Mission: Emerald Keep
-The Royal Mage Academy hires me to find a giant emerald crystal in the Salikawood. Is this a crystal, or a capital-c Crystal?
-There’s a new rumor about Clan Borzoi. They’re restricting merchant trade.
-A group of folks is in the Salikawood already. They feel abandoned by the Royal Mage Academy..?
-This lead Nu Mou is… oh, it’s Babus! The Poplio looking dude. Mewt sent him out to research someone “who means him ill.” Marche.
-Marche is not the subtlest character in the FF-verse. He flat out tells Babus, “I just wanted to change the world back to what it used to be!” as if Babus has any clue wtf he’s talking about.
Plus, Babus has a life’s worth of memories. Even if Marche is right, and this world was just constructed, in Babus’s mind he’s served the prince for years.
-Thankfully, Babus is a “lead from the front” type guy. He rushes out and we take him out quick. The tougher boss fights are the ones who stay behind their allies.
-He’s not a bad guy. He legitimately cares for Prince Mewt.
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Mission: Pale Company
-A ghost was seen in Nargai Cave. The residents can’t sleep with all the moaning, so I go check it out.
-Nargai Cave is spooooky. A flickering white thing appears in front of Marche.
-lol Marche is super casual. “Funny… here I am, looking at a ghost, but I don’t feel scared at all.” Is it a friendly ghost? WILL IT JOIN MY PARTY? Maybe a permanent version of the party member I got on the Phantom Train in FFVI?
-The ghost leads us deeper inside.
-Warp time. We get warped to another crystal room. The ghost got warped too.
-A totema emerges from the crystal and absorbs the ghost.
“No one but my master may approach the world thread!”
I doubt Mewt’s the master.
-This totema is Adrammelech. He summons three dragons, and unlike Babus, he’s behind them.
-The law here sucks. No color magic allowed. [Later edit: it’s not too bad. I can still use Aero and Water and stuff. I just can’t use the ability menus literally named after colors, like red, blue, and black.]
-I DID MY FIRST COMBO AND IT WAS AWESOME! I need multiple party members adjacent to the enemy with an active combo ability and JP.
-Took out the dragons and focused on Adrammelech. He starts by obliterating my MP, but his real strength is, well, his strength. His single-attack hits one-shot my party members.
-Victory! Adrammelech explodes. Three ghosts emerge and fade. They must have been part of the totema’s spirit.
[Later edit: I got Adrammelech as a bangaa totema, and he’s awesome.]
-Marche thinks the crystals are more than just magic. Whatever they are, they’re powerful enough to create these races and this world.
I swear to god game, if you say that the magic was “a child’s imagination” or something, then… I’ll probably be okay with it! I can easily see it going that way.
-The crystal shatters. I warp back to the cave.
-Babus meets me in here. He senses that I did something against the prince.
-As if to emphasize how right he is, we hear Mewt weeping. “M-mama? Where are you, mama? Where…?”
-The warping effect appears again, bringing Mewt to us.
HE’S LONELY! Lost. He vanishes before our eyes.
-Babus turns to Marche. He starts to accept the possibility that Marche is telling the truth about this world being newly created, but even so – why destroy it?
BABUS: “What do you have in that other world that you do not have here? Money? Power? Something worth causing the prince so much pain for?”
Hypothetically he’s got family back home, but we haven’t really heard much about them.
Marche doesn’t have an answer. He’s expressed a vague sort of homesickness before. Nothing beyond that.
BABUS: “What – nothing? You would have the prince suffer over nothing?”
BABUS RACKING UP POINTS LIKE MICHAEL JORDAN
-Babus ports away to comfort the prince. We’ll see him again, and I hope Marche can at least come up with a better answer for why he’s intent on destroying this world in the meanwhile.
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Baguba Port
-I accidentally click on the new area (Baguba Port) way across the world map and manage to barely dodge like three random encounters along the way by pure luck.
-Cutscene. We’re at a clan hall here and a moogle awaits us. It’s Montblanc’s lil bro, Nono. HE’S SO CUTE
-Nono’s an apprentice gadgeteer. He just finished building an airship, but someone hijacked it on its maiden voyage!
-The hijackers are in Jagd Dorsa. Judges can’t go into Jagd, so no laws. Yay!
-…or not. Montblanc is wary.
OHOOOO! So it seems like when laws are in effect, nobody dies. We can defeat others or knock them out, but nobody dies. The judges STOP DEATH ITSELF. Talk about overpowered.
