I probably could have done a James Bond reference for this issue, but the way my night went when I did the first session for it, the Tiny Toons one seemed more apropriate.
I'll spare the details of all that here because by the time this actually goes up, I'll at least have a seperate post made about it, and hopefully have the major issues resolved. With that in mind, I'll just get on with the game here.
I did the grinding I said I would at the end of the last issue before I started this one. I got a few levels for Cecil and Rosa, since they'll be in the party when I do what I usually do on the moon in a bit. I was going to say Kain there, but then I remembered that he'll be leaving the party again soon and doesn't come back again until after that part. I also got a good number of Medusa arrows for Rosa from the BlackLiz monsters, which will come in handy, as they can petrify monsters on occasion.
As for the new translation, most of what I saw in the first part of this was pretty much a wash from the SNES version I'm more familiar with. This is one of those parts where I got to thinking that maybe I should have been ambitious enough to play both versions at once, just so I wasn't trying to do all this from memory, but by this point, I'd made my decision, and like I keep saying in my more serious Text Plays, I'm just doing this for fun, and as such, I don't really see the point of going to that kind of effort for it.
In this case, there are a few things I did rather like about this version. The Dwarves in the underground, and especially King Giot sound more like we've come to expect Dwarves to sound these days. Golbez's taunts during the fight where Rydia comes back seemed better, too. Like he was throwing some better shade at the party before Rydia came back and blasted his Shadow Dragon with her Mist Dragon summon.
Some of the other fun changes this time around are that when Cid says he's going to take the airship back to the regular overworld to fix it he outright says he's going to make some temporary repairs before he goes rather than just half-assing the statement. One thing that made me think I should have been doing the SNES version right now too is the Dwarves' catch phrase. In this version, it's “rally-ho” like it is in Final Fantasy 9, which came out the year before this did. I can't recall off the top of my head if the SNES version has that as “lali-ho” or if that was in Tomra, because I do remember they use a different one there.
Either way, the part where I get to find that out is a ways off, and I'd decided to do the Tower of Babil part in the second session for this because I had that other post I wanted to at least get written first.
Or, at least it was my intent to do the whole tower in one sesson when I finished off the first. As things tend to go in life, though, plans change, and I found myself in a situation where I thought it might be better to do it in two, or maybe even three, depending on how things went. I'll get into that in a post that I'll hopefully have had up for awhile by the time this came out.
The second session was just to the first save point in the tower. On the first floor, we have some summoner-type monsers that call on minions called EvilDolls. There's also some Ice Arrows and some other new equipment in chests. I suspect the fact that I can't remember what the last thing was is part of the problem with having played this game as many times as I have. One would think I'd have that kinda memorized, but I don't.
One thing I do know is that we're getting ice elemental equipment right now is because there are a lot of monsters that are weak to it and/or use fire attacks. On the next couple floors, we get weapons and armor for Cecil and Kain to those ends. One's a spear for Kain that does Ice2 when used as an item in battle, and there's also a sword for Cecil, as well as some armor and a shield. I put both of those on Cecil as well.
All of those are found in chests guarded by a mechanical enemy called Alert. These things can summon various other enemies to ward off attackers. I'm not sure how variable the summoned monsters are for the ones in chests, but I'm sure it is fairly much so for the ones we'll run into randomly later.
Once I got all that stuff collected, I just went back to the nearest save point and shut that down for the night.
Most of the second session in the tower was spent taking advantage of those Alert mechs when I finally got to them on the sixth and seventh floors of the tower. It's a good way to level grind and farm for gold. One other thing, aside from my bad habit of working on all this stuff way too late, that made this issue take so long to get out was that I wound up deciding to do the tower in three session, partly for what I mentioned about the Alerts, and partly because I wound up starting off by getting my ass kicked by a Chimera because I neglected to heal my party.
That made me realize I've got some conflicted feelings about how they've got the save system set up here. On the one hand, I can kind of appreciate that they made it accurate to the SNES version, where you could only save on the world map or at special save points in dungeons On the other, I do kind of take issue with the fact that that applies to the Memo function as well, because that kind of defeats the point, at least in my way of thinking. Maybe it's because I've gotten into the habit of abusing them, which is something I'd learned from years of watching Let's Plays by AppleGodZMG on YouTube, who at leas used to have a way of abusing them, and save states. Not being able to use them anywhere like I can in the Origins remakes of the first and second games seems inconvenient at best, and mostly makes the Memo function seem kind of silly, since doing a hard save seems more practical since the party's at a save point anyway.
Something else I'm not sure what to make of is the new dialog that comes along with the fight against Dr. Lugae and Balnab. Like everything else thus far, it seems less hamfisted and awkward than the original, but some of the choices still seem odd to me. In this case, it's both more dramatic and sillier at the same time. I'm sure Lugae was meant to be a bit of comic relief all this time, but he seems a little too light here. Basically, this time he says he's not one of the fiends, but he's the brains of Golbez's operation so we can just shut our pie holes. And yes, “pie holes” is indeed the phrase he uses. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same as the SNES version, aside from the fact that his “cyborg” form is called Lugaborg. When we win that fight, he tells us that Rubicante has already taken the crystals to the above ground portion of the tower and that the Dwarves are toast, but he dropped the Tower Key when we beat him.
When I got to the save point on the floor below where all that takes place, I took advantage and called it a night because I had a few other things to do before I got off to bed, which is something I'm trying to do a little earlier every day now. I've been staying up later than I should and it's having a negative impact on things.
On our way back out of the tower after the fight with Lugae and Balnab is the scene where Yang sacrifices himself to stop the Super Canon from. I must admit, I've never been entirely sure of how that was supposed to work, exactly, and this version doesn't make it any clearer. The good news is that at least Yang's “final message” to his wife is more clear than it was, in that we're supposed to go tell her that he'll always be there in spirit and that he loves her.
The scene where Golbez burns the party out of the entryway to the tower is smoother, too. He simply tells us that we never cease to amuse him and that the mice play while the cat's away, indicating that he had nothing to do with Lugae's crap.
The bit where we're chased around the Underground on the Airship Enterprise is about the same as it was in the SNES version. The dialog's different, but I'm not sure it's better. I think they were trying to make the part where Cid sacrifices himself to trap the Red Wings in the Underground by blowing himself up at least a little funnier, and it doesn't work so well. I think part of it's because they've got him being a little more direct about wanting Cecil and Rosa to get married and have kids, and if memory serves, it comes at the expense of having him tell us why we need to talk to his men at Baron. I might be misremembering that bit, though.
Either way, we'll pick back up at Baron, where Cid's crew does some work on the airship next time.
Until then, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA. See you soon, folks!
No comments:
Post a Comment