Zodiark DOWN! (FFXII)

So after a ridiculous amount of power leveling, I got my guys to level 95. I went back in for the last summon, the only summon I haven't gotten in all the Final Fantasy games. He still tried to repeatedly cheat with back to back to back to back instant kills, but I was able to pull out the win eventually. Finally, I have all summons in all games. Ahhhhhhhh........ Bonus objective complete. Was a fun one. I think getting all of the summons was the most full-filling part of the whole journey. I can finally rest easy now without that bastard Zodiark hanging over my head. Now, the wait for 14 begins... Too bad there's no summoner class. =(

Completion

So I got the platinum on FFXIII, but the final summon on FFXII still nags at me. Now that thirteen is done, I'm very tempted to go back and attempt that evil bastard again. I NEED all the summons for a feeling of completion for the series!

Final Fantasy XIII, The Latest Adventure Ends... Sorta

So I wrapped up FFXIII this weekend. Overall was a good game, and while it had some great strengths, it had some weak spots. Unfortunately, the weakest point was also my favorite part of the franchise: the story. I found the story completely lacking, I could have written something better in a couple of days and they had four years. Anyway, aside from that, the game was really great. The music wasn't as good as past performances, but the battle system is simply amazing. The leveling system is interesting, reminding me of a Grid/License hybrid. And the graphics are just off the charts, especially the pre-rendered stuff. I really enjoyed it, and it's definitely one of those games where I want to keep playing it.

Which is nice, since the game offers a large chunk of content AFTER the game is beat. In fact, you can't even access the final tier of abilities until the final boss is dead. And you can't even think about beating some of the really tough mobs in the game until your characters are maxed out.

A couple of other little things to pick at. While not devastating, I didn't like that there were no summon quests. Overall the summons were VERY weak in this game, almost completely useless. And I don't like that they required the TP system to summon them. Also, while I'm not sure I dislike it, it is VERY hard to get the ultimate weapons in this game. Not because you have to go on some crazy quest (that I can dig), but rather you need to sit and grind money for hours to go buy ONE component at a shop to make ONE weapon. The alternative is to try to find some method of being cheap or grind until end game when you're strong enough to beat the mobs that have a 5% chance of dropping the item. I think they could have been a bit more creative on that end.

Anyway, as this is the first FF on the PS3, it's the first to utilize the trophy system. So my current goal is to obtain a platinum trophy for the first time on my PS3. This entails a great many trials which I look forward to. One of which is completing all hunts with a 5 star rating. So far, it's been pretty fun doing all the hunts, I feel like I'm getting to play a whole different game with a different goal now. Good times. Another difficult trial is killing the end boss with a 5 star rating, and I've already completed that. Was tough, but only took me like ten tries. The last really tough one will be to obtain every weapon and accessory in the game. This is tough because of the money aspect. Getting all that cash to make 6 ultimate weapons just makes me cringe but I'll do it. Another one I'm looking forward to is completing the Chocobo hunts. Got about another 60 hours of post credits play to put in, looking forward to it.

On a side note, it still bothers me a month later that I didn't get that ONE last summon in FF12, so I think I might also work on getting those guys to 99 in parallel while I play FF13. I know, I'm crazy. =)

Final Fantasy XII, And so Our Journey Ends

Right down to the wire, in fitting Rhek fashion. I finished FFXII tonight. A bitter sweet feeling as I close the book on this great adventure. Let's finish it up.

Saturday I had finished up most of the story line, defeating Cid in the Pharo tower, the 100 floor dungeon. Since that time, my party has been getting summons and grinding. I got all summons, my summon roster on the status page of the character sheet filled out completely, but there was one more. A hidden summon, so evil it doesn't even get a roster spot. For this summon I knew I'd have to be of a much higher level. I grinded out levels 52 through 71 by way of setting up gambits and leaving my characters in a never ending room of spawns. Now some of you will say I cheated. I don't really care. Ninety-nine percent of this game was completed by setting up my gambits just perfectly then directing my controller into the direction of the mobs. I never had to engage, or heal, or do really anything once my gambits were set properly. So what's the difference if I stare at the screen while I grind or not in my opinion.

Anyway, it was all for naught. I stopped my characters at level 71 because the mob Zodiark is around level 67 and 71 is a prime number. Why's that matter? Well the fucker has about a zillion abilities which are level division dependent. Anyway, after getting about 20 more levels, buying TONS of gear, technicks and magick and researching the fuck out of this mob I headed in. I admit I could have been more prepared. I could have gone on a ton more hunts, spent another ten to fifteen hours on the game and gotten bubble belts for everyone, mirror mail, and the like. But since I'm kind of on a schedule here, there simply wasn't time. Now, this guy, is not just tough, GETTING to him is a bitch in itself. There's no nearby save crystal and the mobs can kill you in two to four hits, or simply KO you, confuse you, sleep, you name it. It's a LONG fucked up walk to Zodiark.

I set everything up as best as I could, studying my gambits and finessing things for like an hour. Then I traveled carefully in, died a bunch and finally made it to the secret chamber. I engaged and got him to about half health before he killed me. Let me explain how he kills me. He casts a spell called Darkja. This spell has a 50% chance of instant killing a character. There is no way on the planet to avoid it, no spell, no buff, no item, no gear, nothing. And for some reason he always gets lucky and eventually kills all three of my main characters in one shot.

I went in a second time, a third time, a fourth time. Keep in mind, it's a bitch of a walk every time. The fifth time I got him to about 10% health. But it got to the point where he was just casting Darkja once a second. I couldn't keep up. I failed.

I have been defeated, I am defeated. I give up. Zodiark will not fall to Rhek in the allotted time. My little side quest that I'd given myself to obtain every summon in 12 games is incomplete and will probably remain so. Maybe I'll go back and grind to 99 and do all the hunts and get all the other gear one day, but it's not very likely. A very bitter taste in my mouth that one left...

Very frustrated, I said fuck this and went into the Bahamut without any preparation. What followed was a series of awesome cut-scenes with all out war between the Bahamut ship and the imperial fleet against the resistance fleet as it heads to Rabanastre.

The Strahl flies into the mess and hails the Marquis capital ship, the Garland. Ashe tells him to stand down for a while, we're going in after Vayne. He does so after we use a voice changer to pretend to be Larsa, aiding us into the ship.

We head on in and within a matter of two minutes we're in a final showdown with Gabranth. My characters were still setting up their buffs when he went down. That's how over powered my guys are now.

Next in came Vayne. He went down just as fast in his first form, but then he had two more transitions. Eventually, flames consumed his body and Venat granted him the power of the Undying. He sprout wings and became godlike in true final FF villain form.

This was by no means a difficult battle, only long. Many of the bosses in this game have pallings. They differ from boss to boss and many bosses have several. Take for instance the summon Ultima. She would rotate between no use of weapons to magick to technicks to items, etc. And many times there would be a null barrier, meaning that ZERO damage will go through by means of physical or magic, depending on the barrier. So during the course of the Vayne fight I was literally standing there swinging at IMMUNE for five minutes, waiting for the barrier to finally drop. Then he'd raise it again. Annoying but not difficult.

Eventually he fell and I got treated to another series of great cut-scenes. In the final act, the Bahamut is out of control and headed toward a crash landing on Rabanastre. We try to leave on the Strahl but the engines aren't starting. Balthier and Fran head out to 'check the engines' and finally they come on and Vaan takes off.

With the Bahamut crashing, the old capital ship of the imperial fleet volunteers to ram crash into the Bahamut to stop her from hitting the city. But then we get a transmission from Balthier. Apparently when he and Fran went to check the engines, they did so off ship. They're still on the Bahamut trying to fix the drives before it hits Rabanastre. They'd kindly like the Alexander to not kill them all.

Balthier is successful in restarting the drives and re-routing the massive ship but it's too late for them. The ship is crashing into the desert. It seems to be the end of Balthier and Fran. Seems to be...

