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xyzzysqrlLAST TIME on Final Fantasy 12 International, we reached the Holy Mountain of Bur-Omisace, and then turned right back around and went somewhere else. Why? SIDEQUEST TIME.
JRPGs and side content have a long and linked history. Final Fantasy 12 feels somewhat unique among JRPGs, though, in that it has a very nonlinear system of area progression. You can wander around a lot of places from the very start of the game, exploring the world and completely forgetting/neglecting the plot. (This happened to me the first time I played it. Eventually I forgot why I was playing and shelved the game.)
What this means is that there are interesting little side-things tucked all over the place. This isn't as sidequest-heavy a game as some, most of the "huh!" moments will be rare drops and rare steals and rare monsters... But there's still quite a bit left to do. And some of those Hunt Marks are out there. LURKING.
MONOGRAPH GATHERING
I hop a teleporter back to Rabanastre. Then I start talking to merchants. Talk, cancel out of store. Talk, cancel. Talk, cancel. Each type of Merchant (weapon, armor, magic) has a hidden counter, a record of how many times you've spoken to them. The same for the Hunt board. Once you've spoken to them a certain number of times, a "Forgotten Grimore" becomes available to purchase. When your party buys it, it turns out to be a Monograph on how to scavenge from various types of beasts. These items are expensive, but they unlock better loot for each and every type of monster. I could have had them before now, but I'd only bought three of them.
The intent was clearly to have them unlock organically towards the end of a run, but of course game guides suggest you unlock them as at the very start of the game and buy them as you get the money, leading to players asking "WHY would they make you talk to people 20 times in a row for NO REASON to unlock this?" Me, I realized I probably had very little to do to unlock them, and a big pile of money, so...
Sidequest COMPLETE: Big stack of monographs GET.
THE CASE OF THE DRIFTING BOAT
Way back in a small village in Dalmasca, we come across a scene with a boat that's drifted up to shore. A small boy says it's his father's boat, and wants us to sail across and find his father. Naturally, we agree. After sailing across, we sneak over to the village on the north shore, to find that small ambulatory cactuses have taken it over and are holding the boy's father... and the other townspeople... hostage. We negotiate.
As it happens, the cactuses are looking for one of their own, a rogue youth with a flower on his head. He's a mean roughneck with a bounty on his head...
...Ah. ...Uhm. I remember doing that bounty. I gave the flower to that lady to make into medicine... *cough* Oh.
As it turns out, she boiled the flower to extract the ...extractable parts, I guess, and threw it away behind her house, where it... apparently grew into a new cactus-person. We gather him up and take him back across the river, and the cactus family leaves, reunited.
Sidequest COMPLETE! Reward: 1000g, some dragon-killing gun ammo. Useful when I get gun access. I also get access to the "Broken Sands" area, which lets me scavenge for dew. The dew will let me complete...
...and then the emulator crashes. So go back to the top of this entry and re-read it all until you hit this point once, then keep going. Or don't, but oof, that was a good four hours of grinding, selling, money-raising, and questing there. Kids: Save early, save often. It's as true today as it was in the eighties.
A few hours later, we move on. THAT DEW WILL LET ME COMPLETE...
THE SICK DUDE
Remember way back towards the beginning of the game, where I gave that flower to a woman to make medicine, and then she wanted to send me somewhere to get dew, and we just talked about that? Well, now I have the dew, so the person she was taking care of can be cured. He gives me a key to a locked door that lets me into "The Barheim Passage", a route back into the dungeons the party fled with Basch. The fellow who was injured was exploring deep in that passage when something super-powerful jumped him. This will allow me access to MORE OPTIONAL CONTENT yay hooray joy woohoo.
Am I gonna do that right now? No. Let's go on an airship ride!
AIRSHIPS AND ALCOHOL
Okay, these quests aren't related, but I like that subject heading.
