As Tellah outlines in a thought-bubble, the Earth Crystal allows the land of Troia to flourish. One wonders what all the other crystals did. I mean, the Fire Crystal doesn't have an obvious use, or does it?
Anyway, we move on and talk to everyone we see, like a good RPG player. For the most part, we're given a very warm welcome.
Because you can't have a strong matriarchal society without putting the guardswomen in skimpy uniforms! They can't even wear those without commenting on fashion.
Swiftly moving on, a guard with more armour explains the political nature of Troia:
Also in this main hall area, we find out that someone from Damcyan has washed up on Troia's shores. Hmm, could it be Edward? I enter the infirmary and talk to one of the healers, who gives the victim a backhanded prognosis:
So Cecil and the others head back into Troia Town and I basically make everyone re-equip. Some people were fine, like Yang, but Cecil basically had to undergo a full costume change and wield a very terrible 'Fireshard' which does measly damage. I imagine he won't be very helpful to me in the next dungeon.
To get to the Lodestone Cavern, we need to take a Purple Chocobo because the airship can't land in forests, for obvious reasons. We take the Chocobo onto an island north of Troia's mainland, and venture into the cavern!
Cid helpfully tells us this when we were *already* in the cavern.
Anyway, it's a fairly short dungeon. Cecil was pretty useless swinging what looked like a hot dog on a stick around, so Tellah and Yang were indispensible. Especially Yang, as his Flame Claws worked great against the enemies. But Tellah and his flame rod could rack up the damage as well.
I don't normally comment on dungeons much, because there's not really a lot to say, but look, it's a Mindflayer! I actually first saw one in FFXII so it is nice seeing some enemies in their original appearances.
Apparently, Edward has a sixth sense. He decides to get our of bed, despite whatever vague illness he's suffering from, and help us out with the power of music.
Apparently the Dark Elf really hates Edward's music, so maybe Edward's just an awful Harpist?
Either way, his music stuns the Dark Elf, meaning he can't weight down our equipment. We're given the opportunity to re-equip and fight the Dark Elf once again. Halfway through the fight he turns into a Dark Dragon, but honestly he's just easy.
Soon enough, we find ourselves at the Tower of Zot. Weirdly, the Tower of Zot appears to reside in the skies; our airships travels vertically and fades to black to get to the tower.
Inside the tower,Kain challenges us to scale the tower towards Rosa, who is naturally on the top floor of the Tower. Unfortunately, Rosa doesn't have long hair for us to climb up, so we're gonna have to do this the traditional way: killing a ton of enemies.
The Tower of Zot is surprisingly small. It only has roughly five floors to it, and there's no hidden gimmicks like super-secret passages or invisible treasure. Just a floor, a few branching paths, and some chests. And enemies. The enemies were fine.
One interesting enemy is called the Soldier...ess? I mean that term doesn't even exist. A female soldier is a soldier, and is called as such.
They're pretty evil. Also, they're The Magus Sisters! FF experts, do they appear in a previous game, or is this their first appearance? Because I only know them from their rather more insectoid appearance in FFX.
Anyway, so their Delta Attack, unlike in FFX, is far less deadly. All it involves is Sandy casting Reflect on Cindy, while Mindy bounces off that magic. I mean, it all sounds highly convoluted. They'd be better off just attacking.
Their 'killer' strategy is also easily dismantled.
So what I did here was silence Sandy so she fails to cast silence. Unfortunately for Cindy, Mindy doesn't realise this and casts a cool blizzara on her own ally.
Suffice to say it was all too easy. They were tripping themselves up with their strategy and that gave me plenty of time to just wail on them with my strongest attacks.
Gotta say I'm appreciating how status ailments play a factor more in this game. I've already had to use Slow, Break, and now Silence proves really useful.
Anyway, they're defeated, and we move on to the top floor.
Once we arrive, huge cutscene! We approach Golbez, demanding Rosa. He gives the classic villain response.
Golbez develops a growth spurt between the cutscene and the battle. He positively dwarfs Tellah.
Well, I say 'battle', because unlike other plot battles we can't even do any actions. We just watch Tellah cast -ga tier spells like they were small gusts of wind.
Eventually Tellah decides to go for it and unleah Meteor. It's got a pretty badass animation.
And so that's the end of Tellah's revenge plot. As revenge plots goes, it was pretty obvious where it was going. His hate-filled revenge was never going to go well.
At least we didn't have several chapters of teen angst, like the other FF revenge plot I can recall.
Anyway, we wake up Kain, who is full of apologies and doubt about whether his actions were all mind-controlled or not.
Anyway, Kain explains his (also intensely creepy) motivations. "I just wanted you by my side, all tied up."
