LogFAQs > #947603833

Exdeath's Castle time! We have a few new enemies to deal with, they're not so tough but it takes a while to escape battles now, so I just fight on through most of them. Kelger helps Krile open the path ahead and fades away (oops forgot all about him, I should probably have gone to see him after his pals died) and the environment changes. Now this is a bad guy's castle.

We slowly but surely make our way up the floors, hitting switches and floating over lava along the way (though not at the first opportunity, I didn't think to use Float then sadly so I missed out on a chest). The dungeon is cool, each floor is pretty distinct and the layout isn't too simple but doesn't have the messy can't see where you are vibe of the Forest. Higher up we face a bunch of dragons quite a lot. After a second save point we reach an open room with a lone empty chest in the middle, which triggers the surprise arrival of Gilgamesh. I don't have Steal equipped so immediately reset.

Second time round I avoid the chest and go into the side room, then see if I can go ahead without opening the chest at all. Turns out you can skip the fight altogether but of course we don't want that, so onto rumble #4 as Gilgamesh helpfully reminds us. Despite his assertions Gilgamesh does not pound us silly, the battle isn't super hard. We have a boss team kinda down now- Faris as Blue Mage/Time Mage and starting with Hastega, Krile on Summoner/White Mage duty casting Titan whenever she's not healing, Bartz as a Ninja attacking three times per turn thanks to his new twin blade, and Lenna is Samurai/Red Mage but she seems the least useful tbh so not sure what I'll do with her. Gilgamesh even seems a little disappointed that Galuf didn't make it.

He delivers the iconic line I've heard referenced many times, and morphs into his second form. I gear up for a hard fight, but... poor guy got swindled. Excalibur is Excalipoor, and we basically can't lose this. Exdeath has finally had enough of his mistakes, and banishes him from our dimension, presumably taking him to FFVIII and beyond. Poor guy, pretty harsh exit for him :( Our only reward is the useless weapon (and the steal ofc) but the dialogue was worth it. Looking back I'm sad he didn't have a proper hard battle, but hey at least he got to technically survive and become a series icon.

Next up is Exdeath himself, who throws some cryptic message about returning the world to the way it was before starting the fight. We have the same team (but Bartz has Counter instead of Steal now), and we get into a pretty solid rhythm. He starts by using doom on Krile, who gets off a few Titans before succumbing and being revived. Thankfully Ex wastes a bunch of turns casting Dispel, and his magic attacks don't hit super hard as the party is usually Shell'd and Protect'd up. People die every now and then but we have plenty of time to get back up, and his gimmicky double hit Vacuum Wave and row swapping are easily reversed. It still takes a while to take him down, and it's not like we're ever more than a couple dodgy turns/mistakes away from falling, but we eventually win with the whole party alive and healthy.

Exdeath disappears, the crystals break and we all pass out... and wake up outside Castle Tycoon. Cue an extended 'you beat the game' sequence in the style of IV's ending, and the game doesn't have to pull a 'something's odd here' for me to be very wary of what's going on. I love these kind of fake sequences in games, always feels uneasy. Lenna and Faris/Sarisa get caught up in some royal festivities, and Bartz/Krile go off to try to figure out what happened and why they're suddenly back in Bartz's home. These two haven't had much dialogue with each other before, so it's a nice new combination (though pales in comparison to Bartz/Galuf :( )

Everything still seems too good to be true when we finally reunite with our chocopal Boko and his new wife Koko. We wander around the map and honestly I can barely remember what things used to look like, but we travel through Tule (where we get an interesting tidbit about how mastering jobs will add some of their proficiencies to the Freelancer and Mime classes) and reunite with Faris after an Antlion battle and some comedy antics.

We finally shed some light on what's happening when we enter a new cave mentioned by the Tule residents, which is actually Ghido's cave. Ghido plainly lays out that the two worlds have merged into one, and tells us the history of the void, interdimensional rift, and the great evil Enuo, as well as absolutely roasting Bartz as before and throwing a few references around (I love this guy). Exdeath then reveals himself to be disguised as a splinter in Krile's foot (?!? Can't he just teleport around? Why did he need to go to all that trouble of transforming into a tiny splinter >_>) and confirms his evil plan, as Castle Tycoon and Lenna are taken into the void (!!).

Cue an epic Splinter v Turtle showdown (is this why Ghido referenced TMNT? The levels to this game's translation are wild!) and I really wish this game got a full remake purely to see this scene in 3D. They trash talk each other and Exdeath sends us flying to the Library of the Ancients, which is just what we needed apparently. We then get a very Zelda-style quest given to us by a talking book- we must assemble four tablets from across the newly merged world to unlock the 12 legendary weapons so we can survive the void and defeat Exdeath, and also there's some extra summons and spells if we want.

Ghido sends us to the desert with a parting shot at poor Bartz. The scholars around offer some interesting thoughts: one says that the Void is the birthplace of Light, and one wonders how defeating Exdeath will help fix things when the crystals are all shattered anyway (a very good point...). I take a look at the world map and wonder how stupid I must be to have not realised these maps lay perfectly on top of each other before now. Man it's right there, what a cool thing they did! Our travel options are limited so looks like we are going to the desert, but with only three party members... Will they replace Lenna or will she find her way back to us soon? I don't like having a non-full party for too long! Last thought for now, the new world map theme is great. Onto Act 3!

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