Part 34: Part Thirty-Four: An Album by The Smiths, or Maybe The Decemberists

Part Thirty-Four: An Album by The Smiths, or Maybe The Decemberists


Things are not looking good for Alus right now.

KING GORN: Alus...my son. Gigameth had put a spell on me... I was afraid you would never forgive me for what I had done to you...

It's not great to kick your ten-year-old out onto the street, but I think you're overlooking something much worse here.

KING GORN: But you came back. That is what gave me enough strength...to break Gigameth's bonds.

Uh, alright, sure. Fine.

KING GORN: Alus...the kingdom is yours now. Stop the war, and bring peace back to its people. I'm counting on you, Son...

Saronia is fucked. There's just straight-up no way that Alus, a child, can do any of this. Realistically, he'll be killed within a day.

: Father, don't go!
KING GORN: I love you, Alus...


Well, at least that was a nice touching moment. Now, we'll just, uh, be leaving while your country tears itself apart. Have a nice life, kid!


Yeah, whatever, kid. You're fuckin' ten, nobody is taking you seriously.

: No, sire. You had never stopped loving your father.

Okay, nobody except Jecht. Jecht is a chump, come on.

: Thank you, Jecht...



: You have my eternal thanks. You have saved Saronia--and my father--from Gigameth.

Yeah, again, that's not really the fire here.


Instead of anything that makes sense, here's the resolution to this arc. The kingdom is saved and everybody is happy with the new child king.


And we're free to run around the castle now!


The first thing I want you to notice is that this is where we slept. It's also just past the entryway to the castle. This isn't a bedroom or anything, so it's kind of like having your bed in your living room.

Area design!



We're also free to loot now.













The Ice Rod is the only thing that will be useful to me.



Can you see the telltale sign of a hidden passage? Man, I really fuckin' hate hidden passages.


More treasure, yeah, but...







...Ehh.


Rusty Mail is just plain garbage, it has no reason to exist. It's not even worth money, and I don't know why they put two of them in the game.


The Ice Rod is the real haul from Saronia. It's a powered-up version of the Ice Staff, boosting the magic stats more and also bringing Jecht's offence up to the second tier. Its companions are available from the now-open weapons shop in Saronia; I'll pick them up later.


Here's a statue! Wow!


You remember how I told you that everything was resolved? I meant it. The Saronian Civil War is now just over.


Gigameth's power right now is actually closer to having a spear hole in his chest and losing most of his blood, but whatever you say, champ.


Alus is fucked up!

I know that they're trying to go for "strong and just ruler" but, really, all I'm getting is "shellshocked child".


I've kind of spoiled this for you.


Who the fuck are you?


What are these Bards doing here?


Nice throne, kid. Try not to mess it up too much crying about your dead parents.



Well, that's good then. But what I'd really like is a new airship.


There's really nothing you could do to stop that, either, kid. You're ten and we're divine warriors.


There are only a couple more things to do in Saronia now. I don't have too much to say about the place, really, because it's arc is kind of cheap and poorly done. It fits into things more than Goldor's shit did, but that's no feat.


Lines like this are really all you get about the civil war after the Garuda fight.


You see, I'll spoil it now, we're only in Saronia for the game to give us a new airship.


Because this dickhead shot down our last one.


So we'll pop in here.


And talk to these guys.



Saronia's technological achievements aren't "achievements" as much as they are "things they found".



They run off.


Comic relief!


The Warriors of Light are just left here to wait. The screen fades out &c., but I figure you guys understand what that looks like by now.



Who cares what it's called? What does it even matter, it's probably just going to get wrecked by some stupid jackass the next time the devs feel like putting a contrived area in.


Here's the rationalisation for Saronia and the Nautilus: we need to go to Dalg, but it's windy (remember, the Enterprise just got blown backwards), so we need a faster ship!

In an overarching sense, this game might say "save the crystals", but it's really just about getting new airships.


Wow, I'm enthused.



