Well, when we last left off, the Leather Harem had shipwrecked and punched a lot of ghosts underwater, and now we're completely lost somewhere.

There's a lot of place to walk around here, but it's mostly dead ends.

I kept running into these like... snail... hedgehog... things called Gatlings, and it took me forever to realize they were countering every attack with their own needle attack. And they wouldn't directly counter the person who hit them, either, so each party member could punch them, but each hit would simply trigger its needle attack, and it could like... hit Lenna like four times T_T I was just thinking these things were ridiculously fast and strong, but really I was just making them hit me :)

We do eventually stumble upon a little village called... Tarmac or something. Actually now that I think about it, it was like... Carwen? Bobby Corwen? I don't know; I forgot to screencap the name and I don't feel like looking it up lolol

Anyway, the first guy we talk to is like "What?! You came from the ship graveyard?! Are you a ghost?!" or something like... did we just walk up to this guy and be like "HI WE'RE FROM SHIP GRAVEYARD HOW ARE YOU?"

But yeah, I spent a lot of time just running into walls hoping to find secret passageway things hahaha.

Most of the people here for no reason volunteered information about Wind Drakes or the poison grasses in the north mountain. Because you know, that's just... what people talk to strangers about in this place. Not like, the weather or something. I mean, I guess we talked to them about ship graveyard, so... maybe social interaction is even stranger here than it is in the real world. And I can't even understand the real world...

Though there were a few oddballs in town. This one old beard guy in the pub just said, "Knights do it two-handed," and that's it... but my personal favorite was the bartender:

To whom I actually laughed aloud while playing, which is something I almost never do.

But hey, do you see how there's a little bit of a room over in the dark abyss??

Ha! I was right to be walking into walls! This little hallway back here loops around to behind the bar, and there's a pot on the ground along the way containing 1,000 Gil! And, uh, if I haven't explained it and you haven't played Final Fantasy before, "Gil" is the name of the money lol.

We also take the time to practice piano in the corner of the bar. Still sounds pretty terrible. Also, despite it being called "piano," the appearance of the instrument and the sound it makes is that of an organ. It uses like... a midi electric organ sound, and there are two sets of keys and huge pipes coming out of the instrument.

I mean, organ technique and piano technique are almost identical for the most part, so playing organ would increase your piano skills, I guess, but... why not just call it an organ... or make it look like a piano...

Once we get to the eastern half of the town, everyone stops talking about Wind Drakes and poison grass, and now they're talking about how Walse is to the south, but there's no way to get there since there's no land route and the wind has stopped so ships can't travel. Galuf grumbles that we don't have Syldra's help anymore, triggering Faris's sorrow over his lost sister, to which Galuf quickly apologizes. I like that Galuf has already grown more sensitive toward Faris~~ The two are my favorite characters so I like to see them get along. In fact, I'm surprised I don't ship them LOL. Uh, now watch that happen over the course of this playthrough...

Though, I mean, Galuf already thinks Faris is hot, but like... I have a feeling Faris would just think Galuf is a sleazeball lmao.

After the first little conversation over on this side of town, everyone mentions something about the sea route being inaccessible or whatever, and the player character turns toward the screen and waves at the player, and then Bartz says HMMM IF WE CAN'T GO BY LAND OR SEA...!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111

And it does this every single time we talk to somebody now X_X

Which is the most obnoxious and obvious clue a game has ever given me. Other than explicitly direct "clues." Half the town talks about FLYING DRAGONS!!!! and then the others make the character literally ask the player "HOW CAN U GO BY NOT LAND OR WATER???"

Anyway, there was another kind of little hidden path that led to this Frost Rod by the pier. Pretty nice find. Some kid in the front of town said something about "lizards and hibernating creatures" hating the cold or something, so this might come in handy soon... Even though we can't equip it, I think rods can be used in battle as items to cast magic spells by mage-type character classes, but the rods will break when used this way. And the Frost Rod's description says that it "sometimes casts Blizzaga" so...

We find an antidote in a barrel laying around town, and stop by the shops on the way out. I guess it's time to head toward the northern mountains and find dragons and poison. We are able to upgrade our leather to cotton... so I guess we're the Cotton Harem now. Doesn't sound as kinky, but I'm not really a fan of leather in the first place.

