This is just a collection of awesome
Phrases I would rather not hear from medical professionals: "Well, those are two of the weirdest side effects I've ever heard of."
The conclusion of today's doctor's appointment was that the substitute doctor wasn't sure what's wrong with me, so we're going to experiment to try and narrow it down. Fun!
You know, if I'd known the other side of the save crystal was near-freedom, I might have kept playing. But I just assumed the crystal was there as the game designers' slight acknowledgement of the fact that Area: In a Giant Rock was kind of a pain in the ass.
Anyway.
Teleporting through the mechanism by the save crystal gets our heroes out of the damn rock, which is a huge relief, even if the area we go to shows more of the usual uninspired dimly lit brown stone dungeons I've come to know and be mildly irritated with. And they walk ... right into the arms of another boss battle. This is boss battle number four for this chunk of plot.
Thankfully, this one is also the last boss battle. Unfortunately, this is the one that I also found to be the biggest pain in the ass, as the boss kept draining MP, seemed to be constantly healing itself in a way I couldn't stop, kept casting silence on the entire party, and kept alternating between killing Vaan and Balthier.
The boss looked like a woman from Cirque de Soleil who had decided to wear a pantomime horse as a cape, which made the frequent deaths just kind of embarrassing.
Once defeated, she turns out to be an Esper. I give her to Vaan. I'm sure he'll appreciate the great power of the pantomime horse lady.
Continuing through the dungeon, there is yet another teleporting mechanism that leads us to ... cutscenes! Lots and lots of cutscenes! I'm still drinking my morning tea, so really, this is okay with me.
Princess Belt, and no one else, finds herself on a platform floating in the clouds (or possibly a bunch of other platforms) and being addressed by bitchy, arrogant, shadowy beings who are, I guess, Gods, but for some reason no one wants to use that term. They seem to be immortal and apparently direct the fate of the world, though, so: Gods. I've already forgotten what they're actually called. They talk at Princess Belt a /lot/ in the best manner of epic fantasy that makes the eyes glaze over, but what it seems to boil down to is: Princess Belt is the chosen, she and she alone can have some new anti-magic rock, have this shitty sword, and kill one of our number who's pissed us off and is helping the Evil Empire. Princess Belt's dead idiot husband is there, too, but he doesn't seem to indicate one way or another if this overthrowing the Evil Empire is a path approved of by dumbasses who don't wear decent armour. Eventually, Princess Belt is done dealing with the Gods and everything returns to a slightly less trippy version of the floating cloud platform area with the rest of the party. Who apparently heard everything, but couldn't see the Gods and Ashe couldn't see or hear any of them. Whatever. The general consensus seems to be 'Fuck the Gods trying to make us do shit', even from Basch who, being crazy, you think would be all on board stabbing people because invisible Gods told someone else to.
Princess Belt stares dramatically into the camera and says that ... she's going to do what the Gods ask and find the Sun Cryst (which is, I guess, a randomly pretentious way of saying 'Sun Crystal', but seeing it spelled out in the subtitles makes me think it's Sun Cyst - so we'll be going with that).
Goddammit, Princess Belt. Didn't you notice that you were outvoted? If you keep this kind of thing up, everyone else is going on strike.
And then everyone realizes that Balthier's Crazy Dad didn't show up for their date, which means, according to Balthier, that this was all part of his dad's cunning plan to do ... something. Something cunning. And evil. Also, apparently the invisible person his dad talks to is the God that the other Gods want Princess Belt to kill, which is good, because man, did I have no clue who the Gods were talking about until Balthier mentioned this. Balthier says he guesses his dad isn't crazy after all, which is awfully generous of Balthier and shows touching and misplaced filial faith in his father's sanity. Me, I'm still voting for 'crazy'. This is a Final Fantasy game, after all.
Meanwhile, in the Empire, it's Larsa! Hi Larsa! Larsa, his brother, and Balthier's dad are all discussing what to do about Princess Belt. It's cute how the grown-ups pretend Larsa's opinions are even a little bit relevant. Larsa insists that Princess Belt is totally opposed to war and if they just talk to her, some kind of alliance will be formed and everyone will be happy! His Evil Brother pretends to agree and gets a Judge to go and find Princess Belt and 'speak' to her. With his sword. Larsa apparently buys this and goes off to do something else. Maybe be a normal little boy. Once he and the judge are gone, Balthier's Crazy Dad is crazy and Larsa's Evil Brother - shit, is he the Evil Emperor now? I can't remember - is Evil.
And back in the Dungeon That Never Ends, everyone discusses what needs to be done to find the Sun Cyst. Vaan wants to go back to Pirate City and talk to the Chief Pirate with the Facial Hair. Balthier tells him to shut his stupid mouth, as he knows jack shit about pirates. But I think the next stop is supposed to be Pirate City anyway? Maybe? I don't know, because I'm going /hunting/ again.
