Well, last time, we failed at saving the Water Crystal and it got busted up just like the Wind Crystal did. But at least because of that, we got access to some new Jobs! Or, at least, one Job, since we're doing that whole thing.

And the Job we were given was the Time Mage Job.

Despite Time Mage having some kind of weird clown outfit, it's actually a pretty cool job. Unlike the White Mage who can only equip staves, Time Mage can equip rods and knives, as well!

This alone is a huge deal, as staves are really terrible for fighting, so now we at least get to stab and slash.

Time Mage is similar to White Mage in that you use magic from a pool of spells that you've bought from shops. Instead of healing spells, they focus on magic that manipulates time, like speeding up the ATB gauge of allies and slowing down that of enemies. Well, I guess you could slow yourself and speed up the enemy if you wanted, too...

And since we leveled up our White Mage Job for each character a bit, they're able to equip White Magic as a secondary ability while in the Time Mage Job! I would have just put everyone on Time Mage, but as per Four Job Fiesta rules, you must have at least one of each of the jobs you've been assigned at all times. Fortunately, we don't have to have an even mix, so Lenna stays in the back with her healin' stick, and the other three jump to the front as Time Mages, holding knives and ready to cut someone.

Syldra dropped us off pretty much right where we were before entering the tower, just outside the meteor crash site. So we pop back in there to see what's up, and now there's a hole in the meteor that we can enter! This wasn't here before...

But before we head inside, we should head back to Walse and see what has happened since the Tower fell...

Most of the people in town talk about how they're sad that the Crystal is gone or whatever. A couple note that there's a soldier from Karnak that suddenly appeared here. The more we talk around in the castle, we find out that this guy somehow "warped" from one meteor to the other, but he doesn't know how or why. And then when we talk to Daddy Walse in his bed (<3) he begs us to try to save the Fire Crystal, which is in -- you guessed it -- Karnak, where a meteor also recently fell.

Putting all of this together, it sounds like conveniently there's some way to warp between the meteors at Walse and Karnak, and that's just where we need to go anyway. So we head back to the meteor crash site and head inside.

And indeed there is some kind of strange warp... thing... inside the meteorite. Bartz steps on it and gets teleported away somehow, flying off the top of the screen, and Lenna suggests that we'll never know if it works unless we try it, so everyone steps on it in turn.

Though Galuf is the last to go, and he seems to be vaguely remembering something, but he just can't quite recall what. This whole warp thing seems familiar to him, and someone in the tower knew him. He starts to wonder just who he really is.

Next, we're just kind of outside somewhere else at another meteorite. Probably this is close to Karnak.

Walking around, we run into a variety of enemies. Most of them easily fall to the much-more-consistent damage of the daggers we've equipped, but these turtles don't. So probably for the first time ever in any Final Fantasy title that I've ever played, I actually am making use of the 'Equipment' menu in battle. I always figured it would take a turn to switch your weapon out, but it doesn't!

Switching to the Frost Rod, even if sometimes we deal small damage, it's still averaging much better damage than the daggers that barely scratched the big things.

We reach the town of Karnak, which is... on fire but no one seems to care? Or at least there are just like... fires everywhere. They don't seem to be spreading...

But if we touch them, it hurts, so...?? Why would people enjoy living like this?

But they all seem to, because when the people from the Library of the Ancients told them to stop amplifying the power of the Fire Crystal, they got so upset that the Queen built an entire wall to keep anyone out from the west. Which also means we can't go west either, because the land is completely walled off from the mountains to the sea.

Other people in the town talk, of course, about fire, and someone says that the inventor of the amplification machines that are used on the Crystals were invented by someone named Professor Cid. Someone else mentions that because of the great fires in Karnak, they're able to produce weapons and armor much more easily than other places, which means they're able to offer great prices, too.

Heading into the shop immediately after hearing that, we find really cheap weapons. Stuff that cost 750 Gil before only costs like 175 Gil now!

I grabbed some more Frost Rods since we've been using them and they were so cheap, but then...

