Last time, we left off just after failing to save the Earth Crystal, after a wave of incomprehensible story scenes and a lot of toppling over. But the toppling over is not finished! After we absorb the souls of warriors from the Crystal shards and get our four new Jobs, the Ronka Ruins start to fall down. And unlike the various shrines and towers that have collapsed under us before, this time we're high up in the air!

The party and Galuf's granddaughter Krile make their escape by running out of the ruins as they start to explode. Fortunately, our airship is still docked nearby and we're able to jump to it before the big kaboom. On the ship, Faris and Lenna continue to grieve their father's passing, and Galuf tells Bartz of his memories, and why it's important that we make haste to stop Exdeath. Basically, he's a big bad that Galuf and his friends sealed thirty years ago, but now he is unsealed. His evil plan seems to be... destroy the Crystals. But that already happened, so I don't know what the problem is now.

We all return to the meteor Krile came in on in order to teleport back to Galuf's world, but there's not enough 'juice' in the meteor to take all of us -- there's just enough to take Galuf and Krile back home. After a little arguing about it, the decision stands, and the two travel back through the meteor, leaving our party with now only three members.

I'm not really sure what we're supposed to do with the whole Fiesta thing when we have less than four party members, so I'm going to just keep everyone's Job as it is at this moment until we get a full party again. So the big reveal on what our fourth Job is will have to wait until then. (Don't worry; it will be very soon.)

Once Galuf and Krile are gone, we're left... standing where the old ruins were, just outside of Krile's crashed meteor. There's no direction on what to do at this point at all. But once we get on the airship, there's a little scene where everyone decides we're going to find a way to teleport to Galuf's world so we can help out. The problem we have now is that we have no idea how to do that. But our buddy Cid would probably know, because "when we think meteorites, we think Cid." (???)

Now that we have "direction," we have... even less direction. There's no indication whatsoever where Cid might be. This is actually a pretty common place for players to get stuck, and I remember this being a problem the first time I played long ago. The problem I have now is that I don't remember at all what we're supposed to do next.

We do a lot of running around -- checking the library, the place where the old Fire-Powered Ship is still "docked" under Crescent Island, the pub and just about everywhere else in and around Karnak... no sign of Cid anywhere. And no clues at all, either.

Well, I guess the "clue" was supposed to be that we think of Cid when we think of meteorites?! Because he and Mid are inside the Tycoon meteorite. There's a tiny clue about this on the world map -- the Black Chocobo is actually parked outside of it, and you can see its location. But since we haven't had to ride the thing for a while, it's not like we'd really notice that its location has changed from where it last was or anything.

Cid and Mid were curious because energy started coming from the Adamantite, so they decided to go put it back where it came from. When they put the thing on the teleporter tile, it seems to generate a lot of power. We wonder if this may be able to power up the teleporter enough to travel to Galuf's world, but Cid and Mid say we'll need the power of all the meteorites in order to get that much power.

So, our meteorite world tour begins!

We head to the meteorite where we very first discovered that we could use them to teleport, and Cid and Mid run inside to power up the Adamantite. When they come out, though, some monsters appear on top of the meteorite, heading down for them.

We get into a fight with six Purobolos, bomb-type monsters that can self-destruct when their HP is low, causing massive damage. What's worse is that if one is dead, the others will swiftly revive it when they're about to die, so the only way to win this battle is to defeat all six Purobolos at the same time.

Of course, for us, that's not too hard -- just shatter a few Frost Rods and we're done.

The next stop is the meteorite near Karnak, where we first teleported to when we entered the previous meteorite's teleporter for the first time. This time, Cid and Mid go inside, but quickly run back out, saying that the meteorite has turned into a den of monsters. So we go in to clear the monsters. There's only one thing inside, though: Titan.

Gaia allows us to dump rocks on his head and he dies immediately after the first cave-in on the first turn. But Titan's gimmick is that before dying, he'll use Earth Shaker, doing massive ground damage to the entire party. You can avoid this by using the Float status, or in our case, you can just have enough HP left to tank the damage. It's pretty easy to have all your HP left when only one action ended the battle right away.

Next we head to the Gohn Meteorite, which is the one Krile flew in on outside what used to be the Ronka Ruins. Cid and Mid head in alone again (did they not learn their lesson the last two times...?) and this time it seems to be taking them a while. We eventually go in to check on them, and find they've been trapped by a monster. This time we have to fight the chimera monster Manticore.

I'm not sure what the difficulty to this one is meant to be, because the battle ended right away again. While Lenna did end up using Ignus Fatuus instead of Cave-In with the Gaia ability on her first action, it didn't matter, because Bartz also used Gaia and rolled Cave-In, defeating Manticore instantly.

Now that the Adamantite has restored power to the four meteorites, a warp has appeared where the energies of the four intersect with one another. We head there on the airship, and realize that once we hop in, there will be no turning back. Lenna bids farewell to the Chancellor of Tycoon, Faris to his pirate crew, and Bartz to Boko, each jumping into the warp one after the other.

We arrive on a tiny island with no means of leaving it -- our airship and Chocobo and everything are back in the other world. Wandering around the area, we continue to get in fights with this little thief monster called Pao. It's extremely easy to defeat, and every time we defeat it, it drops a Tent. I remember when I first got to this part of the game, I thought maybe if I defeated enough Paos that something would happen. I can't even tell you how long I spent running around and fighting these things...

But this time, I know better. The Tent is the clue, and using one triggers the next scene.

