Board 8 > Andy Plays Final Fantasy IX

(+) Yeah! (+)

andylt posted...

oh **** RIP Alexandria

I suddenly see why they started Disc 3 so quietly, damn

Haha yes

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andylt posted...

oh **** RIP Alexandria

I suddenly see why they started Disc 3 so quietly, damn

Absolutely amazing sequence here

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My disc 3 was scratched and froze on the Alexandria cutscene in all my playthroughs besides my first (which is why I never actually finished the game!). Real bad place to be forced to end a playthrough!

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First things first, Zidane heads to see Vivi at his grandpa's old home. Thanks htaeD, this was a nice scene and I would've missed it entirely otherwise. Vivi was fished out of the sky, a nice line. Also the clock here stopped a week before the game's events started, this was stated when I came here as Garnet earlier but it's an odd thing for the characters to point out so I'll make a note of it.

I savescum the final card fight until I wi- I mean, I win the first time against Champion Cid, and get a Rebirth Ring as reward. But there's no time to celebrate, as Kuja makes his next move.

Kuja soliloquises (is that a word) in the courtyard ("Peace is but a shadow of death." OK buddy), and releases Bahamut to wreck the city. Alexandria's new ruler weirdly doesn't counter by trying to summon her own Eidolon- I know Bahamut is OP but surely Leviathan could at least douse the flames or something- instead she orders the Plato Knights to do some work and I think I do a decent job as we get Angel Earrings as a reward.

Steiner and Beatrix tear through beasts in the town, and I can't help but feel the only purpose of this is to build their levels back up towards the main party. I check the menu and sure enough Beatrix can't learn any abilities, so she's temporary for sure. I, er, take off her best equipment to make sure I don't lose it (don't judge me!), and we leave the two potential lovebirds mid-battle as we head back to Garnet. The Queen is drawn by music to the top of the castle, and plucks up the courage to try and do things herself instead of relying on her mother or Zidane.

Before we continue I find what I assume is the optional boss from earlier, the Magic Book. This thing is annoying as hell until I figure out the gimmick of only using magic to damage it when it's opened up, and it's still pretty annoying as Freya is underleveled and we have no healer on side. I eventually wear the book down and get some Running Shoes, as well as a Silver Fork (I don't get the Demon Mail but that must've been a 1/256 chance so I'm not too bothered). It did wear through my healing item supply, though.

At this point, we suddenly learn how Alexandria got its name. The legendary Eidolon Alexander spreads its wings behind the castle and rises to defend its home in a string of cutscenes that are probably my favourites in the game so far. Alexander just looks so damn cool here, he's not a summon I usually care for but this is easily the best he's ever been. This seems to be the reason Kuja ordered the attack on the city, but I am completely thrown for another loop with the introduction of a new character. I will refer to him as Garland as that's the name Kuja gives, though he has no text box confirming it at this point. He claims that Kuja has gone too far in whatever his quest is and stops him from taking Alexander. He appears to be standing in some kind of bridge (is the giant eye actually a spaceship?!) and says a bunch of weird presumably alien stuff about circulating souls and the like.

For the first time in the game, things don't go Kuja's way. Like a kid mad somebody else is playing with his toys, he instead flees and I guess changes his plan (Act 3 is gonna have to wait!). Meanwhile, the Treno gang arrive via airship and Eiko takes a dive to see Dagger. She seemingly knows about Alexander, but this doesn't do anything to help the situation. Zidane and the crew arrive at the top, Zidane orders everyone else to go back for some reason (I assume this is to set up the correct number of party members for a boss fight but nope), and rescues Dagger. Well, Eiko kinda rescues her really. We leave for Lindblum as Alexandria is utterly destroyed.

