Reviewing Monsters: Final Fantasy XII, Part 3

Yep, last we left off I had to repeat the stupid mimic dungeon. I went and rapid-fire'd the damn Battery Mimics, and it's annoyingly very easy to actually clear the dungeon once I know what I'm doing. I don't think I even saw a single skeleton, let alone the more powerful skull-defenders and specters. Which means they don't show up in my bestiary (or, sorry, Clan Primer) in this gameplay. Whatever, I assume I'll have more chances to meet them. 

I also neglected to mention in the last part of our fifth party member, Basch, who's a disgraced soldier blamed for the assassination of Dalmasca's king. The jury's still out on what actually happened, but he is accidentally freed by our heroes. So anyway, so far we've got a bunch of interesting duos -- Aladdin-expy street urchin Vaan, who lost his brother in the war; his best friend Penelo (our eyecatcher here); the smooth-talking gun-slinging sky pirate Balthier; his scantily-clad rabbit-woman sidekick Fran; and disgraced knight-general Basch. 

Normally, in these kind of JRPG monster reviews, I make a point to talk about one of the party characters, but Penelo is... there's not much to really talk about her, is there? She sure is a girl-next-door type and the responsible one of the duo she makes up with Vaan. She also kind of leaves the party before Vaan gets arrested alongside Balthier and Fran, so there's really not much to say about her... but apparently she doesn't really do much in the game other than later tag along with Vaan to keep him alive. 

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Bomb

• Classification: Fiend
• Genus: Bomb

A Final Fantasy staple, the Bomb in Ivalice is still a floating grinning ghost-thing with little hands, but it's a bit more... elaborate? The 'default' state is actually just a hovering bomb, but as it gets more and more enraged, the classical "fire elemental" body forms around it, with the grinning mouth enveloping the spherical bomb. Ultimately it's a nice compromise between being a nice nod to a classic design, but also incorporating an actual 'bomb' into it. 

The lore notes that these Bombs were once an ensorcelled weapon that were used against mages, but have grown wild and are just wandering around. Bombs will react to the presence of magick, causing them to explode and unleash the energies within. This is accurately reflected in-game, because the Bombs are actually completely docile unless you attack them... or if one of your party members casts magick around them, at which point they go all 'anti-magic' and start to attack. 

Seeker

• Classification: Avion
• Genus: Steeling

A slightly rarer and stronger version of the Steeling bat-monsters, I like that the Seeker has a soft white down around its wings, and some creepy-looking claw-finger appendages poking out of his wings. Just like their Steeling cousins, Seekers also use echolocation to navigate in the dark, although are also able to use these high-pitched shrieking to discombobulate prey of their sense of direction. Apparently, their white wings are sought-after by certain collectors. 

Suriander

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Toad

The stronger version of the Gigantoad adds another pair of horns, and is called the 'Suriander' -- presumably a portmanteau of Surinam (a type of toad) and 'salamander'. The lore actually points out a detail that existed on the Gigantoad that I simply never noticed until seeing the Suriander flavour text, that their butts have gigantic fish-tails. And this tail allows them to swim through the water despite lacking webbing on their feet. Nice that the writers actually thought of this!

Like many animals with actual horns, the Surianders are noted to use their gigantic horns more for display and intimidation purposes. 

Mimic Queen

• Classification: Boss
• Genus: Giant Insect

And the boss of the Barheim Passage is a gigantic Mimic Queen, the size of a large dinosaur. It's basically what I expected from a larger version of the Battery Mimics I've been fighting throughout the dungeon. It's got a couple extra joints on her legs, a much more pronounced abdomen and way more multicoloured light around her 'head' and 'thorax'. She's also got explicit wings, though they look way too flimsy to support her full weight. 

The Mimic Queen is surely way too big to pretend to be an urn, though I suppose she could pretend to be like a building pillar? We don't fight her in her capacity as a mimic, which is a bit of a shame, since she's just treated as a giant insect queen monster. She also has a couple of cinematic lightning-blast attacks, but is otherwise kinda just there for the spectacle of beating up a large monster. The mimic Queen can lay 100 eggs within a single day, and can live and remain fertile for hundreds of years... though 'hundreds of young' might be a bit of a hyperbole. Very cool robot bug, but I kinda wished they did more. 

Tiny Battery

• Classification: Insect
• Genus: Mimic

And these Tiny Batteries, basically a downsized version of the Battery Mimic model, accompany the Mimic Queen as "adds", to use a MMORPG term. They sure are tiny versions of the queen that can soak up hits and pile on damage. These tiny larvae are apparently wracked with hunger from the moment of their birth, and they continue to look for food until they properly mature... or more likely, die in the protection of their queen. 

Apparently, there are some that are born slightly smarter than usual, and it's theorized (but not confirmed) that these 'gifted' mutants would become queens in the future. 

Flowering Cactoid

• Classification: Rank I Mark
• Genus: Rare Cactoid

The third mark/bounty is the Flowering Cactoid, who is a regular Cactoid with a flower on top of his head. Like the Cactuars in other Final Fantasy games, the Flowering Cactoid has access to the one-shot-kill Thousand Needles move. Among the cactoids, those with a red flower are revered as leaders and the focus of 'much respect and adoration'. Neat!

Wraith

• Classification: Rank I Mark
• Genus: Ghost
  

The fourth mark is a Wraith, another visual repaint of the Ghost... but this one is a bit more annoying to fight due to casting a 'Doom' effect that'll kill your party members after a set number of turns. 

There's also a fun story for the Wraith, too, which sets it apart from the 'monster is menacing civilian' excuse plot for the previous marks. The Wraith is the 'coalescence of lingering regrets' of people who perished during an accident during the construction of Garamsythe Waterway... that, or the results of the rats killed by Vaan, which the NPC that gave this quest offhandedly mentioned, but this explanation is unlikely. The lore explains that the death of the workers in the Waterway causes the Wraith to often haunt children, due to the fact that the dead people were mostly fathers who had regrets about seeing their children. And, indeed, the reason the bounty got posted in the first place was because a Seeq child has locked himself in his house after being haunted by this thing. 

Ripe Rampager

• Classification: Plant
• Genus: Mandragora

And this is a 'rare game', which is a mechanic in Final Fantasy XII that is apparently very frustrating. I'll list the creatures as I find them, and I don't intend to 100% this game. I think I'll have post-script page at the end listing all the monsters I never encountered. Rare games are extremely, well, rare. Some like this guy here just has a small chance to spawn, but others have some rather esoteric methods to get them to spawn. 

Anyway, Ripe Rampager here is apparently a 'mandragora' adapted to life in the desert, and shares the same 'skeleton' as the Rogue Tomato. The Ripe Rampager looks a bit more like a turnip, only he's got two glowing eyes and what appears to be a face... and some kind of a leather cloak that covers up its lower mouth and upper 'body'? It still has funny chicken-legs. I do like the general look. 

This design apparently became iconic in FFXI, and is reused for this game. It's still a very serviceable 'fantasy plant tiny person' design, and you could see this stand alongside races like the Korok, Deku Scrubs, Aranara and other fantasy plant-sprite people... but I still think the Rogue Tomato is a cuter design than this, sorry. 

Slaven

• Classification: Giant
• Genus: Slaven

Okay, so this big lumbering beast walks through some parts of the desert, and I had initially thought that it's one of those 'don't fuck with this thing' enemies like the Wild Saurian. It's actually not that bad, though! The Slaven is an interesting design. It's like a giant lumbering dinosaur, reminding me of a discount version of the Long Gui from FFXIII, but... it's got a giant crocodile head, column-like elephantine feet, and... not much else. It's got a tortoiseshell hump or something, but that's it. That's all there is to this thing's body. It's such a weird creature, and the game even classifies it as a 'giant' instead of a 'beast'. Weird!

