From deep-sea diving to escaping from a
town. This should be fun.
Not nearly as long as I remembered it
being, but fun.
When we pick up Locke's branch of these
three, he's done everything he can to mess with the Imperial forces
in South Figaro, so it's time for him to get the hell out of Dodge,
so to speak. This is the part of the game I was thinking of before,
where Locke gets to swipe a dude's clothes and give the bookie a
drink.
At the start of this one, Locke is
being chased by a trooper, who gives up soon as our hero jumps behind
a nearby tree. Locke then tells himself that it's time to go, and he
needs to find a way out. To do that, he needs to get the rich guy's
book keeper to tell him about a secret passage. This is where
horking the clothes comes in. There's a merchant in the Item Shop
who fits the bill. You'll need to look like a merchant to get past
the book keeper's grandson in the basement of his place.
Once you do get past the kid, you'll
need to go to the cafe, like the first time the party visitied. Only
this time, we can actually get the cider that the merchant in the
basement was going to take to the book keeper and do it ourselves
instead. The book keeper tells us that there's a secret
passage to the rich guy's house that his grandson will open if we
give him the right password. Too bad he doesn't remember it.
The grandson gives us three choices for
the password: “Rose Bud”, “Courage”, and “Failure”.
While I've not played this game as much as I have Final Fantasy 4,
but I have played it enough that I should have remembered that the
password was “Courage”. Why I thought it was “Rose Bud”, I
don't know. But the kid whacked me for it, and I had to get the
Merchant's clothes again. At least I got to see the “B.Day Suit”
alternate form these guys get when you steal their clothes one more
time.
There's really no good way to work this
in, so I may as well just mention it. The merchant in the Item shop
isn't the only NPC's clothes that can be stolen. There's also a
soldier whose uniform that can be stolen. He's the only one dressed
in green, if memory serves. Far as I've ever been able to tell,
there's nothing special that happens as a result. The only real
changes I can recall are a few bits of dialog in this part of the
game. One's with the grandson who lets you through the basement.
He'll say something like “Soldier? Go ahead.” instead of
“Merchant? Go ahead.” There's one other line that changes a
bit, but I'll mention that when we get to it.
So, when I gave the grandson the
correct password, he let me through the secret passage to the rich
guy's house, since the soldiers wouldn't let us through the streets.
Once inside the main house, the rich guy's wife tells us the the
soldiers have made the place their base, and the man himself laments
betraying the town for money because he came to realize that he
didn't need the money nearly that badly. There's also the sound of
wind in his room, coming from another secret passage behind the
bookshelf. I think this got mentioned by the guy's wife on the last
visit to South Figaro.
The guy's daughter also says “Wind
the clock, wind the clock!” and then claims that it's only a
jump-rope rhyme because there's a soldier in the room. It's actually
a clue as to how to actually get out of the interrogation rooms in
the basement. Before we go, though, we need to get another new
character and a clock key. This new character is one of the Empire's
generals, a woman named Celes. I'm not entirely sure how to
pronounce her name. I've always gone with “cells”, but I keep
hearing YouTubers go with a single-l pronunciation. She can use
magic, just like Terra, but instead of fire magic, she has the first
level ice spell, and will even learn the imp spell before we get to
the end of this.
When Locke takes the chains off her
wrists, she'll ask him what he thinks he's going to sell in the
dungeon if he's got the merchant's clothes on, or she'll quote
Princess Leia from A New Hope, I think it is, and suggest that
Locke's a little short to be a storm trooper if he's got the
soldier's uniform. Either way, he'll change back to his normal
clothes and the quest goes on from there. There's also an option to
take whichever costume off before even looking into the chamber that
the soldiers are torturing Celes in and forgo either scene.
The torture chamber is in the first
door. Once Celes joins the party, she tells Locke that the sleeping
guard in the room has the clock key we'll need to get out. What
plays out is a bit of humor, because just before Locke went in, the
guard bragged to his superior that he could go for days without food
or sleep. When Locke gets in there, the guard is already asleep and
dreaming of food. When Lock grabs the key out of his shirt pocket,
the guard jumps up and demands more bread before dozing back off in
the chair and asking for more soup, too.
There's a save point behind the next
door to the right which is a good thing to use, just to be safe, and
in the last door is the tunnel out of the rich guy's place. This'll
let us get out of town to the east. The direction we need to go once
we're out of town is north and west, back through the Figaro Cave.
There's new monsters in here, but no new treasure. Along the way,
there are rumbling noises every now and then. Once we get back to
the end closer to the castle, Locke finally asks what the rumbling
noise is. There's also a recovery spring. I can't recall if we got
to use it before, but it comes in handy now, because before we get
out of the cave, there's a boss fight with a machine called TunlArmr.
Celes explains how this thing can use magic, but she and Locke will
be safe because as long as she's got a sword, she can use a move
called Runic Blade. This allows her to absorb the magic points it
takes to cast a spell instead of taking damage from it. That move
will come in handy for quite a lot of the game, and this first
demonstration proves that.
Once the TunlArmr is destroyed, Locke
and Celes head out for Narshe, and Locke's thread ends. I honestly
thought there was more to do with Locke and Celes here, but once they
go out the mouth of the cave, this part of the story ends and we have
to go on with Terra, Edgar and Banon as they finish their raft ride
into Narshe.
And that's where we'll pick up next
time. See you then, folks, and until then, stay safe, have fun, keep
gaming, and DFTBA!
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