This is rough, man.

The game uses a lot of status effects and healing. I can’t believe enemies even use revives!

We leave the city of Thespeiros and travel to Ekhidna Falls. We briefly see two figures walk off screen as several monsters appear. Some of the monsters are kinda cuts. The giant sloths blowing a horn deserve better than what I’m about to do to them. The creepy standing snake, though, is getting what’s coming to it. And don't even get me started on The Harvester. The Harvester is a metallic abomination and was just asking me to kill it. Our characters even point out its sketchyness, believing it to be the ringleader, so that’s two reasons to focus on it. This battle was pretty easy, so I felt like I had overcome my feelings of inadequacy. After the fight, Anadine begins feeling unwell. She says the powers in the temple are affecting her new evil side. Everyone tells her it’s okay to return to town, and she does.  

Inside the Jungle Temple proper are a mass of people. They claim they’re working for Sigil, and their leader has been selected as a Marked. Kyrie wonders why an anti-Immortal would, and could, be selected as a council member. The Sigil members were told to kill everyone who came through the door. They, however, disobey orders and promise to only knock us out. We return the favor.

I hated this. This fight has a lot of healing, cripples, status effects, cleanses, HP, and attack. If the devs wanted this game to feel like a war, they succeeded. FFT has its moments of difficulty but, once you know what you’re doing, is pretty easy, even without cheese classes. After two tries, and focusing on the healers, I managed to succeed. Maybe because I was missing Anadine and my back-up mage was bad, but here’s the new hardest fight. When the dust settles, both sides agree to the ceasefire. Reiner wonders if they should just arrest them, while Kyrie tells the Sigil group what’s going to happen to them. They’re sentenced to stay in the temple, where they can’t leave because they have no Marked. I forgot why, but it sounds like a dick move. Kyrie absorbs what’s left of the magic in the relic, says she feels more powerful and dark, and Yates studies what remains.

We return to Thespeiros and meet back up with Anadine. She’s still feeling unwell, even from this distance away. As she rejoins, we’re graced by another well-known person, the Immortal, Primus! He’s meeting up to confirm the story he heard from Quintus and Bzaro, as well as give his thoughts on stuff. Before he does, Riener yells that the city is under attack. We go to defend, and Primus joins us. With the aid of a god, this fight is simple. There’s some discussion about how Immortals cannot interfere with "mundane" acts, but he does anyway. His only action is to teleport enemies into the water, drowning them. It’s pretty brutal! After we win, Primus says the Immortals don’t track teleportation, so no one will know. He then informs us he knows what’s wrong with Anadine and cures her of her Demon Knight issues. The staff we picked up with Alphonse has been studied and used to relieve her of her ailment.  Her evil side still remains, so she keeps being a Demon Knight, but the adverse effects are gone. We thank Primus, he tells us to keep the encounter a secret, and he leaves. In an optional scene, Kyrie wonders about the morals of a god drowning people when they’re not supposed to, skirting their own laws. Reiner seems fine with it.

To end the night, I went around and opened a few chests. Some I still can’t get to because I can’t fly. The tournament at the arena in Centralia is also opened. I tried but got beat pretty fast. Sneak attacks didn’t do much, and this Auto Crossbow kinda sucks.

We’ll head to the Desert Temple tomorrow!

I don’t like status effects. I’m just not a good assassin, I guess. I don’t like using them, and I, obviously, hate being struck by them. In Tactics, I feel like I never see them, other than poison. I say I hate this, but I’m secretly enjoying it, even it’s greatly extending the playthrough of the game and blog.