LogFAQs > #947532569

We get the frog after an annoying back and forth where we're told he's too strong to capture followed by it immediately fleeing multiple times. Item get, I've not been catching stuff often but it'll come in handy if I need to do it again.

Turns out there's not a whole lot I can do on the world map right now but it's nice to get our bearings and peek over the mountains to see what's coming up. We do have access to Surgate Castle, where we pick up some info about Xezat's fleet attack, Float and a bard song and see half a mysterious book mentioned that Bartz finds familiar. I hope I wasn't meant to pick that up back in the Library of the Ancients or something >_>

We go to see the sage and the island immediately sinks (lot of earthquakes in this game!), my first thought was there goes another form of map transport but thankfully that's not the case. We land on Xezat's ship and soon get a cool sorta-cinematic battle sequence across the ships. The music tells me it's time to put Steal back on Bartz. Gilgamesh remains not so tough, but this time he brings his pal Enkidu who is a bit of a pain. First time through Nightingale just refuses to cast after many many attempts, OK after the first few fails I should've just gone into full Cura mode but I was stubborn. Doesn't help that near death Enkidu decides to Vampire one of my crew for 3800 HP!

Second attempt is much smoother, my Ninja Bartz throws a Shuriken at Enkidu which deals 2000 damage (I had no idea it did so much!), and the others concentrate their attacks, including Ranger Galuf who can hit for full damage with his bow, Blue Mage Faris and Lenna with some spells. After Enkidu goes down Gilgamesh is zero problem, though he amusingly isn't at all aware of his companion's defeat. He tries to pull Galuf off the ship with him but fails tremendously. How did this guy become Exdeath's top lieutenant?

Xezat reveals the secret plan one of his workers already told me about earlier, but I wasn't expecting a full on underwater map! We don't get to control it but surely that will be coming up, I guess VII took the submarine overworld idea from this game. The Barrier Tower is a pretty simple dungeon, narrow and tall, but with a cool visual effect outdoors and weird gimmicky enemies, I didn't figure out what Level Tricker's deal was. There are two chests guarded by Red Dragons (pretty tough but can be brute forced when they don't spam Atomic Ray) and two chests filled with cash. I go down at the start to see what happens and Xezat is on the stairs by the generator, it takes until we go up 8 floors or so for him to move down that half flight of stairs. Come on, bud!

The big scaling tower and repetitive climbing makes this place pretty atmospheric, and the boss doesn't disappoint. Atomos has a great design, it looks like a portal to another world and its attacks line up with that cosmic vibe. He's tough! He casts Comet pretty constantly, usually twice in one turn, so Lenna's on Raise duty and we burn through most of our Phoenix Down supply keeping people upright. His gimmick is that unconscious people's bodies shift closer and closer to him, I didn't know what would happen when they got to the other side but I knew it wouldn't be good! The gimmicky percentage based Blue Magics don't seem to work, so Bartz getting his Monk double-hits in does most of the damage.

After our Phoenix Down and Ether stocks go down quite a bit and our entire party is on the left side of the screen I use Libra to see if it's even worth continuing, and he only has 2.4K HP left. I go on full assault mode, and Bartz gets Wormhole'd just before getting the final blow. Thankfully we take him down anyway, I feel like I got very lucky not having to redo this one. Xezat sacrifices himself which isn't a big deal but Galuf's reaction is really good, as is Bartz protecting Galuf from himself. The relationship between these two is the strongest in the game so far, pretty easily.

Galuf takes some time to himself in the sub (nice that they put this in to make it less game-y), and I try and fail to be sad about Xezat and instead enjoy the cool new sub we now own. Wonder where the Wind Drake went. I like the underwater music a lot! Not sure why we can't just go directly to Castle Exdeath now that the barrier's down, but we're told to find the sage. I go to the other two dots on the map first, one leads to a town named Moore where we can buy the next level of spells and get told about the forest spirits and impenetrable forest to its east. There's also a locked door hidden in the corner of town I can't get into.

The other dot leads to a Chocobo Forest with a female chocobo we can't do anything with, so just another thing to take a note of I guess. We finally head down to Ghido's Cave. The puzzles aren't hard here but it gets the point across that Ghido isn't fond of guests, I'm now guessing the island sinking was simply a defence mechanism he installed. There's Metamorph enemies here and some very annoying vampiric Dark Aspics.

At the bottom Bartz cruelly bullies a turtle that turns out to be the sage, and a very amusing conversation follows with an understandably pissed off turtle. He drops some pretty serious lore on us though regarding Exdeath's plan and past. Exdeath was born in the Forest of Moore when a tree used to seal evil spirits turned into a dark creature due to the concentration of evil inside it, and he's now looking for something inside that forest to complete his plan. I think I got that right. Ghido is a great character, I love his utter disdain for Bartz throughout his important exposition drop. Next stop, Forest of Moore.

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