We're getting some serious Army of
Darkness stuff going on here, and we're not even dealing with undead
monsters yet.
Turns out Garnet was thrown clear of
the ship when it came down, and it seems that Vivi and Steiner were
thrown clear, too. Of course, as things start off here, nobody knows
that for sure, because we've got Blank and a few others looking for
her in the wreckage, and some guy named Zenero tells Zidane to go
looking for her in the woods after Cinna explains the situation.
We get to see what happened to Garnet
and Vivi in another of the games Active Time events, telling us where
to go looking for her in a moment. By the time Zidane gets there,
Steiner has shown up as well, and Garnet has been scooped up by a
minion of what will be the boss at the end of this dungeon, a
plantlike thing that can really kick some ass.
When Zidane and Steiner try to rescue
Garnet, we're introduced to the limit break system in this game.
It's an interesting mechanic that allows each character special moves
unique to whatever class their character is supposed to be. Zidane's
got something called Dyne, which gives him some interesting and
powerful moves. Steiner's power level just goes over 9000, to quote
the overused meme. Vivi's got something called Double Black, which
lets him use his black magic twice in a turn.
Before they can get back to the ship,
Vivi also gets captured by one of the plant minions, but with help
from his fire spells, Zidane and Steiner manage to get him loose
again. The downside here is that when the minion dies, it hoses
Steiner and Vivi down with some sort of gas that makes them hosts for
monster seeds that will kill them if not treated quickly.
The good news is that Blank has
medicine for exactly that back at the ship, and he uses it on them
when they get back. While all that's going on, Zidane decides he
needs to go rescue the princess, and goes to talk to Baku about it.
Baku says no, for a good reason, of course. He's looking after his
crew, which is something any good captain would do.
At the same time, Zidane makes a good
point as well, saying that they didn't go to all the trouble of
“kidnapping” Garnet only to drop her at the first sign of
trouble. All the same, Baku tells him that if he really wants to go
looking for her all the same, for whatever reasons he may have, he'll
have to leave Tantalus and go it on his own. To do that, he'll have
to prove his strength by beating on Baku. It's an easy enough fight,
and Baku even has a few goodies for Steiner.
One thing I've noticed about the goings
on in this little part of the game is that there's quite a lot of
stuff specifically for Steiner here, and not a lot of stuff that
might be good for anybody else. Sure, there's a few things they can
use, but it's not really good stuff, all things considered.
Along the way, we also see Steiner find
the doll of Garnet, Ruby realizing she's stuck in Alexandria for now,
and Cinna pining for the doll Steiner found earlier, all in ATEs.
As for the trip through the forest, we
get enough fights to level our three heroes up a little bit before
the fight with the plant boss. I know all these boss monsters have
names, but I'd forgotten how to find that out for this particular
fight. At first, it seems it's just going to be Zidane, Steiner, and
Vivi for this fight, which would have been doable with help from a
dual tech move where Steiner gets black magic on his sword from Vivi.
Fortunately, Blank shows up to give Zidane a map to Lindblum, though
it's essentially the world map for the game, and joins the fight,
which makes things easier.
When the monster goes down, it hits
Garnet with the same gas that its minions used on Steiner and Vivi
earlier. Even though the party does have the medicine to fix that
problem, Garnet's still weak from the ordeal. That means that
Steiner's gotta carry her out as the party is chased from the forest
by weird rose monsters. As they escape, the forest begins to turn to
stone. The party members escape alive, but Blank gets trapped and
petrified after he tosses the map to Zidane. He had quite the arm,
given how far Zidane had to run to actually get the map.
Once out, the party rests for a night,
and the next morning, Zidane tells Garnet they're going to get Blank
out of there somehow. We'll be back, of course, but not for awhile.
From there, we're to head south to an
Ice Cavern that might lead out of the valley, which is filled with
something called Mist, which spawns monsters and other creepy things.
I should have just saved when I got there, but because I'm a dumbass
about things in this game, I got to running around in a forest by the
entrance to the cave and wound up getting into one of the special
battles that happen from time to time in such places throughout the
game. In this case, there's a quizmaster who asks about where the
Prima Vista was built. It's a true or false question regarding some
of the flavor text that I know I read, but still got the question
wrong, which is too bad, because there's some cool stuff to be had if
the questions are answered correctly. There are others like this, as
well as some with usually friendly versions of monsters who want a
specific amount of certain items to give up their rewards. I know
there's one such battle where it just takes your shit, but I can't
really remember what it is right now.
Once I got done messing that up, I
decided it was time to just save and get on with the Ice Cavern next
time. It'll be groovy!
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