It's a brave new world, though it's not
quite what Aldous Huxley wrote about. Let's have a look around,
shall we?
When Celes sets out on the raft that
Cid built for her, she's on the sea for a few days before eventually
making landfall near the town of Albrook. The equipment that they
sell here is pretty much the same as it was before the end of the
world. The people, however, have new information now. Some say that
Kefka's become something of a god and has built himself a tower, from
which he looks down upon the world and fries whole towns should they
be home to so much as one person who opposes him.
Others tell us about how the world is
different after it was pretty much nuked by all the magical energy
that got set loose when Kefka started shoving those giant statues
around on the Floating Continent. One guy says that when everything
changed, there were ancient monsters released. He mentions a few by
name: Phunbaba, Death Gaze, and the eight dragons.
There are even a few people who mention
having seen other party members, specifically Sabin. They say that
Celes looks like Sabin, for some reason, and that he went north to
Tzen to look for friends. So, I guess we'll stock up on a few items
and head north.
In Tzen, there's a house that's about
to collapse with a kid trapped inside. Making matters worse, the
house is full of monsters, to boot. This is where we see that
Sabin's still alive after the end of the world. He says that he'll
continue trying to hold up the structure, in hopes that he can give
Celes long enough to go in and bring the kid out. There are a few
good items to be retrieved, most notably the Heal Rod and the Holy
Rod, or as it was called in this game, the Pearl Rod. This is a lot
like the translation for Final Fantasy 4, where all the
Holy-elemental weapons, items and spells were called White. Here,
they're all called Pearl. I'm not entirely sure why, but there you
go. There's also a chunk of Magicite that summons a random Esper if
used as an item in battle and something called the Drainer.
It's important to have a Relic on Celes
that prevents the petrification status, because most of the monsters
in the collapsing house will cause it when they die, which, at this
point, will wipe out the party and cause the mission to fail.
Fortunately, I did have a Jewel Ring, which did the trick.
After getting the kid out and chatting
with Sabin for a minute about seeing him alive again, Celes has gone
from feeling completely lost and hopeless to confident that
everybody's still alive and that they can save the world. That's
quite the 180, but not uncommon for games in this era. Other
townsfolk suggest that we head east and find what used to be the
Serpent Trench. It's all above water now, and it's a curved strip of
land that connects Moblitz on its eastern end to the port town of
Nikkea on its northern end, with a tower in the middle. The tower
was built by a group called the Cult of Kefka. There's a magic-only
side quest that involves Strago, but it'll be quite awhile before we
can get to that.
In the meantime, we're going to head
east to Moblitz, or at least what's left of it, and see what's going
on there. If memory serves, Terra's there, but won't be rejoining
the party just yet. And I think we also have the first of two
encounters with Phunbaba, one of those ancient beasts they mentioned
in Albrook.
But that's for next time. Until then,
stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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