- Joined
- Jun 27, 2014
Final Fantasy 1 is one of my favorite RPGs. I played the original ages ago and it wound up dominating parts of my childhood. Into adulthood, I got more into taking the game apart, then putting it back together again via coding tools, and eventually, with the later-gen ports of the PSX version, I began to play this old classic in a new way: A way that's stupid enough, and I hope, entertaining enough, to share with you all.
I call this way to play the Level 11 Challenge Run.
The Level 11 Challenge Run is a very simple but very interesting way to play this game on all later versions of the game. It is possible on the PSX version (from Final Fantasy Origins) and the re-releases based on its code (Dawn of Souls on GBA, FF1 Anniversary Edition on PSP, and the Mobile Port). The idea is that you class change as early in your characters' career as possible (ideally, Level 11, hence the name), allowing you to maximize stat growth for your characters and also subjecting yourself to some of the hardest shit oldschool games are capable of force-feeding you.
To do it, you run from every non-boss encounter. This is a true test of your skills and mastery of the game, because you need to farm treasure (since you can't just grind) and make the most of what the game presents to you. Shit you tend to overlook in regular gameplay becomes absolutely vital in the Challenge Run. Every single gil counts. Every bit of free treasure is like an angel's kiss. It's an amazing accomplishment if you pull it off.
This is hard as hell, but there's ways to make it easier. In the Dawn of Souls and Anniversary Edition versions of the game, you can exploit the 15 puzzle for treasures that can be very helpful (most notably, White Curtains). You can't do this in the PSX and Mobile versions, so whether you can pull the run off sometimes will boil down to pluck (and luck). However, I've done it in every version of the game after Origins, so I was pretty confident that means I stormed every single FF game so far.
....And then the Pixel Remaster of FF1 came out, which uses an entirely different engine. Most people were probably just glad to get their hands on a spicy new version of FF1 to play, especially since it seemed it was gonna be a little different than the usual fare, but meanwhile, I was wondering if it was possible to do the equivalent of a Level 11 Challenge Run on it.
So, very inebriated, our resident asshat who some-the-times reviews shitty games bought the thing and gathered some heroes for a good ol' adventure.
This screenshot's from a bit later in the run, but fuck it, I forgot to take a screenshot earlier on.
Leading right in, I decided to go with a team of Kiwis I could trust, and I asked myself: "If I had to adventure with a series of people that I would likely be murdered alongside, which ones would I choose?" The answer there is "a sizable chunk of the forum," but in the end I went with fan favorites @Coldgrip, @Randall Fragg, and @lolwut. Together with me, we would adventure on into glory, Autism, and possibly an adequate lesson in why I should research shit better before I decide: "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."
I decided to go with my favorite party config of FF1: Warrior, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage. Coldgrip was our frontline, Randall our dashing rogue, Lolwut our plucky healer who may or may not be harboring a tragic secret, and I was the guy who was picking up class features like a drunk guy creating a sandwich (whatever's in the fridge, OK).
Our team created, it was time to begin. If nothing else, I knew this one would be short because I can speedrun a Level 11 run on the GBA version in about 6 hours.
I hope you enjoy it.
PART ONE - TROUBLE BREWING:
So we're off! We watch the prologue (which can't be skipped; good job, buckos) and embark on our first mission, which is to save the Princess of Corneria, who was abducted by the Fallen Knight Garland. I've done this a billion times.
We go to the Temple of Chaos, raid it for goodies before fighting Garland, yadda yadda yadda.
Things take an abrupt turn when I realize the first major difference between this game and the earlier remakes: Casting in FF1PR is Vancian. For those who don't watch @Adamska and company's Dice Scum streams (fix that, ya nerds) this means that instead of MP to manage when casting spells, your characters get a certain number of spells per level per day, akin to D&D. This means that you get way less spells than in the previous remakes. This could be a problem, since the game is basically mandating that I use my spells sparingly. Some boss fights in the last remakes were basically only possible because of being able to repeatedly buff allies or debuff enemies. Undaunted, a short trip further in yielded a second problem.
The enemy encounter rate is way higher in the Pixel Remaster - nearly Breath of Fire 2 level. It's also much more willing to throw the hardest enemies in an area your way, as evidenced by this Werewolf encounter. They're also harder to escape. This could be a trouble.
Fighting Garland, he's a bit tougher than previous. He's also immune to most status effects, which means putting him to sleep and kicking his ass isn't an option anymore. That said, he still goes down in short order. He also drops a Longsword, which is a gigantic weapon upgrade for this early in the game and goes right on Coldgrip. Unfortunately, it's here we run into problem number 3.