Someone comes in and starts yelling about how we're in cahoots with the monsters because we came out of the meteor. Because that totally makes sense. Actually I think perhaps monsters also come out of the meteor but like... it's never been explicitly stated thus far...? Or I forgot already...????

Anyway, despite playing through this game multiple times in the past, I always forget this is going to happen when you try to buy something. Like... every single time I play. Even though this is one of the more memorable parts of the game... I'm always just like "Yay! Super cheap items!" and then freak out when this starts happening, then realize I always forget this for some reason, hahaha.

Then we end up getting tossed in jail.

There's a period of time where you can walk around but nothing will happen. I'm not sure if the game continues after so many steps you take or after a timer or something, but it takes a while. I feel like... so many games in the SNES era did this? Put you in a jail and then allowed you to play with no solution for a while, then the game just continued on its own...

In this case, after a while of nothing, someone from the next cell blows a hole in the wall with a bomb. Then he's sad that he finally managed to escape, but it was just into another cell. Then the party just laughs in his face while he hangs his head. And I guess there are no guards in here or something because no one seems to come running after hearing a huge explosion like that.

But we find out this lovely mustached fellow is the Professor Cid that we heard about before. He'd been researching the Crystals and learned that long ago, they had much more power than they do today. So after learning more, he was able to build machines to amplify that power. Which seemed good, but all it really did was blow them up. He didn't make it to Tycoon or Walse on time, but when he tried to shut off the machine in Karnak, he was thrown in prison.

Bartz explains that we're here to save the Crystals, too, and shows him our Crystal Shards. Cid kind of freaks out and asks who exactly we are, but before anyone can answer, someone comes running to the cell. Finally.

It's the chancellor, coming for Cid. But he comes to our cell. Even though Cid is supposed to be in the other cell. And doesn't notice or comment on the giant hole in the wall.

Well, possibly because he's in a panic. But not a distracting enough panic to notice Cid is in a different cell with other people and stop at that one immediately. But too much panic to realize that people aren't supposed to just be in different cells and that there's a huge gap where there used to be a wall, and probably rubble and soot and stuff all over the ground...

Anyway, he says that Cid was right after all, and the Crystal is starting to crack, even though they turned the amplification machine off. Cid replies that it must be the Fire-Powered Ship that is leeching energy from the Crystal still. The chancellor begs him to help, but Cid says he needs the help of "these kids" (referring to us, despite Galuf being like... just as old as Cid?)

The chancellor is hesitant because we came out of the meteor, so obviously we're friends with a werewolf (?!?!?!), but realizes he doesn't have time to argue and lets us all go free so we can save the Crystal.

But while this is such an emergency of great urgency that you can let all the prisoners out of jail without question, it's not so much one that we need to go to where we need to go right away. Cid just tells us to "get ready" and that he'll meet us at the Fire-Powered Ship. No, we don't get to have two stache silverdaddies in the party, sorry. Game devs aren't nice enough for that.

So we leisurely wander around the dungeon. All over Karnak, including indoors, are these little fires like outside... You will also notice that most of them are blocking off entrances to rooms or are covering up treasure chests so that we can't access these things.

And the people of Karnak don't see to really care. But they even recognize that the flames block important passageways and stuff, but they're all just like... casually going about their own business without thinking huge balls of flame inhabiting their buildings is that big of a deal.

As we explore the castle, most people just talk about how great the Fire Crystal is because they can make good weapons and power their machines with heat and stuff, including making a ship that can sail without wind because it's powered by a fire-powered engine.

A few people mention this werewolf thing again -- apparently there is a werewolf, and everyone is convinced that it's after the Crystal.

We finally make it to the throne room, and... this guy just casually shouts out that the Queen is missing. And they're doing nothing to find her. No one is worried or anything. Just... missing! You'd think that this would be a pretty big deal, and that more people would be talking about this and people would be trying to find her or something, but they're just like, "Yeah, she's gone!" and that's it...

The chancellor is pacing around the throne room wondering where the queen is, too, and just tells us that Cid is waiting for us at the fire-powered ship.

