Chapter 1: Chaos Shrine
There's our starting party! Now let's get this show on the road!
We descend from a beam of light into Castle Cornelia's throne room. Heading down the stairs, we encounter Princess Sara, surprised to see us.
...now, here's where I
would transcribe the dialogue, but I'm gonna be honest. The MTL was kinda bad. So instead, I am going to summarize from what I can piece together.
Sara is confused by us being here, but then notices the crystal shard we carry. She leads us to the only other inhabitant of the castle*, Mog, and tells us about the prophecy of the Warriors of Light. It seems like the entire world, except for this castle and the Chaos Shrine, have ceased to exist. In the past, Chaos attacked this world, and was defeated by four Warriors of Light. If you'd like to know more, I think we have like seven different LPs on the subject. But even after they traveled into the past and defeated Chaos... this land has disappeared. Sara and Mog ask us to investigate the Chaos Shrine.
*This is a lie.
After that, we're given control. And first off, we'll dive into the menu!
Oh that's a lot of options, okay. We have no items, so instead, let's look at our character skills!
Here's Lenna. She has the Catch skill, which captures any creature she kills, and the Release skill, which uses an ability based on a captured creature, removing them. She can Catch any number of monsters, even more than one of the same kind, which then functions as an item menu where you can't see what the items do until you use them. Not the most, uh... UI-friendly ability, but it's interesting! We can also see her Overdrive skill, 'Dragoon', which lets her call Hiryuu to do large Wind-element damage to all enemies.
Next up is Lightning. In the front row, she has the Chivalry command, which are Knight skills. Right now she only knows the Launch skill, which, as the game describes... "Put yourself in a state of stepping in."
Yeah I don't know either.
In the back row, she gains Red Magic and Shot. Red Magic, of course, is both White and Black Magic, while Shot consumes Ammo in your inventory to deal damage. Magic is learned similarly to Final Fantasy V where we need to obtain an 'item' for each spell, so right now she knows no magic. Dual Style is the ability that switches between these commands, and Recover restores her HP/MP when defending in the back row. Finally, her Overdrive, 'Scene Drive', delivers 5 physical attacks at random targets.
Here's Steiner, who has the same Chivalry command as Lightning does... though right now he has no abilities for it. Spellblade functions the same as FFV as well, where you enchant your sword with a compatible magic you know. Two-Handed prevents him from using a shield, but lets him wield a one-handed weapon with both hands, getting 1.5x attack power (it does not increase the power of two-handed weapons). Cover, of course, automatically covers targets at low HP, and 'Transform' is FFIX's Trance; instead of using his Overdrive for a powerful ability, Steiner automatically Trances when he reaches full Overdrive. What this does depends on the character, but for Steiner, I believe it affects his attack power and allows him to use his Overdrive skill, 'Moonlight Slash' (which costs MP), which is just a big single hit.
Then we have Wakka, with Blitzball skills. Right now all he knows is Sleep Shot, which is physical damage and sleep. Aim, which is a passive, allows him to ignore enemy evasion, so he'll be great at hitting flying targets which tend to have evade (hmm... that sounds familiar...). And his Overdrive is Element Reels, except we can just choose the element. Big single-target damage, you get the idea.
Finally, we have Tifa. Unlike the rest of the party, she doesn't actually have a big fuck-off Overdrive skill. Instead, her Limits cost smaller amounts of Overdrive gauge rather than MP. Beat Rush costs about a fourth of the bar and does solid single-target damage. Kick is the same as Yang's Kick from FFIV, a split-damage AoE. Counter is Counter, of course, and Brawler is the ability that allows her unarmed/claw damage to scale up.
In essence, Tifa and Steiner are going to be our beatsticks, Wakka will support them with debuffs, Lightning will mostly be on the backline with healing, and Lenna is kind of a wildcard.
Going to equipment reveals about what you might expect: Lenna uses whips (and knives), Lightning uses gunblades, Steiner uses swords, Wakka uses throwing weapons (he starts equipped with a Chakram), and Tifa fights using only her fists.
Status shows everyone's stats and commands; you can see here, since Lightning's in the back line, she has Red Magic and Shot, but not Chivalry. Stats seem to work pretty similar to FFV, though I don't know
exactly how the numbers work.
