It's the dungeon that never ends ...
It has been a number of months since I last gameblogged Final Fantasy XII. This is not because the game has been sitting around, collecting dust, but because instead of pursuing the plot, I spent a lot of time hunting marks and kicking up rare monsters and even more time failing at the previous two things. There were a few 'high points'. Like the woman who lost her carrot, which was as dear to her as a baby, but not so dear that she doesn't want us to go and kill her babycarrot. This has not actually been accomplished yet, although for several days after, I and a couple friends went around substituting the word 'baby' with 'carrot' in popular song lyrics.
I may have killed a giant underground zombie turtle creature. Indeed, I may have killed it twice, because after killing it, I forgot to save, and promptly got myself killed by something else. Possibly it was the baby carrot? God, I hope not. That would be embarrassing.
Truly, the peak of poking around for rare monsters came when I decided to hunt Rare Monster No. 80 - the Urutan Exile. Which will only spawn after you've killed at /least/ one hundred Urutan Yensa. It's been a while - a long, long while - since I was originally in the desert area full of the Urutan Yensa, so it may be worth mentioning, once again, that the Urutan Yensa are a sentient race of little ugly desert people. I called the good hour I spent killing them Sidequest: Genocide. Because, really, what the hell else am I supposed to think?
None of the other hunts or rare monsters can really top hunting the uber member of a race of people that you've tried to annhilate, so it's time to try and remember plot. I believe there was a date with Balthier's Crazy Dad in some place the party hasn't been to yet, which is on the other side of a place that the party hasn't been through yet (because the one time I accidentally stumbled through it, the first thing that happened was a trap detonated and killed most of my party - the second thing that happened was that those left standing were mobbed by tomatoes).
It is time for the party to venture into ... the Feywood. A name which sounds very pleasant, but fails to encompass the sheer horror that awaits.
The Feywood is an area where your little corner map fails to work, which is annoying, but tolerable. However, the area's also full of optical illusions, making it difficult to see ahead for things like clusterfucks of monster. Admittedly, a large percentage of the monsters are walking tomatoes, but that only makes the shame, when it comes, burn even brighter. There's also a couple different palettes of dogs and some giant shambling non-flying birds made out of metal who automatically reflect all magic attacks. It's /fun/. Everyone stumbles about until we realize there's no way out of the area. There's a barrier! Shit, man, how do we - oh, wait, through a tiny cutscene where Princess Belt see's her dead idiot husband, we find the barrier dissolving.
I'm sure glad that little obstruction had a point.
Princess Belt's dead idiot husband may not be on our side, as he has dissolved the barrier and led us deeper into the Feywood only so that the team can be raped up the ass by a giant plant that inflicts all sorts of status effects and drains away our MP to make things maximally delightful. There was, for once, a save crystal right before, but still guys. We're barely into this bit of plot - how many bosses are you planning on peppering the area with? (The answer, several hours later, turned out to be: a lot.)
The giant plant boss and its lackeys dispatched, our heroes ... backtrack so they can use the save crystal and revive the many, many dead party members free of cost. Ah, modern RPGs. But once /that's/ done, we can proceed deeper into the Feywood, something which I quickly regret. The new areas are even mistier and more confusing than the original areas. They are full of even more metal reflect birds, praying mantis monsters that cannibalize other, nearby praying mantis monsters which would be cool if it didn't make the surviving praying mantis monster jump up like ten fucking levels, and ... an invisible T-Rex. Just because, I guess. I stagger around this area for a good hour, fighting the same monsters over and over again and being puzzled by the identical inscriptions on a series of gazebos. I eventually, eventually find a door. That is locked. I have failed to utilize the gazebos properly.
I also failed to stock up on new armour, weapons, and spells in the pirate city, which may be why a lot of Feywood has been like adventures in buttrape. Completely baffled as to how to unlock the door, I walk /all the way back/ to pirate city, upgrade everyone's stuff, and then get to walk back through Feywood.
God.
A quick trip to gamefaqs later, I have figured out how to utilize the gazebos /and/ how to open the giant locked doors (they require the summoning of the Espers, things that are never fucking used and I generally forget I have except for when gamefaqs tells me otherwise). At the touch of the, uh, flamey beastman Esper, conveniently summoned by Vaan, the doors open and oh thank God there is a teleport crystl in the next area.
