Sunday, June 23, 2019

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy IX (PlayStation, 2000, Square-Enix): Issue #046: Deja Vu Again


I'm going to have to check my file archive, because I could swear I've done this part of the game for this Text Play, but I also know that's not likely the case.

It comes with the territory, I suppose, since I've spent a lot of happy and not so happy hours playing various Final Fantasy games in the almost 30 years since I really got into the series with Final Fantasy IV back in the early 90s. Granted, I'm way more familiar with the Super Nintendo era games that came out here in the states than I am with the PS1 era games, but I'm still fairly familiar with these ones, too. There's more I could get into, but I think I'll save that for a Final Fantasy Tonight entry later.

With regard to the game itself, I was going to open this issue with a reference to Olivet, South Dakota, because this place we're in is called Oeilvert, and I've been making these long reach jokes the entire time I've been doing this Text Play.

On the outskirts of town is a moogle who runs a shop with weapons, items and armor, all of which come in handy at this point. She's also got the seemingly standard Mognet option, and she's got mail for you to take to a friend, who's in the city proper. All this kind of reveals one of the disadvantages of being a “somewhat older fellow” who's playing and writing these things way too late at night in that I can't remember the specifics of what I actually bought in regards to the weapons and armor. Then again, I suppose they're really not that important.

Oeilvert itself is kind of a museum or planetarium sort of place, albeit one in ruins. In order to get what we need to set the rest of the party free of Kuja's death trap prison, we'll have to power the place up and watch the show. Since this is likely to take a few play sessions to get through and I haven't been getting these things posted in anything like a regular, timely manner lately, I'll just be posting these as I do them rather than try to combine them all into one big, long piece.

In order to get the place running again, we're going to have to do sort of a reverse BigCliveDotCom on the place, checking everything out to see what's there before finding a boatload of bits and pieces to reinstall. There's kind of a central chamber with a circular pit in the floor that kind of looks like the tactical display onboard the Normandy in the Mass Effect games. There are also control panels, lighting rigs, and other such doohickies around, all of which need things replaced and all that fun stuff.

And naturally, because we're getting on in the game, there are a few things here to give us those fun little bits of Extra Challenge. We've got random battles in here, because what fun would a hunt for small items in a maze be without them, right? On top of that, we can't use magic in here, either. This is doubly frustrating for me, because not only do we have to ration our healing items, but it kind of interferes with my play style. It's going to be a little tricky getting through here with a party that's set up a lot like my main party from my Text Play of the Origins version of the original Final Fantasy. The only difference here is that Zidane's job class is Thief, whereas I had a Monk in my party, if memory serves. Otherwise, Steiner is a Knight, Vivi is a Black Mage and Eiko's a White Mage, technically.

Aside from cramping my play style, what makes the lack of magic here a difficulty is that the one new enemy I remember coming across is one that spawns clones of various party members, and if the one that it clones is actually in the party, the real one, in the party, gets killed off and won't be allowed to live until the battle's over. This means you're essentially screwed if you're not pretty much overstocked on Phoenix Downs and Potions.

Because, as usual, I'm doing this way too late at night, I did what amounts to a good amount of wandering around for the situation before deciding that a half-hour or forty five minutes was about all I could handle reasonably. This leads back to what I was saying at the top of the post, that there will likely be a few posts of my running around in here, trying to get the place fixed and ready to go. Hopefully, there will also be more FF2 and SoM along the way, as well, plus that FF Tonight post.

One thing I'll want to talk about there is the idea of getting a Nintendo Switch for the possibility of getting their either soon to be released or newly released Collection of Mana. But like I said, I'll get into that later, because I'm going long and it's getting late as I write this. So until next time, folks, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.

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