(Written 24 August 2006)

The four crystals are mine! After 41 hours of digital adventuring, I have come into possession of the last crystal. As a bonus, I found some adamantite in the airborne castle, gave that to a drawf, and he made me Excalibur, an uber sword of the highest nature. My knight and thief are now a vicious one-two punch, and my level-75 party is primed for what I’m assuming is a forthcoming final battle.

Anyway, I took the four crystals to the guys dancing in the woods, and they proceeded to babble on an on about a lot of confusing stuff. Somewhere in there they let me know about something very big and bad that is 2000 years old, which I’m guessing I need to kill. They didn’t actually do anything, as far as I can tell, which makes me wonder why they wouldn’t tell me all that stuff before I got the four crystals. So the big question here is: What use are they to anyone? The big answer, folks, which is fairly obvious now that I think of it, is this: If you spend your whole life dancing in a circle in the woods with a bunch of other men, you’re likely to be little use to anyone. So there, don’t choose that as a career option.

I digress…

As I expected, when I got the fourth crystal, the guardian in front of the water cave decided to skip town, which opens up this last preliminary cave for exploring. I decided to explore that cave before I try to go after the final boss, who apparently lives in a castle very near to where our adventure started. D’oh! Tricky guy, that final boss! Anyway, I’m now on level 8 of the cave, which I’m guessing may be 20+ levels large, if it’s like the previous one of these things. Once I’m done here, I think I can head off for the final encounter.

Getting close to the end!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose!

(written 22 August 2006)

More progress. I went to the town of the unknown language, and things moved along well. They gave me a chime to get into the tower in the desert, and that’s where I am now. I’m just about to go up into the air, I think, using a warp cube, which I got from a robot in a waterfall. I might have forgotten to tell you that part about the robot in the waterfall, but trust me, it’s all true. Somewhere ahead lies the fourth crystal! Onward!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose!

(written 20 August 2006)

Well, with no forethought whatsoever, I decided to go for the whirlpool dungeon, and what an adventure it was. The place goes on for ever and ever and ever. 20 levels of mayhem and madness. Actiually, sometimes the game seems to count by twos going down, so it may have only been a dozen or so levels, but we all know how much Japanese people stuggle with basic math, so I’ll forgive them this little error. At level four or something like that I kicked Gilgamesh’s butt, and that unlocked a door to let me go down even farther. About level 12, I had to kill dragons for a dragon lord called Dark Bahamut in order to go farther. At level 20, after constant fighting for 19 levels, I finally reached the bottom. By this time, I was running low on healing potions, and I was faced with a choice of two boss fights. I randomly picked one, and whoops, problem. Omega, some sort of robot demi-god, took us to the farm in about ten rounds. He has this laser-thingie that just ripped us up, and our swords don’t do much damage to him at all.

Humm, reload, and let’s try the other boss. Ouch. This one’s a fat ass dragon of the meanest sort. I don’t think we even lasted five rounds.

Reload, try again against the dragon. Once again, he chews us up and spits us out like White Castle burgers.

Humm. I’m stuck. Up to now, I haven’t run into a fight that I couldn’t handle fairly easily. This set of bosses is proving to be a tough match, though. I look over some of the remaining potions we’ve got, figure out a new strategy with spells and responsibilities, and take another shot at Omega robot.

This would turn out to be a 60-round epic battle that lasted over 50 minutes. Numerous times he took out our knight, but each time we were able to get the knight back into the battle. Finally, with our knight down, potions out, and everyone low on HP, our black magic wizard fried up Omega with a thunderbolt and took the beast down! Woot. Great fight, and we gain a “murakame” sword, a kick-ass sword well worth the effort. With that, we zip back up to the surface. I burned up all our extra special potions here, so we’ll have to leave that dragon for some other day.

(Written 18 August 2006)

After spending another two hours slogging through more of those repeatable dungeons, and searching the world over for more hints and clues, I gave in. I looked at a walkthrough. Low and behold, I had missed a person in the town of Onlak who owned a submarine. The good thing about this is that my getting stuck wasn’t a language problem, it was a problem of simply not exploring enough. Matter of fact, the three times this game that I’ve gone to outside sources for information I’ve discovered that I’d gotten stuck because of not exploring enough. So that might be something I can use to get myself unstuck in the future, and it makes me feel that my Japanese skills are getting better again.

Anyway, once I got in the submarine, I was taken to some underwater palace where I kicked butt on the badguys and got the water crystal! And the hit parade of wonder treats doesn’t stop there. I also found the Rosetta Stone. And I discovered that I need something called a “chime” to open the mystery tower in the desert. And…, that’s right, there’s more! And I triggered the door of the dungeon inside the whirlpool. I’ve got a veritable list of things to do now!

Apparently, I’ve got to take the Rosetta Stone to someone’s brother, but I think I have an idea where this guy is. That will open up that village where I can’t understand anyone. Things are rolling rolling rolling. Three crystals down, one to go.

The only thing I don’t quite get yet is that I’ve only encountered abou 63% of the monster types yet. If I’m getting close to the end of the game, why haven’t I encountered a greater percentage?

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

(Written 15 August 2006)

Well, a lot has happened since I last wrote. I have both good news and bad news. First, I found Caravan! I wasn’t a city after all. It was a travelling caravan. Someone in a town gave me specific directions where to go: near the forest on the north side of the desert to the west. Got it. Except I still couldn’t find the damn place. Finally, a few night’s ago, I was randomly searching the area and bingo! I found it.

Well, I bought the little fairy bitch from the caravan master and took her back home, and she made me something that allows me to breathe under water. Except it doesn’t work. I can’t get under any water to use it. Defective goods! I’ve been had.

Well, that’s not actually true. In a moment of actual intelligence, I figured out that the whirlpool I remembered seeing in some random ocean might be a way to get under water. Sure enough, inside the whirlpool there is a dungeon antechamber with some big stone statue blocking the main entrance. This is, I think, the dungeon for the water crystal, but beats me how I’m supposed to get through it, except find the fish people, who can only be found if I can figure out how to use my defective underwater breathing apparatus. Argh. Somewhere in there is a Catch 22, but I’m not sure where.

And I found out who wanted the mouse tail. It was the dragon king! Who says games don’t teach you useful things? This is what Final Fantasy I has taught me: Next time you’re about to get mauled by a dragon king, just give him a mouse tail and he’ll make you a ninja. The dragon king wanted the tail, and he got so excited he gave all of my party titles like knight instead of whatever they were called before. So far, this is as useful as the defective underwater stuff from the fairy bitch.

And that’s where I am now. I know I need to find the Rosetta Stone to be able to talk to the people that don’t speak any known language. I know there are fish people underwater somewhere, behind the cave in the whirlpool, perhaps, and they have lots of valuable stones. My stones are valuable, too, so I’m not sure what’s so special about this. I found a couple of random dungeons that have multiple fights at the end that would require you to go back in a few times to kill all the bosses, and I’m wondering if that’s what I need to do next, because I’ve been in cluelessly lost mode for two hours now. Only problem is that I don’t remember where those random dungeons are, so I’m still cluelessly lost.

Status: Cluelessly Lost