Mt. Gulg (Day 201)

I have vanquished the first two of the Four Fiends of Final Fantasy. To be honest, they were not at all challenging. Most of the difficulty in the game lies in getting to the bosses in the first place. To take on Marilith, I needed to traverse the twisting passageways of Mt. Gulg, a volcanic cavern flowing with lava. Fortunately, the lava in the cave only dealt 1 damage per step--with the added benefit of disabling random encounters for as long as I walked on the lava. It felt safer overall to just trudge through lava, despite how ridiculous the idea seemed at first.

I'm making steady progress for now. I seem to be making a lot more gil than I was before, but it's possible that the prices of subsequent spells will simply skyrocket. The level 5 spells were 20000 gil apiece, which would have seemed ridiculous only a few hours of playtime before--but with enemies just outside the city of Melmond awarding me with around 4000 per encounter, it ended up not being a big deal. It's kind of a bummer that so many of the spells seem to have such limited use. I've never been a big fan of spells that rely on low accuracy to do anything at all, and Final Fantasy has those in great quantities. Quake swallows up enemies, Bind and Stun both paralyze, and Reaper instantly kills foes but rarely works.

Black and white mages do have access to several utility spells that are quite useful, but it would seem it's only necessary to use them for boss fights, which seem to be incredibly infrequent. In about 11 hours of gameplay, I've encountered two major boss fights and two minor ones. The minor boss fights required little else more than simply basic attacking. Against Lich and Marilith I buffed my party with Shield and my warriors with Haste. This part of the game, at least, is fun. Trudging through mazelike caves while battling through countless random encounters is frustrating, but I feel I should be used to it by now after playing dozens of games with these exact mechanics. Final Fantasy was a very early example of this kind of gameplay.

I suspect I'm getting close to being able to promote my classes. Surprisingly, I've made more progress into the game than I ever have before. After years and years of owning Final Fantasy Origins, I've finally actually made progress. If I can complete these first two games in the Final Fantasy series I will have satisfied this obsessive compulsive tendency of mine--and I can go back to playing Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Are there other games in the series I should try to tackle? Final Fantasy II is obviously my next project, but what of Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest? Although I've played it, I don't recall ever finishing it. It's not a good game by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it would be interesting to attempt. I also still need to play Final Fantasy IV: The After Years and Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. I'll probably end up playing none of these until much later, of course. My plans always end up unraveling.