Journey of the Five Battle Logs

[Jumza]

Well, I did another random and it turns out it isn't 100% (although 2 of my guys still got petrified). It's possible that I have bad luck I guess. I've never had any sort of emulator interference with ePSXe before, so it's probably crappy luck.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

It's like the story of Journey of the Five is crafted with all of Elric's love and care, and all the RNG elements are crafted with my hate for all of you. 

Fitting. :v

[3lric]

LOL

Also all the errors raven gave me are now fixed. Update will be tonight. Luckily since it's event related you'll just have to patch with the new ppf and continue on as normal. If you haven't gotten to Ch1 end battle than you won't even notice a change.

[Jumza]

I once again try Barius hill, I did ok for a while

spoiler: Spoiler Alert!

and I found the secret

but unfortunately that didn't stop Tesnya from murdering me. My strategy was basically to keep Agrias at full HP and MP so she could pwn everything, but I couldn't keep it up for long.
I'm going to do 1 or 2 more randoms then try again.

[3lric]

You mean bariaus valley lol. Try giving link the bow and using him as your companion in that fight. Keep him on the side of the river you start on. That's how I won. But I got lucky with the guests. However I did not get the secret. I'll say tho. You have another chance in chapter 1. But that one is much harder.

[Jumza]

I managed to finish this battle with cloud, being able to immobilize Tesnya was a blessing, but I did have to reset once because he does have long ranged abilities like charming Agrias, and dooming people, just have to stay away from him.

spoiler

I did have to blow an ether to get "the secret"

I watched the scene afterwards (thanks to Raven for fixing it so quickly) and then the scene after that...

spoiler: I wonder...?

Did... Link just get a zodiac stone? Guess I'll find out soon!
I have no idea where this story is going, and I love it!

On my way back from Golgorland (I can't remember if I spell these names right >.<) I did the Chocobo knight random battle, It was really intense and I was in some tough spots for awhile, but Raven was right. A larger pool of skills makes life easier. Also the rewards saved me like 2000 Gil by giving me a bunch of Phoenix downs!

(I'll just keep updating this if no one else posts)

Ah! Gate explosives, Dead enemies scattered throughout the castle, Battered and bloodied Bartholume, Chocolate Chip Cookies! (I'm eating some XD)
What other intrigue-inducing plot twists shall we see?

spoiler: Writing Complaints

Ok, Bartholume's dying scene, he describes sephiroth as a man with silver hair and a long sword, HOWEVER, the universal term used for describing sephiroth (as used in FF7) is "a man with a black cape"! I would probably change that myself, to have all 3.

[pokeytax]

I'm going to get to playing the rest of this later on, but I just wanted to note:
- I lost the Alma battle twice somehow because I'm a terrible player and a terrible human being.  I think it somehow contains Raven's soul.
- That Dante scene in the intro is just as good every time I watch it.  Just terrific work.  The events in general are great of course, but even compared to a really good baseline I can't get over how slick that is.
- Smoke Break is a great skill.  I almost don't want it to have a "better" implementation just because it's scientifically the perfect use of that formula.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

spoiler: @Jumza

That phrasing is used as a red-herring.  Who else has silver hair, a long sword, a tendency to beast entire forces, and comes back from the dead regularly?  It could be the person you think it is and who Cloud thinks it is, but it could also be another silver-haired Katana maniac...

- I lost the Alma battle twice somehow because I'm a terrible player and a terrible human being.  I think it somehow contains Raven's soul.

It damn well might.

[Jumza]

spoiler: @Raven

OMFG IT'S ZOMBIE ELMDOR ISN'T IT???????

Sweegy Woods.
I don't know exactly what I expected when I learned some MP restoring moves, but they are epic, invigorate+eponas song+cheer up means I can finally afford to make some mistakes in battles. Although I think I may have found a bug which I will bring up in the bug section.

[Durbs]

spoiler: I wonder...?

Did... Link just get a zodiac stone? Guess I'll find out soon!
I have no idea where this story is going, and I love it!

Ehehe. Patience padawan, your hunger for knowledge will soon be well rewarded.

[Jumza]

Hee hee, Daravons first name is Bordam.

Ok, scratch what I said about Sweegy earlier, even with those skills I've had to reset a couple times. I always almost have it, then a bomb with near full hp decides to blow up or, a skeleton revives at the worst time possible.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

It sounds like that fix I implemented and never tested because I'm lazy to make the Dragon that starts in front of the party actually attack you works swimmingly.  This used to probably be the easiest fight in Chapter 1.

[Jumza]

Oh that dragon attacks, and is probably the easiest to deal with monster on the field due to the circumstances.

It runs in and my party has yet to take a turn, great I can wreck him in one go. Olivander will go for a venom shot, Leesha for a protect, Cloud with either a Climhazzard or braver depending on enemy speeds, Ramza will either attack the dragon or Cheer Up a poisoned unit (skeletons), Link will go for an attack on the dragon, Dante will go for the attack, Snake will go for a crossbow shot.

Now switch out one of the 5 (you have to leave one out of the battle), thats ok. Plan still works, dragon goes down with barely any fight, and when it gets back up (dragon spirit) it gets dropped again from poison.

The battle goes downhill from here.