Heading out of town to go find the ship, there's a scene with the werewolf approaching the castle. The guards use fire to "scare him away" and he runs off. When we head out of the castle, they tell us not to worry about any werewolves getting inside.

It's fine, I'm really not worried anyway...

Before heading to the ship, we stop by Karnak to buy supplies for our journey. Importantly, everyone gets a Mythril Dagger except Lenna, and we upgrade our hats to plumed hats. Also, the prices have gone back up to normal now, even though there's no explanation for it...

We arrive on deck of the ship and Cid tells us that the engine is what's draining power from the Crystal, and we need to go stop it. But he can't because there are monsters all over the ship. So we head inside where he tells us to go. The first little area is wooden and looks like all the other ships we've seen so far, but once we enter the lower areas, it looks more metallic and modern.

There are a variety of strange monsters here, including these "Motor Trap" enemies that fall down from the ceiling sometimes when you defeat all the enemies in a battle, and prolong the fight.

There's also an enemy that uses a 'flashing' ability to cause Darkness on all members of the party at once. Except Faris who is still rocking the Silver Specs.

There are elevators and switches and conveyor belts and all kinds of stuff in here. It really has that 'factory' feel to it. There's also just a world map lying around on this rafter, which we're able to pick up. This is pretty cool, because when we're on the overworld, we now have a little mini-map in the corner, and can open up a map screen with labeled locations that we can visit.

But we're inside a ship right now, so we can't do that...

We climb through ducts, activate elevators, fall through holes in the ground, and more to grab treasures and navigate the ship. Who ever thought it would be a good idea to design a ship like this? If you need to get to the engine you'll have to flip switches, take elevators back and forth, crawl through ducts, risk falling through the floor...

And even solve puzzles! We find a consecrated circle, and then after that we're taken to a large room with a bunch of switches and strangely-shaped platforms. Flipping a switch will move a platform or change its shape, and if there's something in the way, it won't be able to move. It's actually not too hard to figure out; you can mostly just flip the switches in the order you come to them and will continue around to the end.

There is one switch near the beginning of the room that moves a small platform near the end of the room, and if it's not in the right position when you get to the end of the room, you won't be able to get to the treasure chest at the end. But you can always just reverse your steps and go back and flip that switch. But since you still get into battles while doing this, it's extremely tedious to have to undo everything to restart from the beginning, all for one treasure.

And the chest just contains an Elixir, so... it's especially disappointing if you do all of that again just to end up with that.

There were some other cool treasures throughout the ship like Thieves' Gloves and a Green Beret, but it was nothing we were able to equip with our Jobs.

After puzzle fun, we arrive in the boiler room, where we find Queen Karnak. We ask her what's going on, and she calls us "infidels" and summons a bunch of fire from the engine and shoots it at us while she glows blue.

Cool.

Apparently we have to fight the fire, which is called Liquid Flame and now looks like a person. Thankfully, everyone still has the ability to heal since we have White Magic equipped in our Ability slot.

Liquid Flame mostly just does a flame attack called Blaze that hits the entire party for some decent damage, but with Cura, it's not much of a problem. We just keep chopping at it with knives.

And then it turns into a hand shape. While in hand form, it seems to have different abilities, as it often casts Fira on a single party member, dealing a ton of damage. If they're not at max HP, they have a pretty high risk of being knocked out.

We also have access to the Regen spell now, which when cast upon a party member will constantly restore HP to them periodically in small amounts. It's like the reverse effect of being poisoned. It's pretty useful for helping to make sure everyone has the highest HP they can have for when they get hit by Fira.

Also, this thing has a tornado-looking form, too. This form also casts Fira, but upon itself, which heals it. It also can do this thing where it makes a magnet pull a character from the back row to the front. If the character is in the front row already, it just does nothing. Since magic damage ignores the row formation of the target, this is a completely pointless ability. Though I do think the hand or person form would sometimes use a physical attack, but it was rare and pretty weak, so... I don't see how this helps too much. But I guess it's better than it curing every turn.