See, in the remakes, the Red Mage got a nerf bat smack because he could do basically a bit of everything in the original FF1. These nerfings took two forms - an indirect nerf brought about by the fact that magic now properly scales with level, and a direct one, in which the Red Mage's HP growth was severely hamstrung. He had only a 5% chance per level (outside of levels where the RM has guaranteed strong HP growth) of getting a decent amount of HP. After our first battle, Jaimas having an HP count of 32 compared to his teammates having ones twice as high meant that we were staring down the barrel of a character who was going to struggle. At this point I could have restarted, and not taken the Red Mage, perhaps bringing a Black Mage instead, but I'm a persistent old coot and I decided to play it where it lies and see where that brought us. Having gotten the bridge fixed, we cross and encounter another unskippable cutscene.
Our next destination is Pravoka, the port city, which is overrun by pirates. It's also the part where if Jaimas didn't get a decent HP Boost, I was ready to restart.
The pirates aren't tough, but they can do a lot of damage if they gang up on one party member. The sleep spell utterly trivializes an already fairly easy fight, if you have it. Even if you don't, this one won't take long.
Deciding to finally get his fucking head in the game, Jaimas gains a strong HP stat-up. Crisis averted. Now let's see if our luck holds.
PART TWO - GAY AND UNREALISTIC CHALLENGE:
The second part of the game after Pravoka is going to Elfheim and saving their prince. A witch named Matoya can save him, but she wants her eye back first. The Old King of Elfheim has it, but the old fuck wants favors for favors and he's demanding the return of the Elfheim crown, stolen by some prick named Astos. So we go to the Swamp Cave to get it back.
I admit to being worried at this point. The encounter rate is fucking ridiculous, and those low-damage hits Coldgrip keeps taking add up over time. A much bigger problem, however, is shit like this:
Half of the fucking encounters in this shithole are with poisonous monsters, and poison basically means "fuck it, we're starting over, because Antidotes are expensive." This is on top of the problems of increased encounter rates and difficulty fleeing, and then for shits and giggles, the game throws ambushes:
Fucking hell.
Soonafter, I get the Broadsword, a decent weapon for Jaimas (Randall can't use it). I finish raiding the various goodies the Marsh Cave offers, and then proceed to the boss tile in front of the chest, only to encounter..... Nothing. No encounter tile. What sorcery is this?
Well, shit gets real when I open the chest, and it's a Monster-in-a-Box. FF1PR changes up how encounters work. Scripted encounters are now properly scripted, and cannot be run from. Even worse, all the scripted encounters are now locked encounters, so gone are the days with enemy formations that could change. The guardian of the crown? Four fucking Piscodemons. In the earlier versions of the game, this could be anywhere from two to four of the things. Now, it's 100% of the time four of them.
....And that means the run is over. Piscodemons can deal so much damage to our team that they can one-shot everyone but Coldgrip and maybe Jaimas due to his armor. Two of them can butt-fuck a party sideways (with tentacles) if things go bad, but are beatable. Four is basically death. There's no way to get better gear or more items, and no way to beat that many Piscodemons. However, it's at this point that I realized something.
Earlier, when exploring the area, I realized that the game queues encounters via a rotational script. If you were to encounter Enemy X, in location Y, and were ambushed, then loaded a save and went back to location Y, you would get ambushed by Enemy X again. The exception is if you beat/ran from the encounter and then reloaded the save, as this would clear the queue and generate a new enemy encounter with new parameters.
This gave me an idea. I got into encounters around the box intentionally, before saving and going after the box again. Finally, on my third attempt, RNGesus smiled upon me.
I got a Pre-emptive attack.
Throwing everything at these Squidhumpers, I had Jaimas go down quick, but it was after he buffed Coldgrip and turned him into a murder machine. Randall went on item duty as Lolwut did everything to keep our squad alive. The following round, Randall revived Jaimas with a Phoenix Down, and our team sealed the deal.
So to writ: a borderline impossible-to-beat-for-a-low-level-run encounter couldn't stop me. We're off to a good start.
The Crown was ours!
We just needed to get the fuck out of the Marsh Cave now. A few minutes later, we were free, had used a Tent, and were well on our way back to the ruined castle to give the Old King back his crown.
The dude was Astos, of course.
After that shit with the fucking Piscodemons, I expected this boss to turn our assholes into No-Man's-Land. After all, he is legitimately the hardest early boss in the originals. Armed with multiple powerful spells, including Death, and every tier-2 damage spell, his battle has a tendency to turn into a glass cannon bout; kill him fast or fucking die. He tends to cast debuffs more now but has the same spells in practice.
Naturally given the challenge of this, Lolwut lands Silence on his stupid ass at the start of the fight, and prevents Astos from doing anything for the rest of it while the rest of the team kicks his ass, turning the entire thing into a farce.
Next stop, wrapping up Elfheim. We raid almost every single treasure box we can, and it's here that I run into another major snag with a curve-ball this game throws.
Do you remember how for the Piscodemons, they removed the encounter tile, and instead they made it a monster-in-a-box? They did that for most encounter tiles in the Pixel Remake. What this means is that a ton of treasure you'd normally be able to snag, including a Silver Armlet and a fuckton of Gil, is now completely inacessible, because it would push you upwards via inescapable encounters. This dramatically cuts down how much gear we're able to acquire for the next section, which means a hard part of the game just got even harder.