Afterward we flash to a year later, Rabanastre being rebuilt, Ashe being corronated, Basch taking care of Larsa in Archadia, Vaan and Penelo flying the Strahl... We see a whole lot of city cuts and Penelo gives a narrative of the after math and rebuilding. At the end though, the Strahl has been stolen. By it's original owners. Good times. Great game. End game stats. Game was probably more like 55 hours, but the grind really pushed it higher.

A couple of side notes:

Again, I loved the huge ships in this game being named after all the FF summons. I also liked that many of the summons were named after old FF end game bosses, like Chaos, Ultima, Zeromus, etc... Lot of really good name drops there, especially for someone who's just beaten all of them over the last three months.

The story of this one was no where near as good as previous FFs. It was okay, but there wasn't a lot of good motive and the end never resolved what happen to the Gods, or to Venat who betrayed the Gods. What was Venat's purpose? I would have expected him to be the true end game boss.

While the end credits rolled, they showed art work they'd done for the game. The clothing and style was so much more old school than the actual game and it looked gorgeous. I really liked it quite a bit. I wish they would have utilized those art concepts in the game. It would have made for a MUCH cooler feel. It's amazing how much art work has to do with the overall game experience.

Once again, we had no character naming, and in truth, while Vaan was the beginning of the game and the main character in every city, the story was more about Ashe and her fight against the empire. The split there between who you're following and who the story is really about hurt the emotional attachment or involvement of the player in the story line. And not being able to name your characters always makes it feel less like your game.

Once again everyone could do pretty much everything. I've stated before that I was always a bigger fan of designated roles but it's not a huge deal. The license board is probably one of my least favorite leveling systems. But no where near as annoying as two or five.

Awesome, beautiful cut-scenes all the way through. I really enjoyed them, but it felt like 90% of them where airships or fights of airships. No issue there, just saying...

Hate that I couldn't beat Zodiark. I've always hated the 'cheap' bosses in games where it requires more time and luck than skill of any sort.

Was a little weird playing this game in that I really didn't DO anything after I set up my gambits. I just steered my players around and watched them fight.

Loved the on screen mobs though, random encounters can get a little overwhelming. You feel more in the world when you can see all the mobs. That's all my comments on this one.

So... yeah. All done. Wow. Been quite a ride. I'm SO glad I did it, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed it. Really. I'm glad it's done because FFXIII comes out tomorrow! But I loved it, even the lame ones like FFII. The only down side is that I felt rushed through some of the REALLY great games in there like FFVI and FFIX. I mean. I really loved those games. They were special, and I hated that I was just blowing through them because I had this deadline.

Umm.. so I guess this is my last post about a game. I think I'll do one more post later to finish up the blog to rank my favorite games in order.

Time for the next project, become an artist! Oh yeah, and umm... beat the fuck out of FFXIII. =)

FFXII - Bahamut Rising

TWO DAYS LEFT!!!

Alright, into the Pharo dungeon I went, for-e-ver. The final dungeon of FFXII consisted of about 100 levels of gameplay. Fortunately many of those levels were just stairs but there were still about a good 20 levels of mob ridden, puzzle solving madness spread over three tiers of dungeon ascension. Each ascension held it's own challenges, a fine final dungeon indeed.

Over the course of SEVERAL hours I finally burned through two more summons and reached the summit to enter the chamber with the Sun-Cryst. It was a little smaller than I'd imagined, about the size of a shield. Once there, it was time for Ashe to decide her course of action. She draws the treaty blade and steps forward. The Sun-Cryst reacts, turns on, or something, in a pretty cool cut.

As she approaches, Rasler appears before the crystal, nodding to her, urging her to continue. She finally confronts him though. She asks if he would have her cut from the Sun-Cryst, to exact revenge on all of the empire for him. He nods. She then tells the ghost that the true Rasler would never be so blood thirsty and she cuts through the apparition with the Treaty Blade. The true nature of the spirit is revealed. It has been the Gods in disguise trying to manipulate her through her love of Rasler. She will not be a tool to be used, she will not cut from the Sun-Cryst.

Gabranth appears from the shadows. He confesses to the murder of Ashe's father and Reks, he wants Ashe to cut from the Sun-Cryst. He is goading her on, though I'm not sure why. They have a lengthy discussion about revenge and how killing people doesn't bring anyone back. Blah, blah, let me kill this guy already. He deserves it. Finally when Gabranth realizes Ashe will not be swayed, he attacks. For being one of the final bosses in the last dungeon he went down quite easily.

When he hit about 1/5 health though, Cid stepped in and tossed Gabranth aside, yelling at him for not fulfilling his promise to Larsa to protect Ashe. The mad scientists continues with some long speech about becoming more than man, becoming a God. He infuses himself with a bunch of power and I engage him with Venat's aid. At about fifty percent health he also summons Famfrit whom I have to defeat first. Not too tough of a battle though, all said and done. He finally fell, and said his final farewells to his son Balthier.

After this fight, Ashe draws the Sword of Kings to destroy the Sun-Cryst. But the stone senses it's own impending doom and begins to react. It draws in Mist and pushes Ashe back. Vaan and Ashe press forward against the tide of power emanating from the crystal, but it's almost too much. They sense something is about to happen, it's time to get the fuck out. Reddas takes the sword from Ashe and makes a final charge at the Sun-Cryst. He makes it through and buries the blade through the center of the crystal. The screen goes white.

We come back to the party at the Strahl taking off from the island tower. Apparently Reddas is dead, the Sun-Cryst is gone and we got out of there. Who knows how.

Back in pirate town we find Al-Cid, the guy from Rozarrio, waiting for us. I'd forgotten that was his name. I wonder if he's supposed to be the real Cid from the series, who aids us. He tells us that the Rozarrian division of the resistance fleet went off course and attacked a city in Archadia to incite a reaction. And they were successful. The Archadian empire is now on a course to engage the resistance fleet. But we tell Al-Cid that Vayne has lost his advantage, the Dawn Shard is powerless now.

However, Al-Cid has some news of his own. In it's last moments, the Sun-Cryst gathered enough power to breathe life into Bahamut, who has now awakened. And Bahamut is under Vayne's control. That can't be good.

In fact Vayne is heading toward Rabanastre to completely wipe out the town. So the final battle is to be us vs Bahamut and Vayne. But you know what comes before that. Summons.

So off I went to get summons, but it wasn't going to be easy. Let's go through an example of just one. Before I could even think of going after my first summon, I had to get several items. To do this I had to get them from hunts. To get them from hunts I had to complete other hunts to open those hunts. After I got the items, I had to track down the people to get the other items. Once that was done, I had to get to the summon usually in some crazy far away place. Once I was there, I had to actually beat the bastard. And as stated earlier, boss battles in this game are HARD. And the higher the summon I go for, the harder it becomes. Some summons are just ridiculously difficult, locking out all magic or all attacks or just casting non-stop death or disable.

So I'd often have to go back and find some new merchant to get some ability or piece of equipment just to survive ten seconds in the battle. And that was typically in some far off different place I'd have to travel to as well. A LOT of walking around.

I got all but three of the summons. The last three look ridiculously hard and I need to do a bit of leveling before I can even attempt them. The good thing though is that once they're all defeated, the Vayne battle will look like a joke. Hopefully I can wrap things up today or tomorrow. Just in time.

FFXII - Can you defy the Gods?

Last time I was very close to being totally fucked deep inside a tough dungeon up against disease with only two remedies left in my inventory. Luckily I ran into no more malboros, and was able to continue on without much difficulty. My party continued it's trek DEEP underground where we could finally get a view of the biggest damn chunk of nethicite ever. It's like the size of a stadium, it's called the great crystal.

