On Halloween, I started the "Playing Final Fantasy with a party of monsters" playthrough that I've been occasionally working toward
. I actually streamed a little bit of it previously, and
, but that day's goal was sort of a mix of adding some last-minute features, playtesting and bugfixing, so when I played on Halloween last night I started anew.
threads in 2008-2010 (when I was fairly active there). I ran with this idea originally
, actually, but when I said I wanted the characters to behave as monsters it was FatRatKnight who wrote
to give monsters a "magic list" and "special list" and override stats when characters are initialized to make almost the whole thing possible. I added bits, including making the monsters actually appear in combat, but from my perspective I did the easy part.
Although the script could be implemented in many ways, the specific way I'm using it for this playthrough is starting with the four weakest monsters (as
) and, for each new monster I defeat, I get to add that monster to the list of monsters that are available to my team. It's sort of a little bit Pokemon-like. I can switch any time outside of combat (although if doing so would lower that character's HP, that happens). I made a little C# Windows app that runs while I play where I maintain the list of monsters I meet and also select which ones make up the party.
The starting party is WOLF, IMP, BONE, PIRATE.
These monsters being so much better on the offense than IMPs might make you think that the start of the game would be easy, but they aren't likely to endure more than one fight. This makes sense when you compare their statistics to the actual starting light warriors, right? Even my best character's hit points are lower than a level 1 black mage, and they aren't wearing armor.
Most of our starting gold went to reviving and inn trips in the early going. The game is set up such that we gain +1 max HP for each monster we've recruited and +2 max HP per level - beyond that, levels have no effect on anything. The reason I added this feature was so that levelling would do
and possibly even provide an option to overcome what might otherwise be a roadblock, and to incentivize encountering a variety of enemies. This is why you see, for example, that my IMP has 12 max HP - because we started with four monsters.
Since levelling doesn't contribute anything other than a very minor HP boost, grinding is not an appealing option. What I really needed to make progress was a monster that was stronger than a WOLF, IMP, BONE and PIRATE, but could reasonably be defeated by my team. There are only a few options near the beginning that can work, and the first we encountered was a MADPONY.
This MADPONY, of course, utterly manhandled the team... but my single surviving fragile little monster guy turned into a MADPONY and was able to make it back to Coneria to revive the team and heal up.
Next, the team of MADPONY, IMP, WOLF and BONE met some GrIMPs. I have never considered GrIMPs really the least bit challenging, but here they are as a serious asset for us.
IMPs are pretty much the lowest-damage enemies in the game, but my starting IMP stayed on the team because they have a little bit of an absorb rating. GrIMPs are a little bit better on the offense, but with 16 base HP and 6 absorb! Oddly, this was my best defensive guy for a while. With the GrIMPs we did a little trek into the Temple of Fiends and recruited a SPIDER, who is distantly better than a BONE.
Most of the local enemies aren't very threatening to this team anymore, although only GrIMP has any appreciable defense. It was time to approach Garland! On the way, though, we met a GHOUL! I beat the GHOUL and decided it was worth going back for another heal in Coneria.
FatRatKnight had
just been asking me whether status-touch effects are working or not, since I hadn't done that in my recent tests. It turns out that the answer is
yes. GHOUL was amazing to have on the team! He's got reasonable HP, 3 hits for 8 damage, and even a bit of absorb. As well, his stun effect was paying off amazingly well. Maybe too well? It certainly made GARLAND easy.
I decided that I
wouldn't actually use GARLAND on my team in this playthrough, just because it seems icky for plot reasons. I'm also not going to use the four fiends themselves. GARLAND won't be missed too badly; although he's got a lot of HP at the beginning, nothing else is particularly good.
Like in my test play, I ran into an IGUANA just beyond the bridge. IGUANAs have always been very unremarkable to me playing this game normally, but here they're quite a strong party member for me.
IGUANA, GHOUL, MADPONY and SPIDER then engaged Bikke's crew. Obviously, this was no issue.
With access to the Aldi Sea, we could meet and join up with some other strong enemies, like R.SAHAG and SHARK.
With a stronger crew including IGUANA, OGRE, SHARK and GHOUL, I thought it might be kind of neat to go to
the Penninsula of Power (PoP) / Penninsula NE of Pravoka (PNEoP). My intent wasn't to ruin the gameplay (funny to say when we're so distantly beyond what was dev-intended) but I
did want to use interesting enemies and the FrWOLF's Frost ability was interesting to me.
Right away, I pitched a tent for a local save. It took a while to encounter FrWOLF. The first enemy I encountered was one of the strongest PNEoP enemies: TYRO. I was sure we were doomed, but GHOUL actually managed to stun-lock him while the other monsters dealt over 400 damage. We actually beat TYRO!
I said that using a TYRO now would utterly undermine the gameplay. It would be kind of fun to steamroll a large part of the game, but I wanted to keep trying and appreciating different monsters. Thus, I checked off TYRO as available but didn't add it to the team.
I used another tent, and ran into a ZomBULL and two TROLLS. I thought we were doomed, but I actually had GHOUL paralyze the TROLLS at the start of the fight before joining the utter dogpile on the ZomBULL and, although they certainly had us on the ropes, we won!
Amazing. Again, I decided not to use these monsters yet. I tried a couple more battles here, but the groups of GIANTs kept crushing me and when I
did eventually encounter FrWOLF there were eight of them. That didn't work out well for me. Three super-powered late-game enemies was plenty for now.