Final Fantasies are practically inseparable from the concept of airships. They're no Skies of Arcadia (the definitive "airships are cool" game), but there's at least one airship in every single game. Be it as simple as a boat that flies, as complicated as an airborne cathedral, as ridiculous as a bright red motorcycle-esqe skyripper or as brain-searingly awesome as a high-mobility space jetfighter shaped like a goddamn dragon.
(oh my god the ragnarok I LOVE YOU INSANE DRAGON SPACESHIP this was originally like a full page ranting about that damn thing but I cut it down to this, you're welcome)
Final Fantasy 12 probably has more airships than any game since Final Fantasy 4. The Empire has a huge fleet, the party has their own thanks to Balthier showing up prepared... However, you could totally miss it if you're not paying attention, but there are also public-service airships running between cities. Why would you miss it? Well, you can fast-travel everywhere with teleport crystals. However, if you go to the Aerodrome and hop a flight, you can choose to cruise between cities the slow way.
Why would you do that? Well, for one it's cool. You can ride an AIRSHIP! They're NEAT. For two, there are some sidequests involved.
I hop an airship to Bhujerba. The huge industrial airliner pulls out of the terminal and off into the skies. On board, a moogle riding on a seeq (D'AWW) asks directions to the private cabins in front of us, so the game can exposit where they are without needing to directly tell us, kupo.
I also take a moment to check up on deck, but the invisible magical chest that only spawns 1% of the time and has a 1% chance to drop the most powerful weapon in the game didn't spawn, surprisingly. What a shame. So let's get to the REAL reason I'm taking this flight: Interfering in the personal life of the crew.
Down in the "Sky Saloon" we briefly eavesdrop on a conversation between one of the women at the counter and a grumpy man. Being ADVENTURERS, we can ask what's up. (Or ignore the whole thing and get some sleep.) Rande, the man, is trying to get Ann, the woman, to marry him by blustering and pouting about how AWESOME he is. Ann is not buying it, so Rande proposes that she should send letters to all her sisters to tell them to give flowers to her mother, using the party as an intermediary, and if Vaan and company miss conveying letters to any of them then her and her six sisters will marry him and his six brothers.
Ann drags him to a plate glass window and hurls him through to the clouds and ground below, without his luggage. Turning to the shocked passengers watching, she smiles and shrugs. "No ticket." she politely explains.
I'm sorry, that's the AWESOME reaction I made up.
Instead she agrees, although the second he's out of earshot she points out that there's no way she'll go through with it. Still, I get a letter from her to give to one of the six other Chief Stewards (her sisters) who work the six other airship routes. I don't have access to ALL of the airship routes yet, but the moment I do this quest is getting done because that dude's a huge dingus.
So now the group is in Bhujerba, where amusingly some people still refer to Vaan as "Mr. Basch". He's never gonna live that one down, y'know. Then there's the guy who was just hired, but "The day before I joined the guides, they say the Dalmascan captain who was executed came back from the dead and ran naked through the streets!" Vaan is going to end up on th Bhujerban version of Snopes here, I suspect.
Now why are we here in Bhujerba? We are in Bhujerba for -booze-. There's a scavenger hunt of sorts going on around the city, as someone has hidden ten bottles of contraband spirits all over the place. There are also ten buyers blending in with the crowd, who will buy these bottles for 1000g each.
This is just a quick way (if you're good at finding the bottles) to make some extra cash. It's not really important to the story in any way, but hey! We got here on an airship and we're contraband-running! We're almost like real sky pirates!
While we're here, we check on one of the Hunt Marks that Monteblanc the moogle set up for us, kupo! This is a nasty one. The "paling", or magical security system keeping monsters out of the Lhusu Mines, has failed. Two children wandered deep inside and got lost, and while looking for them, the town guards found an Antlion. Antlions are traditionally BAD NEWS in Final Fantasy, and Ivalice Antlions even more so. (One is the serious wake-up-call boss in FFTA2, for example.) Accordingly we're gonna have to prepare before we go in there after it.
