Part 9: Defender of the Fuel

Update 8: Defender of the Fuel

Before we continue on our quest for computer parts, I have a small problem. I need more weapons, and the ones here are either too expensive or too specialized. You've seen before how an elemental weakness can result in instant death (the chance isn't 100%, but it's there), but what hasn't come up is that resistance to an element results in no damage at all. As a result, for a good bit here the Silver Sword from Byak-Ko's world is a good choice for a lot of this stage unless you're willing to buy and use multiple elemental themed swords.



On the way back I come across this area, which I initially mistook for a completely new space I just had missed. In fact, it's the flooded area drained of water. I feel kind of silly for making that mistake, but the dialogue here has changed a lot and there's no mention about flooding. Now they're talking about Ashura and how he's the power behind the fiends.



The people from before are now pretending to be the four fiends/guardians. I'm sticking with my assessment of these people as "special." The main thing, however, is the castle that has been revealed. It's nothing more than a treasure room with some rather nice loot.




The X-potion is kind of Blah, but the P-Sword is a nice upgrade to the P-Knife. I suspect that it might bypass defense in some manner, since even with inferior stats Fina will do more damage than the humans for a while. Elixirs restore HP, status, and I suspect uses of powers, and revives return a dead character to life without counting against their hearts.



This is our next destination, the other town on the map which is really more of a bazaar. It has a lot of nice equipment, as well as being an easy place to buy HP200s. This'll come up later, as you might expect.



It's full of monsters that they didn't bother to write dialogue for, and naturally there's a shop with a back door to a special merchant..



He examines our ROM and gives us the right BOARD for it. That's right, our next step was to go find a computer guru to identify our part and make sure we had the right motherboard. SO nerdy. Anyway, we've gone as far as we can on our own so it's time to head back and get some guidance into the atomic power plant.



We try to leave early, but So-Cho and his sister insist on coming along with their goon squad.



This leads to us following him on bikes, including a sweet jump across some broken tracks. That's actually kind of cool for a game this old.



Once we get into the sewer So-Cho and his men decide to wait. Really, of all the places to wait you choose the sewer? Whatever man.



The inside of the power plant is blocked off by these barriers, and I've heard it's possible to fall off here. With the speed my emulation is running at it's quite a struggle not to go over the edge.



The way forward is blocked by an evil eye, which is far less threatening to a late game party than it was to the low level groups in the original Final Fantasy.



Eventually we come to the top and are blocked off by this barrier, which is electrified or somesuch. So-Cho comes from behind and says he'll fix it for us.



It goes about as well as one would expect.



The insanity of this plan is made clear. We're going into the core of a nuclear power plant to get the final item for the ERASE99, which will allow us to finally kill Suzaku.



For some reason the builders of this power plant included a Warmech model defense robot to prevent any theft of nuclear materials. Overkill, possibly?



Its a fighter, but that doesn't help it much...




You can see what I mean about the P-Sword. Fina has 99 mana, while Aika and Vyse have about 150 or so in their main stat. Unfortunately, Cupi is becoming a bit irrelevant.



I'm inclined to think that Machine had about as much HP as Warmech did.



Unfortunately while we were gone, the entire town was slaughtered. Oops!



Ladies and gentlemen, Aika...mistress of the obvious.

Next time: Dealing with Su-Zaku once and for all.