-People stay away from Jagd because without the laws, you can die. I don’t disagree with them. Even in a meta sense, I prefer the laws of FFTA if it means not risking permadeath like in FFT.
This death-without-laws is fascinating in the context of this world. If it’s really Mewt’s wish world, then the concept of an area where no one can tell you what to do having this massive and terrifying downside is powerful.
Sort of like how kids often love freedom and doing what they want, but only to a point. When that structure really goes away – say, with the loss of a parent – the resulting “freedom” can seem a lawless nightmare.
This also reminds me of that Truman Capote quote: “The problem with living outside the law is that you no longer have its protection.”
-Marche loves his friend, Montblanc. So much so that he’ll risk his life to help Montblanc’s little brother.
-I wonder where Marche’s little brother is. I don’t think we’ve seen Doned yet in this world.
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Mission: Jagd Hunt
-The music here is more serious and intense than prior music. Fitting, given the new threat of death.
-The hijackers attack. One of them is even named Monid! He’s a human in this incarnation of Ivalice, not a bangaa.
-The adamantoises are brutal in this game. They have a disable that can hit from across the screen.
At least it hits enemies too.
-It’s a tough fight. [Later edit: not quite on the level of the coming Cursed Bride, but still.] Victory.
-I return to Nono. We got a reward for capturing the thieves, so we give him a chunk of money to help repair his airship.
I thought we’d get this as our main airship, but he plans to turn it into a merchant ship.
-Interesting! A message says I can use “Link” to access that merchant ship. I go into the Link menu, and there’s lots here about allying with clans and stuff. I need to check this out next time. I had assumed “Link” was the multiplayer feature only. Not so.
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Mission: Cursed Bride
-One mission has us fighting a Lilith who hid her true form to marry someone. I… kind of feel bad for her?
Of course, context matters. Does she intend to eat her mate or something like that? Or is it more that there’s some terrible and unwarranted stigma against lamias and they have to disguise themselves to live remotely normal lives?
(Probably the former, but still.)
HOLY CRAP SHE SO MUCH STRONGER THAN ME! My party is level 10-14, and she’s like 26. If I start to get a bunch of missions like this then maybe I’ll need to do some random encounters. I’ll avoid it if I can help it. I don’t like grinding for levels. I’d rather just play through the stories and missions that interest me naturally.
-Okay. I can do this. Milly’s piercing damage does like 28. Only a drop in the bucket of her 250-ish health, but enough to chip away. The others in the party do 8-10 damage.
-Glad I didn’t reset. It’s a really tough fight, but it levels me up a lot. I surround her and slowly but surely take her down, healing up along the way.
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Random Missions, Combat, Rumors
-I love this party member’s dispatch mission failure text.
-CHOCOBO STAMPEDE!
-Some of the jobs abbreviations are obvious – like, I know BLU means blue mage – but others are not. Still not sure what ILV will be. Just discovered EMT. It’s an elementalist, not a paramedic.
-Lots of dispatch missions are closed to me due to needing certain items. Stuff like the homework-helping mission I can’t do without a dictionary.
Not really sweating it. There are tons of missions available in the log, hundreds, but I see lots of them as optional. Could definitely see myself doing a more completionist replay down the line.
-More adorable missions, like helping this kid settle a bet about his favorite toy.
-omg this moogle’s charm ability is “Tail Wag.” Is that… is that a sexy tail wag, or “aww adorable” tail wag? I suppose it depends on who he’s charming.
-I think I cracked the code on dispatch missions! On the screen where I select who to dispatch, the party member I hover over has an icon. I wait a second and they change their stance to one of three things: cheering, walking, or holding their head in defeat.
This seems to indicate how likely the party member is to succeed. Cheering means they’ll probably succeed, walking means maybe, defeat means they’ll probably fail.
I tested this with a clan archer. He hung his head at first, but when I geared him up and returned to the dispatch select screen, he started cheering, indicating he was now ready to succeed in the mission.
Sick knuckles, bro!
-Completed a couple of Montblanc’s thief A-abilities. This opens up juggler and gadgeteer.
-I’m not a fan of juggler – which is too bad, since the jester-ish costume is adorable. It’s one of those jobs that throws items and weapons. Haven’t tested gadgeteer yet.
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Next time: more crystal stuff probably, but I’ll also check out the “Link” option.
