Friday, February 7, 2020

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy IX (PlayStation, 2000, Square-Enix): Issue #052: Back to the Gulug, Part Three


This part of the game seemed a bit glitchier than the third Back to the Future movie.

Quite a bit glitchier, really, and I'm sure it's got at least something to do with the age of the equipment and software. That's something I'll get more into at the end of the issue, though.

Turns out we were a lot closer to the end of this dungeon than I thought last time, but I'm still glad I stopped when I did. As I said then, I've been sick lately, and I'd been up way too late, as well, and given how things went this time around, I'm probably better off for not having pushed my luck.

When I first started up, I made sure everybody had the equipment they needed and adjusted what I needed to, saved again, and went pretty much straight into where the dungeon boss was. The party looks down from a bridge or a cliff or something and sees that Zorn and Thorn are doing their extraction ritual on Eiko as Kuja and his Black Mages look on. Dagger wants to go rushing on in to rescue her, but Zidane holds her back, saying that things will go better for them if they at least go in together.

At the same time, Zorn and Thorn are being about as successful as always, and Kuja's not happy about it, saying that he's doing all this because of a rivalry with that Garland guy who I'm sure I've talked about before, and he's running out of time on account of some sort of big master plan that's about to go into effect. Kuja wants to be the head guy of it instead of Garland because apparently, whoever's in that spot gets their soul saved or some such thing, and in order to take over, he needs a stronger eidolon than what Garland has. As a result, he's willing to kill Eiko to get it, because she's got that very thing.

In the process of all this, we get to find out that Mog was actually Eiko's fourth and final eidolon, who took the form of a Moogle to be at the little girl's side physically. This reveal comes when Mog hits a Trance mode and transforms into a beast that looks and potentially acts like the Maduin Esper from Final Fantasy 6 and proceeds to whack the shit out of Zorn and Thorn, killing them in one shot.

All this happens in the time it takes for the main party to get to Eiko's location. When they get there, they see the destruction and ask Eiko if she's OK. When she says yes, it turns out it was the first time the game actually hung up or crashed on me, so I had to do a soft reset and redo the whole thing. For the rest of the session, the game kept having hang-ups and abnormally long load times. I'm really hoping the rest of the game won't be this way, because I might have to abandon it if it is. This kind of thing is certainly not a new thing for the Text Play series. It got the better of both my attempts at Lufia and the Fortress of Doom, and I had similar issues with my playthrough of the original Final Fantasy, which is on the same Origins disk as FFII.

When I got the game up and running again, I took the time to do a little more exploring before I went in again and found another Moogle, this time with a shop, and one more Red Dragon to fight. If I'd remembered what the actual boss fight was going to be like, I'd have taken the chance to pick up some more vaccine potions. It turns out that when we get past the part of that scene I talked about before where Eiko says she's OK, Kuja steps in and says that Zorn and Thorn aren't actual twins, and they turn into a two-headed zombie monster that casts the virus status effect on the party at the start of the fight. It turns out I had just enough, plus the one I stole from the monster, called Meltigemini. I'm not sure if that's what Zorn and Thorn actually were or if it's because of some sort of necromancy that Kuja does.

Before the fight, though, Vivi goes chasing after Kuja because he wants to have a word with him and the other Black Mages about what all this means. It's too bad we don't have a black mage of our own right now, but having a second healer comes in handy becase Dagger still fails moves sometimes.

Turns out this fight wasn't as hard as I was thinking it would be. I think it's in part because I got lucky and the monster only did the virus thing once, though it did do a thing called venom powder on a few of the caracters that took me a little too long to figure out how to fix, because it put the Stop status on those characters and made them loose health and MP, too. But it was still a relatively easy fight, all things considered.

After the battle, Vivi comes back to where Zidane is with a couple other Black Mages. Turns out the Black Mages pretty much knew Kuja was full of shit when he said he could extend their lives for them but went along with him anywway. When he pretty much said it to their faces, or at least what passes for their faces, the shock was enough to make them regret the decision. The more this happens, the more it all seems to resemble real life in our own modern world, which is disturbing, at least to me.

On his way back out, Zidane hears a woman's voice calling him into another room. The lady in the other room is all dressed up in nice clothes and has a nice room to be in. Turns out this is Hilda, Regent Cid's wife. This becomes apparent when she knows Dagger well enough to address her as Princess Garnet, though she's not introduced by name until Cid himself comes in and says her name.

Hilda explains that Kuja hadn't intended to kidnap her when he jacked the Hilda Garde 1, but took advantage when it happened anyway. She suggests they go back to Lindblum so she and Cid can discuss things further in a safer venue.

Back at the castle, Cid convinces Hilda to turn him back into a human because he's sorry for neglecting and cheating on her, and all the time apart and being stuck as an oglop and a frog has made him see the error of his ways. Eventually, she forgives him and undoes the spell. Even though I'm not into guys, I gotta say, Regent Cid's a nice looking dude in human form. Kinda makes up for Zidane and Kuja, I guess, and the fact that I can do a decent Steiner impression without much effort.

After that little scene, one of the palace guards goes to wake Zidane from his sleep in the royal guest room. Kinda sucks for both of them because Zidane's having a Commander Sheppard dream about Dagger again. We're going to have a meeting with the royals in the conference room when we pick up next time. And we will pick this up later, because it's time to stop for now.

Before I wrap this up, though, I should probably finish the thought on the glitches and stuff from before. I know it's an old game and I'm playing on old equipment that's all second-hand, too, but really, this hasn't been that much of a problem until just this last bit. It's all held up rather well for being a 20-year-old game, at this point, being played on a console that's at least 15. When I was having this trouble with Lufia, it was all older stuff than this is now. But since it's late again, I'll probably do a Final Fantasy Tonight/This Morning on it later. And I just may finally get around to another gaming-related post I talked about in my recent round of vacation blogs, too.

And one last thing before I go tonight, too. Something I just realized about this game is that Regent Cid's wife is called Hilda, and so's the princess in Final Fantasy II, which I'm doing as a side game right now. Turns out we just rescued her, or at least what we think is her, from the bad guy there, too. We'll get to that soon enough, though. Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.

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