LogFAQs > #949541709

Ha, nice little details there.

MalcolmMasher posted...

I've always figured that Kefka is one hundred percent lying about Celes in order to sow discord in the party, myself. I mean. It's Kefka.

Kefka's not the reason I believed it, it's Cid who first says something like 'Oh hey Celes you're back from infiltrating the Returners?' or something, I know he's still loyal to the Empire there but it doesn't seem like he's trying to trick anyone. And Celes' reaction herself isn't one of indignance or disgust, it seems more like she still feels guilty but determined to prove that she knows where her loyalties lie now. Idk, I'd have to rewatch the scene in question.

So the pigeon takes us to Maranda, where Lola is still receiving letters from her beloved despite his passing. There's a couple hints around here; a thief mentions something about looking to the right of the treasure chest. Which chest? No idea, I don't see one around here. Something to bear in mind. Another mentions Cactuars (!) in the nearby desert, and a very big one too. I don't recall Cactuars in IV/V, was this their first appearance? And of course VIII took Jumbo Cactuar from here.

We follow the next pigeon up to Zozo to track down Cyan, but on the way we stop in at the Opera House, where we fight an Earth Dragon that longs to be on stage. This takes a couple tries, but once I remember to continually cast Float we get through. He hits hard with a bunch of spells but with Float and the correct buffs we have enough time to heal up between attacks and he wastes turns using 50Gs, thankfully we can simulcast Float on the whole party. Once down, our reward is... remembering that there are 7 more dragons to take down. Oh yeah. Seems that's all there is here (The hopes of an Act 2 Opera scene are drifting further away...), so we head to Jidoor on another detour.

The music has changed here! Speaking of, I like the new world map music and the new depressing theme tune for towns. We get another hint- Deathgaze cannot heal between battles, so whenever we face that guy we can just continually game over and eventually he'll go down I guess? We'll see when we get to that. There's very heavy hints that Relm is here in the artist Owzer's Mansion (makes sense), so we head there. Some of the paintings come to life and attack us, though we sadly don't get to face off against Gestahl this way. Gestahl's painting does tell us that a legendary treasure is hidden 'where the mountains make a star'. It's times like this I'm glad I have a playthrough topic to refer back to whenever I forget things.

This turns out to be a full on dungeon, a very cool and creepy one at that. There's minor puzzles around and paintings coming to life everywhere, the creepiest thing of all being a painting of Maria that seems to turn and face a different way depending on where we're seeing it from. Eventually we reach Owzer and Relm, and a demon who is possessing the goddess painting Relm is currently working on. Cue boss!

The setup to this boss is great, and the presentation even better. Unfortunately it is a little annoying how long the boss takes to shift forms and how frequently it does so, though it still looks cool. It's particularly frustrating when it has cast Last Kiss on a party member and the count continues to decrease while the demon slowly shifts its picture >_> The fight itself is pretty fun, it's unique and gimmicky without being too annoying, though it seems to have a ridiculous amount of HP. Eventually it goes down, we get Lakshmi as an Esper (Curaga!), and Relm apparently joins us. (I was wondering where she went until I checked the airship and she was just there lol, guess that's it for any kind of dialogue from her)

We leave the mansion (a villager mentioned Owzer's diary but I couldn't find it), and check out the Auction House before leaving. We fail to get a miniature airship model but come back in and buy Zona Seeker for 10k Gil. Two espers in one trip, cool! Finally we resume our journey to find Cyan, which takes us to Zozo. The dead bodies from a year ago haven't moved or decomposed one bit, and nor have the enemies levelled up. We follow a tip from the only honest man in this town (as someone somewhere informed us) and open up a path to Mt. Zozo, full of high evade enemies. I have one Sniper Eye, and guaranteed hits in the form of Tools, Blitz and Magic. Mugbear lives up to its name, so I can't really flee battles here without going broke. At one point Setzer's Slots spawn Bahamut for Mega Flare.

Past the save point a switch releases a Storm Dragon, which is our next boss. This thing takes a while. There's no handy Float option this time, though I do manage to Debilitate it with Edgar to give it a Holy weakness and then swap weapons on Sabin to use Dragon Claw for massive damage. Magic spells don't do too much (I hope we can get attacking -agas soon) so it's mainly healing+buffing and doing physical damage. 2/8 down, not looking forward to the harder ones but hey I should be able to swap Setzer out by then.

We find Cyan at the summit after reading his last letter and are rewarded with a nice scene. He has realised that he's been clinging to the past much like Lola, and vows to look to the future instead. He also has a copy of Bushido in the Bedroom. Guess he really does want to move on, good for you sir! He tells us Gau is probably in the Veldt (I wonder if he hints somebody else's location if we already have Gau here), and joins the party. Aw, I do like Cyan. A shame if he's silent forever from now on >_>

Before leaving things today I take a trip to the Coliseum, expecting Shadow to be here. He is not (unless he shows up in the fights), our only pal is... Ultros. He shows up in the darndest places, huh. I give the fights a go, putting up a Fuma Shuriken, and Sabin gets immediately wiped by Incinerate from a Chaos Dragon. Oh boy, if that's one of the 8 I have to face then I'm gonna have to come back better prepared! I also head down to the desert near Maranda to try and hunt some Cactuar, and indeed do manage to get a few. 10AP is very juicy indeed, sadly these encounters are punctuated with dozens upon dozens of Slagworms (lol), which I have to run from as their repeated Sandstorms are just too much. No sign of the big guy, will have to come back another time. I also check out Thamasa but neither Strago nor Gungho are here, I might swap in Relm and come back to see if there's different dialogue but probably not worth it. One NPC mentions Ebot's Rock being above ground, but there doesn't seem to be anything over there for now.

Next time I shall check Narshe as an NPC suggested I can finally thaw its Esper, and then see what else we have on the Northern continent. Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of world we haven't touched on given how many party members we still need to get!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFVI
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