Why not.
With the Nitro Powder we can blow open the rock ledge and access the outer sea for the first time.
We are approaching the hardest part of the Run.
PART THREE - IN WHICH TREASURE STARVATION BEGINS:
One of the early treasure rooms is filled with monster-in-a-boxes, which pisses me off because there's like 5000 Gil in here we can't get and could really use.
The Cavern of Earth hangs tough. A jaggedy-rock-filled hellhole with the toughest monsters yet, and we're now grossly under-equipped because the Monster-in-a-Boxes have cut off a critical source of Gil we'd be using to upgrade. Hot times. All I can do at this point is pray the enemy hits Coldgrip or Jaimas and keep manning the retreat command.
We head forward, and we're making good time. I don't think we're going to have too much trouble with the boss. Now we just need--
God damn it.
All right, so in the original game and its follow-ups, these fuckers were here as normal enemies. Unfortunately, even in the remakes, these fuckers can't be run from. Running into them is not quite as suicidal as my run-in with them at the Marsh Cave, but what can we do once we do so?
Well, the devs were kind enough to make them escapable in this version only. So there's that.
Another likely monster-in-a-box. I ain't fooled. Unfortunately, when I leave the room....
STOP
Finally, I reach the boss of this fucking area, the Vampire.
Despite allegedly being the reason the Earth is rotting, the Vampire doesn't exactly strike one as intimidating. Be cautious, though: This fucker hits like a truck, but has low HP. Unfortunately for him, Lolwut has his number.
See, the Vampire is Undead, which means Dia family spells damage him. Lolwut kicks out the magical jams, channels the power of the Pear Gods, and makes him Taste the Rainbow. Meanwhile, Coldgrip, Jaimas, and Randall kick the ever-loving shit out of him.
He goes down in two turns. We can't go forward, so we collect an item from his room that we need (The Star Ruby) and trudge back to the surfac--
I run into this encounter five times in a row on the way back out, and I'm pretty sure I was getting ready to throw my desk chair.
Our team takes a nap and goes to the Cave of Giants next.
The Stone Giant lets us pass if we bribe him with a snack. The ruby will do. We then raid the small treasury for some gear for Coldgrip and then we make our way to Sadda's place.
Sadda explains that the Vampire was just the minion of the real evil rotting the world. To get to this enemy, we'll need to use a special tool (the Earth Rod) to break open his crypt and go after him. He gives us the Rod. However, before we do that, we have a very long, but very important detour to make, despite it being dangerous.
See, one reason you need the Gil as much as you do is to buy equipment. Armor is the big important one here, and it's pricey. We got so starved for cash, however, that I can't even buy a Mythril Sword. I'm stuck using the Great Axe on Coldgrip. However, there is one item coming up so important that we need to come here, to Crescent Lake.
And Crescent Lake has even tougher monsters around it than the Cavern of Earth. But here - and only here - is where you can buy the Buckler. It's a small shield that costs a shockingly high 2000 Gil. Why the fuck is it so expensive?
Because it's the only shield the Thief and Red Mage can use, aside from the Cloak of Protection (a literal endgame item), and it gives them a block chance. That block chance is a gigantic increase in survivability. I'm also able to buy a single Silver Armlet at Melmond. Everything else goes to medicine. Lolwut's getting stuck with low defense and our best weapons are the Coral Sword, Wyrmkiller, and Great Axe right now, so the way I see it, we're gonna succeed or not.
Humorously, Ethers do exist in this game. They restore one use for every spell level. That actually makes them stronger than the remake version. We buy two just in case.
Back to the Cavern of Earth.
We take a nap in a bedroll and then proceed deeper in. Enemy opposition is getting worse but we finally get to B5F.
After about fifty squillion more encounters with fucking Piscodemons, we finally reach the apex: The hardest fight of the run.
Lich is a game-ender for a Level 11 Challenge Run normally. Any of his powerful elemental spells can obliterate the party if they don't have the proper counterspells up, he hits terrifyingly hard, he buffs himself, he debuffs the party, and he can cause paralysis on hitting you. In a Level 11 Challenge Run normally, Lich is easily the hardest boss because you can't possibly have Nulfrost at this point, so his Blizzara spell is a one-shot. It's still a one-shot in the Pixel Remake, but due to the Vancian casting system, you learn higher level spells earlier, so Lolwut has Nulfrost.
The problem comes in with the fact that Lich has had his AI tweaked. In the original, Lich followed a spell pattern: Blizzara → Sleepra → Haste → Thundara → Hold → Fira → Slow → Sleep. He would interrupt it only to do melee attacks, and would continue the pattern on the following turn unless he decided to melee you again.
