Part 29: Cecil Visits His Creepy Uncle

Chapter 29 - Cecil Visits His Creepy Uncle





So our new space ship is pretty decked out. It even has its own crystal!




It also comes with a free inn and access to the Big Chocobo, in case you like to hoard your items.





Using the top controls lets you move the Big Whale around like a regular airship. It can't go underground, but otherwise it works just like the Enterprise and Falcon, except with no hooks or drills. It's not as many airships as FF3, but it's still a sufficient amount of airships.



Interacting with the crystal is where the real fun begins.








Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the moon.



The moon is very small, and there's even less to do here than the underground. Still, there's a couple locations of note, but right now let's go ahead and advance the plot first.





The overworld music for the moon is...interesting. Not as memorable as the other two overworld themes, but it has a nice alien, desolate air to it.

Mainly just linking to it because you probably won't get much opportunity to listen to it again.





There's a couple of caves we have to navigate through before reaching that giant crystal tower. The music here is appropriately haunting, emphasizing how empty this moon is and how alone you are here. No cheery dwarves to give you hope here!




The monsters here aren't difficult, but they can easily wear you down with hard hits and ugly status effects. For instance, these guys can poison you when they hit.

The chest itself contains an Elixir, because why not?



Red Worms have a ton of HP and can hit hard. They counter attacks with a weak Vampire attack.



Balloons are the highest tier of bombs in the game, but they don't have that much HP.



MoonCells... Eh.



Puddings hit hard and require serious firepower to take down, as they can easily survive weaker spells.



Despite these enemies wearing us down, we pass both caves and make it to our destination.











Who are you?
I am FuSoYa, the guardian of Lunarians' slumber.

I think this is the only version of the game that actually capitalizes Fusoya's name like that, probably to make his name seem more exotic and alien. He's our contact here on the moon, and pretty much the only person we really talk to here.

He's also about to give us quite a bit of poorly-translated plot dump, so hunker down.

Lunarians?



The people who survived this calamity escaped by ships and headed for the Blue Planet.
The Blue Planet?
Your land earth. However, the people of the earth were still in the process of evolution. Thus they created another Moon and kept sleeping.

Maybe I should give The After Years' end-game plot some slack, as people usually gloss over the fact that this game takes place on an alternate-timeline Earth, with the Lunarians living on an old planet before creating a second moon to sleep in until the people on Earth evolved to the point where they could all get along.

It's hokey, but what else would you expect from a Final Fantasy game?



Who?
I forced him to sleep. But his thoughts were still awaken.
Is that who is controlling Golbez?
Who is that!?
He is Zemus.

Alright, I think a few things got skipped here. It turns out that Golbez isn't actually the big bad guy of the game. Rather, he serves a Lunarian named Zemus, who's nothing more than a giant dick.

He needs the crystals as the energy source to reactivate the Tower of Bab-il.



Most of us Lunarians are waiting for you folks on the Blue Planet to be able to understand us.

Zemus's ultimate goal is to summon a giant to destroy the world. To be honest, it's one of the more badass plans I've heard of, plus he doesn't actually have to get his hands dirty because he has Golbez doing all the dirty work for him. And all because he's kind of racist.

What about the Big Whale?
My brother KluYa made it to go to the Blue Planet. He taught your folks how to build the airships and the Serpent Road.

Not to mention it was KluYa who taught the art of magic to the people of the Blue Planet. Pretty much everything magical about the FF world stems from the teachings and technological knowledge of KluYa.

KluYa fell in love with a girl of your Blue Planet and gave birth to two children. One of them is...







Then the Light at the Mt. Ordeals was...
It must be the spirit of your father, KluYa.
My father...is that Light...
KluYa gave you his power to thwart the foul machination of Zemus.

Cecil is actually half-Lunarian, with his father being the one that pretty much advanced the Blue Planet's civilization toward the better. His father's spirit still rests on Mt. Ordeals, and it's through his own father that Cecil gained the power of the Paladin.

There's some interesting stuff that could've been delved into, like having Zemus resent KluYa for helping the Blue Planet so much and transferring that hatred toward Cecil, though that never really manifests. Still, it feels like they could've established a KluYa/Zemus rivalry to deepen the story some, but then Zemus is portrayed as an immature little brat by Lunarian standards while KluYa is pretty much Space Jesus, so it probably wouldn't have worked out so well.



