Part 2: The Politically-Correct Phrasing is "African American Mages"

shu'up busta we get to it when we get to it

CHAPTER 2: The Politically-Correct Phrasing is "African American Mages"

Our update begins today



with a clumsy motherfucker.


If you look hard (we'll be seeing it again later), you'll notice that the ticket itself actually has very intricate textures that a PSX could never have displayed. I don't know why Square went to such lengths to create details that would in theory never even be visible, but I appreciate them.

Maybe it had something to do with Connectix/Bleem high-res emulation, or perhaps they were planning for a PC port like its predecessors.

Well, time to loot and plunder. Let's start back a screen.

There is a surprising amount of hidden content in this sequence for being an area exclusive to the beginning of the game.


This is a statue of an Anime Heroine, who was like fourteen years old or something when she rallied a bunch of Alexandrian troops to get shit done.

Also, note the windmills in the background, faithful to the intro CG.




NPCs with more character than twenty new Enix games: 2


Wow, FF9, making it a point to make me feel like a douchebag.


Walking down the main street a bit further spawns this asshole, who actually chases after you no matter how hard you try to navigate out of his way.


Seriously, what an asshole.


Anyway, the play. This is the "I Want to be Your Canary" play that Baku was talking about last time.

I hope he's got his ticket.

Just like we do

--FUCK

Now, it's revealed in about one minute that your ticket is fake, but I think it's a very clever touch that they put the ticket in your key items pocket just so you can click it and see that yes, you have a distinctly fake ticket.


This is a pretty big event, what with these rich folks showin' up.


But there are more entertaining things to be seen than rich people fucking around.


Maika'i NPC count: 3, and we don't even ever see this guy

(Maika'i, of course, has a colloquial application as "awesome" in Hawaiian, but will be used here because it has a wider cultural-linguistic application that means more than simply just the "awesome" or "great" that it is used for in modern times, and "awesome NPCs" on its own isn't quite what I'm going for)


aww yeah gonna get crunk with some her majesty

what the fuck kind of drink name is that

(Actually if any of you guys wanna come up with a good Her Majesty cocktail, that would be pretty great, I enjoy making mixed drinks and we'll all submit it to The Drunken Moogle)


but you're a WOMAN, you can't be a manager

Incidentally, Alexandria is depicted as a very matriarchal and feminist country (even its male knights are utterly incompetent), so her aspirations are pretty much right on the mark.


Some people think that this is Ashley Riot from Vagrant Story, but I think he's just a barman with a coincidental name. This sprite, too, is reused by hobos and drunks in Treno.

but vagrant is a synonym for those rite

So, on to the town square.

Do I sense a sidequest? I think I sense a mini-sidequest.

There are lots of shops in the square.

"Lindblum is a pussy country that won't let me buy a trebuchet to protect my family, Alexandria is the land of the free"


Maika'i NPCs: 4


Anyway, back in the square, let's do some jump-roping. While I will be doing a lot of things in this game, I will not be getting the King of Jump Rope. I can't even get a 30 Chain in Vagrant Story, how can you expect me to do this kind of shit and get 1000 jumps in a row


We manage 26, though.

Head to the left and we end up in a back alley.


Past that,



some fucking communist propaganda bullshit

In the nearby house,

the little girl who picked up our ticket for us is chillin'.

If you have an analog stick controller, you can use the game's failsafe NPC-clip programming (which lets you clip through NPCs if you run at them for long enough; it's made to prevent you from getting permanently stuck behind NPCs) to walk through her, but with a D-pad, like I'm using, you get stuck on her and have to get her to leave her house before you can loot the upstairs.


RRRRAGH GET OUT OF HERE YOU LITTLE BRAT

(This is achieved by leaving the house and going south past the church door)


This was so not worth it.






Here is a cute little sidequest you can only do now.

Run back to the entrance, and...





Received Bomb Card!

While not spectacular, the real reward is that you get to see as charming a sequence as this.

Now we go into that church and climb the steeple.



The bell rings, and a tiiiiiiiiiiiny little treasure box falls out.


You get three cards out of this, none of which are worth writing home about.


Ahahaha


The area thoroughly examined, it is finally time to progress with the story.




You can ask him a number of questions, such as the ones shown here. It mostly reiterates how much Alexandria loves "I Want to be Your Canary," how fat Queen Brahne is, and how teenaged Princess Garnet is.


"Why, it's another fake! I've seen so many today."

You can see here what I was talking about when I mentioned the textures. That ticket is just a yellow-gray blur on the PSX, but there is distinctly-crisp gibberish written all over it.


A heartbroken piano key-mashing chord plays here. It is quite a nice touch.


He gives us some cards and tells us about some Alleyway Jack guy before sending us on our way.

Back down that alley...



Talk about anger management. On the other hand, why would you fall down so fucking often


He finishes his job and goes on his merry way, while Asshole from earlier shows up.






had this game been made in 2010, there would be such a fucking shitstorm from the NAACP right now


"All clear?"
"Yeah, it's clear"


Oh great, I'm now party to a felony.


We talk to that weirdo walking down the alley before we follow Asshole.



So obviously he can't just teach us here, he has to take us to the bar, right.

There's a big optional tutorial section here, but with the card game's opaque mechanics, it doesn't help anyway.


But let's play this shit.


I am able to win because I am highly intelligent, and I take his Yeti card, which I don't have any of yet.


We'll learn his real name yet.


Anyway, Asshole was kind enough to wait for us. How nice of him.


"It's very dangerous. You go first."


VERY. FUCKING. DANGEROUS


Moogles are basically very cleverly-disguised save points.


This other Moogle also shows up.


He's going on an adventure or someshit. I'm sure he'll rip us off eventually.


Oh, right, right.


Before we do that, this guy has a little errand for us to run.

'Kay, NOW we can get on with this.

"What, are ya afraid of heights? It's easy! Just pretend like you're on the ground!"








WELP


"I don't even know your name!"


Paki is the closest you'll get to phonetic Hawaiian for Pasi, short for Pascal, which is Pakakala in Hawaiian, which will not fit in FF9's seven-length names.


He goes on to introduce himself as Puck, which is a kinda retarded name.


Since we're here, we may as well loot the rooftops, too.




why go through the trouble of getting this ladder when we clearly had a perfectly fine setup of highly-unstable lumber bridges up to this point


We'll be doing just that

but it's going to have to wait until NEXT TIME, in which we impress nobles, see dancing fat people, and meet knights who just wanted to write fairy tales for a living.