Wednesday, November 19, 2014

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy VI (Super Nintendo, Square, 1994): Issue #043: Cyan Dreams In Doma Castle

It was a bear to get this done, but not for the reasons you might think.

This part of the game itself was not as hard as I remember. The problems came from that I'm playing on a system that's going on 25 years old and its age shows rather badly. The first thing that went wrong was the same thing that got the Lufia game, but that's why I was smart enough to have two saves this time around so I didn't lose the game. Plus, I think there's a short someplace in the controller I'm using, because it shorts out if I move wrong or don't hold it the right way.

But the game itself wasn't that bad, compared to what I remember. There are some good items to be had in Doma Castle that I'm surprised I didn't get before. I must have been saving them for this part of the game, but then again, I didn't really use them here, either. Most notably are an X-Ether and a Beads relic.

There's the room where the party can rest up in that can still be used. When we use it, the party sleeps as normally, but when the party wakes up, Cyan doesn't wake up. While the other three, in this case, Locke, Sabin, and Edgar, try to rouse him and figure out what's wrong, three strange creatures come along to introduce themselves as Curley, Larry, and Moe, the Three Dream Stooges, and they've come to eat Cyan's soul and jump into his head. The others follow them in, and find themselves in an Escher painting where monsters attack them. At first, I kept getting killed, but once I switched Sabin and Edgar around, it was no problem, because at first, the party is split up and needs to be reunited.

Once that's done, our three remaining heroes go against the Dream Stooges. I know it's possible to kill all three of them, but Larry got away this time. Once the Stooges are out of the way, the party finds its way into Cyan's dreams.

At first, Cyan dreams that he's on the Phantom Train, where we can get some decent shields. There are some puzzles that need to be solved to get through. One involves two rows of three chests. The solution is to close the far right one on the top row and the middle and far left ones on the bottom row. To finish the train off, go into the train's control room and exit. That opens up the path to the next section, which is the caves of Narshe. In this case, the end is a circular path that's an infinite loop if followed along the way that seems to be forward. Going in and back out the farthest right door there is the way to continue. I had forgotten that this was the one last time we got to use MagiTek Armor. The bridge we cross while chasing Cyan is too weak to hold the armor, and we go crashing into Doma Castle.

When the party comes to, they see the spirits of Elayne and Owain, Cyan's wife and son who died when Kefka attacked Doma near the start of the game. They say that they want us to save Cyan from his grief because he's being haunted by a monster called Wrexsoul that'll kill him if it's not stopped.

Wrexsoul is hiding in the throne room, and when the party approaches, he's pretty much done in Cyan, saying that his grief, hatred and anger have reached critical mass and now Wrexsoul is going to get the rest of the party, too.

Wrexsoul can possess party members, and does it in such a way that we don't know which one it's hiding in, which means that to get the monster back out where it can be hurt, it means killing party members and then reviving them. Having the Life3 spell really comes in handy for that. Sabin's regular attack works well, as does Edgar's drill, in his tool kit.

When Wrexsoul is finally taken care of, Cyan's family says he's going to be OK and Cyan himself learns the rest of his special sword moves. When the party wakes up there's a new piece of Magicite to be had. It's for the Esper Alexander, or Alexandr in this translation, which has the Pearl spell and a few others.

From here, there are a few other side quests to go on. There's seven of the eight dragons left that I'm thinking I might go for, and DoomGaze as well. There are also quite a bit more rages for Gau I can probably get now, and some more lores for Strago, too. Those can all be found on the Veld, which I think I'll spend some time running around on. I'm not sure how much of that I'll actually write about. The dragons and DoomGaze, for sure, even though DoomGaze is pretty much a random thing I need to find by flying around on the airship. And there are a few other cool things I might try, like Dinosaur Forest, since they have some good XP, MP, and make good rages and have good blue magic, too.

But we'll see. Until next time, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!

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