Part 1: Update -I- Tutorial Town

[???]: Tick, tock, tick, tock...


We open with a small narration (sort of?), from a mystery girl.




[???]: Tick, tock...



The Brother is awake, having been asleep on the ground apparently.



He's got some fancy gauntlet on. No slots for stones though. Immediate disappointment.



Of course, since there's "The Brother", you're also going to get "The Sister".



She's got a gauntlet on the opposite hand. Her's is silver with a blue gem thing though.





They are on top of a huge-ass building. I'm going to assume there's like, a ladder or something hidden just out of view. I don't see any roof access to this place, or guardrails for that matter.



There's a few panning shots of the city at the street level, but it's all just brick and stonework. Nothing particularly noteworthy. While the cameraman is busy filming material for a tourism pamphlet as a side gig, the brother and sister have wobbly wandered over to the edge of the big building in kind of a zombie/half-awake looking state.


[???]: Time to wake up.




Our mystery girl says it's time to wake up, then proceeds to fall off screen, giving us a brief glimpse of some kind of butterfly wing hair accessories. Bad choice on the glitter kid, that shit is going to be stuck in your hair for eternity.



The brother and sister proceed to follow mystery girl's thought process and just lazily fall off the building.

Good riddance to those Kingdom Hearts looking goofballs. Now where's our Final Fantasy protagonists?



Dammit.

Huh...?



*Yawn* What a nap...



.....Oh, right. I gotta get to work.


-Plaza 99-





Controls are simple RPG style. Left Analog Stick/WASD moves the character around. Circle/B (or whatever the hell you assigned that to on keyboard) will make him do a tiny hop, which is useless and I don't know why they bothered to put it in. Select gives you a larger view of your map. That's all we can really do right now. Let's head to this job that the brother keeps yammering about.



The Star on the map/mini-map will signal where your main objective is. In this case, we need to go straight ahead and through those doors behind the pillars.

You only have limited camera control by the way. The Right Analog stick lets you slide the camera around a tiny bit.



-North Promenade-



We can only go in the one direction, so just proceed forward to Nine Bean Coffee, which is the brown building in the back.


-Nine Bean Coffee-

Hey, I'm here!



Huh? How'd she get in if no one's here yet?





Oh, right! She needs some water.

Oh, no thanks. A pint-- I mean, a cup of coffee, please. Oh, and bring the whole jar of sugar. I'm gonna need it.

Right, that's one cuppa joe. And I'll get you one of the big jars.



Also, no. Nobody is acknowledging the little thing on his head. It's just there.

I'm sorry, miss. This might take a while.

Hey, no hurry! Time's not an issue.

*Later*

Here you go.

Thank you.







Jesus, lady! Just drink soda if you want that much sugar! She puts 13 cubes of sugar in her coffee. That's about 52g of it, or a 500ml bottle of Coca-Cola. That mug looks like it's got about 250-300ml in it.

I'm not a coffee person though. Any bean lovers out there want to comment on how insane/reasonable 13 sugar cubes would be in a cup of coffee?



Hey! We've got a name from the sister!

Keep it down, Reynn. How 'bout acting your age, huh?

And there's the sister's.

Hey, don't talk down to me. Listen, last time I checked, little bro, I've been around a few minutes longer than you.

Okay, okay! I get it already! *looks to the customer* Very sorry!

I'm just going to establish this right out of the gate. Reynn is the sibling that pretends to be super mature (but is still childish enough to claim to be the 'older' one by a minute), Lann is the idiot. Lann's idiocy will waver between 'typical idealist JRPG protagonist' and 'unable to dress himself'. I just wanted to give you fair warning of what we're in for with these two, at least for a good chunk of the game.

Also, Lann is voiced by Josh Keaton in English and Soma Saito in Japanese. Reynn is voiced by Amanda Leighton in English and Sora Amamiya in Japanese.



So here are our protagonists for this game.

So, what's up? I'm all ears.

Well you don't have to get all sarcas-- Uh...

*Reynn somehow only just now notices the fox*

You really are all ears.

Uh, what?

Despite pointing up at it and Lann looking up trying to get a look at what she's talking about, the two of them choose to ignore it and move on.

