Part 33: Faris vs. Illusions

As a nice touch, Reina starts out KO'd, though a quick Raise spell and she's back to normal. She's a couple levels behind everyone now, but she's really close to mastering Ninja and is still a murder machine.



I missed her hitting hard four times in a row. Good times.



That big spot is where the Ancient Castle used to be. The castle is Surgate, or Zeza's castle where we picked up Float.



All that's new there is three scholars, one of whom will repeat the Sealed Book if you want.



Also, here's a Neogigas.



Anyway, we've got our airship back, though there's cutscenes to go through first.



If we fly over Tycoon Castle's old location, we'll enter the N-zone and the final dungeon. In fact, after this cutscene we could go ahead and do that, but there's still so much awesome stuff to show off first.



Do ye forget the aged Gill said we were nary a match for him?
The 12 fabled weapons are at Kuza. Come on!



So our next destination is Kuza to get some weapons. We aren't quite done yet, though.





They said none could control the power of The Void... Well how about now?!





Go! Destroy the entire planet! Let them see your absolute power!









And so goes Walz...





...Istory, maybe? Some random town nobody gives a shit about.











...The Moogle Forest...







...and Bartz's home town of Lix or whatever.



So when X-Death tries to destroy the world, he only ends up banishing a couple of podunk towns, a forest of weird bear creatures, and a castle whose entire guard was beat up by one elephant.

Amateur.









And then Bartz proceeds to slam the airship forward full-speed ahead, having it shake violently. In this version, you can see the game slow down significantly when going over land, while speeding up passing over water. Oh, Mode 7.









With that out of the way, let's get those weapons.







There's people from the Wind Temple for some reason.





They're...not very helpful.







If to break the seals ye seek... Stand before the weapons and speak. With a heart true and tall... Spells will fade with lithographs all.



Four lithographs x Three weapons each = All 12. For right now, though, let's take weapons that'll be most useful to me in the immediate future.





For each one, you can see exactly what weapon it is before unlocking it, which is handy since a lot of the blades look the same.





My first choice is the Holy Lance, as Krile has only Lancer and Black Mage left to master, and she'll be spending awhile in Lancer. The Holy Lance, as you probably guessed, is Holy-elemental and gives a minor strength boost.





Even though Faris is close to mastering Samurai, I figure she has enough AP to go that I can go ahead and give her Masamune. This weapon's gimmick is that whoever wields it always goes first in battle. So even though Reina's the fastest one right now, this guarantees Faris will go first every battle. Since Faris has access to Time and Blue magic, it's very handy for getting buffs up quickly.





Finally, I go Magus Rod because it boosts multiple elemental spells, handy for a Summoner. Unfortunately for Reina, there's not really a good non-Knight sword for her to use here, and since I plan to swap her to Sorcerer next for Magic Sword, she'll have to stick with other stuff for now.



And with that, I'm done for now. Gotta beat the next dungeon to get more weapons.





Gotta love those attack buffs.

Anyway, once we leave the room, we get another cutscene, complete with new music.





Hear me my servants who have been sealed in this N-zone!



Seek them out and kill them! It would be regrettable if they gained the 12 fabled weapons that beat Enuo...



Very well. Go now, my monsters, while I gain the full power of The Void...





Solid damage considering how buff this guy's defenses are. Reina averages 150 a hit on this guy, and even Bartz's Titans with Magus Rod only do 900 or so.

There's also a new monster now, X-Death's Soul or whatever, but I'll show that off if I run into one later.



We could go to the next dungeon now, but there's an absolute ton of things to do first, as there's so much delicious loot to gather.

First, let's return to Moore Village, which is west of the Pyramid (and in fact within walking distance, but I'm lazy).



The formerly locked door is now open. A further march in, and...





If you think you're brave, take the chest on the left. If you're a coward, take the one on the right. Well, which is it gonna be?



Cowardice, of course!





So, here's the deal. The other weapon, the Brave Blade, is a very powerful weapon in certain circumstances. It starts off being one of the most powerful weapons of the game, but running away can actually weaken it. On the flip-side, the Chicken Knife gets more powerful the more you run away. Considering the Brave Blade is Knight-only while the Chicken Knife can be used by any of the game's numerous knife-wielding jobs, and considering it's easier to just grind up the Chicken Knife than to spend the entire game without running away, the Chicken Knife's usually the better choice here.

