When we last left our adventures, they were on the trail of Darius in the Gulgur Volcano. Unbeknownst to them, General Braak escaped Hans, Biggs and Wedge, leaving them to fall into the hands of three enigmatic beings who appear to be capable of mind control. When the Vahn squad catches up with Darius, they find him in conversation with a voice that he is seeing outside of his head for the first time: Malacore, whom Darius released from the Crystal of Water.

A later encounter with the esper Rama puts much of this in perspective: the crystals are doing their usual elemental control thing (either placed there by the gods or left there as energy siphons for malevolent outsiders, depending on the cosmology). What effects the crystals effects the espers. This entanglement has come up in older FFs but here we have an additional layer: elemental guardians, like Salamander and Bismarck- residing either with their crystal or at its former location. Quetzalcoatl is both an elemental guardian and an esper. Quetzalcoatl leaves nethicite behind and Salamander does not. Ramah then introduces a fourth layer: the Archareons, rulers of the Esper World. Presumably beings older and more powerful than Ramah and the other espers seen thus far.

In the distant past, both human and esper worlds were affected by a phenomenon which- on the third dimension -manifested as the disappearance of all light from the sky. Humanity remembered this as the era of the Blackmoon. It choked the biosphere, obviously, yet had consequences beyond it. The espers appear to have been affected just as much and- having longer lifespans and more of a multidimensional perspective than humans -resolved never to allow it to happen again.

Despite their immortality and non-locality, the Archareons can only perceive this event through the dark glass of prophecy. While prophecy on the esper scale may see farther than on the human one, both humans and espers relate to it in the same way. A prophecy, for these purposes, is an amorphous thing: a statement from the future with a limited range of success or failure conditions.

Malacore, who was subsumed by the Water Crystal before Darius released him, is the one who is actually capable of manipulating the crystals in such a way that the Blackmoon Prophecy may be fulfilled. This prophecy specifies that Malacore’s opposition is the axis on which Malacore’s decision will turn. From the Archareons’ perspective, Vahn and the party are the ones actually swinging the axe and therefore they are the ones who must be stopped.

The Archareons are also having non-human pattern-matching issues: Darius was a dragoon from Branch. Vahn is also a dragoon from Branch. As far as they are concerned, “these kinds of humans” appear to be working in concert. Almost immediately after acquiring the ship with which to travel to the continent of the Wind Shrine, they are capsized by an Archareon. This Archareon was summoned by Gylfi: the one we saw fighting Hans, Biggs and Wedge at the Water Shrine.

Now…Malacore shoves, espers push back. Gylfi appeared to comfortably take some responsibility for what is happening both with Darius and the crystals. Is Gylfi a third-dimensional proxy for the Esper World Archareons? Or a collaborator with Malacore? Both seem possible, just now.

Espers also introduce our first actual taste of character customization: nethicite crystals. Obviously magicite exists in this game but its only use appears to be teaching Vera how to summon different esper spirits. Nethicite can be equipped to anyone, bestowing passive buffs and additional points for various stats upon leveling. These are, of course, good for cultivating stat emphases in the long run and circumstantial protection immediately.

So far, I have encountered three nethicite-yielding boss fights in the main plot: Syldra (MP leveling bonus), Quetzalcoatl (defense and HP leveling bonus) and Atomos (magic leveling bonus).

Considering how I acquired the Valefor nethicite on Mount Palumpu, I think this may be a good time to talk about other game play factors that start loosening up. Laka the thief is recruited shortly before entering the Naddaha Pyramid, which I appreciated. I like FF thieves; both for the stealth build and the perpetual item-farming. Goblins can be encountered in the vicinity and an interesting little item can be stolen from them: Goblin Punch, with a little book icon. This comes in handy post-Naddaha once Ami the blue mage (my favorite FF mage class) is recruited. I’m wondering if those book items are how Ami will be learning most of her blue magic? Stealing the items from the relevant monster makes a lot of sense. I can see how this might annoy some people but the idea of coordinating things between thieves and blue mages kinda hits me where I live.

Anyway: Goblin Punch will make Valefor way less scary.

We also start seeing some recognizable dungeon-design conventions from the mainline series around here. Naddaha Pyramid is a FFIV-style gauntlet of winding paths and high encounter rates. The treacherous swamp of Connal Curach has stone-to-bridge jumps and thick fog, like the shipwreck graveyard from V.

