t even bother with any fakeouts this time and just spring the guardian boss after a few steps: Slyt, a large blue fish-creature, representing Seiryu, the azure dragon of the East. Slyt is obviously a water-based boss, though the mythical Seiryu was a deity of wood and the Spring. After pushing its shit in with a few Firaga spells, we once again find ourselves back in the tower, after which it’s a short walk to the 50th floor and the teleporter to the second “ascent” of the tower.

The gimmick of this labyrinth section is binding abilities; to progress, you have to pick an altar which will prevent you from using either standard attacks, magic, items, or— if you aren’t a total fucking idiot— the minimap. Although the minimap disappears in these areas if you take that option, you are still able to check your main map to figure out which of the many identical rooms you’re in, rendering the sacrifice trivial.

It may appear that you are intended to complete a short section under each of the restrictions to proceed, but this isn’t so; though each altar unlocks only the door next to it, they all lead to the same place. Regardless of which altar you choose, there’s nothing stopping you from merely running past the enemies for the short distance to the next floor.

Okay, a twelve foot tall man-tiger with an 800-pound knife is a more credible threat than the walking rock and the psoriasis carp.
Okay, a twelve foot tall man-tiger with an 800-pound knife is a more credible threat than the walking rock and the psoriasis carp.

Arriving at the 65th floor, it’s time for another boss. Passing through the door, we find ourselves whisked to a snowy mountain crevice. The battle begins immediately with Fenrir, a bipedal white tiger. This boss represents Byakko of the West, a deity of metal and Autumn. Although Fenrir seems to be a wind-based creature in-game, he still sort-of matches Byakko’s element, for once, by virtue of carrying a massive fuck-off sword. Unfortunately for him, the swirling maelstrom of overcompensation and penis envy that is our party can’t really be beaten as far as massive fuck-off weapons go, and he is quickly done in by the aforementioned.

That was the last guardian deity, by the way. Yep, of the four guardian deities, we only fight three, none of whom correspond with their inspirations beyond their appearance. Fantastic.

However, one of the game’s final hunts is for a creature called the Shadowseer, who summons these three bosses for a rematch, as well as the fourth and final guardian, Phoenix, based on the Vermilion Bird, Suzaku. Suzaku was the deity of fire, Summer, and the South, and therefore matches the in-game boss better than any of its mandatory kin. While in Chinese myth there is an earth deity called Huang Long, the yellow dragon, which represents the center, the Shadowseer is more in line with the Japanese tradition, in which the center represents the Void.

This all has to be part of an Occurian game show, like Ninja Warrior or MXC. ''Okay, one of these buttons takes the elevator to the next floor. All the other ones flip the elevator over and dump the passengers out. Can they figure it out? Watch and find out after these messages!''
This all has to be part of an Occurian game show, like Ninja Warrior or MXC. ''Okay, one of these buttons takes the elevator to the next floor. All the other ones flip the elevator over and dump the passengers out. Can they figure it out? Watch and find out after these messages!''

After Fenrir is defeated, the party may at last dispel the binding magic, which summons a “Dais of Ascendance,” better known as… wait for it… “the fucking express elevator,” which will take us to the next floor, and eventually will freely transport us between any levels of the ascent we wish to explore. It proves to be rather limited right now, since it only takes us up one level, which contains nothing but a teleporter to the next ascent.

Well, enough faffing around. With the last guardian defeated, it’s time for more stairway ravel nonsense. This time, we need to pick from different colored teleporters, one of which takes us to the next set. The game doesn’t really give you much to go on here, but if you fuck it up twice you get transported to an area with a map of the level and some pillars which tell you the answers straight out… as well as a massive swarm of undead.

Lacking anything else to say about it this time around, I’d like to relate that the entire tower is filled with inscribed pillars. Some of these, especially the earlier ones, give hints about how to progress, but some of them are just for flavor. All of them, however, drop at least a few lines to explain that humans suck and are lame, and the Undying— the Occuria, that is— rock and are cool.