Apparently the Slaven (literally 'slave' in the original Japanese) used to be a giant beast of burden in the past, but now we're in the age of airships and whatnot, causing Slavens to call by the wayside... but this also caused a lot of the art of Slaven-rearing to be lost, and most Slaven are feral and unable to be trained. Pretty weird creature, I like it. A bunch of these show up in the Lhusu Mines that I visit in the sky-city of Bhujerba. 

Ba'Gamman and His Henchmen

This guy's been kind of chasing down one of our main characters, Balthier, ever since Rabanastre. The plot of FFXII is very loosely inspired by Star Wars, and Ba'Gamman is a rough analogue of the bounty hunters in that setting -- though it's a bit more clear in this setting why the Empire's Judges need to hire mercenaries when they're so powerful... to basically get around the politics of the world and keep their hands clean of interference in other countries. Ba'Gamman is part of the Bangaa race, who are basically stocky lizard-people. Not a whole ton to say since they're pretty basic as far as lizard-people go, though they do have tassel-like 'hair'. Or are those ears? I do like that, just like the Seeq, the Bangaa are introduced as perfectly nice citizens in Rabanastre. In fact, Vaan's caretaker prior to his adventure is an elderly Bangaa.

Ba'Gamman attacks out party with four goons, Rinok, Gijuk and Bwagi, though only the big boss himself has this hilariously over-the-top giant weapon that I can describe as... a buzzsaw spear? He latches the staff and the chainsaw-ring together into a hilarious, impractical anime weapon, and I love him the more for it.

More Imperials!

The game's bestiary don't even register any of these guys in their own segment, considering every single one of them under the same 'Imperial' category. But the next area is the Dreadnought Leviathan, which carries a bunch of additional enemies -- in addition to the Imperial Swordsman and Imperial Magus we've seen in the tutorial, there are also Imperial Hoplites (stronger swordsmen), Imperial Gunners (self-explanatory), Judges (pictured here, and basically have a different set of cool armour) and Mastiff (reskins of the wolf model with spiffy military armour). Again, never had much to say about humanoid enemies.

Judge Ghis

No, not Judge Geese, but Judge Ghis. One of the five named Judges that serves as the primary antagonists of the game, Ghis sure has a cool golden helmet with horns, a sword, and probably the most distinctive aspect of his design -- that weird fan-spike thing that he's holding. It's not quite a traditional war-fan, more like a stabbing weapon whose handle is really souped up to look like a wacky anime weapon. And we love our wacky anime weapons here. In combat, he can combine the sword with his fan-dagger into a longer weapon. 

I could probably say a lot more about his character, but this is just an early meeting with the character who presumably will be hounding our party for a while to come. Not much to say, again, about humanoid enemies. 

Alraune

• Classification: Plant
• Genus: Mandragora

The first 'true' Mandragora common enemy after the last couple that we saw were named elite ones of some sort. And this one is... kinda cute? It's got a drill topknot, and the 'organic' clothing surrounds its mouth and upper torso like a classic rogue travelling cloak or something that you'd see in D&D or something. 

I'm not honestly the biggest fan of their design, though it really is hard to beat the charm of the first tomato one I fought. I do really like their lore, though, where the designers of the game attempted to explain their behaviour of living in a desert climate. The Alraune use their head-horns to crack rock salt, and draw the 'salinity' that sustains their life. It's interesting to note that the vines that spread across their neck and creates the charming 'clothes' are a source of irritation and frustration for the Alraune, who often try to claw the vines off -- probably why the Alraune has such a huge anger-point thing like a Primeape on his head!

"Alraune" is the German term for mandrake (or mandragora), and Final Fantasy likes to use it as the name for repainted enemies of the Mandragora. 

Urutan-Yensa

• Classification: Humanoid
• Genus: Urutan-Yensa

Oh! Okay! Another non-human race, though this one is more explicitly set up as an always-hostile enemy as opposed to the Bangaa and the Seeq. The Urutan-Yensa are introduced in a rather badass sequence of riding fish as they surf through the strange Sandsea, which is comprised of sand that resembles water. The Urutan-Yensa then menace us with their strange, mandibled faces, their cloaks, their savage claws and their bizarrely reverse-jointed legs.

The lore behind the Urutan-Yensa note that they're actually a race 'evolved from crustaceans', so they're... crab-people? Huh! It's a rather unique situation, I suppose, thanks to the fact that the Sandsea is a magic... well, sand-sea. The Urutan-Yensa aren't as explicit of being crab-people like many examples in nature, but I do kind of appreciate that they're just humanoids with crab ancestry and featurses. You can see it in their faces, right? It also explains their chitinous arms and legs, although sadly whatever giant crab claws they might have had in the past have phased out like monkey tails in humans. 

I do like the thought that was put into their description. Their hides are apparently extremely hard, and are covered with needle-like bristles, again like a crab. They are aggrsesive and territorial, though I do like the little detail that there had been attempts at integrating Urutan-Yensa into 'hume culture', which I assume is the combined cultures of humanoids and the other sentient humanoids like Moogles, Viera, Seeq and Bangaa that we've seen wandering around town. 

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Unfortunately, this is going to be the last Final Fantasy XII monster review for a while. I enjoy the setting and the story enough, but I wasn't really feeling the gameplay and just didn't haev time to really get used to it. Things has been quite busy and I just didn't quite have the time to really properly play this game as I thought I would. 

I will no doubt finish the game at some point, but probably not this year. Sorry!

Reviewing Monsters: Final Fantasy XII, Part 2

More Final Fantasy XII monster reviews! The first real 'dungeon', even if it still feels a bit more tutorial-ish, basically combines the sewer segment underneath Rabanastre Castle and the subsequent dungeon that we get tossed into immediately. It's pretty fun. 

The first impression of the other party members, Balthier and Fran, also makes the game much more bearable. There's always a degree of tolerance that I have towards 'generic anime protagonist', but Vaan is just so... so bland. Vaan is a bit more bearable because I'm playing the Japanese dub (where he is voiced by, of all people, Kamen Rider Ixa/Kamen Rider Grease!) but there's only so much that voice-acting can do when Vaan himself just seems like this random thief tossed into a much more interesting political storyline. He's not terrible, I wouldn't go that far. He's got a typical Aladdin 'pickpocket from the streets' vibe to introduce the common man in the setting, but I think it's a testament to how much I'm indifferent towards him that I took so long to get through this prologue of FFXII. 

Anyway, monsters!

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Ghost

• Classification: Undead
• Genus: Ghost

Oh, we have undead in this game! The 'Ghost' enemy here is the most basic one, and I am very pleased that it's not just some guy with a spectral filter put over the CG render. No, Ghost here is a full-on monster design and what a fun one! On paper it's still working off of the 'Casper' body design, but the 'tail' and especially the fingers trail off into long, white wispy tendrils. Most striking, though, is the appearance of his upper body. His head trails up like a weird mountain, and there are almost stone-like carvings of eyes running down the head and on the chest. It looks so different and a fair bit more imposing!

The Ghost is also probably the first enemy in the game that actually casts spells. In addition to shooting elemental attacks, the Ghost is able to heal itself, spawn a weaker clone, and cast annoying 'Blind' status ailment. 

The lore talks about how in Ivalice, Ghosts are formed when any soul is trapped within a coffin by magic (sorry, magick), and this process happens regardless of how pure or evil the soul previously is. The game doesn't actually treat the Ghost differently from other enemies in how they are killed, but I like the very D&D description in the lore about how one needs to find the casket to properly release the Ghost from this warped form it's turned into, allowing the Ghost to return to its natural form. 