Also during the Laka-to-Ami-juncture- the obstacle transcendence abilities of the party leader have so far appeared to be removing single-tile obstructions. Elina with the Mysidian gyph barriers, Laka with picking locks and Ami with persuading the Moombas of Mount Palumpu to step out of the way.

The music gets a little more diverse at this point. The Naddaha Pyramid has what at least sounds like the music in Ultimecia’s final dungeon from VIII (on a related note, music in boss fights have been from VIII and V, thus far). Once the party starts making their way through Mount Palumpu toward Wind Shrine, the music gets distinctly non-retro themed. Like, recognizable low notes on a viola in a distinctly non-midi format. The mines of Kohlingen have a version of the ‘Phantom Forest’ from VI with a lot of woodwind instruments and a bit less harp-plucking than expected. I liked it though.

Since so much of what we are listing to comes from mainline Final Fantasy games, the music choices can sound a little referential at times. I’m still kinda waiting to see if certain associations expand or not, like all the FFVI musical cues happening in relation to the nation of Ivalice. Or the FFV boss music during the fights with Gylfi and his cohort.

It is also impossible not to notice just how many place names and character names are used from other FFs. Lots of main characters like Balthier and Cecil. The name ‘Vahn’ also comes from a pre-existing game but he’s also the only one with a main character name doing main character stuff. Maybe it matters, maybe it doesn’t.

It is easy for me to imagine certain things. Like each mainline FF takes place in its own tangent universe. These tangents proceed from a convex curve, enabling them to go as far as possible without intersecting. Final Fantasy Blackmoon Prophecy may be a lateral level above or below. If the main character from a mainline FF is, perhaps, causing the mutually exclusive tangent…than Blackmoon Prophecy appears to be a level up or down from there. The souls of the divergence-authors are now circulating in a contained environment, with everyone else. If Vahn got caught in the web of the story, than maybe its because it could have happened to anyone in this version of Gaia.

Some other things I wanted to mention-

The blue Whip creature on the ground has a tent if Laka can manage to successfully ‘steal’ from it. Laka is level 8, here, with 39 for luck and 56 for speed. Vahn is the only one with a better luck stat and Laka is obviously the fastest party member so far. Laka always moves before anyone else has a chance but she can only steal a tent from a Whip once every few dozen attempts. For now, it looks like the luck stat determines whether the ‘steal’ command works or not, as in most other Final Fantasy games.

Also- the Headless monsters you can encounter between the Rift Shrine and Connal Curach? Kinda look like female Armadullahans? You can steal Spirit Shards from them. ‘Shards’ are basically permanent, single-increment stat boosters, like the stat+ and ‘source’ items from VII. The stat+ and ‘source’ droppers were hidden in the Crashed Gelnika, though. The demake of VII for the NES (the Lugia2009 version- not the Chinese bootleg it was based on) had a lot of monsters late in the game that dropped stat+ items, which felt like a way to add some character build freedom near the end. We’ll see how Babineau implements stat+ / shard droppers going forward.

The Headless are also damage sponges who can hit the whole party at once, though, so have fun with that.

Here’s the sauce

TBC

Final Fantasy Blackmoon Prophecy is an RPG Maker fan game by Daniel Babineau. Babineau began development in 2003 and completed the first playable iteration in 2011. After over decade of patches and updates, a streamlined, final-draft ‘remake’ was released a few days ago. Presently, Babineau is developing a sequel.

The nostalgia and referencing are immediately apparent with some interesting inversions.

The most obvious ones so far riff on FFI and FFIV. A beloved dragoon named Darius has lately been going a lil crazy with wild emotional reactions and inferences about everyone’s loyalty and worthiness. He looses it too hard with a prisoner, threatens to have them summarily executed and bristles when fellow dragoon Vahn tells him that’s not how it works. He storms off, rants to the king about it and gets drummed out of the military. A brief investigation to the Water Shrine ensues and guess who shows back up, eventually?

Darius’ falling out and expulsion is rather efficient. Irrational person says irrational things, threatens a detainee and strikes a fellow dragoon. Everyone agrees on this and they get rid of him because they respect the rule of law. Last time things went this smoothly in a 2D Final Fantasy, Kefka was on the brink of reshaping the face of the planet and terrorizing everyone into worshipping him.