....In the Pixel Remake, he chooses his actions at random. Good news is that he can spend four turns spamming Sleepra. Bad news is that he can fire off Blizzara, Fira, and/or Thundara turn after turn after turn. And that is exactly what happens the first few times I try to fight his ass. Thankfully, on my third attempt, we get a good start, and then our entire team cuts loose. Jaimas bolsters the team's attack before unleashing Fira. Lolwut provides counterspells, then spams Dia when it's out of uses. Randall heals the team with items and does shockingly high damage when meleeing Lich.
About seven turns later, he goes down, and we've beaten the hardest battle of the original Level 11 Run.
We restore light to the crystal, and we go back to Crescent Lake.
Back at Crescent Lake, we visit the Circle of Sages, which serve as the plot dump and exposition squad. One of these bastards gives you the Canoe if Lich has been beaten though, and this allows you to cross rivers.
While we're here, we stock up on items and take a nap. We're gonna need it.
Our next destination is the Citadel of Trials. Normally, you'd do this after Gulg Volcano, but if you're trying a Challenge Run like ours, you do it now.
The Citadel is a teleport maze, and once again, there's great items I can't touch because of Monster-in-a-Boxes.
Thankfully, there's also even better items that aren't in those, but we'll get to it.
The random encounters here are fucking murderous. Powerful undead, devastating creatures that can kill you or petrify you if they touch you, and more.
And these fuckers are high-level, so they're hard to escape from. Soonafter, we run into another area an Encounter Tile used to be.
It's an inescapable encounter this time, so we need to break through. Two Nightmares. They hit hard but aren't super dangerous compare to the other monsters that hang out around this area (which can kill you very fast).
The chests give Lolwut a fantastic piece of armor, though, and give Coldgrip a literal cold grip to kill enemies with. Now we're much stronger.
We obtain the rat tail and fight another scripted encounter: Two Zombie Dragons. They paralyze Coldgrip, but Jaimas' fire spells, Lolwut's Diara, and Randall's Wyrmkiller sword finish them off rather quickly despite their high damage output.
By this point, my estimates are that the minimum level you can beat this challenge run at is Level 13 or so.
Our next stop is the Ice Cavern, which is the last dungeon we need to complete for this run. Normally, I consider this the calm after the storm. Good fucking luck with that notion in this run.
The trip to the Cavern is fucking brutalizing, and the river monsters are extrremely strong. The White Croc can one-shot any party member but Coldgrip, and the Pirahnas can do heavy damage too. We run into a lot of these clowns. Eventually, we reach the Ice Cavern.
The Ice Cavern has vicious enemies who will absolutely murder your ass. These aren't so bad individually....
.....Then I run into two White Dragons that Ambush and kill me instantly, forcing me to reload a save.
The Ice Cave is sparkly as hell, and the music is catchy, but good god, the encounter rate hurts. And again, Monster-in-a-Boxes are everywhere, so I can't just secure more resources.
This room has the Levistone we need, but we need to come back from above to get it.
The Flame Sword is found here though, and that's a fantastic weapon. It goes on Jaimas for now.
Jumping through the crack brings me face to face with this guy. I'm gonna have to fight him twice, due to the layout, and both times are mandatory.
Nothing we can't handle.
The sharp ice spikes cause damage when crossed. Once again, I must fight all my instincts and not go treasure hunting.
We jump down the hole and fight the evil eye. He lasts one round. We then get the Levistone and jump back down the next set of holes.
These assholes again. We beat 'em and move on. We're almost done. We just need to escape now. The only thing to do is make it ou--
....Well, that's a game over.
I reload, go through the process again, and this time escape with the Levistone, though I have more than a few close shaves.
Really close shaves. But we make it and we rest outside in a cabin.
The run is basically done by now. All we need to do is get the last piece of the puzzle.
Our heroes bring the Levistone to the Ryukahn Desert.
With this, we can go to the Carida Islands and finally visit Bahamut.
No enemies. No bullshit.
Bahamut gives us our class change, and the run is complete.
It wasn't quite a Level 11 Challenge, but good fucking god was this an order of magnitude tougher. It almost feels like parts of the game were specifically redesigned to prevent assholes like me from doing runs like this, with how many things they did to thwart low-level runs. That trap with the Piscodemons very nearly ended the run, but perseverence and a knowledge of the game mechanics ultimately saw our heroes through.
In the end, I hope you enjoyed this fucking shambles as I attempted to force a game to play by my rules despite it doing its level best to prevent me from doing so.
It's amazing how different the Pixel Remake is despite being, ostensibly, the same game as the previous versions of FF1. I don't like the derpy "growed up" class change models of the OG NES version, and the Pixel Remake's variant of them doesn't change that opinion much, but a lot of the game is amazing, with really good visual effects, fantastic music (arguably the best remixes of FF1's tunes so far), and a shocking amount done to tighten up the game experience. If you're a fan of the original and you want something to fart around with to try something new, it won't disappoint, especially if you have a taste for the classics.