Maybe the Pharos was actually slipped into the Occurian budget a few thousand years ago as a good, honest porkbarrel jobs program by whichever Occurian Senator represents the Naldoan Sea. ''We can't afford NOT to protect our strategic nethicite assets!''
Maybe the Pharos was actually slipped into the Occurian budget a few thousand years ago as a good, honest porkbarrel jobs program by whichever Occurian Senator represents the Naldoan Sea. ''We can't afford NOT to protect our strategic nethicite assets!''

Each and every one of these inscriptions takes time to explain how humans are foolish, violent, chaotic, and ephemeral, while the Undying are wise, everlasting, and set the world into a necessary order. A likely story, given who wrote it, but there are a few passages of note scattered among the posturing. It seems the Occuria once took a far more active approach in governing the world’s affairs, controlling the passing of events with an indomitable hand. But eons ago, they relented, choosing instead to grant human scions the responsibility of altering the world’s course only once every few ages, when necessary. The inscriptions go on to say that this changed at the will of “Our King.” So it would seem that the Undying themselves have some sort of hierarchy we aren’t privy to, and at the very least there is one among them to whom they all bow.

Don’t bother remembering all this; the game sure as hell won’t.

After the final teleporter, we reach another elevator which brings us up to the 90th floor, which has a large platform in the center of the circular wellspring rather than leaving it open like all the others. It should be noted that the waterfall curtain plainly visible in all these screenshots of the Pharos interior seems to be rising, not falling. Trying to admire that from within here will get you ganked, though; from outside the circle leaps a new challenger: Hashmal, the Bringer of Order!

As ever seems to be the case, if you're looking at this boss thinking, ''I have no fucking clue what I'm supposed to be looking at,'' congratulations! That's the genuine Final Fantasy XII experience. You're welcome.
As ever seems to be the case, if you're looking at this boss thinking, ''I have no fucking clue what I'm supposed to be looking at,'' congratulations! That's the genuine Final Fantasy XII experience. You're welcome.

Hashmal is some sort of wolfman with giant horn/claw things instead of arms. Must make it inconvenient to wipe. You people should know how it goes by now; I have better things to do than sully my hands fighting Lucavi. Hashmal, prepare to face Zeromus, the Condemner!

In defiance of tradition, Hashmal barely manages to defeat my Esper, mainly due to Ashe sandbagging unhelpfully and chomping popcorn while watching them wreck each other’s shit. Once Zeromus falls, she swoops in to killsteal the last tiny bit of Hashmal’s health, because our party is all class, all the time.

<b>Basch:</b> ''Because if it's not, I think I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm 36, that's like 60 in JRPG years. I think I'm technically older than Fran.''
Basch: ''Because if it's not, I think I'm going to have a heart attack. I'm 36, that's like 60 in JRPG years. I think I'm technically older than Fran.''

With that out of the way, nothing remains to challenge us as we climb the last quiet stair to the peak of the great Pharos. Fran points out that the mist is becoming much stronger, because mist detection is one of two whole character traits she possesses. Penelo, Vaan, and Reddas wonder aloud if Ashe will really go through with the Occuria’s plan, as if she wasn’t standing two arms’ lengths away, clearly hearing every word they say. At this point, she fucking better go through with it or I just climbed this damn tower for nothing. Amusingly, Ashe politely stops and waits for Reddas to stop guilt-tripping her behind her back.

With that out of the way, the party uses one last teleporter to reach the seat of the Sun-Cryst itself in all its blinding radiance. For this purpose the tower was built in ages long risen and fallen: to enshrine the marvelous, terrible power that made Raithwall Dynast-King a thousand years past, and his forebear before him, and his before him, and so on beyond mortal reckoning.

Neat.
Neat.

I hope, despite all odds, you enjoyed the game so far. Once atop the Pharos, the game explodes into a maelstrom of lunacy. Get ready, because there’s no going back.

The Travelog continues next week.

 

Footnotes:

[1] The message is actually written in English, merely with a stylized font. The words with double letters stand out easily, in particular the signature, “In Blood, Raithwall.” Check the double-L by Fran’s elbow in the image above. The Galteans make the Al Bhed look like expert cryptographers.