Quest "Cockblock The Jerkass": BEGUN.
Selling Booze To Street People: SUCCESSFUL.
Antlion: HOLY CRAP NOT RIGHT NOW.
Let's see... we have one letter from the Rabanastre/Bhujerba line.
I pop back to Dalmasca, then hop an airship flight to Nalbina. The Chief Steward here is "Liddy", and she's dealing with her own brotherly suitor by giving him the cold shoulder. I pass her the letter, she reads it over and agrees. That's two.
BEING A JERK TO THE IMPERIALS
While I'm in Nalbina, I stop out by the market square. I remember being here way back when Penelo needed a mace, and this was the only place to get one. Good times. Hmm. There is also a woman here spying on the Imperials nearby. Both her and the Imperials complain they'd rather be somewhere else, that it's hot, and that the local chocobos smell terrible. ... Well, I know how to resolve this stalemate. I hire myself a local chocobo and ride it right up to the guards. They run off, screaming about the smell. The spy drops me a salute and offers to reward me if I'm ever in the town of Archades.
I am PRETTY SURE I will be, at some point. So, sidequest complete! Reward? Pending.
Let's get Vaan's ass off this bird before it smells funny forever. We teleport back to Rabanastre.
MATCHMAKER TIME
By the gate to Rabanastre, we meet a Viera woman. "Good day." she says. "I am yearning to find a soul mate, so I travel the world. Excuse me, I am going to restock my provisions." Then she leaves. ... Now, this to me calls up reminders of those furry ads of yesteryear, where people would lament "I NEED TO FIND A MATE RIGHT AWAY, BECAUSE I'M 17 AND I NEED LOVE TO LAST THE REST OF MY LIIIIFE". Pfft. Kids.
... I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes. Anyway, trailing after her, I find a "Lovestruck Man" who is naturally smitten with... well, Viera in general. Not entirely her. But I could at least talk to her for him?
Sigh. Let's get this over with.
The Viera is stocking up in the Gambit store, so... I guess she needed more ... I got nothing. She claims if the person she is meeting at the bar is not her true soul mate, he will be her 63rd "less than true" soul mate. So I run on out to the BAR and apparently that dude never showed up. She suggests maybe Vaan is her soul mate! ... No, she feels he is someone else's. (Who? Penelo? ... Basch?) "Do YOU know anyone who feels so strongly about me?" she asks.
So I go talk to HIM and I come back to talk to HER and I go back to HIM and then to HER and--
...soooo long story short VaanHarmony Dot Com (IT'S DOT NET!) pairs the two off. My reward is a couple potions and a bow I bought in town a while ago. And the glow of helping someone find their SOOOOOOUL TRAIN.
Mate. I mean mate.
Anyway it comes out that the first viera the man saw was Fran and that's who gave him the hots for bunny lovin' or whatever, so really, we should all thank Fran for being herself. Thanks, Fran. Thfran.
SIDEQUEST COMPLETE. MATCHUP STATUS: POTENTIAL MATE 63 IN TESTING.
I think that's all the non-hunting sidequests I can do right now. Y'know. Speaking of hunting. ... I have a vendetta.
SQRL VS. WHITE MOUSSE, ROUND 2!
EAT IT
EAT IT
EAT ALL THE FIRE, YOU JIGGLING ABOMINATION
OH LOOK IT'S THE -ELEMENTAL LORD OF FIRE-
I SUMMONED HIM
HE HAS SOME FIRE FOR YOU
PERHAPS YOU'D LIKE SOME MORE FIRE
OR MAYBE FOR VARIETY SOME FIRE
NO I THINK LET'S GO BACK TO FIRE THAT SEEMED TO WORK
BURN EVERRRRYTHIIIIIIIING
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
PRAISE THE SUN
That went okay.
NEXT TIME: I use fewer capital letters, I promise.
