When we last saw Benjamin, he had just encountered a twist so intense it broke his neck. I'm not even joking.
Wait, no, I am.
He was actually about to enter the Focus Tower.
And once we're inside the little bar says we're actually in Doom Castle, a theory which is supported by the fact that just to the right of the door is the area we were in in Chapter 9 where we got Aero, which also said it was Doom Castle.
Around the the left, we can head down some stairs onto some shifting sand.
I'd scribble some arrows onto the pictures to highlight the shifting sand, but just describing it makes more sense: All of the sand is shifting downwards. See, wasn't that simple?
If you've been with us since Day 1, you'll remember that we last saw the shifting sand way back in the Bone Dungeon. Doom Castle's dungeon gimmick is that it's all the other dungeons. Actually that's not true, it's just the four major dungeons. Level Forest, Wintry Cave, Falls Basin, Mine, Volcano, Alive Forest, Giant Tree, Mount Gale and Mac's Ship can all go get fucked it seems.
We can't get anywhere from here. Presumably, this is where we'll be dumped if we fuck up nearer the top of the room. We'll head back upstairs and on around the left.
I'm pretty sure I've seen these before. Back in Chapter 9, we saw it with the Minotar Zombie and the Chimera when we were getting Aero. It's one of those monsters that we're only encountering for the first time now in a parallel universe, and it's gotten really hard to keep track of two universes at the same time now so I'm going to stop. I have already explained the Shadow though, so I won't do it again.
Further up, the path splits into two and immediately merges again.
...
There are times when I feel that this game is trying to make a point that I'm just not getting and it really annoys me because I do not like the idea that I don't understand a point that this game is trying to make.
Continuing on around, and we see the room's challenge. We need to pick a staircase, drop onto the sand, and try to land on something that we can use to make progress.
Picking a staircase ENTIRELY ARBITRARILY (in this case, the last one, waaaay round on the right hand side), we'll drop down and see where we end up.
Oh we've landed on something. I did not expect that AT ALL. Now we can hookshot over to the stairs, and tackle the...
...wait is that a Gorgon? We haven't seen that since... well... since Bone Dungeon. I'm not sure why I'm so surprised to see it here. I think it's because it's such a stupidly weak monster to have appearing this late in the game. And I refuse to accept "Well they can only use monsters from Bone Dungeon here" as an excuse because there was a Shadow just across the fucking room.
Up the stairs, and we hookshot across a platform, and then across onto another one, before killing the Minotar Zombie.
See, earlier on, when I said "Doom Castle's dungeon gimmick is that it's all the other dungeons", this includes the bosses. Actually, technically, it doesn't because, technically, the boss is different because it's a reskin but whatever we'll run with it.
So we climb down the wall and get sucked down to this compactosaurus. We can shimmy over to the right to get the Cure Potions from the treasure box. We have to move across anyway so that we can move back and fact the correct direction without falling off. We need to be facing left so we can Mega Grenade the second compactosaurus and hookshot over to the stairs. Then we can head up and battle the Flamerus Rex.
Whoops, sorry. Skullrus Rex. Fuck, we don't want to get the name wrong. He really hates that.
So this is Skullrus Rex and he has two Shadow friends. Skullrus Rex is the easiest boss in the game. Here's why.
Exit works.
I'll give that a minute to sink in.
Exit, a one-hit kill, works on a boss.
But wait, there's more! Let's use crazy save abusing powers to bring him back to life.
It's not immune to petrification, so the Dragon Claw is also a one-hit kill (occasionally).
I must say that this is a very well designed boss.
Just so I could say I did, I did this boss properly, and it still wasn't that hard. Exit on the two Shadows, then Benjamin Flares and Phoebe Whites it to death. Simples.
Once we're finished, we head up the stairs and in through the door.
Technically, we're back in the Focus Tower, this is an important detail that should be kept in mind when I show you the next room.
Yes, this is the final door in the Focus Tower. The one we couldn't get to from anywhere else. Now we finally get to go through it.
Here we go. All together now.
1, 2... 3!
Benjamin AND YOU TOO: It opened!
Seriously though guys if you record yourself shouting "It opened!" and send it to me you get like a million points alright?