[2] actually five



From The Archives:
 

60 thoughts on “A Travelog of Ivalice, Part 14: To the Peak

  1. Syal says:

    That’s lucky; if I found a note written by King Arthur in 1100 AD’s Middle English, I’d be pretty well fucked

    Two yonge knyghtes liggynge by and by,
    Bothe in oon armes, wroght ful richely,
    Of whiche two arcita highte that oon,
    And that oother knyght highte palamon.

    1. ContribuTor says:

      It’s even stupider than this in the specific example.

      The Canterbury tales were about 1400, in the late Middle Ages.

      The actual age of Arthur (if he was real) would be more like 500 AD. Or, for perspective, about 300 years further before the Canterbury Tales as the Canterbrury Takes are before us.

      The oldest stories about Arthur date to about 1000-1100 AD.

      If Arthur had actually left a message, it would have been in one of the Proto-Celtic languages. So, imagine the example here, but even further adrift from the modern language by several centuries, and that language being Gaelic.

      Even if we date from the earliest surviving stirrups, they’d be either in old English (which is pretty exclusively a Germanic language) or a Middle French. Almost certainly French, since (after the Norman Invasion in 1066) that was the language of the nobility and the educated.

      Chaucer’s Middle English developed over the centuries that followed the Norman invasion, as a gradual mixing of Norman French and Saxon German. Or, as I’ve heard it described, English is what you get when Norman knights trying to pick up Saxon barmaids.

      To give a sense of the speed at which this has changed, Chaucer’s hard to read Middle English is only about 200 years before Shakespeare’s pretty recognizable Elizabethan dialect, which was 400 years ago. . It’s crazy how much the spread of the written word has slowed down the process of language evolution.

      Time and language are WIERD.

      1. Lasius says:

        If Arthur had actually left a message, it would have been in one of the Proto-Celtic languages.

        Technically no. Proto-Celtic would be a language spoken in the early first millenium BC, probably in what is today southern Germany, Austria and Czechia.

        In 500 AD in southern Great Britain a Brittonic language would have been spoken, maybe late Common Brittonic.

        1. Rho says:

          He might have spoken Latin natively as well. Many Britons evidently did by that time, although it varied by class and background. Assuming Arthur existed at all.

      2. You know, I had a footnote after that line that pointed out the anachronism and joked about different branches of Arthurian myth and the Norman Conquest… but I tossed it because it was too long, bad, and I figured no one would notice anyway.

        1. tmtvl says:

          I figured no one would notice anyway.

          Welcome to Twenty Sided, you must be new here.

        2. Narratorway says:

          *all of Twentysided in a resounding Skeletor voice*

          Jokes on you I’m into that shit!

    2. Retsam says:

      This also makes more sense if you imagine the Dynast-King in the vein as a mythical Chinese Emperor, as some people suggested earlier in the series – while the Chinese spoken language varies a lot, as I understand it, the written language really has changed very little.

      1. Lasius says:

        True to some degree. However you have to keep in mind that Chinese was primarily written on very perishible materials. All the ancient texts that are more than two thousand years old were preserved by copying the texts over and over and during that process the characters were of course also adapted to the current form. The old bronze and bone inscriptions we have from that time show earlier froms of the characters.

        Take for example the glyph for “servant”.
        (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%83%95#Glyph_origin open the historical forms tab)

        You can see that it did change quite a bit from its most ancient form.

        1. Retsam says:

          Yeah, if you go back far enough you hit these older forms which are probably hard to match up with the current shapes, but as I understand that’s mostly pre-imperial China, before 300BC. The oracle bone script dates back to pre-1000 BC Shang period, and it looks like the bronze inscriptions either from the Shang or the Zhou period that lasted up until 300BC.

          The versions that were standardized in the first imperial dynasty, the Qin Dynasty, the seal script is a lot closer to the modern style. The Regular script, (which is basically the “Traditional” style that Taiwan still uses) was introduced from the 200s AD (and “matured in the 600s AD” apparently).

          So as far as I understand if you go back 1000 years, you’re fine. If you go back 2000 years, it’s dicey, and if you go back 3000 years you’re pretty much out of luck.

