Day 25

Game - Final Fantasy 4, Day 25
Hours Played/Hours Total - 1 hr / 1 hr
Starting Point - Beginning of Final Fantasy 4.
Current Goal - Start Final Fantasy 4. Beat Final Fantasy 4.

What Happened - And thus begins the next tale in my saga of playing games with long tales. I've heard from several friends that Final Fantasy 4 is highly underrated. With this in mind, I am greatly looking forward to where this game takes me. I will apologize for extra, super long post ahead!
     The game opens up, and I already have an airship! (Or so I hoped but was wrong of course.) The initial opening of the game is pretty much all just story element. Let me tell you though...the PSP version of this game is INCREDIBLY pretty. I've played the original game (SNES) and the DS remake. The DS version was going for a full 3D look of environment and characters, but they apparently decided to go for a polished HD 2D look for the PSP edition. The PSP version is also called "Final Fantasy 4 - Complete" because it contains Final Fantasy 4 and the newly released Final Fantasy 4: The After Years. I'm unsure if I'll be playing the After Years at this moment, but I might change my mind before it is all over. Back to the game! It opens up, and I'm flying on an airship to some kingdom known as Mysidia. I've been sent there to retrieve a Crystal (SHOCKER!) for the King. It does a big sad bit where soldiers are slaughtering weak mages and defenseless people. Fast forward! My character is back in the Kingdom of Baron. The person who is currently at my helm is the Dark Knight (Wooo!) Cecil. I find myself in front of the King who accuses me of betrayal because Cecil questioned why they are not only slaughtering innocents but also stealing the crystals in the first place. The King gets mad, demotes me (5 minutes in and already demoted ._.), and then sends Cecil off on a mission to destroy an Eidolon in some city in the Misty Valley! The only odd thing he does is hand me a weird-named ring before I leave. OOooo! So ominous!
     After being sent away from the King, I finally gained control over Cecil and started looking around. You can talk to Kain (a dragoon! Wooo!). He burst in during the King's ridiculousness and tried to stop the King but got involved in the mission instead. I walk around some more and talk to all forms of castle personal. Not a lot to do right this moment, I found a few treasure chests with items and gold though. Walking along, I come into contact with a woman named Rosa (apparently the love interest of Cecil) as well as a man named Cid, who is an airship mechanic (familiar? I think so!). Both conversations with them generally involved the current strangeness of the King. I finally found Cecil's room and bed down for the night. Rosa comes in sometime later and the two talk. Apparently since he is a Dark Knight and her some form of White Mage, their love is forbidden or frowned upon or something. I'm not 100% sure on it, but they also talk some about Cecil's current feelings. He's starting to really doubt what the King is wanting him to do, but he wishes to obey the King because apparently the King has done a lot for him and Kain. I can already tell this game is going to be hard to avoid a lot of story spoilers...
     I wake up the next day and left the castle to complete the task given to me. I stopped in town to buy a few potions and tents, but otherwise I continued onward and upward. It was a short trip north, northeast to the Misty Cave. Inside, it was a simple cave dungeon. It really only had one path with a few treasure chests as I went along. As I proceeded through, I kept being interrupted by a mysterious voice that was warning me to turn and leave. Of course, I can't really turn and leave...Otherwise I'll never make it through the game! Finally, as I reached the end of the cave, I was attacked by a Mist Dragon. BOSS BATTLE TIME! The Mist Dragon put up quite a fight...kinda. Really, it isn't too tough of a fight, but it does have one fancy move that could have been troublesome. Basically, it can turn mist and is impervious to attacks while being mist. Also, if you attack the mist version of the Mist Dragon, it retaliates with a massive ice spell that attacks the entire party (of 2...). Basically, I had to wait it out until the dragon reformed itself. After reforming, I easily took down this dragon. Aaaaah yeaaaah!
     Figure I should tell a little about the fun and interesting new battle system that starts with 4 and goes on up until Final Fantasy 9. Final Fantasy 4 takes advantage of a new battle system called the Active Time Battle (ATB for short). Basically, each character has a meter that slowly fills as time goes by, based on speed and such. Once it fills up, you can choose your actions as usual. What this means is that you could possibly get in several attacks before the enemy gets in one. However, this also means that you are generally timed in your actions so you have to think and choose quickly. Of course, you can get around this by simply going into a secondary menu (like items or spells) and it generally stops the ATB bar in most of the FF titles that use it. They generally include a way to change it from ATB to the classic wait battle system, but that's not as fun or quick-paced. Anyways, back to the game!
