With the fangs in our possession, we cut southwest to Dorga’s mansion. Inside, we were ordered to stand in a magical circle. We did so, and were immediately transported to the inside of a cavern that spiraled downward. We quickly hacked our way to the bottom, where we wet Dorga and Unei. Strangely enough, they insisted we fight them. They said something along the lines of us needing their power in order to receive the weapon/power at the next place.

They transformed and battled us in succession. Dorga went down fairly easily, which was good, as we needed all our strength against Unei, who was much more powerful. After a couple of rounds, she took out our Dragoon. A turn later, she took down our onion knight. Fortunately, we had been pasting her with significant damage. Before she could finish us off, a well-placed geomancer spell toppled her.

On their deathbeds, Dorga and Unei gave us two very important keys, one to unlock a secret power, the other to open up a Syrcus Tower, which I think contains this power. Or maybe not, who knows. In any case, someone called Xande is our mortal enemy, and both Unei and Dorga want us to kill him before he destroys the balance in the world.

I have no idea where this tower is that Xande lives in. I think they mentioned something about the old village on the floating continent, so I’ll go take a look there tomorrow.

To the tower!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

Image: Final Fantasy Compendium

Sorry about the past few days. On a whim, I picked up a copy of the new Pokemon DS game last weekend. I thought that my son might like it, and that we might be able to play it together. The game turned out to have a bit too much reading for him, but…um, let’s just say that wasn’t a problem for his father. Man, this game is addicting.

I’ve never played a Pokemon game before. I had heard they were solid games, but I never realized how solid the gameplay really is. This is an amazingly polished game. If you like RPGs, I can’t imagine not liking Pokemon. The party development is fantastically rich. The combat is simple enough to dig in from the start, but can be incredibly complex and challenging once you work your way into the game. There is a ton of stuff to do. I had never tried the games most likely because in some way I viewed them as too “kiddy” for me. I can understand how some people might not be able to get past that, but if you can put those things aside, this is a heck of a lot of fun.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I got completely and totally immersed in “Catching ‘em all.” Other trivial things in life—bathing, eating, and sleeping—sort of fell by the wayside. Needless to say, this blog was one of those things that didn’t get much love over the past week.

All is well, now. I’ve torn myself away from my Prinplups, Chimchars, and Magikarps. I’ll be resuming posting this evening.

Rather than take the easy way out of the mountain cave, we fought our way up the rocky passages. I was certain that I had missed a couple of side passages and I wanted to see what was down them.

Sure enough, I found two chests that I had missed on the way down the cave. Unfortunately, neither of them contained anything worthwhile.

After a dozen or so battles, we found ourselves in fresh air again. Time to head to Dorga’s mansion with the fangs!

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

With more energy and an earlier start, we resumed our attempt to get the final fang in Final Fantasy 3. The cave was fairly extensive, with at least a half dozen levels and lots of hidden passages that always had me uncertain as to where I was going. Fighting was moderately easy, although we did lose our dragoon twice. Many of the opponents split into two new whole monsters when we struck them, but the new versions tended to be relatively weak and easy to kill. In the process of getting to the bottom, we picked up some fairly nice Genji gear. We also gained a level, which brought everyone to Level 42.

At the bottom of the cave, the final fang sat on a small table. Of course things would have been too easy if we could have simply grabbed the fang and left. Instead, a huge swordsman by the name of Hecatoncheir showed up and tried to slice us into sushi. He didn’t prove to be much of a challenge however, as he only used two physical attacks per turn, each of which did about 500 points of damage. It was straightforward for us to stay at full strength and pour on the damage. After about a half dozen rounds, Hecantoncheir crumbled into dust.

With the fang in hand, I could teleport out of the cave, but I want to fight my way up to see if there are some treasure chests that I missed on the way down.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose

Sometimes, I can be a bit slow on the draw. After I traveled all the way back to Amuru to rest and resupply with potions, it dawned on me that I was traveling in the Invincible, which has a shop and beds inside it. I don’t need to go back to towns any more. D’oh!

Stupidity aside, I worked my way back to the mountains, then started making the series of maze-like jumps to get to the cave in the mountains. After a few minutes, we stood at the entrance. To be honest, I’m not sure this is the correct cave, but time will tell. We took a deep breath, and headed inside.

The battles inside seem manageable. We hacked through a few random attacks with only minor difficulty. Unfortunately, this week I’ve started exercising again, and it’s made me incredibly tired about an hour before I usually get tired. Instead of playing for a half hour or so, I caught my head nodding off to sleep and the DS slipping out of my hands after only about fifteen minutes of play. Try as I might to fight the exhaustion, I was a zombie by the time we got into the cave. I saved, flicked the DS off, and crashed.

I’ll pick up the adventure tomorrow from this point. I want to start a bit earlier so I can get a longer session in.

Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose, but Slowly