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[R^2]

Sabin: I told you, I'm not--
Aged Man: Now, hurry up and fix that chair over there! You're gonna need to stand on it so you can fix the roof!


Gau: Uwaoh...
Sabin: Come on, Gau... don't you think?
Gau: Fa-ther...?
Sabin: Yeah. That guy's gotta be your dad!
Gau: ...? ...Gau... dad!? Uwaooo Gau!
Sabin: All right! Let's go tell him! He needs to know you're his son! Wait a minute... This is a once-in-a-lifetime event! We should at least dress you up a bit! Let's go to Jidoor and get you spiffed up!

Music: Johnny C. Badd


Sabin: No, Gau! How many times do I have to tell you not to eat with your fingers?
Gau: Uwao...
Sabin: Don't say "uwao" when you mean "sorry"!
Gau: Yaoh!
Sabin: ...


Terra: Oh, but I liked those others ones so much, too...!
Sabin: *mumble* ...everything you liked... ...boy wouldn't even be able to move...
Terra: What was that!?
Sabin: N-nothing! Didn't say a thing! ...Whew. That was close...
Celes: What to do, what to do... Oh, this is nice! ...But I need something that would look good on Gau, don't I? Hmm...
Sabin: Oh, pick something, already...!
Celes: What did you say!?
Sabin: ...N-nothing!
Cyan: Now this is a fine and jaunty little hat!
Sabin: Maybe if he were a clown...
Cyan: What was that? If he wore a crown? Ha! We don't want his father thinking he's some kind of prince, now, do we?
Sabin: ...
Sabin: I know just the thing!


Sabin: It's perfect! Functional, yet sporty!
Anonymous someone in the party: That's, uh... not exactly what I had in mind...


To be fair, you're letting the monk who literally grew up on a mountain retreat veto any ideas that come up.

[R^2]

Music: Gau's Theme. The melancholy cello piece is fitting for the scene, but still... an odd fit for the character.


Sabin: You're gonna go in there now and show your father what a fine young man you've become!
Gau: Yaoooh...


Aged Man: Who in blazes are you? Oh! Repairmen!?
Sabin: Sir... You had a son once, didn't you? You did... right?
Aged Man: ...A son?
Sabin: Yes. You see, sir... he's alive. ..Gau, speak up!
Gau: Fa-ther...
Aged Man: Huh? What? What's all this business about a son? I don't have a son!


Aged Man: I grabbed the thing and rushed off to the Veldt with it... Thing was crying like crazy by the time I got there...
Sabin: But, sir...!
Aged Man: I left the child there... And then I turned around and ran, trying not to look back...
Sabin: I'm trying to tell you...
Aged Man: Then all of a sudden the crying stopped. I turned around... ...and there was some frightful monster! Never seen anything like it... Hideous! Still gives me the shakes when I think about it...
Sabin: I give up... This guy's hopeless...
Aged Man: But you, young man... Your parents must be proud to have such a fine son! I still dream about being chased by that demon child... Terrifying, those dreams...
Sabin: Why you old...! Running your mouth, not even so much as thinking about Gau's feelings! You want me to beat some sense back into you!?

[R^2]

There's no reward but closure for having Gau reunite with his father, so on to the next thing.


Back up the Cultist's Tower, this time without Molulu's Charm.


All the enemies here are Level X0 Magic, getting tougher as you climb. All commands except Magic and Item are locked here -- characters can't even fight. All unique abilities are also unavailable, even ones that are largely passive, such as Trance, or are actually a kind of magic, like Lore. The only character who can physically hit in the Tower is Umaro, because he's wild like that.


My goal for this visit is in one of the treasure rooms.


It's the Holy Dragon! And he's a pushover, because he only does two things.


One of them is Holy, which bounces off of the target's Reflect Ring and heals the dragon of negligible damage.


The other is Dispel, trying to get rid of the Reflect status and failing because it's from a relic.


w/e man




On the way out I happen to run into some Magic Urns. They're virtually unkillable and spend all their time throwing healing items -- Ethers, Potions, and Remedies -- at the party. They'll eventually Flee, but finding them here means they can show up on the Veldt. And that's nice. Raging as a virtually-invincible monster is a good thing for Gau to do.

[R^2]

[Brentai]

If an enemy Ripplers Shadow and steals Interceptor, then Strago Ripplers that enemy, the Interceptor status is instead transferred to Strago, and the dog protects the old blue mage for the rest of the game instead. Weird.

Wasn't he Strago's dog to begin with?

Also that scene making fun of the way Final Fantasy protagonists dress was a couple generations before its time.

[R^2]

Hey, you know where we haven't been yet?




I completely forgot to visit Doma after the Imperials pulled out in the World of Balance. There's not much here, but I almost missed some treasures, consarn it.