JRPGs and side content have a long and linked history. Final Fantasy 12 feels somewhat unique among JRPGs, though, in that it has a very nonlinear system of area progression. You can wander around a lot of places from the very start of the game, exploring the world and completely forgetting/neglecting the plot. (This happened to me the first time I played it. Eventually I forgot why I was playing and shelved the game.)
What this means is that there are interesting little side-things tucked all over the place. This isn't as sidequest-heavy a game as some, most of the "huh!" moments will be rare drops and rare steals and rare monsters... But there's still quite a bit left to do. And some of those Hunt Marks are out there. LURKING.
MONOGRAPH GATHERING
I hop a teleporter back to Rabanastre. Then I start talking to merchants. Talk, cancel out of store. Talk, cancel. Talk, cancel. Each type of Merchant (weapon, armor, magic) has a hidden counter, a record of how many times you've spoken to them. The same for the Hunt board. Once you've spoken to them a certain number of times, a "Forgotten Grimore" becomes available to purchase. When your party buys it, it turns out to be a Monograph on how to scavenge from various types of beasts. These items are expensive, but they unlock better loot for each and every type of monster. I could have had them before now, but I'd only bought three of them.
The intent was clearly to have them unlock organically towards the end of a run, but of course game guides suggest you unlock them as at the very start of the game and buy them as you get the money, leading to players asking "WHY would they make you talk to people 20 times in a row for NO REASON to unlock this?" Me, I realized I probably had very little to do to unlock them, and a big pile of money, so...
Sidequest COMPLETE: Big stack of monographs GET.
THE CASE OF THE DRIFTING BOAT
Way back in a small village in Dalmasca, we come across a scene with a boat that's drifted up to shore. A small boy says it's his father's boat, and wants us to sail across and find his father. Naturally, we agree. After sailing across, we sneak over to the village on the north shore, to find that small ambulatory cactuses have taken it over and are holding the boy's father... and the other townspeople... hostage. We negotiate.
As it happens, the cactuses are looking for one of their own, a rogue youth with a flower on his head. He's a mean roughneck with a bounty on his head...
...Ah. ...Uhm. I remember doing that bounty. I gave the flower to that lady to make into medicine... *cough* Oh.
As it turns out, she boiled the flower to extract the ...extractable parts, I guess, and threw it away behind her house, where it... apparently grew into a new cactus-person. We gather him up and take him back across the river, and the cactus family leaves, reunited.
Sidequest COMPLETE! Reward: 1000g, some dragon-killing gun ammo. Useful when I get gun access. I also get access to the "Broken Sands" area, which lets me scavenge for dew. The dew will let me complete...
...and then the emulator crashes. So go back to the top of this entry and re-read it all until you hit this point once, then keep going. Or don't, but oof, that was a good four hours of grinding, selling, money-raising, and questing there. Kids: Save early, save often. It's as true today as it was in the eighties.
A few hours later, we move on. THAT DEW WILL LET ME COMPLETE...
THE SICK DUDE
Remember way back towards the beginning of the game, where I gave that flower to a woman to make medicine, and then she wanted to send me somewhere to get dew, and we just talked about that? Well, now I have the dew, so the person she was taking care of can be cured. He gives me a key to a locked door that lets me into "The Barheim Passage", a route back into the dungeons the party fled with Basch. The fellow who was injured was exploring deep in that passage when something super-powerful jumped him. This will allow me access to MORE OPTIONAL CONTENT yay hooray joy woohoo.
Am I gonna do that right now? No. Let's go on an airship ride!
AIRSHIPS AND ALCOHOL
Okay, these quests aren't related, but I like that subject heading.
Final Fantasies are practically inseparable from the concept of airships. They're no Skies of Arcadia (the definitive "airships are cool" game), but there's at least one airship in every single game. Be it as simple as a boat that flies, as complicated as an airborne cathedral, as ridiculous as a bright red motorcycle-esqe skyripper or as brain-searingly awesome as a high-mobility space jetfighter shaped like a goddamn dragon.
