Part 6: More Explosions than an Action Movie

This better be most excellent.

Hmm... You know, it's probably better if I have context, but by itself it's just more of that synth-syndrome Hamauzu's had since he worked on Samurai Legend Musashi and it really sounds no different from any other track he composed for that game. Certainly not bad, but by the same token, nowhere near being spectaular at all.

Anyway, so none of you can say that Ke Ali'i o Let's Play FF9 (that's me) is not a benevolent ruler, have some 100 Nobles memory card lovin'. I hope you have a program that works with it, or can convert it into a working PS save format.


We rejoin our heroes just as they were making a fantastic escape.




Incidentally, "HEY LOOK BEHIND YOU" is one of Zidane's skills later in the game.


All the while, we can't target the Bomb and it just keeps getting and bigger.


Eventually it just gets way too gigantic and, like all Bombs, explodes.

There's some sort of sexual euphemism in there, but that's not my territory.


GAME OVER

here is a very fucking obvious link to a video of this fmv for those of you who are blind fucks


for those of us who can't view youtube at home or because you are too ashamed to visit it, actually we made it out alive


When I get them, I am going to give them such a paddling


And our airship sinks into the Mist.


No shit, asshole


And that, as they say, is that.








Fat chance of that, lady.

heh fat


Well, at least Kilika made it out alive.


Wasn't there just a hugely catastrophic explosion that would've turned this wooden ship into flaming toothpicks? Maybe it slipped their mind.




"Well exactly that's what I mean by interesting I was thinking maybe I could throw you out of here one at a time and see what happens"

FUN FACT TIME: Baku is a Tapir. Which makes sense when you consider that the Japanese word for Tapir is Baku. Which you wouldn't. He doesn't quite have the snout for it, and being anthropomorphic he is morbidly obese, but the rest of him fits the bill, more or less.






"I can't believe you jumped! You're nuts, you know that?"
"And you're an asshole, you know that?"


Oh, right, I wonder what she's up to?

Suddenly,



explanation of mechanics.








God damn do you two even know the first rule of horror movies

You always keep running


You shouldn't be worrying about her. Even if she gets caught, the black guy always dies first.

Well, that's our first Active Time Event. It seems like a shitty way to do out-of-party scene transitions, but like most of the extra stuff in this game, ATEs are just cute little scenes that have no bearing on anything whatsoever, like little characterization intermissions, such as folks hanging out in a bar or people being racist toward Makakao. Usually.

And now, back to our show.

Hah! Hah! Hah!


"Bullshit, the worst situation has got to be that time you got the top bunk over Marcus and pissed yourself"


Well, okay, I'll get a move on. I wish you assholes would let me, y'know, rest and restore my HP or someshit, or even just buy some goddamn potions with my 10,000 Gil, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards.


This is the Evil Forest. It is full of plants. And frogs. And evil, of course.


Oh, and Goblins. And, like, hairy boars that foam at the mouth. We spend some time stealing from them and grinding levels. I don't want to be put into a situation in which a low Max HP is a limiting factor on how many items I'll be able to steal in these early boss battles where I don't have target-all healing spells.

We gain a few levels and head to the next screen.






"Yeah, like it's really gonna listen to you."

Man, FF9, busting out the iceburns for me in your canonical script.


This battle introduces the Trance mechanic.

Amazing how you already have all the ability mechanics that will available to you for the rest of the game. Why, some games these days don't even give you these abilities until halfway through the entire thing!

Wait, no, FF9 isn't special, it just doesn't use FUCKING RETARDED GAME DESIGN.




Well isn't that just dandy.




REMEMBER THIS LINE! It's actually integral to explaining the Trance mechanic when applied to the plot outside of battle.


Okay, first things first:

Oh, by the way,

this thing will drain Garnet's HP. If she hits 0, it's probably game over, but there are only two cases in which this can possibly happen.

1) You let her get drained down to 0, in which case you are clinically retarded.


Ahem, first things first. Steal from him. Except I forgot that he doesn't have anything. Oh well.


Anyway, the other reason why Garnet may die in this fight:

2) You use Tidal Flame, which targets everyone on the opposite side of the battlefield. Killing Garnet in this fashion does not preclude clinical mental retardation, though it certainly is much more


I am not an idiot, so I use Free Energy instead.


Kilika blasts the enemy with solar power, wind power, and wave power--you know, FREE ENERGY


It is soundly spanked, and runs away.

So, Trance. It is basically this game's "limit break" mechanic. Every character has a different Trance mode; Kilika here changes his Thief Skill into Dyne, changing his normal commands into highly-damaging attack spells. We'll discuss the others as they come up.


we blasted them with our mana so hard that they got vaporized

Mana is Hawaiian for "power"--usually used in a more mystical sense, but also can be used to describe someone's ability to bench-press 500 lbs if your vocabulary is lacking. Secret of Mana, for example, the whole reason I got into the RPG genre in the first place, was bought for me because my dad thought it was a Hawaiian game.

blizzard and other game companies subsequently stole this terminology and fronted the back-rounded /ɑ/ (almost /ɔ/) into MAAANA just like how they stole our land

ahem

you useless shit this is all your fault


and what the fuck do you know about sentient botany

SUDDENLY

IT'S BACK!


Makakao is at least more competent than Garnet was. This plant still tries to drain him to death, though.


However, his damage-dealing is problematic because this monster has equipment I want to steal. Not the Broadsword, but a Leather Wrist that will allow Makakao to learn Blizzard, which while no more useful than Fire, just looks cool on his Ability Résumé.


Once its loot is looted, we kick this one's ass as well.




These things are just full of surprises. Kilika backflips out of the way, which would obviously save him from an aerosolized attack, but our two friends there get it pretty badly.

What will become of them? We all know the answer, of course, but that is for another time.