We keep on going, further and further until we finally reach another summon battle. After she went down, I had my third summon. I like how all the empire capital ships are named after old school FF summons, and I like that the resistance capital ship is named Garland. But I feel like the summons should be named as they've always been: what are the roots of Belias, Mateus, Zodiark. Why these names, why change it up like this? Is it because they're more akin to threats to my party rather than helpful gods in this game?

Anyway, after this I was in a crazy ass maze of platforms, teleports, magick locks and floors that would come up to meet your feet as you stepped into thin air. All cool stuff but complicated. After so many locks I had to pull up a map online to see where the fuck was going on. On a side note, I'm officially sure I've never been this far in the game, never seen this place, I continued on. This maze goes on for days and the locks are the 12 signs of the Zodiac. I believe I only have access to unlock the locks of the designated summons. So I could only unlock 3 and get so far since I only have 3 summons. I'll have to find out what's down there when I have them all.

After the small part of the maze I could navigate we came to a final teleport. We hit the trigger and the party is teleported ... somewhere. It looks like... heaven? A place of Gods.

But only Ashe arrives. She lands on a platform in a saturated white background and before her materialize beings out of three statues around her. They call themselves Occuria, the Gods of Ivalice (I like that it's called Ivalice, it's a common name in several FF games for the world, along with Gaia). The Gods speak.

Here's the gist. One of the four Gods has sorta gone rogue, the God Venat. For some reason or other, Venat has decided to help man put their fate back in their own hands by giving them the power of the Gods. Venat has been helping Cid and Vayne to create manufacted nethicite. The Gods are not pleased.

Long ago, Ivalice was in trouble, and rather than let it die the Gods decided to step in and give one man the power to bring things back to rights. That man was Raithwall, he visited them here in Giruvegan. And they bestowed upon him the Sword of Kings with which to cut three pieces of nethicite from the Sun-Cryst. A fraction of power from the great crystal. With this power he was able to bring peace back to the world and save it. He was chosen by the Gods to do just this.

Now the time has come once more when Ivalice is in trouble and the Gods have chosen Ashe to be their hand and execute their will on Ivalice. They gift her with a Treaty Blade with which to go cut from the Sun-Cryst once more some stones of power with which to defeat Vayne and Venat. Such power they are willing to give her. But, they want the entire empire of Archadia to be destroyed as well. They are vengeful Gods, they want blood. Ashe hesitates. She wants the empire out of Dalmasca and she knows that Vayne is a threat that must be put down. But to destroy an entire empire of people?

The Gods convince her to take up their charge and she finally takes the Treaty Blade. Afterward the rest of the party appears and the Gods are gone. The others heard the whole conversation. They ask her if she will really do as they ask.

Back in Archades we see a conversation with Vayne and Cid. Venat tells Cid that they've taken the bait. That the party now has the Treaty Blade. Sneaky bastard setting us up like that to get something he couldn't get himself. That's only been done in eleven other FFs... Anyway, there's some further discussion about the war and the nethicite and the Gods. They have some plan though. Venat speaks to Vayne about his 'ascension'. It seems Vayne is to become something else. God-like. Another FF staple. The main villain always attains some level of godhood.

The party heads back to the pirate port town where Reddas is. He talks to us about this place called Ridorana Cataract. A place of great Mist power, it's destroyed all his ships that try to approach. It happens to be where my party believes the Pharoh Tower is, the resting place of the Sun-Cryst. We decide we're to head out to this place. We take the Strahl, retrofitted to fly where the Mist would usually not let it.

We're heading there but our intentions are still unclear. Are we going to destroy the Sun-Cryst with the Sword of Kings rendering all nethicite in the world dead, or use the Treaty Blade to cut from it and use it against Vayne and the empire. Does Ashe want the power or a straight up fight?

Before we set out, we also buy buy buy. This is the last town on the map, and I spent gobbles of money getting the latest gear, magick, techniks, and gambits. I also stocked up on Remedies =P. Now before the LAST dungeon in the game, I'm finally given access to the entire world map. My airship can go anywhere I want. I can't just fly around the world but a map comes up and I simply pick a location I'd like to be in. Just like FFXIII by the sound of it.

I headed to a couple of other places to pick things like float and cleanse. I want Bubble but can't find it. Hope I won't need it for this final dungeon...

I hopped into the Strahl and headed over to this crazy ass tower at the edge of a water fall. Pretty stuff.

My guys are ready, it's time to tear this bitch down.

FFXII - In over my head

The days are dwindling fast, I must make haste.

I arrived in Archades to find that I needed some chops to enter into the inner city. This involved running around in a little matchmaker game for a while in the city. Sorta pointless time sink. After that I got into the Draklor Laboratories and once more I found myself someplace where there were a number of murdered imperial guards. Seems like everyone this Cid is involved in, imperial guards die.

I worked my up to the top floor through guards and puzzles to finally face Cid himself. But before that I met a pirate by the name of Reddas who had been enlisted by the Marquis to obtain the nethicite from Cid. We duke it out with Baltheir's old man for a bit then he retreats. On the way out he mentions to Ashe that he's headed to Giruvagen to obtain more nethicite, he'll see us there. Yea, he's insane.

After the battle Reddas explains his purpose there and we learn about the maneuvers of the Marquis, Halim Ondore to build the fleet of the resistance. He's actually done quite a good job amassing a fleet to match that of the Imperial army, but with the nethicite at Vayne's disposal, the forces of Archadia will surely win. They need that stone.

But at the same time, Vayne doesn't have the stone either, Cid does. So it's off to Giruvagen to get it from the madman. Some interesting notes... The capital ship of the resistance fleet is called the Garland. Also, I believe this is the first time that the character Cid has been a villain in a FF game.

Anyway, the name of the game is neutralize the nethicite Cid has to even the odds for all out war with the imperial army. To get there we have to head through Golmore Jungle, then the Feywood, then into Giruvagen itself. It's a REALLY long journey through some tough places. After a time I arrived in Giruvagen, and my party has started to delve very deep into the earth. They're starting to think this might be the birth place of nethicite. It's a pretty crazy dungeon, complete with invisible floating platforms to walk on, evil malboros and behemoth type mobs we see in typical final dungeons. The end of the game is nearing.

Right now though I'm way deep in this dungeon and the malboros keep casting disease on me. I have only two remedies left. After that I'm pretty well and fucked over. I hope the dungeon end is soon. I might be at a point where I get really really stuck. That would... suck.

FFXII - Arrival in Archades

Not much new here. My party is still on it's way to kill Vayne in Archades. It's been a long trek through many new lands and new armor sets, magick, weapons etc. No new summons, some tough boss fights but nothing too terrible. One thing of interest is that when we reached the land of Archadia officially there was a little conversation between Ashe and Baltheir that took place. In the conversation, Baltheir told Ashe that Dr. Cid, the guy running Draklor Laboratories for Vayne, is Baltheir's father. Little bit of a plot bomb. Add to that the fact that Baltheir himself used to be a Judge... Wow. That shocked me, don't remember that at all!

Speaking of remembering the game, things are definitely getting fuzzy. I'll be playing along and start thinking, okay I've never played this far because I don't really remember this. But then after a bit more I will come across something that I do remember. So I think I've still played this much. Currently I'm in the city of Archades and I think I'm about 80% through the story line. My guys are almost level 40. We'll see how much more I remember.

FFXII - Picking the Three

So, been trying to get in some time lately but it's been hard. Didn't get a whole lot done in the last two days. I headed out to the Stilshrine in Miriam and ran through that dungeon. There was a bit of puzzle solving involved which was cool and at the end I had to fight Mateus. Once he was defeated I had my second Esper who I gave to Ashe.