Forget it. So Lann, have you seen anybody this morning?

Well, yeah. I mean, I'm looking right at you, aren't I? And there's that customer.



Aaah! H-hello.

You didn't even see her? Dude.

Yeah, but... Ugh, look. Come with me right now.

*Reynn proceeds to grab Lann by the arm and drag him out the front door*



So it's a quiet morning. Maybe they just...

I. Mean. No one!

Huh?

Lann, have you bumped into anyone today? Besides her?

Uh... now that you mention it, I guess not.

And this isn't setting off any alarms?

Should it?

You two really don't remember a thing.

Huh? What was that?



Reynn, manners.

You two really don't remember a thing.

Would you please just answer my question?

You can call me Enna... Kros. Enna Kros will work.



Enna Kros is voiced by Cassandra Morris in English and Kana Hanazawa in Japanese.

Okay, well... we woke up to a ghost town this morning. Maybe you know why?

Yes, you're quite alone. But you always have been.

Huh?

This world, it's always been the two of you. A world without time, one that ended when it began.

Wha? That's the weirdest thing I've heard.

But don't worry. Just because the world ended, doesn't mean that it's going anywhere. You know, I have been checking up on you two. Until now you were nothing but blank stares. So imagine my surprise when Lann took my order! What a morning.

Okay... now you're kind of scaring me.

So! Now that you're awake, we've got a story to tell.



Right the-here!

Tama is voiced by Lisa Kay Jennings in English, Ayana Taketatsu in Japanese.

Aaah! Who the honk put this thing on my head?!

This game is rated E10+ in North America by the way. So get used to hearing incredibly strange substitutes for curse/naughty words.

Yeah, I did try to mention it before.

You take it from here. I'll go on ahead and link up a path.

You the-got it!

Also, I hope you all like Starfire and/or Teen Titans GO! Tama's speech pattern involves sprinkling 'the' all over the place. It sounds exactly as fucking irritating as you would expect.

Huh? H-Hey, you can't just leave!

Salu-the-tations! The name is Tama and I'm the-here to help out. Does anyone the-have any questions?

Hmmm... Wait, I've got tons of questions!



That's the-seriously the first thing on your mind? Ugh... Now I the-see why Enna Kros was just about the-ready to throw in the towel.

We're not allowed to be confused?!

Hey whoa, take it easy there, Lann.

I thought you were upset too!

Let's start the-over. I'll make us some the-coffee.

Oh, yes please!

But... I already made some coffee before you got here. How can you just roll with this, Reynn?!

Chill the-ouuut. You'll live the-much longer.

Yeah, Lann. You shouldn't start out your morning with so much stress.

Oh! Would you the-like some sugar?

Three cubes for you, right, Lann? I'm good with just one.

Okay! I'll the-go and put the coffee on.



Check out the video at the end of the update by the way. The characters, Lann and Reynn especially, have a habit of making incredibly exaggerated/overly dramatic movements. I'm not a fan of that style, personally. It looks too goofy and also like they are trying too hard to make something funny.

It might seem like I'm complaining a lot, but I do genuinely enjoy the graphical look of this game. I don't like the Kingdom Hearts look of the human characters because I'm not a fan of Kingdom Hearts, but it still looks good from a quality standpoint. There is also something that will largely remedy my dislike of KH aesthetics, but we'll get to that in due time.



That's the-correct! Those the-marks on your arms are proof. You were born to work the-miracles!

Miracles? Our arms can... do that?

Dude...

How could you the-forget? You used to command a whole the-legion of them. You were masters of them: powerful, living illusions known as "Mirages"!



Oh...

So... we could have ruled the world? Because, what, we controlled these "Mirages"?

Well, that's what I the-heard.

From who?

What do you mean? Enna Kros the-told me, of course! But enough the-reminiscing. I've gotta the-teach you two to use Mirages again.

What? How's that?

First off, I'm the-going to present you with my very own prismarium!



With this prismarium, the Mirage inside becomes yours, and you can the-make it do the-anything and the-everything you command. So, let's the-try it right now in glorious combat!

Wait, what? Huh?



Too late! Combat tutorial incoming! Click here to watch the video!