As for our heroes? They'll be going back to all the areas where they used to run from the monsters and promptly going ham on them in retaliation for all the bullying.
I call this way to play the Level 11 Challenge Run.
The Level 11 Challenge Run is a very simple but very interesting way to play this game on all later versions of the game. It is possible on the PSX version (from Final Fantasy Origins) and the re-releases based on its code (Dawn of Souls on GBA, FF1 Anniversary Edition on PSP, and the Mobile Port). The idea is that you class change as early in your characters' career as possible (ideally, Level 11, hence the name), allowing you to maximize stat growth for your characters and also subjecting yourself to some of the hardest shit oldschool games are capable of force-feeding you.
To do it, you run from every non-boss encounter. This is a true test of your skills and mastery of the game, because you need to farm treasure (since you can't just grind) and make the most of what the game presents to you. Shit you tend to overlook in regular gameplay becomes absolutely vital in the Challenge Run. Every single gil counts. Every bit of free treasure is like an angel's kiss. It's an amazing accomplishment if you pull it off.
This is hard as hell, but there's ways to make it easier. In the Dawn of Souls and Anniversary Edition versions of the game, you can exploit the 15 puzzle for treasures that can be very helpful (most notably, White Curtains). You can't do this in the PSX and Mobile versions, so whether you can pull the run off sometimes will boil down to pluck (and luck). However, I've done it in every version of the game after Origins, so I was pretty confident that means I stormed every single FF game so far.
....And then the Pixel Remaster of FF1 came out, which uses an entirely different engine. Most people were probably just glad to get their hands on a spicy new version of FF1 to play, especially since it seemed it was gonna be a little different than the usual fare, but meanwhile, I was wondering if it was possible to do the equivalent of a Level 11 Challenge Run on it.
So, very inebriated, our resident asshat who some-the-times reviews shitty games bought the thing and gathered some heroes for a good ol' adventure.
This screenshot's from a bit later in the run, but fuck it, I forgot to take a screenshot earlier on.
Leading right in, I decided to go with a team of Kiwis I could trust, and I asked myself: "If I had to adventure with a series of people that I would likely be murdered alongside, which ones would I choose?" The answer there is "a sizable chunk of the forum," but in the end I went with fan favorites @Coldgrip, @Randall Fragg, and @lolwut. Together with me, we would adventure on into glory, Autism, and possibly an adequate lesson in why I should research shit better before I decide: "Yeah, that sounds like a great idea."
I decided to go with my favorite party config of FF1: Warrior, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage. Coldgrip was our frontline, Randall our dashing rogue, Lolwut our plucky healer who may or may not be harboring a tragic secret, and I was the guy who was picking up class features like a drunk guy creating a sandwich (whatever's in the fridge, OK).
Our team created, it was time to begin. If nothing else, I knew this one would be short because I can speedrun a Level 11 run on the GBA version in about 6 hours.
I hope you enjoy it.
PART ONE - TROUBLE BREWING:
So we're off! We watch the prologue (which can't be skipped; good job, buckos) and embark on our first mission, which is to save the Princess of Corneria, who was abducted by the Fallen Knight Garland. I've done this a billion times.
We go to the Temple of Chaos, raid it for goodies before fighting Garland, yadda yadda yadda.
Things take an abrupt turn when I realize the first major difference between this game and the earlier remakes: Casting in FF1PR is Vancian. For those who don't watch @Adamska and company's Dice Scum streams (fix that, ya nerds) this means that instead of MP to manage when casting spells, your characters get a certain number of spells per level per day, akin to D&D. This means that you get way less spells than in the previous remakes. This could be a problem, since the game is basically mandating that I use my spells sparingly. Some boss fights in the last remakes were basically only possible because of being able to repeatedly buff allies or debuff enemies. Undaunted, a short trip further in yielded a second problem.
The enemy encounter rate is way higher in the Pixel Remaster - nearly Breath of Fire 2 level. It's also much more willing to throw the hardest enemies in an area your way, as evidenced by this Werewolf encounter. They're also harder to escape. This could be a trouble.
Fighting Garland, he's a bit tougher than previous. He's also immune to most status effects, which means putting him to sleep and kicking his ass isn't an option anymore. That said, he still goes down in short order. He also drops a Longsword, which is a gigantic weapon upgrade for this early in the game and goes right on Coldgrip. Unfortunately, it's here we run into problem number 3.
See, in the remakes, the Red Mage got a nerf bat smack because he could do basically a bit of everything in the original FF1. These nerfings took two forms - an indirect nerf brought about by the fact that magic now properly scales with level, and a direct one, in which the Red Mage's HP growth was severely hamstrung. He had only a 5% chance per level (outside of levels where the RM has guaranteed strong HP growth) of getting a decent amount of HP. After our first battle, Jaimas having an HP count of 32 compared to his teammates having ones twice as high meant that we were staring down the barrel of a character who was going to struggle. At this point I could have restarted, and not taken the Red Mage, perhaps bringing a Black Mage instead, but I'm a persistent old coot and I decided to play it where it lies and see where that brought us. Having gotten the bridge fixed, we cross and encounter another unskippable cutscene.