Garchimacera

• Classification: Fiend
• Genus: Gargoyle

It's a little flying imp-goblin! I like how his face has such a shit-eating grin. The design of the more ornate wings and the giant flat rabbit ears, coupled with the magic runes running down its head, does kind of set this guy a bit apart from your regular goblin/imp enemies, though these guys are never going to be something that particularly excites me. (This guy shares the name with a different imp-ish enemy from FFXIII). 

I do like the backstory given to the Garchimacera, though. Apparently, in the olden days of Ivalice, it was customary to place statues with terrible visages in houses to ward off malady-causing demons. This really does feel like it's a nice reference to many cultures that use protective totems and house deities to protect themselves. And, just like real life, more modern generations end up misconstruing the function of these fierce-looking creatures, thinking the scary-faced statues are themselves demons. This doesn't corrupt the statues themselves, however, which is a nice subversion. But the fear that the humans have towards these statues caused them to manifest in real life, like something out of Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. I like that! It's a nice little origin story. 

The Garchimacera is identified as part of the 'gargoyle' family, which I assume is where the 'gar' in its name comes from. It's also got a couple more interesting abilities like a life-draining attack. Note that I'm not going to list every single enemy attack unless it's relevant to the flavour or how annoying an enemy is in-game. 

Firemane

• Classification: Boss
• Genus: Flame Spirit

And finally we have the boss of the sewer dungeon, which... is honestly rather random? We don't fight the soldiers chasing us, or a bigger version of the Gigantoads or Garchimaceras lurking in the sewers, or even anything particularly fire-themed. Firemane ("Bushfire" in Japanese) shows up out of nowhere to menace my party at the end of the sewer level. He's a giant fire horse with six fiery tendrils that grow out of his head. The lore explains that the Firemane is a great spirit of fire (so kind of like an elemental?) that became enraged when mankind used fire as a weapon of war instead of as a sacred object. Thus the Firemane manifests to attack humans, menacing the Garamsythe Waterway... and we're still not given a reason why it menaces a sewer system. It does morph into a ball of fire to arrive and later to exit the battle, which is a nice little detail. 

The fight and the animations are relatively simple for a fiery horse monster, though I do like the little detail that the arena we fight the Firemane in is partially covered with water, and the Firemane can't use certain attacks to characters standing on the water. 

I still really wished we had more context to what this thing is, though. It really just feels like a random fight against this fiery spirit that has nothing to do with either the plot or the current location. 

Daguza, Galeedo & Gwitch

Named NPC's don't get an entry in the Clan Primer, apparently. BUt in the prison, Balthier and Vaan fight these three pig-faced bastards without any weapons in a little fight ring. It's a simple fight and they aren't really able to do much but punch. But I'll take this chance to talk about the Seeq race. I almost thought about talking about all the non-human races in the first part, but I thought (rightly!) that there'll be opportunities to talk about them when some of them inevitably become bosses. 

In addition to the typical humans and franchise-staple Moogles, Ivalice has a bunch of other races that hang out very prominently in Rabanastre. I actually really, really like this little detail! More often than not it's so easy for these games to segregate the elves into the forests and the orcs are always barbarians. And sure, some games that do something with the racism tropes (like Witcher 3, and World of Warcraft before the writing stagnated) but I really do like the alternative where... these intelligent races are just there, hanging around in towns and treated as regular citizens, no matter if the Seeq race are brutish, muscular piggish dudes. It's not the Seeq's fault that they're ugly by human standards! They're all intelligent humanoids, and really it's just our human sense of aesthetics!

Of course, that doesn't mean that some individuals, like Daguza, Galeedo and Gwitch here, can't act like brutes, but there are also brutish human enemies earlier and a bunch of grumpy but otherwise friendly Seeq and Bangaa (those are the lizard-people). 

Mimic

• Classification: Insect
• Genus: Mimic

What? Mimics! Okay, what a fun subversion! Mimics have been chests with fangs and tongues since forever ever since Dungeons & Dragons codified it, but they really should look different to, y'know, 'mimic' other things, right? And the Mimics in Ivalicce are apparently some kind of quasi-technological insects that fold up into mechanical urns on the right, which are what the chests in this part of town look like. It's actually rather bug-like already, right? Like an insect's abdomen with four legs supporting it? The treasure chests will unfurl out to become that four-legged bug-like creature that honestly looks more like a robotic insect than an actual bug. 

But the lore specifically notes that the Mimic is properly an 'insectoid', so presumably all the organs of this creature are chitinous, just maybe hard enough to pass off as a metallic or ceramic urn. In a gloriously awesome explanation, the Mimics apparently behave like another iconic D&D monster, the Intellect Devourer. They actually want to prey on brains. And not just any brains, but intelligent brains. And this ambush tactic of pretending to be a treasure urn is, in a way, a method for them to filter for intelligence, allowing them to specifically attract beings that are smart enough to understand that urns equal treasure. It doesn't really translate into anything significant in-game, but I absolutely love that there's an actual stated reason in the settting .

Tiny Mimic

• Classification: Insect
• Genus: Mimic

However, the Mimics perhaps aren't executed the best as far as how they're introduced to us. Only the 'adult' Mimic above can mimic urns, and those don't show up until the second half of the Barheim Passage dungeon. The mimics are actually the main gimmick of the entire dungeon, but it's their swarming and electrical affinity (are they actually robots/mechas, then?) that's highlighted, with the actual titular 'Mimic' part being more of an afterthought. Indeed, for most of the dungeon, you fight these Tiny Mimics, who aren't even able to turn into little urns!

Anyway, Tiny Mimics are just smaller versions of the big mimic. The lore notes that the Mimics actually get smarter as they devour brains, but those in the larval stage like the Tiny Mimic are rather 'vapid and dull', and if they're unable to grow beyond this stage, they remain dumb until the day they die. 

Battery Mimic

• Classification: Insect
• Genus: Mimic

Oh, look at that more elaborate body! Look at that nasty drill-like mouth! And are those eyes, those blue patterns on the most proximal part of the legs? The Battery Mimics are the first Mimics you encounter, and they feed on electricity. They feed on it, and then discharge electricity as a combination of defense mechanism and excretory method. These Battery Mimic strains are apparently very short-lived due to how inefficient their feeding methods are. 

The Battery Mimics are the primary gimmick of the Barheim Passage dungeon, because any time a Battery Mimic feeds on the electrical supply of the dungeon, the lights start to dim. It's a rush every time your party enters a portion of a map and there are like three or four Battery Mimics spread all over, eating electricity while their smaller counterparts try and swarm you. And if you fail to take out the Battery Mimics in a timely fashion, and lights actually do go out... well, the walking dead arrive! Which are the rest of the monsters here:

Zombie

• Classification: Undead
• Genus: Zombie

First up is a typical, rotten zombie, with raggedy clothing and a delightfully wretched face. A pretty basic zombie, not much to really say about the design. 

The lore does note that the Zombies in this setting are pretty basic. An exhumed corpse, enslaved and bound by 'foul magicks'. It's still rotting, and as such exposure to the sun's rays (or, say, the lighting of a mine that our heroes restore by blowing up Battery Mimics) will cause the decay to advance so fast that they crumble to dust. 

Skeleton

• Classification: Undead
• Genus: Skeleton

The other very simple undead enemy type is the Skeleton. Do I need to elaborate on skeletons? You've got one inside of you! Again, all these undead only show up if the light goes down, and it's not in the longest and biggest chamber that I missed a Mimic that these bastards start coming out. These guys can also cast magic! 