Okay, go ahead and the-throw some attacks out there. To take action, you need to spend something called Action Points, also the-known as AP. You automatically gain a little the-bit of AP each the-time your turn comes around in battle. The amount of AP you need depends on the-what you're trying to do. So make the-sure you use them wisely!



As explained, attacks and Abilities a require a certain amount of AP to do which is dependent on the skill/action.

The game also uses the Active Time Battle system. ATB was designed by Hiroyuki Ito and first used in Final Fantasy IV. The meter wasn't introduced until Final Fantasy V. It was slightly tweaked from game to game from IV through IX, and also made some appearances in other Square games.

The ATB system in this game has three settings: Wait, Semi-Active, and Active. Wait will cause the battle to pause when your character's turn comes up, Active won't pause the battle even when you are looking through menus. Semi-Active will pause in the Classic Menu but won't in the Shortcut Menu style. I have always preferred Wait, personally.





There are two battle menu styles you can use, although you can swap between them with the click of the left shoulder button.



The classic style is the other one. This is closer to older Final Fantasy games where all of your options are laid out for you. I much prefer this style, to the point that you will never see me using the Shortcut version.

You can change between these whenever you want in battle, but the default style needs to be changed in the settings.



Anyway, we've got two abilities to use at the moment. Foxfire is a basic fire spell. Libra will let us scan the monster we're fighting and get some more info on it.





Yurugu is a Tama impersonator, one that we cannot catch in this battle. You can cycle through your characters using the shoulder buttons while you're here.

On top of Elemental Resists, you can also see Ailment Resistances by flicking the right analog stick.



We've got limited options, so Lann just takes a swing with his gauntlet and deals 45 damage.







Holding the right shoulder button will let you speed things up, by the way. There's an option to change this to a toggle if you want. Clicking in the analog stick will speed things up even further, although this is always set to toggle. I think this extra fast speed setting is a Maxima add-on, or at the very least a patch.

I the-knew that you had talent!





And here's the menu style explanation. This is another reason I don't use the Shortcut style. Items and Target selection can only be done in Classic.



A few more attacks and Tama finally calls it quits for this minor tutorial.



We get 10 EXP, but that gets divided between Tama and Lann. Mirages in the main battle party get a bigger share of the EXP, while the ones in reserve just get a small flat percentage. We also get 7 Gil (Gil is the term for money in the FF-verse).

The-figure it out yet? The two of you were un-the-surpassed. No the-Mirage could stand up to you!

Dude. Seriously?

Dude, the-seriously.

It's hard to believe.

I'm sure it is. As far as I can tell, you two have lost everything--all the memories and experience you've ever accumulated. Oh... but wait. Of course that would have happened when you and this world were spliced out.

Huh?

So not only did they the-lose the Mirages they had, they've been the-stripped of all their memories of the Mirages too? But, I guess that explains why all their other memories seem to be largely un-the-affected.

What?

Listen. Let me show you something.

*And everyone follows Enna Kros off to somewhere*


-Sylver Park-



That... is where you'll find all the Mirages you've lost.

You mean they're all inside this gate?

You got it. Are you ready to conquer them again?

So, um, if we do manage to find all the lost Mirages... does that mean we'll be able to remember the things we forgot?



Oh...

But, even if you don't remember Grymoire, Grymoire still knows a lot about you. You're certain to find traces and records of your past.

Okay... so, like...

You're saying, whether we remember anything about ourselves or not, we can still find clues about our past and the things we've done?

Correct. And if you keep on gathering Mirages, I think you might even meet your family in due time.

Our family?

Huh? Well I guess, it does make sense that we'd have parents.

Oh yes. So then... You going? You going? Will you journey to Grymoire?



Totally excited for it apparently.





After the twins jump into the portal, we get a Save opportunity. This brings the Prologue to a close.

Next time, we kick off Chapter 1 and find out what the deal is with this 'Grymoire' place. Also, we get to be Pokemon trainers and start catching a team of little Final Fantasy critters which are adorable as almighty hell.


Videos

Prologue Scenes

I won't be doing these videos for every dialog scene, I just felt that the Prologue would benefit from it. I'll mostly be doing videos for scenes that are important or cool or interesting, as well as the scenes where the Final Fantasy characters get introduced and talk with each other.