Summary: Gilgamesh’s forces attack the fleet, but we fight them off. We take a submarine to the tower that maintains Exdeath’s barrier, and split off from Xezat. We defeat Atomos atop the tower and destroy the barrier, but Xezat dies. I get unexpected Galuf feels.
Next Day, on the Fleet
-We wake up to the most awesome music: “Clash on the Big Bridge!” Yay!!! Exdeath’s monsters are attacking the fleet.
-Xezat is a super badass.
-lol. The monsters attacking are called “Gobbledygook.”
-Been trying Lenna as a dancer, and that job leveled up. Her new ability? “Flirt.” LOL WHAT
-Guess who’s there to greet us on the prow of our ship, leading the attack?
-HI GILGAMESH!!!! Joined by his “faithful sidekick,” an abductor named Enkidu.
-Luckily, Galuf can !Control Enkidu to help turn the tide. We knock Gilgamesh off the ship. He tries to drag us down with him, but we hang onto the ship barely.
-Xezat sees us barely hanging onto the prow: “Hang in there!”
-The drake saves us, and we latch onto its tail. Xezat expresses his joy the only way FFV characters know how:
The magic of awful puns.
-Galuf’s response: “Oy.” Galuf just used a Yiddish exclamation. My life is made.
-We head down below the ship, to find…
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Submarine
-Hell yes. A submarine. Awesome in FFIII, awesome now.
-We go underwater to blow a hole through to the Barrier Tower, the tower help support the barrier protecting Exdeath’s castle.
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Barrier Tower
-MORE AWESOME MUSIC
-We’re headed to the top floor to blow the tower’s antenna, and Xezat will go below. He gave us whisperweed to keep in contact. Hi, FFIV!
-Neon and Traveler, but especially Traveler, look great. These two taught us two Blue Spells: Flash and Time Slip.
-Red Dragon! !Controlled it, but all its juicy abilities were only cast-on-self. It dropped Blood Sword.
-Weird. Faris can’t equip it except as a Knight. Even as a Knight it sucks, because it always (read: 100%) misses. Hm. Maybe there’s some “never miss” item that makes this thing usable at some point.
-“Level Trickers” deal massive damage to me with “Graviga.” At least I learned it as a blue spell.
-SUCH COOL MONSTERS IN THIS TOWER!!
The spooky…
The classic…
The iMacs…?
…?~~?? the dancing, magnet-wielding imps?!?!?
-Xezat got attacked down below, but used some zappy lightning thing to easily kill his attacker. Again: badass.
-Got a Gold Hairpin to halve MP use. This may make grinding with a Black Mage viable.
-Top of the tower.
-ATOMOS!! I’m a big Lovecraft fan, so I can’t help but love this boss’s art.
-Ow. Seriously tough fight, with seriously cool mechanics. He cast spammed Comet on us until one of us died, then he didn’t cast anything. Instead, he slowly sucked the dead characters’ body towards him. When it got close enough, he sucked the body into another dimension, and then repeated the cycle.
The cosmic corpse-eater.
The fight was really close. I couldn’t revive the dead characters efficiently because whenever I had no dead party members, Atomos would resume Comet spam. He’d sucked most of my characters’ corpses into that other dimension, but Bartz’s FISTS OF FURY finished the job. Whew!
-NO!!!! Xezat! He did his thing to destroy the barrier below, but it causes a fiery explosion feedback thing and kills him. He knew this was a one-way mission going in. RIP Xezat.
-Galuf is really distraught and crushed. It’s disturbing to me. He’s so often a goofy character that to see him emotionally shattered from the death of his good friend like this is kind of devastating.
-Bartz knocks Galuf unconscious, and they escape on the back of the wind drake.
-The barrier is destroyed.
-So is Galuf.
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Submarine
Galuf insists on waiting for his friend. There’s no chance he’s still alive, zero, but Galuf wants to wait anyway. Just in case.
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Next time: Not sure, but I’m guessing that with the barrier down, we’ll invade Exdeath’s castle. Final push/final dungeon? I’ve been wrong before about that in this game, so I’m only cautiously calling this.
