So stopping for tonight and might not see you all for a while.

First and foremost, I ran into a really weird bug, my first all game. 20 hours in, I'm sure you can understand my distress. Attack animations from enemies wouldn't show up, we would just take damage. Furthermore, characters would be reduced to 0 HP but still stand and could be healed after battle instead of revived first. Finally, one of the random guards that fights you in the Imperial Castle will cause the game to freak out and basically crash.

Alarmed, I tried to figure out why this was all happening now after everything has gone so smoothly. At last I realized the only recent addition was me buying Dice and Darts for Setzer. I'm not sure if it was pairing these two up, or one of them specifically causing the issues, but once I got Setzer wielding Demonsbane and a Targe again, all the problems disappeared.

So that's nice.

In terms of story, not sure what to say. The Cave to the Gate was an obvious ploy by the enemy given that the base right before the cave was conspicuously deserted. Our heroes in these games really need to stop breaking trhough enchanted barriers because all it does is let the bad guys through.

Only...I guess not. Espers kicked Kefka's and the whole Empire's ass. Now we're whining and dining with the Emperor himself like he hadn't been an evil power-hungry and murderous monster. Why would any of the Returners eat a thing prepared by their mortal enemies?

I only managed to get the Emperor to have his troops leave Doma an South Figaro. I have no idea what this does. I guess I'll find out later. I was wondering what was up with all the timing and questions, anyway so I'm glad the game didn't make me wait.

So I've had a couple dream sequences with Billy and Clyde. I thought at first it was something silly put in by the modder but the last one talked about their duo being called "Shadow." So are these actually from the game? Shadow's real name is...um, I think he was Clyde?

Locke and Celes are having a lovers' tiff. Although I really get the feeling Terra likes Locke? Never heard about this love triangle. Then again, maybe I never heard nothing because it doesn't exist. This ain't no FFVII.
But the remixed opera music for when Locke tried to talk to Celes was beautiful and then Locke was a jackass and rebuffed Celes when she tried to say something on the ship.

Overall, things are happening, still having fun, wondering when exactly Gestahl will just give up this transparently bulltrout ploy and try to murder us again.

Are there optional Espers?