I don't remember when the first time that I was introduced to the oddly named Malboro in Final Fantasy, but I am certain that I hated every single one of those encounters.
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This thing was a frequent encounter in a lot of the earlier FF games and when you would encounter them you knew you were in for a long and difficult fight.
The reason why this guy was so annoying, even if you were definitely going to overpower it with ease, was that he/she/it had the ability to put negative status effects on your entire party, which was its primary attack.
Therefore, you would have to spend a full round of potential attacks clearing all of these status effects ranging from bezerk, poison (not really a big deal), confusion, sleep, and even the one that turned you into stone that I do not recall the name of.
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In many of these recurring fights, by the time you FINALLY got all the status effects cleared and prepared to dole out some real damage, guess what Marlboro did? Well he hit you with the status effects again!
Mostly running into the lessor versions of these things in the wild didn't really pose any sort of danger to kill you, but because of their status effect main attack, the fight took much longer than other fights would. You weren't going to lose, but it was going to take 10x as long to finish the battle as it normally would.
Imagine my delight when I encountered a far more powerful version of the Marlboro in later Final Fantasy games
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This is from FF 10 and thankfully in this game you had a much greater opportunity to avoid facing the regular Marlboro's in the open but this guy, named Marlboro Menace, was unavoidable and posed the same problems as his younger brothers that were in the open fields. Unlike his smaller counterparts, this guy actually could wipe your entire party, and while it was a long time ago, I am certain that it did exactly that to me.
Some of the status effects can only be cured by very specific items and you didn't always have them on you. Items that seemed irrelevant (and were for the most part) were essential to defeating the great Menace.
Status effects are an important part of RPG gaming because it requires you to use a certain strategy other than just hitting attack every time combined with an occasional heal in order to win, but when the enemy is able to inflict all of them on you at once, it's more annoying than anything else.
I think Square is very aware of the fact that this is an extremely hated enemy and that is precisely why they keep throwing them back into the game
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I feel as though generally speaking that FF15 was just a terrible game but to make matters worse they have this guy in there as a boss fight and it is, of course, one of the most irritating portions of the game. Basically you just work on keeping your distance so that the breath spell doesn't make all of your characters run around like loons in a corner while getting tentacled to death.
Will the Malboro continue to be a part of all Final Fantasy games in the future? Well, I think we can be all but guaranteed that this will be the case. They've gone too far with it to turn back now.
Pack of smokes?
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it is frequently mis-stated as being Marlboro but nah, it's a Japanese word as it turns out.
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