But first! Cutscene! Mostly to confirm that this is where we have our date with Balthier's Crazy Dad, to note that while the area is full of mist, it won't be making Fran go crazy and red-eyed now because the plot doesn't require it, and we won't be proceeding any further because there is some batshit crazy in the beyond.
And then Princess Belt sees her dead idiot husband in the distance and wanders off, and everyone promptly goes forward without comment.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be more resentful of Princess Belt or her dead idiot husband by the time I'm done this dungeon.
One of the first things the team of the moment (Vaan with a sparkly staff, Penelo with a deadly sword and spikey shiled, and Balthier with a gun, as always) encounters is a boss. It's a statue that stops being a statue long enough to try and hack at Penello with a giant sword (or maybe an axe) and, once defeated, it turns back into a statue again, but ... slightly off to the side.
That taken care of, the actual dungeon can finally be entered. It only took several hours to get inside and once inside it actually looks a bit different from 90% of the dungeons in the game to date. Like everything else in the past couple hours, it looks a bit trippy and involves a lot of stepping out into black empty nothingness and making glowing green paths appear that disappear once you're off them. There's also a lot of flipping of switches, but that's pretty much par for the course. Enemies are unremarkable, although there's a version of the malboros that is purple and inexplicably called 'Vivian'. They're girls, I guess.
There are, appropriately, cutscenes with characters going 'What the fuck is this?' and admiring a giant chunk of anti-magic rock floating in nothingness. It is established, again, that Fran no longer has rabies.
And then we're attacked by a dragon that ... somehow keeps Vaan from stealing things? The only techniques I ever bother with are 'steal' and 'libra' so this isn't exactly a big handicap. Even if it /is/ the third bloody boss in one plot section.
With the dragon quickly disposed of, everyone teleports - out of the dungeon? Maybe? Or not? I'm not sure, because when I check the map to see where we are, I see ... a picture of a rock. There's a little red dot to show that, somewhere in the rock are Vaan and company, but a bit of running around, and finding a switch that tells me I'm not good enough to flip it, shows that the little red dot never moves.
There are switches and more magically appearing paths, everything looks the same, and there are a lot of nasty enemies, particularly the undead bastard that keeps dividing just as you think you've killed it.
Running back and forth, probably over the same spot three or four times, through areas that look exactly the same, is not very fun. Once I find a save crystal, I am done for the moment, because good lord. It's a /giant rock/.
Poll Books?
I may have killed a giant underground zombie turtle creature. Indeed, I may have killed it twice, because after killing it, I forgot to save, and promptly got myself killed by something else. Possibly it was the baby carrot? God, I hope not. That would be embarrassing.
Truly, the peak of poking around for rare monsters came when I decided to hunt Rare Monster No. 80 - the Urutan Exile. Which will only spawn after you've killed at /least/ one hundred Urutan Yensa. It's been a while - a long, long while - since I was originally in the desert area full of the Urutan Yensa, so it may be worth mentioning, once again, that the Urutan Yensa are a sentient race of little ugly desert people. I called the good hour I spent killing them Sidequest: Genocide. Because, really, what the hell else am I supposed to think?
None of the other hunts or rare monsters can really top hunting the uber member of a race of people that you've tried to annhilate, so it's time to try and remember plot. I believe there was a date with Balthier's Crazy Dad in some place the party hasn't been to yet, which is on the other side of a place that the party hasn't been through yet (because the one time I accidentally stumbled through it, the first thing that happened was a trap detonated and killed most of my party - the second thing that happened was that those left standing were mobbed by tomatoes).
It is time for the party to venture into ... the Feywood. A name which sounds very pleasant, but fails to encompass the sheer horror that awaits.
The Feywood is an area where your little corner map fails to work, which is annoying, but tolerable. However, the area's also full of optical illusions, making it difficult to see ahead for things like clusterfucks of monster. Admittedly, a large percentage of the monsters are walking tomatoes, but that only makes the shame, when it comes, burn even brighter. There's also a couple different palettes of dogs and some giant shambling non-flying birds made out of metal who automatically reflect all magic attacks. It's /fun/. Everyone stumbles about until we realize there's no way out of the area. There's a barrier! Shit, man, how do we - oh, wait, through a tiny cutscene where Princess Belt see's her dead idiot husband, we find the barrier dissolving.