I'm sure we're more than ready for the Marsh Cave. On the way, I added lots of other monsters to my team such as ARACHNID, KYZOKU, CREEP, and OddEYE, but my team stayed pretty well the same. In the Marsh Cave, though, I encountered a SCUM. SCUM are interesting: in regular gameplay, you hate them because they have high defense and inflict poison a lot. The poison part doesn't matter, but the idea of leading the team with an incredibly tanky slime boi seemed like a good one. It took a while to beat the SCUM but with GHOUL stunning it there was no risk anyway.
GARGOYLEs were also an interesting addition with their high damage potential.
I did not defeat the WIZARDs on my first try. I thought I might, but besides SCUM tanking their hits like a champ they could often wreck the rest of the team in an attack or two. I thought GHOUL's stunning attacks would carry us through, but they could not.
My second attempt was closer, ending with me running out the turns with turbo on while SCUM and the last WIZARD exchanged pitiful damage against each other. It's actually kind of amazing that if the poison status worked on enemies, it would
actually have made a useful difference here.
For the third attempt, I considered my options and realized that R.BONE is actually pretty great. I swapped R.BONE into the team and we won.
There was no good reason to return to Elfland, so we went up to
face ASTOS. SCUM wouldn't do well against ASTOS' magic, so the team was now IGUANA, R.BONE, GARGOYLE and GHOUL.
GHOUL kept ASTOS pinned down for the majority of the fight. He did throw out a RUB eventually, many turns into the fight, but it wasn't effective. His SLO2 did effect GHOUL that did actually matter somewhat since it reduced his three stun-touches to one, but ASTOS didn't last long after that.
Of course, now that we've beaten ASTOS, we can
become him!
This is nice, because it gives us access to our first... well, our first anything-but-a-regular-attack ignoring a super-weak OddEYE's GAZE. Part of FatRatKnight's work is that a monster's next spell and/or special in their cycles appears in battle.
It also means if I'm willing to go a few turns using relatively bad spells like RUB and SLO2 that I can make use of FAST and some spells that affect more than one enemy.
This all works amazingly well. The spell animations work, the in-battle statistical effects are clearly functional, and it's
fun. RUB isn't even a good spell, statistically, but I had a ton of fun erasing snakes and sharks and other things.
Well, now it's time to do the fetch quest. Along the way I picked up several treasures even though most of them are entirely useless. GHOUL actually
died facing GARGOYLEs in the Temple of Fiends. GHOUL is... really starting to feel a bit old. It also feels like with monsters' high magic defense values that the stun-touch is coming in clutch a lot less often.
I did a bit of running around, like meeting a GIANT in the Earth Cave and then stumbling into a GEIST nearby. GEIST is a minor upgrade for GHOUL. I needed to heal after the first Earth Cave trip and since Melmond has no clinic I went all the way back to Coneria. While I was there, I figured I may as well take another little crack at the PNEoP. It honestly still didn't go well for my team overall, but it was amusing seeing GIANTs affected by so many status effects because of ASTOS.
We encountered a group of WYVERNs after a couple of attempts, and we were actually able to beat them.
After successful fights, I'd use a tent to save. In less-successful attempts, I'd let the team die to reload my save or even just reset because that was so much faster and easier than returning to town to revive the downed monsters. When I'd reset my script would sometimes go a little crazy.
Anyway... it didn't take too long to encounter some FrWOLF friends. This time, I met just four of them! This seemed pretty attainable.
Having FrWOLF on my team was
so cool! Literally, lol.
My first crack at the Earth Cave wasn't super great. A pack of stunning undead decimated the team.
An EARTH then took out GIANT before the VAMPIRE.
By moving ASTOS into the front, I encountered one of the funny issues with monsters. Despite having all of these interrupts and GUI features and whatnot, this is still the original Final Fantasy for NES without bugfixes. Consequently, the
running behaviour is still super bugged. Characters at the top of the party can run reliably if they have luck over 15, and their odds are obviously low for low luck values.
In FF1, monsters don’t have luck. For a few stats, like intelligence and agility, I was able to get actual, official stat values from later releases of the game, but not for luck. The way I determined monster luck values is based on the fact that luck mostly affects escape chances and low morale monsters are more likely to escape. Thus, the value is derived from a formula, which I believe is this:
Luck = max((204-morale)/2, surprise chance)A consequence of this is that bosses and a lot of late game monsters have very, very low luck statistics. Astos can't escape.
I really wanted to escape a battle with a bunch of COCTRICEs since just ASTOS was alive, but there was no way. He had to just blow them all away. Amazingly, he didn't get petrified, but perhaps that's just because of monsters having such high magic resistance.
ASTOS was actually able to defeat the VAMPIRE single-handedly...
...but since he can't escape from battles he got destroyed in a battle with four GrOGREs on the way out.
Our next attempt went much better. The whole team made it to the VAMPIRE and I said aloud that the VAMPIRE could one-shot FrWOLF or GEIST. Isn't that
exactly what happened on turn 1?
The rest of the team won without issue, and we managed to make it out.
On the way out, VAMPIRE finally replaced GEIST/GHOUL. As well, I realized that I had been foolishly ignoring some other rather potent monsters like WIZARD! VAMPIRE and WIZARD have excellent attacks.
The team is like... a bunch of early-game bosses and their canine companion.
When we left, we only had 12 heal potions remaining. We went back into the Aldi region to restock, and I decided to be done for now. Next time, we'll finish off the Earth Cave for sure.
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