When we left off last time, Zidane and
crew were getting ready to hop aboard the cargo ship, intending to
take it to Lindblum, though Steiner had other ideas. His plan was to
take it to Alexandria like the good little numbnuts he is at this
point in the game. He'd told the others that it was going to
Lindblum instead in order to get them aboard.
Turns out that both plans are kind of
FUBAR, as the cargo ship is crewed only by four of the Black Mages
that were being made in Dali and had been previously brought to life
for the purpose. They only operate on their programming, though, and
won't respond to anybody talking to them. They apparently gave
Steiner what-for when he went to ask for their help and took off for
Alexandria as they'd been programmed to. When Zidane finds him on
his face on the main deck, Steiner explains that this isn't quite
what he'd wanted, but he's OK with it anyway because it was pretty
much his plan to begin with. I'm sure I could have gotten some other
thoughts from him, but I was kind of in a rush and just went into the
wheelhouse instead, having Zidane try to get the pilot's attention
first, with no success.
Of course, the Black Mage piloting the
ship pretty much stands aside for Zidane when he goes in and takes
the wheel. Steiner shows up a moment later, joined by Dagger and
Vivi, and begins carrying on about how he doesn't like how Zidane's
taking the ship to Lindblum in spite of that being exactly what
everyone else wants. As this is going on, we see that the third and
final Black Waltz is about to attack the ship.
Between the shipjacking and the arrival
of the Waltz, the Black Mages running the ship have begun to act a
bit odd. At first, they gather around the wheelhouse for some
reason, and then try to defend Vivi when he goes to confront the
Waltz on his own. Of course, he blows them all away, which prompts
Steiner and Zidane to come to Vivi's aid, after Zidane tells Dagger
to take the helm and decide where they're actually going.
This Waltz isn't a particularly hard
fight, which is OK, since we don't have a healer. In past
playthroughs, I've gotten my ass handed to me here as a result of
that, but this time, not so much. Much as I would liked to have
tried getting clever and going for all three items the Waltz was
carrying, I'm sorta glad I only got the low and mid level ones,
because going for the Silver Gauntlets, or whatever they're actually
called, has an unfortunate way of going bad on me.
The unusual thing here is that the
party wins the fight without killing the Waltz. Instead, we're given
a nice cutscene where he manages to get away with serious damage,
only to chase after the cargo ship on a little runabout-class airship
that Zorn and Thorn, Queen Bhrane's jester goons were using to watch
things go down, after tossing the two goons overboard, of course.
After a midair magic battle between the Waltz and Vivi, as the two
ships pass through the big airship gate to Lindblum, we're supposed
to believe that Waltz Number Three is toast when he crashes his ship
into the inside of the gate. It's been a good few years since I've
played this part of the game or watched an LP, but I kind of doubt
that's actually the case.
The good news is that once the party
gets to Lindblum, they do intend to stay awhile, because that big air
gate is all messed up because of the crash, and getting back to
Alexandria, at least by air, isn't going to be an option until it
gets fixed. As they approach, there's a bit of a plot hole in the
cutscene, as somebody has to explain to Zidane that the City of
Lindblum is actually incorporated into the castle itself. One would
think he'd know that, considering that he's supposed to be from
there. Kind of like me not knowing some basic things about the
waterfall that's my hometown's namesake.
This place we've actually docked at is
called Lindblum Grand Castle, and it's a much more advanced version
of a place familiar to longtime fans of the series like myself:
Fabul, or Regent Cid Fabool IX, as we call him this outing. The
spelling with the “u” was actually the homeland of the monks and
karate fighters in Final Fantasy IV. Rather than just being a
fortified city as it was in my all-time favorite video game, Lindblum
is built on three levels, all of which will come into play before
we're completely done here. The Base Level, build below the Mist,
allows access to the world map and what may be the only actual
sailing port still operational on what is called the Mist Continent.
The Mid Level, where the actual city is, has all the services one
might expect in an RPG town and access to the above-the-Mist part of
the map. The upper level is where Regent Cid is.
As a man named Minister Artainia guides
Dagger and the party to where Cid is, they can run around the castle
a bit before hopping on the elevator to the top level. There's a
female member of Lindblum's Air Force that Zidane strikes out with in
the chamber to the right of the elevator. She tells Zidane that her
name's Erin before running off on the guy. I think this was supposed
to happen later, though, because Zidane says he's going to go get
some food and invites her along, which doesn't go so well. Plus,
there's a bit of odd dialog that seems out of place, and it doesn't
seem like the sort of bad translation we've seen in the SNES era.
But we'll want to remember Erin's name. We'll be seeing her later.
As for where the actual plot goes from
here, Artainia takes the party to see Regent Cid, who has been turned
into a giant version of an oglop, the buglike things Zidane and his
Tantalus friends were going to dump on the audience at the start of
the game. At first, the party doesn't believe it, but then Dagger
recognizes his mustache, which he somehow still has. Once that's
taken care of, the rest of the party is told to disperse so that Cid
and Dagger can have a private conference about what's going on.
While the official, for-the-public
explanation is that some random, yet highly trained, thief did this
to Cid while in the process of kidnapping Cid's wife Hilda and
stealing the prototype of an airship that could do its thing without
the Mist, the real story is that Hilda herself did it all for some
reason. Also of import is that Cid knew that things were getting a
little weird in Alexandria and wanted to get Dagger out, which is why
he got ahold of his buddy Baku and sent Tantalus in to get her
because it's what he'd agreed to with the king of Alexandria before
he died.
At the same moment, Zidane's going to a
local pub to get a bite to eat. He sees that the special that day is
a bowl of soup, so he goes in and tells tells the guy at the counter
he'll take it. Turns out, the guy running the place is Zidane's
friend Bobo,
who is sadly not a gorilla, in this case. Once the greetings are
settled, Zidane flirts with a barmaid, who pretty much shoots him
down too.
The whole scene gets the attention of
another character as well. This time, it's our fifth party member,
though she won't be joining us for a bit. This cute young dragoon is
an anthropomorphic rat named Freya Cresent. Of course, it's odd that
I'd have as much difficulty as I do finding appropriate art to
properly prove my point in this case, in light of the fact that
there's considerably
more of it out there than there is of the last similar character
like this I was sorta crushing on, Legend of Mana's Sierra.
Anyway, after Zidane and Freya catch up
on old times and talk about how she's here for something called the
Festival of the Hunt, we're finally given a chance to save at a room
in Lindblum's Inn. Before we can, though, Vivi says he's gonna go
looking around on his own just to prove he can.
We'll get to that next time, though, as
this has gone on for long enough for now, and I am once again
working on this way later than I probably should. See you soon
folks, and as always, DFTBA!
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