Now that we have Rosa and Kain back, I take the time to re-equip everyone and dole out some augments. I got three augments from Tellah, and I gave some of those to Yang. Rosa got Dualcast, so she can buff and heal more more efficiently.
Anyway, we no sooner enjoy this moment than the next archfiend appears: Barbariccia.
The main gimmick with this fight is when barbariccia enters her tornado form. Foreshadowed in the cutscene before the fight, our returning ally Kain is the only person who can break through the form. His Jump attack knocks her out of the potentially deadly form, disabling her from using her strongest attack.
All in all, another easy-ish fight. Honestly the main concern at this point is Rosa's astonishingly low health. Other than that, the fight was easy enough after Yang focused three times.
After the fight is ended, Barbariccia gloats that we won't be able to fight the fourth (and presumably strongest?) archfiend. That, and she decides to do the age-old trick of destroying the Tower. Rosa gets us out of a bind by casting Teleport and we land in Cecil's bedchambers. Case of Freudian Magic, perhaps?
Either way, Kain reveals a shocking surprise: turns out there's four Dark Crystals in the underworld, of all places.
What's this all for? Kain has some news for us as well:
So, Golbez's plan is to gather the crystals and go to the moon because... there's clearly something bigger at play here.
So our path is set: find a way into the underworld and capture the Dark Crystals before Golbez does. If I know my RPGs, I sense we'll ultimately try hard and fail to do so. No harm in trying though, right!
Tune in next time where we re-visit a place we've been to before, uncover the entrance to the underworld and say hello to yet another old friend.
In this episode of FFIV, Cecil and the others descend into the Underworld of the land to seek the Dark Crystals. We encounter an old friend and defeat some enemies! We also say 'lali-ho!' to the Dwarves, which would make a really harsh drinking game if you had to drink to each and every lali-ho.
So we start off in Cecil's bedchamber. The game doesn't really give you many hints as to where to go, and you're expected to ask around to find out that Agart is the place to go. Thankfully, I already visited Agart and found out about their Dwarven ancestry, earthquakes and general weirdness. Yup, definitely the place to go.
Anyway, we crash-land, thankfully not in the lava. Suffering from the intense heat, we work our way towards the only settlement in the area. I am shocked how Kain can even survive in full armour.
And how. To save on screenshots I didn't screenshot every lali-ho but just play through this section to a lali-ho drinking game, talking to everyone, and tell me you won't get smashed by the time you leave.
We talk to the Dwarven King, who's pleased that we aren't currently ashes in the lava sea.
We ask for an update on the Dark Crystals. Sadly, Golbez already has two of them, one is right here and the other is in a place literally called the Sealed Cave. The Dwarves love those practical, straight-to-the-point names.
The King asks for Cid's airship to aid in the defence, so Cid leaves us to plate the Enterprise with mythril to protect against heat. So we're down to four once more.
Meanwhile, we enter the Crystal Chamber upon hearing a strange noise. Turns out somebody is spying on us!
As it happens, the super-secret hiding spot isn't so secure because the spy was already in the Crystal Chamber. Whoops. Doesn't anybody post guards in these rooms anymore?
Anyway, we fight the dolls. They have this very annoying strategy of merging to form one big doll which actually packs a pretty big punch, but the fight is more of a slog than anything else. Having Protect and Slow up at all times was a huge help. Kain basically stayed out of trouble by jumping all the time.
In the end, the dolls are defeated but not before letting Golbez know where we are. As if on cue, look who turns up, bringing all the sass with him.
Well turns out the fight was unwinnable, so that's alright. Golbez continues to gloat as he downs the team. But look who's here to save the day?
It's Rydia! Well, actually, it's Adult!Rydia now. For some reason. I'm sure we'll find out. She proceeds to lay the beatdown on Golbez with just a little help from her friends.
I've got to say, the summon animations seem really cool. I'm impressed. Also this is the first time I have Ramuh as a summon in the FF series, so hello to him!
The fight is over, and Golbez is seemingly finished. Rydia stands with us. It's obviously we've got some catching up to do.
Tune out next time as we end on this cliffhanger. In the next episode, we finish up our reunion with Rydia, recieve some new instructions from the Dwarven King, and proceed to ignore them in favour of roaming the castle for goodies. You'll be surprised what's lurking in the castle!
Next episode will be tomorrow as I already have all the pictures ready. See you soon!
She also tells us that she can no longer use White Magic, but her Black Magic and Summoning Arts have really strengthened, which is convenient because Rosa is our resident White Mage.
Rydia also tells us that the Queen of the Feymarch warns of future events to come, prompting her to help Cecil and Kain despite what happened at Mist.