Beyond the mystical, magical door, we end up back in Doom Castle. We have a stairwell, not entirely unlike the five in Pazuzu's Tower. This one's a bit different though in that it has multiple doors and stairs in it. The stairs are blocked off though, so the only place we can go, for now, is into the door.
And this is the Ice Pyramid themed segment of Doom Castle. Obviously, we have to kill the Shadow on the left and open the door.
Hmm. Two paths. We'll head left.
We can head to the bottom and jump over the space wide gap, then head back up and stab the switch to open the door just to the left of it.
A Phanquid blocks a switch which opens the door on the left.
With nowhere else to go, we'll head back to the main door and go right instead.
Since it's impossible to fall off, we can jump upwards, but we're going to hookshot over to the right instead, then head in the door.
A box of Heal Potions, and a door out the other side of the room.
We've reached a crossroads. Of course, we can't change direction in mid-air, so we can only continue upwards and follow the path around to the larger part of the platform.
Ack. We're going to need to reach that switch in order to open this door here. That said, the gap between the corner of the path we just walked across and another path is just a space wide, so we can jump across.
We can't get anywhere from here but you see that notch just on the other side of the peg?
No, you can't walk straight through that.
So where to go, where to go?
Sure let's try over here why not?
And hey, now we can hit that switch for the door and...
...jump back over here. Now we can work our way back along the path to the door, and see what's inside.
Two doors, the left one is open, the right one is connected to the switch, and opens up the notch that we couldn't walk through. Of course, as we already found out, we can't get anywhere from there, making the door completely fucking pointless.
Outside door number two, we have a path leading to a switch.
The switch opens the door over yonder. The path also continues downwards...
...to a larger platform, from which we can jump onto this path. This path leads all the way around to that open door you can just about see in the bottom left corner.
And on the other side of that door, is the other side of the room we were in near the start, where we killed a Phanquid and opened the door above that we're just about to walk through right now.
Oh and the box contains Refreshers. Not that that matters.
Across the gap, over the path and into the next room, there's a treasure box with Arrows and a Freezer Crab that needs murdered to get through the door.
Outside and to the right, we can hookshot across to this platform and...
Well fuck. This room has certainly captured the Ice Pyramid's "let's waste as much of your time as possible" approach.
So where haven't we been yet? Where haven't we been yet? Oh, yes!
We never followed the right path from here!
Over the gap and we have a choice to make. We'll take the door on the left first because it's harder and the harder path is invariably where the actual important stuff is.
Oh for fuck sake. The box has more Arrows in it. Clearly, we've also copied the Ice Pyramid's huge Arrow fetish.
So anyway we go out of the room, walk around the path and in the other side of the room, hit the switch, walk back out of the room and in here again, then through the door.
And a Freezer Crab guards the last switch of the room. We kill it, flick the switch, then backtrack the whole fucking way back to the door again.
And what's on the other side?
An Ice Golem reskin that we have to kill despite it being basically no threat to anyone because it's stuck in a room only 1.5 times it's area, and it's twice as big as the only exit. But whatever, it exists and it's big so it has to die for some utterly contrived reason. In this case, it's the fact that killing it is the only way to get rid of the blocks blocking the stairs in the stairway.
So yeah let's go.
This is the Stone Golem, with two Cerberus buddies. They can just be Exited. In an effort to switch things up, the Stone Golem is strong against Fire attacks, which knocks Flare's strength right down. It's also strong against Earth attacks, making Meteor less useful too. Looks like Benjamin and Phoebe will both have to use White.
Except that's not true because guess what?
Oh yes.
Hey at least it's immune to petrification though right?
Yeah, it actually is.
"Oh no! the less than 100% reliable one-hit kill has been removed! WHATEVER WILL WE DO?"
So he dies oh so very easily, and we backtrack all the way back out of this crazy room.
And now you can see those blocks are gone! We'll head upstairs and OH THERE'S BLOCKS. Looks like we're going to need to do a Lava Dome themed segment now.
I TOTALLY CALLED IT.
So this room takes the "jump around the room" concept from the boss room of the Lava Dome and turns it up to twelve.
