Part 42: Part Forty-Two: Gimmicks Ain't Shit

Part Forty-Two: Gimmicks Ain't Shit


Well, here we are on the Invincible. Now we're finally ready to make some real progress on the main quest.


This starts, of course, with me getting lost like an asshole.


I find my way over to just north of Amur eventually.


Another weird mountain pass, of course. Lot of convenient things like this is the game.


Here's the Invincible's transport gimmick: it can hop over shitty little mountains like these.




You just pull up to 'em, hit A, and if you're in the right spot, the ship boosts up and over.

If you are not in the right spot, the ship just boosts up and into the regular mountains. The animation takes a couple of seconds and it's easy to be out of alignment. Combine this with the Invincible just being slow generally and it's all kind of annoying.

Oh, I've also gone the wrong way in that pic and I'm stuck in a dead end like an asshole.



The path to the next dungeon is just a bunch of short hops over mountains. It's boring.


It's also fairly long, taking you out to the coast from the middle of the continent, then doubling back in.


There are also random encounters all along the path, just for fun.




At least they give me a chance to show off another feature of the ship: at the start of every round, cannons fire on the enemy and deal a bit of damage. Enemies in the air aren't very hard anyway, but this makes fights that much shorter.


It's always good to see this kind of damage.


I deal with a couple encounters and follow the path, eventually reaching this little cave.


The Invincible will let you off anywhere except over the water.


And now...the Cave of Shadows! Wow!


The place is full of skeletons, because it's dangerous and evil stuff lives here.


Who's this? How did they get here?

Did you walk here?


This is just explaining how most of the enemies here function. You attack enemies normally and they'll split off into two copies; we saw this back in the Ancient Ruins, too.

By the way, Falgabard is on the other side of the ocean, so it would take real work to get here.


Also by the way, the Cave of Shadows is full of invisible passages.


This one leads to a random encounter!


Sephy can kill a bunch of stuff here in one hit, which is nice.


Jecht cannot, because his damage output is always piss poor. Jecht is the worst member of this party.


Kuja is picking up some power, which is nice.



Now, generally, you bring a Dark Knight with you into this cave, because their katanas don't make enemies split, and that makes the whole place easier to get through.

I, however, am not in the business of taking shit from this game, so I just tank through it with my party set up like regular. It's a little more dangerous this way, but it's also better for job levels - if I were to change anyone out, it would be Kuja, and I'd rather have her pick up Dragoon levels.


This is the actual treasure at the end of the hidden path.


Black Musk is an instant death item, so it misses a lot and isn't really worth using. That's not saying much, though, since attack items are only a really good idea if you're running a Scholar.


Back to the main path!


There are a few pieces of equipment with "dark" in the name, but I don't believe they have the same effect on dividing enemies that katanas do. These Dark Claws are completely useless, of course.


Just before I go down to the next floor, I find another Dark Knight.


This one's in a bad way.


Before dying, the Dark Knight hands over a Kotetsu. This is an entry-level katana, so you could give your own Dark Knight something to swing around.




RIP, Dark Knight.


Onto the next floor!


Highlights include a secret passage! I am so sick of these things!


Not remembering Tranquilizers at all from this game, I ask myself "is this a good item?"


Nope!


Further on, as I head through another invisible hall, I find some new enemies! This is a Hellish Horse, and I have nothing to say about it other than I think it doesn't divide. The other thing is a Vassago, which you saw earlier. They're kind of tough and annoying, but nothing special.


Lilith's Kiss drains HP from an enemy and restores it to the user, like a stepped-up version of the Blood Spear.



Secret passages!


Dead ends! This is a cave a lot of people don't care for; it's fairly long and dull and most of the enemies divide.



I have a lot of screens from dungeons that don't really matter. I thought that getting here wouldn't take very long, I sort of assumed the Cave of Shadows would be its own update.


These guys are back from the Ancient Ruins. I think. They might be new, I don't know, they're boring.


Moving on.


This next floor is pretty annoying.



It's all small rooms linked with hidden passages.


At the end of the floor is a pair of Genji Gloves. These are good, but nobody in the party can equip them - I think they're Dark Knight-exclusive, which would make sense.


We're fairly deep into the cave now.



More secret passages. I wish you could see these by having a Thief in the party, like you can in Final Fantasy V.



I'm always surprised when this comes up. It'll one-shot any enemy in the place.




Downstairs and along the invisible path! This place can be something of a maze if you don't have a guide or a map, and that gets pretty annoying. If you know your way around, though, it's not so bad, just the enemies are annoying.


On my way through, I get back-attacked by these assholes.


Jecht just barely makes it out alive.


For some reason, I decided to use up some of my Cure MP.


Cure is alright, but it's not really great. It takes about four castings to get one person to full HP.


Also on this floor, I find a Kiku-Ichimonji. It's another katana, slightly better than the Kotetsu.



If I had someone using the two together, they'd actually have pretty solid Attack. Dark Knights are a pretty good class, really, I just decided to use a Dragoon instead because of Garuda and now I'm sticking with it because of job levels.


Carrying on, I find a Genji Shield. A decent shield, but for Dark Knights and a shield, so it's just going to be sitting at the bottom of my inventory until I throw it at Fat Chocobo.



This floor is pretty much just a long hall leading to the stairs.



This next floor at least changes things up a bit as we run along some giant dead monster's spine.


On the other side is the Genji Helm.


There's also the stairs on to the last area of the dungeon.


Is this the same beast, or a different one? I wonder what this was when it was alive.


It's a fairly long bridge here, to be honest.


And on the other side...


...the Fang of Earth. This is what we came for.



Nothing is ever easy, is it?


And here's the main man himself, Hecatoncheir.


The guy has 28,000 HP, so this is actually a pretty good hit.



Surprisingly, the boss protecting the Fang of Earth has no resistance to earth-elemental damage. This is kind of a weird game for stuff like that, to be honest.


This is a pretty ugly hit. Kuja can take it, though, especially because she'll be jumping soon.


Golbez isn't in danger from physical attacks here.


Jecht also contributes to the effort.


Kuja still has a long way to go before she'll be a major player in the damage race. Some extra job levels would help.


It's incredibly annoying that enemies' attacks can target a freshly-landed Dragoon. Especially because your own cure spells will miss them.


Here's Hecatonchier's most dangerous move.


It's pretty ugly, to be honest. Not quite as bad as Lightning, but still not friendly to the party. Jecht's Protect Ring is a big help.


I can cast Curaja once, so I decide to go for it.


Sephy also tossed a Phoenix Down to Kuja, so everybody is back at full.


The fight goes on for another couple rounds, but nothing particularly interesting happens, so we'll just skip to the end.


Ehh.


This is a joke, pretty much. For whatever reason, bosses don't give shit for EXP in this game.


Yay.


She'll just have to wait, because we won't be getting to this for a while.

Mognet



Wow, mail from a real-life king! Telling us about how he can't really do his job! No shit, you are a child, you're not fit to take the throne at all!