Alright, adding in the new jobs, I notice "Mime" counts as a 'Water Crystal" job... even though you can't get access to the Mime class until after the Earth Crystal. Do I allow access to that job to be a 5th Re-Roll? Do I eliminate the possibility entirely?
-So I get the Water Crystal jobs, and re-roll the characters:
Phaze: Blue Mage
Reina: Knight
Galuf/Krile: Time Mage
Faris: Red Mage
This is a pretty damn good setup. It's too bad this is probably the shortest stage in the game, so I won't be able to take advantage of it for long.
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-Huh... So apparently, "Garula", the second boss of the game and big red-headed mammoth thingy SURVIVES. In the town of Worus, before you go to the Water Tower, a girl is playing with it. But then apparently it goes ape-shit and wrecks the place, and you have to put it down.
But there it is afterward. In the same spot as always. And the girl tells you how upset she is that someone would manipulate the creature into killing a bunch of dudes. It doesn't even occur to her that it might be an angry rampaging animal, like most elephants. Hell, it even survived the tower and land-mass it was connected to sinking into the ocean. And the only reason we survived that is because Syldra saved us at her own expense.
Elephants don't fuck around, is what I'm saying here.
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| Elephants never forget, and they never forgive. |
-Okay, bye dragon thing that we only used like once and couldn't even fly over mountains!
-Why is everything on fire?
WHY IS EVERYTHING ON FIRE
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| Oh. |
-The Fire Boat Thingy makes for an interesting contrast to the naturesque medieval look to the game's environments so far. And the music isn't half-bad either. But I still hate it when a game puts one of those "choose which way to go out of forty possible paths, and only one leads to a treasure, which won't even be worth it anyway, and then you'll have to go all the way back if you want to try again" puzzles.
Er, "puzzle". So... save-states.
-Speaking of emulation cheating(sort of), in order to repel the drudgery of level-grinding, I did find a nice spot of forest outside of one of the villages that only spawns a lot of really weak enemies. Then I just held two buttons: the button that lets me attack, and the button that speeds up the emulator. Then I just walk around the forest some more.
I should mention that this isn't just me trying to get an advantage over... the game? Whatever, the point is it's more just to avoid having to spend three hours doing something that's not fun. Besides, this challenge isn't a race. And the game gets mighty difficult later on, so I doubt this will help me very much in the long run.
-Back to the fire ship whatever: It does have a mildly amusing switch-based puzzle. Not terribly difficult either, but since it's still early on in the game it's acceptable.
Remember when switch-based puzzles in games were a quick and amusing diversion, instead of a damned obligation? When you see this shit pop up in modern games, you usually have to sit through a big, expensive cutscene to show you that you turned on a light switch, and that you didn't do it in the right order, so now you have to flick it off, and you can't skip that cutscene either and-
Here, it's one room, and then you're done. It feels like an obstacle instead of a chore. People use "obstacle" like it's a derogative nowadays. An obstacle course can be fun and challenging, and rewarding to pull off. And even a chore makes your home a little less unpleasant to live in, so there are tangible results.
-Welp, we killed the boss, and then the castle explodes. Of course. The game gives us 10 minutes to escape before we're all killed!
But first, let's have a nap!
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| I can't get a good night's sleep without the gentle sounds of a castle exploding all around me. |
-So after getting as many treasure-chests as I could before the timer ran out, I had 20 seconds to spare. And the music does that thing in Sonic the Hedgehog when you're underwater: it gets faster and faster the closer you are to death. So it turns out all of that grinding was... necessary to complete this part of the game.
Huh.
END OF LINE
~A.H.
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