In the magic shop, we're able to score Sleep, Silence, and Protect. Sleep is Black Magic, so we can't use it right now, but you know... in the future...

Silence stops an enemy from casting magic and Protect creates a barrier around a party member that reduces physical damage.

Of course, when I was buying these, I just bought everything available without really paying attention to what I was buying...

A lot of walking and several Gatlings later, we arrive at this little mountain path. I remember when I first played the Final Fantasy games on Super Nintendo as a kid, I thought these little path things were just... background decoration or something, and had no idea they were a portal into an entire area I could enter...

And so walking on top of it, we're transported to the aptly-named "North Mountain.

The mountain path here leads in and out of some caves and is very straightforward. You can't really get lost or anything. We encounter even more Gatlings and I'm just about to get sick of fighting them, when we finally start running into...

These bastards. Gaelicat can be kinda strong, to the point where I decided it was best to spend MP casting Protect on Galuf and Faris, who are standing in the front row. Somehow I remembered I had access to Protect.

But what's even more obnoxious about these things is that the party misses them all the time. After fighting a few, I checked the bestiary and they have an Evasion Level of 15. Everything else we've encountered in the game so far has an Evasion Level of 0... even bosses and stuff. This thing evades so much that even both punches of a punch attack often miss...

So just when I was praying we'd run into anything other than Gaelicats...

The game decides to be a dick and do the "be careful what you wish for" thing on me... These things are made of stone and we've been suspiciously finding a lot of Gold Needles everywhere (an item that cures petrification) so I have a sneaking suspicion that these things can petrify party members and I really, really don't want that to happen. To add insult to injury, they got a back attack, so the formation is flipped, and our only two damage-dealers are now in the back row, with our main healers receiving tons of damage.

So this is the first battle that we flee from... Thankfully there's no real penalty for fleeing from battle other than the bit of damage you take while waiting for your chance to run.

Eventually we get to a path high up enough that we start seeing what I assume are supposed to be clouds. And there are these purple flower things everywhere that hurt us if we touch them; these are the "poison grass" we heard about. So we have to kind of inch our way through them without touching them, trying to get to the next parts of the path. It feels even more dangerous since the game is not locked to a grid now. I'm not how sure I'm allowed to move before they will hurt me...

Thankfully, though, we didn't end up stepping on any.

After navigating all the poison grass, we come to a little cave with a consecrated circle in the middle, so we're able to save the game and take a nap in a Tent. I'm not really sure why Tents are a depleting resource; when we sleep in one, it goes away... I mean, that makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, but...

Anyway, encountering a consecrated circle means probably something big is about to happen, so it's good that we're able to rest up. Maybe we're finally gonna have to fight the Hibernating Thing that we'll have to use the Frost Rod on...

When we leave the cave to continue up the mountain, we run across Daddy Tycoon's hat. Lenna of course freaks out.

When she picks it up, suddenly she is struck by a poisoned arrow (this happens really fast, so I didn't get a screenie of it) and falls to the group. Bartz calls out for her, but as he tries to approach her, suddenly there's a bit of a landslide (that's a common thing in this world, I guess) and the path to her kind of caves in.

And a woman named Magissa just kinda shows up from afar where the arrow came from.

She says she's come for a Wind Drake, but she's found something more valuable. Bartz forgets that his friend is like... dying in front of him, and becomes inquisitive about hunting Wind Drakes. Now, in Tarmac, the people were saying that Tycoon's Wind Drake was the very last one alive, because the rest have gone extinct. So I don't know why we're talking about them as if this is just one out of many?

Anyway, Magissa says that their horns catch a great price on the 'black market.' Like, do people who sell things on the 'black market' actually refer to it as 'the black market'? I don't know. But when Magissa inspects Lenna more closely, she realizes she's captured the Princess of Tycoon, and says that Lenna will make a nice souvenir for her husband.

In a way, this is cool because it kind of implies that she and her husband have a poly relationship or something, unless she gives him corpses or something, but this isn't SaGa, so I'm guessing she means she adds to his harem for him or something IDK. But beside the whole 'poly representation' thing, she's also... kidnapping girls and giving them to her husband, so, uh, yeah, not cool Nagissa...

