Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Text Play: Breath of Fire (SNES): Issue #19: Bad Gramor

Maybe this hot weather will be as good for this as the cold weather was before. So let's have ourselves some bad language skills, shall we?

The last party member, a mole person named Mogu, is here. To get him, we need to bring him out of a coma that one of Jade's henchmen put him into. To do that, we have to go to Tunlan again. Fortunately, one of the mole folk gives us a cowl to help us understand the people of Tunlan. Sadly, we still need another item, a flute, to actually be able to tell them what we're there for. Knowing me, I had that and did something extremely stupid with it, so I consulted the strategy guide to find out what I need to do to make this happen.

Of course, it turns out the flute I need is in Gust, so I gotta go there and get that, then take it and the cowl to Tunlan before I can even get this thing started. Fifty-three steps to success, right?

Once we have everything together and finally get to Tunlan, we'll hear about getting something called the Bolster, which is the item the old mole woman said we'd need to get into Mogu's head but woudn't use the name of. While we're there, we also hear about a winged woman who showed up a long time ago and can't remember her past. Funny thing about this winged chick is that she looks kinda like Nina, only she's wearing blue clothes instead of the orange ones she's had so far. Of course, you all know this will mean something later, right?

Another piece of foreshadowing comes from an old woman from Tunlan who's apparently the Princess's matron. This matron is going on about how the Princess is going to turn over the TmKey, short for Time Key, to the Dark Dragons in exchange for eternal youth. Eventually, this, too, will be important.

So, the matron asks the party to talk to the Princess to get her to turn over the key to them instead of the Dark Dragons. Of course, that doesn't work. The princess wants her immortality too badly for that. The matron then suggests horking the key out of the palace safe instead. The safe, of course, has a combination, which, for once, is in a decent place. Sadly, that decent place is tattooed on the Princess's back. To get it, we're required to spy on the Princess while she's bathing in the moonlight. Don't expect too much from this. It's not nearly as sexy as it sounds, though the game does its best to make it so. The heroes get embarrassed by looking at her and see the code backwards.

Naturally, that makes things go fubar when the code gets entered. The code, by the way, is blue, red, and white. Something familiar about that.

But anyway, things go badly, and the Autons from before swarm you and then commit suicide by jumping in their own pits when the Princess shows up to stop you from jacking the key.

This has got to be the most obnoxious cutscene thus far in the game. Bleu decides she'll blow up the safe when the matron tells you to take the key by force. In the chaos caused by all of this, Jade's minion Cerl shows up and takes the key away, naturally going back on his word about granting the royal girl her eternal youth. This whole cutscene bugs me because it feels like we should be able to do something here, but can't because the limitations of the system wouldn't allow for that to be coded into the game. Somewhat bothersome, but not game breaking.

From there, it's back to Gramor and into Mogu's dreamworld. But that's a rather long thing in and of itself, so I'll be covering that in the next issue for sure, and perhaps the one after that as well.

Until then, see you next time in Issue #20: I Dream of Mogu!

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