The way that Skeletons are created are a bit different than Zombies or Ghosts. In the lore, Skeletons are created when people who die have many burdens and are unable to relinquish them upon death, literally being 'weighted down' and unable to ascend to heaven. It's pretty thematic to the wretched shambling of skeletons, and a nice difference to the zombies (exhumed corpses enslaved by magicks) and ghosts (magicks affecting burial). The Skeletons will apparently wander, punished by either a greater power or their own guilt, until their very bones are reduced to ash. 

Skull Defender

• Classification: Undead
• Genus: Skeleton

Of course there are stronger skeletons, and Skull Defenders are specifically the corpses of fallen warriors or hunters who were slain by their marks. They sure have, uh... weird... nets? Attached to their bones? They also have the remnants of armour. In-game, they have more annoying spells like 'Slow' and 'Dark'. Due to the type of people these guys are born out of, they are usually found in man-made locations like mines.

Specter

• Classification: Undead
• Genus: Ghost

And the final undead that shows up are these Specters. Essentially a palette swap of the 'Ghost' above, but far more deadly. The 'ectoplasm' hands and tail are more vividly different with their lavender shade, and the creepy, cursed-growth body is a creepy, armoured gray. These guys can teleport, and can cast a multitude of different status effects like poison and blind. In fact, a group of these specters and skeletons actually slowly routed my party as I tried to run to the part of the dungeon with a shopkeeper and a healing save-point. And these undead basically game over'd me twice (and a combination of poor 'gambit' usage draining all my potions and phoenix downs), which forced me to reload a save file a bit earlier. Which is why this 'reviewing monsters' segment doesn't have the final boss of the damn mimic tunnel. It's probably a big Mimic. 

Anyway, the Specters do have a pretty cool lore bit. They may be a palette swap, but Specters are coalesced and manifested from the shapeless emotion of fear. They are born in places where men feel a lot of fear, like places of great slaughter... such as Rabanastre's prison filled with torture and violence. Being embodiments of fear, Specters are incited to violence at any kind of other emotions. And as humans, we have more emotions other than fear. They attack humans, ripping away all other emotions other than fear. And when all that's left is fear... then all is left of the humans are specters. That's how new specters are born, apparently. Very cool lore.

Reviewing Monsters: Final Fantasy XII, Part 1

So this has been a long time coming, and... it's mostly really due to me taking forever to get through the 'tutorial' and 'prologue' segments of Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. It's been a game I've been itching to play for a long time, and I'm pretty sure I brought this Switch cartridge in 2022 or something. But the opening for this game... took a while, yeah? A combination of the cutscenes with many characters and nation names that I have no idea about being tossed at me really ended up kind of overwhelming me a fair bit, and it took me a while to finally get pass the actionized tutorial. And even more to get through the rather bland Vaan opening scenes. (Vaan is a very boring protagonist, and I'm unfortunately saddled with him right after I got a bit excited about the more interesting kingdom-civil-war setting established in the prologue). And another read-up through the Final Fantasy wiki to be sure about the characters I'm watching in those cutscenes are who I thought they are. 

But one Persona 5 and one Pokemon Violet later, and finally I'm starting this game. And one of the bigger appeals of FFXII is the fact that this is a game that's apparently a bit more lore-heavy in terms of the politics and setting. As well as a bestiary that's probably one of the few times in Final Fantasy that we actually get to learn a lot more about the monsters beyond enemies to fight!

And I could go on a bit about FFXII's story so far and how I find it and how annoying Vaan is, but we're here talking about the monsters, so let's talk about the monsters!

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Imperial Swordsman

• Classification: Archadian Empire
• Genus: Imperial

The game starts off with a bit of a extended prologue/prequel/tutorial starring a couple of decoy protagonists just to show us what the state of the political wars in the world are like before throwing us to into the shoes of a more typical JRPG fantasy protagonist, and we get to fight these Imperial Swordsmen, representing the kingdom of Archadia. They have nice helmets, but I really don't have much to say about them. Presumably, we'll meet actual characters as enemies and bosses? I never have much to say about humanoid characters if they don't do something interesting with them. 

Air Cutter Remora

• Classification: Archadian Empire
• Genus: Imperial Armament

And I'm going to assume this is a tradition for all Final Fantasy games, but we have a huge, visually impressive boss that dies rather quickly in the tutorial segment. for FFVII we had the Guard Scorpion, and FFXIII had the Manasvin War-Mech. FFXII throws Air Cutter Remora at us, one of the Star Wars-esque gunships that take part in the badass cutscene right before the gameplay, and... it sure is a sci-fi spaceship! It's kind of interesting that this gunship is supposed to be like, some kind of an object to take part in more close-quarters combat compared to modern fighter jets and bomber planes? It's hovering vertically and shoots things down like a floating tower. 

I actually don't have much to say here either. It sure is a floating thing that shoots missiles at my party!

Dire Rat

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Rat

And after we gain control of the (supposed) main character, generic adventurer peasant youth living in the slums of a city oppressed by an empire, Vaan Ratsbane, we see him immediately fighting rats. Interestingly, these Dire Rats are actually called "Wererats" in the original Japanese version of Final Fantasy XII. While visually they do look like just big rats, I do like the sinister implication that these rats that Vaan casually murders are actually transformed humans. 

The Dire Rat is described as being a vile creature that lives in the sewers, and while the humans have been trying to eradicate them, their rate of reproduction always causes the population to boom back up. 

Oh, yes. Unlike the other two Final Fantasy games I've played and reviewed on this site, Final Fantasy XII actually has a bestiary. Each monster gets two pages, with the second page (usually being more flavour-related; the Dire Rat's talks about rat tails being used for nasty-tasting potions) only being unlocked when you kill a certain amount of that enemy. Lovely! Each monster also has a 'genus' and 'classification' listed among them, and if you can tell from my Pikmin reviews, I love fantasy settings with a working taxonomical system!

Wolf

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Wolf

Oh yeah, that's... that's not a 'wolf'. Where the rat does still look like a regular human-world rat (albeit with glowing eyes), the Wolf here only has the silhouette and body layout in common with wolves from our world. What a head it has. It looks more like a cross between a dinosaur and a bat, with a jagged, grnning mouth; a chunky lower jaw; what seems to be hardened upper part of their heads; unnaturally small beady eyes; and weird fin-like ears. 

Interestingly, from the lore, the Wolves of Ivalice are recorded to have once lived in close harmony with mankind... but eventually were driven out into the wilderness, at which point they began preying on monsters and this act caused the 'arising' of diverse strains of wolves, transforming them from just regular wolves to wolf-like monsters. It's like a reverse domestication, only instead of breeding wolves into adorable pet breeds like chihuahuas and bulldogs, these wolves are independent and transform into Greymon-headed violent bastards. 

Cactite

• Classification: Plant
• Genus: Cactus

The setting that the first parts of the game takes place in, Rabanastre, is in a desert town. And in addition to the wolves, these Cactites are extremely common weak enemies. I do like how they look, it's just a giant cactus stem with stubby legs and long arms, and Cactites just sort of walk around and wave their hands and mostly minding their business. While I enjoy my more 'monstrous natural anatomy' plant monsters, I do also enjoy plant creatures like these that just have a cartoon face. 

Cactites are described as 'mean-spirited' (though their in-game behaviour is more cowardly) and lacking of intelligence to do actual damage to humans. These Cactites are the smallest 'sproutlings', however. The lore then proceeds to describe about how some rare strains can sprout a valuable scarlet flower that's a highly vaunted for being a sign of good fortune to "young lovers with a tolerance of needles". Haha!