The Party command lets us swap people around, shift their row, and later, will allow us to switch out characters for reserve units. We don't have any of those right now though, it's just us five.
The Crystals menu, however, is
interesting. Here we can exchange a crystal's AP for materia, as well as junction those crystals to characters. Junctioning a crystal allows it to gain AP; if the character it's junctioned to is already at their max job level, it'll gain double AP, but otherwise it gets the same AP that the character does. We can then spend that AP on equippable materia, to give characters an extra ability. Each crystal has its own list of materia, though right now we only have the one.
Our little Crystal Shard here has a bunch of generically-useful abilities: Scan to see enemy health and weaknesses in-battle, Learning to pick up Blue Magic that we're hit by, a bunch of status-resist abilities that will be useful eventually maybe?, Blade Grasp to increase evasion, another copy of Capture (but not Release), Warrior's/Mage's Might which sets the Strength/Magic stat to 50, another copy of Brawler, +30% HP, Pharmacology (doubles item strength), Equip Swords, Equip Shields, another copy of Red Magic, and Morph (turn an enemy into an item). These will allow us to customize characters and patch up any weaknesses our party comp's got. I pick up Scan and Learning immediately because they're just too useful and slap them on Lightning and Steiner, respectively.
Next up is the Crafting menu, which...
...is a little in-depth. We will eventually be able to buy a bunch of stuff, but largely, if we want good equipment, we'll have to gather the materials to make it ourselves. I'm not gonna go through all of these lists individually, but suffice it to say, we'll be using this function a lot.
Next up is the Library menu, which has various stats. The Tutorial is a quick FAQ for questions like 'How do I get stronger' and 'Synthesis sucks!' (not an exaggeration). Statistics has various things like how many battles you've won or how much gil you've earned. Clear Times is a snapshot of your playtime at the first time you defeat each boss or rare enemy. And speaking of rare enemies, 'Bounties' lists those, where you can find them, and what reward you can get for defeating them.
We can only see the bounties for areas we can access, though, so the rest will wait for later.
Next up is the Bestiary. Right now, of course, it's empty, but we
can see...
...that there's a
lot here.
The last option of note is Config.
After the standard RPG Maker settings, we have two untranslated options, then a 'Filters'. You may have noticed from these screenshots that there's quite a bit of weird vaseline filtering going on.
This option does nothing for that, at all. I'm not sure it even does
anything.
After that, we have Battle BGM selections. You can choose most any game's songs, from FFI to FFXIII. The 'Random' option you see here for normal battles was actually hacked in by Ark, the translator. It's definitely a hack, because the 'battle intro', 'battle', and 'victory fanfare' all get randomized separately, and there's not anything he could do about that. Oh well!
Below those, we can set the window style to mirror various games (it even includes FFVI's Chocobo style). We *also* have EXP, AP, and Gil boosters here, allowing us to set a multiple on each of those, at quarter-integer steps from 0x to 2x, plus 3x and 4x. I'm gonna tell you now, this will be
great for catching reserve units up to speed. They get 80% of the EXP, but
no AP.
Anyway, that's it for the menu right now. Next, let's walk around the castle a bit.
Here we see Stiltzkin (FFIX) and Paul (FFII). We can find both of them wandering around in the dungeon. Stiltzkin will sell us three-packs of various consumables for a bargain price, while Paul will sell us random synthesis materials. Both are good to take advantage of whenever we see them. Elsewhere in the Castle we see the bounty turn-in counter and a Beginner's Hall (both staffed by moogles), but neither are useful to us right now so instead, let's leave!
The moment we leave Castle Cornelia, we find ourselves in the Chaos Shrine. Edgar (FF6) is here, let's say hi!
And we see that he's finally learned the concept of 'consent'; we can simply tell him not to act in an intrusive manner and he'll leave us alone... but more seriously, I haven't messed with the debug options at all so I dunno what he does if you say yes.
For now, let's walk into the center and be transported
two thousand years in the past to the dungeon!
Since it's our first time, we'll get a quick introduction area. Paul says this is a tutorial room, and Stiltzkin tells us that the dungeon changes shape every time we enter. Each floor has stairs leading to the next, which will eventually lead to bosses and summons. We can leave the dungeon from any boss room, or with the Teleport time magic or Teleport Stone item.