          I’m sure this is still a huge oversimplification – like I know China had periods of a highly “literary” style of writing, likely the equivalent of trying to read Shakespeare: you can read all the words but can’t really understand it.

    3. Philadelphus says:

      It’s funny, for my job recently I’ve been reading IRAF code*, and I’ve been thinking to myself that it’s about as legible as Chaucer, and you don’t even get a good story out of it when you’re done deciphering it (just comments like “!!! It would be really great if anyone knew what this bit did!”).

      *Which is a scripting language for astronomy developed in the 80s, with all the design decisions that originally being released on magtape and pre-dating modern computing facilities might imply. (I’m reading it to rewrite it in a better language so that future generations of eager young astronomers don’t need to experience my pain.)

  2. Parkhorse says:

    The message is actually written in English, merely with a stylized font. The words with double letters stand out easily, in particular the signature, “In Blood, Raithwall.” Check the double-L by Fran’s elbow in the image above. The Galteans make the Al Bhed look like expert cryptographers.

    Is the image the same in the Japanese version? If so, it’s not the worst… Write it in a foreign language, using a made up alphabet rather than the standard one for that language? Double letters might not be that much of a tipoff if you’re expecting hiragana/katakana/kanji.

    Come to think of it, how did the al-Bhed stuff work in the Japanese version of FFX?

    1. Syal says:

      Japanese Al Bhed is mixed-up Japanese.
      I can’t find a source for whether they had more primers, which would make sense since they’ve got more letters.

      1. Retsam says:

        Looks like there’s not, each primer unlocks more than one ‘translation’ in the Japanese version.

        … except 19, which unlocks the translation “N” = “N”, which seems hilariously useless. Of course N would have to equal N, because it’s the only standalone consonant in Japanese… but the fact that they put it in its own primer, rather than bundling that fact with more useful translations is kind of funny.

        But yeah, seems like they were thinking ahead to the Western release when they decided how many Al Bhed primers to add to the game.

  3. Dreadjaws says:

    Fenrir, a bipedal white tiger. This boss represents Byakko of the West, a deity of metal and Autumn. Although Fenrir seems to be a wind-based creature in-game

    I know Squeenix likes to take liberties with depictions of mythological creatures, but it sometimes reaches hilarious levels. We have a guy here who represents the Japanese deity of a white tiger wind elemental, only it’s named after a giant wolf from the Norse mythology that carries out the end of the world. It’s kind of like if the Thor film had named Laufy, the evil king of the frost giants, “Jesus”.

    Now, reading on Byakko, he’s definitely supposed to represent the wind in the myths, so its depiction would be correct here. As a matter of fact, Seiryu also represents water and Genbu represents the Earth. All of this I took from the Spanish version of Wikipedia (which itself cites this book as a source), I don’t know what your sources are, though, maybe you’re better informed.

    Don’t bother remembering all this; the game sure as hell won’t.

    There’s something to be said for a game that puts unobtrusive flavor text that expands the lore if you willingly engage with it but it’s otherwise unimportant and unnecessary. But so many times it seems as if the developers don’t bother in making it even a little bit interesting. I’m gonna give FFXIII a pass this week because I’ve already complained in lenght about its stupid codex, and I don’t want to keep repeating myself. Instead, I’ll talk about another game. I recently played through Fire Emblem: Three Houses and you can at any point go to the library and pick some books to read on the game’s history. But it’s just all so boring and pointless. It’s not like I couldn’t remember the things I read a few hours later, I literally couldn’t remember them right after reading them. Which is odd, because the in-game conversations certainly show they can talk about this subject and make it interesting and memorable.

    Entirely unrelated to this, we haven’t had a “What are you playing right now?” thread in a while. Those are always interesting.

    1. Thomas says:

      I was hoping for an opportunity to semi-rant about Three Houses.

