LogFAQs > #949101734

We get some backstory for Sabin at Figaro Castle, and the brothers comfort each other. The scene is decent if a bit standard, I wonder how this would play out if I hadn't brought Edgar with me. The castle buries itself under the sand and moves to the other side of the mountains, where we find the town of Kohlingen. This time it's Locke's turn for backstory (Hey I was lucky picking the right team members!) and indeed there's a woman in his life who he believes he failed to save. But it is a bit more complicated than that, as she is apparently dead but still being... preserved in some way by some herbs, and there's a treasure somewhere (apparently in the Imperial capital of Vector) that could send Rachel's soul back to her body. We see a few flashbacks here and Celes has a brief moment thinking about Locke, again I wonder if that's just cut out if I don't have her with me.

Apparently Terra has been here and burned someone's house but then flew south, so I head north to a little cabin whose owner wants to build a coliseum. So there must be some kind of timeskip or something here. We trek all the way down to Jidoor, a posh town of posh people who are nonetheless still split into their own sort of caste system. Lol. We get told about an opera house, and I have to say I think this is the first time in a JRPG that I've seen opera be featured. I am remembering hearing about a famous opera scene in this game, now that I think about it. Our party gets told we look like the famous opera singer Maria (I'm guessing he was talking to Celes, not party leader Locke) and up in the fancy part of fancy town there's a bunch of paintings we don't seem to be able to do anything with, including one of a lady and one of an Ultros.

The poor people from Jidoor have been pushed out and moved north to the funkily named Zozo, where we head next as the Opera House is closed :( . I get so tempted here to ride back to Narshe and swap out team members to see if there's different dialogue options/backstory scenes with Cyan/Gau/Shadow, but I don't do so.

Zozo is a cool looking rundown town with threatening looking monsters and just generally a pretty urban and modern look for a town compared to the more medieval vibes of Jidoor and the rest. I soon realise our goal here, to find the correct inputs for a clock in the Inn. It takes me a bit to realise/remember that literally everybody lies here, and we end up wandering the whole town looking for info, fighting an awful lot of battles along the way. There's some fun dialogue with all the lies around, at one point a string of villagers run up each telling us a different time on the clock. Thankfully my note-taking for this topic helps me keep track of what isn't true, and we eventually get enough info.

Turns out that's not the main plot here though, because traveling up and across the buildings we find a friendly villager who claims to be weak and will let us pass, lol. Great intro for a boss fight. The fight itself isn't very hard, Sabin's Aura Cannon hits like a truck and with Locke's Mug and Edgar's many Tools we make short work of him. Our reward is finding Terra, still unconscious, and Ramuh! The Esper gives us plenty of exposition and important lore, seems like summons are gonna be very very important in this narrative. Notably Terra herself is not quite an Esper, but something else. Ramuh pretty much dies and converts himself to Magicite, and we gain him and his three compatriots Siren, Cait Sith (!) and Kirin. Surprisingly no Ifrit or Shiva just yet, they're normally early!

Terra does not come with us, our next goal is to head to the Imperial continent and rescue some other Espers that should help Terra come to terms with her identity. It's time for a new party (I swap out Sabin for Cyan, for now), and we get an intro to how Espers work in this game. It seems very cool, kind of a proto-junction system from VIII, and everybody now has MP and access to spells and summons. Guess I'm allowed to grind now, hopefully! With this new mechanic it feels like I'm properly out of the 'intro' now and into the main game, I'm very happy about this development.

Before leaving I solve the clock puzzle and get a Chainsaw! A powerful tool that seems like it can insta-kill some enemies. Fun! Back at Jidoor it is confirmed to us that Celes is indeed a lookalike of Maria, and as luck would have it Maria has an admirer who possesses the only airship in the world. An airship we need to reach the Imperial Continent down south. The biggest twist in this game so far is that this guy is not in fact named Cid, but Setzer. I would've bet money on that! Setzer is 'free from society's narrow views of morality', which could swing either way depending on how you look at it, given that he plans to kidnap Maria he seems like a shady dude but the text intro implies he's gonna be in our party so who knows.

I'm really getting into things now that we have the Esper system in play, and I'm very much looking forward to heading to the Opera House next time!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFVI
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