The other dragon comes in for massive damage, and due to my positioning I can't take it down as fast as the other, if at all, and if it gets low the skeletons are right there with a thunder soul. Oh boy, skeletons. Move HP up, infinite re-raise, 100% damage +poison, drain attack. If you're plan was to model the skeleton off of my FFT Nightmares, you did it, it pretty much makes the perfect unit. It also has 2 absorption's, and it's weaknesses don't matter that much because A) Leesha gets about 2 cures (which she uses offensively) off before getting dropped and B) Dante as a knight, while extremely beefy and powerful can't move around the field worth a damn. The Bombs are a whole other story as well. If one gets crit quick, it wont explode, oh no I wouldn't be that lucky. It goes for a fire attack on one of my 1hp units (wish spam >.<) then runs for the hills, the other promptly hits it with a fire attack to bring it back to near full. If I get grouped up, it doesn't matter how much HP it has, it'll blow up. But only if it hits everyone.

Raven, your soul has become one with the game. 

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Sounds like you're having an adventure in Sweegy Woods there, Jumza.

[Jumza]

Boy do I come off as whiney there. I just had to get that out though, it's very frustrating because it's like reading a book, but I'm being forced to read the same page over and over again XD.

Anyway, I'm gonna do a couple randoms, change some setups and hope for better luck so I can end my 'adventures' in Sweegy soon.

[RavenOfRazgriz]

Good luck.  At least the random battles are rewarding enough now it's worth seeking out the harder ones. :v

[The Damned]

(Lulz at acting like Raven has a soul just because he managed to imbue his enmity into something. Pull the other one, guys.)

Seriously, though, congrats on getting your own section since I know you guys have been working hard on this even if I've barely been following this, mostly because, to be honest, the base concept of this is still quite...odd for me. It doesn't help that of The Five, the only one I care about is Ramza due to still only being vaguely familiar with everyone save Cloud, whom I have pretty much never liked.

That said, I'll probably give it a try within the next couple of weeks since it would be a shame to have one of the few active projects not get support and considering...other things I intended to do starting around that time.

For now, I merely wanted to answer something directly that Celdia had asked since Elric only alluded to it when he answered her.

Also I was amused by how more people unlock under the People section as you read each entry. If this was a function in Vanilla, then my ignorance about the information in the Brave Story menus is definitely showing.

It's done that since Vanilla, even when it comes to just reading bar rumors for people you never meet, like the Queen's son. I can't remember if it updates immediately, per se, though I think it does, but it definitely does update with regularity and, yeah, it's really easy to miss.

[Celdia]

Late posting this since I think I went back to it sometime yesterday afternoon, but...

spoiler: Bariaus Hill, Take 2

I suppose properly it would be Take 3 before I succeeded. All I remember of my second attempt was a slightly longer run like my first try that ended with the Lamia getting her Discord damage up to the low 70s and just picking off my team one at a time instead of killing everyone at once in two sweeps of it.

My third attempt was a little different because the AI decided to change tactics for whatever reason. Instead of Babus chasing after the injured Chocobo to heal it then coming back up the hill behind the other monsters, buffing them, he thought it would be more important to stab Link in the back. This over-extended his position and put him in a place where I could gang up on his short ass and put him down in one go. Without their beastmaster to rely on for healing and insanely stupid buffs, the rest of the monsters went down in fairly easy order. That's not to say the RNG didn't still fuck with me nor is it to say that I didn't have a hard time with it because of that. Dante missed like 3 Stingers that would have ended the battle significantly sooner had any of them landed. The battle ended with Link having died twice, ending the battle face-down in the dirt, and everyone but Dante being in Critical status before I finally managed to take down the Lamia and chase the fleeing Chocobo [who had managed to get itself up to a whopping 16 HP from 2 HP while going from one corner of the map to the opposite corner] to a spot where I could actually knife the fucker before he got back up to fighting strength.

Speaking of knifing the bird, Snake being able to Hide turned him into m MVP of the match even though he didn't Act all that much. Just being able to move around the field unmolested and make good use of his insane base Move/Jump stats made him the most effective unit I had. It wasn't a matter so much of being the strongest hitting or having the most devastating attack skills - he was just the man in the right place at the right time, all the time.

So that's my successful attempt at the v1.0 Bariaus Hill. Going to update to v1.2 before I move on.

For now, I merely wanted to answer something directly that Celdia had asked since Elric only alluded to it when he answered her.

It's done that since Vanilla, even when it comes to just reading bar rumors for people you never meet, like the Queen's son. I can't remember if it updates immediately, per se, though I think it does, but it definitely does update with regularity and, yeah, it's really easy to miss.

Thank you, Damned.

[Jumza]

Ok, random battles.
I first ran into Araguay and that triggered a battle, and I quickly got stomped by squids+skele's. Natures Wrath is the bane of my existance.

So after that, I ran to Bariuas Hill and ran into what looks like one of the Kings patrols, a few aren't focusing on me however, there appears to be a 3rd team in this fight consisting of 3 bombs.

2 of the 3 enemies facing the bombs attack them, one being a chemist with Jump+2 that immediately jumps from the top of the hill down to the bombs, and misses an attack. She is so dead XD.
I don't have time to finish the battle for now, but it is a really cool concept. I hope I win

[RavenOfRazgriz]

You need to invest in a wee bit of magic I think, Jumza.  It'd help against those mean old monsters.

Good luck at Bariaus Hill. :v