Let's check out the sides and see what's over there.
Well, the left path is clearly one way, and it can only bring us back here. On the right, we've got a clear path. It's a toss up between the middle and the right path.
Ah, let's take the right why not?
Past the Iflyte, the path leads to that set of stairs you can barely see in the top right which, in turn, leads us right back to where we started.
We can also jump across to the left.
Past the Stheno, the boxes contain Cure Potions and Arrows. From that platform, we can head downwards.
A Cerberus guards yet more treasure boxes. These ones have Heal Potions and Arrows. It doesn't look like we can go anywhere from here but...
...we can! From there, we can jump straight upwards.
Now that I think about it, this whole setup is a heck of a lot more linear that it should be. You'd think that a room like this would have a lot more loops and dead ends to make it more puzzley, but anyway, we head past the Iflyte and down the stairs to the left.
[
Up the stairs, we can see the boss platform, but we can't reach it from here, so we'll head back down and down the path.
And hey, we're back at the place we saw right at the start.
Hookshot over, past the Stheno and follow the path, and we can both see and access the boss platform! Huzzah!
And we never even found out if there was anything on the middle path... Oh well!
This is the Dualhead Hydra Twinhead Wyvern. He's bucking trends by having two different buddies, a Stheno and an Iflyte.
It's immune to petrification and Exit, and as such, this qualifies as a battle as opposed to a distraction. It's actually a fairly difficult battle, all things considered. All of the enemies have attacks cause status problems that stop you from acting (confusion, paralysis, petrification, sleep), so healing should be your top priority. Leaving someone confused or petrified for even a single turn can, and indeed, often does cause disaster.
Exit works on the Stheno and Iflyte, so they're easy to take care of once you finally get a chance to, but even at that, it can get only one of them at a time. Go for the Stheno first, if only because all her attacks are status problems.
Once they're both gone though, the battle is a lot easier, with you being able to just Flare and White your way to victory and into the Pazuzu's Tower themed area.
What the hell? This isn't anything like Pazuzu's Tower! Where are all the stairs and the buttons and the elevator? Oh, the tileset's the same, but that's it! Frick sake, if you're going to copy yourself at least do it properly.
Anyways, we'll take the right path if only because we've been doing that the whole time and consistency is nice.
We'll head down, up the stairs, through the Cerberus, right, up, left...
...through the Chimera and up again.
And there's our Pazuzu reskin. Path on the right is a dead end, so we'll head back down to where the Chimera was, and head right.
Kill the Thanatos, head down the stairs and through the door, up the path and through the Cerberus into the tunnel.
Yes you can walk through these tunnels to get to other places. Presumably they're there so that they could have two paths on top of one another, but when you combine these with the stairs and the crazy twisty paths, it just makes the room a heck of a lot more confusing.
Confusing for me, and I'm playing damn the thing. This must be hell for all of you people to follow.
There's a Thanatos at the end of the tunnel.
Aw, man. I could have made a great joke if there was an Iflyte at the end of the tunnel. Sadly, it was not to be.
Alright, we've got three places we can go. We can head through the Thanatos, up out the back of the middle door, or down and out the right door to the Chimera.
We'll go right for now. Oh it's just a treasure box over there let's not bother. We'll head down the left instead. Oh, it's a dead end. We'll head up the middle instead then.
Wonderful, an actual path we can follow!
Following the path, we go through a Chimera and a Thanatos, and tackle the boss.
This battle is, in my opinion, actually a little easier than the Twinhead Wyvern, mainly because of the lower number of status ailment attacks flying around the joint.
Zuh can now use Psychshield whenever he wants, rather than just between state changes. That would be scary, if the impromptu Psychshield actually did anything, which it doesn't. Actually, that's not true, it does 1HP of damage. Oh em gee.
Once again, Exit first, then Flare and White to kill. Once the Psychshield goes up proper, either take the opportunity to cure, or just use Excalibur and the Bow of Grace for a bit more damage.
After a surprisingly long time (probably a result of the Psychshield), he goes down, and we can head back out into the staircase.
Ooh, I wonder what's inside!
That's a statue of Benjamin. Benjamin is suitably freaked out by this. I can imagine he'd be even more freaked out when the statue of himself started talking to him, like it's about to, right now.
