Final Fantasy Legend, Finale

 

This is it, the shocking conclusion of Final Fantasy Legend, AKA SaGa 1. Will I go through with my plans to cover more of the SaGa series in 2023? We'll see.

We left off with the heroes running through a subway. Yes, a modern subway.

At the bottom of this place, Su-Zaku is hiding out with the sister of that guy who sacrificed himself earlier. I guess he's holding her hostage. Also this guy was way more menacing when he didn't talk, and just let his pecking do the talking.

BIG FIGHT FEEL here, ladies and gentlemen!

Until I break out his weakness: Stone.

Fight over in one hit. And this isn't like using Bane against Tiamat with a tiny hit % chance. This seems to be an insta-kill no matter what.

Man, at this point none of the bosses have gotten out of one round except Machine, making him de-facto a top 3 boss for the game just by not keeling over.

From there, back to the tower. This final door is unlocked by the Red Orb. Next up are the last ten or so floors of the tower, and they're a doozy. Strongest enemies in the game, and lots of them.

I barely remembered this last part from my first playthrough back in the day, and I can see why. It's more generic tower floors, only less generic than the earlier ones.

While climbing the last bunch of floors, you continuously hear about Ashura, lord of this world. The four fiends all operate under him, and he takes care of his loyal subjects.

Floor after floor of this, as the enemies drastically ramp up in power.

These healing springs are worth their weight in gold. There are only 2 or 3 of them in the final floors of the tower and they're a huge assist.

Jesus Christ! In this strange room, we find a bunch of dead kids, and a dead adult in the next room. The dead adult is clutching...

...an Atom Bomb. One-use and probably the most destructive combat item in the game. Nukes everything on screen for like 700 damage. Which isn't that crazy for a one-time item, but still, good to have.

What's the story here though? Why is a guy clutching a bomb and why are all the kids dead? Was he trying to climb the tower and blow it up? Why bring kids though?

Another key endgame item is the potent Flare spell, which does more damage than any other attack spell when doled out by a Mutant. Then again, with Stone instakilling everything, do we even need Flare?

One of the upper floors is this land of flowers, home to...

...this old man who presents our heroes with Excalibur, probably the game's strongest regular (high-use) weapon.

Then he just kinda dies because his mission is finally completed. Wow.

Thing about Excalibur is, it's SUPPOSED to be the strongest regular weapon. The instruction manual presents it as such. In actuality, both the Sun Sword and Masamune seem to be better in this game while also having lots of uses. Neither has shown up yet though.

And then there's...

The game's most powerful actual sword is the Glass Sword, which does mega-damage but can only be used once...or SO I THOUGHT. More on this later.

All we hear about on the upper floors is Ashura this, Ashura that. Time to take this guy on.

Ashura is basically the Chaos of this game, the over-boss of the four fiends. He offers our heroes dominion over the four worlds below, one for each of them.

Wait a minute...are Gen-Bu, Su-Zaku, etc a previous team of four that reached this point and accepted his offer, becoming fiends?

Will we get Stranger of Paradise: SaGa 1 any time soon to tell this story?

He even looks like Chaos.

This guy is the hardest fight in the game because he hits like a dump truck. I reset after losing my first character immediately, and tried using the Aegis Shield on round 1. That creates some sort of evasive barrier on the entire party, and it caused Ashura to miss enough for me to eke out a win by firing off Hypers and Flares.

This seems like a final boss battle, but it isn't. Nope, there's someone above even this guy.

After the fall of Ashura, the people of the world begin to wonder if Ashura was actually real or if someone else put him there as some kind of test.

The final shop in the game has all kinds of stuff. The Power Armor is the best armor, but good luck being able to afford it for 3* characters without doing some grinding.

I bought a bunch of Missiles (5-use high-damage item) for my characters to fire off in the final battle, as well as the Sun Sword for one of them. In retrospect, while the Sun Sword was a good buy, I should have gone for the 3* Power Armors as well and left the Missiles. As it was, I continued on with zero Power Armors and half of my money left unused. My high HP carried me through the rest though.

* The reason I say 3 armors is because you get another super-strong armor very soon after this, so a fourth isn't needed.

Next up are rematches with the four fiends. The Sun Sword has the ability to insta-kill all of them if it gets a critical hit. Which it does frequently. Enough insta-kills! So far the game has had all of two good fights.

Same deal here, Sun Sword one-shots it. Each boss guards a particular piece of uber-equipment, as well: Masamune (debatably the best regular weapon), Arthur Armor (maybe the best armor), Ninja Gauntlets (best gauntlets), and Hecate Shoes (best shoes).

The rematches all have them with significantly beefed-up HP and stats. Basically they're all on the same level as Su-Zaku now if not a bit above that. Not that it matters when the Sun Sword just wipes them out.

Su-Zaku got an even bigger beef-up than the others, and is nearly as durable as Ashura.

...he also gets one-shotted by the Sun Sword.

Time for stats/inventory going into the final battle. I can finally unload all the limited-use items I've been hoarding.

I decided the Human would be the one responsible for bombarding the big high-damage low-use items. Missiles were unnecessary, as it turns out, since the Glass Sword... well, I'll get to that.

Crazy how Mutants are still sparking useless skills like Stench and things that DO NOTHING like ESP, even at this advanced point of the game.

Have one character with 99+ in all stats. We don't know what her actual stats are since it only shows up to 99. They could be anywhere between that and 255. Also don't know why this one character gained stats so much faster than everyone else.

Mindy is really bogged down with useless sparked abilities. At this stage I leaned more towards giving the Mutants weapons, since I had so many good weapons.

Fun Fact: Once you go into the final floor, you can't go backwards. You're stuck here forever. Nothing to grind either, so if you didn't level sufficiently or buy everything you needed, and you saved here...then you're hosed.

Fun Fact 2: This orb on the final floor heals your party, which is incredibly useful after the treacherous last few floors.

Hey look! It's Rose the Hat again. What a hottie.

Actually it's "The Creator", who build the world that this tower climbs through. He gets all meta by saying that this is actually a game, and he created it to test the "players" (the people trying to climb the tower).

Ashura was the biggest, most unbeatable test, and I think this group was the first to pass.

Our heroes are mad that they were just pawns, and go "we haveth our own will" and all that stuff. I feel like this happens at the end of almost every Squaresoft game from this era.

Here we are, final boss. It's basically the deity of this world, trapping everyone in here with it like Scarlet Witch.

ATOMIC BOMB UNLEASHED!

That's right, we carried a nuke the rest of the way up the tower to NUKE GOD.

And here I discover something preposterous: The legendary, one-use Glass Sword... actually can be used over and over again, even though it tells you that it breaks after every time you attack. It...doesn't. I think this is a glitch; in FFL2 I'm fairly certain it's indeed one use.

What this means is that I could have been using this for the last hour of the game, like against Ashura and some of the tougher tower enemies. Cause it's the strongest attack in the game outside the A. Bomb. Damn.

Fairly easy fight is won. I mean, it's probably the toughest fight this game has to offer (though I found Ashura a bit worse). I'm sure there were ways to one-shot him too if you want to SAW GOD.

A door appears, and it's implied that this door leads out to the "real world" (i.e. our world).

Presumably this means your characters are free to go out and live normal lives now. Interestingly enough, Final Fantasy XIII does this same thing. I think in Lightning Returns specifically. You get to the end and the characters from that world basically step out into our world and Lightning reincarnates as a regular teenager in Tokyo or something. And I think Chrono Cross might have also done something similar in the end credits.

Well, in any case, that game was short and simple. Enjoyable for what it is, has its retro charm.

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