When we last left our team, we had just slain Archeoavis, failed to save either the fourth crystal or King Tycoon, and gained our fourth job, bought with King Tycoon’s blood. We kinda suck. Galuf finally regains his memory and before he can regale us with wild stories of his youth, he runs back to his world.
The group decides to follow him, but it requires us to visit each of the four meteorites and have some miniboss battles. I easily wipe out the Purobolos with Aqua Breath, but Manticore and Titan both give me some trouble. ???? again remains an amazing offensive weapon, easily out damaging my weapons. I have no defense against Titan’s Earth Shaker, other than keep my HP high and hope he doesn’t use it too often. Better lucky than good, I guess.
Upon reaching Galuf’s world, we’re immediately captured and taken to Exdeath’s Castle. Fortunately, Galuf comes and bails us out. I didn’t take very good notes on this section, but I do remember that RNGesus saw fit to bless me with many Nightingales through the Big Bridge and the fight with Gilgamesh. I finally pick up Drain Blade, and now along with the Dragoon’s Lance ability, I finally get some reliable healing. I’m still missing a nice group heal beyond Nightingale, but hey, nothing’s perfect.
In the Moogle Village, I pick up a great treasure: the Dancing Dagger. I can’t make great use of it right now, but later there’ll be some opportunities to pick up some Blue Magic by confusing some enemies. We finally discover that Galuf is a king, and we meet one of his former colleagues, the werewolf Kelger, at Quelb. I like that he challenges Bartz to a duel and gets his shit wrecked. Must be Dorgann’s influence. Kelger agrees to open the gate so we can go to Drakenvale to get the dragon grass to heal Galuf and Krile’s wind drake. Fuck you, Kelger.
Drakenvale is not a place I like. There are way too many random encounters here and since it’s been so long since I played this game, I forgot that I needed to wander around the area until the floor collapses so I can open up the path. There’s an event where you save a Golem from a Bone Dragon and a Zombie Dragon, but since I can’t use the summon, I don’t bother to save him. Sorry, buddy. I get the Bone Mail here, too. I may have to use it later, but for now it stays safely in my backpack. It takes a few tries, but I finally get Death Claw to stick on the Dragon Pod, and then Aqua Breath sweeps them all away. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a screenshot, so here’s a random screenshot of someone else using Aqua Breath at a completely different section of the game. Thanks to Final Fantasy Wikia user Keltainentoukokuu for the screenshot.
Lenna poisons herself for the third or fourth time in the game trying to coax the wind drake into taking the grass. I know that some parents eat (or pretend to eat) the baby food so that their kid will eat it as well, but this seems like taking it a bit too far. Fortunately, the wind drake is stupid enough to eat the grass and Lenna gets healed before anything too traumatic can happen. We’re supposed to go see Sage Ghido, but Exdeath has the upper hand and blows the island away. Fortunately, we land close to Castle Surgate, the home of yet another of Galuf’s former colleagues, the mage Xezat. He’s not home right now, though; he’s leading a fleet to attack Exdeath’s castle.
We land the wind drake right on the ship. After a bit of talking, we attack Exdeath’s forces, leading directly to yet another confrontation with Gilgamesh. This time, he brings his partner Enkidu. Enkidu has White Wind and uses it frequently, but since you can’t confuse him, you can’t get it here, which is a giant tease. Gilgamesh himself is kind of a loser in this encounter; he can’t hit too hard and I get a few lucky Sword Dances from the Dancing Dagger, which pretty much crush Gilgamesh to dust. Xezat then reveals his true plan: the fleet is just a distraction to allow us to take a submarine to one of the towers that maintain the barrier around Exdeath’s castle and disable it.
The climb up Barrier Tower is actually pretty uneventful. I get the Blood Sword and the Gold Hairpin, fighting off four Yellow Dragons in the process, even though neither of them are that useful to me. I also pick up Off Guard from the Ziggurat Gigas. As a side note, isn’t Faris’ spell casting pose as a Ranger just the best?
On the next episode, we fight Atomos. Ugh.
Steve's Space 