Knight Statue: We Crystals now entrust you with our power.
CURE SOUND EFFECT.
And we get all our health back.
Man, the Crystals mustn't have that much power considering that we could basically have done that ourselves if we wanted to. Very easily as well.
The statue also brought up the (barely-visible) walls around the outside of the room, giving us access to four chests.
Not treasure boxes. Chests. And they contain Arrows, Cure Potions, Heal Potions and Seeds. Twenty-five of each.
So here's the big ominous door that very obviously leads to the final boss.
...
Alright, I have a problem.
Earlier in the thread, I mentioned that I have never managed to 100% this game, because I kept missing one piece of treasure.
Well guess what?
I missed it again.
Luckily, we haven't passed the game's point of no return, so I still have a chance to go find it.
The really annoying thing is, I should know where it is. You should know where it is. You've seen it before. I've shown it to you IN THIS CHAPTER.
...
Back in the Bone Dungeon segment, I linked you to Picture 6 of Chapter 9. There's a chest in plain view that we never got, and that I completely forgot about.
And now I realise that I must have seen it, and forgot about it, every single time I've played this game.
How do we get it? We go to the Bone Dungeon segment, and drop down to the very bottom of the screen from the right.
We bomb this compactosaurus, kill the Behemoth, and the chest is ours!
And that's petrification finally taken care of! It would have been useful to have this in the Twinhead Wyvern battle but eh, que sera, sera.
Back at the top of the castle, we go through the ominous door o' doom!
And we end up inside a Giger painting.
"At last? You've known about my existence for no more than thirty minutes!"
Dark King: Indeed, and now you will serve me...
Benjamin: I don't think so! We won't allow you to ruin our World.
"Ruin it how? I haven't even done anything yet!"
Dark King: Alas, silly humans, I must share a terrible secret! That Prophecy? Ages ago I started that rumor! Welcome to the power of Darkness!
Wow, way to drop a bombshell on us then give us absolutely no time to react to it. Storytelling at its finest here.
So it turns out that the entire Prophecy was started by the Dark King himself. This raises one very large question:
Why?
I mean...
Why?
Anyway, this is the Dark King. He's so awesome, he doesn't need two buddies to help him.
Exit works though. No it doesn't, but it would be hilarious if there was some sort of ridicilously easy way to kill him.
Oh wait.
Rather bizarrely, only Benjamin's Cure does this ludicrous amount of damage.
In a rather odd defiance of convention, the Dark King doesn't break down as he gets damaged, he just changes form. He's also the only thing in the entire game that has dialogue during battle.
Dark King: Is that all you can muster?
He then grows a few extra arms, pulls a few extra weapons out of nowhere, and switches his mouth for a set of pincers. By changing form, he's added a few techniques to his relatively small repertoire. They're elemental attacks mainly, but he also now has Cure Arrow, which will absorb some of your health.
So, he's got loads of arms and pincers for a mouth, what do you think his next form is?
Dark King: Now see what I really am!
HOLY FUCK. The only thing that stopped this being outright traumatising as a kid was the fact that the ends of his legs sort of looked like nail-polished fingernails, at which point he just started looking like a transvestite's hands.
More moves now that he's a spider. Golden Web, which causes Petrification, and a less prestigious Silver Web, which causes Confusion and Poisoning simultaneously. He also has Spider Kids which hits you a few times but really isn't very strong.
And finally.
Okay this actually was traumatising. It's probably the HOLY SHIT RED eyes, but possibly also the fact that he's given up the pretense of being even remotely similar to anything that actually exists. This form has Mega White and Mega Flare, both of which do high amounts of damage to Benjamin and Phoebe.
A few more hits, and this happens...
Not content with just dying, he glows red. Then dies.
Uhm. Then apparently, he turns back into human form and explodes.
Phoebe: At last! It's all over!
Hah! There are actually five crystals, not four!
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, there was a clue earlier on in the game which should have let you know that there were five. Really early.
Like, as early as the fricking title screen.
Magic Cid AKA The Crystal of Light: A bright future awaits you now. Go, and enjoy all the World has to offer.