Our next destination is Pravoka, the port city, which is overrun by pirates. It's also the part where if Jaimas didn't get a decent HP Boost, I was ready to restart.
The pirates aren't tough, but they can do a lot of damage if they gang up on one party member. The sleep spell utterly trivializes an already fairly easy fight, if you have it. Even if you don't, this one won't take long.
Deciding to finally get his fucking head in the game, Jaimas gains a strong HP stat-up. Crisis averted. Now let's see if our luck holds.
PART TWO - GAY AND UNREALISTIC CHALLENGE:
The second part of the game after Pravoka is going to Elfheim and saving their prince. A witch named Matoya can save him, but she wants her eye back first. The Old King of Elfheim has it, but the old fuck wants favors for favors and he's demanding the return of the Elfheim crown, stolen by some prick named Astos. So we go to the Swamp Cave to get it back.
I admit to being worried at this point. The encounter rate is fucking ridiculous, and those low-damage hits Coldgrip keeps taking add up over time. A much bigger problem, however, is shit like this:
Half of the fucking encounters in this shithole are with poisonous monsters, and poison basically means "fuck it, we're starting over, because Antidotes are expensive." This is on top of the problems of increased encounter rates and difficulty fleeing, and then for shits and giggles, the game throws ambushes:
Fucking hell.
Soonafter, I get the Broadsword, a decent weapon for Jaimas (Randall can't use it). I finish raiding the various goodies the Marsh Cave offers, and then proceed to the boss tile in front of the chest, only to encounter..... Nothing. No encounter tile. What sorcery is this?
Well, shit gets real when I open the chest, and it's a Monster-in-a-Box. FF1PR changes up how encounters work. Scripted encounters are now properly scripted, and cannot be run from. Even worse, all the scripted encounters are now locked encounters, so gone are the days with enemy formations that could change. The guardian of the crown? Four fucking Piscodemons. In the earlier versions of the game, this could be anywhere from two to four of the things. Now, it's 100% of the time four of them.
....And that means the run is over. Piscodemons can deal so much damage to our team that they can one-shot everyone but Coldgrip and maybe Jaimas due to his armor. Two of them can butt-fuck a party sideways (with tentacles) if things go bad, but are beatable. Four is basically death. There's no way to get better gear or more items, and no way to beat that many Piscodemons. However, it's at this point that I realized something.
Earlier, when exploring the area, I realized that the game queues encounters via a rotational script. If you were to encounter Enemy X, in location Y, and were ambushed, then loaded a save and went back to location Y, you would get ambushed by Enemy X again. The exception is if you beat/ran from the encounter and then reloaded the save, as this would clear the queue and generate a new enemy encounter with new parameters.
This gave me an idea. I got into encounters around the box intentionally, before saving and going after the box again. Finally, on my third attempt, RNGesus smiled upon me.
I got a Pre-emptive attack.
Throwing everything at these Squidhumpers, I had Jaimas go down quick, but it was after he buffed Coldgrip and turned him into a murder machine. Randall went on item duty as Lolwut did everything to keep our squad alive. The following round, Randall revived Jaimas with a Phoenix Down, and our team sealed the deal.
So to writ: a borderline impossible-to-beat-for-a-low-level-run encounter couldn't stop me. We're off to a good start.
The Crown was ours!
We just needed to get the fuck out of the Marsh Cave now. A few minutes later, we were free, had used a Tent, and were well on our way back to the ruined castle to give the Old King back his crown.
The dude was Astos, of course.
After that shit with the fucking Piscodemons, I expected this boss to turn our assholes into No-Man's-Land. After all, he is legitimately the hardest early boss in the originals. Armed with multiple powerful spells, including Death, and every tier-2 damage spell, his battle has a tendency to turn into a glass cannon bout; kill him fast or fucking die. He tends to cast debuffs more now but has the same spells in practice.
Naturally given the challenge of this, Lolwut lands Silence on his stupid ass at the start of the fight, and prevents Astos from doing anything for the rest of it while the rest of the team kicks his ass, turning the entire thing into a farce.
Next stop, wrapping up Elfheim. We raid almost every single treasure box we can, and it's here that I run into another major snag with a curve-ball this game throws.
Do you remember how for the Piscodemons, they removed the encounter tile, and instead they made it a monster-in-a-box? They did that for most encounter tiles in the Pixel Remake. What this means is that a ton of treasure you'd normally be able to snag, including a Silver Armlet and a fuckton of Gil, is now completely inacessible, because it would push you upwards via inescapable encounters. This dramatically cuts down how much gear we're able to acquire for the next section, which means a hard part of the game just got even harder.
