A Full Team

Playtime is over, I take it? Tonight had a difficulty spike, but I found it manageable, albeit slightly tedious.

We last left off looking for Alshline, which we could find in the storeroom of Tonoe. Gryz, a bird looking fella, is our guide, and he takes us down into a monster filled cellar. The mobs come fast and often, and they hit hard. They also stay around a while, so good luck. Don't be afraid to backtrack out if you need to rest. This'll probably help get more EXP, which is always beneficial in the long run. If you're impatient, buy an Escapepipe from the tools shop. Speaking of shops... guess what I found out too late? You can buy new gear at the colorful awning places outside. That would have helped a lot, would it?

There is no boss, which I was also trying to prepare for, so just make your way down to the fourth floor. There's a good number of chests to save you some money later on, though. At the bottom, you'll get the Alshline. Gryz will ask to officially join the team since he thinks we're on a collision course with Zio. Alys is unsure if he's our target, even if she hates him. I started to realize that Alus, Chaz, and the Hunters are business first. We're not getting paid to fight Zio, so we won't. It adds another wrinkle to what Rune said last night. Regardless, Gryz is powerful, so Alys lets him come with. They give you an Escapepipe, but I did it manually. We make our way out, say farewell to Gryx' brother, and head back to Birth Valley.

As we enter the town, a cutscene happens, which shows us saving everyone with the one bottle of Alshline. Professor Holt is last, and we get a happy ending to this arc. Holt asks us to return to the Motavian Academy because he, too, is business focused. Instead, we hang around for a bit and talk about the end of the job. It's nice and peaceful until a scream is heard. From out of the cave to Birth Valley comes a copy of the first boss we fought. Use the same tactics, but I accidentally used my first magic combination. It was a three way! After the fight, we head back into the cave because Holt is missing. Behind him was a door we couldn't go through, but we can now.
 
It takes us to a futuristic hallway with blinking lights and steel hallways. It's filled with stronger versions of the aliens we killed in the first dungeon, including the boss, and a few robots, if I remember right. Eventually, we come to a fork in the path. The upper right takes us to a treasure, and the lower left takes us to another chest down the line, but that leads to a dead end. The elevator on the lower right is where you need to go. This is another dungeon that I didn't hesitate to Escapepipe from. You can buy more, for cheap, in town, so why not? Once again, there is no boss here, but we do find Holt. We can see a woman with pink hair standing behind him, but Hahn asks how he survived down here. Holt points to the woman wearing a black, heavy armored, one piece with strange ears. This is Rika, and she protected him. She asks us to talk to Seed, who's in the room behind her.

There's no one here, but a voice talks to us. They don't know it, but Seed is a computer. Seed tells us that Rika is an artificial human created with the intelligence of the last 1000 years. He also informs us that he, and other computers like him, are in charge of this planet's everything. It controls the climate and soil fertility. Unfortunately, things have gone haywire. Ut's causing and the monsters to turn evil and the climate to shift abruptly. If we wish to fix things, we need to shut down all the other computers and save someone named Demi. Alas, Demi was kidnapped by Zio. Finally, Seed asks us to take Rika with us to do this, which we do. As we leave the Bio Plant, he tells the aether something I didn't really understand. The story teleports us out to the city, and Rika is excited. This is the first time she's ever seen the sky! ..and then an explosion rocks us. Seed blew himself up, which was the only thing I did understand from his final soliloquy. We all quickly regain our composure and carry on. Zio's Castle is across the quicksand from Mile, so we'll need to find the long way around.

North of us is the small village of Nalya. It's a partially ruined place where the remaining citizens spend their time thinking about leaving. There's some foreshadowing, I suspect, here, but nothing else. North of this place is a meteor crash site. If you go and explore the dungeon, another tough task, we learn more about the backstory on this world. Long ago, humans lived on another planet. I think this is the basic plot of the other three games. One day it exploded, but several survival ships escaped. One was in orbit around Matovia, our current planet, but it crashed landed recently. That was this here meteor. Everyone died, though, so it's only here for EXP and treasure.

Keep going west to get to Aiedo, where we started the game at. This is home to the Hunter's Guild, and we can get a side quest here. Talk to the receptionist and head back to Mile. The sandworm farmer needs us to take care of his pets, which I don't think I should have been able to do. It was an incredibly long fight, and I ran out of all my MP. Alys and Hahn died, and the survivors gained three levels. Rika gained five because she joins the party at level one. Use magic and techniques, and you can win at level ten. The sandworm can only attack one character at a time, so heal whoever just got hit. It's slow, so good luck. We get 1200 gold, or whatever it's called, and I returned to Aiedo to prepare my assault on Zio Castle...

...tomorrow!

I'm really enjoying the game so far. Magic worked tonight, but I'm still confused. My triple magic combo only worked once, but maybe I used the wrong ones next time? Combat is faced paced, makes sense, and is fun. I'm noticing that speed does play a part in turn order, so there isn't the semi random turns of early Final Fantasy. I can really see why this game has been so beloved since 1993!