Part 15: Part Fifteen: Child Rescue Squad

Part Fifteen: Child Rescue Squad


We're picking up shortly after Sephy was knocked out, as I traverse the ocean in search of a revival spring. Here, you can see an encounter on the high seas.


Which Desch promptly interrupts.


See? There he is.


This is his support attack that isn't casting Thundara. It's just a regular sword attack, and it's kind of disappointing, really. Nothing to write home about, in any case.


This is the kind of damage Golbez can put out with a Salamand Sword (lightning-elemental) can put out, for comparison. I remembered Desch as way better than this, so that was kind of a let down.

Desch, by the way, hangs around for a while, but doesn't level up or anything, so your party members end up being better than him pretty quickly if you make any sort of conscious effort at gaining levels.


Shot of the ship in the middle of the sea. Pretty nice lookin' sea, eh?


A lot greener than it is in the battle screen, that's for sure. You would probably never pick up on that playing the game yourself, but little things like that pop up when you're dealing with old screenshots.


This enemy is a Tangie, by the way. The thing with the shell was a Hermit. Neither is anything to make a fuss over, especially if you're big into exploiting weaknesses.


Desch shows up in this fight, too. I fought a bunch of extra battles with both Sara and Cid, trying to get them to show up, but that's just how random numbers work out sometimes.


Unlike some games, you can just get off the ship at any place along the coast. I chose the Sasune area because the enemies are weak, there's a revival spring in Ur, and I have a sidequest to deal with here. You can also see here that party is led by whatever character comes first in the party and is conscious.


Just including this shot to show off how far we've come since the last time the kids were hanging around here. These guys used to be a credible threat.


The offensive capabilities of a White Mage in the back row disappointed me when I was going for a gag shot, though. That's the point, I know, but still.


Kuja was really close to this level when I was heading back. I was trying to gain some levels when Sephy got his shit pushed in.


Now with a ship, our heroes make a triumphant return to Castle Sasune. Why am I here?



Because I am dumb and forgot that resting in this game doesn't revive your KO'd teammates. On a personal note, I generally prefer RPGs where KO'd characters are revived with 1 HP after battle. That's hardly a measure of game quality, though, because it tends to be combined with other elements that differ from this game, but if you want to draw some fallacious links, uh, go to town I guess?


Anyway, I wanted to go back to Ur.



Revived!

Revived but still in job transition...


Now to talk to the old guy.


Wow, kids in Ur are fucking dumb.


Yeah, sure, we'll find your stupid kids in the baby tutorial cave. But there better be a good reward in it for me. If I get a shitty reward (or, god forbid, no reward) I will piss straight up a rope in an impotent rage.


Goblins! You know what would humiliate them?


This, if it worked. Whenever I have to go back to an old area in an RPG, I like to kill the enemies with the stupid little bullshit abilities that are just pinpricks to whatever I have to actually deal with. I'm just not that advanced in this game yet.



Altar Cave! Here we come, kids!

Was it called Altar Cave before the hole opened up to the lower levels? Did everybody already know there was a crystal there? I mean, Sephy seemed kind of surprised, but hey, maybe he's just dumb as rocks.


There! Right off screen!


Well, not anymore. There are three kids there, being assaulted by three Bombs.


Spoiler: Sephy is about to get his ass kicked again.


Yes, by all means. Let's throw down.




Action kids! Rush into danger!


Here's the special fight for this quest: three Bombs. Bombs aren't a unique enemy or particularly thematically important, nor are they a reference to anything or local wildlife, but that's just how she breaks.


First thing to know about Bombs: they hit really damn hard. They're not really classified as "an enemy I should be fighting right now", necessarily, and they could make some real problems for me, but I'm not that worried.


Sephy is pretty much just deadweight in this fight. His physicals aren't enough to really make him shine, nor is his thievery. This is a problem that Thieves (and some other classes) can come up against, but there's not really a solution. You just have to make do, which usually means "take whatever damage you can get out of physicals".



White Mages also tend to be chaff in the first round of a fight - there's no way to know who to target with an aimed heal, and a party heal will probably be less help than it costs to cast. The solution for this is also to just do whatever damage you can. I don't have an Ice Rod available, so I have Jecht hit the Bombs with Aero. It's not great, but it's something.


Unfortunately, the bombs don't like this and vent their frustrations on Sephy.


Casters with access to Blizzard really pull their weight in this fight because all the Bombs are weak to ice magic. They only have about 300 HP, so this is a solid hit and makes Golbez the MVP of this fight.


With Kuja on clean-up, the Bombs' ranks are thinned nicely. This fight is slightly more difficult than a standard random encounter right now, but not by much.


Remember what I said about Sephy getting his ass kicked?

I had Jecht queue up a Cure for him, but he didn't get to it in time because when turns actually happen is unreliable, which is a major strike against any kind of really meaningful strategising in this game.



Golbez takes a single hit, but hangs on to finish the fight with a second casting of Blizzard. This is what Black Magic is for, so it's really too bad that the Black Mage doesn't have any meaningful attack options outside of it.


We're slightly less poor!


Any way less inexperienced!



Levels for everyone except Kuja, who just gained one!

"Fun fact": my EXP counts had almost aligned until this fight. Now Sephy will be behind for a while.



This is closure for Jecht's character arc.


At least, until Golbez swoops in to ruin it for the kid. Come on, man, let him have this one. Not everyone has a princess absolutely slavering for a chance to be deflowered by them.



Everybody just kind of leaves the kids there.


Oh, here's his closure.


Ehh, closure, reward, close enough.


Wow, a new job! How exciting1


And there it is!

Now, I won't get into it here, so let me just say this: Onion Knight is not a reward.


Just for thematic symmetry, let's close this update...somewhere near where we started it, anyway.



Fun fact: the game doesn't automatically refresh which character leads the party when you revive a KO'd member, but if you open the menu, it forces the change.



Sure thing, old man!

This is the last thing to be done in Ur.

Mognet



Just Takka telling us about his day-to-day. Takka's "quest" doesn't really develop between letters like Topapa's did, instead it sort of shows up in the last one. It also works a bit differently than Topapa's quest, but that is something to be discussed...another day!