Cockatrice

• Classification: Avion
• Genus: Cockatrice

Oh, okay! The Cockatrice in this game is an early enemy and it's just... a mean-ass looking chicken. A fat, mean-ass looking chicken without a neck. No snake parts, no stone-petrification eye beams. Okay! As an early fat bird-themed enemy, I actually do find the Cockatrice to be absolutely charming, particularly since they move around by rolling on the ground. Ha! I like how this thing still looks like a chicken but with all the parts mutated somewhat grotesquely. They did a great job at making that face look mean, and I like the tiny dinosaur claw-fingers. 

The Cockatrice's profile describes some of its biology, which is fun. They didn't need to put any of these in, but I just love it. The Cockatrice feed on smaller animals, spitting out a sticky saliva and keeping these trapped prey until they are hungry enough to feed on them. Sort of like how certain spiders keep around coccooned-up prey in their web. Also, while the Cockatrice obviously can't fly with those tiny wings, apparently they have swollen air-sacs that allow them to float into the air when there are drafts to spy for prey. Okay?

Interestingly, later on as we go to small villages in the desert regions, there are a couple of villages where they rear Cockatrices just like regular chickens!

Rogue Tomato

• Classification: Rank I Mark
• Genus: Deadly Nightshade

Our first 'mark', or bounty, is the Rogue Tomato here that has been menacing some local merchant. Apparently this is a member of the 'Deadly Nightshade' family, and the lore book describes that because it's an outcast of its people, it has lost certain 'powers' it wielded with impunity, which I'm going to assume refers to some kind of more powerful variant of the Nightshade genus/family that exist in the game?

The Rogue Tomato is a very cute design! Its head is just a tomato with a giant maw stretching like a hideous, demonic smile. Its body is some kind of straitjacket puppet, and its legs look like either bird-feet or twigs. It's a very fun plant monster, a simple and memorable design!

Wild Saurian

• Classification: Dragon
• Genus: Tyrant

Each overworld area has a particularly powerful monster that outclasses your current level, and basically is unbeatable until you grind up a lot and come back. For the first area, it's pretty simple -- a giant blue T-rex looms and stalks the area, far more powerful than the fat chickens or mutant wolves around. And it gets the point across! A giant, roaring dinosaur generally does. In addition to just having a buttload of stats, the Wild Saurian is able to eat wolves to buff itself. 

The Wild Saurian is considered a dragon, and it's noted that the dragons used to rule the land until a 'war with the gods' dwindled these dragons' numbers down to a number of their former glory. The lore description talks a bit about the anatomy of the T-rex, but also the fact that apparently their bones are really hard to get rid of, which is sometimes a problem in expanding into the wilderness.

There are a couple more 'giant' enemies in the desert areas I've explored, but I've only 'spoiled' myself in the wiki for the Wild Saurian and I'll wait until I actually meet and unlock the bestiary entries for the other big enemies before I review them. 

Hyena

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Wolf

Oh yeah, this definitely isn't a 'hyena'. The mottled spots and shaggy hair on the Ivalician Hyena's body certainly fits with those in our world, but the Hyena has gigantic tusks that point downwards from the back end of their jaws... and most interestingly two giant bone-horns that sprout out from its head. The end result makes it kind of look like a Hercules Beetle with how they are curved. 

The Hyena is the next version 'up' in the Wolf family, which I'm going to assume shares skeletons and movement animations. They are fierce hunters, though they also scavenge just like our-world hyenas. The horns are used in particular to fight against larger opponents. Rather wacky for the generic animals you see at this part of the world. I like it. 

Also, in addition to the regular version of the enemies found in the wild, there are also apparently more powerful variations like the Alpha Hyena that hang out with their lesser brethren. These slightly differently-named variants aren't registered in the bestiary as a separate entry, but me being me, I'll acknowledge them here. 

Happy Bunny (a.k.a. Giza Rabbit)

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Dreamhare

Known as 'Giza Rabbits' in the overworld and 'Happy Bunny' in the lore book  are these... interesting creatures. From a distance and from the back, they look like a cartoony rabbit -- see those giant ears attached to a big fluffy body? The actual appearance is a bit more different, with the main body of the Giza Rabbit being an impish humanoid thing. The rabbit body is a giant ball of fur sprouting from the back of his neck, and the ears look more like antennae or horns the way they are attached to this guy's head. 

The lore gives us a rather surprisingly disquieting backstory. The Giza Bunny is a 'fiendish creature taking the form of an adorable bunny'. And for that, it is all the more fiendish. We don't actually learn what else makes them fiendish other than this, although since they're technically as powerful as the rabid cockatrices and dinosaur-horned hyenas, it could simply mean that people thinking that they're about to hunt an easy bunny to make soup for dinner get a nasty surprise. 

The 'Happy Bunny' is apparently called Giza Rabbits or Ozmone Hares depending on where they are found, even though they are the exact same species and can even migrate from one place to the next. A lot of animals, particularly insects and fish, have so many different names and are thought to be different animals entirely when they migrate, and I thought this was a cute little detail (while also presumably allowing the designers to do a two-in-one enemy).

Urstrix

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Urstrix

Urstrix here is... literally called "Owlbear" in the original Japanese version. In just a transcribed English word. I keep forgetting that the original Final Fantasy is literally just borrowing the Dungeons & Dragons bestiary, and I actually do like that FFXII's interpretation of the Owlbear (or 'Urstrix') is so... lanky looking! It looks less like an owlbear and more like a wretched owl-man, with that torso and upper legs looking rather humanoid. I like how nasty the owl face looks, particularly with those giant eyebrows, and the way those raggedy wings are splayed out does give the impression of a creature that's been sweltering in the desert heat for a while. 

The lore gives us an actual backstory for the Urstrix. They are originally the equivalent of the 'canary in a mine', where they are taken into 'magicite mines' to look for the presence of toxic fumes. But because these are magic toxic fumes called the Mist (which presumably will show up in the game story later) instead of killing the canaries, it mutates their children into the Urstrix, which are so monstrous that even their parent birds panic and abandon them. 

Thextera

• Classification: Rank I Mark
• Genus: Mutant Wolf

And our second Mark is Thextera, a giant mutant repaint of the Wolf. And a giant wolf alone wouldn't be too special, but look at the colours of this motherfucker! Stand him up on two legs and he could hang out with superheroes! The leopard-coloured fur on the front and the zebra-like back is fun, but I think it's the fact that the tips of all four of his legs look like he's wearing socks. Neon green socks, which I think brings the design together. This looks so unnatural and bizarre. I like it. 

The Thextera is explicitly noted in the lore book as a 'Mutant Wolf' genus, because a larger size and rainbow colours counts as being mutated but those dinosaur dragon horns on the Hyena's heads aren't. Apparently, the mutation is caused by that monster-creating Mist. 

Sleipnir

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Sleipnir

Oh, mutant horse! From a distance, the Sleipnir (named after Odin's iconic horse from Norse mythology, natch) has the silhouette of an armoured horse. Sure, one with a particularly spiky armour that would look more at home on the fences of a grand gothic castle as opposed to armour on a horse... but take a closer look and the Sleipnir looks a bit more nasty. Just... just look at that mouth! That doesn't look like anything a healthy horse should have. The mouth also terminates around halfway through where the armour ends, making it look like the armour is crafted for a much bigger horse than this thing. Very monstrous, it looks like a mutant pillbug or some such.

And there's the question as to how the Sleipnirs got their armour anyway, and it's implied that it's actually a natural growth from its body? The lore for the Sleipnirs is that they were once the result of a program to create a powerful breed of war-charger horses. However, over time, the kingdoms that created these powerful cavalries are gone, with only the feral remnants of their horses running rampant in the wild.