I knew things were a little off when the esper fight proved so difficult. The dungeon in general was a bit tough at times. My entire party of six was about level 25 at the end when I finally gained possession of the Sword. Upon receiving it, the party said that Ashe should see if it works, try to break the Dawn Shard with it since the shard no longer held any power. But as she places the shard to break it with the sword, Rasler appears once more and shakes his head. She swings and misses on purpose. The shard glows then fades away, fearing the sword but knowing the danger has passed. This time though, when she asks Vaan, he didn't see Rasler, only she did. We head on outside. And when we look up we see an entire fleet of airships on their way to Mt Bur Omisace. Wow, Vayne has balls.

We arrive to a burned out refugee camp with many people dead or beaten. The Judge (can't remember his name) came for Larsa. Larsa went willingly to avoid any blood shed but once Larsa was in hand the Judge ransacked the place anyway. We arrive and they tell us to leave at once, the Judge is still there in the temple. Of course we're not going anywhere. We continue up the road and into the temple. There we find the Judge and his victim, the dreamsage, who he's just murdered.

The Judge is crazy with power and we can see a faint shadow of a demon in him. His very body emanates with the power of the Mist from manufacted nethicite. He sees us and deems it's our time to die. I then get into a battle and he destroys me. Reset. Die again. Ok...

So when I played FFXII before, I played with my room mate. He played three characters and I played three characters. So I had no issues keeping everyone on the same level and using them during boss fights. But it's just too much now on a time table. It was time to pick my three and leave the others behind for the time being. I went back to the Stilshrine, setup and grind route and killed undead through a chain of 198 or so. This net me five levels and about 100k in gil which I needed badly for gear anyway. With my chosen three of Basch as tank, Vaan and DPS and support, and Ashe as healer and DPS I went back in and killed the Judge, not easily but he died.

I'd forgotten how merciless this game was with boss fights. With the sword in hand now, we decided that we need to kill Vayne and destroy the nethicite. We head off to Archadia. However I just want to mention some annoying shopping first. I bought a bunch of gear to fight the Judge with my 100k. After the fight, of course, new gear popped up. I bought that. Then I went back to Rabanastre, two minutes later, new gear. Gah! Bought that. Moved down to Nalbina twenty minutes later on the way to Archadia, new gear. Fuck. Now I'm broke with barely up to date gear. Annoying.

Anyway, I ventured forth and the mobs are easy but the tough mobs are hard. I think I have to grind up another five levels or so tonight. I fought a boss in the woods near the end of the night and it took me about twenty minutes to kill him. I went through elixirs and several phoenix downs and handkerchiefs. In my experience, it's never a good thing when you have to use an Elixir before the final boss fight in a FF game. Got some work to do and not much time to do it. I think I'm going to have to lock my door to get my room mate to leave me alone.

FFXII - Emperor Vayne

Alright, off to Mt Bur Omisace we went, but first we got a glimpse back at Archadia of a chat between a few judges. The topic, Vayne's ruthless nature. We got a little more background info about his two older brothers. I guess it was he who killed them because they got in his way. How did that go unpunished...?

Anyway we started out for this mountain place and passed through some plains, and entered a dark wooded area. But we could go no further after a while. The wood cut us off from our path. Fran decides it's time she went back to her sister Vierra to get this taken care of. Apparently her home is not far off. We head into Eruyt Village, a small wooded town in the trees full of nothing but Vierra. Fran stays outside and asks Vaan to go find someone called Mjrn. Guess she's not exactly welcome.

It's not too long before we don't feel too welcome either though. After about the billionth time of being told to 'Go away Hume, leave the Wood.' Eventually though we come to a Vierra who's the leader. Her name is Jote, she's not giving us any info though and eventually Fran comes in to find out that Mjrn has left the Wood as well. Run off to some Hume mines to the west.

We go to track down this Mjrn at the Henne Mines on Ozmone Plains. When we get there though, everyone is dead. Some research for the Draklor Laboratories (run by Dr. Cid for Vayne) gone awry. We head on in and at the end we come to a large dragon mob named Tiamat that we must defeat. After he goes down we find Mjrn, who'd been under some Mist spell. She recovers and tells us that she came here to find out what the Humes were up to but they caught her and locked her up with a Magicite stone. They wanted the power of the stone to absorb into her, to see the effects. Larsa starts to see that the empire is not as clean as he'd hoped.

We take Mjrn back to Eruyt Village and find out that both Mjrn and Jote are Fran's sisters. Mjrn wants to follow in Fran's steps and leave the Wood but Fran tells her she must stay. Fran has been cut off from the Wood and can no longer hears it's voice. It's isolation from her is painful but she feels that there are things she must take care of in the outside world for the Vierra. We continue on.

We finally get to Mount Bur Omisace and find that it's a refugee camp for the survivors of the wars. It is run but a being called the Gran Kiltias, a dreamsage who sees the future. Kings and emperors the world over take heed of his word and will not cross him. The mountain lies high up, among the still floating remnants of land said to be a long lost floating continent that was shattered. The forces of that continent still drain the energy of any airships that try to enter, robbing them of their buoyancy.

The dreamsage has foreseen our coming and speaks with Ashe and Larsa about their plan to reclaim Dalmasca. But we're interrupted by another friend of Larsa's, his counterpart from Rozzario, trying to stop the war. This man tells us that peace is no longer an option. While the old emperor might have given Ashe his ear and listened to her pleas, Vayne will not.

Apparently the old emperor has died of poisoning. Vayne had a senate member arrested for it but it's obvious he was behind it. Even one of the Judges accuses Vayne of doing such and he has her killed by Gabranth. Gabranth does not want to do it, because she is his friend, but she tells him he must, and to protect Larsa from Vayne for the both of them. Vayne sends another Judge to retrieve his younger brother post haste.

Back in Mt Bur Omisace, the dreamsage now tells us that if we wish to fight power with power, we must seek out the sword that can cut through nethicite. The old dynast king entrusted it to the dreamsage of his time, long ago. A weapon that could destroy him, to be kept away from his own descendants. The weapon is in the Stilshrine of Miriam. We head out to get us a magick sword.

FFXII - Deifacted Nechicite

Oh man, in the final stretch here, less than ten days to go. It's been a whole lot of fun. Let's keep it going with the last of our journey in Final Fantasy XII.

Last time my party was read to set out on foot across a bunch of desert to reach King Raithwall's Tomb. About this time I decided to split my party into two groups and identify what the roles would be. Or rather, how I'd dish out the damage. Stripping everyone of all gear, and being around the same level I could see by stats who would be the best at what.

Vaan had good strength and the best speed, only Fran comes close in speed. So since daggers have a speed modifier, that's what I'm going with for him. And since Fran started with a bow, and bows also have a speed modifier, she'll stick with that. The strongest weapons in the game seem to hammers, axes and spears. Now spears have a straight strength mod, so Basch took those as he has the highest strength. Axes and hammers have a vitality mod, and I was surprised to find that Baltheir had the highest vitality, so he got those. Lastly, Ashe had the highest magick power, followed by Penelo. So Penelo will be my pure white mage, and Ashe my pure black mage. And I'll probably dish arcane and time magic to some other people.

Fun stuff, I spent about an hour figuring that all out and getting the right gear setups and license points distributed. Never have I had to put that much thought into gearing my people in a FF title. I like that part though, lot of fun.

Continuing on through the desert I took my first squad of Basch, Vaan, and Ashe almost all the way to the tomb. I've implemented a rule of no more than two levels of separation, so once those three were level 17, my other party of Baltheir, Fran, and Penelo stepped up from level 15. I played them through the tombs and until they were level 19, then swapped again. You get the idea. Only during boss fights do I break this and play whoever is going to win for me. Along the way I had to fight through the inhabitants of the Sand-Sea. You know the Sand-Sea people, or the 'sandpeople' as I like to call the for short (is George Lucas part of Enix...?).