It's just sinking in for me how big a deal this is, in most RPGs Dagger would ascend to the throne and rule at the end of the game, but her home is now annihilated. As Freya points out this is just another in the list of destroyed cities, but for some reason I did not see this one coming. This was 'supposed' to be Dagger's culmination, she has been constantly doubting herself and relying on others, and now was when she was to finally come into her own, and... everything burns down. She of course blames herself, and it's no wonder she sinks into a spiral here and loses her voice. I am now significantly more interested in where her story goes than I have been the whole game, as the default 'happy ending' option has gone up in flames. How can she find herself and her strength now? How can she accept relying on others when she thinks she has caused so much destruction to everyone around her? I have no idea. This is a really, really good twist. Man this game is pretty dang dark.

Speaking of character arcs going in unexpected places, Kuja is now in an interesting situation. His plan, whatever it was, is done, and there's bigger players at hand here that he must now contend with. I never really care for the 'super smart villain who is 10 steps ahead of everyone and cool and badass until the very end where he loses' trope, so I am way more intrigued by Kuja now. He has some new black mages who can talk, and I am racking my brain trying to remember if #234 was one of the ones from the village. I hope not! Notably, Kuja and Garland both single out Zidane by name, so he must not be from Gaia or something... somehow...

Beatrix went missing in Alexandria, but everyone else is accounted for in Lindblum (even Quina!). We have a quest to get some potions to restore Cid, but that will have to wait. This rivals the previous Alexandria Castle sequence which was until now my fav bit of the game. Those Alexander/Bahamut cutscenes, whew.

The only oddity is that there was no boss fight, this is the second time in a row a major plot event has come and gone without a mandatory fight, I think the last was Amarant. But I don't really care because the plot is so good right now. I apologise to the FF9 writers for questioning the pace change earlier.

(I know I wrote some things out of order here, but it was all jumping around at once and I didn't take note at the time!)

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Dagger can't concentrate

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Yep, Tantarian is the boss I was talking about

Freya can actually do some decent healing if youve taught her Reiss Wind (full party regen)

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I have taught her that, but sometimes the book decided to spam whatever its party wide paper spell was several times in a row and that was annoying!

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Tantarian is much more difficult to fight earlier in the game since you're weaker and have a time limit, but I like doing it to get Auto-Haste as soon as possible.

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The gimmick of the book is that it opens up to whatever page you dealt damage by I think. So if you hit it for 72 damage, it'll open to page 72. Once you find the page he's on you hit with magic like you said, especially fire or holy (he's a demon in a book).

Alexander is a beast, but man I felt kinda blackballed a bit. This was THE big eidolon that the summoner tribe was so afraid of that they split its jewel into 4 pieces, and sure it kicks the crap out of bahamut with zero effort, but then giant space eyeball comes in and blows it up. Can't help but feel Alexander got done a bit dirty.
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Leonhart4 posted...

Dagger can't concentrate

This often comes up in SMFFFC as a complaint about her and I never understood it.
FFIX is a heavy story centered game. Often taking out characters to the sideline (mostly Quina but also main party characters)
This is no different. But instead of not making her available at all, you can use her. You just...shouldn't
So just pick another character like you have done 20 times before in this game
It's just a gimmick and I think it was pretty clever and unique. It's much better than to just leave her in some generic situation in which the main character say something like "maybe we shouldn't distrub her right now" or something

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Also I don't quite remember but (andy don't read)
Is there anything notable after this or this is when the game story is going off rails?

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Nanis23 posted...

But instead of not making her available at all, you can use her. You just...shouldn't

Except you have to use her because you have to split your party up for two separate dungeons, hence why it's a thing that annoys a lot of people

Anyway, don't read that yet, andy.

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Not reading!

Emeraldegg posted...

Alexander is a beast, but man I felt kinda blackballed a bit. This was THE big eidolon that the summoner tribe was so afraid of that they split its jewel into 4 pieces, and sure it kicks the crap out of bahamut with zero effort, but then giant space eyeball comes in and blows it up. Can't help but feel Alexander got done a bit dirty.

This is a good point. I guess it depends on how advanced the space people are compared to the summoners, and how long they've been coming to Gaia (it must've been them destroying Madain Sari 10 years ago). I'm sure all of that will become known as I progress, but yeah I guess they did wipe Alexander pretty easily, assuming he doesn't come back.