      I also found the library frustrating, doubly so because it seemed like the lore there would have been useful if I could remember any of it

    2. Sleeping Dragon says:

      The extra issue here is that Occuria are at the same time both central and inconsequential to the plot. Apparently after communicating their will to Ashe they’re fine just letting her do whatever with it and once (spoiler I guess?) the party decides to effectively give them a finger they never factor into the story again except for Venat. In any normal setting the “Our King” line would be a hint at something. Are the Occuria bound to some higher will that does not like them meddling and the entire dynast king thing is them working through some kind of loophole? Are they threathened by something and by order of their leader have hidden away from the world only daring to act indirectly? The game gives us nothing.

      The obvious comparison regarding flavour text would be the Elder Scrolls games (particularly from Morrowind onwards) that have extensive fluff lore. Including myths, legends, apocrypha, propaganda and historical scholarship that will question the events of the previous games (that the player knows by virtue of having played through them).

  4. Chad+Miller says:

    The gimmick of this labyrinth section is binding abilities; to progress, you have to pick an altar which will prevent you from using either standard attacks, magic, items, or— if you aren’t a total fucking idiot— the minimap. Although the minimap disappears in these areas if you take that option, you are still able to check your main map to figure out which of the many identical rooms you’re in, rendering the sacrifice trivial.

    Funnily enough, this choice is made even more obvious in the Zodiac Age. See, one of the quality of life additions in that game is an “expand minimap” button which replaces the one in the corner with a giant translucent overlay of the actual map that takes up most of the screen. This is generally a huge improvement to the game as when you’re exploring the wilderness and get turned around you can just press one button and check where you are without the interruption of pausing the game to pull up menus. This does result in some hilarity in a couple places, though. One is the Great Crystal; since it has no useful map, pressing the button just changes the situation from “I am lost” to “I am lost and my party seems to be partially obscured by a dog turd.” The other is here, where you can just say “No minimap? Okay, guess I’ll use the megamap for 5 minutes,” and trivialize what little “challenge” this section ever had.

  5. ContribuTor says:

    in addition to the tower itself, there’s a postgame area beneath the Pharos that requires scads of dark orbs to access some of the game’s best equipment

    Hold up. So this game already pulls the dick move of hiding the end game equipment until you take the one way gate to the final dungeon, but once you get there, it won’t give it to you?? Until AFTER the main quest of the game is over?

    1. Chad Miller says:

      Oh, this isn’t technically the final dungeon; it’s just that the actual final dungeon is like four rooms long. You’re expected to do all this stuff while deliberately ignoring vayne’s airship bearing down on Dalmasca.

      1. Syal says:

        Yeah, there’s no actual “postgame”, it’s like the Monster Ranch in 10. And this tower isn’t a one-way gate, we’re free to go back to exploring the world after this*.

        *(Except there’s a Hunt that sends you to an NPC that, after this tower, will only talk about the final boss and won’t let you start the Hunt anymore. So, there is stuff the plot advancement locks you out of.)

  6. Trevor says:

    I’m always amused by giant tower final dungeons because I think about all your guys having to walk back down all the steps after they defeat the boss. Yes, usually at the top you get teleported to another realm or whatever that renders descending moot, but it’s still funny to think about if the game made you control your party back down to get the final cutscene with the people at the bottom. Not to mention all the trash mob guards having to commute to the tower and then up 89 of the 100 flights of stairs every morning.

    1. Syal says:

      This one is particularly bad about that, as we’ll get to see next week.

    2. Fizban says:

      Tales of Symphonia plays with this- On a number of occasions, though not all, where the plot is taking you to the end (or back to the start) of a dungeon from earlier in the game, it will ask if you want to “Quick Jump” to just skip the walk to your destination. Until after one particular event (at the top of a tower, no less) where it doesn’t give the option and while you’re walking back down the game will offer one of the many interstitial character skits, where the main character lampshades wondering why there wasn’t a “Quick Jump” and the other characters are confused. Then partway down you run into someone and stuff happens.

      No reason they couldn’t have just had the skip stop at the same place, but on the other hand having the option so conspicuously lacking allows some tension to build as you wonder what’s going to happen as you’re making your way down.

  7. Joshua says:

    As ever seems to be the case, if you’re looking at this boss thinking, ”I have no fucking clue what I’m supposed to be looking at,” congratulations! That’s the genuine Final Fantasy XII experience.