I know I complimented the minimal plot of this game earlier, and I understand that I seem kind of down on it recently, but come on. We go from the revelation of the flooded-out surface world, which is really cool and atmospheric and makes the game look like it'll really pick up and climax, to a double serving of bullshit filler. Anytime this game gets any sort of forward momentum, it slams on the brakes, and that's just annoying as hell.


How long have airships been around? If they're ancient, why are they still so rare? This reads to me like finding a fossilised Model T, but no modern society has even invented the wheel.


That doesn't even make sense, but I'll assume y'all know exactly where this is going. It's not a subtle reference.


Thanks, man.


Okay, two things that make this stupid:

1. How do you remember the world getting covered in darkness? It's been established that nobody knows what happened because time stopped.

2. He's talking about Cid! The genius engineer of Saronia of old, whose airship was in some goddamn ancient ruins, is fuckin' Cid! Cid is, according to the wiki, 64. So if he's the airship genius, okay, airships are relatively new (40 years, tops) but Saronia obviously has none!

Goddamn devil in hell. This game does that sometimes, tries to tie things together like that and the player is supposed to go "oh wow, I know what that means", but it makes no sense. It wouldn't surprise me at all if this line wasn't in the NES version at all.


Also in Saronia: a magic study lab. I will give the designers credit for one thing: Saronia is big. This is the third update to take place in Saronia alone.


We've heard these names before.


I think that the player is supposed to know who the bad guy is at this point, but he's not really had a big presence, and I know for a fact that some people have no idea who it is until you fight him.




The game also takes the time to remind us to go to the Dalg continent.

I'm beginning to suspect that Final Fantasy III doesn't think much of the player.


This will be our next stop. I hope you like an update where nothing happens, because that's what you're getting!

_{And if that's news by now, I don't know what to tell you.}


We, uh, didn't, really. We just killed Gigameth, to be honest.


Question: what the hell was the point of the civil war, anyway? Gigameth wanted to be king, okay. So he orders Gorn to kill Alus, but that doesn't pan out. So his next plan is "get all the soldiers to kill each other"? It's not like he's leading a rebellious faction, everyone in Saronia is all about the monarchy. It's just breaking stuff for no reason. Hell, it actually led directly to his own death!

What the fuck?


Once you leave the castle, the Nautilus is right outside.


It flies around, but faster than other airships. It can also land on actual land, like the first airship, which is really nice compared to the Enterprise. Nautilus is a good airship.


There are still NPCs and shops and shit around, but honestly, I'm sick of Saronia. This place is stupid. The library is the only place with any significant information.



BOOK OF OWEN, I: The device will allow us to lift and control objects of immense size and mass. If my calculations are correct, it could even control the very planet that we live on!

This is actually kind of neat. This is the guy who built the Tower of Owen, talking about making the Floating Continent...float.



BOOK OF OWEN, II: Poetically put, an object in cryostasis could be said to be free from the flow of time. In theory, this should also be applicable to living beings.

This is also kind of a cool idea, and it would have been really neat to see, say, a bunch of people in cryostasis in the Tower of Owen, being saved from an ancient flood of light.



BOOK OF OWEN, III: I will take my son Desch, already an accomplished scientist himself, with me.

Yeah, that's our dead buddy Desch he's talking about. It also explains why Desch knew the Tower of Owen.



ANCIENT BOOK, PART 1: The four fangs that we possess are the only things that grant us safe passage.

This is talking about the use of the elemental fangs we've been picking up along the way. It's pretty easy to miss and isn't really important. I would have preferred more about the floating continent and flood of light.




ANCIENT BOOK, PART 3: The light is everywhere, overflowing... There is no way for us to stop it. And the inevitable outcome? Doom...

Like this! I still think that the whole flood of light is a cool idea, as is the idea that light and darkness can't be controlled, no matter who tries.



ANCIENT BOOK, PART 4: Who are they? How did they come to possess their power? The only thing we know is that their bravery saved the world from destruction.

This is also cool, the idea of the four Dark Warriors being in a different world than the one they come from. Though, wouldn't that mean that these kids should be from the world of light, and not just this world (which I figure exists between the two)?


This is just a sidequest hint.


This is just lore.



This is just stupid.