Steeling

• Classification: Avion
• Genus: Steeling

Just called "Steel" in Japanese, we get our obligatory 'bat' enemy... but what a fun creature this is! Identified as part of the 'avion' genus, the Steeling is technically a bird if we take that classification seriously. But while it does have giant bat-wings (or dinosaur wings, I suppose, if its anatomy is more bird than mammal) its body isn't like the shape of any bird in existence. In fact, it's more like a flattened snake, or a mutant manta ray, with a long, wide mouth at the end of a flat body. It actually kind of reminds me of 'Minazuki' from Bleach, a giant manta ray monster. 

The Steelings are noted to feed on 'life-humours' of other monsters, but the lore page actually talks about just how much the in-universe literature overhypes and demonizes these animals as if they were 'guided through the black by the devil's hand'. Which is true to a lot of creaturse in our world, too. 

Ichthon

• Classification: Ichthian
• Genus: Piranha

The Dire Rats and Steelings hang out in the massive sewers underneath the city, and among those are the flying fish called the Ichthon. Or 'Killer Fish', in the original Japanese. These guys, despite their fearsome appearance and look, are actually docile and aren't aggressive unless you attack them first. 

Their anatomy is a bit hard to follow in this official render, but it's basically a long fish with wing-like fins, and one gigantic underbite with some orc tusks. The long downwards-pointing hairy spike is perhaps one detail too many, but it definitely adds to the savage-looking monster fish. Ichthons feed in shoals and the game notes that they are part of the 'piranha' class... except these are fantasy piranha that can hover above the water, and apparently hordes of Ichthons can devour beasts as large as the Wild Saurian above. 

Gigantoad

• Classification: Beast
• Genus: Toad

Oh, I like the Gigantoads. They're an annoyingly bulky enemy in-game, but I do like the design. It's supposed to be a 'toad' monster, but other than the raggedy brown colours, the neck-sack and the general shape, it's as much of a toad as the 'Hyena' monster above is a hyena. It looks almost dinosaurian or even demonic, with tiny beady eyes that look unexpectedly intelligent, giant bull-horns that curve upwarsd, almost reptilian-looking claws and a mouth that looks like it's sneering at you. 

The end result is surprisingly threatening-looking for a monster that's meant to just be a common enemy, but I do like the effect. The clan primer (our 'bestiary' book) describes how the giant sac in the Gigantoad's neck is meant for males to create sounds to attract females. The horns are also unsuitable for combat, and are insetad used to mark territory with gouges on trees. It's actually kinda cute -- the horns aren't really pointed the right way to pierce enemies anyawy, and a toad's body isn't meant to facilitate headbutts the way a deer or a bull would. 

Wait, are the demonic-looking horns supposed to be a riff on how some toads have horn-like protrusions above their eyes? I just got that. 

Flan

• Classification: Amorph
• Genus: Flan

One of the minibosses in the 'sewer' dungeon is the Flan (or 'Pudding' in Japanese), a recurring enemy in the Final Fantasy series after the first game used the four classic Dungeons and Dragons slime names for their slime enemies. Obviously, out of the four, 'Black Pudding' was the one that caught the fandom's attention, eventually mutating into a recurring 'Pudding' monster coloured rather deliciously like Japanese pudding. I love this origin story, and I love how the original intention of homaging a different source material ends up mutating into an endearing little critter here. 

I much prefer the name 'Pudding' because it's what this thing is supposed to be, but 'Flan' is also an endearingly dorky name. FF12's Flan is just an adorable blob monster with a charming slime monster mouth. It's got lumpy protrusions around halfway down its body that it uses in its attack animation, spinning around like a buzzsaw. The lore notes that the Flan is self-reproducing, absorbing prey and increasing its mass until they reproduce by what's essentially mitosis, and research notes that they are strikingly similar to the enigmatic Mist, meaning that these are probably more 'pure' monsters that aren't just a funny mutated animal. 

The second lore page notes that Ivalice's flan/pudding-the-dessert is actually designed in homage of this monster in this universe, which became extremely popular. But... considering the colours of Flan-the-monster, and the fact that we fought them in the sewers, the brown bits on top of the Flan's head is very likely not caramel syrup and just amalgamated poopie. Not quite as appetizing now, yeh?

Reviewing Monsters - Final Fantasy VII, Part 11

My final segment in reviewing the monsters for Final Fantasy VII! It has been a blast, and it took me quite a while to actually complete the previous batch of gameplay. This one basically covers the final dungeon and a couple of ersatz monsters from the Battle Square -- sort of a repeatable battle gauntlet to farm for resources in Gold Saucer, and a way to get Cloud's final limit break Omnislash. 

I spent quite a bit of time getting everyone else's final limit breaks and final weapons, but let's just say that Cloud's... requires a fair bit of work. In order to get Omnislash, I have to be able to win 32,000 points in the Battle Square of Gold Saucer. I've got the 'battle' part well pat, especially at this point in the game and knowing to equip a Ribbon. But to participate in the Battle Square, I needed a lot of GP since I can't take BP out of the Battle Square. And to get a lot of GP reliably, the fastest way is through Chocobo Races. And to reliably farm Chocobo Races, I need to get a Gold Chocobo. And to get that, well... let's just say that even with a guide, it took me quite a while to get the very specific order of events, random battles, breeding items, feeding items, Chocobos that spawn with an exact enemy in an exact location... yeah, it's not something I'm ever looking forward to doing ever again. 

But hey, I got all the ultimate limit breaks and that's the principle of it. And finally it's the final confrontation in Disc 3, the crew of the Highwind against some super-soldier child and a space alien god-being trying to destroy the world with a meteor! The story is honestly pretty damn neat even if it's admittedly not the most innovative compared to a lot of other anime and manga, but I really, really did enjoy the game. Even if some of the biggest moments of the game have been basically spoiled to the world, I'm actually only spoiled about one specific moment, and experiencing the story firsthand -- polygon graphics and questionable translations notwithstanding -- does really make me realize just why everyone and their mother hypes up Final Fantasy VII as one of the best games ever.

Anyway, I'm not here to complain about convoluted side-quests, or to gush about the game. On with the monsters!

Tonberry

So two unique enemies show up only exclusively in the Battle Square, and they are two of Final Fantasy's most recurring enemies! The Tonberry looks exactly as it does in most other Final Fantasy games other than XI -- a little mouthless reptile/fish guy with glowing eyes, baggy robes, a fish tail, and carrying a lantern and a knife. Good ol' Tonberry will only slowly walk towards your character and it's basically a race against time, since if the Tonberry reaches you it'll stab you with its knife and instantly kill you. Slowly it approaches. Not too much to say here, it sure is a classic-looking monster. The Tonberry, alongside the Bomb, are among the Final Fantasy classic staples to make it into the FFVII Remake way earlier than when they actually show up in the original FFVII. 

Ho-chu

One of the four possible final battle for the Battle Square (and you better believe you will need to repeat the Battle Square over and over and over to get enough BP to get your super-duper-awesome loot) alongside the Serpent, Sea Worm and Ghost Ship is the Ho-Chu. Thanks to the mechanics of the Battle Square -- only one character, and you slowly accumulate handicaps at the end of each battle -- the Ho-Chu is a simple enemy with a large HP pool, a decently powerful attack and the ability to cast status effects that ended up being so much more dangerous than it would otherwise be since it's more likely than not that you've lost a huge chunk of your health and might have half your equipment or materia disabled. 

Ho-chu, if you know your Final Fantasy monsters, is Ochu! Or, as I noted during my coverage of FFXIII monsters, the Otyugh from Dungeons & Dragons, which has basically been interpreted and reimagined as a series of giant plant monsters in the Final Fantasy franchise. You can still see the squad body shape, the tentacle arms (now vine-arms) and yawning mouth, but Ho-chu here is very clearly a plant monster. The vine-arms ending in spiky clubs, the leaf-like legs... but, of course, the most charming part of the Ho-chu is that this incarnation has a massive ballerina skirt made up of flower petals. This is apparently the first Ochu in the franchise since the original, and I find it hilarious that they basically took the 'flower monster' of the original Final Fantasy and turned it into a chubby ballerina screaming plant monster. I approve. 