    Not only Final Fantasy XII. There are plenty of monsters I can remember in VI (and probably others as well) where I have to squint at the television and ask “What is it I’m fighting?”.

    1. Dreadjaws says:

      To be fair, it’s a thing with the whole series. There are some really memorable monster designs and then there are those that give the impression that the artist was a Picasso fan.

    2. Rho says:

      I don’t recall having that issue. However, I’m not arguing. Could you provide some examples to clarify? What kind of designs were visually confusing the 16bit era?

      1. tmtvl says:

        Well in FFVI you have enemies like the Cruller, which even in the higher resolution PC/Android version makes me do a double take; the CrassHoppr, which in higher res looks fine, but in the SNES version is pretty much a pixel-y mess; Still Life, what even is it, like a fish with green lips breathing smoke on top of a piece of paper?

        1. bobbert says:

          Other standouts:

          Bleary – a black haystack with a single red eye
          Rhodox – some kind of mouse peeking his head out of a fox-hole with a giant fluffy tail shaped like a corkscrew
          Beakor – a knok-kneed hunch-backed old woman in tattered clothes with the head of a bird
          Over-mind – a legless skeleton with a scepter and regal cape vomiting up a dog-ghost
          Mag Roader – a naked red man with train wheels for hands and feet
          Delta Bug – a beetle with a pyramid that shoots lightning on his back
          Crusher – an evil light in the middle of an onion sack
          Critic – a girl in a one-piece swimsuit ridding a fat green ant-eater

          Pick your own favorite!

          1. Fizban says:

            Critic – a girl in a one-piece swimsuit ridding a fat green ant-eater

            o.O
            *checks provided link*
            What the hell? And it’s encountered in “Cyan’s Soul!?” Pretty sure I did that dungeon but I sure as hell don’t remember any of those. Apparently the samurai’s guilt manifests as. . . a woman in conservative yet revealing attire astride a beast from a child’s imagination* who has presumably unflattering things to say about him. Wasn’t his guilt over losing his wife and kids?

            *That thing would fit into the nightmare-fuel sequence from Dumbo just fine.

            1. tmtvl says:

              Originally the enemy was called Alluring Rider, no idea why Woolsey went with “Critic”.
              I suppose Shamus also rides a green anteater when he needs to go somewhere.

            2. Joshua says:

              Well, there are a lot of monsters in the game that just get thrown in wherever, as if there was very little link between the team creating the monsters and the team designing the levels and story. There’s also sometimes strange relationships between a monster and its name, or a monster and its abilities. To be fair, some creatures’ abilities do line up with what you would expect, and they seem to match their environment (I guess the Magroaders are racing along the mine cart?), but there’s still a bunch that make you scratch your head, like a six-armed guy with a bunch of katanas…..who likes to turn you into a zombie.

            3. bobbert says:

              Oh! I missed that she has a whip.

          2. Boobah says:

            One of the fun things in FFXIV is that as the expansions go on they keep needing new enemy types, and they mine these weird monster designs from other entries to do it.

            Some of these are bosses (most of the summons from XII show up as bosses in the “Return to Ivalice” raids) but you also get things like the Leafer, which is a rabbit riding a head of lettuce three or four times its size. Or maybe they’re a head of lettuce with a little rabbit lying on top of it.

          3. Philadelphus says:

            I like “HermitCrab” – someone put a shell on top of an angry spider

        2. Joshua says:

          The Cruller is the main one I was thinking of. When having the ability to look at the art on a PC many years later with much better graphics…..I STILL can’t tell what the hell it’s supposed to be.

          bobbert listed some other ones.

          Another one for me personally was the Ouroboros and its variants. I guess it’s supposed to be a flower head with a tongue, but on my CRT television in 1994 when I couldn’t quite make out the tongue, it looked kind of like a malicious dolphin thingy stuck in a bunch of vines.

          1. Rho says:

            Many of them are pretty weird, but I didnt have a great problem of figuring out their shape. The Cruller isn’t any stranger than the bizarre things that popped up in DnD though, so maybe I’m just used to it.

