Part 19: Faris vs. A Dinosaur

Here's where we stand after the last update. Bartz is already close to getting L4 White Magic, which is nice.







Anyway, we're on this massive continent that actually has very little to speak of. There's two whole points of interest on the map, which you can barely see. Ultimately, we'll be wandering to the other end in the hopes that something interesting will happen.

I like this part, though, as you're just kinda exploring this rather untamed continent where civilization is sparse. No dragon or airship to skim over everything. Still, it can be a bit tedious.



There's a decent variety of enemies as well. Those pigs are "Ferry Walks" apparently. I can see how they mixed up "fairy" and "ferry," but I don't get the "walk" part. At least they got "Devourer" right.

The Ferry Walks have some healing spells, so controlling them can be nice for topping us off. Then again, we've got a Healing Staff-wielding White Mage, so that's kinda unnecessary.



Then there's these guys. The name "Subterran" for the brown guy isn't very appropriate, but it feels more like a general Final Fantasy Fuck-Up than a translation snafu. Maybe they live underground and just burrowed up to be cannon fodder for our party. Verminator sounds more awesome than the pink guys deserve, considering they willingly use Pep Up.





Bartz learns L4 White Magic, which is all he'll need for a long time. Back to Chemist to climb slowly to Mix.

What sucks is that the AP costs keep climbing up, yet we're still getting 1-2AP from these encounters. You'll be doing a lot of fights, but you won't be seeing much actual job progress. It'll start actually going up soon, at least.



After a bit of a march, we come across a town. It's actually optional, and you can completely bypass it, but you probably shouldn't.





RPGe: Rugor. GBA: Regole.



This is a backwater town out in the middle of nowhere, and really the only town on the entire continent.



Also, there are moogles in this game. FF3 came up with them first, and I think it was Final Fantasy Adventure that gave them the name, but this is the game where they have a decent-sized presence.





used in the 1000 year old war are sealed.

That's the only other notable landmark on this continent. We'll run into it shortly.



NEW MAGIC TIME

This shop sells L4 magic for the three classes. Time to finally get some upgrades!



Drain's drain. It's never going to be interesting. Break can instantly kill an enemy, though I don't know how effective it is. It's only single-target, though, so that kinda hurts it a bit. Bio's a step-up from the L2 elementals, and it's poison-elemental as well. Bio's definitely the big winner out of these three.



Blink nullifies two physical hits for one character, while Shell reduces magical damage. Both spells are definitely worth having.



Return is an interesting spell, as it'll completely reset the battle back to the very beginning, including whatever status your characters started the battle with. Kinda useful if you don't want to reload a save, especially with the loading times of this version. Slow2 casts slow on all enemies, though usually you'll only use Slow on bosses, and most of those are just one target. Comet is the Time Mage's only attack spell for a long time, and it's pretty random, though it can also be very powerful. Comet's the big one here.





Also, a ton of weapon and armor upgrades. Unfortunately, all that magic bled me dry, so all I buy is a spear in case I get a chance to swap Galuf to Lancer.









The dancing's kinda lengthy, so I'm not going to bother animating it. Think of it as Bartz getting prepartion for when he gets into the Dancer job.



You even get a bit of money out of it.



Hidden away is yet another piano. It's easy to miss this one.



Anyway, we can sleep here for free, which doesn't seem like good business for an innkeeper in a town that nobody ever visits. Whatever, a free heal is kinda welcome out here.

SILENCE





Anyway, since it's a free inn, that means stuff's going to happen.





right down your throat!

In RPGe, it's throat-soothing wine, and I believe the GBA version suggests it's beer. No matter what the version, it's apparently good shit.



What's up?
Can't sleep...
Have a seat and tell me all about it.



X-Death's castle...
Even if I did get in, the Barrier would have gotten me... I'd no idea they finished it! In fact, if it weren't for you all I'd 'a been...
Galuf...