Why not.
With the Nitro Powder we can blow open the rock ledge and access the outer sea for the first time.
We are approaching the hardest part of the Run.
PART THREE - IN WHICH TREASURE STARVATION BEGINS:
One of the early treasure rooms is filled with monster-in-a-boxes, which pisses me off because there's like 5000 Gil in here we can't get and could really use.
The Cavern of Earth hangs tough. A jaggedy-rock-filled hellhole with the toughest monsters yet, and we're now grossly under-equipped because the Monster-in-a-Boxes have cut off a critical source of Gil we'd be using to upgrade. Hot times. All I can do at this point is pray the enemy hits Coldgrip or Jaimas and keep manning the retreat command.
We head forward, and we're making good time. I don't think we're going to have too much trouble with the boss. Now we just need--
God damn it.
All right, so in the original game and its follow-ups, these fuckers were here as normal enemies. Unfortunately, even in the remakes, these fuckers can't be run from. Running into them is not quite as suicidal as my run-in with them at the Marsh Cave, but what can we do once we do so?
Well, the devs were kind enough to make them escapable in this version only. So there's that.
Another likely monster-in-a-box. I ain't fooled. Unfortunately, when I leave the room....
STOP
Finally, I reach the boss of this fucking area, the Vampire.
Despite allegedly being the reason the Earth is rotting, the Vampire doesn't exactly strike one as intimidating. Be cautious, though: This fucker hits like a truck, but has low HP. Unfortunately for him, Lolwut has his number.
See, the Vampire is Undead, which means Dia family spells damage him. Lolwut kicks out the magical jams, channels the power of the Pear Gods, and makes him Taste the Rainbow. Meanwhile, Coldgrip, Jaimas, and Randall kick the ever-loving shit out of him.
He goes down in two turns. We can't go forward, so we collect an item from his room that we need (The Star Ruby) and trudge back to the surfac--
I run into this encounter five times in a row on the way back out, and I'm pretty sure I was getting ready to throw my desk chair.
Our team takes a nap and goes to the Cave of Giants next.
The Stone Giant lets us pass if we bribe him with a snack. The ruby will do. We then raid the small treasury for some gear for Coldgrip and then we make our way to Sadda's place.
Sadda explains that the Vampire was just the minion of the real evil rotting the world. To get to this enemy, we'll need to use a special tool (the Earth Rod) to break open his crypt and go after him. He gives us the Rod. However, before we do that, we have a very long, but very important detour to make, despite it being dangerous.
See, one reason you need the Gil as much as you do is to buy equipment. Armor is the big important one here, and it's pricey. We got so starved for cash, however, that I can't even buy a Mythril Sword. I'm stuck using the Great Axe on Coldgrip. However, there is one item coming up so important that we need to come here, to Crescent Lake.
And Crescent Lake has even tougher monsters around it than the Cavern of Earth. But here - and only here - is where you can buy the Buckler. It's a small shield that costs a shockingly high 2000 Gil. Why the fuck is it so expensive?
Because it's the only shield the Thief and Red Mage can use, aside from the Cloak of Protection (a literal endgame item), and it gives them a block chance. That block chance is a gigantic increase in survivability. I'm also able to buy a single Silver Armlet at Melmond. Everything else goes to medicine. Lolwut's getting stuck with low defense and our best weapons are the Coral Sword, Wyrmkiller, and Great Axe right now, so the way I see it, we're gonna succeed or not.
Humorously, Ethers do exist in this game. They restore one use for every spell level. That actually makes them stronger than the remake version. We buy two just in case.
Back to the Cavern of Earth.
We take a nap in a bedroll and then proceed deeper in. Enemy opposition is getting worse but we finally get to B5F.
After about fifty squillion more encounters with fucking Piscodemons, we finally reach the apex: The hardest fight of the run.
Lich is a game-ender for a Level 11 Challenge Run normally. Any of his powerful elemental spells can obliterate the party if they don't have the proper counterspells up, he hits terrifyingly hard, he buffs himself, he debuffs the party, and he can cause paralysis on hitting you. In a Level 11 Challenge Run normally, Lich is easily the hardest boss because you can't possibly have Nulfrost at this point, so his Blizzara spell is a one-shot. It's still a one-shot in the Pixel Remake, but due to the Vancian casting system, you learn higher level spells earlier, so Lolwut has Nulfrost.
The problem comes in with the fact that Lich has had his AI tweaked. In the original, Lich followed a spell pattern: Blizzara → Sleepra → Haste → Thundara → Hold → Fira → Slow → Sleep. He would interrupt it only to do melee attacks, and would continue the pattern on the following turn unless he decided to melee you again.
