Moderate spoiler warning
Here’s the first post, should you want to start at the beginning
At the Water Shrine, Malacore absorbed the four base crystals and wrested the Crystal of Life from Oalston. Valiar and the Archareon enforcers showed up and Malacore had no idea who they were, disproving the possibility of prior collaboration.
Being in possession of the essences of the five crystals, ordinary combat would not have worked. Valiar and the enforcers therefore did something drastic: combining their energy to seal the Water Shrine under the surface of Gaia. This was an extremely dangerous thing to attempt with unforeseeable consequences. Valiar saw no alternative, though, other than letting Malacore walk off with all five crystals.
One year later, Vahn wakes up in a strange place, in the company of a Lindblum Chemist named Coral. Being both a scientist and a physician, taking care of the comatose person was simply an intuitive thing to do amid the chaos and destruction that preceded all this.
Coral tells Vahn about the global catastrophe, Vahn tells her what he knows and the accompanying Kids Run Through City Streets track sounds more romantic than normal.
From what we know now, a sort of global contraction has occurred. The Water Shrine appears to be gone, the surface of Gaia filled in the missing space and the resulting distribution of the absent surface space was blended with the Esper World. As if a foundation stone of Gaia’s surface disappeared and everything contracted inward, including the outer Esper World. This blending explains the new name for the world map in the lower right corner of the screen: Merged World.
Vahn, having no one and nothing at present, wants to search for his friends, however improbable such a thing may be. Coral, for her part, is not particularly rooted. The house in which she lived and cared for Vahn was a random dwelling whose owners were apparently lost in the upheaval. Since Coral has scarcely set foot outside any more than Vahn has, she elects to follow him.
Not far from the empty house is Visage: an Esper village that was displaced during the merger. Visage is populated by canid folk called Lupins- no further context yet but they seem almost like an Esper ethnicity. The people of Visage tell us that a powerful, airborne demon called Humwawa has been regularly destroying their bridge which left me a little confused when I just walked over it.
See…in these kinds of JRPGs, there is distance between representations and what they represent. I guess it’s possible that the broken bridge could be illustrative of current damage. We’ve seen a number of glitches before, though, and no other broken bridge has taken us directly across before now.
Remember that we now have a Chemist in the party. I’ve never had much use for those disposable spell items in most Final Fantasy games. Dazers in VII are one exception but a lot of that just felt like clutter in my inventory until a Chemist like Coral or Rikku shows up. While you’re in Visage, you’ll find a whole shop dedicated to those things and it’s worth the gil to stock up. You’ll get less frustrated at Mount Ozma, to the north.
Lazula, the swordswoman from the beginning of the game, is conked out at the foot of Mount Ozma. Lazula is en route to the Gigas Coliseum (Jasmine fell down a hole and Lazula has been wandering for years…does that place even exist?) and her determined route goes through Albrook. Strictly speaking, Lazula is a “friend” from before so we follow her. On the surface, there is no reason for Vahn not to do that but I wondered if he was hoping to find Vera. We briefly glimpsed her old house, there, once.
There is a monster-in-a-box that’s worth fighting. I don’t quite remember the name of the monster but I think they’re called Vortiflor. They look like an extremely angular goat and they drop a Force Bow for Coral, with a decent vigor increase and the potential to inflict slow. I suspect Coral’s beginning stats are calculated to reflect the party’s pre-merger average so who knows if this will work for everyone this early…but the Force Bow has inflicted slow more often than any other weapon with status effect potential (for contrast, I spent most of the game with Elina equipped with a staff that may cause petrify which it never once did).
You know what’s great to have against Notochelone? Coral’s Prophylactic ability, which stops an enemy from buffing themselves. In addition to her various Mix abilities which scale items up by combining a number of the same kind, Coral has two MP-consuming spells. Like a lot of turtle JRPG monsters, Notochelone has a range of defensive capabilities so cast Prophylactic and pile on the damage.
We pass, then, through the Albrook cave which empties between Albrook and Rivera. By now, you have likely encountered at least one camp site and discovered that none of the NPCs we recruited are with us. Not that I had a ton…still: no Laudo and no Crepe. Mog is still there, as always, but he’s apparently as disoriented by all this as we are and has no advice to give. If you’ve had Laudo up until now…you will, unfortunately, start noticing the prior Ether scarcity again (monsters rarely drop them and they’re a little spendy at the shops). Between Vahn, Coral and Lazula, Vahn is most likely to use more MP, especially if he knows Reis’s Wind (learned at level 28) and takes over the group-healer role from Coral when there’s no longer enough Hi Potions and Mega Potions for a mixture. This can be mitigated with Vahn’s Lancer ability (learned at level 26) which sacrifices a small amount of HP to drain an enemy’s MP. The Ether scarcity will start hitting harder pretty soon, though.
In Albrook, rumors are circulating about a man in dark armor coming and going from General Vera’s old home. Unlike last time, there is no one guarding it. Within, a series of progressively longer hidden paths leads up to a downstairs room where we find Darius and Vera.