I'm sure glad that little obstruction had a point.
Princess Belt's dead idiot husband may not be on our side, as he has dissolved the barrier and led us deeper into the Feywood only so that the team can be raped up the ass by a giant plant that inflicts all sorts of status effects and drains away our MP to make things maximally delightful. There was, for once, a save crystal right before, but still guys. We're barely into this bit of plot - how many bosses are you planning on peppering the area with? (The answer, several hours later, turned out to be: a lot.)
The giant plant boss and its lackeys dispatched, our heroes ... backtrack so they can use the save crystal and revive the many, many dead party members free of cost. Ah, modern RPGs. But once /that's/ done, we can proceed deeper into the Feywood, something which I quickly regret. The new areas are even mistier and more confusing than the original areas. They are full of even more metal reflect birds, praying mantis monsters that cannibalize other, nearby praying mantis monsters which would be cool if it didn't make the surviving praying mantis monster jump up like ten fucking levels, and ... an invisible T-Rex. Just because, I guess. I stagger around this area for a good hour, fighting the same monsters over and over again and being puzzled by the identical inscriptions on a series of gazebos. I eventually, eventually find a door. That is locked. I have failed to utilize the gazebos properly.
I also failed to stock up on new armour, weapons, and spells in the pirate city, which may be why a lot of Feywood has been like adventures in buttrape. Completely baffled as to how to unlock the door, I walk /all the way back/ to pirate city, upgrade everyone's stuff, and then get to walk back through Feywood.
God.
A quick trip to gamefaqs later, I have figured out how to utilize the gazebos /and/ how to open the giant locked doors (they require the summoning of the Espers, things that are never fucking used and I generally forget I have except for when gamefaqs tells me otherwise). At the touch of the, uh, flamey beastman Esper, conveniently summoned by Vaan, the doors open and oh thank God there is a teleport crystl in the next area.
But first! Cutscene! Mostly to confirm that this is where we have our date with Balthier's Crazy Dad, to note that while the area is full of mist, it won't be making Fran go crazy and red-eyed now because the plot doesn't require it, and we won't be proceeding any further because there is some batshit crazy in the beyond.
And then Princess Belt sees her dead idiot husband in the distance and wanders off, and everyone promptly goes forward without comment.
I'm not sure if I'm going to be more resentful of Princess Belt or her dead idiot husband by the time I'm done this dungeon.
One of the first things the team of the moment (Vaan with a sparkly staff, Penelo with a deadly sword and spikey shiled, and Balthier with a gun, as always) encounters is a boss. It's a statue that stops being a statue long enough to try and hack at Penello with a giant sword (or maybe an axe) and, once defeated, it turns back into a statue again, but ... slightly off to the side.
That taken care of, the actual dungeon can finally be entered. It only took several hours to get inside and once inside it actually looks a bit different from 90% of the dungeons in the game to date. Like everything else in the past couple hours, it looks a bit trippy and involves a lot of stepping out into black empty nothingness and making glowing green paths appear that disappear once you're off them. There's also a lot of flipping of switches, but that's pretty much par for the course. Enemies are unremarkable, although there's a version of the malboros that is purple and inexplicably called 'Vivian'. They're girls, I guess.
There are, appropriately, cutscenes with characters going 'What the fuck is this?' and admiring a giant chunk of anti-magic rock floating in nothingness. It is established, again, that Fran no longer has rabies.
And then we're attacked by a dragon that ... somehow keeps Vaan from stealing things? The only techniques I ever bother with are 'steal' and 'libra' so this isn't exactly a big handicap. Even if it /is/ the third bloody boss in one plot section.
With the dragon quickly disposed of, everyone teleports - out of the dungeon? Maybe? Or not? I'm not sure, because when I check the map to see where we are, I see ... a picture of a rock. There's a little red dot to show that, somewhere in the rock are Vaan and company, but a bit of running around, and finding a switch that tells me I'm not good enough to flip it, shows that the little red dot never moves.
There are switches and more magically appearing paths, everything looks the same, and there are a lot of nasty enemies, particularly the undead bastard that keeps dividing just as you think you've killed it.
Running back and forth, probably over the same spot three or four times, through areas that look exactly the same, is not very fun. Once I find a save crystal, I am done for the moment, because good lord. It's a /giant rock/.
Poll Books?