Yay, more teleport stones!!

Have not played for quite a while but geez, incredible that some of you guys are level 90+ already and still discover tough enemies...

Yeah, I don't know why he keeps giving us these things when it's pretty clear that he's got far better stuff stashed away (example: Serpentarius, Gemsteel, etc..)

Nabreus Deadlands + Embroidered Tippet made 50s-70s completely forgettable, and if you're really persistent you could go all the way to 80, but I went off to do hunts and leveled a bit faster.

Oh, and I shared that same sentiment with you when I first into the second part of the Henne Mines (speak with Yugelu, to the south of the item shop in Jahara after you have 10 Espers so he can open the way). They're level 62-65, but they're brutal. As I mentioned up there, Abysteels leech an ungodly amount of health and they often come in pairs or groups of 3. Maybe it was just me, but they also seem to have a much larger awareness range, since many will come for pretty far off to defend an ally.

Gizamaluks are often (actually, always) found duking it out with a bunch of Abysteels. This is good for you, since all the enemies are at least 1/4 of the way dead and a nicely placed Scathe or two will take down the weakest ones.

Hecteyes are just fucking horrible. It's like all the irritating shit about Malboros and Flans all mixed together. They spam Mithril Bubbles and Thundaga, you don't ever fight one alone and they're often accompanied by a pair of Abysteels. ....Yeah, it gets pretty hairy in those situations. My advice is not to cast spells or you'll end up in "WAIT" hell, while the bats suck you dry.

Etems (there's an accented e there), are the ultimate ghost creature it seems. They pull every trick in the book from all the others you've faced. Annul, Death, Darkga, frequent warping to provide themselves with temporary invulnerability. They do drop a new book though, those have always interested me due to the descriptions given of the item. Their's is the Orgain-Mille.

I heard you can get a Zodiac Escutcheon in here, along with a few other rare items (Ensanguined Shield) and the few chests I encountered came up with 1 gil, which seems code for "I have something very rare but you have to keep trying" in this game.

The last thing I did though was save and then go and try out my new Esper's technicks/limits/etc..

Zodiark - Final Eclipse (Trigger: Easy as hell, Summoner must be in Petrify condition)
Just summon him, and cast Break on whomever summoned him and his bar will automatically start readying him for Final Eclipse. Basically, it's some ridiculously grandoise attack. It starts off with a black and white full moon ocean scene. Zodiark jumps up at the moon and splashes into the water, and a few moments later a giant egg pops up and comes up into the sky. This egg cracks revealing ole Z with enormous leather (black) and feather (white) wings.

The next part is confusing, but he flys up into the sky and does what my limited vocabulary would label a "sunburst" while spreading his wings and he's enveloped in fire. While like this he flies off into space, through an asteroid field/belt with flaming wings and tail behind him and you can see the enemy as a little speck. Some spiraling upwards and a sharp slam into the enemy causes a good bit of special effect destruction and finally white out.

Trust me, it's far better than it sounds. Amazing that I've gone from hating the little bastard for all that trouble, to actually thinking it's pretty cool. He uses different spells based on an enemy's weakness, but sticks to the highest level magic (Scathe, Shock, Scourge, Flare, etc..). I was in Ozmone Plain just coming out of Jahara when a snake came around and he promptly hit it with Banishing Ray (Holy) and the pack of Black Chocobos with Scathe. That's when I decided to see his special.

Oh, damn. I went on for way to long, I'll put up a few brief descriptions of the other ones and their triggers (I'm never going to see Ultima's, damn) tommorow.

Cuchulainn - Blight
Shemhazai - Soul Purge
Famfrit - Tsunami
Chaos - Tornado
Hashmal - ...kept doing Roxxor

LIES. FUCKING LIES. Final Fantasy VI Behemoths stood on their back legs. BACK TO YOUR PSX ERA BULLSHIT WITH YOU.

Actually I just remembered that King Behemoths in FFX could stand on their back legs too :D

I don't remember any Behemoths in FFVI :(

LURK MOAR.

Behemoths guard relm/shadow upon their re-aquisition in the cave after the world goes kaboom. You can also fight them in a few other areas.