Worth it though, as it's an incredibly memorable sequence. One of the best uses of a summon in an FF plot that I can remember! I mean in general Alexander is a cool idea, this giant robot fortress that for some reason is angelic and holy, but this is the first time I've seen that concept actually work.

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yeah, I really like how IX handles summoning lore. might actually be my favorite treatment of summons in the franchise (followed by VI and X I guess).

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Yeah, I really enjoyed how IX made summons an active part of the story.

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Alert: this 'Gimme Cat' wants a Diamond. I only have one, should I give it away or not?

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Always give it away

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No, gimme cat is a fake friendly monster

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What the hell Leon! I gave it a Diamond and it said 'meow meow meow I fooled you!' then ran away with it!

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Gimme cats arent real friendly monsters tho
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andylt posted...

What the hell Leon! I gave it a Diamond and it said 'meow meow meow I fooled you!' then ran away with it!

owned

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Sorry, it's been too long since I've played to remember how the friendly monster quest works. Generally speaking, you want to give them what they ask for.

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IIRC Gimme Cats don't play the "friendly monster" battle music. You got snookered.

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Yeah I only asked because the music was usual battle music and the next monster I've been told to look for is a Nymph, and it'd be quite the jump to go from two ores to a Diamond.

Luckily I promptly died to a dragon and it reloaded me before that battle, so no harm done.

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andylt posted...

What the hell Leon! I gave it a Diamond and it said 'meow meow meow I fooled you!' then ran away with it!

Lmao

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I think one eventually does ask for a diamond, but you get one as a reward from the previous friendly monster

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Trolled by leon

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'whoops'

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GimmehartFour

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Leon played you so bad lol
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LordoftheMorons posted...

GimmehartFour

brb making new alt

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We collect the potions for Cid, but it doesn't really work and he turns into a frog. My bet is that Zidane didn't portion the ingredients out the way Tot specified. We then decide to head straight to Kuja, which means finally getting a ship, woo! I pick up Quina along the way (what happens if you don't have 100 Gil to pay for the pickle?) and we're onto the world map riding Blue Narciss. I am very impressed at Quina's self-restraint in not eating Cid. Character growth!

Amazed that it took til disc 3 before we both get a vehicle and have the ability to freely change party members (well, via Cid). Of course it is time to scour everywhere in the world I can before heading to the main objective. Unfortunately there's not really anywhere new we seem to be able to access- I head back to Alexandria and turns out it's not completely destroyed, but Beatrix is nowhere to be found. There's a crater where Cleyra used to be, but not much new in any other previous location (I don't walk over to Treno or Dali though).

We do at least get a look at the other continents. There's strips of grassy land housing mean lying cats and OP dragons, and a giant western continent that appears to be largely desert but has no beaches to land on. Guess we'll be back here with an airship. I dub this land Westhar.

We do discover Esto Gaza in the snowy northern continent, a strange place with lots of devout believers talking about the Shimmering Island/Path of Souls. Sounds important (is path of souls related to Garland's soul circulation thing from earlier? Perhaps!), but nothing to do here now. It's possible there's other new areas in this continent but the enemies are pretty tough so I don't bother running around for now. I do grind a bit on the beach to get my lower leveled party members back on track, thank you Whale Zombie for dying in one hit to Life. Also at one point my software abruptly closes. It was when I was running 3x speed on the map, so I'll make sure not to do that anymore.

The mages with Kuja were indeed from the Black Mage Village, as Vivi is distraught to learn. We witness a chocobo hatch and there's some more nice sad scenes here between Vivi and 288. Vivi starts to accept his own individuality, realising that his sadness and suffering is a trait shared with humans. He's still obviously sad about his own mortality, and I am terrified that one day we will head back here and 288 will have stopped. This is another case where a typical 'happy ending' seems unlikely here, as Vivi is mortal and can't run from this. This game is rough, man.

