Tuesday, January 3, 2012

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy 4 (SNES, 1991): Issue #13: Edge in the City Cave by the Tower


Two in a row where the title is a parody of one from the original Star Trek series. I've really had that on the brain lately.

In this case, though, it's not a gateway through time so much as it is a trip back to the underground via the Tower of Bab-Il and an introduction to our penultimate new character and the party in it's final form, pending two or three more party changes.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There's a ton of other stuff that needs to happen here, some of which at least set up the sequence of obligatory side quests I always go on starting at about this part of the game.

Sure, Cid's toast, at least presumably, but his guys will still help us. They'll put a tractor beam, or more properly, a grappling hook on the Airship Enterprise so that we can take the Hovercraft other places than Mt. Hobs, which is where we left it when we were on the way to Fabul. The first place I'm gonna take it is Silvera so I can go in the mine on an island near the town. There's a dude in there that collects animal tails. That'll come in handy once, if you play the way I do, and twice if you're willing to put in about a billion hours into fucking around in the final dungeon. I know CLG's Apple used cheat codes in his last Let's Play of the game to get the excessively rare items that came from that side quest, but god help me if I can remember if he said they were any good or not, and sadly, that LP got deleted when the CLG YouTube channel was hacked a couple years ago.

But anyway, let's get on with the game, shall we? Just for good measure, I went to talk to the guy in the mine by Silvera. The mine's called Grotto Adamant. I don't think you actually have to go there and talk to the guy right now. The miner's kid says that the head guy, the only other one there, has found a funny rock and collects tails. Talking to the man himself doesn't do any good. It just brings up a sub-menu where you can give the guy something, but nothing happens if you try. It's just something to remember for later.

So, off we go to Eblan. There's the castle, of course, but I'll go in there later. There's some cool stuff to be had in there, but it can wait for awhile. In the cave, called Cave Eblana, we find a few items, most interestingly a throwing star, listed as a Shruiken. This is one of two we'll be finding in quick succession. It's a clue to what kind of character will be joining us shortly. This isn't a very long cave. The next room is the town where the ninjas of Eblan went after Rubicant nuked the castle, which is empty, but not nearly in as bad a shape as Damcyan after Baron bombed the crap out of it. But at least there are a couple monsters in Eblan.

The ninjas say they're in bad shape as a result of the attack, but it seems things aren't as bad as the people are saying because the weapons and armor shops are charging an arm and a leg for things you've already found. Well, except for the Black Shirt, which is reasonably priced and something I don't think we find, so it's worth it to buy one for Ryddia.

Go into the tunnel the guards say the prince went down and eventually, you'll catch up with the guy. The prince is named Edge, and he's about to get his ass handed to him by Rubicant. Seriously, Edge just walked up to Rubicant and tried to pick a fight with the Fiend of Fire. They hit each other once, then Edge casts Flame on Rubicant, who says “Oh, you mean this shit?” and does Glare on Edge, which fucks him up pretty bad.

Rubicant goes away after telling Edge to grow a pair. The party comes over to help and tells Edge that they can help take Rubicant out. Rosa heals Edge, and he joins the party.

I'd go on from here, but that's a bit more than I want to do right now. There's a bunch of fun stuff coming up here. There might be a side quest or two coming up next outing, but that'll have to wait until next time, when we go to Bab-Il-on Two!

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