The flames to the right of Stiltzkin are symbol encounters. Red ones are normal and purple ones are FOEs, the bounties we saw before. They'll be moving around a dungeon and if you touch one, it's a battle! Some FOEs won't fight you on touch, though; for those, you have to interact and then tell them you want to fight. And then chests; the brown ones have standard consumables and stuff, while the red ones have better stuff like equipment or magic... though the latter are sometimes trapped chests instead.
In the room above, we have a starter package of chests: 5 Potions, 1 Ether, 3 Antidotes, 1 Phoenix Down, 1 Teleport Stone, 1 Tent, 10 Normal Ammo, Thunder, Cure, Libra, Slow, and Teleport! This will give Lightning stuff to do in the back row. The ghost reminds us that there's a beginner's hall in Castle Cornelia and a tutorial FAQ in our menu, and then it's off to the dungeon for real!
We end up starting right next to Stiltzkin, so I can show him off.
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...though we, of course, have 0 Gil. Whether you say yes or no, he vanishes afterward, so that was kind of a waste, but oh well! Walking a bit further, we have our first battle!
It's standard ATB like the SNES FFs, and we can see the monsters' gauges too. When no one's got an active turn, the gauges speed up, and when someone gets a turn, time pauses for a second before resuming at a slower pace. Time also pauses in menus, of course, like the usual Wait option. Lightning acts first and I have her use her Scan materia. Next turn, Wakka selects Attack, and...
We can see a summary of the selected monster's stats; Level, HP, MP, and affinities. The Red Mousse here takes extra damage from Wind, Anti-Beast, and Anti-Air attacks. There's not much else to say about the fight, it's a Final Fantasy battle. So let's fast-forward to the victory screen.
If anyone leveled up or learned a new ability, we'd see a little pop-up on their window, but as this is the first battle, we haven't quite gotten that far yet.
After getting through a battle, other flames will deactivate for a few seconds, giving you a bit of breathing room. But we're not here to breathe, we're here to get stronger, so I go around fighting all the flames.
Here we see Lenna getting the last blow on a Goblin and capturing it, then releasing it in another battle. It uses Goblin Punch, of course, and conveniently, it killing the Black Goblin counts as Lenna's kill, so she captures that in exchange for the Goblin we used.
Later that same battle, Steiner gets punched by a goblin, and since he has the Learning materia, we now have the Goblin Punch blue magic... not that anyone can use it right now. It does exactly what you'd expect, too; huge extra damage if your level matches theirs.
A couple fights later, we get our first level up... across the entire party. Like FFV, core stats don't change with level. HP and MP go up, though, and most damage formulas involve level somehow... I think.
Here we find Paul standing in a corner, offering us an assortment of crafting materials. For now, I can only afford the Poison Powder, so I pick some up, and he disappears. I'll figure out a use for it Later.
Above, we see our first FOE. I am
not fighting it. We would almost certainly get our shit kicked in. Instead, we'll fight the red flame.
The Cursed Pennies function as this dungeon's 'metal slime'; their flame moves *very* fast and they don't give any EXP, but they give a lot of Gil and AP relative to the rest of the floor, and like to flee. These guys in particular aren't that lucrative, but later sections of the dungeon will have different enemies that fill this role, and we'll generally want to seek them out.
We find a Fire spell to go along with our Thunder. I mentioned that Lightning can use these with Red Magic, of course, but Steiner is also able to use this with Spellblade. Fortunately, I don't have to 'teach' it to anyone like FFII or III, just having the one copy is good enough for both of them.
On the next floor, we get a set of Silk Robes, a decent armor upgrade for Lenna. Speaking of, Lenna maxes out her Overdrive, so we can try out Dragoon!
Against most of this floor, that would end the encounter, and it's not like the Land Turtle lived much longer regardless. That'll be a convenient option for catching a bunch of monsters to stock up.
Steiner gets hit with Seed Cannon in the next fight, learning that blue magic. He also ends up going into Trance, which does... not much of note.
six-seven, six-seven--
Later on this floor, we get a Longsword, which despite only having 14 ATK to Steiner's starting Claymore's 16 ATK, is only a 1H weapon, so it can be two-handed to deal more damage comparatively.
A couple more fights and everyone levels up again, and Wakka gains a job level to learn Silence Shot. (He also leveled up, but the JLvl pop-up comes first.) It does exactly what you think.
