This part of the game seemed a bit
glitchier than the third Back to the Future movie.
Quite a bit glitchier, really, and I'm
sure it's got at least something to do with the age of the equipment
and software. That's something I'll get more into at the end of the
issue, though.
Turns out we were a lot closer to the
end of this dungeon than I thought last time, but I'm still glad I
stopped when I did. As I said then, I've been sick lately, and I'd
been up way too late, as well, and given how things went this time
around, I'm probably better off for not having pushed my luck.
When I first started up, I made sure
everybody had the equipment they needed and adjusted what I needed
to, saved again, and went pretty much straight into where the dungeon
boss was. The party looks down from a bridge or a cliff or something
and sees that Zorn and Thorn are doing their extraction ritual on
Eiko as Kuja and his Black Mages look on. Dagger wants to go rushing
on in to rescue her, but Zidane holds her back, saying that things
will go better for them if they at least go in together.
At the same time, Zorn and Thorn are
being about as successful as always, and Kuja's not happy about it,
saying that he's doing all this because of a rivalry with that
Garland guy who I'm sure I've talked about before, and he's running
out of time on account of some sort of big master plan that's about
to go into effect. Kuja wants to be the head guy of it instead of
Garland because apparently, whoever's in that spot gets their soul
saved or some such thing, and in order to take over, he needs a
stronger eidolon than what Garland has. As a result, he's willing to
kill Eiko to get it, because she's got that very thing.
In the process of all this, we get to
find out that Mog was actually Eiko's fourth and final eidolon, who
took the form of a Moogle to be at the little girl's side physically.
This reveal comes when Mog hits a Trance mode and transforms into a
beast that looks and potentially acts like the Maduin Esper from
Final Fantasy 6 and proceeds to whack the shit out of Zorn and Thorn,
killing them in one shot.
All this happens in the time it takes
for the main party to get to Eiko's location. When they get there,
they see the destruction and ask Eiko if she's OK. When she says
yes, it turns out it was the first time the game actually hung up or
crashed on me, so I had to do a soft reset and redo the whole thing.
For the rest of the session, the game kept having hang-ups and
abnormally long load times. I'm really hoping the rest of the game
won't be this way, because I might have to abandon it if it is. This
kind of thing is certainly not a new thing for the Text Play series.
It got the better of both my attempts at Lufia and the Fortress of
Doom, and I had similar issues
with my playthrough of the original Final Fantasy, which is on the
same Origins disk as FFII.
When I
got the game up and running again, I took the time to do a little
more exploring before I went in again and found another Moogle, this
time with a shop, and one more Red Dragon to fight. If I'd
remembered what the actual boss fight was going to be like, I'd have
taken the chance to pick up some more vaccine potions. It turns out
that when we get past the part of that scene I talked about before
where Eiko says she's OK, Kuja steps in and says that Zorn and Thorn
aren't actual twins, and they turn into a two-headed zombie monster
that casts the virus status effect on the party at the start of the
fight. It turns out I had just enough, plus the one I stole from the
monster, called Meltigemini. I'm not sure if that's what Zorn and
Thorn actually were or if it's because of some sort of necromancy
that Kuja does.
Before
the fight, though, Vivi goes chasing after Kuja because he wants to
have a word with him and the other Black Mages about what all this
means. It's too bad we don't have a black mage of our own right now,
but having a second healer comes in handy becase Dagger still fails
moves sometimes.
Turns
out this fight wasn't as hard as I was thinking it would be. I think
it's in part because I got lucky and the monster only did the virus
thing once, though it did do a thing called venom powder on a few of
the caracters that took me a little too long to figure out how to
fix, because it put the Stop status on those characters and made them
loose health and MP, too. But it was still a relatively easy fight,
all things considered.
After
the battle, Vivi comes back to where Zidane is with a couple other
Black Mages. Turns out the Black Mages pretty much knew Kuja was
full of shit when he said he could extend their lives for them but
went along with him anywway. When he pretty much said it to their
faces, or at least what passes for their faces, the shock was enough
to make them regret the decision. The more this happens, the more it
all seems to resemble real life in our own modern world, which is
disturbing, at least to me.
On his
way back out, Zidane hears a woman's voice calling him into another
room. The lady in the other room is all dressed up in nice clothes
and has a nice room to be in. Turns out this is Hilda, Regent Cid's
wife. This becomes apparent when she knows Dagger well enough to
address her as Princess Garnet, though she's not introduced by name
until Cid himself comes in and says her name.
Hilda
explains that Kuja hadn't intended to kidnap her when he jacked the
Hilda Garde 1, but took advantage when it happened anyway. She
suggests they go back to Lindblum so she and Cid can discuss things
further in a safer venue.
Back
at the castle, Cid convinces Hilda to turn him back into a human
because he's sorry for neglecting and cheating on her, and all the
time apart and being stuck as an oglop and a frog has made him see
the error of his ways. Eventually, she forgives him and undoes the
spell. Even though I'm not into guys, I gotta say, Regent Cid's a
nice looking dude in human form. Kinda makes up for Zidane and Kuja,
I guess, and the fact that I can do a decent
Steiner impression without much effort.
After
that little scene, one of the palace guards goes to wake Zidane from
his sleep in the royal guest room. Kinda sucks for both of them
because Zidane's having a Commander
Sheppard dream about Dagger again. We're going to have a meeting
with the royals in the conference room when we pick up next time.
And we will pick this up later, because it's time to stop for now.
Before
I wrap this up, though, I should probably finish the thought on the
glitches and stuff from before. I know it's an old game and I'm
playing on old equipment that's all second-hand, too, but really,
this hasn't been that much of a problem until just this last bit.
It's all held up rather well for being a 20-year-old game, at this
point, being played on a console that's at least 15. When I was
having this trouble with Lufia, it was all older stuff than this is
now. But since it's late again, I'll probably do a Final Fantasy
Tonight/This Morning on it later. And I just may finally get around
to another gaming-related post I talked about in my recent round of
vacation blogs, too.
And
one last thing before I go tonight, too. Something I just realized
about this game is that Regent Cid's wife is called Hilda, and so's
the princess in Final Fantasy II, which I'm doing as a side game
right now. Turns out we just rescued her, or at least what we think
is her, from the bad guy there, too. We'll get to that soon enough,
though. Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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