Liquid Flame seems to periodically jump between forms at random -- at least, I didn't notice a set pattern. Or I'm really unobservant (which is true).

But the most fun part of this battle was getting to try out our only offensive magic we've obtained so far (other than curing the undeads), the Time Magic spell Gravity!

In the Final Fantasy series, gravity-based magic distorts physical space around enemies, and usually does damage based on percentages of the target's health rather than calculating damage using the caster's magical might. In the case of our party's Gravity spell, the damage dealt is equal to half of the target's remaining HP.

Liquid Flame starts the battle with 3,000 HP, so using Gravity at the beginning of the battle will deal 1,500 damage all at once! Then a second time will deal 750, since its current HP has dropped to 1,500. So there's a bit of calculation needed -- if the enemy's current HP is more than twice the amount of the maximum damage a party member is able to deal with any direct damage, then Gravity is going to be your strongest ability.

And since our other option is just to literally try to stab fire with a knife, Gravity is our best ability for most of the battle.

Gravity doesn't have the best accuracy, but I don't think it's too terrible (it seems to hit more than 50% of the time at least), and of course, when the enemy's HP is low, it's not very effective. If they only have 20 HP, Gravity will only do 10 damage, so it would be better just to bop it with a staff and do like 24 damage at least...

Sadly, bopping wasn't much of an option, as the Frost Rods were only doing about 8 damage against this thing...

After a few Gravities and stabs, the thing turned into Little Squares. Galuf did get knocked out once from a Fira, and I was a little panicked, but it ended up not being so bad.

Especially because Liquid Flame apparently has limited MP, and after a while just starts doing nothing at all except displaying the message, "Not enough MP!"

Afterward, we find that Queen Karnak was just being controlled by an evil spirit, and she begs us to go save the Fire Crystal. We head through the hatch behind her, which leads to a really long duct that we have to crawl through. It's just a straight line, though.

When we come out the other side, we find the Fire Crystal, which is in a room that looks much like the other Crystals' rooms we've seen so far.

But we seem to have another visitor inside the Crystal's chamber. It's the werewolf from before. And despite the fact that Bartz and friends know absolutely nothing about the werewolf from any reputable source, only a couple rumors being spread around by the Karnak government, they just assume he's a terrorist and tell him they won't let him near the Crystal. It's a bit too real.

Our new werewolf friend seems to know Galuf, however. But Galuf, of course, has no idea who this guy is, and meeting up with him doesn't seem to help him recover any memories.

But the first person who knew him was trying to protect the Water Crystal, and now this werewolf claims to be trying to protect the Fire Crystal... it seems like Galuf probably isn't some kind of secret bad guy who's going to suddenly remember he's a bad guy and turn on us. He'll always be our mustache hero <3

As we're trying to catch up with our old friend that we don't know, a Karnak soldier comes in and turns the machine back on, trying to destroy the Crystal quickly. He seems to have the same blue aura around him that Queen Karnak did while she was possessed, so the evil spirit or whatever must have transferred bodies while we were fighting Liquid Flame.

With the machine turned back on, these huge duct things start closing back in on the Fire Crystal. Bartz and friends run to the switch to try to turn it back off, but the switch has been broken by the possessed soldier, and there doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off with the panel in the wall. The two side ducts close around the Crystal, separating the crew from Galuf's fursona.

Wolfie tells us to escape while he tries to hold the duct back for as long as possible. Lenna insists we try to save the werewolf, but he demands we escape, as there's not enough time and the place is going to explode when the Crystal shatters.

We head out of the Crystal chamber and we're... in Castle Karnak for some reason, even though the Crystal was supposed to be on the boat or whatever?? I don't really get it. Well, I guess the Crystal wasn't on the boat, but the boat was using its power... but we walked to the Crystal chamber from the boat, so... maybe that long duct we went through was like a 'plug' that feeds from the Crystal to 'charge' the boat when it's not sailing...?