Fucking bullshit
 

So, I saved my game in the rest area of the highwaste, only to now find that I cannot load my game. I swear to God, if my save is corrupted, I'm going on a shooting spree. It says that the file has been loaded successfully, but the game never loads.

I'm so pissed right now. All of that time spent leveling, all of those marks hunted, 70 hours put into the game and I'm not even halfway through, and then everything fails.

Holy shit, damn man. I've heard about this happening to a few people, but it always seems to strike well into the game (not just an hour or two in).

No worries. I'm going start a new game, then use a cheating device to give myself the same levels, armor and weapons that I had before, and then speedrun my way back to where I was. It shouldn't take too long. The only reason I logged 70 hours is from all of the leveling up. Just running through back to where I was should only take a few hours tops. What really pisses me off is losing all of my mark hunts and clan ranking. I worked damn hard killing some of those guys.

http://www.videogamesprites.net/Fina...s/Behemoth.gif

Roar says Mr. Behemoth! And such.

I leave for a week and you all talk about areas I haven't been to, yet. :(

Anyway, since finals are going to be over very soon, and I don't have (much) homework yet, I'm going to be popping in FFXII again either late tonight/early tomorrow, so I can get to Giruvegan already.

From when you are you supposed to enter the Feywood until the end, can anyone simply tell me how many hours or so left until I beat the game, assuming I ignore all else henceforth? I am trying to gauge whether or not I'm at the end or not, as I am having trouble figuring it out.

About five or six hours, probably.

I just finished it myself. Some comments: the music in this game was terrible (not really, but virtually no songs came even close to IX or X; not even mentioning VII), and I seriously don't know who decided it would be a good idea to let Sakimoto compose it. That man has never created a fun, interesting song in his life. Also, there were obviously some problems with pacing and expanding upon the relationship between the main characters (though it's great that there was no lame romance plot), but everything else was mostly great (dialogue/translation, voice actors, the supporting cast), and technically it was flawless, as far as PS2 goes.

I probably wouldn't name it my favourite Final Fantasy (that's still IX), and considering its differences from the past games, I dunno if it would even be fair to compare. All in all I'm still a bit undecided as to what I think about this game, but at the very least it was not disappointing, just a bit... directionless in some areas. Though considering the development issues, that was to be expected. I guess now we just have to wait for XIII, though I'm afraid that since Tetsuya Nomura is involved, the main character will be some faggot again. Who knows.

I didn't like the music much at first, but the more I played, the more I liked it. They certainly fit the locations they play in, although they're not the type of music that I'd listen to outside of the game.

As of right now, FFXII is my favourite PS2 game. I don't have many PS2 games, so I guess that's not really surprising. There's loads of things to like about it. Unfortunately, I like it more than FFVIII, but FFVIII's FMVs are still more memorable for me, and Squall's still my favourite character.

I'm looking forward to FFXIII now, but I doubt I'll ever be getting a PS3 anytime soon. Instead, I'll get the DS game instead.

That is just so wrong on so many levels. Sakimoto's work is utterly brilliant.

HORSE DEAD. BEATINGS EVERYWHERE.

Did you save just soley on one card and one save file? Shit, now I'm glad I've saved on two seperate cards, and like over 70 some save files, 50 on one and 20 on the other, JUST IN CASE.

I believe I just threw up in my mouth a little.

I finished Japanese version and USA version and not even once I had experienced such problem, and I was saving a LOT! So I don't really know what can cause such problems.

One save file, and one card. The save file itself doesn't seem to be corrupted. I noticed that the CD itself is riddled with scratches and gouges. Somehow, my PS2 scratched the hell out of my nice collector's edition CD. I am going to aquire a new CD and see if it fixes the problem.

Also: I started a new game, and it crashed hard when I tried to fill in a license panel, leading me to believe it might be the CD and/or game programming itself.

And: Just for safety's sake, I went out and bought a codebreaker and a usb drive today and backed up all of my save files. I should have done this a long time ago.

Since no one is talking about it at the album comments...I was curious about something. Exactly which songs are the new composers, and which are Uematsu's? Chudah's site didn't exactly help in deciphering what was what.

I thought you knew ages ago? Anyway, you liked FFVIII though, right?