            1. Joshua says:

              When I was in high school, I thought that this creature was some kind of Rakshasa thing, before I figured out that it’s actually some kind of skeletal guy breathing out some kind of smoke and holding the staff with an arm coming out of his crotch? The top of the smoke looked fairly leonine to me, and the staff looked better oriented than where the skeletal guy is holding it.

              1. Chad+Miller says:

                My personal funniest “misread sprite” moment was the mind flayers in the first game; at the time I didn’t know enough about D&D to know what a mind flayer was, and the English translation called them WIZARD and SORCERER anyway. With the NES graphics I actually totally missed that they were squid people; I didn’t see the eyes (interpreted them as part of the cloak), and I thought the fins were just really low-fidelity stylized hair. The face tentacles? I dunno, that’s a really weird neckline or cleavage or whatever.

                https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Mindflayer_(Final_Fantasy)

  8. Retsam says:

    An interesting bit of the dungeon that this doesn’t mention is that the bottom section (with the labyrinth floors and the black orbs) requires you to give something up: the first thing you do with the dungeon is interact with pillars that require you to either give up your physical attacks, your magic, your items, or your mini-map.

    It’s a neat idea, as it could add a bit of interest to the otherwise fairly straight-forward dungeon… except the releases kind of broke this (in true FFXII tradition), since you now can pull up an overlay map and you actually don’t lose that, even if you give up your mini-map.

    Someone mentioned in an early thread that “the overlay map breaks a puzzle later in the game”, I’m guessing this is what they meant, but honestly, this is the fourth time I’ve thought that. There’s a few random areas that are supposed to have distorted maps, (parts of the Zertinan Caverns optional area most notably), the bit in Draklor Labratory, and then the Feywood (with the puzzle with the illusion images in the gazebos) – the overlay map makes all of these trivial.

    It’s not a huge thing, but really feels like a meaningful oversight: when you remake a game you aren’t supposed to make it worse.

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      … that this doesn’t mention…

      See the paragraph about “binding” and the minimap in the article.

      1. Retsam says:

        Oh, whoops. I was looking for it in the first section, because I misremembered where it happens, and skimmed over the mention of it.

  9. Hal says:

    Hashmal, prepare to face Zeromus, the Condemner!

    I love that, after his stint as the BBEG of FF4, Zeromus’s fate is to become a pokemon in another universe. Would that we all could be so lucky.

    1. Chad+Miller says:

      This is actually true of many of the Espers; nearly all of them are based upon either Final Fantasy Tactics Lucavi or a Final Fantasy final boss (and in one case, both). The final bosses in particular are Chaos, Mateus (emperor from Final Fantasy II), Famfrit (roundabout reference to FFIII’s Cloud of Darkness), Zeromus, Exodus, and Ultima.

      1. bobbert says:

        They changed their minds on X-Death?

        1. Chad+Miller says:

          Yeah, the series is full of callbacks that get inconsistently translated. For another prominent example in this game, a lot of people (including me) didn’t notice that the Elite Mark Orthros was a reference to the purple octopus from Final Fantasy VI.

  10. Syal says:

    So I guess I’ll mention. This dungeon isn’t quite as obnoxious as Giruvegan, but we’er definitely feeling the late game now. For the sacrifice section I’d disabled Items, but even with the minimap the place is a pain to navigate, with massive numbers of tiny rooms that interconnect at all different angles. Knowing where the exit is doesn’t help much when the way to get there is a labyrinth, filled with headless knights and other meat sticks..

    And at the end of the labyrinth, parked in front of one of the floor exits, is a Rare Game, a headless knight that could nearly one-shot my party members, and could render himself invincible for minutes at a time. I spent what felt like an eternity finding the exit, and then ended up running my crippled party basically to the entrance again, through a horde of respawned enemies, to flee this monstrous Rare Game while its invincibility ran down.