Once I got to the tomb, I had to beat some phoenix like monster named Garuda (nice) just to get inside. And once inside, I was attacked by the classic demon wall. Kill it before I get smashed. I got smashed... I think my guys were a little under level so I had to go again. No dice. I finally realized that it was an optional fight to get the Demonsbane sword so I passed it up, beat the other demon wall and continued. When we finally got to the end of the dungeon, we find that we have to fight a demon. Well... an Esper. Once we beat Belias, he joined us as a summon, I gave him to Baltheir to get his first Mist going. While down there we also picked up the Dawn Shard and headed back to the surface. But before heading up, Ashe saw a ghost of her late husband Rasler before the Dawn Shard. No one else in the group saw it except for Vaan. What's going on there...?

Anyway, when we got topside, we were greeted with the entire 8th fleet of the imperial army. Damn Judge Ghis. Being out of his clutches only temporarily we found ourselves on another capital ship, the Shiva, prisoners once more.

This time however, we strike a bargain. Or rather, Vossler strikes a bargain. He has traded the Dawn Shard without Ashe's permission for the throne (for Ashe) and for Dalmasca to be free of the empire. I can see why he'd do it, sounds like a pretty sweet deal. But when someone is willing to give so much, the thing they want is always worth much, much more. Ashe is not too happy with Vossler for betraying them. Vossler says he did it for Dalmasca but we're in chains and he's free as we're escorted aboard the Shiva.

Back on the Leviathan, Judge Ghis wants to test this new nethicite to see if it is deifacted nethicite (authentic) or synthetic. They smartly put it in their drive system for the ship to test it out. Of course the tests prove that it's authentic. A little too authentic. It starts to pull in the power of the ship, something's wrong.

Back on the Shiva, Fran with her deep connection to the Mist can sense the nethicite going into some kind of overload. She starts flipping out, going berserk. She breaks her chains, and kills three guards before anyone knows what's happening. Vossler draws his sword. He will not let my party ruin the chances for Dalmasca's future. We have to put him down. As he's dying, he apologizes to her, to Basch, and asks Basch to watch after her for him now.

The Leviathan drives reach their breaking point and finally blow, triggering the nethicite in something like a nuclear reaction. The ship goes and take the entire fleet with it. The party barely escapes on their own shuttle as everyone else gets toasted.

When it's all said and done, Penelo with her eagle vision sees the nethicite floating at the epicenter of the blast. We go in and retrieve it then head back to town.

Back in Archadia, a meeting of the Senate has convened. They decide that Vayne has overstepped himself. His actions have led to the destruction of the 8th fleet while their rival, Rozzario, is building it's military for some kind of action soon. They're in a bad spot now, defensively. Vayne must pay. The emperor doesn't like it but they remind him it's not the first time he's had to put down his sons. They hint that he's killed his two oldest sons in the past when they went too far. The senate wants Larsa to become the next Emperor. They sign the death certificate for Vayne.

Back in Rabanastre, Basch recalls a seeing a similar reaction during the fall of Nalbina with Rasler. Ashe and Basch conclude that it must have been the Midlight nethicite going off. All this, all those people so Vayne can get his hands on the three deifacted nethicite. Now he has the Midlight Shard from Nalbina, the Dusk Shard from Dalmasca, and he wants Ashe's Dawn Shard which we just acquired from the Tomb.

Ashe wont let that happen, she will use the power of the Dawn Shard against Vayne. But she needs to know how to use it first. Fran tells us that the people of Garif know of such things, so that's where we're headed next. But first it was time for a little grinding, and shopping!

After a fun time doing that I finally got a Kotetsu for Ashe. I love this combo. The katanas in this game base damage off of magick power. She's the strongest magick user in the game. I equip her with a katana and mage gear, now I've got a stong ass black mage who can cut enemies to pieces with a sword. She does more damage then anyone else because the katanas strike multiple times. So while she, Vaan and Basch are all hitting for about 330 damage, she will sometimes hit for that two to five times in quick succession. Good times!

With that on it's way I headed across the Giza Plains to Garif. Once there we talked to the head chief but didn't really learn much. They don't really know much about the stones either. In fact what the chief tells us is that way back when, the Gods gave the stones to his people. But not knowing how to use the stones at all, the Gods eventually took the stones back and gave them to the Humes (humans) instead. The King Raithwall figured out the power of the stones and used them to become the first Dynast King. He used his power to bring a great time of peace and prosperity to his people. This is Ashe's descendant. He also tells us though that the stone she has, the Dawn Shard has been used up. It holds no more power, instead it only craves to suck up power, to regain it, it's a magick sink.

While there, we find out that another Hume has been around asking the same questions. And eventually we find Larsa in the camp. Larsa thinks that Ashe should come with him to meet with some big shots and reclaim her throne. Not sure really who these guys are that can just tell Archadia to stop and they will, but ok... Larsa knows that the Marquis is building an army to fight the empire. He knows that he does this for Ashe and Dalmasca. He wants him to stop. Ashe of course is not buying this, she wants her kingdom back. But Larsa explains. The Marquis Halim will be successful in gathering his troops. And the country of Rozzario will help him do so. Dalmasca will be theirs once more. But then what? Rozzario will attack Archadia, and Dalmasca being in the middle will be the battlefield between two much greater nations for who knows how long. The people of Dalmasca will be obliterated. It is her kingdom that will suffer in the end. The kid makes sense. Smart little bugger. Ashe reconsiders things when he puts it in that light. She tells him that she will follow him for the time being; she is yet undecided though.

Before setting out though she sees the ghost of Rasler once more while alone. But Vaan comes along and Rasler disappears. She realizes that Vaan can see him too, but neither of them know why. Vaan makes a commitment to Ashe, to follow her through to the end of this. I thought Penelo was his girl but it seems like they're slowly steering Vaan in Ashe's direction. We'll see, he's like seventeen. Until next time.

Peace.

FFXII - Square Enix presents... Star Wars

Back from out little bout with the Empire and a nice little dungeon escape, Vaan tried to track down Penelo to show her the Dusk Shard he'd found, but she seems to be missing. We go to Dalan, to show him what we got and to ask about Penelo. He says he'll put his feelers out but in the mean time he'd like us to take something to someone in town, a Sword of the Old Order.

We head out and the place is just around the corner, guarded by a few guys. Once we're inside, we find that Vossler is the guy we're delivering it to. Basch is already there defending himself against the slew of accusations that he's a traitor. He seems to convince Vaan, but Vossler is still on the fence. Eventually though Vossler decides to trust Basch for the time, but he's going to keep a very close eye on him. Even if he's telling the truth, it means that his brother is a Judge.

Back in the city Basch asks Vaan to help him find Baltheir. Coincidently, when we find Baltheir, we also find that Penelo has been snagged by that bounty hunter who's after Baltheir. Normally Baltheir wouldn't care but he's feeling a little guilty, and he needs something where they're keeping her anyway (Bhujerba). Basch also has business there, so the four of us take off in Baltheir's airship.

We arrive at a city in the clouds, which is pretty sweet.

We head toward the meeting place, the Lhusu Mines and along the way we pick up another Guest. A boy named 'Lamont' who's dress screams noble. We're not in the mines long when we hear some talking and go to spy on whoever it is. When we get there we see a Judge walking with a noble who Baltheir identifies as the Marquis, Halim Ondore IV. The Marquis is assuring the Judge (Ghis) that the purest of the magicite is being diverted from the Empire directly to Lord Vayne as instructed, discretely. What's Vayne up to? He's obviously working against his father in some fashion.

After they leave we continue on downward, Lamont comments on what he finds. He pulls out a stone and calls it Nethicite, it absorbs the energies of magicite. He comments on something to the effect that this is indeed where all the magicite is coming from. Eventually we come face to face with the bounty hunter. When we ask where Penelo is, he tells us that they cut her loose a while ago. Well... since they don't have Penelo we just bail. Idiot.

Once we get out of the mines, Lamont, who was ahead of us, is already talking to the Judge and Marquis. While we watch from the shadows we hear the Marquis call 'Lamont' by his real name, Larsa, who happens to be the fourth son of the emperor and brother to Vayne. We also see that they have Penelo, who Larsa claims as his guest and retreats to the Marquis' manor with her so she's not thrown in prison by the Judge.

