LogFAQs > #949616187

You're a tad late Rango but thanks for the advice! I agree the encounter rate is a bit high. No Deathgaze encounters yet.

First off we land in a curious hole in the mountains down south, where we're encouraged to split into two parties. I am initially worried that I've triggered endgame or postgame stuff by accident, but thankfully this appears not to be the case. As I only have 6 party members right now I decide to come back later.

We then head to Narshe, which is almost completely abandoned. The game hints that we need Locke here to open the doors (I am only now, dozens of hours in, realising the pun in his name.) and I'm just about to call this a wash and come back later when I remember the secret entrance to the mines. We find Mog back at the Moogle Hideout (are the others dead? :( ), and he joins us and tells us the yeti should be somewhere in the mines. I can't find the yeti, but I do find an Ice Dragon. Or rather, the Ice Dragon finds me. I'm not looking where I'm going and run right into it.

Props to the game for making each dragon fight feel different, there's a bit more to them than just selecting the opposing spell to their element. This one has a bunch of spells I haven't seen before including Northern Cross, Avalanche and Absolute Zero. We are introduced to a new status effect, Frozen, which can't be healed by Esuna or Remedy. After being stumped a bit I decide to try using Fire to undo it, which works! Very proud of that one lol, especially using the weakest mage to make sure we don't take that much damage. Once we've solved that trick we manage to get through this fight, though it's still annoying as sometimes the entire party is frozen at once. 3/8 down.

Soon after the Ice Dragon we reach our goal here, the frozen Esper Valigarmanda. From the wording it seems to let us fight because of our Magicite, so not sure if I could've attempted this back in the pre-apocalypse times. Anyway the Esper has the same frozen gimmick as the last boss, but is also very fond of using Rasp, and is immune to physical damage. It can be tricky to get enough damage going, it seems to be immune to Bio as well as other status effects, but thankfully its attacks don't do very much damage once we are Shell'd and Regen'd up. We can use Rasp ourselves and with a couple of Ethers stashed away Celes's Fira eventually melts our new friend down, and Valigarmanda (is this name taken from mythology or something?) agrees to join us and I guess dies, giving us access to the -agas! OK it's x1 so will take a while but woo! I get sick of roaming the mines looking for the Yeti and the encounter rate is bugging me so I decide to come back here later.

Next up we head to the Veldt to look for Gau, and wind up in the Cave of the Veldt, where we're told we need a gap in the party to recruit him. More importantly Interceptor is here, and following him through the cave we eventually find a badly wounded Shadow! We dispatch of the nearby Behemoth King with the usual tactics, and then kill the second from behind us much faster thanks to everybody being buffed already. Shadow is saved, so we take him to... Thamasa? Surely there is civilisation closer than that >_> He sleeps in Strago's house (perhaps this makes more sense if we have Strago back by now) and we seem to witness a dream of Shadow without his mask, telling his dog to stay with his daughter? Not really following this 100%, I remember somebody mentioning Shadow's dreams earlier in the topic but I didn't manage to see them before.

Anyway we have to leave Shadow for now, and I head to the forests to the north as we were tipped off in the Cave of the Veldt to some tough dinosaurs that should give good rewards here. We beat a Tyrannosaur and receive Impartisan, a spear with comically low attack in the inventory. Well ok then! We successfully recruit Gau, who seems to have zero awareness of the world being any different, and head back to Terra to see how she's doing. Katarin is pregnant now and Duane is having concerns, but before we can resolve things Humbaba shows up again to attack. We handle it well enough thanks to Gau's Thunder Shield absorbing most of its attacks, until it Humbaba Breaths my two strongest fighters out of the battle.

Terra goes Super Saiyan and suddenly gets her powers back and then some, remaining in Trance mode the whole battle and annihilating the beast. She finally realises the revelation she was so close to before- it's love! She now wants to fight to protect those she loves and to make the world a better place, so joins us. I'm not sure what really changed between last time we were here and now, she already loved the kids and wanted to protect them, and now she wants the same thing but by leaving. It's a decent development though, I'm glad that the love she needed in the end was familial not romantic, and it makes sense for her to be so confused by it given how she's grown up. It's interesting how the game has shifted her to the sidelines so much, but we have her back now, presumably for good. I still hope we get some more background on the past between her and Celes.

Heading back to Thamasa we learn Shadow has traveled to the Coliseum (how, exactly?) to find an Ichigeki, which we conveniently picked up in the cave near him earlier. Hmm, I was told back in Jidoor that a man was looking for this weapon in the Coliseum, I wonder if that was a bit of an error to have that line of dialogue so soon or if that's what Shadow was doing before he went off to that cave we found him in. Anyway we put up the weapon for a fight and sure enough recruit Shadow once more.

Now seems a good time to head back to that hole in the mountains, and split into two groups- Celes, Sabin, Edgar and Gau, and Shadow, Terra, Cyan and Mog. Turns out this is just a really cool unique dungeon, the gimmick is a really nice way of getting me to try party members I don't normally use. I hope there's more stuff like this to come, it's very fun. The dungeon feels pretty long and the enemies are manageable but also annoying- some stop us from fleeing and others turn us to Zombies or cast Bio a lot. It doesn't help that after the first couple of chests the rest we find are all empty. I start to realise what's going on- the chests have all been looted, the location we're in is around where Vector was before, and I guess this might be a star-shaped mountain range (I didn't really notice it but it would track!). Love how the game does this, letting the player realise Locke must be here rather than just showing him to us.

Locke has been very noticeably absent so far in this world so it's only fitting he gets a grand old dungeon to welcome him back, and sure enough after a long long stretch we find him (thankfully I was with team Celes at the time, I didn't realise he'd be right there but she gets some unique dialogue). He discovers the Phoenix Magicite, which of course is the treasure that can bring someone to life. I thought he'd be on a fools' errand and learn in the end that there was no such life-restoring item, but this is Final Fantasy of course. Kinda makes a certain other FF game's crew look lazy for not bothering to try anything after a tragedy.

He does miraculously manage to bring Rachel back to life, though only for a short time. It's enough to give him closure and peace (and permission to bang Celes), and man he's lucky with how well Rachel responded to this! Though I guess she knows him and knows what he needed to hear. Props to him for actually succeeding in the end. We get the Phoenix Magicite and access to Reraise (fitting!) and Arise, and I equip it to Locke purely for sentimental reasons.

Unfortunately we've been kicked out of the cave so I have to go all the way back through to fight the Red Dragon I noticed earlier. It's easier than the other recent ones, except one massive attack it does near death, but we take it out. 4/8 down, and Strago is the only party member I need to get back. Plenty for today!

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Slowly becoming a Final Fantasy aficionado. Currently playing: FFVI
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