Part 53: Part Fifty-Three: The End of Xande

Part Fifty-Three: The End of Xande


The kids have finally made it to the top of the Crystal Tower. Now we just have to kill Xande and I guess we've saved the world. (Again?)


There's not much going on at the top of the tower, but there are some dragon statues just sitting around. Do you think these were just built in the tower, or moved in later?


There's also a few more stairs, which take us to the cutscene dimension.


Oh, hey, a mirror. Would ya look at that?


Jesus Christ, disembodied voice, go bodyshame someone else. These kids probably have enough hangups.


It's "five worms", idiot, and you don't get it from looking in a mirror, you get it from drinking mezcal.

: I...I can't move!

Yeah, that's the five worms for ya.


Who's this, talking on the top screen?

: Doga...? Is that you!?
: I told you that our souls are everlasting, did I not?

Oh, son of a bitch.

: Only five souls who possess hearts of pure light may break the curse of the five wyrms...

Well, it looks like we're up shit creek now, doesn't it? Because isn't that the kids' goddamn cosmic job description or whatever? Isn't that their whole deal?

: I will go forth and find the five! Do not lose hope!

Yeah, good luck, asshole. The kids'll just stand around and starve to death waiting for that. Why didn't you mention this and maybe have those five all ready to go?

Goddamn Doga is an asshole.

: I will be right back!

So now we get to watch Doga's globetrotting antics. This whole sequence exists only to impress upon the player how important friendship is in Final Fantasy III.




First up, we get to see Sara despairing over the fact that she's a princess and rich as hell &c. I suppose she might be sad about Golbez, but again: that's dumb as hell, they're never getting together.


Oh, and then Doga just shows up in her bedroom like a creep.

: Golbez is in great danger! Princess Sara, I must ask you to come with me. Only those who possess hearts of pure light may break the curse of the wyrms...and you are one of them. Will you help us?

Why was none of this "pure heart" stuff brought up before this point? Also, seriously, isn't that a basic thing of Warriors of Light, that they have pure hearts?

: Golbez? In danger!? You must take me to him! I will accompany you!

Sara, of course, is completely on board with saving Golbez, because she is in love with Golbez.


Now we're off to...I don't know, one of, like, a dozen different towns.


Oh, I guess it's Canaan, 'cuz here's Cid and wife.


Doga teleporting into your house has to be just the creepiest fucking thing in the world.



What? Nobody mentioned Sephy at all. Oh well.


Next up, uhh...the Tower of Owen?


Bad news, asshole, there's nobody livin' here.


Haha, nice work, fuckass. Who's your next bet, Aria? Because bad news, jackoff, she's dead too.

Just like you should be.






What?

: Desch! You're alive!

For once, I'm on Doga's side. This makes no sense. Desch jumped right into the weird magma-pouring thing on the tower. He's shouldn't just be dead, there shouldn't be anything solid left.

: Of course I am. And who are you again?

Desch is the first of the five to actually question Doga on that.

: I just finished repairing the tower's reactor. It was a really close call. A few more seconds, and the floating continent would have been toast!

The mind fairly boggles at what a bad idea it is to make a continent float thousands of feet in the air and put all the maintenance responsibilities on two people.

: Excellent. Now, will you be willing to help Kuja...?
: One trouble after another, eh? Sure, count me in!

Well, that's three of the five.


Next up, of course, is King Alus of Saronia, who's probably just recently been taught about basic algebra.


Shown here taking some time out of his day to stand up in the middle of a room like a doofus.


Damn, Doga doesn't even know the kid's name. Fuckin' cold, Doga.

: Jecht is in trouble? Then I will go with you!

That was easy. Only one left.






Yeah, yeah, come on, get to it.






Doga('s ghost) helpfully brings these folks back and arranges them in front of the dragon statues (the five wyrms, presumably)...

: Sephy! Jecht! Kuja! Golbez!
: We will hold off the wyrms' power! Quickly! Into the mirror!
: You must stop the darkness from covering this world again!

...some words of encouragement...





...and now we're on the back side of the mirror! Place looks pretty ominous, with the purple and everything.


This is just a straight shot to the end of the hall, where another cutscene starts in.


Finally, we're seeing Xande.


He's not a very present villain, is he?

By the way, here's the main problem with the idea of the world having already been flooded once. In the NES version, darkness hadn't flooded the world once, so Xande's plan was to do something with unclear results. Here, though, it's already been done, and we know how it works out. It sort of changes the tone of the whole exchange.



Here's why: Xande's plan won't make him immortal. The player knows that, because the last time it just froze him in time like everyone else. If the player didn't know that, it would be a real threat; since the player does, Xande's just a guy with some hubris and the whole scene is steeped in dramatic irony.


Well, let's kill him.


Xande has a good physical attack, just like every other boss.



And access to solid magic, just like every other boss. He has one spell that we've not seen yet, and that can be very dangerous, but he doesn't have Doga's Flare or Unei's Holy or anything else really interesting; except for his 49,999 HP (that's a lot), Xande is nothing at all.


He takes Sephy down just because he focussed. For all I've been saying bosses ain't shit, this hasn't stopped being a threat. A boss can usually take down one character at a time.



It's easy enough to deal with, though Xande did do his best to take Jecht down. At around level 45, I'd say I'm a bit low to be really comfortable in this fight and the last area; I knew the party could handle it, though, and went ahead for the sake of an interesting LP. If you're playing at home, do a few levels of grinding as a Black Belt and it'll really take the tedium out of the end of this game.



When he's at about half HP, Xande will cast Protect on himself. This is a bit of a problem, since Kuja and Sephy are my main damage-dealers, but on the other hand, we've been through 25,000 HP in three rounds, so there you go.


Jecht goes down, but I'm not that worried about it.


I ended up using a Phoenix Down just in time for him to be killed by Firaga.



Then I punched Xande's ticket before I could revive him again. Oh well.


It'll change you being alive, which I think is sort of the thing right now.




So, yeah. The game doesn't change anything here and just goes with the same setup the NES version had, instead of acknowledging the past flood.


And here's some sparkles from a black hole!


The camera pans around while the Cloud of Darkness talks to the kids.


Note: the Cloud of Darkness seems to be less interested in just flooding the world with darkness because Darkness and Light push on each other, forces of nature, &c., &c.; the Cloud of Darkness is just plain evil.

Cloud of Darkness also gets her own theme:



Also, it's going to kill the kids!



Really kill the kids. You can't damage the Cloud of Darkness, so you can't win this one. The best laid plans of mice and men, and of crystals, &c. Sometimes you come up against something you can't change, and even if you fight your hardest, it doesn't matter.


Knowing this ahead of time, I had Kuja jump anyway.


After a while, the Cloud of Darkness uses this.


The end, no moral.

Thanks for reading!