After another month and a half, I'm back at this again.
I started this session by getting back to where I was at the end of the last one, and in the process, I think I figured something out along the way. I'll get to that in a minute, though.
At the top of the steps leading up to that portal thing I mentioned at the end of the last issue, there's a fight with Tiamat that I either didn't realize was there or had forgotten about after reading about it on Caves of Narshe (current chapter) at the time. The good news is that I had my party set up well enough to get through it alright. The bad news is that in the course of the thing, Tiamat did this attack that put the “burn” status on the whole party at once and I lost three of my four characters, because it causes them to burn to death if they move before it wears off. At least Vivi the Black Mage lived, which let me bring Eiko back to use her Life spell on the others. I also got the Feather Boots and Blood Sword off it, but missed the Grand Helm. Towards the end of the fight, Tiamat also used an attack called Snort to blow Eiko out of the fight, but fortunately, it was late enough in the battle that I got through it OK.
On the way to the next save point, there's another scene where Zidane looks around like he sees something up ahead, just like in a previous section. What he was seeing was the next bit where Garland explains a bit of the lore to the party, and therefore, the player. In this case, Garland explains that when he started all this, life on Terra was coming to an end, and the only thing the people living there could think to do was merge with another planet, in this case Gaia. The process went bad because Gaia was already inhabited and Terra was too far gone to do any merging anyway, but by the time the folks on Terra figured all that out, it was too late to keep things from going pear shaped on them. That going pear shaped wiped out the civilizations on Terra, so Garland made the Ilfa Tree to bring souls from Gaia to Terra to repopulate the latter with, if I understand correctly.
The scene where this takes place looks like an abstract space kind of thing, possibly influenced by MC Escher or one of those fantasy posters I remember seeing all over the place in the late 90s and early 2000s. I'm not really sure which came first, but that may be because this was going on 25 years ago now, and I'm anything but young nowadays, so my memory isn't what it used to be.
When I came to the save point, I decided to give this a rest because it was all coming at the end of what had been a relatively busy day for me, all things considered. The good news is that I did get most of what I wanted to do done. But even this was a bit much for where I am right now, so this seems like a good place as any to stop.
If I understand correctly, there's an optional boss fight coming up, but my plan for now is to skip it, since I'm only barely prepared for what the game has going on in the main plot anyway.
And that's going to be a cause for concern going forward. I know I'm only just prepared for what's going on here, and the last two mandatory boss fights have been easier than expected. This makes me worried that I might not be able to handle the final boss when I get there eventually. And I do intend to get there eventually. I've put too much time into this to give up so easily now. Not without seeing how well I actually do, considering how I've played.
But that's for the future, and hopefully not too far in the future. We're on our way there, for better or worse.
Until next time, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA.
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