Anyway, we head back to the Crystal chamber and the werewolf is nowhere to be found. Back at the castle, Lenna notifies us casually that the castle is held together by flames (whatever that means) and now that the flames are dying, the entire place is going to explode (... what?)

But since we can't go back the way we came, since the other side of the room where the Fire Crystal was is now sealed off by the big ducts, we have to escape the castle by running all the way to the entrance. Because we can't just toss a rope out a window or something. Or like, call for Hiryu. WE HAVE TO RUN THROUGH THE WHOLE CASTLE, OKAY?

But remember all those treasures that were blocked by weird fire pit things before? Since the "flames are dying," those are all gone and we can pillage the treasures! I mean, who cares that we're about to explode into smithereens...

Also, I just got curious and looked up 'smithereens' in the dictionary and apparently it's just a word that means 'small pieces.' But I only ever hear it used in the context of getting blown up by some kind of explosion resulting in turning into small pieces. I think we should start using smithereens more in everyday speech.

I dropped the bread plate and now there are bread smithereens all over the floor. I like drinking slushies because I love ice smithereens. My brother is always drawing at the table but never cleans up his pencil smithereens. I don't like mowing the lawn, but I actually enjoy sweeping up the smithereens on the sidewalk when I'm done. Do you want some candy from the gas station when I go? Yeah, Reese's Smithereens. (At least that would stop people from saying "Reesey's Peacies..." or would they just start saying "Reesie's Smeethereenies" or something?!)

ER I MEAN THE BUILDING IS GONNA BLOW AND WE HAVE TO GO FAST.

The first chest we run by has 2,000 Gil in it, but the next one has a monster waiting inside...

Gigas is one of four enemies that pop up in Karnak during the escape sequence. And if you haven't noticed the timer at the bottom-left corner of the screen, we really do have a time limit and have to escape before it counts down. If we reach detonation time and we're still in the castle or on castle grounds, the place will explode and it will result in Game Over.

And Gigas is particularly annoying because there's a high chance he'll counter any damage done to him by casting Aero immediately. It hits the entire party and doesn't do too much damage, but the big problem is that we have to sit and wait through the whole stupid animation while the explosion timer continues to count down... And he'll do this after almost every attack! And that's in addition to his regular attack turn...

We also run into these Cur Nakk things being commanded by a Sergeant. Also I just realized I've been spelling "sergeant" wrong my whole life. Today is a dictionary day. Words are good.

Anyway, the Sergeant will do an attack where they call out to the dogs to attack (actually, they just say like "Come and get it!" or something weird?!) and then each Cur Nakk gets a chance to do an extra attack. Like, all at once, interrupting the battle. And this doesn't use up their ATB gauge, so they still get to do their normal attacks during that time, too.

If you defeat all of the pups, the Sergeant (omg I keep having to re-spell it like 7 times) will taunt you and then run away...

I try to run from every battle but the escape rate seems very, very low.

The other enemy that shows up are these Sorcerers (hey, I can spell that one) who don't do too much and can die pretty quickly. The biggest threat is that they will sometimes cast Confuse on one of the party members, which can really slow down the battle since not only will we miss out on their attack turns, but we'll also have to deal with healing the party members who got attacked by the confused member...

Fortunately, any normal attack by a party member onto the confused member (even if they attack themselves) will knock them back into their senses and they stop being confused. This includes Lenna hitting them with her Healing Staff!

I wasn't using Lenna in most battles, anyway, as healing just wasted time, and it was faster to cram potions into everyone's face from the menu when we weren't in battle. Plus the detonation timer stopped ticking when we were in the main menu, which is something I don't think happened in the original version. Or maybe I'm thinking of the countdown timers from Final Fantasy VIII. Or maybe I just don't remember anything properly. Anyway, so Lenna usually had her ATB Gauge full the whole time and was able to whack someone as soon as they got confused. Still a bit of a waste of time, but not as bad as if we weren't able to do that.

So basically the developers decided it wasn't enough to build a battle system that revolves around the magnificent action of WAITING, but to design an area of the game where waiting makes everything worse and frustrating, and specifically place enemies that waste tons of time and make the waiting worse. Because everyone is going to love that, right?