     With the Mist Dragon defeated, I was finally able to proceed out of the cave and onward to the Village of Mist to deliver the funny ring. Upon entering the village of Mist, the ring lights up and reveals its true purpose...Apparently the ring was a cursed/trapped ring and immediately let loose a horde of Bombs (the popular FF enemy that is a giant fireball monster). They proceed to destroy the town to the horror of both Cecil and Kain. They hear a voice somewhere from inside the town and look around to find its source. Apparently there was one survivor in this village of Mist....a young girl. She stood next to the body of her dead mom. Her mom had died when someone killed her dragon (Uh oh...). Cecil and Kain realize what they have done and accidentally impart this to the girl. She freaks out and attacks them. The battle starts and she immediately summons Titan. Yes, it turns out that the village was a village of summoners. She summons Titan, and Titan proceeds to create a massive earthquake which shatters the continent (Daaaaaamn). Cecil wakes up to find himself with stranded with the girl, but there is no sight of Kain anywhere. With the girl in arms, I proceeded into the desert and towards the desert oasis of Kaipo.
     In Kaipo, Cecil needs to locate a place for the girl to rest, so I made my/his way to the Inn. The Innkeeper lets us sleep there for free since she is in such critical condition. Cecil sleeps nearby...only to be woken up in the middle of the night by the King's soldiers. They have come to retrieve the lone survivor of the village of summoners. I fought them off with little trouble, and the girl seemed to be...at least remotely thankful. Although she couldn't forgive Cecil for what he did to her mom, Cecil at least asked if he could protect her with his life. She told him her name (Rydia) and the story continued. With Rydia in the party, I had a magic user! Of course...she started off at level 1. I looked around town some and found out that a person had been found in the desert. The descriptions given lead towards one person...and the fears were realized. It seems that Rosa was found out in the desert, and she now had desert fever! Oh noes! It also seems that the only cure for desert fever is some sort of special pearl to heal her, but I have to cross the continent and fight a giant monster to get it. With this in mind, I started training up Rydia.
     After a few battles, she easily leveled up to around level 6. I figured this would be good enough for now and proceeded to a nearby cave, the Underground Waterway. It would hopefully take me in the direction I needed to go. The enemies here proved to be mostly pushovers, but I did have a small problem with zombies. The problem with the zombies was...that I could hardly damage the zombies with any of my current weapons or spells. Slowly but surely, I beat each group of zombies, but I would like to add extra emphasis on the slooooooowwwwllllyyyyyy. Anyways, around halfway through the cave, I ran into a mysterious old man. I talked to him, and he revealed himself as Tellah. He was trying to make it through the cave, but he needed some help with a monster and figured that a Dark Knight and Summoner could greatly assist him in this. Thus...I gained another party member! The Sage Tellah! Sage Tellah came into my party at the high level of 20, and he also came with a decent group of White and Black Magic. I forgot to mention before, but it seems that characters with spells (mages and such) learn certain spells at certain levels as they level up. At this point, Rydia knew one summon (Chocobo) as well as a few Black and White spells. Tellah came with a nice array of spells to add to my current lineup. I continued onward throughout the Waterway. I collected what treasure I could here and there while fighting off the monsters. Zombies were much easier with Tellah's Fire spell. It was going fairly well.
     After getting a little ways further, I located a special room with a magic barrier to ward off monsters as well as a pad that I could use tents/cottages on and save my game. Tellah used a tent to heal the group and more plot happened! It seems that Tellah is heading to the kingdom of Damcyan to find his daughter, Anna. She ran away and eloped with a bard, and Tellah was going to go get her back. Cecil reveals his reason for travelling through the waterway, and the game continues. Or..it would have, but I figured this was as good a time as any to settle down and save my game for the night.

Ending Point - Underground Waterway B2.
Current Party* -

• Cecil - Level 13
• Rydia - Level 9
• Tellah - Level 20 

Goals Accomplished - Started the game. Made it through the Misty Cave and defeated the Misty Dragon. Unfortunately destroyed the village of summoners. Helped and saved Rydia's life. Joined up with the sage Tellah. Began traversing the Underground Waterway.
Next Goals - Make it to the kingdom of Damcyan. Retrieve the Desert Pearl to heal Rosa.

*Side Note - Considering the direction the games will be going, I've decided to change the category of "Current Levels" to "Current Party" since it sounds better AND future titles have more characters than party slots.

Side Note 2 - I'd also like to add that I played a couple times over several days to do what I did. I didn't realize I had played so little (time-wise) because it felt like quite a bit has happened.

~May the Crystals Guide Me~