If I hadn't been here for it, I'd
wonder how “less than five weeks” became “damn near three
months”.
Thing is, it's been a busy three
months, and if I start doing things right again, I should be posting
at least some details as to what kind of busy I've been soon. For
now, though, it's time to get on with Final Fantasy 9.
When I left off back in August, the
half of the party that Kuja had been holding hostage had very nearly
escaped. It was at the point where there were pretty much two rooms
left after the save point. The first one is one last candle lighting
puzzle, this time one that involves lighting them in such a way as to
make the statues on the wall cast shadows facing a certain direction.
It seems obvious now that I'm sitting here writing this, but it
really wasn't so much when I was playing. It's part because I'm a
dense bastard who likes figuring these things out by himself and part
because I've only ever made it this far in the game once before, and
I'm pretty sure I was still living with my parents at the time, so
it's been at least... Oh hell, the better part of fifteen years now,
if I were to venture a guess.
Anyway, gotta get the shadows so
they're facing to the left, like the figure in a mural or
stained-glass sorta thing between them. The game kept showing me the
mural each time I lit or put out a candle and I still didn't get it.
Didn't even realize there was a hint to tell me that until I went
over to put out the candle that activated it and found it that way.
It's a picture of Death with a caption that read something like
“Don't follow the way of evil. Follow the way of good.” Once I
did get it, though, the stairway to the next room showed up, and it
was pretty obvious that it was a boss room.
One thing I forgot to mention last time
is that there were these stones that lit up along the way, as the
other puzzles got solved, that gave various weapons and armor and
stuff along the way. Turns out I missed one along the way, which
means I not only screwed myself out of an item or something, but I
think I also made the boss fight a little harder than it needed to
be. Fortunately, though, this one didn't give me the fits the one
before did. It was the control unit for the castle's defense grid.
Physical attacks didn't do much to it, and I'm not sure if that was
because of the missed stone or not. Fortunately, though, a good
strategy was to spam a few special attacks and Dagger's Ramuh summon.
As for the thing I missed, I'm going to
just leave it and go forward with the rest of the game, as I'm sure
I've mentioned a time or two by this point, I'm not going for 100%
completion here.
Once the boss is taken care of, Freya
and the others teleport into a central coridor not long after Zidane
and his bunch has gotten back. Kuja has asked Zidane to come into a
room farther back alone, which I'm sure has something to do with
programming around the player having a choice of who's in what party
for this part of the game. While they're in there alone, Kuja shows
Zidane body doubles or false images of the four hostages still in the
cage, about to get dropped.
A funny part of this comes from having
Quina in the party. They're the first one to come bursting through
the door to stop Kuja in spite of being a gender-neutral version of
me. Everybody but Eiko makes it in, for reasons I'll get to in a
minute. When Kuja and Zidane see this, Kuja does a passible Senator
Vreenak impression for the situation and takes the Gulug Stone
from Zidane before beaming out.
At the same time, the party hears a
ruckus outside and realize that it's Eiko getting kidnapped for her
Eidolons. The rest of the party figures that it's because Kuja wants
them for the same reason he was after Dagger's, so they hot foot it
to where the Hilda Garde was, only to find they're a moment too late.
This means they'll have to pursue on their sailing ship, the Blue
Narcicis. Funny how well it keeps up with the flying Hilda Garde.
Must have been designed by Red
Green or something.
Anyway, the pursuit ends when the BN
has to land at the shore of the Lost Continent, which is a new area.
We'll have to continue the chase on foot, which means building a
party. For now, I'll stick with the one closest to what I used for
the last little while, meaning Zidane, since we have to have him,
Steiner, Vivi and Dagger, since that's essentially the party I had
for my main run of the original Final Fantasy some years ago, and
it's a good one. I'll try to get a few more levels for Freya,
Amarant, Quina and Eiko later on, since they might be useful later on
in the game, too.
This is where I'll leave off for now,
since it's getting kind of late as I work on this and I'm trying to
get to bed at a more reasonable time than I have been lately, in
hopes that I'll be able to do other important things at more
reasonable times, as well. I'm also hoping I can say I'll be getting
back to this in less than three months and mean it this time, too.
Until then, stay safe, have fun,
keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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