....In the Pixel Remake, he chooses his actions at random. Good news is that he can spend four turns spamming Sleepra. Bad news is that he can fire off Blizzara, Fira, and/or Thundara turn after turn after turn. And that is exactly what happens the first few times I try to fight his ass. Thankfully, on my third attempt, we get a good start, and then our entire team cuts loose. Jaimas bolsters the team's attack before unleashing Fira. Lolwut provides counterspells, then spams Dia when it's out of uses. Randall heals the team with items and does shockingly high damage when meleeing Lich.
About seven turns later, he goes down, and we've beaten the hardest battle of the original Level 11 Run.
We restore light to the crystal, and we go back to Crescent Lake.
Back at Crescent Lake, we visit the Circle of Sages, which serve as the plot dump and exposition squad. One of these bastards gives you the Canoe if Lich has been beaten though, and this allows you to cross rivers.
While we're here, we stock up on items and take a nap. We're gonna need it.
Our next destination is the Citadel of Trials. Normally, you'd do this after Gulg Volcano, but if you're trying a Challenge Run like ours, you do it now.
The Citadel is a teleport maze, and once again, there's great items I can't touch because of Monster-in-a-Boxes.
Thankfully, there's also even better items that aren't in those, but we'll get to it.
The random encounters here are fucking murderous. Powerful undead, devastating creatures that can kill you or petrify you if they touch you, and more.
And these fuckers are high-level, so they're hard to escape from. Soonafter, we run into another area an Encounter Tile used to be.
It's an inescapable encounter this time, so we need to break through. Two Nightmares. They hit hard but aren't super dangerous compare to the other monsters that hang out around this area (which can kill you very fast).
The chests give Lolwut a fantastic piece of armor, though, and give Coldgrip a literal cold grip to kill enemies with. Now we're much stronger.
We obtain the rat tail and fight another scripted encounter: Two Zombie Dragons. They paralyze Coldgrip, but Jaimas' fire spells, Lolwut's Diara, and Randall's Wyrmkiller sword finish them off rather quickly despite their high damage output.
By this point, my estimates are that the minimum level you can beat this challenge run at is Level 13 or so.
Our next stop is the Ice Cavern, which is the last dungeon we need to complete for this run. Normally, I consider this the calm after the storm. Good fucking luck with that notion in this run.
The trip to the Cavern is fucking brutalizing, and the river monsters are extrremely strong. The White Croc can one-shot any party member but Coldgrip, and the Pirahnas can do heavy damage too. We run into a lot of these clowns. Eventually, we reach the Ice Cavern.
The Ice Cavern has vicious enemies who will absolutely murder your ass. These aren't so bad individually....
.....Then I run into two White Dragons that Ambush and kill me instantly, forcing me to reload a save.
The Ice Cave is sparkly as hell, and the music is catchy, but good god, the encounter rate hurts. And again, Monster-in-a-Boxes are everywhere, so I can't just secure more resources.
This room has the Levistone we need, but we need to come back from above to get it.
The Flame Sword is found here though, and that's a fantastic weapon. It goes on Jaimas for now.
Jumping through the crack brings me face to face with this guy. I'm gonna have to fight him twice, due to the layout, and both times are mandatory.
Nothing we can't handle.
The sharp ice spikes cause damage when crossed. Once again, I must fight all my instincts and not go treasure hunting.
We jump down the hole and fight the evil eye. He lasts one round. We then get the Levistone and jump back down the next set of holes.
These assholes again. We beat 'em and move on. We're almost done. We just need to escape now. The only thing to do is make it ou--
....Well, that's a game over.
I reload, go through the process again, and this time escape with the Levistone, though I have more than a few close shaves.
Really close shaves. But we make it and we rest outside in a cabin.
The run is basically done by now. All we need to do is get the last piece of the puzzle.
Our heroes bring the Levistone to the Ryukahn Desert.
With this, we can go to the Carida Islands and finally visit Bahamut.
No enemies. No bullshit.
Bahamut gives us our class change, and the run is complete.
It wasn't quite a Level 11 Challenge, but good fucking god was this an order of magnitude tougher. It almost feels like parts of the game were specifically redesigned to prevent assholes like me from doing runs like this, with how many things they did to thwart low-level runs. That trap with the Piscodemons very nearly ended the run, but perseverence and a knowledge of the game mechanics ultimately saw our heroes through.
In the end, I hope you enjoyed this fucking shambles as I attempted to force a game to play by my rules despite it doing its level best to prevent me from doing so.
It's amazing how different the Pixel Remake is despite being, ostensibly, the same game as the previous versions of FF1. I don't like the derpy "growed up" class change models of the OG NES version, and the Pixel Remake's variant of them doesn't change that opinion much, but a lot of the game is amazing, with really good visual effects, fantastic music (arguably the best remixes of FF1's tunes so far), and a shocking amount done to tighten up the game experience. If you're a fan of the original and you want something to fart around with to try something new, it won't disappoint, especially if you have a taste for the classics.
As for our heroes? They'll be going back to all the areas where they used to run from the monsters and promptly going ham on them in retaliation for all the bullying.
