Part 102: Interlude - Part 5
The Interlude Interlude: Part 5
So here we are at the Tower of Babil, Interlude's final dungeon crawl!
Treasure chests are scattered throughout the place in fair quantity, but that's not to say they're generally useful.
Flamehounds and Frostbeasts abound within the Tower, as well as several other fire and ice-elemental monsters. This is why I kept that Flame Sword around; with just the Icebrand Cecil's damage is going to tank for a fair amount of encounters here, but swapping weapons mid-battle ensures that he'll oneshot nearly everything with relative ease.
The hounds can still hurt a damn lot if they feel like it, though.
Also, these creepy motherfuckers, who never got a turn on me before I destroyed them out of sheer terror.
Upon completion of plundering the first floor, opening the door to scale the Tower reveals a monster!
...Haha, what? You gave a boss transition to a Frostbeast?
haha fuck you
wait a second you aren't melting AND YOU HURT WHAT THE HELL
Palom refuses to care, and annihilates the jackass with an un-Bluffed Firaga that hits the damage cap.
YOU ARE USELESS TO ME!
With the pumped-up Frostbeast thoroughly obliterated via slamming a miniature sun into it, it leaves behind an orb of blue light, which is drawn to Rydia.
Sum...mon...
Rydia...?Sum-mon friend!
Hell yeah!
This is supposed to be Rydia's first "official" acquiring of a summon, though if you really felt like it you could have picked up the Goblin, Bomb and Cockatrice drops with enough grinding at the beginning of the chapter.
The first of several treasure chests of actual worth in the Tower. This goes right on Cecil's head for a lovely Strength boost.
Some of the Eidolons have pretty impressive animations. Others... do not. Shiva's deal is just flicking some sparkly thing at everyone and emulating the Frostbeasts' Icestorm attack for semi-respectable damage.
Nice!it goes completely unused for the rest of the chapter
See these guys? If you want to pick up Cecil's best weapon in Interlude, you'll have to grind the hell out of them until they drop a Stoneblade. If not, you'll have to settle for the Icebrand/Flame Sword combo, or the Dwarven Axe that Cid came pre-equipped with. The axe tanks the Speed of whomever's got it equipped, so it's recommended you stick with the blades.
Edge's best katana, however, is just hanging out in a chest.
As we try to go up another floor, yet another monster blocks our path!
The Green Dragon still presents little overall challenge to the party, or rather specifically Palom.
He does counter spells with Toad, though he also completely misses the one time he uses it before Shiva freezes him into oblivion.
A golden light this time, giving us the powers of elderly electricity. Unfortunately since nearly all the encounters here are fire or ice-aligned I never actually use him, and thus can't show him off.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
In what is becoming a very easily-identified pattern, climbing upwards results in...
...ScreenShot crashing my PSP.
Let's try that again! This floor pits the party against an enhanced Flamehound, which almost immediately goes down to a Blizzaga/Shiva combo.
On to the next!
Holy shit. I had no idea there were other Flans in Interlude except the one that the Trap Doors spit out. This is literally my first time encountering these, as they never appeared during my first run through the chapter.
They still bite it to a well-timed Fira, however, which makes my thoughts that an Index Finger might be worth using completely null. Oh well.
More stuff for Cecil! Provided you actually got that Stoneblade, body armor is the only piece of equipment he's lacking in an upgrade for in this place, leaving him with Diamond Armor from the dwarfmart. I, on the other hand, still have him wearing Yang's Black Belt Gi because fuck it, why not?
--whoah, what
Namingway what are you doing here?
Huh.
So yeah, welcome to the postgame content of Interlude, access to the Developers' Office, where the guys who worked on Complete Collection reside. Without a clear-game save on the memory stick, the Hummingway doesn't appear so the place is just an empty room; thus I simply accident my way into this.
"I'm getting married as soon as this project is finally over!
Huh? What're you doing here? Don't even dream of getting in the way of my matrimonial bliss!"
Gah!
Flan Man here is completely immune to physicals but goes down to a single Bio from Palom, coughing up a Ruby Ring for our troubles. Uh, thanks?
This is a recurring theme for most of the developers. Either they express total joy for working on this compilation and pride in their contribution to making it, or complain about the crunch of it slowly eroding their souls.
Mao is a bit... different. FLYING SKELETON MAN, AWAY!
His gimmick is that as you hit him, he'll speak with you as a "counter". As far as I can tell he's otherwise invincible, or just has mountains of HP you'll never realistically whittle down.
He'll still hit back on his own accord, however. What a dick.
Mao: This is the newly added Dummy Map.
It was made in a hurry, so please check it for me.
I will be in contact again soon.
I am free right now, so let me hear your report.
I see.
I'm counting on you to take care of the embedding.
This is the current additional data.
Please check it and complete the embedding.
You missed a section...
Please make the appropriate changes.
After that final line, he runs off and ends the battle.
"Oh! Hey there. I made the sprites and other things.
...Without ever getting a day off... Zzz..."
Talking to this guy restores your HP and any lingering status effects, but not your MP.
...er... okay?
He turns you into a pig (or back) any time you talk to him afterward.
These guys are assholes!
"Man, I owe you one! Well, this sucker is nearly due, so we're gonna stay here all night working!"
He then forks over a Tent.
"But then I got to design the new hidden boss! That made it all worth it! I really do love monsters..."
Hidden boss, you say?! Surely this won't come back to bite me in the ass when the main LP is at an end!
Tube-baby gives us an Elixir.
...yes...
"Believe me, it'll just blast any drowsiness away!"
A piece of advice and an Alarm Clock richer.
"I'm beat..."
"I also helped make part of this Developers' Office!"
There are two more sections to the Office, though one is less a meet-and-greet and more... odd.
A Soma Drop for talking to this one! I never use it though...
The guy with the Black Mage sprite throws up a series of ellipses at us before initiating a battle. Like the fight with Mao, he'll talk to you every time he's hit, though this is all he says for a very, very long time.
It does give me a chance to show off Ifrit, at least.
After a while I just resort to Hasting and Berserking Cecil and letting him smack the flying zombie around for a while. With enough damage, he starts to change his tone.
Game Designer: THE BUGS... THEY'RE...!
Now this is what I call great literature!
"...Nekushiroyo... Mosley Sigassi..."
Er, what? Any guesses to what this means, guys?
Entering the teleporter immediately north of where we came into the second room gets us...
...here.
"That's what I thought! Then get your butt in line and wait your turn like everyone else!"
Now we wait in line while all the fangirls ahead of us squeal and rejoice for their supposed, uh, hero, or something.
Girls: P-p-please accept this!
It's such an honor...!
Ooh, I knew it was impossible. It's just way too embarrassing! I can't give him this...
Finally, it's our turn.
You can actually deny him here, and he'll get a little depressed:
Miu-P: O-oh. I see. I hope you'll keep rooting for me!
Selecting Yes throws up an item prompt, and you'll have to choose something to give him. I gifted him the Lustful Lali-ho that the zombie game designer dropped.
Miu-P: Thank you! I'll give you this as a token of my appreciation.
Not bad! You can leave and come back to give him something else, but the fangirls will have returned by then, making you wait in line again. Anything that isn't a Dry Ether, Remedy or Elixir will result in a Potion, but giving him one of those three will have a, er, "special" reward.
Yep, it's roughly the same dancer scene from the members-only section of the bar in Troia. The door locks behind them once it finishes, however, so you can't get yelled at for going into their dressing room this time.
This has all been... very confusing. Let's just go finish the chapter...