Vera and Darius awoke from the merger to find that the shifted geography brought them into Ivalice, which is now a coastal nation. They made the best of the situation and decided to gather what information they could on the state of the Ivalician court. Not much can be ascertained save that Emperor Belmont was playing less of a role in leadership as Zeul played more. With the addition of Vahn and Coral, a more thorough reconnaissance is now feasible.
Below the basement floor of Vera’s house is a cave with In Search Of The Man In Black (VII) for background music. Coral’s Prophylactic ability has also proved useful for dispelling enemy buffs that are already in effect and the Clairvoyant monsters love to buff themselves.
Considering how well Coral’s Prophylactic is working, I think she’s one of the better recent party members. I like Jasmine fine as a character but I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a new party member this much since Ami or Siegfried.
It is not long until we pass into the sewers beneath the Citadel. Luckily or not, we emerge quite close to the entrance of the dungeons.
We emerge amid the cells to the Vector theme music (VI). No one and nothing prevents us from exiting the dungeon and entering the outer halls.
I of course stocked up in the castle town. Buy enough Hi Potions and Mega Potions to make use of Coral’s Mix abilities Heal and Heala. Mix actually makes it worthwhile to continue gathering those, effectively scaling them up (with a proportionate increase in gil spent).
Quietly, the question takes shape: return to the Citadel and go down the same hallway we did last time? After a while, there is little else to do.
Behind the door, we are greeted by Vera’s former comrades Braak, Deckar and Eva. They claim that they knew Vera was in Albrook the whole time. Braak makes an odd claim about somehow causing Vahn to come to Albrook, specifically to flush her out.
With our party currently set to Vahn, Darius and Vera, I don’t know how I would have got through this without having picked up the Kirin magicite in the Arcane Library.
Well…nevermind I do know: spend enough gil to keep Coral’s potion stash comfortably full. If you forget to do that like I did then Vera can fill the group-healer role. Outside of healing, Coral is also good with maintaining steady attrition pressure which can help in this fight.
If Eva is the last one left, Prophylacting her will prevent her from casting Curaga on herself (depending on the FF, healing magic may or may not be treated similarly to buffing).
With the three remaining generals out of the way, we proceed to the court room to find it empty. In Emperor Belmont’s bedchamber, we find him in conversation with Zeul, evidently making plans to elevate Zeul in the event of his own death.
Zeul begins to move against us and Belmont orders him to stand down. Evidently at death’s door and full of remorse, Emperor Belmont speaks plainly with us. He says that Ivalice “instrumented the entire war.” This was because Branch was the only kingdom capable of standing up to Ivalice. Lord Zeul eventually took telepathic control over King Kain and compelled his sudden and single-minded search for the crystals.
Emperor Belmont did not expect Lenadia and Lindblum to stand down after King of Branch was killed by Ivalician soldiers. Ordinarily, Ivalice could have not crush Branch openly without losing credibility on the world stage.
Belmont: “Little did we expect some random general to rise up, take the throne and revive Branch so efficiently from the Brink of Death.”
Thus began Belmont’s attempt to influence Branch governance with mind control and manipulating the Crystal of Water (anything involving the Crystal of Water at that time would have reflected directly on Branch).
Earlier, Belmont said that Zeul was the one who subjected Kain to mind control. The message gets a bit more mixed when Belmont says that Braak was the agent deployed for this infiltration before he was caught by the dragoons. Vera also knows something about this which she has yet to share.
Now, in the post-merger world, all of this is moot: “The cataclysm eliminated the kingdom of Branch” (Gylfi’s sect of Archareons actually did that before the cataclysm but nevermind). Vahn asks why Ivalice does not simply make her move for global hegemony with Branch out of the equation. Belmont is then forced to admit that Ivalice herself has been crippled by the contraction of worlds and all this has been in vain.
Belmont was behind everything, it seems, except Malacore. As soon as Vahn mentions the name, Zeul murders Belmont in front of us. He turns to us and says that he, Zeul, “created” Malacore. He further claims to have installed Malacore into the Crystal of Water while propagating a rumor that King Kain made Malacore “as a living weapon.”
Malacore started out as nothing more than a spell-craft robot, made by Zeul in an effort to create “the perfect being.” He has since become more than that. Zeul’s priority, for now, is putting down his mad dog. Surely the party can’t take issue with that? In his words, he “simply wants to rule” as opposed the world-ending havoc that would ensue should Malacore re-emerge.
Zeul vanishes in front of us, taking the dead body of Emperor Belmont with him.
On top of all this, we still don’t know where things stand with regard to the Blackmoon Prophecy. The sky is visible in the Merged World, so it hasn’t happened yet.
Archareons and Espers are deeply invested in prophecy yet are nowhere near as isolated as they once were. Esper society has (to some extent) been scattered across Gaia and the Archareons are reacting to the drastic fallout of an act they never imagined they would go through with. Zeul created Malacore for his own reasons, in recent memory. Yet Malacore is the axis that the whole Blackmoon Prophecy turns on. Malacore is a spell-craft robot scarcely older than a human toddler…which means nothing if the ripples of their actions go far enough to be visible to ancient prophecies.
Here’s the sauce
Until next time, TBC
AilixChaerea 