Bartz falls asleep quickly, but Faris and Lenna stay up talking. But before they get much conversation in, a monster appears and takes the siblings away. Bartz wakes up and finds the monster waiting for him, and fights it off easily with a quick Branch Spear.

Afterward, the monster drops a treasure chest. Bartz opens it, but it contains some kind of paralysis gas, and Bartz gets knocked out.

We wake up in a prison cell in Exdeath's castle. The henchman monster we were trapped by appears and notifies Exdeath that Galuf and his crew have arrived at Big Bridge, a very cleverly-named bridge that leads to where Exdeath's keep is. Exdeath summons the "giant mirror," which seems to be some kind of device that can livestream his castle to the sky.

Galuf is able to see us with Exdeath on the image that appears in the sky, and Exdeath demands Galuf stop his advance, threatening to kill the three of us if he doesn't.

Galuf stops his army from advancing on Exdeath's castle, but he borrows Krile's Wind Drake to go on a personal mission to Exdeath's place to rescue us.

Honestly, I think it's a bit strange that Exdeath's keep is so easy to infiltrate. No guards or anything, nothing to keep Wind Drakes out, and a convenient entrance sitting right atop the castle. Though I guess the guy did just get revived like, only moments ago, so he hasn't had a lot of time to build up his defenses yet. It must be pretty convenient that we came along to bait Galuf into stopping his advance, or he may have been able to seal Exdeath already!

We spend a little time playing as only Galuf, running around the castle looking for the rest of the gang. There's very little resistance here; in fact, the only obstacles we really have are some random monsters that are just wandering around the castle for some reason, like bears and stuff. It's a bit obnoxious for Galuf to fight them alone being just a Time Mage, so we run from most of the battles.

When we find the cell where Bartz and the sibs are being held captive, Exdeath's other henchman Gilgamesh is waiting guard, and Galuf has to fight him alone. When Giglamesh's HP gets low enough, he'll retreat from the battle, afraid of Galuf's power. Using Gravity takes care of that pretty well, so the fight ends very fast.

All of these bosses have been really easy. I guess they really water them down since you don't have your full party, but...

Now that the party is back together, we can finally equip our new Job! The final Job we received for the fiesta was Chemist. This is my first time really trying out the Chemist Job.

It's a bit refreshing compared to the three jobs we have already. There's a bigger variety of armor we can equip, and the Drink command it comes with allows us to consume potions that give us all sorts of interesting effects, like raising various stats temporarily, or inducing Haste. Sadly, the drinks can only be used on the person using the Drink command, of course. Chemist also comes with an innate Pharmacology ability, which means that the effect of restorative items like Potions is doubled when they use them!

We equip Faris with the Job, and now we have one of each of our four Fiesta Jobs. Per the rules of the Fiesta, the party must always be composed of one of each Job like this from now on, so we can't have anyone doubling Jobs like before.

And with that, we're able to just... walk right out the front door of Exdeath's castle without much problem. Even for a dude who just got unsealed or whatever, these are some pathetically weak defenses.

Outside of the castle is a lot of swampland, and we encounter many new monsters here in Galuf's world. We don't get a chance to really understand what they're like, though, because one of the Gaia abilities on swampland is Bottomless Bog, which instantly defeats all enemies on the field. It doesn't always work, but it both triggers and succeeds commonly enough that with all four characters using Gaia, we're able to defeat any monsters that come at us before they even get a chance to act.

Not far outside of the castle, we arrive at Big Bridge, which connects us to the rest of the world. This is also where Krile is waiting for us to return. When we step onto the bridge, Galuf warns us that it's "all monsters" the rest of the way, and now I guess it makes a little more sense why Exdeath's castle was left undefended -- he must have sent all of his troops (what little he's gathered since his revival) to barricade the oncoming army at Big Bridge. Now we're fighting our way through them, but in the opposite direction originally intended.

At first we just fight an onslaught of some small-fry enemies called Merrow, Little Chariot, and Flying Killer. They're nothing too difficult to take out, but they can deal a decent amount of damage at once, so we at least have to pay attention to healing. Not that it's hard when we have a party full of dedicated support Jobs.

When we get to the little rest station in the middle of the bridge, we are confronted by Gilgamesh again, who this time, instead of running away, starts talking a lot when we've damaged him enough. He tries to act like we're too tough and he is surrendering, but all the while he is casting Haste, Protect, and Shell on himself.

The buffs don't really help him all that much, they just make it take even longer to take him down. In fact, the battle took more than an entire five minutes to complete. I guess that doesn't sound like a lot, but five minutes of just selecting the "Attack" command over and over is a very long time.

We continue down the bridge and run into a "Neo Garula" which is like the Garula we fought before, but now a different color. It doesn't pose much of a challenge, either, so I'm not really sure what to say about this one.

When we finally reach the opposite end of the bridge, Krile appears and warns us that Exdeath is activating the barrier around his castle. The barrier creates some kind of energy wave blasting out from the castle, which even sweeps across the entire bridge. Krile manages to get into the fortress at the end of the bridge safely, but our four party members get swept away by the energy blast.

The whole Big Bridge event isn't particularly exciting as far as the battles go, but it has one of the most memorable and exciting background tracks to come from a Final Fantasy title. I recorded the event solely for that reason, so if you'd like to take a listen, feel free to watch it on YouTube.

After we're blasted away (Team Galuf's blasting off again!), Krile comes back out of the fortress to find us missing. It seems that getting caught in explosions and ending up in some mystery location is just the Thing We Do every time we finish some kind of important story event or something. I can't even remember how many times this has happened now.

But if you want to see where we end up next and explore the Chemist Job a bit more, you'll have to wait for next time.

---