Part 25: Cecil Admits to His Failings

Chapter 25 - Cecil Admits to His Failings

Right, so the party walked into a trap and fall down a hole.






Now we're back in the underground, cut off from our airship. Welp.




This part of the floor has Iron Men, which Cecil can crush with his axe, and Queen Lamias.

Other than that, it's a few more screens of tower and rather straightforward.





An airship! How convenient.

New airship?
Let's take this airship and get out of the tower!
It's not yours!
That's Okay! It would be happy to be used by us!

...Wait, Rydia's against stealing an airship from the enemy? When it's the only way out of here? Come on.




Isn't this a trap or something...?



Edge must have a short attention span.

Hurry, Edge!
Okay! Okay! Now...... Go, Falcon!







The Falcon is our airship for the Underground. That's right, we have two airships now.



Unfortunately, this one also can't cross over magma, which means it's pretty useless to use in the underground. Considering the overworld entrance is sealed, the only place left to go is the Dwarven Castle.







There are a few new NPCs with some new things to say. Apparently dwarven women like to brag about their vaginas.

Well, time to tell Giott how much we sucked.




How did it go?
I am afraid...
I see... Golbez is trying to force open the Sealed Cave! It's just a matter of time before he succeeds. So I want you to get the crystal before him.




This is the very key to open the Sealed Cave! No one can enter the cave without it! We must defend the last crystal at all cost!




Which means the party's going to fuck this mission up, too. Cecil really sucks at this whole "saving the world" business.





So our next mission is the Sealed Cave, which we can't access due to the magma. If only Cid were here.



Oh, there he is. Wait, what.

Video: Cid Works Through the Pain



Cid!





You're okay!
Good grief...
Ha Ha Ha...!
Who's this chap?



Who is this little nuisance?
I'm Edge, the renowned Prince of Eblan!
He is a Prince, though his mouth betrays his nature.
And handsome, skilled Ninja as well!



He is injured! Don't anger him!
Henpecked, boy?
Oh, shut up!



But all the crystals, except for the last one are now...
We want to go get the last crystal, but the Enterprise is above on the upper world.
We snatched an airship from the enemy. But it cannot fly over the magma.








Oh, shut up and help me remodel the airship! We have no time to waste!




So yeah, Cid's not only badass enough to jump off an airship and blow himself up, he's not only badass enough to survive such a feat, but he immediately gets out of bed and works on a airship.

I'd like to see any of the other Cids pull that off.







More airship hijinks that come across better in the video.





The sad music starts up. Looks like even Cid can't do that much work and survive. Shit...





Or maybe he's just exhausted and needs a nice nap.

He must have been very tired.
He has overworked himself...





Cid's alive, and now we can explore the Underworld proper. There's actually quite a lot to do here, and while we can immediately fly to the Sealed Cave, there's a lot more to explore first.





South of the castle is this little smithy.





There's nothing we can do here yet, though we'll be back soon enough.




Southwest of the castle is the Dwarven town of Tomra.









They're perhaps even more charming than the castle folk. The dwarves will mention caves of Sylphs and summoned monsters, which we'll visit soon enough.




There's some nice equipment here. Edge gets another Middle sword while Rosa gets some Mute arrows to silence enemies with. The Diamond armor is a nice upgrade from the Fire/Ice stuff the fighters have been carrying.







And for the hell of it, there's Indra.






In the northwest corner of the map is the Sylvan Cave. This place is optional, but it's well-worth exploring this place, even if doing so is a major pain in the ass.



One of the reasons this dungeon sucks is because you need to cast Float on your party, as some segment of the dungeon will otherwise deal damage to your party. Float wears off every time you change a floor, so you have to constantly cast it.




What's even more annoying are the myriad of different paths and secret passages to take. It's really fucking confusing, and there's more than one exit in this dungeon, so you have to go through this place twice to get everything.




The enemies are also annoying. The ToadLady hangs out with toads and orders them to cast Toad. They're really nothing more than a nuisance, but it's still a bit of a pain to deal with them.



What makes this place worth it is all the awesome loot you can get. The Charm rod gives a nice ten-point boost to Wisdom, and can cast Charm when used, which is always welcome.



Ghosts cast Fire2 and are more annoying than deadly.




Especially considering we have ways to deal with them.



There's also DarkTrees, because it's the underground and everything is dark, including the living trees.





The Mist Dragon deals non-elemental damage, though it's not as powerful as Rydia's other summons.



This dungeon is also where we meet a staple enemy of the series, the Malboro, or known here as the Molbol. As you can see, their signature Bad Breath attack is intact here, and it will hit you with a shitload of status ailments. Of course, considering this is the version where Remedies cost a hundred gil a pop, they're not even that annoying unless you just never buy any items, and even then you'll probably have enough to stay alive. At least Cecil can heal status effects.




This route is one of two exits in the dungeon. As you may notice, I forgot to cast Float here. The green areas will hurt your entire party for 50HP per step.







The top three chests all contain six Ghosts, and all three gives Elixers.





The Fullmoon is another ranged weapon for Edge, and it's stronger than the Middle sword. It'd be great if Edge weren't already bugged to deal full damage from the back row, but it's still a nice weapon upgrade.





This fucking sword.



This thing is two-handed, so you have to unequip your shield to even use it. It boosts the user's physical stats by ten, which is nice. This sword also has a very special feature in that whoever wields it is automatically Berserked.

Normally people just skip over it because you can't equip a shield and not controlling your character sucks. But I've learned how awesome Berserk is this playthrough. This sword is worth using.




Pfft, really?



The Avenger sword makes Cecil hit hard and often. He certainly wasn't pulling 1.5k+ damage every attack. Plus there's no menus to slow Cecil down. Hell, I don't think Cecil was doing half of this beforehand. I've even had Cecil hit for full damage in the back row with this thing. The Avenger is awesome.



Meh, more Medusa arrows.





Alright, time for Trip #2.





Another chest gives us the Mute dagger, which Edge puts to use.



We don't even have to fight anything to get a new bow for Rosa.



At the end of the other route, we come across a house in the middle of the dungeon. Sure, why not?



Meet the Sylphs, the fairies the dwarves were talking about.




Also, there's Yang. Holy shit, Yang survived exploding as well?



Yang's not dead, but he's still out of it. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do here but steal his claws.



Fun fact: Edge can equip claws. Not that I really see any reason to, of course.




And that's all we can do here for now. We'll come back to deal with Yang later.

Next time, we visit Rydia's pals over in the Cave of Summoned Monsters.