"How? We've already been everywhere?"
Benjamin: Thank you!
And now we're in cutscene mode. The ship sails all the way back to the Dock.
Benjamin: But of course! Say, what's become of Reuben and Captain Mac?
Otto: They're fine! They've already headed home.
Benjamin: Great. Sometime I'll drop by and say "Hi!"
Smash cut to Foresta. Benjamin walks into Kaeli's house.
Kaeli: What are you going to do now?
Benjamin: Hey, maybe you can answer that. Mac, how about lending me that ship? I need a little more adventure in my life...
"No, Benjamin, I can't lend you my ship. Want to know why? Because it's a fucking ship."
Benjamin: Don't worry, Kaeli!
Captain Mac: Alright. But let me see if it's still seaworthy.
Kaeli's Mom: Don't forget your Cap again!
"Just making sure that stupid players realise that you're my husband despite it being really obvious!"
Smash cut to Aquaria. Benjamin walks into Spencer's Place.
Smash cut to the bottom of Spencer's Place, because they sure as hell weren't going to make us watch Benjamin climb down those fucking stairs.
Spencer: Yep. All because of you guys!
See, now you can read that either as gratitude (because we fixed everything), or as blame (because we blew up his old tunnel and now he has to do it again). I do not believe this is intentional.
Spencer: That jerk... He's gone treasure hunting again!
Wait hang on I thought he was going treasure hunting with you. Why the hell aren't you away with him?
Benjamin: Well, tell him I said "Hi!"
Smash cut to Fireburg. Benjamin walks into the inn.
"I'm the lead singer of Thunder Rock now!"
Benjamin: Reuben! Couldn't be better!
Reuben: Why don't we hang out in this town?
Benjamin responds to this by basically saying, "Fuck that". Seriously.
Reuben: At least let me see you off!
"Screw you too."
Smash cut to the Dock again, and we're greeted by basically everyone we've ever met.
Benjamin: Thanks, Mac.
Kaeli's Mom: Three cheers for Captain Benjamin!
Otto: Wait until you see my next invention!
Norma: Can you come over again?
Arion: Have a good trip!
Who the hell is this? It's theoretically possible for this to be anyone, because there have been quite a few generic blue-haired ladies dotted about the place. I mean, for starters, she could be any one of the women who kept selling us stuff in identical houses.
I think it's supposed to be Reuben's Mom though.
How come no-one's mom has a name in this game?
Spencer: How about taking me along? You'll need an expert treasure hunter!
Phoebe: You don't know what you're saying, Grandpa! You'll be back in no time. See the World for me!
Benjamin has already seen the World. It's really small and very little of it is even accessible by water anyway.
"Judging by how fast this Ship seems to go, I'll be home in a few hours anyway. Oh wait my village was destroyed in the opening sequence so I don't have a home or family or friends or anything. You'd think I'd have mentioned this at some point."
Benjamin: Farewell!
"I guess I'll just live on this boat forever then."
And Benjamin sails off into the horizon, to a life of adventure and jazz music.
Wait, jazz?
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Tristam: I can't resist in when I hear about an adventure... I'm going to keep an eye on you, kid.
Benjamin: That's Benjamin, you nut!
And Benjamin sails off into the the distance with Tristam as the credits roll.
And then he kills the bastard.
Fin.
Final Thoughts
You know, even after all of this, I still kind of like Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. This might surprise you, because I may have given off the impression at several points that I didn't.
It's by no means a good game, but it's certainly nowhere near as bad as the Final Fantasy fanbase made it out to be. A lot of their complaints seem to be of the "You changed it, now it sucks" variety, after seeing Final Fantasy IV. As someone who never associated the game with the Final Fantasy franchise, I'd say it's still a decent game on it's own merits. Oh, sure, the plot's nonsensical and the characters are inconsistent but it's supposed to be a game to introduce people to the genre and in that respect, it's pretty good. Years later, when I first picked up Pokémon Red (probably the second RPG I ever played), I liked it, and I picked up how to play it pretty easily, "because it's like Mystic Quest".
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, I salute you. Now I'm fucking sick of you. Go away.
Thank you. Good night. Much love.