Also, how come this rando can easily identify a slumped Lenna as the Princess when neither Bartz nor Galuf were able to recognize her? Actually... I guess it makes sense, thinking about it a bit more. Faris wasn't shocked when Lenna introduced herself as the Princess, though it didn't explicitly define whether or not he knew she was the princess before that. I think maybe he just hadn't really been able to see her before she ran forth and introduced herself, though.

But Galuf has lost his memory and can't even remember his own granddaughter, so why would he remember a random princess? And Bartz has been a vagabond for a while and seems like a bit of a loner, so maybe he just doesn't know a lot about celebrities and such.

Okay, I guess I can't fault Bartz for getting sidetracked during this dire moment when I'm doing the same...

Faris calls Magissa an "addle-pated foul-complexioned scofflaw" and leaps across the canyon that opened up from earlier's landslide.

So, Faris is pretty badass.

But, uh, then yet another landslide occurs and the ground falls out from under his feet. He manages to catch on to the edge of the cliff next to Lenna, but...

He ends up falling anyway...

Bartz and Galuf are freaking out, and now our active party has suddenly been cut in half.

And Magissa, in typical villain form, is just kind of like "oops he fell lol." And yes, she uses "he" to refer to Faris -- the only people who don't are his ignorant friends who aren't particularly sensitive toward trans issues.

Something seems to catch Nagissa's attention suddenly, though, as she's looking over the cliff to watch Faris fall...

Somehow Faris is climbing back up! And one hand at a time somehow! So Faris is, like, REALLY badass.

Though I'm pretty sure the reason he's climbing with only one hand at a time is because they're just using that awkward "waving" animation frame because they didn't want to bother drawing a climbing animation for this one scene or something lol. Though I feel like this can't be the only time someone climbs something in the game, so you'd think they might have thought to put that. I mean how often is it critical we get to watch them wave...?

Faris, for some reason, has a rope now (that was not in the inventory!!) and tosses one end of it across to Bartz on the other side of the chasm. And for some reason Bartz and Faris both have big wooden stakes, and they take the time to tie the rope around them, drive them into the ground... and Nagissa just kinda sits and watches patiently while they literally build a bridge in front of her.

With the rope bridge finished, Galuf and Bartz manage to balance themselves across the gap and arrive at the other side unharmed. Bartz tends to Lenna and helps her rise back to her feet. So now everyone is ready to fight.

And only then does Nagissa seem to decide this is troublesome and get annoyed. So her answer is to fight the party. I mean, we had to have an excuse for a boss battle, right? But we also need exciting action scenes, right??

I know I kind of make fun of the writing in this game, but I really do enjoy it. It's charmingly cheesy.

And so our boss battle begins! Lenna is actually still poisoned at the beginning of the battle, which I think is a nice attention to detail. Unlike... the rest of the preceding scene.

Nagissa is... quite difficult. She has access to a lot of powerful magic, which Protect does not protect against. And, uh, I just kind of... completely forgot we had access to the Silence spell...

Most devastating was her Drain spell, which could completely wipe out any of the party members with a single cast, plus it would heal her for the amount of HP damage it caused, even if that damage roll was higher than the target's maximum or current HP!

So, this was pretty terrifying. And we've only collected a total of four Phoenix Downs at this point, so we only have the opportunity to revive party members four times...

After running out of Phoenix Downs and Bartz and Galuf falling, I finally... noticed that we had Silence in our magic arsenal.

I tried it out to see if it would work, and it indeed did stop Nagissa from casting any of her magic. If she tried, we'd just see the message "No effect," and if she didn't, she just used a physical attack (maybe she's punching; the enemy sprites are beautifully detailed but they do not animate like the ugly player sprites) which only did about 20-40 damage to whoever it hit.

Also, I meant to mention this before, but it's so cute how Lenna makes a little heart with her hands which she's casting magic~ <3

(And lol right after I call the player sprites "ugly" XD)

Sadly, the Silence effect wears off over time (it seems random, as sometimes it would wear off like almost immediately, but other times would last for several turns), and the only way to really tell we needed to re-cast was from Nagissa actually using magic to hurt us. Most of her spells did a bit more damage than her physical attack, but it wasn't something a potion or Cure spell couldn't easily fix.