(oh my god the ragnarok I LOVE YOU INSANE DRAGON SPACESHIP this was originally like a full page ranting about that damn thing but I cut it down to this, you're welcome)
Final Fantasy 12 probably has more airships than any game since Final Fantasy 4. The Empire has a huge fleet, the party has their own thanks to Balthier showing up prepared... However, you could totally miss it if you're not paying attention, but there are also public-service airships running between cities. Why would you miss it? Well, you can fast-travel everywhere with teleport crystals. However, if you go to the Aerodrome and hop a flight, you can choose to cruise between cities the slow way.
Why would you do that? Well, for one it's cool. You can ride an AIRSHIP! They're NEAT. For two, there are some sidequests involved.
I hop an airship to Bhujerba. The huge industrial airliner pulls out of the terminal and off into the skies. On board, a moogle riding on a seeq (D'AWW) asks directions to the private cabins in front of us, so the game can exposit where they are without needing to directly tell us, kupo.
I also take a moment to check up on deck, but the invisible magical chest that only spawns 1% of the time and has a 1% chance to drop the most powerful weapon in the game didn't spawn, surprisingly. What a shame. So let's get to the REAL reason I'm taking this flight: Interfering in the personal life of the crew.
Down in the "Sky Saloon" we briefly eavesdrop on a conversation between one of the women at the counter and a grumpy man. Being ADVENTURERS, we can ask what's up. (Or ignore the whole thing and get some sleep.) Rande, the man, is trying to get Ann, the woman, to marry him by blustering and pouting about how AWESOME he is. Ann is not buying it, so Rande proposes that she should send letters to all her sisters to tell them to give flowers to her mother, using the party as an intermediary, and if Vaan and company miss conveying letters to any of them then her and her six sisters will marry him and his six brothers.
Ann drags him to a plate glass window and hurls him through to the clouds and ground below, without his luggage. Turning to the shocked passengers watching, she smiles and shrugs. "No ticket." she politely explains.
I'm sorry, that's the AWESOME reaction I made up.
Instead she agrees, although the second he's out of earshot she points out that there's no way she'll go through with it. Still, I get a letter from her to give to one of the six other Chief Stewards (her sisters) who work the six other airship routes. I don't have access to ALL of the airship routes yet, but the moment I do this quest is getting done because that dude's a huge dingus.
So now the group is in Bhujerba, where amusingly some people still refer to Vaan as "Mr. Basch". He's never gonna live that one down, y'know. Then there's the guy who was just hired, but "The day before I joined the guides, they say the Dalmascan captain who was executed came back from the dead and ran naked through the streets!" Vaan is going to end up on th Bhujerban version of Snopes here, I suspect.
Now why are we here in Bhujerba? We are in Bhujerba for -booze-. There's a scavenger hunt of sorts going on around the city, as someone has hidden ten bottles of contraband spirits all over the place. There are also ten buyers blending in with the crowd, who will buy these bottles for 1000g each.
This is just a quick way (if you're good at finding the bottles) to make some extra cash. It's not really important to the story in any way, but hey! We got here on an airship and we're contraband-running! We're almost like real sky pirates!
While we're here, we check on one of the Hunt Marks that Monteblanc the moogle set up for us, kupo! This is a nasty one. The "paling", or magical security system keeping monsters out of the Lhusu Mines, has failed. Two children wandered deep inside and got lost, and while looking for them, the town guards found an Antlion. Antlions are traditionally BAD NEWS in Final Fantasy, and Ivalice Antlions even more so. (One is the serious wake-up-call boss in FFTA2, for example.) Accordingly we're gonna have to prepare before we go in there after it.
Quest "Cockblock The Jerkass": BEGUN.
Selling Booze To Street People: SUCCESSFUL.
Antlion: HOLY CRAP NOT RIGHT NOW.
Let's see... we have one letter from the Rabanastre/Bhujerba line.