The game is quick to contrast Vivi with Dagger here (not the first time it has done this), and their different approaches to grief. Dagger seems to sink further still into despair and guilt when witnessing Vivi's growth, and she continues to be frustrated that she's still the same person she wanted to escape from way back when. Baby steps I suppose, she must soon realise that she can't keep running from herself or blaming herself for the world. This really has been such a good way to develop Dagger's character and distinguish her from the other leading white mage FF women, though it doesn't make it any harder to swallow. Weirdly enough, Dagger is one of the more relatable characters in this game despite her royal status.

Dagger's status extends to battle now, as noted by some users already. Sometimes she just won't attack, and she doesn't engage in victory animations. I really don't have a problem with this (maybe I will if it goes on for ages), it's a nice way of connecting gameplay to story and reminding the player that Dagger can't just switch off from her depression, it's consuming every aspect of her days.

Very interested to see where we go from here. It's starting to seem like Kuja could possibly be the Act 2 boss of this game, or maybe a Seymour kinda deal. We shall see!


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Did you buy anything at Esto Graza? If you haven't, go back and buy the staff for Vivi. Also, eat the whale zombie. Level 5 death. Then you can use them on the grand dragons for some easy powerleveling for now

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andylt posted...

I pick up Quina along the way (what happens if you don't have 100 Gil to pay for the pickle?

There's actually an ATE specifically for this scenario

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most_games_r_ok posted...

Did you buy anything at Esto Graza? If you haven't, go back and buy the staff for Vivi. Also, eat the whale zombie. Level 5 death. Then you can use them on the grand dragons for some easy powerleveling for now

I thought the staff is not available until you go there for real
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Maybe

Thought it was available soon as you get access to it. Ah well in any case cannot leave without it later.

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I did not see a shop there IIRC, but it's possible I just missed a person. I'll check again before going to Kuja's palace. Thanks for the whale tip too!

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I think right now the shop only sells Mythril weapons (which is still nice since its first place where you can buy a Mythril Racket) and it doesnt get the staff until later.

But at that point it will be the best time to buy that staff.

Also there's a treasure chest I think you can open in Dali now (There was a sidequest there to do back when you were still in Treno. But I dont think you ever started collecting coffees)
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That coffee quest is one of my most hated things in that game because of how random and out of the way it is to get the last one, and how you can't do it literally any other time.
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Heh. I get that.

Btw you can buy another diamond later on even without the friendly monster sidequest
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htaeD posted...

Also there's a treasure chest I think you can open in Dali now (There was a sidequest there to do back when you were still in Treno. But I dont think you ever started collecting coffees)

Oh yeah I meant to mention that, somewhere at some point somebody mentioned a kind of coffee but they didn't give me any and I didn't know if I was supposed to get it from them somehow. (Not talking about the guy in Dali who first asks for the three kinds) No idea where it was though >_>

Also while we're on collectibles, I have I think 4 of the Zodiac things for the bird lady in Treno, don't know if any of those are missable. The rewards for that have been terrible so far, so I've probably missed a bunch.

And are any of the auction items missable? I got a Mini-Cid (the description for that sure is interesting!) but the rest was too expensive as both times I've been to Treno I blew my cash in the synthesis shop first.


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Have you been keeping up with Chocobo Hot & Cold and the chocograph hunting? There wasn't much new to do in disc 2, but now there's more stuff available thanks to boat.

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I feel like most of the auction items are a waste of money.

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andylt posted...

Oh yeah I meant to mention that, somewhere at some point somebody mentioned a kind of coffee but they didn't give me any and I didn't know if I was supposed to get it from them somehow. (Not talking about the guy in Dali who first asks for the three kinds) No idea where it was though >_>

Two of the 3 are not hard to find and I don't THINK are missable: one of them is in one of the south gate areas where you see Cinna making coffee in an ATE. I don't remember the 2nd one but I don't think it's super hard and not missable. The 3rd one is the B****.

The 3rd coffee is ONLY gettable during the treno card tournament (which you passed already) and it requires you to randomly, for no reason, go to Dali and just happen to check I think the mayor's office? And there just happens to be a random door that wasn't open before that is only open during this time that leads you to a back area where you can get the 3rd coffee. It sucks.
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Emeraldegg posted...

