Monday, October 27, 2014

TEXT PLAY: Final Fantasy VI (Super Nintendo, Square, 1994): Issue #041: Jidoor, Wisconsin

Been away from this for longer than I'd hoped again.

Of course, it's also been a busy couple weeks during which I had some computer issues taken care of. But it's time for some fun now, so let's get back into Final Fantasy VI, shall we?

When I left off last time, I said I wasn't sure what I'd try to do next. Of course, I'd also been dumb enough to leave the cart in the console this whole time, which causes the damn thing to spaz out on me. Fortunately, nothing bad happened this time around, and I remembered to take the stupid thing out when I was done. I suppose I wouldn't be having this trouble if I'd been doing that the whole time I've owned the system, but it's twenty-some years too late to think of that.

Anyway, this time out, I parked my party and airship at Thamasa last time, thinking I'd start off there, but went pretty much straight to Jidoor because I remembered that there wasn't much I could do there. Maybe later.

In Jidoor, there's rich guy Owzer's house, which is full of paintings, plus Owzer himself and one more party member: Relm. Owzer's house is a big place. We only got to see the first floor in the World of Balance, but we'll get to see more here. There's the stairs that go up to the art gallery, but we can't go up because the lights are off. A voice tells us to stay away and a force pushes the party back down the stairs. A book appears on a table nearby. This is Owzer's journal, in which he tells us how to turn on a new lamp he put at the foot of the stairs and that he commissioned a big new painting, but some crazy shit started happening once he got a proper artist to work on it.

There are a few paintings in here that bring out monsters to fight. There's one of a chair that pulls the party in and makes the party fight a knife-throwing dancer and four cats. We'll be seeing that particular monster setup quite a lot. Once we've beaten the monsters, a door appears where the picture was. Through the door is a weird maze sort of place, full monsters, which include not only the dancer and her cats, but a tumbleweed sort of thing called Crusher and a bird thing called Vindr. The Crushers seem to have something called Super Balls, as I won those from almost every fight with them.

The first puzzle to figure out is how to get into the maze, since the doors are hard to see because it's supposed to be dark in there. There's door that's on the very far left part of the first room. We've gotta go around and get in a fight with a monster in a picture to get to it. After that, there's a set of three doors, two of which are blocked and don't open. There's a rotation to it that determines which of the three can be entered. That's a factor because the door of the far left of the three is the one that goes through.

From here, it gets a little hazy on how to get through. In fact, now that I think about it, I shouldn't really vouch for the accuracy of what I've said thus far this issue, either. As I said last time, I've been through this game just often enough that I can get through it without really thinking about it too much, even if I do forget some specifics. That's kind of a bad thing right now because I've been under a bit of stress, and I'd kinda turned my brain off for part of this when I really should have been thinking about how to describe how I got through to the boss.

Anyway, when I finally did get to the bottom of the matter in Owzer's house, we find that somehow, Owzer's been turned into a big blob of a guy. Can't remember if we saw him before, but I don't remember him looking like that before. Could be that we didn't see him before. My memory is going to crap on me, it seems. And to think I'm not even 40 yet.

Owzer tells us that the painting is possessed. For whatever reason, a monster took up residence in the picture and won't leave. We see that Relm is the one that Owzer commissioned to do his big new painting, which might be part of the reason. Relm tells the party to come up and kick the monster's ass.

This monster switches between two forms, both of which are weak against fire. It comes in handy to have Terra in the party because she can use the Gem Box relic and cast two fire spells per turn. The monster, a demon called Chadernook, says it likes the girl in the painting and won't leave unless we beat its ass. Fortunately, this really isn't that hard a fight, all things considered. Relm joins when the fight ends.

After the battle, Owzer says he felt compelled to have the painting made after he bought a fancy rock at the auction house. He lets us have it because it's been nothing but bad luck for him, what with the monsters in his house and all the other weird shit on top of the demon. Turns out, he just gave us the Magicite for an Esper called Starlett. I think I have all the spells this one teaches with other Espers, and they teach a lot of them faster.

And speaking of Espers that can be bought in the Auction House, we can also get ZoneSeek there. I had it once, but stupidly shut the game off without saving it because I forgot how sensitive the controller was. It's a random thing to get it, but worth it, because it's one of the few reasonably priced things to come out of the Auction House. I think there's one more piece of Magicite, too, but I'll have to research it.

As for next time, I'm not sure what I'll do. Kinda like this time. Maybe Doma Castle or try to get Strago back again. I think having Relm in the party has something to do with that. No matter what, though, I will be back sooner than I was this time. Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!

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