I suppose I could have gone for an
Arthur C. Clarke reference and called this one Rendezvous
With Ramuh, but I kind of
forgot the name of the Esper we got to actually talk to in the second
town we go to.
First off, though,
I'd better finish with Shadow's dream before we get to that. There
are only two more parts that I've ever been able to get after where I
left off time. The first of the two sees Clyde and Baram trying to
make an escape from someone or something, Baram having been gravely
wounded in the process. Since he can't continue, Baram asks Clyde to
kill him so that their pursuers won't torture him or something.
Clyde doesn't have the balls to do it and just runs away instead.
When we see him in
the next dream sequence, Clyde has also been injured, but has made
his way to a town called Thama, where he meets Interceptor the dog
and a nice lady who finds him and tries to keep him conscious. I'm
assuming there's more to this, based on implications later in the
game, but I've never figured out how to get them or been willing to
put the time in to do it. Naturally, I'll get to those implications
when we get to that part of the game
Anyway,
moving on to the storyline, the party learns that the town of Jidoor
is made up of middle class and wealthy people, and all the poor folks
have moved north into the mountains to start their own town, called
Zozo.
Given that no less than 95% of the people in this town are liars, it
would be nice to have a Galaxy
Ranger or two around. There are some nice side quests to do
here, but for now, I'll pass on those. There's one I might try to do
where there's a clock that needs to be reset. The answer is to set
it to the only options that nobody says, but I've always had a hell
of a time getting them all together correctly.
There's a guy who
says he hasn't seen anything weird but you need to check the top of
the building. Since there are fights actually in this town, things
can be a little tricky. The HadesGigas is a particularly dangerous
monster, since it has a finishing move called Magnitude 8 that can
severely damage, if not outright kill a party.
At the top of the
building, there's a dude named Dadauda who says he'll let you pass
because he hates to fight and then tries to beat your ass. This can
be a hard fight if you're not careful about it, but it can go well if
you've got your weapons and armor up to snuff. When his health gets
low, this boss calls in two Iron Fist minions. Yeah, they can be a
threat, too, but if you just have Shadow throw shurikens and other
spare weapons at Dadauda, they really shouldn't be much of a problem,
either. When this fight's over, it's a good idea to take Shadow's
equipment again, as he leaves the party after this next cutscene.
In the room at the
top of the tower, we find Terra, who's still all glowy and stuff. As
the party tries to communicate with her, an old man in wizard robes
teleports in and introduces himself as Ramuh, an Esper. He'll
explain that twenty years ago, more or less, the Empire found its way
into the Espers' secret realm and has been making regular visits to
collect more Espers over the years. Terra's condition comes from the
fact that she's half human and half Esper and won't be able to return
to the fight until she comes to terms with that in her own mind.
In the
meantime, the party needs to go to the Empire, which is located on
the southern continent and at least try to rescue the other Espers
that Ramuh left behind when he escaped with three others, and then
drew Terra to Zozo to help her understand herself. Feeling
responsible for the distress of those he left behind and the deaths
of those who escaped with him, Ramuh explains that Espers can only
truly transfer their powers to others when they die and turn into
something called Magicite and then kills himself and brings forth the
Magicite remains of his companions so they can help the party as they
try to rescue the other Espers.
And this is where
we see the introduction of a mechanic that, far as I know, has stayed
with the main series in every game since. In this case, it gets a
little confusing, because now the term “magic points” refers to
two things in this game. One is what I've been referring to as “MP”
on occasion, which is the pool of points that indicate how much magic
a character has left to cast. Each spell costs a specific number of
these to cast, and generally speaking, the higher the value, the
stronger the spell. The spell power is also noted by the name of the
spell. For example, in this translation of this game, there are
three healing spells called “Cure”. The most basic, simply
called “Cure”, costs the least, while “Cure 3”, the
strongest, costs the most.
But now, there's
also magic points earned at the end of battles. These are applied to
the spells the characters learn, which can also be a bit complicated.
Each spell has its own rate at which it can be learned, which is a
multiplier for the magic points earned at the end of battles. This
multiplier can be anywhere from one to either ten or twenty, but I
can never quite remember. Basically, what this means is that if a
spell has a multiplier of one for it's learn rate, it takes getting a
hundred magic points at the end of battles for a character to learn
the spell. If it's a multiplier of five, it takes twenty, I believe,
and so on
With all that out
of the way, we need to go back to Jidoor to see if anybody can help
us get to the southern continent so we can pay the Empire's MagiTek
Research Center a visit. But that's going to have to be for another
time, folks. See you next time!
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