Two of the 3 are not hard to find and I don't THINK are missable: one of them is in one of the south gate areas where you see Cinna making coffee in an ATE. I don't remember the 2nd one but I don't think it's super hard and not missable. The 3rd one is the B****.

The 3rd coffee is ONLY gettable during the treno card tournament (which you passed already) and it requires you to randomly, for no reason, go to Dali and just happen to check I think the mayor's office? And there just happens to be a random door that wasn't open before that is only open during this time that leads you to a back area where you can get the 3rd coffee. It sucks.

Pretty much "you should have bought our official strategy guide"

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Nanis23 posted...

Pretty much "you should have bought our official strategy guide"

Which is also the worst official strategy guide of all time lawl

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andylt posted...

Also while we're on collectibles, I have I think 4 of the Zodiac things for the bird lady in Treno, don't know if any of those are missable. The rewards for that have been terrible so far, so I've probably missed a bunch.

Don't think they are, and the rewards are GREAT but only if you collect 5 I think for disc 2. Then you get the Blood Sword which is a fantastic weapon for Steiner.....less so now that you are in disc 3 and have much better, stronger swords.

andylt posted...

And are any of the auction items missable? I got a Mini-Cid (the description for that sure is interesting!) but the rest was too expensive as both times I've been to Treno I blew my cash in the synthesis shop first.

Pretty sure they aren't missable and do eventually cycle through again. Not a big rush to buy them though.

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Thanks for all the sidequest tips, everyone. Today's plan was to inch along the next bit of plot then go sidequesting, but the plot just kept going >_> I shall return to side stuff next time. And I haven't even seen a second Chocobo Forest yet, mnk.

So onto the eastern part of the Outer Continent, we get bad luck and have to fight through 3 Antlions (which are disproportionately tough considering the tiny amount of XP they give!) before getting the right hole. We sink into the quicksand and... are immediately captured by Kuja. Great plan everyone!!

Kuja insists on sending Zidane to fill a fetchquest for him- I try refusing him (my reasoning being that he can't kill Zidane if he needs his help), but the game of course railroads me into the first option anyway. False choices! Kuja can't go himself because there's an anti-magic barrier in effect, and I briefly consider not taking my mages but think better of it. They weren't greyed out on the selection screen, battles haven't been hard lately, and I didn't want to miss any good optional dialogue so I brought Vivi and Dagger with me. I may not have been thinking things through >_>

I soon come to regret this as we land on the Forgotten Continent (cool name). The path down is fine, though at one point the serious music is somewhat undercut by the chirpy chocobo theme lol. I am really coming to love Steiner's Magic Sword skills, too. We eventually arrive at Oeilvert (really nice looking screen on the outside), and sure enough, inside magic is banned. I really don't know what I was thinking. Thankfully I have both Steiner and Zidane, and my trusty Flee for the times when the mimic battles get too annoying. Still, it's really annoying to have to use items to heal (there really should be a potion between Hi and Elixir by this point).

Oeilvert is pretty fascinating. The structure itself is very fun, and the vibe here is both eerie and cool. It becomes clear that this is a place of stored records from the alien race that Garland and Kuja are presumably a part of. We learn bits about the Invincible, the decline of the alien home planet Terra, and the quiet hints that Zidane isn't originally from Gaia have now become blaring airhorns, though nobody has noticed it yet. There's a lot still to be pieced together here (I really wish I'd screenshot all the stuff so I could think it over later), but the most fascinating thing has to be an image showing two planets being laid on top of each other. Is this a Merged World situation?! I suppose these records have to be on Gaia for a reason. I am very glad that this 'throwback' FF goes heavy on the alien/space stuff, sci-fi (or sci-fantasy if you want) after all has always been baked into the DNA of this series!