Our main character Vahn shares his first name with the main character from FFXII. XII and XII: Revenant Wings are set in a place called Ivalice along with FF Tactics and Vagrant Story. In Blackmoon Prophecy, Ivalice is a known location in the wider world. We learn in short order that the people of Ivalice worship the dragon Bahamut as a deity and that Ivalice is at odds Branch, where our player characters start out. An Ivalician general named Braak was the prisoner that Darius threatened.

I suspect the majority of music in this game comes from the Pixel Remaster versions of I-VI and a few of them have abrupt splices in their loops (copy right protection?). Excepting, of course, the music that’s obviously from PS1 through present, like ‘Who…Are You?’ from VII during a dramatic moment and the FFIX Chocobo Forest music for the, uh…Chocobo Forests.

The majority of musical cues are from IV, like the basic fight music and the Baron Castle music for Branch Castle. A lot of FFVI cues are associated with the nation of Ivalice but not exclusively (an early non-Ivalice village has ‘Kids Run Through the City’).

The random encounter rate is suspiciously low for a retro-style Final Fantasy game, at first, but ramps up once you get out of your backyard. So far, combat abilities are learned from a pre-existing roster for each character with occasional ability-and-stat-bestowing items.

Vahn’s ‘jump’ command also seems to have a clear purpose, early on. I know that the turn-skip was always supposed to be a risk-vs-reward mechanic but it actually works that way, in these early battles. Vahn leaps into the air, skipping his turn and taking no damage. Either Hans or Oalston have to just take all the hits during that beat so you have to keep them alive until Vahn descends with his massive physical attack.

In IV, there were a lot of temporary, scripted NPC party members early on. The point was to give you an early taste of what different classes can and can’t do before the permanent, “real” bearer of the character class showed up.

(Possibly…? A few of them turn out to still be alive and playable later which always struck me as kind of pointless..especially after having more competent party members to do that stuff longer by the end game period)

Blackmoon Prophecy clearly uses a similar approach to character class ‘tutorials’. The dragoon character class eventually gets a dedicated exploration with Hans, Biggs and Wedge. I dunno yet if this game has a red mage class but so far the dragoons seem to have most of the ‘red magic’ stuff going for them with an occasional ‘jump’ button, like Freya from IX.

Oh hey- when you finally have a full four-member party in Mysidia (judging from its portrayal in IV, is Mysidia supposed to be the FF version of Mystara?) you can choose your own party leader. Different pcs have different obstacle transcendence abilities, like Elina being able to remove Mysidian glyph barriers.

The four-member party also makes it clear that the ‘defend’ command has more than one function. This game is inspired by early Final Fantasy so the absence of an active time bar lines up. Nonetheless, there is such a thing as turn order determined by everyone’s relative speed stat.

This, here, is an ideal case in point. Context from FF in general tells us that restorative magic is lethal to undead. Thus it is here. So Elina casts Cure on the Fossil and takes it out in one shot. Oalston should also be leveled enough at this point to one-shot a normal Bomb with Blizzard. That leaves the purple-tinted Grenade, which seems to have more HP and hits harder when it blows up.

Unlike most classic Final Fantasy, our summoner Vera has a firm melee emphasis (vigor seems to translate into physical attack and it’s her best stat). Buy the Mythril Blade while you’re in Mysidia, equip it to Vera and you’ll notice that she can usually one-shot the Grenades before they can cause trouble.

But– Vahn has been leveling since before any of these three were recruited. That gives him an inconvenient speed stat, here in the Gulgur Volcano. With Elina, Oalston and Vera, you could probably end the battle in the screenshot up there in one turn. If you just plug in a ‘fight’ command with Vahn, though, he will act before any of the other three have a chance to. This could have a few consequences. Depending on who Vahn strikes first, the Grenade might have a chance to explode. Ending the fight as quickly as possible depends on Vahn using the ‘defend’ command.

You’ll probably find the magicite that allows Vera to summon Shiva and a Blizzard Staff for Oalston, eventually, which will make things easier. Until then, you’ll probably spend less time dying and using up healing items if you pay attention to who is good at what and how the speed stat effects turn order.

That was a neat little tutorial segment without needing to be told what’s happening. Good job, Babineau.

Here’s the sauce

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