Hey, free inn.


Sure is nice to be able to rest for free now and then. Setzer doesn't have the Falcon crewed like the Blackjack was, so the bartender that gives everyone free healing on board isn't there anym...


Cyan? Cyan, wake up.


Nyeaaah! Tiny hyperactive children!


Curlax: I'm Curlax!
Moebius: I'm Moebius!
All three: We're the Dream Stooges!
All three: This man's soul is ours!






The party follows the Dream Stooges -- named "dream" in Spanish, "dream" in French, and "dream" in Italian originally -- into Cyan's mind.

[R^2]

That's a problem.


Other party members are visible in different areas, but this place is a door maze, where the door you come out of may not lead back where you came from if you turn around and go through it again.




But I've done this scenario so many times I'll probably never forget my way around for as long as I live.


And then there's this door, which pushes you back out no matter what...




But if you've got everyone together, there's a fight instead of a dead-end.

[R^2]

Curlax, Laragorn, and Moebius each have their own tricks and strategies and blah blah blah. When they're together, they can Delta Attack to petrify a party member -- more elegant that just giving a special name to bouncing -ra magic off of Reflect, huh?


Curlax, weak against ice, dies first. Because he can cast Arise, you see.


After that you've pretty well won, since the Stooges can't Delta Attack or revive one another. I take out Laragorn next, since he has a habit of running off and hiding like a Bard. Also because his battle sprite looks like he's flipping off the party.


Moebius is next to go.


Ready to proceed? Let's proceed.

[Mothra]

WH

IT'S

CURLY

LARRY

and

MOE

WHAT IS THIS MADNESSSSSSSSSS

[R^2]

While Doma plays its usual high-pitched recorder theme, and the Dreamscape plays the Phantom Forest music, the redux of the Phantom Train has no music at all -- just the clack-clack of the train going down the tracks.


It'd be soothing if it weren't for all the random battles.




Cyan is here, being chased by phantoms.




Each car on the train is a set of switch puzzles.


Like for this one you flip the right switch to move a sofa, the middle switch to move some boxes, the right switch to move the sofa back, the left switch to open the path forward, the right switch to move the sofa again, and the middle switch to clear the boxes out of the way forward since that's where they go when they were moved the first time. Then you can proceed! Oh, and there are random battles as you're running back and forth, of course.


Then once you're done you're given a pop quiz on what the chests in the last car looked like, and if you've forgotten, you can't proceed.


The goal is the locomotive engine, of course.

[R^2]

Not for what's inside the engineer's cabin, but because it takes you to another dream-warp.


This time you're in a cave. A mineshaft, from all the tools and stuff lying around. But Cyan didn't have any traumatic experiences in a mine!


Oh. Since we're all in Magitek armor again, this must be the part of him that's terrified of machinery.






Maybe those guys chasing him now are robots or something, I dunno.


All the enemies here certainly are. Check out the feral child who's barely able to string two words together pilot that super-advanced mecha!


Terra, should you bring her along, is still using an upgraded model with missiles and stuff.


The map here is a simple loop. To complete it, you have to turn around and go back the way you came.


Stupid dream logic. Hey Cyan, wait up!




Ach, crivens.

[R^2]

Party: Where are we!? What is this place?
Spectre of Elayne: You're inside... Cyan's mind. My husband, Cyan, continues to torment himself... Over what happened to Doma... what happened to the world... and what happened to us... And because of the depth of his despair, a monster known as Wrexsoul has latched on to him. Wrexsoul is a monster formed of the countless souls lost in the course of that ancient conflict...

There's a lot to be said for villains made of the amalgamated mass of tortured spirits. At least this time he isn't really a tree.

Spectre of Owain: They're hurting my dad! Help him!


The spectres drop a save point.


There are a few flashbacks of Cyan's happier memories scattered around Doma, should you care to look for them. This one is Cyan and Owain sparring.

[R^2]

spoing!




listen here u little shit

[R^2]

So here's the deal. Those two Soul Savers exist solely to prolong the fight while Wrexsoul is gone.


And by "gone" I mean "off the battlefield until you kill the right one of your own party members, causing him to reappear.


fwoooom

Wrexsoul always possesses first off, while the Soul Savers pound you with magic. You can use Banish to remove both Soul Savers from the fight at once, suppressing their ability to revive themselves after they die -- at this point the game goes "Huh, there are no enemies left, I guess you won." even though someone is still walking around possessed by Wrexsoul.


In this case, petrifying Sabin causes Wrexsoul to appear.


And later he chooses to posses Terra, who I don't even have to kill because she's equipped with the Cursed Shield and has had Doom status in every fight so far. So Doom kills her...


Wrexsoul reappears...


...and Terra is revived thanks to the Reraise I put on her. It's like I knew this would happen!

