We're starting off back at Baron, but we'll go a few other places along the way.
When we find Cid's crew, it doesn't matter which one we talk to, because they both say the same thing, and it triggers the cutscene where they attach the hook so we can get the hovercraft from Mt. Hobbs and take it over by Babil so we can go fo the crystals again. When Cecil tries to tell them he's dead, one interrupts and says he knows that Cid's difficult but we can handle him for a while longer. I think the actual term he uses is “babysit”, but that's here nor there, really.
Once we get the hook, I decided to take the hovercraft to where it needs to be and then I went exploring and level grinding. At first, I thought I'd go looking for more Medusa arrows around Agart. I was getting some decent XP and gold from it, which is kind of the point, but not so much for arrowls. When I got bored with that, I decided I'd go try to get the Mage summon out of Cave Magnes instead. It took awhile to get even close to where I needed to be for that, so when I got to the first save point in the cave, I quit for the night.
The second session was more running around kind of aimlessly looking for either the Mage summon from Cave Magnes or more Medusa arrows from the monsters around Agart. I didn't have any luck on that front, but I did get the party's levels high enough for Rosa to learn the Wall spell, which is a stat buff spell that reflects incoming magic. Getting it a little early might help when we get to the moon in a bit. Having everybody else at a slightly higher level sooner might also be of some use going forward, as well.
With that in mind, I went ahead and got some of the stuff out of Eblan Castle and then went into the cave where the actual people of Eblan were, mostly to use the Inn before using Cecil's Exit spell to get back to the map and save. I got the Sleep sword and the Blood spear from the guarded chests they were in in the castle.
Quite a lot of what they say within the cave in this version is pretty much the same as what they say in the SNES version. The most notable thing is that the guard by the entrance to the village in the cave doesn't freak out when we talk to him, rather asking us if we're friend or foe. Also, the items in the weapons shop are just named differently, but still stuff we already have or will get soon enough, so not worth buying. The passage to the tower is pretty much the same as well, with the sword we get in the save room being called the Blood Sword here.
When we finally get Edge, he's a little less subtle about his interest in Rydia, especially. Rubicant criticizes his technique by calling it poor rather than by asking the name of the spell Edge used.
If I'd had any good sense in me, that's where I'd have quit for the night and gone ahead with posting this. Instead, I figured I'd try to muscle my way through the tower as well. That was kind of dumb of me because it turns out I wasn't quite alert enough to pay as much attention as I should have been. I do remember that the sword I got for Edge was the Asura. Plus, the monsters are really cranked up in terms of power, so I kept getting party members killed along the way.
I may have to start ditching items at some point, because I'm trying some of these items that weren't in the SNES version, and they don't seem as worthwhile as I had hoped, outside of specific situations. That was going to be decided in the next session, though, since things were getting late when I wrote this part.
It had been awhile between sessions of this, and when I got to the last one for ths post, the monsters didn't seem quite as hard that time around. One thing I've noted a few times is that Bomb type monsters keep dropping an item called “bomb”, but it's not the Bomb summon, and I keep forgetting that. What the bomb item does is cast a low-level fire spell on an enemy party. It never did much damage against anything I used it on. The Silk Web and HrGlass items use Slow and Stop spells on enemy parties and might actually be useful. I had a few other items like that that I just put in the Fat Chocobo when I got back to the Dwarven Castle in the Underground.
Before we get there, though, we need to get through the fights with the King and Queen of Eblan and Rubicante. The King and Queen have been rewritten to be less clunky. I like that they say they're going to drag us off to Hell instead of Hades like in the SNES version. After we knock them back to their senses, they say they can't go back because they've been changed too much, but Edge is more than capable of taking over for them, even if he doesn't seem like it to us right now, and that they love him, before they off themselves.
Rubicante seems about the same. Just less clunky, but still just as formal. Otherwise, no big changes, right down to where he says Golbez is still gonna win.
These two fights seemed shorter than I remember, too, but the cutscenes seemed better, which makes up for it, I suppose.
When we fall back to the Underground, they don't expressly say that's how far they think the drop was; just that it was quite the drop. They've tweaked Edge's personality a bit, and what little we've seen of it so far, I'm not sure what I think of it. It's a lot like it was in the SNES version, but not exactly the same.
Getting through the last bit of the tower and to the castle wasn't as much of a problem as I had thought, either. I'm not sure I said this last time we talked to Giott, but he sounds a good deal like Gus from the original version of Final Fantasy 2. I kind of like that. Once we've got it established that we need to go to the Sealed Cave to get the last crystal, I decided to save and quit for the night, then get this ready for posting. I'll start the next issue of this with Cid making the new airship ready to fly over the lava and then do a tour of the Underground, because I'm sure having some of those side quests at least started will come in handy going forward. But that's for another time.
Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA. See you soon, folks!
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