Ruby Weapon

Alongside Emerald Weapon, this guy acts as the game's two 'Superbosses', i.e. enemies you can encounter in the course of the game, but you need some extensive post-game grinding and strategies to beat them. You can encounter Ruby Weapon at around this point in the game, which is the third disc, where there's a suspiciously odd-looking red protrusion in the quicksand-desert around Gold Saucer, appearing only after you've blown up Ultimate Weapon. 

I tried to fight it and, just like Emerald Weapon, got absolutely fucked. He's a pretty cool looking giant robot, though, like some sort of Zoids or Gundam or Evangelion or something. I think they did a pretty good job at making the various Weapons -- especially those with in-game battle models -- look distinct from each other. I do like the Ruby Weapon's long, elongated arms that end in chunky fingers, which is something that I did find pretty charming. This guy's apparently a homage to the Hygogg from Gundam. Not from one of the series I've watched, but I certainly do love Gundam's wacky aquatic suits! The fact that this guy has a long, serpentine head also makes it look kind of different compared to the other Weapons. Throughout the battle the Ruby Weapon will slam his long arms onto the sand and have them emerge behind the party as giant tentacles. Pretty neat. Apparently it's fight is pretty troublesome, and most of the guides I've skimmed noted how it's easiest to do the Ruby Weapon fight with only one character in your party or something? Eh, okay. 

Gargoyle

And, with all the optional enemies and bosses out of the way, it's about high time to talk about the bulk of Disc 3, the final segment of Final Fantasy VII, which primarily takes place in the massive dungeon called the Northern Cave. One of the earliest enemies are gargoyles, which are actually relatively simple adaptations of how they usually are in fantasy. Interestingly, all Gargoyles you meet will be completely still, crouched in their 'stone' form, and are completely immune to most attacks. Anything will trigger its transformation as it 'breaks free' of its stone form, and it flies around as an angry devil. Honestly, not the most interesting enemy in the Northern Cave, but a pretty neat one with a gimmick. 

Dark Dragon & Armored Golem

Y'know what? Let's get the 'repaint' enemies out of the way first. Northern Cave is a pretty large dungeon and there's a lot of enemies found in only specific areas. There are also a lot of repeats, and... and it's very cool to see some of these models again, but I really don't have much to say about Dark Dragon (it's the 'big dragon' model, but black and can cast Ultima) and Armored Golem (a black golem with the same move-towards-the-party gimmick as the Tonberry). 

What is the theme of this dungeon? I'm honestly not sure. Jenova-Sephiroth is resting at its center and it's connected to the Lifestream, but you've got natural-looking animals, demonic-looking guys, as well as artificial robots like the armored golem. 

Pollensalta, Death Dealer & King Behemoth

Likewise, I don't have a whole ton to say about either one of these three. Pollensalta is a repaint of the Jemnezy and Snow "evil ambiguously-human seductress" enemy, but unlike the other two we don't get any real theme behind her; she just casts generic fire and status spells. You can learn the skill 'Angel Whisper' by manipulating her, but it's not like she's got an angel or holy-magic theme to her. Boring! King Behemoth is a golden version of the Behemoth we met at the Return to Midgar sequence. Not much to say about this one, either, although it sure is cool. 

Death Dealer is a lot more interesting. A repaint of the Joker enemy, this guy uses Tarot cards instead of playing cards! The five cards he can toss at you are Emperor, Death, Star, Sun and World; and he can also cast a random 'Roulette' skill that, well, kills anyone it hits... except it's random, and might hit the Death Dealer or its allies.

Iron Man

More accurately translated as "Iron Giant", based on his katakana. Turns out that the Wolfmeister isn't just a one-off model in that Junon train mission. Iron Man here is still cool, with his ridiculously large upper arms and knife, but otherwise you might only meet Iron Man in a specific area of the dungeon, where you jump down from the proper dungeon towards where Sephiroth is, making him sort of a quasi-miniboss. Not much to say here, but he's cool.

Master Tonberry

My bane. Okay, this guy is a right asshole. Design-wise it's just a Tonberry with a different skin and a star over his head, but the Master Tonberry fucked me over hard in this dungeon. I actually didn't even realize that there's a run option on this game (something that's even more difficult for me because the buttons for escaping is mapped to two keys I have no reason to use ever). Master Tonberry basically just walks towards your party from his side of the screen, slowly it approached, and when it gets in front of a party member it just instantly shanks him or her to death with his very mundane-looking kitchen knife. 

The gimmick here -- which I didn't realize after wasting huge chunks of recovery items -- is that you can only attack the Master Tonberry once between each movement. Trying to be greedy and attack more than once will have the Master Tonberry retaliate with the best move ever, the unblockable "Everyone's Grudge". Which deals damage equal to the amount of kills the specific character has done throughout the game. Since you're likely to bring your best party into this dungeon, this is basically a death sentence. Appropriately terrifying. 

Mover

The actual in-game model has two eyes, but for some reason the picture on the wiki only depicts the orange orb? Eh. I'll get this one out of the way quickly, it's a weird super-rare enemy in a specific room of the dungeon, and provides a large amount of experience points despite being weak. The idea is solid, but I dunno... maybe do something more interesting than literally just an orb with simple eyes? 

Parasite

Oh, what a weirdo! Yeah, whether this is just a weird creature or some sort of Jenova-mutant, I'm not sure. These guys appear like floating, flat tadpoles, but with a mass of weird green... hair? Horns? Cilia? They've got those on their 'head' and 'tail', and a bunch of red... mandibles? Feelers? Underneath its 'head', of course, is a massive green eyeball. Despite its pretty cool name, the Parasite is a pretty standard enemy and doesn't try to parasitize you at all, just being a simple status-effect-centric enemy. For an enemy that is named a 'parasite' and looks like a bizarre giant mutant critter, I can't lie, this is kind of a letdown. 

Scissors

When I first saw Scissors, I really didn't think too much of it. Oh, it's a Zaku-esque robot thing, but it's got two huge knives for fingers and toes. It's kind of cool, and judging by its face, this might be a person in a suit of armour or something, covering his face with a helmet and a piece of cloth. I thought that, yeah, okay, a neat killer robot. Weird to find in the final dungeon, but, like, sure, why not? 

Then I didn't kill one in a single attack... and Scissors immediately and instantly kills that character, before splitting into two. That's awesome. This thing is neither robot nor human, and I absolutely love it! The upper body is just suspended by a nasty, Parasyte-style meat tentacle-feet that's impossibly thin to hold up something so big, whereas a mass of claws around an eye pokes out of the lower half. They split into two! That's a pretty damn cool enemy concept. 

Allemagne / Ahriman

Mistranslated and mangled into "Allemagne", we get the return of the commonly-reoccurring Ahriman enemies! I like this version, a giant eyeball and mouth on a fleshy body, with a tail, giant bat wings and bird legs. Not a particularly over-the-top fantasy monster, perhaps, but certainly one that's memorably weird. It's got a couple of nasty attacks, but they are level-dependent so it's not going to really bother most parties. Not too much to say here, but I did really like the Allemagne, it's a very cool and simple monster design. 