Anyway, because of the whole wearing off thing, there were times I'd think Nagissa was silenced and she's just... suddenly use Drain and kill someone, so I ended up losing the battle.

Fortunately we had that consecrated circle just before this, though, so the only real inconvenience was having to watch the whole cutscene again.

The second time through, surviving the fight seemed pretty easy, since I made sure to silence Nagissa right away. But unexpectedly, when her HP got low, she summoned this big guy called Forza.

Forza seems... a bit anatomically challenged. Does he only have one leg? If so, how does he balance his unreasonably twisted torso that seems to be hovering behind that leg? And what exactly are those weird ball things attached to him by what I'm assuming are like... flesh ribbons...????

Anyway, Forza wasn't too tough to deal with. As long as we kept up with the Silence, it was rare that Nagissa caused much threat from the back, and since she was now in the 'back row,' her physical attacks seemed to have gotten even weaker. Forza could do a little more damage, but all his attacks were physical and we already had Protect up on the whole party.

Forza was pretty defensive, though. I had actually switched Lenna and Bartz over to using the Staff instead of punching, while Galuf was still fighting barehanded. Against every other enemy, Galuf seemed to do slightly more damage than Lenna or Bartz (so perhaps if they were in the front row, the Staff would actually be stronger...?) but during this fight, the Staves were doing about 4 to 6 damage to Forza, while punching did around 2 damage, sometimes even hitting for 0 damage.

Faris's Flail was still the only reliable source of damage; and that's sad because the Flail is certainly not reliable. He was able to do around 60+ damage in a single hit... sometimes. The damage from the Flail seems to have a wide range of variability, and sometimes we were only managing something like 18 damage. But we still seemed to average around 40, so that's good.

I used Libra on both Nagissa and Forza to see if they had any weaknesses or whatever, since we wouldn't be able to look at them in the bestiary until the battle was over. Neither of them did. Forza had a whopping 850 HP, which took quite a while to whittle down with the Flail. Though little bits of whacking him with canes did help.

Nagissa's max HP was 650, but when she summoned Forza, she only had less than 300 left, so once Forza fell, it wasn't long before we were able to defeat her.

I also realized that the 'skipping turns' thing exists in this game (I'm pretty sure it didn't exist in the original FF5, though?) so I was more easily able to keep Bartz and Lenna's ATB gauges filled so they could cast Silence or Cure or throw a potion as soon as it was needed. Though later, they ran out of MP, so Galuf turned into the designated caster and healer, since his punches weren't doing so hot anyway (just kidding Galuf, you're ALWAYS hot), and Bartz and Lenna returned to being stickthwackers, unless they needed to toss a potion now and then.

Eventually they both had fallen, and everyone got a Job Level Up from the 6ABP that we got. Now everyone can use White Magic up to Level 3 when using a job other than White Mage.

Past where we had the battle was the summit, where Hiryu, the Wind Drake of Tycoon on whom Daddy Tycoon had ridden away at the beginning of the game, lies injured. He seems to be badly hurt, and we need Dragon Grass to aid him.

The Dragon Grass has been choked out by Poison Grass, but there's still a little bit left at the very tip of the summit. Lenna trudges through the thick poisonous grass to reach it, much to the shock of her friends.

Lenna gives the Dragon Grass to Faris, telling him to give it to Hiryu quickly, as she collapses in her poisoned state. Faris begins to feed Hiryu the medicine, while Galuf scolds Lenna for being so reckless.

After Hiryu seems healed up, though, he walks over to Lenna and like... screeches are her...

Which I guess cures her, yay!

Lenna thanks Hiryu, so I'm guessing maybe he regurgitated some of the Dragon Grass and spit it in her mouth or something?!

Afterward, Galuf tells everyone to "saddle up," but Bartz is hesitant, afraid of heights. Everyone laughs at him, and when he asks what's so funny, Galuf says, "Your face!"

lol...

Anyway, everyone jumps on the back of Hiryu, except Bartz who is violently shoved upon Hiryu by Galuf.

And now we have a method of flight!

SO IF WE CAN'T GO BY LAND OR SEA, THEN...

*waves to the camera*

Sadly, we can't pass over mountains nor land anywhere but flat grasslands. But now we can head south to Walse, where the Water Crystal resides, by using Hiryu to fly over the water.

And that's where we'll pick up next time...

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