Final Fantasy Legend 3, Part 5 - Meltwater Pulse 1A

 

Under the iron stare of Mr. S, our motley crew heroes arrive in Pureland. So far, it doesn't seem so pure. The people here have been petrified by a compelling unknown force, and vicious mummified cats are roving the lawless landscape.

Did the cats petrify the people? Why are they mummified? I have so many questions

Talking to one gets you into a brawl with the clawing, hissing menaces.

Winning gets you the most prized of delicacies: Cat Meat.

Looks like we have some competition in our hunt for units. Check out the units on that guy!

I tried to experiment with Sharon a bit at this point since she's such an odd woman out in this group and Monster just hasn't been working out very well.

She temporarily became a Hatamoto (which I guess have lived on in borg form) but I remain unimpressed with Cyborgs in general. Maybe when I have endgame gear, the class will work better.

From there, I went to my real goal, Robot, thinking that two Robots bookending the two Beasts would be a good party.

And it would...if there was anywhere to buy Robot capsules in Pureland, which there isn't right now. And to my surprise, I can't go back to the previous worlds. That's right, I'm LOCKED IN PURELAND.

So this Robot experiment is over before it even gets started, and Sharon just switches over to Beast instead. So now I have 3x OP martial arts Beasts. That one class just trashes everything else on DPS, it seems (though Robot has saved me on a few boss fights).

I beat up angler fish for a little while until Sharon gets situated as a Beast. I haven't given up on Cyborg yet though. Kinda lame that Robot is basically defunct now, with nowhere to buy capsules. I'm sure they'll reappear by the end, but I haven't seen them anywhere in Pureland.

This guy tells me how to stop the rampaging Cat Army. I need to get Catnip to get them all to chill, then defeat the nefarious Fenrir in a nearby dungeon (I guess Fenrir is the one making the cats freak out to begin with)

Finding the Catnip requires jumping over this random obscure broken fence. It's the only part you can jump over in the entire town. Good luck not stumbling around the place for 20 minutes trying to figure out what to do next before that, though.

Go around and inspect this tree and here's the 'Nip. Why'd they make it so obscure? Well, whatever. With this, I can get all the cats to stop attacking me.

Using this in the nearby dungeon causes all of the mummified cats to stop what they're doing and, presumably, roll around on the floor.

At the end of the dungeon is the ruffian who caused all this trouble...

...Fenrir, a freakish wolf-man. Not sure if he's supposed to be a Big Bad on the level of Chaos or Maitreya, but I doubt it, and the fight is over fairly quickly. He's got strong single-target attacks and that's about it. Winning gets me the...

...Prison key, which is used elsewhere in the same dungeon to rescue Faye (in other words, don't Exit out after the boss fight).

Yep, here's Faye.

"I'm here to save you, girl!" says Arthur. "Come be in Shady's world!"

Next step is taking a boat north to a bustling merchant town, which for a minute I thought might have Robot capsules. Nope.

One cool thing worth noting is that getting into fights while flying the Talon allows the ship to launch attacks against your foes. Every fight starts with the Talon opening fire, doing some damage. It's only that first attack, but still useful.

The next dungeon is a nearby mountain. I like the mountain dungeons in this, they tend to be fun and straightforward.

At the top is a boss that I think IS supposed to be a Big Bad...

Guha. What in the blue hell am I looking at right now?

This thing is TOUGH, and spams a beastly AOE fire spell on everyone. Not sure if this makes it the fire counterpart of Chaos/Maitreya, or even if the game is going for an elemental theme for the Big Bads to begin with.

Regardless, if this game does have four fiends, I'm going to guess that this guy is the third and Balor (still to come) is the fourth, given their respective difficulty levels compared to all the other bosses around them and their status as major Xagor minions.

Arthur is the sole survivor of the fight, due to his high HP and regenerating 100 HP per round. Robot has been consistently OP all game and difficult to put down, even if at this point he's doing the least damage of my main four.

This gets Arthur so much pooled EXP that he surges to about 3 levels ahead of everyone else and puts him over level 30. I think he can now get the ultimate Robot form if I get the right parts.

The first of the four Mystic Swords, the super-weapons of the game. This thing is potent enough to give Arthur a substantial attack boost and put him more in line with the Beasts. Not only does it have a high natural attack power, it also has holy element so it does double damage to undead, demons, and a lot of the bosses. There's also the "Mystic" property which allows them to damage foes that take very little damage from anything else, like the final boss.

Other Mystic Swords include Excalibur and Masamune (of course) along with Emperor. Looks like Durand is the least-potent of the four, with Excalibur and Masamune being the top two.

There's also the Sun Sword, which is pretty much on the same level as the Mystic Swords damage-wise, but doesn't get the same title for some reason. It doesn't have the "Mystic" property either so it won't do the extra damage to lategame bosses.

This thing is EASILY missed, and I had to go through the dungeon a second time once I found out about it. This game hasn't rewarded thoroughness very much so far, and with the high encounter rate, I don't really scour places.

Equip this on the Talon, and...

...it'll unleash a powerful AOE at the beginning of every battle you get into on it. This is an ideal time to bang out some levels if need be, since the Talon will drop enemy HP by like 35% before your characters even start attacking.

The next phase of the game involves finding a tablet for this red mage, who lurks in a crystal cave. What's with the sudden FF1 spritework? I think I see Golem there too.

The game is throwing huge bosses at me one after another at this point, which is a sign that I'm near the end.

Another freakish multi-mouthed foe, Dahak is based on Azi Dahaka, a major figure in Persian mythology that represents destruction and has roots in Zoroastrian demonology. Whether Dahaka was a lizard-beast with three heads or simply a powerful tyrannical human is something that seems to depend on who you ask, but either way it represented a great destructive force that gripped Persia at one time.

Durend absolutely chunks this guy's HP. The bosses are going through some serious HP inflation now, though. Since they can get away with boss HP skyrocketing due to my weapons getting better, they're getting crazy with it.

Next thing we know, a flight across the desert gets our heroes ambushed by ANOTHER boss. What's worse, the Talon gets smashed during the attack.

Yeah, the Talon I've spent the entire game repairing and re-assembling. It's GONE.

This is probably supposed to be the Midgar Zolom / Midgarsormr. Another thing with freakish mouths that looks like an AI abomination. In any case, it has a lot less HP than the last few bosses, made up for by sky-high defenses that nullify spells and block most physical damage. Durend is the only thing that hits it for normal damage, so it was likely intended to be a "make sure the player has Durend equipped" check.

The good news is that the game immediately gives me Talon 2, the new and improved version that has everything the old one did AND can fly way faster (too fast, actually, if you're playing on Game Speed Fast...thing zips all over the place)

This hole in the world is ominous, have a feeling it's where I'll need to go soon enough.

Next time: I finish getting the Mystic Swords and get ready to wrap this one up.

In the meantime, here's Aerith preparing for a swim.

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