Of Dwarfs and Dolls
Posted by Mike Blitz on December 28th, 2007
After dropping through the darkness, we find ourselves in the underground, in the midst of a pitched battle between tanks and Red Wing airships. The Enterprise gets hit in the crossfire, plummets to the ground, and crashes. We survive the crash, and find ourselves near a large castle. We leave our damaged Enterprise behind and head inside the castle, which appears friendly.
Inside, we meet the Dwarf King, who confirms Kain’s tale about the dark crystals. It turns out that two of the four dark crystals are in the hands of Golbez already, and the battle we witnessed upon arrival in the underworld was the Dwarf King’s attempt to prevent Golbez from taking the third crystal, which the Dwarf King has in a secret room behind the throne room.
The Dwarf King is excited to use the Enterprise to help fight the Red Wing airships, so Cid heads out to fix and armor the craft. Shortly after he leaves, Yang senses activity in the Dwarf King’s secret room. We enter the room, and quickly find ourselves entangled in a freaky battle with six bizarre dolls. We pound on them for a while, but then they morph into one huge doll. We continue hammering away, and suddenly the huge doll morphs back into the six smaller ones. Argh. This goes on for a while, before finally the six dolls die for good, I hope.
And just when we think we’re safe, there standing in front of us is Golbez! Oh no Mr. Wizard!
Status: Killing Stuff with a Purpose
December 28th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
I don’t know which is more scary, the dolls in the game or the doll in that pic!
December 28th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Hey, Mike, I remeber reading a while back in a comment that you had played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. I just picked it up today at my local Gamestop for the Xbox 360. I played the previous game in the series years ago and was just wondering if you had any pointers?
December 29th, 2007 at 12:14 am
Drake,
Yeah, those dolls in the game were pretty freaky, if I remember right.
I really enjoyed the half of Oblivion that I played. I’ve actually liked all of Bethesda’s major RPGs (Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion). They are so sprawling and wide open. I’m also a big fan of the character development model they use, which is more in line with that of Final Fantasy II, where your character develops skills that he/she uses. This gives you a ton of flexibility in how you play a character.
I actually played the PC version of Oblivion, and heavily modded the game to change the combat model and treasure distribution model, which I liked least in the game, so some of the advice I’d have wouldn’t really apply to the 360 version. You can’t mod a 360 game, can you?
All in all, though, I think the only place you can screw up your game is if you make some highly used non-combat skills your major skills, and then level too fast because of it. Basically, the level of your opponents scales to your level (in most places), and you level by raising your major skills. So if you’ve got some non-combat major skills that rise fast, your overall level will rise too fast and leave your important combat skills behind. Suddenly, the game will get real hard. Fortunately, even in this case, you can just adjust the difficulty slider and move on.
It’s funny you mention this game, though. I was just thinking about it the other day, because my four-year-old Windows computer just died and I’m in the process of building a new one. With the new computer I’d be able to see Oblivion in all its glory.
December 29th, 2007 at 6:57 am
Oh no, a cliffhanger! And yeah, the dolls are freaky, and so is that one in the picture…
December 29th, 2007 at 9:34 am
Me and my friend were playing the psx version of final fantasy and im not quite sure, but i think we managed to kill all the six dolls BEFORE they morphed to that big doll!
December 29th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Chocobo,
Not too long of a cliffhanger, though!
Anonymous,
Yes, in writing this up, I needed to look at a walkthrough to get some of the details straight, and I stumbled onto a description for this battle. Apparently if you do things right, you can beat the six dolls before they morph into the one larger doll. There are two sets of three dolls, and if you kill one set of the three dolls first, you’ll avoid the huge doll. Of course, I didn’t know this when I fought the battle, so I had a more difficult time of things. As usual.
December 29th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
I wouldn’t know how to mod the 360 even if I could. Oh no, I leveled up too fast! I haven’t even gotten to the Emperor’s son yet (I’ve been doing a lot of missions for the theives and assassins guilds) and now I’m on level 4. I was wondering why those goblins in the sewers seemed a little harder. I’ll have to do some gladiator fights to get my combat skills up.