Back at the estate with Larsa and Penelo, Larsa explains that the Empire is good and trying to help Dalmasca. That all the men of his family try to help the people of the empire selflessly. He believes that his brother Vayne is a good man. Kid has a good heart and a good head but he's blind, Vayne is not the good guy here.

Back with the main party, we set up a meeting with the Marquis. We arrive at his palace that night and are greeted as welcome guests at first.

But as Basch explains that he plans to rescue the resistance leader Amalia from Vayne, the Marquis has them arrested. He explains that the fleet is arriving as they speak to pick up Larsa and Judge Ghis. That Penelo will go with Larsa, and that they will be delivered to Vayne. He has no choice.

This is all too reminiscent of Lando (Marquis) turning against his friends because of the Empire (the Empire) at his Cloud City (Bhujerba). We have our sky pirate Han (Baltheir) being chased by the bounty hunter (Banga). We have our Princess Leah (Ashe) who's the leader of the resistance (Rebels) fighting them. Anyway, enough plot stealing. We cut over to Vayne with Judge Gabranth (Basch's twin) talking about the loyalty of the Marquis, but Vayne has just gotten word that the Marquis has captured Basch for them. Gabranth swears he'll kill Basch when Ghis brings them back. As Gabranth leaves, Dr. Cid enters and has a discussion with Vayne.

In the morning the party is taken up to the fleet, specifically the Dreadnought Leviathan (I like how all the capital ships of the Imperial fleet are named after old FF summons).

Aboard the ship we're taken to the bridge where we find Amalia, who's introduced finally as the Princess Ashe, waiting with Judge Ghis. She slaps the traitor Basch who supposedly killed her father when he comes in. After that little bit of drama, Judge Ghis explains that Vayne wants the help of Dalmasca royalty to help bridge the peace in Dalmasca but anyone falsely claiming the blood of royalty will be executed. Basch expalins that he knows the location of a stone which will prove her royal lineage. Well, it just so happens he's talking about the Dusk Shard, which Vaan has with him, and it starts to glow. So her blood is proven right there on the spot. However, the Judge doesn't really care, Vayne just wanted the stone. He sends Ashe and the others back to prison, to be executed later I think.

On the way to their prison (separated from Ashe already), Baltheir and Basch beat down the guards with the help of an undercover Vossler. Free of our bonds, we head off to rescue Ashe. After a bit we come to the Princess and she joins our party. Now we're roaming the Leviathan and the alarm is going off. I'm supposed to find the control panel to disengage the alarm but instead I used the opportunity to gain a few levels for all of my people. This almost backfired though when I stumbled onto a boss fight with no MP and everyone at about half health. Barely surviving, I moved on, and as we came to our destination, Vossler left the party to find another solution to help Dalmasca, leaving Ashe in Basch's hands. I guess everyone finally trusts him.

When Vossler leaves, Penelo and Larsa find us. Larsa helps us get away, and before he goes he gives Penelo the nethicite as a gift. When we ask him why he's helping, he says that Basch and Ashe were claimed dead by his brother for a reason. The fact that they live will bring plots to light, and the longer they live, the more that plot will be revealed. Larsa must know what's going on.

We finally arrive at the transport and have to face off with Judge Ghis to continue. He attempts to just kill Ashe with one spell but the nethicite that Larsa gave Penelo absorbs the attack. He's gonna have to do it the old fashion way I guess. After we got him to about 20% health, his mask fell off and he gave up. This was my first time getting to experiment with the new limit break system. Vaan had recently gotten a 'Mist' on the license board and when his MP is full, he has the ability to go off for a special attack. The attack system takes some getting used to, but eventually I got it. Knocked off about half the Judge's health in one hit. We escape the fleet on the transport.

Arriving back in Bhujerba, we meet with the Marquis again, this time he's not so ready to turn us in. We find out that Ashe is his niece and she wants his help. But he says he can not do anything until she can get proof of her blood, the Judge has the Dusk shard now. She explains that there's one other stone which can do that, the Dawn shard in King Raithwall's Tomb. The Marquis says she'll stay in Bhujerba with him until they can figure out what to do.

The next scene is her trying to steal Baltheir's airship. But Vaan and then Baltheir and then everyone else comes in. She convinces Baltheir to 'kidnap' her. She promises huge treasures in the tomb. So in Han Solo fashion, the greedy leading man will help the princess once more.

Back in Arcadia, we see Judge Gabranth meeting with the emperor. The emperor is dying and he worries that there will be a war between his two sons once he's gone. He knows Vayne is ambitious and might kill Larsa if necessary. He also knows that the senate (hah) prefers a more pliable emperor, someone younger and easier to manipulate like Larsa, and they may go after Vayne. The emperor wants Gabranth to be Larsa's shield, to protect him from harm. We also find out that a long time ago the empire destroyed the home of Gabranth and Basch. But where Basch fled to Dalmasca, Gabranth joined them. Lastly, Gabranth reports that Cid is helping Vayne doing some experiments in some research laboratory.

Back to the party, Baltheir lands quite a ways from the tomb, something about the field not letting the ship get any closer without shutting down. We turn on the invisible cloaking system on the ship and head out on foot.

Very fun game to play and just tool around in. Love the lack of random battles, just because I hate loading and unloading the battle system every other minute. Nice to just be able to run around and, with gambits, I can just run up to a mob and the party will kill it, heal themselves, and continue. I only have to really get involved if things get out of hand. Kind of refreshing.

FFXII - The Captain Returns

Off to the desert I went and after a little fun killing wolves and the like, I found myself in a small village on the outskirts of the city. And there I ran into Vaan's friend Penelo who teamed up with me to keep Vaan out of trouble. We talked to the locals and found out that the Sunstone must be gotten by absorbing power from large Shadowstones in the desert. Out we went with the help of some kids to acquire the power of the Sunstone. When I was done I headed back to Rabinastre, and Penelo left the party.

I headed down to Dalan and, with the help of the Sunstone, I broke into the palace, then the treasury. As Vaan was rummaging through the treasury a statue opened up on it's own and revealed a glowing crystal. Vaan snagged it just as two other thieves entered the treasury too. They identified themselves as Fran and Baltheir, and said the stone was the Goddess' Magicite, and it was theirs for the taking. Vaan thought otherwise, but there was no time to argue as a commotion was stirring outside and it was time to bail.

We started to run and Vaan tried to break away from the other two but Fran cut him off on their hover bike, and they snagged Vaan.

On our way out of the keep though, there is something else going on. Apparently the old knight Vossler and a girl named Amalia (obviously the dead Ashe), along with a great deal of soldiers, have broken into the palace to kill the new Consul during his Fete (welcoming feast).

But the new consul Vayne obviously anticipated something of the sort and the great airship fighter Ifrit comes out in the night, just destroying the resistance members.

As the battle rages on, the hover craft gives out and we crash into the lower keep, finding ourselves somehow in the dungeon or under the palace. Fran and Baltheir decide to temporarily team up with Vaan to fight our way out. Along the way through the sewers of the palace, we find a girl cornered by many imperials and though she's killing them, she's greatly outnumbered. We aid her and take down the soldiers. She introduces herself as Amalia, one of the leaders of the resistance, but we tell her that her resistance is all dead upstairs. She joins the party as a Guest, to fight our way out.

So the party consists of three members once more. While the combat system only allows complete control of one character at a time, I can switch between characters whenever I want, as well as set "Gambits" which are like AI commands for battles. When Guests enter the party as they have since FFII, you have no real control over them, their equipment, or their actions, and they leave when the story line dictates.