That said, the Chicken Knife has a wonderful gimmick where attacking with it has a chance of forcing you to run away instead. There's ways around it, though, using commands like Focus, Mug, Dance, Sshot, what have you, so it can still become a powerful and very useful weapon in time.



So much to do...





Remember that town where Galuf got plastered? There's one thing to get here.



We can get a free Ribbon here.



Next up is the Pirate's Cave.



Faris will notice something and head off on her own.







Faris, what is it?
Faris, what do you see?
Ah? I thought I did see me old friend, Hydra.



Hydra's a girl in the GBA version, yet a boy here and RPGe. Who the hell knows.

Krile! Can ye see 'em?!
Hydra's spirit says it wants to help you, Faris...
Eh?!
He's a very gentle spirit...





Anyway, the point of this small cutscene is to get a new summon. Not sure what elements it deals, though all the FAQs agree that it does at least lightning damage.





Ferifa, so he named her Faris.

It makes more sense in the other versions, where her name is Sarisa. Faris couldn't actually say her name that well, thus becoming Faris. It kinda falls apart in this game, because her name is Salsa. If anything, her pseudonym in this game should be Fawful or something.





OK, we're done here.



Alright, so I'm cheating a bit here because I actually know where to go. There are NPCs that give you clues about this next location, but it's hard to know where exactly this place is until one of the later dungeons.



What you want to do is get into an encounter in this specific forest.





However, instead of getting into a battle, you end up here.



So the story of this town is that it was locked in time in The Void. With the whole X-Death business, they're back out and now we have a new town.





The reason I went ahead and came here early on is because the stores sell a ton of nice loot. Here, we can buy Elixirs, though they're ridiculously expensive.







Some nice upgrades for weapons and armor. Pretty much the best weapons you can get outside the 12 Sealed Weapons and the ones stronger than those, and some of the best armor outside the final dungeon or so.



However, each store has two merchants. The second armor one is accessed by touching this box to open a path to the back of the store.



Here, you get Dancer equipment that boosts the chance of Sword Dance triggering whenever you use Dance, the same Rings from Istory that absorb Fire/Water and protect against death attacks, and the Winged Shoes, an accessory that gives Auto-Haste. Fun stuff.



The obvious Magic merchant only sells Walz spells (since that town's gone) and Mini/Toad, since those are optional spells gotten from doing random shit.







Hello! This guy sells 2/3's of each set's L6 magic. Arise revives someone at full health, a White Mage staple. Dispel removes buffs and debuffs, which can be useful in certain instances. Doom and X-Zone both kill an enemy, yawn. Asper is Osmose, letting you absorb MP from other sources. Quick lets a character take two consecutive turns, which can be crazy and abusable, though it's high MP cost mitigates some of its brokenness.

That said, the trademark high-end spells aren't sold here. We have to earn those later.



A tip for a later, optional dungeon.



The back entrance of the pub lets us access the rest of the town.



Thief Knife has a chance of activating Mug randomly, which is nice.



Let's see... First, ya gotta go round the world on a yellow chocobo! Howzat?!

In a side-quest similar to the one in FF3, we get a reward from circling the world on a Chocobo. Unlike that game, though, the reward's actually decent. We'll get this another time.



Sweet!





No going in there, though the right path takes us to the other weapon merchant.



Mostly crap, though. Double Lance is awesome, of course, but I already stole those.



What we want to go is left.



Left to the game's final piano.





Excellent!

Once we take one more exit...





We get back the Black Chocobo!

The Black Chocobo is actually necessary to get a couple of things, as there's an entire area closed off by mountains that doesn't have a single spot the airship can land on, though there's forest for the Black Chocobo. I'll save those areas for later on, though.



Let's go to Crescent and get the last couple of songs from mastering the piano.





A couple of the NPCs here will mention Mirage, though not really pinpoint its location beyond "it's in a forest."



underground!

Mid's wandering around here, talking about Cid being trapped under the nearby tower. We can't go there yet, though.







Sing this in battle to increase your power.

For playing all but one piano, we get this handy song, which slowly boosts Strength. It'd be nice, except...



to raise your level.

...playing ALL pianos get us this song that boosts our level, which is a big portion of most formulas in the game. This is one of the best Bard songs in the game, and in fact, with this we now have all eight Bard songs.



Thank you!



Anyway, here is our next destination. This temple was completely inaccessible back when this was just Bartz's world, but the Big Bridge lets us access it now.

Next time, we tackle the next dungeon and maybe do some more side stuff.