FF2 PSP: Started this up, and made little progress cause...wow, Arcane Labyrinths are available this early? Yeah, doing them for fun, at least to get Minwu's Staff of Light.
The idea behind the Arcane Labyrinth is pretty neat. Dungeon based entirely around the Password system, and its even handled in such a way that you only need to complete each Floor of a word once. The exit can be accessed pretty much instantly (just requires finding it), but there's often a puzzle on the floor which if completed, gets you another Password (one not used in the main game), which gives you access to another floor.
What words you use, when you use them, what category they fall into, etc. all plays a role in this, primarily based around what enemies you fight, what rewards the chests have, and what the ultimate reward you get is. No, the chests are NOT randomly generated ala the Soul of Chaos Dungeons either; its pre-determined based on the above factors, something like 3 potential outcomes (a "Good" "Normal" and "Bad").
Basically, the end result is that while initial runs of a floor can be lengthy, going through it again (you'll have to do this due to how the dungeons are handled) is much faster.
Conceptually this is neat, but execution is a bit off. Mostly cause EVERY floor has random encounters and the encounter rate is higher than typical FF2. Furthermore, the early floors *LOVE* Magicians who love to spam shit like sleep and love to ambush you. This makes doing just one floor a chore.
On the upside? Anytime you complete a floor, you can choose to leave the dungeon. This makes no progress in the dungeon itself (meaning you still have to do the x amount of floors required for that Arcane Labyrinth) *BUT* it lets you keep whatever rewards you got, including the Passwords, so you can just get through already completed floors so redoing things isn't so bad.
As far as the SUPER ULTIMATE WEAPON!!! rewards go, which you get for completing all 3 dungeons and then talking to the guy in the 4th place? They're set up such that its impossible to get certain rewards until certain points. Minwu's and Josef's are apparently available immediately, Leila/Gordon happen somewhat later, and the rest are all late game.
Gordon's is the only really useless one glancing at things though (I'm assuming you are NOT abusing the Minigame for Masamune); Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon all get their weapons available for the entire final dungeon sequence so useful there, and better than stuff available in the final dungeon, Masamune aside. Ricard, Minwu, and Josef all seem to get theirs with actual time left *AND* PSP version still has Soul of Rebirth, so they can transfer the weapons to that and make use of them there, and Leila's the temp with by far the most playing time, so she's around long enough to justify picking it up. Gordon...it would be worthwhile if it was available on his INITIAL recruitment, but as it stands? A weapon for Palamecia Basement alone = meh.
Oh, and as you'd expect, doing these dungeons means your characters get...comparitively much stronger than they should be at certain points in the game, especially since FF2's Run command is as worthless as ever, yay! Honestly annoying cause I hate powerleveling in FF2 for a number of reasons, but seems like if you want to do the Arcane Labyrinth, it comes with the package. At least its not quite as dull and tedious as FF1's Soul of Chaos dungeons.