A quick look at my list of accepted hunts shows one, fairly early on, has not been completed. How strange, I think. All the marks before it have been hunted, and quite a few of the ones after. Clearly, I was confused at some point in my mark hunting history. I will correct this right away.
I get the information on the mark from an old man hanging out in Nalbina Fortress. He's kind of incomprehensible, but from what he says, it sounds like I'm being sent to dispose of his renegade robot son, who's stomping shit in an area I'm not familiar with: the Deadlands. It sounds charming and I'm sure the name has nothing to do with why I haven't been there.
As the Deadlands is on the other side of the Salikawood, I take the opportunity to dispatch of some rare monsters on the way through.
For monsters, apparently read, "friendly giant toad" and "friendly rabbit that will only appear after you've killed every other, lesser friendly rabbit in the area". If our heroes didn't seem enough like heartless, animal-hating monsters, the bestiary entry on the twenty or so rabbits I just stabbed tells me they're extremely rare and considered symbols of joy and good luck for people who happen to see them.
The bestiary does not tell me if you get the benefits of seeing a joy rabbit if, as soon as you see one, you have Balthier shoot it with flaming bullets.
A few more species having been added to Ivalice's Endangered Monsters list, we go into the Deadlands. I can't /imagine/ why I avoided this area earlier. It's only crawling with skeleton warriors, zombies, small ugly manmonsters who seem to summon their extended family as soon as anyone gets close enough to attack, some truly vile jelly monsters, obscuring fog, /and/ a teleport crystal that is actually a monster that seriously fucks my party up. What the hell? I have fought elementals who didn't rape my party as badly as that thing did.
To make things even more fun, the mark I'm hunting can only be reached through a SECRET PATH which is great fun to search for in this area full of randomly appearing undead. After bumping into two more rare monsters and a fucking entite, I find the area with the mark.
And about a hundred skeleton warriors who won't stop spawning. (A quick look at a FAQ tells me that, supposedly, the skeletons only spawn three times before being eliminated. This is a FILTHY LIE.) After getting in some impressive chains /and/ dispatching of the crazy old man's robot son, what's left of the party runs for their fucking lives, with skeletons still spawning behind them. Until another sidequests requires me to trek back there.
Teleporting back to Nalbina gets me not nearly enough loot to make up for the hell of the hundred skeletons and the information that the robot was actually /built/ by the old man's now dead son, and not his twisted blending of machine and squishy infant. I'd be disappointed if I wasn't too damn tired to do anything but save.
I believe it is moments like these that cause the game to go into hibernation for months.
The conclusion of today's doctor's appointment was that the substitute doctor wasn't sure what's wrong with me, so we're going to experiment to try and narrow it down. Fun!
You know, if I'd known the other side of the save crystal was near-freedom, I might have kept playing. But I just assumed the crystal was there as the game designers' slight acknowledgement of the fact that Area: In a Giant Rock was kind of a pain in the ass.
Anyway.
Teleporting through the mechanism by the save crystal gets our heroes out of the damn rock, which is a huge relief, even if the area we go to shows more of the usual uninspired dimly lit brown stone dungeons I've come to know and be mildly irritated with. And they walk ... right into the arms of another boss battle. This is boss battle number four for this chunk of plot.
Thankfully, this one is also the last boss battle. Unfortunately, this is the one that I also found to be the biggest pain in the ass, as the boss kept draining MP, seemed to be constantly healing itself in a way I couldn't stop, kept casting silence on the entire party, and kept alternating between killing Vaan and Balthier.
The boss looked like a woman from Cirque de Soleil who had decided to wear a pantomime horse as a cape, which made the frequent deaths just kind of embarrassing.
Once defeated, she turns out to be an Esper. I give her to Vaan. I'm sure he'll appreciate the great power of the pantomime horse lady.
Continuing through the dungeon, there is yet another teleporting mechanism that leads us to ... cutscenes! Lots and lots of cutscenes! I'm still drinking my morning tea, so really, this is okay with me.
Princess Belt, and no one else, finds herself on a platform floating in the clouds (or possibly a bunch of other platforms) and being addressed by bitchy, arrogant, shadowy beings who are, I guess, Gods, but for some reason no one wants to use that term. They seem to be immortal and apparently direct the fate of the world, though, so: Gods. I've already forgotten what they're actually called. They talk at Princess Belt a /lot/ in the best manner of epic fantasy that makes the eyes glaze over, but what it seems to boil down to is: Princess Belt is the chosen, she and she alone can have some new anti-magic rock, have this shitty sword, and kill one of our number who's pissed us off and is helping the Evil Empire. Princess Belt's dead idiot husband is there, too, but he doesn't seem to indicate one way or another if this overthrowing the Evil Empire is a path approved of by dumbasses who don't wear decent armour. Eventually, Princess Belt is done dealing with the Gods and everything returns to a slightly less trippy version of the floating cloud platform area with the rest of the party. Who apparently heard everything, but couldn't see the Gods and Ashe couldn't see or hear any of them. Whatever. The general consensus seems to be 'Fuck the Gods trying to make us do shit', even from Basch who, being crazy, you think would be all on board stabbing people because invisible Gods told someone else to.