[R^2]

Un-doomed, Terra takes on her monstrous esper countenance and blasts Wrexsoul with Flare.


Sabin manages to pick out a good and proper target for Phantom Rush, too.




If you Banish the Soul Savers without defeating Wrexsoul, he doesn't drop the Guard Bracelet. Guard Bracelet is auto-Protect and auto-Shell combined, so that's nothing to sneeze at.


Cyan: I could hear my wife and son calling out to me... Their voices gave me the strength to hold on.


GOD WHAT NOW


...oh.

[R^2]

Cyan: Elayne...
Spectre of Elayne: Thank you, my love...
Spectre of Owain: You really are strong, Dad!
Cyan: No... I couldn't do anything... Not then... and not now... I am a man without honor...
Elayne: No... You've always had more than enough.














Hey, on the throne there...

[R^2]

Cyan would have eventually mastered these techniques by himself (Tempest at level 44, Oblivion at 70), but clearing up his mental state unlocks them all. It sure would have been nice if, like how Terra's personal development doubled the duration of her Trance, Cyan's quest doubled the speed of his Bushido concentration. But it doesn't! Getting to Oblivion takes a damned long time, and while it tries to instant-kill all enemies, it can (and often does) still miss.


And don't forget to nab the Alexander magicite on your way out! (I have done this before.)

Alexander does holy-elemental damage to all enemies when summoned, and teaches Holy at x2! Finally, someone other than Sabin can hit a weakness to holy! Alexander also teaches Protect, Shell, and Dispel at x10, and Esuna at x15.

In the Japanese version, the boss I just fought was named "Alexsoul", implying that the swirling mass of spirits from the War of the Magi was in fact a corrupted esper, and by defeating it the party purifies Alexander's soul as well as Cyan's.

[R^2]

Meanwhile, back in Thamasa...






Strago: Who did this to you?
Gungho: It was Hidon, that legendary beast you and I used to hunt... Almost had him, too...
Strago: Hidon!?
Gungho: Oooh... *cough*, *wheeze*...
Strago: G-Gungho!?
Gungho: Strago... Please... avenge me... Oooh... *cough*, *wheeze*...




Strago: You're right... I grew old and stopped even thinking about pursuing the dreams of my youth...

Well, you did have a granddaughter foisted on you.






Strago: ...I need to face the thing I ran from all those years ago. I need to get the best of it. It's a matter of pride, dear.
Relm: It's a matter of you being a stubborn old man! You're my grandpa! I can't just sit and watch while you make things harder for yourself than they have to be!
Strago: I'm sorry, Relm... It means a lot to me that you care so much. ...But Hidon's a tough beast to track. Its name comes from the old word for "hidden", after all! No one'll ever find him if I don't go.


Yeah!

[R^2]

I've been taking my lowest-leveled characters on these sidequests for a while, and Umaro has just started to fall behind. He can stand next to Gau on Team Uncontrollable, then! Might as well make the most of things -- check that Gauntlet-boosted attack power!


The tiny island north of Thamasa has a cave on it now. Gungho must have opened it up when he went looking for Hidon.


It's dark inside.


The tricky part of Ebot's Rock isn't finding Hidon, it's getting past this little bastard.


Chest: Gimme somethin' ta eat! Or I won't let ya through! I love me some coral! You got any on ya?

We do not, having just arrived.


So we are sent instead through a teleporter maze, where each teleport panel takes you to a random room. Most caverns have treasure chests, and inside each chest is between one and five chunks of coral. One room is the entrance, one is the chest's passage, and one room has a save point.


While you randomly search random rooms for random amounts of coral distributed randomly, you get into... yes, random encounters. Every monster has Teleport Stones that can be stolen from them or picked off their corpses, just in case you get lost or stuck and need to get out quickly.


It takes 22 chunks of coral to satiate the chest.


The chest sits by itself all the time, and demands to be fed by anyone who passes by. I can't decide if I'm annoyed at it or want to make it a role model for all my decisions in life.

[R^2]

The next section is really easy!


Because Hidon is about a dozen paces beyond where the chest sat. Fun fact: That's the same sprite as would be used for Typhon, if Typhon was ever viewed from the front.


Hidon himself is fond of poison attacks. Each Erebus budding off of him is different, with attacks and elemental weaknesses/absorbs not possessed by its brethren. The guy in the back has auto-Reflect, too.


Wiping them out isn't difficult, but it sure pisses Hidon off.


He then attacks with Grand Delta, a powerful nonelemental spell.


Team Catscratch-and-Yetismash destroy Hidon immediately thereafter.


If you're not interested in learning Grand Delta, you can just huck a Holy Water or Phoenix Down at Hidon. He's undead, so that's good for an instant KO.