Christopher & Gighee

Another rare encounter that can only really be found in a specific room are these two weirdos, who always show up together. Christopher is a weird human (?) that dresses up like a bad Hisoka cosplay, wears a mask, and the sides of the hair taper off into this huge weird two-sided blade. Gighee (or "Ziggy", in the original Japanese) is a weird horse-dog thing with super thin legs, Super Saiyan hair, a guitar jutting out of its butt, and... is that head stitched on to that body? Apparently the enemy is a pun to Ziggy Stardust, which leads me to go 'buh-wha'. Gighee basically uses weird status effects, while Christopher's attacks change depending on whether Gighee is alive or dead. It's honestly really kind of weird and, honestly, the two slightly feel out of place. Or maybe I'm just freaked out at the clown costume.

Magic Pot

A weirdo. This guy is a bizarre bearded purple imp with long elf ears that peeks out of a golden pot decorated with Yu-Gi-Oh hieroglyphics, and basically demands your party give him an Elixir, an item that, while not super-duper hard to find, is also kind of valuable. It is completely immune to anything you can do until it gets fed an Elixir, which, again, is another reason why I eventually had to learn how to simply just run away from battles instead of wasting my elixirs on these guys. The Magic Pot is another huge-yield enemy, although I'd rather have my elixirs. 

Dragon Zombie

OH SHIT, this is awesome. Screw you, Dark Dragon, this is a proper dragon monster! Look at how utterly nastily wretched this guy looks. It's standing in a bipedal form, but instead of regular dragon wings, the Dragon Zombie has a massive set of spidery legs bursting out of his sides like spider legs. I love just how that chest looks like it's just a bunch of ribcages bursting out of a chest, how the flesh just terminates to give way to the knobbly leg bones and the tail-bones. Slightly over the top but such a badass-looking monster undead dragon! This is so, so much more creative than just throwing a pile of bones shaped like a dragon to us. A bit of a rarer enemy, in the dungeon proper.

Alongside the Ahriman and Iron Man, the Dragon Zombie is one of the possible encounters as you get through the final stretch of the dungeon. It's got a bizarrely special (and learnable) skill, Pandora's Box, which the Dragon Zombie will unleash exactly once in your entire save file, and if you don't manage to learn it... whoops? It only does this when it dies the first time. Such a bizarre, weird thing that people probably have to go out of their way to even know about how the skill is triggered, and I simultaneously love and hate this aspect of older games. Not a whole ton to say beyond that, it sure is a cool-looking monster!

Jenova SYNTHESIS

One thing about this game's finale is that... for a game that hinges so much on me falling in love and being invested in the characters and the plotline, the actual final battle feels pretty... hollow. Mostly because we're missing one last huge, grandiose Sephiroth taunting speech, and what we got felt pretty short compared to what Sephiroth has mostly talked about before. Even Jenova's battle feels like it comes out of nowhere... although it certainly is cool. I guess this is Jenova's original body as it reconstructs itself? We've got a naked woman's torso and head, plus two giant tentacles, attached to that giant... dung ball? It's got flower petals, at least. Apparently it's just a mass of flesh, and when the camera pans around to show you Jenova Synthesis's back you see a heart suspended mid-air and attached to the ball by sinew. And that detail really does help elevate Synthesis just a bit.

Apparently, the original concept of Jenova is that she is really pulling the strings, and that the original idea was that Jenova will continually cut off pieces of herself (which would be the previous Jenova bosses) before the final piece, the heart, would shed its hood and fight you in a super form. Very interesting, although honestly at this point in the game poor Jenova just got most of her relevance essentially subsumed by her son, doesn't he? 

Bizarro Sephiroth

Mind you, not that Sephiroth actually got much to talk or do in this final dungeon compared to how huge of a presence he had in the bulk of the first one-and-a-half discs. Honestly, other than a relatively simple and short little monologue, you just jump straight into a battle with Bizarro over here. What a hilariously dorky name, too. Bizarro Sephiroth? Not helping is that I associate the name 'Bizarro' so much with that upside-down clone of Superman from DC comics. This form's actual name in Japanese is "Rebirth Sephiroth", with the katakana for 'rebirth' (ribasu) being valid for "Reverse" as well. I get that the pun is impossible to replicate in English, but then going on to call this guy 'Bizarro' is... bizarre. 

Anyway, I fought this guy with two teams, splitting my party into two parties of three. That's awesome! One of my complaints about Final Fantasy games in general is that for the most part only three out of a far larger party ever get to do anything, and to actually have the group stand on Bizarro's two flanks and attack him is pretty damn neat. Apparently this battle is different on how well you did in the game, too; if you had too hard a time fighting Jenova Synthesis the game takes pity on you and lets you fight Bizarro Sephiroth with one party -- so you don't have to juggle two regenerating sides of a multi-part boss fight. Boss-wise he's honestly just a huge HP sink, and you have to kill him fast enough before the core regenerates the health pools of the other parts, while the core itself is invulnerable while the other parts are up. 

Design wise, this is a pretty neat boss! It's the start of Sephiroth's angel theme, I suppose, since he's just some long-haired supersoldier with an oversized nodachi for the rest of the game. What a weirdo angel he is! He's got a smaller him growing out of the top of his head, and I've always been distracted by how bizarrely muscular his shoulders are before they end up in wings. Kinda neat, I guess it combines Sephiroth's angel theme with Jenova's flesh-aberration theme? Not the weirdest final boss I've seen, but certainly an appropriate look for Sephiroth's mutant form. 

Safer Sephiroth

As with all J-RPG final bosses, of course Sephiroth has an even more humanoid-looking final form after you go through the pretty grueling task of beating down Bizarro. You get transported into a heavenly-looking realm, and you fight Safer Sephiroth. Or, rather, probably intended to be Sefer or Sepher Sephiroth, meaning 'Book of Sephiroth'. It's also got one of the most iconic pieces of music in gaming history, which, no joke, is how I found out about this franchise in the first place. I'd be remiss not to mention just how utterly badass this one musical tract with ominous Latin chanting is. Estuans interius, ira vehementi.  Estuans interius, ira vehement. SEPHIROTH! Honestly, that musical tract is easily one of the best things about this game. 

Also, this form is well, well known for the time-consuming, two-minute long Supernova attack. Where after filling the screen with Ptolemy's diagram of the celestial spheres and some Physics equations, Sephiroth summons a meteor from beyond the galaxy, which vaporizes, in order (and the planets are explicitly named), Pluto, Jupiter and the asteroid belt before slamming into the sun, causing it to bubble, erupt, consume Mercury and Venus, before arriving as a fiery ball of death to consume the party. A far, far worse cataclysm than the actual 'drop a meteor on the planet'. Also, apparently FFVII is set on Earth? Okay?

Safer Sephiroth's design is a pretty cool angelic abomination. Most modern portrayals of Sephiroth post-FFVII basically tend to just have him in his human form with a single black angel wing -- a form he never actually assumes in FFVII. Here he's got a single black angel wing replacing one arm, but he's got a mass of six wings growing out from under his waist like a mass of bug legs, except they're, of course, angelic wings. Actually pretty cool, and far, far cooler than if Sephiroth was just a boring angel man. 

Sephiroth

The final 'battle', if you can call it that, is a battle in Cloud's mindscape as Sephiroth tries to take him over, I think. You fight Sephiroth in his high-def (for the game's standards) form, just a shirtless dude with long hair and an oversized sword. It's also impossible to lose this fight, as you're programmed to one-shot Sephiroth with an Omnislash. It's essentially a cutscene battle, but you get to click stuff! Again... they could've added a bunch of extra dialogue here to really hammer home the Cloud/Sephiroth rivalry, and I have some opinions about the ambiguous ending cutscene... but that's what the extended universe and that one movie is for, I suppose.

And with that... wow, that took me longer than I thought I would! Both playing the game and reviewing the monsters and enemies inside! It's been a massive, massive blast. See you guys for the next one!