TEXT PLAY SIDE GAME: Final Fantasy II (Famicom 1988/PS 2003 [Origins]): Issue #027: Where, Now?

 Kept getting a little turned around when it comes to finding the cave where the Crystal Rod is.

Unless I was misunderstanding what one of the wizzards in Mysidia was saying, I think the people who developed the original version of this game meant for the trip to the Cave of Mysidia to be more of a hike than it actually was. I could have sworn he kept saying it was on the northwest part of the continent we were on, but it's to the southeast of town, around some ring-shaped mountains. But like I said, that could just be my own misunderstanding. At the same time, virtually all the land on the map in this game is connected as one continent, so I guess that technically is northwest, if one insists on going the long way. And I ran into a similar issue when I was doing that Lufia text play a few years ago. There's a part where the place we're supposed to go that's technically to the west of the starting point, but getting there means going east to get around some mountains first.

The cave itself isn't so bad once you get there, for the most part. What makes it difficult is two monsters in particular: the Flying Ray and the Parasite. The Flying Ray has defense that's a little high for where I've got the characters right now, plus a pretty good attack on them, which tends to make for a bad situation, considering how they tend to come at a guy five at a time. The Parasite is one that tends to take both health and magic points when it attacks, which made things frustrating.

The good news is that there's no boss fight at the end of this because by the time I got there, it was all I could do to keep the party alive on account of Firion being low on magic from all the Parasites draining his magic along the way. The good news is that I had a few elixers, so I used one on Firion so he could use his Warp spell to get the party out with the Rod without having to deal with the monsters along the way. I might go back in to do a little stat grinding later, because there are a few decent items in there that might be worth getting. One's a weapon called the Ogrekiller Axe, which is presumably good against Hill Gigases, so that alone would probably be worth it.

For now, though, I'm going to back to Mysida and stock up on a few things and sell off some of what I did manage to get this time. Next time, I'll take a shot at the monster guarding the entry to the atoll where the Tower of Mysidia is, but it might be awhile until I get to that. Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.