The final floors of the tower are once again crazy tough, even though we're extremely strong now, but with Ashura's four generals defeated, we're on the home stretch to face him!
It's a difficult climb, and we're barely making it past the tough random battles. Exhausted, we find a cave near to the top. Hoping to find rest and healing, we're instead met by a grim sight in the small home- three dead children. Like, the game doesn't even try to sugar-coat it- you try talking to them, and it straight up says 'This child looks dead...'. This took a dark turn from our regular jaunty adventures! That said, we actually have lost a lot of good people through Ashura's attack on the worlds of the tower, and our quest for the Spheres. Downstairs in the small home, we find the body of an adult. They're holding a diary. We read it and learn that this small family couldn't get any further up the tower, and were forced to seek shelter here. The final words read 'May the Creator protect the children'. Unfortunately, we know that that didn't happen.
That was a bummer.
We struggle on, and find a mysterious library. The books read 'Ashura...' 'is...' 'controlled...' 'by...' 'the...'
...and then the last book is illegible. Real wordsmiths here, each bookcase we examined contained just one word of that sentence. But among them was a secret room! Inside was... the tome for the ultimate attack spell, Flare!
After this, another small side-world- a peaceful field filled with flowers and a single hut. Inside, an old man on his deathbed. He had been tasked with waiting here for a hero to arrive to give them... the legendary sword, Xclbr! A sword so strong that it apparently scared off every vowel in its name.
The old man hands us the sword and passes on.
Yeesh, this game really does have a high body count. I wonder who's responsible for all of this?
Oh yeah, we also find a literal nuke somewhere in the tower. Sure, why not!
We're near the final tip of the tower now. Our fancy top-hat man friend once again shows up to give us some welcome advice- Ashura's at the top of the tower.
We get ready, and charge onward!
Coming face to face with the big bad guy himself, he offers us each a portion of the worlds he's been conquering if we join him instead. Hell no! We draw our weapons and mess him up good! He hit hard and killed Enya, but she still has lives left and we made it through.
But then... a trap door opens and we plummet!
A voice speaks to us:
"Can you climb out?"
We find ourselves...
At the very bottom of the tower!!
All the surviving characters we helped out are here with us- King Armor thanks us for taking his... King Armor. Without it, he gave up fighting for power and decided to go home and be a family man. His cyclops alien girlfriend is here too, and pregnant with his kid! The old riddle man/former dragon from the ocean world says something cryptic about Ashura being an illusion. The surviving sister from the sky world misses her sister, saying how they looked so alike but were such different people. The new leader of the biker gang from the post-apocalyptic world gives us her words of encouragement! The top hat man is here guiding us once again, too- he tells us that the road to Paradise is beyond the door of the tower. The town around the tower is packed with great stuff in the shops- Arcane is insanely useful, restoring all uses to any item or weapon! I grind a bit for a few of those to restore my best weapons up to full. The shop also has Power Armor- it's awesome and boosts everything, but requires it to be the only armour that character wears- which is actually pretty great- you tend to end up with better stats anyway from wearing it, and it frees up character inventory space! I get it for everyone, but choose to forego it for me- I'm almost maxed out anyway, and that headband the biker dude gave me gives me a ton of resistances. Plus sentimental value, y'know?
Fully prepared, we enter.
The inside of the tower is completely different now- just a few repeating floors of a straightforward but hard-fought path. Along the way, powered-up versions of each of the four world bosses are back- the big turtle from the starting world, the sea dragon from the ocean world, the tiger-guy from the sky world and the giant bird from the post-apocalypse world. They all go down easy- some of the random encounters here, and just surviving through so many tough random encounters was honestly way tougher. Along the way, we find some of the best equipment in the game (which actually ends up making me better than the Power Armor users)- Arthur Armor, Ninja Gauntlets, and... Shoes. Just shoes. this item has the footwear equipment symbol as its name, but is missing any actual name. Huh. Also, the Masamune! A legendary sword even stronger than Xclbr!
We finally make it to the top.
A strangely peaceful field. It's empty, and surrounded by clouds. We seem to have stepped out of a small sphere- was that our entire world?!
Waiting for us is our top hat friend.
He reveals himself as The Creator, and that everything we've been through was a game set up by him- he had created the evil Ashura as a way of testing the bravery and determination of his creations, as he believed that they didn't know what this meant. We were the first to succeed.
He offers us a wish- anything we want.
Screw that!
He's caused so much suffering just to use everyone as pawns for his game, so instead, WE PICK A FIGHT WITH GOD.
The final boss of this game is God. Like, actual God. They renamed him to "The Creator" in the English version, but apparently the original Japanese script is even more direct about who he is.
For the first part of the fight, he just floats there, unmoving in a white-hot rage.
Jimi kicks that nuke we'd been holding in reserve into his FACE.
Enya sets up some barriers for the party.
Ozzy... can't really do anything yet. God is apparently immune to Fire and Riddles.
Jay runs wildly at the creator of everything with the Masamune.
Eventually, he starts to actually fight- he tries to blind us with his Light attack (my badass headband makes me immune to it!) as well as using Repent, which tries to mass-confuse the party. He can also recover, and use a party-wide attack move called RIGHT (not a mistranslation, since he uses a move called Light as well)
Eventually, after taking enough damage, he just starts unleashing a God-level Flare spell every single turn which tears through everyone.
Jimi breaks the Glass Sword over his head over and over again (the actual strongest sword in the game- it breaks the first time you use it, but apparently it still has 50 uses in that one battle you decide to use, it and only disappears from your inventory after the battle ends? Convenient!) Ozzy takes up the role of a pure healer with his built-in Cure spell, and I keep hacking away with the Masamune. Enya finishes up setting up the barriers and blasts out a Flare every turn herself.
Our resolve wins through and The Creator is incinerated right down the center.
"Well, we didn't do too badly." one of the team says, having just literally slain God.
It's finally over.
The group wonder what to do next.
They see yet another door to a new world in front of them- could this be the entrance to Paradise told of all along...?
After all that's happened, they realise that they don't need it.
They decide to go home, to their own world.
THE END.Makai Toushi Sa·Ga (The Final Fantasy Legend) - Complete!This was fun! A very rough, early Game Boy RPG that required a bit of guide help with the entirely bare-bones presentation of the items and abilities which didn't explain what anything did even slightly (and even the shortened and mistranslated item names themselves required some guesswork in-game at times) but the quirkiness and not knowing what to expect next made it pretty great! Also, surprisingly brutal towards the end! The random battles really did not pull any punches- they became some of the toughest I've seen in an RPG for ages.
If you're cool with the rougher, earlier style of JRPG, then I'd recommend it- but looking up a guide for just learning the (surprisingly unconventional) mechanics and checking up on what the items you've collected do is a must, unless you really want to experience that stuff by pure trial and error, but it's pretty opaque about what's going on on that front- a gentle bit of guide help just for the convenience of explaining what does what made the game leagues more engaging and fun for me, knowing what the heck was going on (kinda)!
This was a good time- Final Fantasy Legend II manages to be even wackier, if that's your thing! (It certainly is mine), and I've already finished Final Fantasy Legend III, which is oddly the most conventional of the bunch- aside from the time travel setting and weirdo monsters. They're all worth a play if you like aggressively old-school handheld RPGs with unusual settings!