Anyway, we continued on, and I was very glad I went to the magick shop before going into the castle because I was blowing through Cure like crazy. Near the end of the tunnels I had a showdown with a Fire Stallion of sorts and had to bust out all kinds of Potions, Phoenix Downs, Antidotes, and Eyedrops to survive. I'd forgotten that boss fights in this game are actually pretty tough. But fun stuff.

Eventually though, the imperials found us once more and there were just too many this time. Vayne was there, and took Amalia away while the others are thrown in the Nalbana prison. Which is like an underground desert where the inmates are free to kill themselves as they please. After a while in there, we come into contact with some asshole Bangas and have to kill them. The guards come down, and we're introduced to a Banga bounty hunter who's looking for Baltheir, and we also get to meet our first Judge. The Judges act as judge, jury, executioner and commanders of the Arcadian empire. This judge in particular has come down to interrogate "The Captain".

While still hiding from the bounty hunter, we trail the Judge to see where he's off to. Maybe a way out. The Judge goes through some deep underground secret passages and finally comes to a hanging cage over a bottomless wide well. Inside the cage is Basch, not very dead. The Judge asks a few questions then leaves. After the Judge leaves, Fran tells us that the way out is down the well. She can detect 'Mist' and knows these things apparently. The party ignores Basch and tries to find a way down. Basch pleads with them to let him out. Baltheir says he doesn't talk to dead traitors, and Vaan jumps on the cage and starts yelling at him, telling him that everything wrong with the world is his fault, that he killed his brother Reks. Baltheir calms him down.

Vaan was a little loud though and the guards are coming. The only way to quickly get down is to cut the chain and ride the cage down, which we do. After we've crashed at the bottom, the cage is broken and Basch is out. He wants to come with us, and Vaan is having none of that, he'd rather kill him, but Baltheir says they could use an extra sword arm. Basch joins as a guest.

After working our way through a good bit of tunnels, Basch finally tries to defend himself. He explains that when they broke into the castle to stop the king, his party was surrounded and he was abducted. Then he was held and forced to watch as his twin brother, dressed like him, killed the king and Reks. Basch was setup, to tear the kingdom apart. Baltheir buys it but Vaan is still skeptical.

Eventually we get out of the tunnel, fight our way across the desert and find ourselves back in Rabinastre. The party splits and we keep Vaan, and are told to lay low, especially Basch. But Basch thinks it's only a matter of time before the resistance finds him, they'll want answers and he wants to clear his name and fight the empire.

After all the fighting, I got to spend a few points on the license board but at this point I have just enough points to get some cures and some boxes to use the latest weapons and some armor. Hope to knock out a bunch more tonight.

FFXII - Fallen Dalmasca

Our story begins with a beautiful cut scene which gives us several years of background info in a few minutes. I'll try to relay that in a few sentences. Ours is a kingdom called Dalmasca, a happy kingdom with a princess Ashe who's newly married, the kingdom rejoices but the celebrations don't last long.

There's two kingdoms at war with each other, with two smaller kingdoms stuck in the middle. The kingdom to the north, Arcadia attacks our home kingdom of Dalmasca to prevent their enemy from doing the same.

It's not long before the new Prince Rasler must go to war with his trusted knight Basch, but the enemy is too strong and the young prince dies in battle, leaving his new bride in black to mourn.

After the great defeat, the kingdom of Dalmasca has no choice but to surrender. It's at this point that we gain control of a 17 yr old character named Reks who's fighting under Basch and his friend Vossler. Their mission is to stop the king from signing the treaty of surrender with Arcadia, because they feel his life may be forfeit afterward. During the mission I basically get a tutorial on the new combat system. They enter the keep, fighting through imperial soldiers of Arcadia to get to the king. Reks gets separated from the main group for a moment, and when he catches up to the king's chamber he finds a slaughter. All his men are dead, and the king is dead. He turns at a noise and comes face to face with Basch who puts a knife in Rek's stomach. Basch says that the king was a traitor for surrendering. The imperial guards come in and arrest Basch as Reks' vision fades to black, Reks calls out the name of his little brother, "Vaan".

Two years have gone by and in the meantime there is a quasi ruler in Dalmasca called the Marquis. It is he who tells the player that since the fall of Dalmasca, the princess Ashe has commited suicide after her father's murder, and Basch was tried and executed as a traitor. Now we get control of Vaan, who's now 17 himself. We're in a sewer, killing rats. After a bit of that a kid named Kytes comes down to tell us some guy named Migelo needs us. We head on up to the surface in the city of Rabanastre and go to Migelo's place. Migelo is a Banga who gives us odd jobs here and there but they're kiddy jobs, Vaan wants something more. Vaan is a thief and wants to put his skills to work but Migelo is trying to keep him out of trouble.

We head to the local bar on a silly errand and find a Bill on the Hunter's Board for a pestering tomato fiend out in the desert. Vaan decides it's time to test his skills out, he accepts the bounty and we go out into the desert. After a look around and a few dead catuar and wolves, I find the menace and dispatch of him. On the way back into the city though I'm stopped. The new consul from the empire is coming today and the city is locked down. Eventually Migelo comes out to get me though, along with my young friend Penelo who I'm pretty sure has a thing for Vaan, she looks about 15 or 16. Young heros.

I get back into the city and go find a spot to see the new consul with Penelo. In another cut, we watch as the new consul Vayne, who's the son of the current emperor, takes control of Rabanastre. Vaan doesn't like it but the people seem to respect him a little after a pretty good speech.

Once it's over, Vaan decides he wants to break into the palace that night during the feast of the new consul to steal something special. Of course he knows Migelo won't help him so he goes to see Dalan. Dalan runs a little seedier part of the city underground and tells Vaan about a secret passage into the castle. But one must have a sunstone to open the magical door. It's off to the desert to find the magical stone.

This is all good stuff, and this is actually the third time I've played through the game, but I only ever get about 3/4 of the way through. It will be nice to finally finish it, it's a fun one.

Final Fantasy XII, Goodbye Sakaguchi, Hello Enix

Final Fantasy XII is an interesting title with roots in change. Final Fantasy X was the last title that Hironobu Sakaguchi was part of as executive producer. Final Fantasy IX being the last title he had a hands on role in. In 2002, after his film debut of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, Sakaguchi felt pressure to step down in the company as the movie was a complete bomb and the company suffered massive losses in capital. After Sakaguchi left the company, Square joined forces with it's long time rival, creating a new company called Square-Enix. Sakaguchi went on to form a new company called Mistwalker in 2004. The fact that he left Square kind of makes me sad. It's like Square going from Nintendo to Playstation back in the day, your loyalties are torn. After all he IS the father of the series.

The last title to appear on the PS2, the first title to be without Sakaguchi, the first title to be produced with the aid of Enix, and the first title to reinvent the turn based fighting system. This game came out in 2006, years after the release of Square-Enix's new MMO, Final Fantasy XI. The game developer took many aspects of the MMO and tried to transition them into play for their new single player title which the world had been waiting for, for four years. They wanted to give the single player game a more online or playing-with-friends feel. Or at least that's what I and many others felt.

The game was successful, but not as much as prior titles. For myself, it felt older than it's time. I had been used to playing online MMOs in FFXI and WoW and this was a definite downgrade in graphics when I expected better. That does not take from the game, it just was disappointing. The designers went for a more realistic look of their characters ALL the time. What this did was make the actual game play more pleasant by having the characters look better. But it also made the cut scenes less crisp or beautiful because the same lower aspect models were being used. If I remember correct, true CG movies are very few and far between in this game.

Also of note, this game again does not allow you to name your main character which I find frustrating. This was done before in FFIV for the DS where voice acting was used for that version. It allows them to talk to and about your character without avoiding using the name. I don't like it, as I've stated before, it takes something away from gameplay, makes it feel less personal, less heroic, and less of your story. It becomes more about the party and not a single hero you can identify with and build up as an alter ego.

