I'll probably be doing a lot of that as
I go along here, just so I can have my levels high enough to do what
I want to do later on.
I'll get to what all that is when it's
closer to when I'm actually going to do it, but I will say for now
that I'll be doing a lot of level grinding as I go along here. It'll
also give me a chance to play around with some of the expanded item
list in this version.
In the hour or so I spent doing mostly
that in the first session for this issue, I got a couple levels for
everybody in the party right now. That'll come in handy with the
part of the story that's coming up, and it'll be a bonus for the
party members we'll have along later, too. For now, I think the only
one we'll still have when we get to the parts I'm worried about is
Cecil, but I could be wrong about that.
I also used a couple of the “new”,
or at least new to me items, to see or remind myself of what they
did. One is simply called “Hermes” in this version of the game,
and casts Haste on the user. The other was called Illusion, and puts
Blink on the user to protect them from what seems to be about two
hits. I'm not sure I'd go out of my way for either of these things,
but they might still have their uses.
Along with that, I advanced the story a
little bit, too. The Eight Sister Clerics that run Troia still
explain that they need us to get their Earth Crystal back, and will
let us borrow it if we pull it off. The wording is, for the most
part, a little better, but there were a couple instances where I
think they were changing things just to change them. One of the
Clerics has what seems to be an accent from the Southeastern US,
while another did a little family-friendly cussing, telling us that
the “bleeping” Dark Elf had the crystal. Neither of these were,
at least for me, necessary or positive changes.
In the scene where Edward gives the
party the Twinharp so he can be of some use later does a better job
of making the prince's feelings clear, having him just say he thinks
it's his fault that Tellah's daughter is dead. It also does
something a little different with the doctor's explanation of why
Edward's recovery is going to be so slow, in that he seems naturally
frail to begin with.
From there, I went to the island with
Cave Magnes on it. I'll be using pretty much the same strategy I
usually do this time, which is to avoid as many fights as I can on
the way in and then grind on my way back out, but that was going to
be for the second session.
The cave itself is little different
than what I'm used to. Because I went straight there instead of
doing a little side questing first, I didn't have to change as much
to get through. Cid still points out that the magnetic field the
Dark Elf is causing will keep them from fighting, but Tellah and Yang
can still fight or use magic if they don't have any metal equipment
on, and so can Cid since I didn't have any metal stuff on him,
either. The biggest difference is the tone they gave the Dark Elf
himself. In the SNES version, he sounds mentally handicapped or
something, in this one, they made him use the same kind of weird
emphasis that the Sorceress in Final Fantasy 8 does. It seems like
kind of a wash to me, really, as I'm really not entirely sure how I
feel about it. On the one hand, the original did kinda need to be
changed, but I'm not sure this version is an improvement.
Some of the items were at least named
differently, too. There was one room that had boxes with healing
items in the SNES version that were combat items here.
Beyond that, it's all pretty much the
same as it was the last couple times I did playthroughs here. Only
other thing I did differently was that I went to Silveira after the
cave but before returning the crystal so I could get all Silver
equipment for Cecil, and the hammer for Cid and the staff for Tellah.
In this case, it's Mythril and the Mythril Village, but essentially
the same otherwise.
From here, I'll probably put a little
more time into level and gold grinding before I advance the plot any
more, and not start another issue until I do unless something
interesting happens. Hopefully, I'll finally be able to make a
little time for FF9 again as well. I kinda want to see just how much
of the game I actually remember from last time I got this close to
the end.
Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep
gaming, and DFTBA. See you soon, folks!
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