Tower of Bab-il!? But it's shielded!
I can neutralize the shield! I will go with you!



With that, Cecil's Space Uncle joins the party.





FuSoYa is the final new character in the game, and he is a pure mage.




Most notable is the fact that he knows every spell in the game. What's bad about FuSoYa is that his MP never increases with level, much like Tellah, though at least he has a bit more to play with. At least FuSoYa can cast Meteo without dying.



In the back room, there are eight moon crystals, similar to the eight crystals of the Blue Planet. These guys are pretty chatty.






ground.



These guys give a bit more background info, mainly explaining that you can't simply go ahead and go to the moon's core to beat up Zemus.



So yeah, we can't do anything yet.



There's free HP/MP recovery here, at least.

Let's head back to the Big Whale.





Hell yeah.




Before we go back to the Blue Planet, let's explore a couple of areas first. This little area is south of the Lunar's Lair.





...What.



Meet the Humingways. Instead of changing your name, they hum.




The main reason to come here is because one of these guys sells high-end consumables. Whistles let you summon a Big Chocobo anywhere, which is kind of nice. But the important thing is that you can buy Ether2's and Elixirs here, though even with all the gold I've been hoarding I can still only afford four of the latter. Not to mention I already have sixteen of the damn things.





Other than that, not much else to say.






Our final stop on the moon is this cave, where Bahamut lives. This dungeon can be a major pain in the ass, so be prepared.



RedGiants aren't terribly difficult, but they have over 10k HP and will counter magic with a Beam attack, so they can be a bit of a slog.



Warlocks can cast spells, of course, but these foes aren't so difficult here.



The first two floors of this dungeon have Samurai armor, the next step up from Cecil's Diamond armor. No major resistances or stat perks from this set, though.



You'll also encounter lesser dragons here. This guy can paralyze you, but otherwise isn't so dangerous.



See this passage here? One more step, and the real fun of this dungeon begins.






This is the first of three Behemoths in this dungeon. Behemoths are a pain in the ass to fight, as they hit hard and will counter every physical and most magical attacks with a powerful hit. Even worse, certain high-end spells will cause Behemoth to counter with Maelstrom, or in this version I believe it's Storm, which reduces all characters to single-digit HP, so Rydia and FuSoYa can't even nuke the damn thing.





Thus it's a lengthy, painful battle to defeat it. And the best part is that there are two more to go through!

Also, FuSoYa has the best death sprite, as he melts into a puddle of beard when knocked out.



Sometimes, the Behemoth will drop a Power robe, which boosts Strength by an awesome fifteen points. Suffice to say, Edge is making use of that damn thing.



One more enemy in this dungeon is the D.Bone, an undead dragon. Fire and Holy attacks wreck it.







Two Behemoths later, and we're through. Rosa also learns Life2 throughout this trek, meaning she only has one more spell to learn. Meanwhile, Rydia still has five more to go.



At least we've made it to the end.





Blasphemy, I know, but I actually use one of my Elixirs on Rosa. The alternative is to cast Exit, use a Cabin, and go through the dungeon again running away at every opportunity. The Behemoths don't respawn, but it'd still be a slog to do that, and Rosa needs MP for the boss fight here.








Meet Bahamut, the God of the Summoned Monsters. Hopefully you did your reading at the library, or looked at GameFAQs, or know how iconic the gimmick for this fight is.



Bahamut doesn't actually attack. He simply counts down before he releases his big attack. Unlike Odin, this isn't a pure damage race, and there's a nice little trick to take him down easily.



Wall.









Wall reflects Bahamut's MegaNuke back onto himself. Poor Cecil didn't get a chance to survive it.



By exploiting this, Bahamut becomes a joke. Otherwise, well, I hope you've got some powerful attacks up your sleeve.




Our reward is Rydia's final summon. Bahamut is definitely worth the effort it took to get him, as he'll rip enemies apart and will be Rydia's strongest multi-target attack until L60, when she gains Meteo. Even then, Bahamut will be faster and less likely to trigger nasty counter-attacks from the end-game bosses.






Next time, we go back to the Blue Planet and go against the Tower of Bab-il yet again.

Trust me, you're going to want to see this next update.