There's too much to process here right now for both myself and our heroes, so we head to collect our item. A boss stops us (the first mandatory boss fight since Amarant!), and we have to fight Ark. Good design on this thing. Ark is fond of casting a spell that reduces HP to 1, then using a physical attack to swipe everyone a little. This is a pretty long battle for me, as with Zidane focused on stealing, Steiner is the only one who is dealing damage. The attack that reduces his HP to 1 actually works pretty well, as I can then use Minus Strike for quite a lot of damage. Vivi and Dagger are on healing item duty of course, and some ways into this fight I wonder if I should just go back to an old save and bring some others with me. No need though, because we eventually take Ark down and get a Holy Lance to boot. Phew!

We then cut back to the palace/prison and get to control Cid! Woo! There's a 10 minute timer here which I foolishly do not realise comes into effect right away (I'm busy in the menus equipping some new gear for a few mins >_>). Cid has a pretty annoying minigame of Red Light/Green Light, which takes me embarrassingly long to succeed in. Thankfully the weight puzzle is very easy and I get to the key with a minute to spare. It's time for one of my favourite RPG mechanics- split parties! I love being forced to use every character in games, I hate leaving some on the bench. Weirdly Eiko is defaulted to lead here, I wonder what the priority list is.

The B team now has another full dungeon ahead of us: the Desert Palace. This place reminds me so much of FF8. IDK if it's the camera angles, the art design or the 'struggle to find the right spot to be in to click on the correct piece of background environment' stuff, but it feels like it's straight out of that game. The music is weird here, a delicate piano over the bass line from Kuja's theme, it doesn't really go together for me and the track just doesn't really go anywhere. A rare miss! Kuja's theme itself reminds me both of Shinra (probably intentional) and Tyrano Lair from Chrono Trigger (maybe not intentional).

As it turns out, Freya, Eiko, Quina and Amarant make a pretty good team for this area. The enemies loove to cause status effects, but between Eiko's white mage stuff, some healing abilities from all 4 characters, and beefy physical hits from 3 of them, we overcome any obstacle pretty well. There's some cool looking enemies, and it's nice to see Coeurls again (they have a different name but that's definitely what they are). I overthink the puzzles here quite a bit, the answer is usually just to light all the candles and there's a candle somewhere that I just didn't see. This place really does look very nice, I wonder how it got here. Kuja probably wasn't the original owner, right? Hm.

We get all the way to the top and the candle simply fails to light. I briefly get worried that Eiko is too short to trigger the '!' icon and I'd have to do it again, but some backtracking reveals a single candle I'd missed earlier on. Our reward is a very gentle boss fight. Partially because we picked up all the Bloodstones so its buffs don't trigger (not sure how you could miss them, they all seemed to trigger naturally on the way up), but mostly because we have no means to steal, and therefore no reason not to pound this thing into dust ASAP.

The boss goes down before I can write down its name, and Zidane and co return to Kuja around the same time. Kuja's deception is pretty weak here, he winds up kidnapping Eiko (unless I missed it he does not in fact get the item we got for him) but we're hot on his tail as he heads to the Lost Continent. For a minute I thought Cid actually got squished. Despite his words, Kuja is pretty pathetic at this point. He doesn't seem to have such a grand plan in mind, and everything he attempts here goes wrong. The black mages are beginning to doubt themselves and have no loyalty to him really, and heck, he doesn't even get Eiko himself, it's Zorn and Thorn who do that! At this point I think it's pretty unlikely that Kuja will last til endgame, it looks like he really didn't have a plan B after Garland showed up to mess with his plans.

That's all for today, though I will note the interesting little subplot brewing between the Moogles. They're becoming pretty suspicious of Artemicion (just realising how weird a name that is for a Moogle, though so is Stiltzkin). I wonder how that will go. Fun stuff today!

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You have to dig up certain chocographs that upgrade your chocobos movement abilities to get to subsequent Hot & Cold stages

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andylt posted...

And I haven't even seen a second Chocobo Forest yet

I can give you a hint that there is only the one forest so you can look around for yourself.

Also, hell no bringing magic to Oeilvert. Maybe Quina for some blue magic to learn sometimes but honestly I don't bother. Just used Amarant and Freya for healing tbh in this section here and the odd potion/tent.

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