Alright, alright, I feel like I'm bashing a good game here so I'll stop. It's time to begin the last leg of this awesome journey. Kind of sad that this is the last one I'll be blogging about... Let's begin Final Fantasy XII.

Edit at 11:24pm: I take back what I have stated about the graphics after watching the gorgeous cut scene opening up the game tonight. It looks really good on my PS3 with the graphics boost. Blows FFX, FFXI, and WoW out of the water. I still don't approve of the character models but I understand their transition in going from cartoon characters to real looking characters can be tough. I know they met much better success in FFXIII.

Final Fantasy X, The Dream Ends

In preparation for defeating the final boss I, of course, had to first obtain all summons to keep my streak going. They looked tough, but I can't stop now. The first on my list was Seymour's crazy ass summon, Anima. This required going back to each temple and acquiring the destruction spheres, then placing them in the temple where Rhek was first summoned by Sin and found by Rikku at the beginning of the game. Once complete we enter and find that the Fayth is Seymour's mother. She tells us how she became a Fayth and granted Seymour the Anima Aeon when he was very young, giving him a craving for power. It's her fault and she's sorry, she wants us to end him, and to help us along the way, she gives us the Anima summon.

Next we headed to the Calm Lands where we traveled to where Lulu's first Summoner met her end. We enter a cave and work our way through to the end where we find the Unsent summoner who has no more humanity left, just hatred. She calls upon Yojimbo and I answer with my new summon Anima. I had hoped he would not be capped like Bahamut so he could deal over 9,999 damage. I was not disappointed as he one shotted Yojimbo for 40k damage, sweet. Afterward though I did not receive the summon outright. Rather I had to pay him off to join me, ended up costing me most of my bank roll, 205,000 gil.

Next up, we traveled to Remein Temple to have our final showdown with Belgemine, the summoner who's been challenging and teaching Yuna throughout the game. We defeat her Bahamut and receive the Flower Scepter. Then we go monster hunting for the guy in the monster arena. Once we've captured all the required monsters, we are rewarded with the Blossom Crown. We head on back to Remein Temple and receive the last summon, the Magus Sisters, who are originally from FFIII. Cool.

With the summons obtained it was time to fight Sin. We begin the hymn and the world joins us in song. We approach the great beast and he creates a vortex which pulls us in.

As we're pulled in, he casts some crazy ass spell which rips holes through the surface of the earth, converging on our airship, we barely get out of that.

We move in closer and notice symbols on the arm joints, so we attack each arm to weaken it before Cid uses the cannon on the airship to fire at Sin and rip his arms off.

Sin, now hurt, moves in for the kill and instead of waiting we engage him first, jumping onto his body. We attack his center point, deal with his ass and then hop off as he goes crashing into the city of Bevelle. But it's not over, Overdrive Sin arises and hovers over the city, waiting for us.

We head in. Now at this point in the game my guys are just.. ok. Auron smacks shit around pretty well, as does Wakka from time to time. But Rhek is very mediocre and Kimahri is useless, as is Rikku. Lulu is powerful when she uses her end game magic on regular mobs but it's pretty weak if not worthless against bosses who are often immune to things like Bio, Demi and Death. She's not far enough in her sphere for Flare or Ultima. So at this time I typically win by overdriving Yuna and her summons then letting the Aeons do all the heavy lifting. This was no exception, Anima annihilated OD Sin, his regular hits were for over 12k (more than a regular summon's OD), and his own Over Drive hit for 50k. Sin went down nasty.

Now it was time to enter Sin and kill Yu Yevon before he could find another Aeon host for Sin. Inside we find Seymour who's been absorbed by Sin. His master plan this time is to sit in Sin for eternity and eventually find a way to control it. Whatever, man. We whip the shit out of him for the last time and Yuna Sends him finally. Man that guy was annoying.

We travel through the body of Sin in some metaphysical plane of existence and finally come to a great tower in the body. At this point it's worth mentioning that I was nearing the end of my sphere grids and I'd gotten Ultima for Yuna and Lulu. We enter the tower and find Jecht, the final real boss of the game.

He lived up to his status and beat me down, but I almost had him. I grinded a couple of overdrives up and went at him again. After a tough first phase (because I saved my best Aeons), I was finally able to chip at his health, only really bringing out my weaker Aeons to absorb his overdrive which almost guarantees one or all of my party dying if they're out. Using this method to soak up most of the damage, I finally beat him into his second phase. At this point it was up to my Aeons. It's worth noting here that once an Aeon has used his or her overdrive ability, the boss doesn't stop getting turns until the Aeon is dead. This killed me before because his turn ended on an Overdrive and he wiped my party when they came back out. This time I was prepared though and strategically timed the turns and overdrives so that wouldn't happen. Auron started things off with an Armor Break to weaken the boss, then Yuna summoned Bahamut who hit him for 28k, Anima who hit him for 85k (!!!), and finally the Magus Sisters who did a disappointing 18k damage (for being the final summon). Gotta love Anima and Bahamut. Jecht went down and transfered back to human form. Rhek reconciled with his father as he died but now it was time for Yu Yevon.

At this point the game was beat, what followed was a series of battles that I couldn't lose due to the fact that the game put Auto-Life on all my party. Yuna summoned each of her Aeons in turn, who were immediately possessed by Yevon, and then defeated by us before they could meld with Sin. We went through this process for every summon in Yuna's arsenal and this was the only time I kinda regretting getting every summon. Once this lengthy procedure was complete, we finally got to face off with Yu Yevon himself. A squid...

Kinda ironic how Yu Yevon cast Zanarkand to remember his dead city, and uses Sin to keep Spira away from his dream world; and then to be killed by your own summon. Ironic because his defeat has always been based on a summoner calling upon a summon which just ends up killing the summoner in the end after merging with Yu Yevon. He got a taste of his own medicine.

Reflecting on this battle I see what has become a key element in the entire series, the summoner. I used to think that the common thread in all the stories was usually something to do with crystals. But ever since FFIII, a summoner has either played a vital role, been the center of the story, or the Eidolons control everything. It's always the summoner.

The fight itself was a pain just because I was hitting him for only like 2-5k damage and he would counter attack with Curaga for 9,999 health. With his total health at 99,999, I wasn't sure how to beat him for a minute. Then I cast Bio with Lulu and it actually landed and I just sat and did nothing so he couldn't counter cure as Bio ticked for 9,999 damage every turn. When his health was under 2k I finished him off with Auron, which I thought was fitting.

After Yu Yevon is defeated, we see all the statues of all the Aeons in the temples over the entire world start to fade in power. We see the Fayth disappear from the temples. Yuna starts to perform her final Sending, and as she starts she sees Auron begin to fade. This causes hesitation but Auron tells her it's ok, to continue. The final Sending destroys all Aeons, Sin, and the Fayth.

The dream that is Zanarkand ends, and Rhek disappears as Yuna tells him she loves him. Aww, so sad...

After everything is over, we see Yuna standing at a pier, whistling the way Rhek taught her. He told her when she whistled like that, he'd always come for her. But he doesn't come... Lulu comes and tells her it's time. She turns and walks to the stadium to tell the people of Spira that they're finally free and it's time to rebuild.

The credits roll and at the very end, the black fades into a scene of the sea. And we see Rhek curled up under the water.

He wakes, looks up, and begins to swim for the surface. The title splash screen hits, The End. What a tease. I almost want to go play through FFX-2 now to see how he came back.

My final stats, game logging in at about 41 hours. Overall great game. I can see why they'd want to do a sequel to this one. The 'dream' thing wasn't bad at all or how people made it sound. I LOVED the whole Summoner story line. I loved using the summons in battle. The story was good. The only things I had a beef with were the voice acting and responses of some of the characters but as I stated earlier, Square has never been great in this department and I accept that. This game ranks pretty high for me though, I'm going to put it at number 4 I think.

Only FFXII to go. After that I think I'll post a ranking of my favorites. Until next time, peace.