Let's Play the BEST GAME EVER!!! (FFIX)

[Pumpkin]

So after copious amounts of grinding (har har), darn you Rebirth Ring, and some sidequesting, we are ready to resume our journey!
(SPOILER)
But first, here's some new things:

We can go to Chocobo's Lagoon now with our ship. It'll be a big detour with the river chocobo but it's worth it.

With river chocobo you can only dig in half of the lagoon, so it's half the time and half the price.

While hunting for Chocographs we get another Chocobolution!

With Mountain Choco you can head back to Chocobo's forest for some new stuff as well, which leads tooooo

And now Choco is officially more useful than our ship, although I guess we need to keep the ship around for party switching.

With your new ship and/or Ocean Choco you can go do some exploring and head to the Northwestern Continent for another little town

Esto Gaza is super pretty. There's not much going on there at the moment but you can pick up some new equipment.

Another note, when you have your River Choco and are heading to the Lagoon, the little island where you summon Choco has some super strong beasties. So either watch out or be prepared for some tough fights. If you can tough the fights out and have an abundance of tents and the like, this is a great place to grind. I got my party up to levels 50-60 here which getting my abilities learned.

ALSO do as much Chocograph stuff as you can on the world map. You'll get some amazing items. No matter how you go about it though, now is definitely the time to strengthen your party at least a little bit, especially since Steiner and Freya will probably be lower on the levels than the rest of your party.

So once aaaaallllll of that stuff is done, we head over to Black Mage Village to find it mostly abandoned.

But why did they go with Kuja?

And thus does the fear of death drive them to do bad things.

See, they really are just like real people!

Vivi, however, believes that Kuja is a liar

When Mr. 288 wonders if maybe they are really just puppets, Vivi asks where they went and Mr. 288 says he won't betray the others and tell us. Vivi then leaves to go see the two left at the Chocobo shack

The two at the shack are actually celebrating a birth!

Is little baby Chocobo :3

The happy couple then begins to cry

We head outside to see that Mr. 288 was listening in

Vivi then asks him how long until he himself stops

Vivi has to work through some of his emotions. He says when his Grandpa died, he was told not to be sad. But when he found out he would die, he didn't know what to feel. After seeing Garnet cry when Brahne died, however, he realized that he was sad and scared.

Having gotten through to Mr. 288, we learn the location of Kuja's super secret base

Having heard the conversation, Garnet goes back to berating herself for not being able to stop the attack on Alexandria

She starts wishing she were strong like Vivi, when little Eiko comes to the rescue

We head over to the desert to find his palace. You'll see four quicksand things and if you pick the wrong one you'll have to fight some antlions. When you do find the right one, it turns out Kuja had been waiting

After locking us in tiny circular rooms and threatening us with fiery death, Kuja has a proposal

You get a choice but you don't really get a choice.

With that, Zidane and Cid are let out of their room and Zidane is summoned to Kuja's private bed chambers.

This is getting kind of indecent, I know, but stay with me here

He will even send us on his fancy airship, the Hilda Garde I. As for why he doesn't just go himself

Such a flatterer

We get to pick 3 party members to join us. Keep in mind that whoever is left behind will form another party, so try to balance for that while also keeping in mind you can't use magic while in Oeilvert. You can use it to heal up if you leave and whatever, but that's up to you.

I usually put Garnet in my Oeilvert party but I decided to do something different this time and have a physical party at Oeilvert and a magical one at the Desert Palace, so I took Steiner, Freya, and Amarant with me.

So after telling Kuja he'd better keep his promise to keep our friends safe, we head out

On the airship ride over, we get to see our best friends, Zorn and Thorn again!

But they started developing a consciousness without a strong sense of self, which has led them to being easily manipulated.

Zorn and Thorn then laugh about how stupid the Black Mages are to join them when they won't be extending their lives anyway and they're basically just toys ahahaha

And with that, Zidane goes to chill for the rest of the ride over.

We basically get dropped off at the other end of the continent because why not, but the clowns will sell you some stuff if you need it. If you opted for an all melee party like me, maybe stock up on some healing items while you can. Especially since there are cactuars in the area.

There's also a shop moogle once you arrive in Oeilvert. Which we do. It's a weird place.

There are monsters here that will summon a clone of one of your characters. Take em out fast because if they do summon the clone, they'll kill off the party member in question. I think you may be able to kill them with a soft, if that helps.

Anyways, Oeilvert is basically a giant history lesson.

Wondering why Zidane can read the strange language he responds with

And that's when Zidane went to a special facility

We do meet up with Stiltzkin again who got here somehow???

As you can see, the moogles give zero craps about the strange place because they are LIVID about the mail not getting delivered. Which I get. Mail is important, you know?

Anyways, more history

But then it didn't

But then there weren't

Oh, hello strange wall heads. Nothing concerning here.

That sounds like a negative thing

It failed

Isn't history fun?

But then they came up with another solution that has been left vague for no reason I'm sure

Apparently the results of this last attempt are still pending

After leaving the talking heads, we go in to another area to see Terra and another planet merging together. That probably doesn't mean anything, best move along!

So we find the stone we need but boss fight of course. It's a toughie because you can't use your healers to heal in battle and you can't use black magic. Try to steal if you can but it's not a huge biggie if you can't, you can get the equipment later on.

Meanwhile, back at Kuja's palace of evulz

Stop showing off, Kuja. We get it, you decorate

Well gee whiz that wasn't part of the agreement! But don't worry

CID TO THE RESCUE

And thus begins a silly minigame where you have to approach a key on the cage of a beastie by pressing X repeatedly. But if he spots you you have to start over so you have to be sneaky. Zany music also plays because of course it does

Afterwards you have to put weights on a scale to climb up the scale and flip the hourglass. It's pretty easy, just put the heavy stuff on there.

Anyways so everyone is free yay!

And with that we will end this for now. Find out what happens next time on This Game Cannot Take Itself Seriously

Stay tuned~