Part 102: Jump Puzzles
Chapter 101 - Jump Puzzles
Gorgeous as the backgrounds may be, this is one of those really experimental places that work better in theory than in practice.
I mean, some places are only meant for the Game Designer to have fun.
The theme of this place is carnivorous plants. We feed them frogs and insects so we can pass through them. This one here is an exception, we can just walk over it and get the item as long as we don't get too close to the center.
You get to battle some plants.
I don't know if this thing is cute, terrifying or overly-detailed.
Since I didn't remember jack of this place I decided to go blind and figure it out as I go. Notice the poor little insect down the bottom unaware I was trying to feed him to the plant.
You have a fixed amount of stuff to feed these plants per screen, so in this case you grab all the animals in the screen here and feed them to the plants in succession before they digest the little things and toss you out.
The place is an item piñata, although we don't have an use for most of them at this point.
I love these backgrounds.
Oh look, a materia!
Yea, this one is a bit hungrier. We'll have to figure it out.
Time to hold some flower stamens. Let's just pretend they're vines.
Whee
This is one weird place to narrate with screenshots.
Here's something - We pick up that frog to the right...
Feed the frog to this plant. Because the frog is so big, the plant isn't able to digest it properly -
Eventually vomiting the frog and pushing me upwards.
We pick up the... rock? Bee hive? Whatever the hell that is up top and feed the plant.
And get the [Slash-All] Materia. Although the name seems incredibly intuitive (hits every single one of your enemies) this materia evolves to give you the [Flash] Command, which inflicts the Death ailment to all the enemies in the screen. Which is one of the most awkward things because a lot of enemies are immune to instant Death and Flash doesn't deal any damage, leaving you with either an incredibly good ability or a useless command that's replacing 4x-Cut.
Either way, we need it for, you know, completion.
Let's move on. Since the frog wasn't digested we can use it again to jump this plant.
I really would like to see this place in a full remake, with all those glorious godrays.
These are lots of elements in one screen.
This vine takes us upward, leading us closer to the canopy.
Another gorgeous background. There's a layer of flares/godrays in front of the background that moves as you go, making it really trippy.
We get our second and last [Minerva Band], which should be enough to cover your whole party unless you somehow managed to revive Aeris.
Back to the forest above we can go a bit to the right. There are two routes here, up and down. If we go up -
- after going completely Tarzan -
- we get the Typoon/Typhon summon materia, which for some reason isn't drawn as a materia on the ground. And without a doubt the strangest summon in the game/series.
If instead we go down we find ourselves on this conveniently placed vine.
This last puzzle here involves some backtracking. We feed an insect to the plant in order to get the Wasp Nest thingie, drop it on the plant and go back.
We toss an insect in front of the tree hollow attracting a frog.
And put the frog inside this rightmost plant which sends us flying to the exit.
This damp cave leads us right to the exit of the forest. Pressing the Square button anytime you're in the Ancient Forest sends you to the first screen, so it's easy to go back in case you've missed something.
The [Apocalypse] is the last important item to be acquired here.
It's a Triple-Growth weapon with three unlinked slots. There's only one other Triple-Growth weapon in the game, Cid's Scimitar.
There's also an Elixir in this room. This place has one of the strongest lighting tints in the game. Look how green Cloud is.
And we're out. We're now almost done with the side-quests!
NEXT TIME:
We may or may not be done with the side-quests.
