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Ship
-So we had enough reach fuel to reach the Adamant Isles. I thought this was the place where Ceodore’s Tale started out, but I was mistaken. This is a deserted island instead, or at least an island with no non-monstery towns.
-Yang will go out to get fuel on his own again (palm oil), and now I can control Ursula.
-Night falls. It’s been a while, Ursula gets worried, and heads out after her dad. A retinue of unnamed monks follows her.
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Adamant Isles - Ursula
-Full moon. DAMN. Full moon is worst moon. It hinders melee, and no matter how often I used the “Inn” on the ship, the moon stayed full. I guess this is by design, but it’s annoying.
-Liliths are on the island! This is rough with weak melee, since they use “Slap” to retaliate every time. At least silence doesn’t hurt my little monkly band.
-And… flashback? To when Sheila told Yang when she was pregnant. He did a little happy dance, and was clearly both overjoyed and a bit freaked out.
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Adamant Isles - Yang
-Shift of perspective. Now, instead of controlling Ursula and her monk friends, we get a solo Yang.
-The map and combat portions here are fairly straightforward. Both on Ursula and Yang, we’re in a forest setting that’s a little bit mazey.
-Flashback: Training. Yang is training right before Ursula’s birth, to help keep his mind off his nerves.
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Adamant Isles - Ursula
-HEY GAME. STOP MOVING URSULA TO THE BACK ROW. She does better damage than the other monks. She has a heal, but rarely needs it, so STOP PUTTING HER IN THE BACK.
-Flashback: Ursula as a kid!
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Adamant Isles - Yang
-Pretty easy combat so far, even solo as Yang.
-Flashback: Yang is hesitant to train Ursula. He worries that she’s too obsessed with strength above honor or wisdom.
-Sheila calls him out on that, saying that she’s already as honorable and graceful as you could want a kid to be. Yang admits this – he’s just worried about her, and doesn’t want her to get hurt.
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Adamant Isles - Ursula
-This time in the forest is much tougher. The combat isn’t bad, but I get a bit lost navigating the forest.
-FINALLY! The lunar phase changed to waning. Ass-kicking time!
-Ursula finally finds a grove of palm trees, where she’ll get the palm oil for fuel (I guess?). And… boss time!
-It’s an Adamantoise. In FFIV, these things were easy mobs, standard, on par with other mobs in the Antlion Cave for example.
But not this one. This Adamantoise must have teleported in from FFII where it was a seriously nasty boss fight, because it’s not fucking around. It does massive damage and all melee hits only do one point of damage. He knocks all the monks down to 1hp (except Ursula). Things look bleak, until…
-Flashback: Monks training. Ursula’s not with them, but she’s looking on from the side. Yang put a large boulder in the city and is asking the monks to break it. They’re not doing well.
Yang tells them to look for a weak point. He demonstrates, giving the boulder a single precise strike that cracks it.
-Back in the present, Ursula remembers this.
Past meets present.
She finds the weak point. And in jumps Yang to help!
-Ursula now has a new attack, “Tenketsu.” The animation is pretty cool, as she hops on the mob and does some precision strike for massive damage. It doesn’t do a ton at the moment because the Waning Moon hurts its effectiveness (I think it counts as a thrown weapon), but still big.
-Tough fight!! But we win. After her initial Tenketsu, all of them could hit the Adamantoise for normal damage. I guess she opened a wide crack in the shell.
-Yay! Yang will formally train her. This makes me unreasonably happy.
-Learned “Twin Wing Frenzy” band, a band attack that allows Yang and Ursula to do MASSIVE damage to a single mob. “Twin Wing Frenzy” also sounds like a pretty good speedmetal band name.
-Back to the ship. Set sail for Baron. AND WHIRLPOOL!!
Those pesky shackled Eidolons.
-End of tale. We don’t actually see the ship go down, so it’s possible that it escaped somehow, but I kind of doubt it. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t think Yang or Ursula died. I just think the ship got destroyed.
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Next time: Kain’s tale, where we hopefully find out wtf he’s teaming up with Evil Moon Girl.
