Or in this case, Barren Falls, with
“barren” meaning empty.
This installment will be all about why
I usually do Sabin's branch first when I get to this part of the
game. Not only is it the longest, storywise, far as I can tell, but
this part specifically can take a while if you're going to take full
advantage of it. And the worst part is, this final segment of
Sabin's branch will be relatively light for the hour and a half or so
I put into playing it.
See, this is the part of the game where
we get a character named Gau. His unique role in Final Fantasy
history is that he's the one character, far as I know, whose attacks
are entirely based on those of the monsters. Before we get to that,
though, there's one other thing we need to do: jump off a cliff.
To get to where Gau actually is, a
place called the Veld, we have to go down the Barren Falls of the
Lete River, which we've been following this whole time. Before we
jump, we need to take Shadow's equipment like we did with Mog when we
had him in Narshe, because he's got good stuff that other characters
can use, and he leaves the party here. Once Shadow's gone, Sabin and
Cyan are free to jump. On the way down, they fight a group of fish
monsters called piranhas, followed by a boss monster called
Rhyzophas. It's really not a difficult fight, but it does make the
trip interesting.
After beating the boss, our current
pair of heroes wind up out cold and floating down the river, where
they get fished out by a young man in animal skins who runs off when
they come to and try to talk to him. At this point, they have to
cross the Veld to reach a town called Moblitz. Chances are, you'll
run into Gau a time or two at the end of random battles here, because
they work a little differently here. I'll get to that in a minute,
but for now, you've just gotta smack him to get him to run away and
let you get to town.
Once you do get to Moblitz, the first
thing to do is go to the Item Shop and buy a piece of dried meat.
Far as I know, this is the only place in the game to get it, but it's
also the only place in the game where you need it, and you'll only
ever need the one piece, as I recall. And this is also where we get
into why we were running into Gau at the end of random battles
before. Up until now, Gau would say he was hungry, and although
there was technically a food item in the inventory, Green Cherries
just don't do it for him, so that's why we hit him before. Once we
have the dried meat, though, give him that and he'll join right up
after having a little dust-up with Sabin and accidentally offending
Cyan with his use of the word “thou”. Gau will also offer us a
treasure that he hid in a cave at a place called Crescent Mountain,
where we'll have to go to move on anyway.
And now that Gau is in the party,
things are going to get long and a bit tedious for the next
forty-five minutes or hour. Building up Gau's attacks requires
having him jump onto enemies' backs instead of fighting them and then
waiting for him to come back at the end of another fight. The fights
that happen in between don't count. Took me awhile to figure out
that's how it worked the first time I played this game, but at least
there's a little green guy called Kappa who comes out to explain this
and a few other things, unlike with Sabin's blitz from before, or
Cyan's sword arts or bushido attacks, or whatever you want to call
them, though Cyan's skill isn't used to advance the plot, that I can
remember.
Part of the reason this part takes so
long is that you want to get as many of the monsters as you can on
Gau's list when you go to the Veld. There's really only one I'd call
“must-have” at this point, and that would be the Marshall, who
was the boss we fought back in Narshe with Locke and the Moogles.
The Marshall has Wind Slash and Snare as special abilities, which are
really good ones. It's still worth it to get all the others, though,
because they do have a lot of good magic and special attacks that the
monsters don't use, fortunately, and other characters won't have
access to until much later in the game, if at all.
There's also a side-quest in Moblitz to
help break up the tedium of building up Gau's abilities involving a
wounded Imperial soldier who'd gotten his ass kicked by his own unit
when he pussed out of attacking Doma. Worth it, of course, but now
the poor guy's in a bad way and in grave danger of keeling over right
there. The only reason he doesn't is because he gets letters from
his girlfriend in the town of Miranda, on the southern continent. Of
course, part of the reason for that is because we've been sending her
stuff in his name. After sending copies of his favorite record and
favorite book, a Tonic for her sick mother, and a few letters in his
name, he'll say he noticed and give us the Tintinabar relic. Could
have sworn I missed it back at the Returner Base, but now I'm not so
sure of what the second relic there was supposed to be.
Anyway, after a while, you'll have
pretty much all monster attacks you can for Gau. These can be
accessed through the “Rage” command in his battle menu, where
most other characters have an attack command. This will bring up a
list of monsters that Gau has been seen with. Whichever one you
select will make Gau use the attacks and special abilities of that
creature.
With all that taken care of, it's off
to Crescent Mountain, where Gau has a diving bell hidden. Since it
still works, Sabin says the party can use it to jump into the Serpent
Trench, a high-speed underwater current in the ocean that will take
the party from the cave to the port town of Nikea. There's a boat
waiting there that will take the party to South Figaro From there,
they go on to the Returner base on their own, which means we'll have
to choose a different party to play as next time.
My standard choice is Locke. It's the
middle-length one of the three, and also the middle difficulty one.
Locke will probably take two issues rather than the three this one
has taken.
So, see you then, folks. Stay safe,
have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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