I pop back to Dalmasca, then hop an airship flight to Nalbina. The Chief Steward here is "Liddy", and she's dealing with her own brotherly suitor by giving him the cold shoulder. I pass her the letter, she reads it over and agrees. That's two.
BEING A JERK TO THE IMPERIALS
While I'm in Nalbina, I stop out by the market square. I remember being here way back when Penelo needed a mace, and this was the only place to get one. Good times. Hmm. There is also a woman here spying on the Imperials nearby. Both her and the Imperials complain they'd rather be somewhere else, that it's hot, and that the local chocobos smell terrible. ... Well, I know how to resolve this stalemate. I hire myself a local chocobo and ride it right up to the guards. They run off, screaming about the smell. The spy drops me a salute and offers to reward me if I'm ever in the town of Archades.
I am PRETTY SURE I will be, at some point. So, sidequest complete! Reward? Pending.
Let's get Vaan's ass off this bird before it smells funny forever. We teleport back to Rabanastre.
MATCHMAKER TIME
By the gate to Rabanastre, we meet a Viera woman. "Good day." she says. "I am yearning to find a soul mate, so I travel the world. Excuse me, I am going to restock my provisions." Then she leaves. ... Now, this to me calls up reminders of those furry ads of yesteryear, where people would lament "I NEED TO FIND A MATE RIGHT AWAY, BECAUSE I'M 17 AND I NEED LOVE TO LAST THE REST OF MY LIIIIFE". Pfft. Kids.
... I'm sorry, where was I? Oh yes. Anyway, trailing after her, I find a "Lovestruck Man" who is naturally smitten with... well, Viera in general. Not entirely her. But I could at least talk to her for him?
Sigh. Let's get this over with.
The Viera is stocking up in the Gambit store, so... I guess she needed more ... I got nothing. She claims if the person she is meeting at the bar is not her true soul mate, he will be her 63rd "less than true" soul mate. So I run on out to the BAR and apparently that dude never showed up. She suggests maybe Vaan is her soul mate! ... No, she feels he is someone else's. (Who? Penelo? ... Basch?) "Do YOU know anyone who feels so strongly about me?" she asks.
So I go talk to HIM and I come back to talk to HER and I go back to HIM and then to HER and--
...soooo long story short VaanHarmony Dot Com (IT'S DOT NET!) pairs the two off. My reward is a couple potions and a bow I bought in town a while ago. And the glow of helping someone find their SOOOOOOUL TRAIN.
Mate. I mean mate.
Anyway it comes out that the first viera the man saw was Fran and that's who gave him the hots for bunny lovin' or whatever, so really, we should all thank Fran for being herself. Thanks, Fran. Thfran.
SIDEQUEST COMPLETE. MATCHUP STATUS: POTENTIAL MATE 63 IN TESTING.
I think that's all the non-hunting sidequests I can do right now. Y'know. Speaking of hunting. ... I have a vendetta.
SQRL VS. WHITE MOUSSE, ROUND 2!
EAT IT
EAT IT
EAT ALL THE FIRE, YOU JIGGLING ABOMINATION
OH LOOK IT'S THE -ELEMENTAL LORD OF FIRE-
I SUMMONED HIM
HE HAS SOME FIRE FOR YOU
PERHAPS YOU'D LIKE SOME MORE FIRE
OR MAYBE FOR VARIETY SOME FIRE
NO I THINK LET'S GO BACK TO FIRE THAT SEEMED TO WORK
BURN EVERRRRYTHIIIIIIIING
AHAHAHAHAHAHA
PRAISE THE SUN
That went okay.
NEXT TIME: I use fewer capital letters, I promise.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-12-11 03:32 am (UTC)I'm surprised you haven't hit the Fox/Chicken/Corn river transportation quest yet in the "small village in Dalmasca". Unlike the actual Fox/Chicken/Corn problem, this is entirely arbitrary and makes no sense.
And the Viera was in the Gambit shop so she could learn to walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 10:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-12 11:24 pm (UTC)...I could seriously go for some mousse though...