I HEART FFVIII. There. I said it, and I'm not taking it back!

Sucks that your file got corrupted like that, Piccy. I hope it doesn't happen to me.

I concur. It seems a lot of people aren't able to appreciate the complexities of his music. I think FFXII's music fit the game better than any FF score has since VI.

Well, I'm thinking about what I should do since I beat the Shadowseer yesterday. Montblanc won't give me any more marks, the hunt board says "all the marks on the board have already been dispatched" and I've gotten all the Espers. My guess is that I have to beat the Hell Wyrm to get him to give me the Yiazmat hunt.

Oh, and before all that I thought I'd keep myself busy by making the Tournesol. But I damn near fainted (not really) when I read what I need:

• Empyreal Soul x 3
• Gemsteel x 3
• Serpentarius x 3

And to make the above you need:

Empyreal Soul

• High Arcana x 1
• Soul Powder x 1
• War God's Band x 2

Gemsteel

• Damascus Steel x 2
• Hell Gate's Flame x 2
• Scarletite

Serpentarius

• Serpent Eye x 2
• Snake Skin x 4
• High Arcana

High Arcana

• Arcana x 10
• Feystone x 1
• Soul of Thamasa x 1

Damn. Looks like I better get to it.

As far as I recall, Uematsu only composed "Kiss Me Goodbye."

Almost all of the tracks should be done by Hitoshi Sakimoto.

Wierd. I actually loved nearly all the music so far in the game (barring the theme for Lowtown...ugh). It is very FF Tactics-esque. Although it does seem as though there are a lot less "theme" type songs, and more background-style music that is just there to enhance the play rather than stick out in your head.

This game definately felt more like you were just there and the world was unfolding regardless of you, rather than your characters driving the plot single-handedly. I'm unsure yet how much I like it, but it is a nice change of pace.

The voice acting was amazingly well done, although some characters needed a bit more to them. Of course I'm not completely done yet...on my way to the Deadlands, so maybe more gets told from there.

Gameplay wise, I love the near lack of mini-games. It makes the game flow a lot better. I do hate the license board though. It would have been better if it had limited how many license points you could put into the board per character, so that you could make the characters more varied from each other, rather than just enabling all the characters to be able to get everything by accumulating enough points. Or if you wanted to expand upon the license idea, make it so that you have to do something to "earn" a license to use something. I thought it was silly to buy the ability to use this set of armor and then buy another ability to use the next set of armor or weapons ad nauseum. Limit the skill points ala Diablo II for the actual abilities for characters and maybe earn licenses for a set of weapons/armor/magic style etc. Hindsight is 20/20 though...

Quickenings were a bad idea. They should have eliminated them altogether, or make them unchoosable attacks that "might" occur if you are in the critical condition rather than tie them to MP. Summons should have been reworked as well, either making the summons able to level up to grow in power, or change the way they worked (making them an uber-"magic" spell of old).

Gambits were beautifully done. A very well thought out idea that made the game flow well for battles. And you could control how much or how little you wanted them to impact your game.

Overall, I would rate this around my third or fourth favorite FF so far. We'll see as time goes on. Although, I still have no desire for FFXIII yet. Nothing about that game makes me want to play it...

Yeah, the licence board was not that great. It virtually made all the characters expendable; I had to roll my eyes when, near the end of the game, Basch was still speaking about how he's protecting the princess. With your level 16, you're not protecting anyone, buddy. http://forumimages.somethingawful.co.../emot-cawg.gif

Also, it would be cool if you could at least wear a freaking hat without a licence; instead, gaining the licence for it should give some added bonus. Like, you can always wear any accessory, but a specific accessory that absorbs Holy would only work 50% of the time without a licence. Same with armour or weapons -- you can probably at least try to swing any sword, but if you haven't mastered the licence, the damage would be lower and you would miss more often. Etc. Something like that. The way the licence system worked in this game didn't bother me very much, but it sure was weird.

I agree that the soundtrack sucked. The only good songs were not composed by Sakimoto, but oh well, you can always mute the TV (?) It's awesome that some people who started four weeks after me already finished the game, I must be terribly slow.

By the way, an excellent place to level up if you're level 50~60+ would be

I gained like three levels per hour.