    Now, technically, you can just run past this guy and ignore him, but keep in mind that:
    a) this guy’s part of the Rare Hunt sidequest
    b) this is following the worst dungeon in the game, and partway through the second worst; this is not a live-and-let-live experience. All shall bleed, all shall perish. Things without blood will be loaned blood just to bleed them. Let none survive.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      I realise Rocketeer skips bits but yeah, this does feel like two major gauntlets one after another. I imagine you’re sort of expected to do some optional content between the two but still.

      1. Chad+Miller says:

        On the one hand, you technically can go do something else in between these parts as there’s a fast travel point in the main entrance (which is in the same room as that elevator thing)

        On the other hand…the middle of a dungeon in progress is kind of a weird time to go sidequest, and having Reddas as a guest character strongly encourages doing all your sidequests before coming here (as even without reading guides the player has likely figured out by now that having a guest character can be handy for doing things like hunts so they’ll likely have knocked out that stuff already.

  11. bobbert says:

    I forget what the 4 Chinese directional animals are: Turtle, Tiger, Dragon, and… Giraffe, I think.

  12. BlueHorus says:

    I hope, despite all odds, you enjoyed the game so far. Once atop the Pharos, the game explodes into a maelstrom of lunacy. Get ready, because there’s no going back.

    Oh, I’m excited now. I thought the game was pretty nonsensical so far, but apparently it gets worse?
    Bring it!

  13. Dalisclock says:

    So I will say I am enjoying Rockteers commentary despite the fact I long since stopped having any fucking clue what’s going on. Something, something crystal shards I think.

  14. tremor3258 says:

    I’m going to be honest, I’m nearly lost with what the party’s actual goals are and you’re saying it explodes into lunacy now?

    I’m on board but now I’m hoping the final boss fight is in fact a dance number.

  15. Scerro says:

    But is there a dead simple math mechanic that wipes half the alliance raid?

    Wait, wrong game, right location.

  16. Mortuss says:

    It is so weird reading this, recognizing some thigs from the ff14 raid series, which from what I understand mix the lore of ff12 and tactics together? Like the interior of the lighthouse is very familiar, although I am sad that there wasnt any boss in ff12 that requires you to set your HP to a prime number

    1. Retsam says:

      If it helps, one of the optional Espers casts a lot of spells that affect the party depending on what level is a multiple of, (Level 2 Sleep, Level 3 Disable, etc). … though prime isn’t a good thing here because it also casts “Prime Death”.

      1. Chad+Miller says:

        There’s also the optional mark Gilgamesh, who has a lot of the Level X spells but not Level Prime Death.

    2. I don’t play Final Fantasy XIV, but my brother has played a fair bit of it (he was a FFXI player in its day, too) and whenever he describes all the storylines and characters from it, my brain just starts ringing with a thousand and one different little references all try to climb over themselves in my brain, and it feels like I’m having a Final Fantasy seizure.

      Mike Stoklasa of Red Letter Media once described very similarly the feeling of watching The Orville as a Star Trek superfan with an enyclopedic knowledge of the series. In the end, he told his friend Rich that he couldn’t watch The Orville because of it. Actually, he said “I love it so much that I can’t watch it.” The sensory/recall overload and the extreme mix of feelings and reactions made the show mentally unbearable even though he found it enjoyable in itself.

      I feel like exactly this kind of thing would happen if I played Final Fantasy XIV. I already get this feeling of, “But that’s from this! And he and she are from there but they’re doing this and this is different now and they’ve joined this and that into this and they’re going to—” and that’s just from hearing half-recalled anecdotes secondhand. I think actually playing the game would put my ass in a coma.

Thanks for joining the discussion. Be nice, don't post angry, and enjoy yourself. This is supposed to be fun. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked*

You can enclose spoilers in <strike> tags like so:
<strike>Darth Vader is Luke's father!</strike>

You can make things italics like this:
Can you imagine having Darth Vader as your <i>father</i>?

You can make things bold like this:
I'm <b>very</b> glad Darth Vader isn't my father.

You can make links like this:
I'm reading about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darth_Vader">Darth Vader</a> on Wikipedia!

You can quote someone like this:
Darth Vader said <blockquote>Luke, I am your father.</blockquote>

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.