Princess Belt stares dramatically into the camera and says that ... she's going to do what the Gods ask and find the Sun Cryst (which is, I guess, a randomly pretentious way of saying 'Sun Crystal', but seeing it spelled out in the subtitles makes me think it's Sun Cyst - so we'll be going with that).
Goddammit, Princess Belt. Didn't you notice that you were outvoted? If you keep this kind of thing up, everyone else is going on strike.
And then everyone realizes that Balthier's Crazy Dad didn't show up for their date, which means, according to Balthier, that this was all part of his dad's cunning plan to do ... something. Something cunning. And evil. Also, apparently the invisible person his dad talks to is the God that the other Gods want Princess Belt to kill, which is good, because man, did I have no clue who the Gods were talking about until Balthier mentioned this. Balthier says he guesses his dad isn't crazy after all, which is awfully generous of Balthier and shows touching and misplaced filial faith in his father's sanity. Me, I'm still voting for 'crazy'. This is a Final Fantasy game, after all.
Meanwhile, in the Empire, it's Larsa! Hi Larsa! Larsa, his brother, and Balthier's dad are all discussing what to do about Princess Belt. It's cute how the grown-ups pretend Larsa's opinions are even a little bit relevant. Larsa insists that Princess Belt is totally opposed to war and if they just talk to her, some kind of alliance will be formed and everyone will be happy! His Evil Brother pretends to agree and gets a Judge to go and find Princess Belt and 'speak' to her. With his sword. Larsa apparently buys this and goes off to do something else. Maybe be a normal little boy. Once he and the judge are gone, Balthier's Crazy Dad is crazy and Larsa's Evil Brother - shit, is he the Evil Emperor now? I can't remember - is Evil.
And back in the Dungeon That Never Ends, everyone discusses what needs to be done to find the Sun Cyst. Vaan wants to go back to Pirate City and talk to the Chief Pirate with the Facial Hair. Balthier tells him to shut his stupid mouth, as he knows jack shit about pirates. But I think the next stop is supposed to be Pirate City anyway? Maybe? I don't know, because I'm going /hunting/ again.
A quick look at my list of accepted hunts shows one, fairly early on, has not been completed. How strange, I think. All the marks before it have been hunted, and quite a few of the ones after. Clearly, I was confused at some point in my mark hunting history. I will correct this right away.
I get the information on the mark from an old man hanging out in Nalbina Fortress. He's kind of incomprehensible, but from what he says, it sounds like I'm being sent to dispose of his renegade robot son, who's stomping shit in an area I'm not familiar with: the Deadlands. It sounds charming and I'm sure the name has nothing to do with why I haven't been there.
As the Deadlands is on the other side of the Salikawood, I take the opportunity to dispatch of some rare monsters on the way through.
For monsters, apparently read, "friendly giant toad" and "friendly rabbit that will only appear after you've killed every other, lesser friendly rabbit in the area". If our heroes didn't seem enough like heartless, animal-hating monsters, the bestiary entry on the twenty or so rabbits I just stabbed tells me they're extremely rare and considered symbols of joy and good luck for people who happen to see them.
The bestiary does not tell me if you get the benefits of seeing a joy rabbit if, as soon as you see one, you have Balthier shoot it with flaming bullets.
A few more species having been added to Ivalice's Endangered Monsters list, we go into the Deadlands. I can't /imagine/ why I avoided this area earlier. It's only crawling with skeleton warriors, zombies, small ugly manmonsters who seem to summon their extended family as soon as anyone gets close enough to attack, some truly vile jelly monsters, obscuring fog, /and/ a teleport crystal that is actually a monster that seriously fucks my party up. What the hell? I have fought elementals who didn't rape my party as badly as that thing did.
To make things even more fun, the mark I'm hunting can only be reached through a SECRET PATH which is great fun to search for in this area full of randomly appearing undead. After bumping into two more rare monsters and a fucking entite, I find the area with the mark.
And about a hundred skeleton warriors who won't stop spawning. (A quick look at a FAQ tells me that, supposedly, the skeletons only spawn three times before being eliminated. This is a FILTHY LIE.) After getting in some impressive chains /and/ dispatching of the crazy old man's robot son, what's left of the party runs for their fucking lives, with skeletons still spawning behind them. Until another sidequests requires me to trek back there.
Teleporting back to Nalbina gets me not nearly enough loot to make up for the hell of the hundred skeletons and the information that the robot was actually /built/ by the old man's now dead son, and not his twisted blending of machine and squishy infant. I'd be disappointed if I wasn't too damn tired to do anything but save.
I believe it is moments like these that cause the game to go into hibernation for months.