3F goes by without much to comment on. On 4F...
...we have an actual structured zone. The orb to the right lets us save the game and use a tent, the portal to the left takes us out of the dungeon, and the chest has 10 Normal Ammo.
I know what this means... a boss is coming!
After resting up and saving, we walk forward.
It's Wing Raptor, the first boss of FFV! It can hit us for wind damage with Sonic Boom or shield itself with its wings to (presumably) counterattack. This calls for not just a Scan, but a full Libra.
Libra, in addition to letting me see their important information on cursor like Scan, also opens the target's full Bestiary page, including drops, stats, detailed status effect and affinity percentages, and an (untranslated) description. It's really handy for figuring out what status effects are even worth trying.
Not that we have much access to them right now anyway. Wakka tries to hit Sleep Shot even though it's only a 15% chance because Silence doesn't work at all and he's got nothing better to do, while Lightning unloads the Normal Ammo we picked up on it.
Lenna sorts through the monsters she's captured so far... which are somehow
differently translated from their actual names... Without knowing what each one does, I go with Steel Bat (or Red Mousse), which casts Poison and succeeds. Hey, not ba--
--holy shit.
So, near as I can tell, the percentage for Poison isn't "how likely is this to land". It is, instead, "how much of the monster's max HP will it take off per action". Bosses, I believe, halve that again, but that's still roughly a quarter of its health every time it takes a turn. After that, the rest of the fight is a formality, with Tifa getting the final blow with a 69-damage Beat Rush. Nice.
In the aftermath, we get Blind Shot on Wakka (that might've been handy) and Somersault for Tifa, which is another single-enemy attack, but with Anti-Air. Despite having wings, Wing Raptor wouldn't have taken extra damage from it. Oh well!
Afterward, an esper falls out of the Wing Raptor's corpse and joins us. We don't have any summoners with us, but if we did, they would now be able to summon
Valefor.
We can also add three more characters to our party once we return to Castle Cornelia. The chests behind Wing Raptor have an Iron Lump and Motes of Magic, two synthesis materials that will let us make stronger weapons and magic. But for now, let's go a little further...
Wait a second, I recognize this tileset!
It's the Earth Crystal! Interacting it causes it to speak with us. Again, let me summarize.
It says that the Crystal Shard we had led us to it. It talks about Garland, who became Chaos and was defeated by the Warriors of Light. But somehow, Chaos returned, due to 'a force from another world'. It's Chaos's fault that the world is fucked up. The Earth Crystal will guide us to Chaos and his Fiends to kill them again. We'll have a new place to go to from the Chaos Shrine.
We also have another Crystal to junction and get materia from! I'll go over what it has later.
When we leave, we automatically show up here in Castle Cornelia. On learning the threat the world faces, Mog and Sara join the party! (This won't count against the 3 characters we can recruit.) We're taught about how swapping party members works; doing it inside the dungeon has the new character keep the current HP/MP of the character they replace.
Mog has dances, which apply effects for as long as he's dancing, and Terrain, which is FFV's !Gaia ability. His Overdrive is AoE Water damage.
Sara has Time Magic as well as Sing; right now the only song she knows is Sleep Song, which puts all enemies to sleep. Her Overdrive gives the whole party Haste.
Also, when we step outside now...
The Fanfare plays, as a message scrolls by... It restates what we already learned, that FFI happened, but somehow, Chaos returned.
More importantly, the town of Cornelia is back and we can shop! Right now, the shops have basic equipment, but they'll update as we progress.
Heading to the Chaos Shrine, we can see that we have options when entering the dungeon; either the place we already were, or the new area the Earth Crystal is guiding us to.
There's one more thing to do before we stop for today, though...
YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!
Here we try to fight the 'Gargoyles'! They like to use Break, both the Black Magic and Spellblade forms. They've got good defenses and high HP, too.
...this leads to the obvious result. GAME OVER...
If you get a game over, Paul will rescue you. He then gives you 10 Potions, 5 Antidoes, and a Phoenix Down. However... you lose half of your Gil. Honestly, right now, that's not a terrible trade. Later on, though, you'll miss the Gil far more.
That's it for now! Vote for who we're adding to the party! Right now the vote leaders are Freya, Rydia, and Balthier all at 3 votes each, and a bunch of people at 1 vote each behind them!