Heartwarming though this is, the team lets their guard down. Golbez was only faking it! He rises up and takes the Dark Crystal from under our noses! Grrr!
Why we didn't, I don't know, check he was dead, or at least tie him up, or surround him with guards, is beyond me. But nevermind, what's done is done.
The Dwarven King tells us that Golbez is heading to the Sealed Cave to get the last remaining Dark Crystal. However, we concoct a crazy plan to infiltrate Golbez's base of operations right here in the Underground: the Tower of Babil.
We enter into the easiest fight ever, effortlessly dispatching him. Thanks to our inspirational bitch-slap, Mopingway decides to get himself out of the gutter and improve his life! I'm sure we'll be seeing him again.
Talking to everyone and fulfilling a few easy optional objectives gives us the 'Reach' augment, which does something. I don't know, I haven't looked at it yet. But that's cool!
In the basement, we learn that the Dwarves call the Fat Chocobo something rather different.
Guess we'll find out in the next episode of FFIV as we infiltrate the Tower of Babil and try and steal all seven Dark Crystals. It's a bold move: will our heroes succeed? (probably not)
In this dark episode of FFIV, two more party members die in tragic circumstances. At this point, we might as well start placing bets on who it'll be next.
But that's for the thrilling climax! Before I started taking screenshots and actually, you know, play the game, I did some grinding. Didn't take so long, but now Rydia and Rosa have more health, which is a definite boon. Rydia started with sub-1000 HP, can you believe it? Now she's Level 42 and sports all the -ga spells, and combined with Bluff she can do some serious damage.
Grinding done, let's scale the Tower. As we approach, we start to hear some tank fire.
They stop firing just long enough for us to enter the main entrance without getting blasted to bits, so that's kind of them.
Inside, things seem... too quiet. Rosa also makes a comment about the design of the Tower. It seems very different from what else we've seen. The monsters though aren't so different, with only a few new ones. There's a Security Eye that summons a Flamehound when attacked - which at this point of the game is the toughest enemy - but with my ice weapons, they're a breeze.
So we go through the tower, picking up chests, fighting monsters, collecting our map bonuses. All exciting, standard dungeon stuff.
Rubicante! He gloats about sacking Eblan Castle for a bit with this Doctor Lugae character. He promptly takes off to do... something. Doctor Lugae seems very happy about this.
Just like an episode of Scooby-Doo, we've got a wacky doctor and his creation who comically misunderstands commands.
Anyway, this fight's easy. His creation goes down like the partially assembled mess it is. Doctor Lugae then ASSUMES DIRECT CONTROL of his creation and goes at us again.
Doctor Lugae turns into whatever that is. The main gimmick in this fight is the use of reversal gas. This basically means that when it is in effect, attacks heal, and healing magic hurts. As long as you plan around this it isn't so bad and can even be useful: Rosa dual-casting Curaja is powerful.
Doctor Lugae falls for the final time, telling us the Crystals are in the even-more-upper levels on the surface. He also cackles about the cannons charging up to defeat the dwarves. Drat!
With Doctor Lugae's key, we rush to the cannon controls.
We beat up the goblin captains who are manning the cannons (Golbez's regime giving equal opportunities to monsters apparently). Despite the fact that we literally beat them in a fight, we allow them to scamper back up to the controls to activate them.
Yang steps in to save the day, and literally kicks us out the room so we
Tune in next time when we do... something. The game doesn't really give us much of a clue as to the next plot point. Suppose we'll head to Baron and find out!
Last edited by Formalhaut; 06-05-2017 at 01:48 AM.
In this episode of FFIV, we rest up at Baron Castle and plot a way to enter the Tower of Babil once more, meeting a new party member along the way.
So when we last left off, we suffered a half-party wipe with both Yang and Cid dying to save the Dwarves and ourselves. At the last, Cid told us to head back to Baron.
Unsure of what to expect, we go speak to Cid's engineers.
We fly southwest to Eblan. Remember how we ransacked Eblan Castle earlier in an optional jaunt? Well turns out the survivors are holed up in a cave not far from the Castle. It kinda makes you wonder how Golbez's forces haven't already found where they live, seeing how they occupy the one cave system in the entire continent here.
See, Eblan Castle fell because they didn't go into the Samurai job class and learn Shirahadori and become immune to all physical damage.
Elsewhere in this little cave, there's an equipment shop where we sell a lot of stuff we no longer need, like staves, claws and hammers that are no longer in use. And there's even an inn, though I'm not sure how many visitors they'd get.
Rested up, we enter the next section of the cave and open a ton of treasures in just two maps.