Here's the intro movie. It is ADORABLES.
I have named my Moogle companion Omochao. As for my chocobo, I dimly recall magic being incredibly important in this game. As a homage to a former enemy, and a reference to one of the greatest and most powerful mages of our time, I dub our heroic chocobo "Trixie".
That means he's a girl chocobo now. I insist on it.
"What? The stairs we came down are gone? This must be another mysterious dungeon." THANKS, GUYS. We didn't get that prequel. Although Omochao does instantly start tutorializing at me so I know how this works. I just gave y'all a tutorial! I don't need one! Skip skip skip. "Why are YOU in the lead? Well... that's just how it is!" Thanks, Omochao. Already you are tutorialing AND being a useless sack. Live up to the dream, buddy.
Very nearly the first thing I see on the floor is a Carry Tag, which increases my inventory space by one slot, forever. Good omens.
Drain spell is INCREDIBLY handy. Steals HP from them, gives HP to you, what's not to love?
As we hit floor five, Omochao finds a lever! It coooould be a trap. It coooould be treasure. He yanks it and it shoots Trixie out of the top of the dungeon like a cannon. ... Why do they even HAVE that lever?
Trixie regains consciousness in the presence of a pretty red-haired white mage girl!. Naturally she is probably nowhere near the mage that Trixie is, but let's say she's probably second-best.
Her default name is Shiroma, which is a short version of "White Mage". That is a silly name. "HELLO, JOB NAMEJOB." Instead... oh, let's see... she's one of the only humans in the game...
Elise. As the token human, it is her job to be in a kind of weird uncomfortable grey area interaction-wise with the rest of the cast. Trixie goes "eek" at her, she sulks and chews Trixie out for speciesism, then leaves after warning Trixie not to drink the tonic in "that bottle on the shelf", which I pick up.
So now I tromp back up and back into the dungeon again, because that seems to be where she wandered off to. Let's see... Identify card, the tonic... Oh. It's a bottle of NITRO. You have odd hobbies, Elise. I'm not judging.
Elise has REALLY weird hobbies. Her next scene involves her arguing with a "chubby chocobo" who doesn't want to be here and who runs screaming the moment he sees Trixie. Hrmf. Elise goes on alone into the darkness, which probably means she's going to need rescuing, because this is a Square game published before the year 2000 started.
Okay... ooh, right. I remember this is important. Weaken an enemy... then kick a bottle into the enemy to kill it... and you get a bottle filled with gooey red "essence" of that enemy! It restores energy, and I think you can forge items in it, and ... and ... OH MY GOD DID I JUST KICK ALL THE BLOOD OUT OF A GOBLIN?! What the HELL?! I had never thought of that before... *twitch*
Further in, I find Elise again, and a stove. As Elise explains, "You put two saddles (armor) or claws (weapons) in, and strike it with Fire or Thunder magic, and that forges them!" Trixie warks and kwehs a bit, and Elise realizes that she doesn't NEED to explain things to the WISE TRIXIE. Ahahahaha. ONWARD, MINION. We seek the irritating one!
Finding still more bottles of Nitro. Should've called her Ace.
Then, suddenly, THE BOSS. It is a huge... skull-robot thing, and when I beat it once it flies into pieces and all the pieces attack. I lose, naturally, and have to restart with nothing. This is the mystery dungeon experience. Happily, it seems that in this game you at least keep your level when you die.
I may have nothing, but at level 7 nothing on the first few floors can best me. I also keep my magic levels, which go up individually for each spell. It looks like burning through all my books attacking the boss wasn't a bad idea... if I lose the books, but I keep the boost, I should use them when it's handy.
Before long I'm rematching the boss fight, and this time NOTHING CAN STOP ME. When it goes to pieces I stay careful and engage one at a time, and huck a potion at Elise to keep her in the fight. She Cures right back, and we successfully tank that fight all to bits. FIRST BOSS SUCCESS!
Just below that, Omochao is derping at what looks like a Crystal Fun House. As in, a fun house with a crystal on the door. "I'M GONNA GET THE TREASURE! Oh no, it is a human, here to steal my
This naturally starts the goddamn apocalypse. NICE ONE. ...okay, actually it makes the dungeon and poor Elise's house slide off a cliff into the ocean. SAME THING. Omochao pretty much blames this on the Token Human, and then browbeats her into taking them to the nearby village. Which is populated ENTIRELY by monsters who, when they hear something bad happened, blame it on the human.
Guys I realize this is probably a racism analogy but given that the -moogle- has been the catalyst of EVERY SINGLE THING that has gone wrong so far it's kinda not working for me. Maybe the real moral of the story here is "Don't think of people as broad groups and pin all wrongs on them that way, think of them as unique individual fuckwits and morons, each special and horrible in their own way, and pin the blame where it belongs."
Then again, maybe the REAL moral of the story is "Omochao is fucking terrible." Yes, I choose to believe this.
Anyway, Elise gets her own house on the side of the village, Trixie gets to stay with a cranky bomb lady, and it is revealed that everyone started hating humans when the dungeon opened up, so presumably there is some Negative Energy leaking out of that place. We'll give them some peanut butter on whole wheat toast and it'll clear the bad vibes up.
NEXT TIME: We start throwing toast into a dungeon. ... Er, continue on the adventure.
This entry was originally posted at http://xyzzysqrl.dreamwidth.org/324368.h