So the heroes getting kidnapped and ruining Galuf's plans ended up saving his life. Somehow. Even though they all still got flung away by the barrier. I guess it would've scattered the army. Good thing for Krile the barrier extended just to the end of the bridge.



No reason, really.



Aww, knock it off, Galuf!



So there's no new plot info other than the barrier bit, it's just a nice touching moment between Bartz and Galuf strengthening their friendship. I love scenes like this that don't actually contribute to the plot or even add much character development, but are simply scenes where the characters interact with each other. I wish more games would do this, as maybe other than FF13 no other games in the series really have characters just shooting the shit with each other.

-----



Anyway, that's all there is for this town.





You can kinda see our current position. Still got a bit of a walk ahead of us.



Here's a Mandrake. That's all I have to say.



Here's the castle mentioned before.





There's actually not much to this place other than a couple of difficult enemies.



This fucker's pretty resilient, and even has auto-reflect. He's also very difficult to run away from.







He hits very hard, and has a nasty attack called Zombie Breath. If the attack kills anyone, they become a zombie.



He doesn't hit anyone with it, but everyone dies instead.

Anyway, once we go through a few rooms...







These must be... The legendary 12 sealed weapons! They really do exist after all!
The same ones used in battle 1000 years ago...?
But they are all petrified...
Well after all, they are 1000 years old.



So there are twelve different weapons here, and these are considered to be the "ultimate" weapons. Pretty much the high-end stuff like Excalibur and Masamune and stuff that's prevalent in other FF games are common here. Of course, there may be some weapons that are better than these.

At any rate, we can't actually do anything with them for a long time. Really, there's nothing to do here, so let's check out a couple of spells.





Here's Bio in action, doing some decent damage.





And Blink in action.



Another decent walk later, and we reach a nice chokepoint into the next area.











A Moogle?
They're odd little creatures that live in the woods. Scared of everything and almost never show their hides!



Did you know Reina likes animals? Because Reina likes animals!

Though I like her line in the RPGe translation, "Let's get him!" like she wants to capture it to skin its pelt or something.





Anyway, we've got a dungeon here.



This dungeon's gimmick is automatically moving you. It's possible to get into a couple of encounters without being able to heal between them.



There's Mog Eaters there, whose only interesting aspect is their awesome name.



Acrophises are annoying because of their high defenses.



Magic helps out considerably.



Faris picks up $toss, the only really useful ability from the Samurai's set.



So once I hit land, I swap her to Time Mage so she too can start working on L4 magic. I also give her Earth since she can give it a bit more oomph, and so she still has some offense beyond Comet.



BloodSlimes are what you expect from flan enemies. Highly resistant to physical attacks, so you gotta use magic.



Here's Slow2 in action, just to show it off.



And here's Comet to show it off.



Reina literally calls him "Mr. Moogle" here in the GBA translation. I prefer her simply screaming "MOOGLE" instead.





Anyway, boss time.



This guy is undead. I actually won't be cheesing him with a Phoenix Down or whatever.



Obviously, Galuf tears into the guy with Fire2.





The only nasty part about this guy is that he has ???/Revenge, doing Max - Current HP damage. He kills both Bartz and Faris with it.



Reina's attacks don't do much damage, so I spam Critters in hopes of Nightingales.



In the end, a comet kills the dinosaur.

Yes, I made a GIF just for that joke.





Anyway, Bartz tries to calm the thing, but it runs away.



here.
kupo...
You'll be alright.
Kupo! Kupo!





What's it doing?
It looks like it's calling someone...

It's...not. The other versions make it clear it's asking us to follow him.





It does this to simulate shaking its head. You see, this world also has an ass-busting monster waiting in the desert to wipe you out.







Instead, you just walk around outside the desert until you reach this chunk of forest, which is the end of this side of the continent.



That's enough for today, though. We'll do that next time, and also run into one of the game's best grinding spots, so maybe we'll actually start making progress in our jobs.