Oh, and don't forget that all ATB gauges stop completely during any battle animation at all. They even stop for a second for the little HP numbers to pop up when Regen is in effect!

As much as I'd love to save my sanity and just walk outside, there are TREASURES EVERYWHERE. We start in the basement, so we could just head back up to the ground floor and exit the front of the castle, ignoring the treasures along the way... but not only do we need to pick up the treasures, we have to go into the rooms we couldn't get into before, which includes going upstairs. In fact, now we can even go to the roof!

When we walk across the roof, at the front of the castle, there is a tower we can walk down, all the way back down to the ground floor, and grab a treasure. But the only way out is to go back up the stairs and back to the back of the castle roof again and enter the main part of the castle again.

Oh, and there are two of these on either side of the castle and we can't get to each roof section from the other roof section.

But there are invaluable treasures here -- the western tower has another Elven Cloak, the red cape thing Lenna has that makes attacks targeting her sometimes do nothing at all, and the eastern tower has a Main Gauche, a knife weapon that's significantly stronger than the ones we have now.

In fact, the Main Gauche became key to my strategy on getting out of here with most of the treasures.

While it is possible to grab every treasure in the castle and still make it out on time, I don't think it was possible with this party. However there are a lot of monster chests that just contain Elixirs, which aren't a unique item or anything, and something we'll be able to get plenty of if we ever need them. But since our entire party can use White Magic, we probably won't need too many. At least, I hope not.

So I decided to grab everything that wasn't an Elixir. Actually, I missed out on two chests of 2,000 Gil each and a Shuriken, but I didn't realize I had. I thought I grabbed everything... I planned a path that took a few tries to really get down, because I had to decide where to run first and what order to pick up treasures and which treasures to avoid because they had nothing in them... Stuff like that.

Oh, and we got a Ribbon, too, which is an accessory that prevents all status effects, but of course, none of the party can equip it.

But one of the chests teaches us the White Magic spell Esuna that heals all status effects, so that's pretty much just as cool. And we can actually use it.

When we finally get to the castle entrance, the game decides to be a huge meanie and throw us into a scripted battle with yet another Sergeant commanding Cur Nakks. And it's impossible to run from this one, so we have to sit and fight off all the dogs.

But when we finally take them all out, the Sergeant appears to not be a normal soldier... They're really the infamous bandit Iron Claw! Which is some really messed up looking... thing.

And of course this thing has tons of HP.

What's worse is that it also has an attack it loves to use called Death Claw, which reduces a party member to single-digit HP and paralyzes them so they can't move at all and their ATB gauge doesn't fill.

... Yeah.

What's even more amazing is that if you manage to defeat him before the timer goes off, you still have to walk several feet away from the castle so that you exit to the world map, or else you'll still get caught in the explosion and get a Game Over.

This is a really stressful point of the game, as they turned the game from a waiting simulator into an anxiety simulator, but it's also one of the most memorable, and I think a text description simply cannot do it justice. So I decide to record a video of all my attempts to clear this while picking up (what I thought was) every treasure that was not an Elixir. Check out one of those attempts here:

Or watch at this YouTube link.

It was critical to get the Main Gauche early as it sped up all of the other fights. I gave it to Faris because he hast the highest Agility of the party, and dagger damage is based on Agility rather than Strength, so he does the most damage with it.

I originally was trying to use Gravity way too much, and with its poor success rate, it just wasn't worth it. So I only used it in a few places where if it happened to hit it would shave off a lot of extra time.

Once we make it out of the place before the timer goes off, the castle explodes, sending the Crystal Smithereens flying out and landing conveniently next to us so we can absorb the warriors' spirits within, giving us the new Jobs of Beastmaster, Geomancer, and Ninja.

And, well, only one of those is even available in this run, so we send a Tweet to Gilgamesh, and he lets us know our next Job in our roster is Geomancer, a very interesting Job that we'll talk about next time...!

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