I've missed that old opening sting of a PS1 booting up.
The menu opens up with a cinematic sequence showing airships, cities, a pillar of light, and a giant tree, intercut with glimpses of a map, all underscored by a soft flute score. It's actually pretty soothing. Sitting on the menu for a while without doing anything will lead to a sequence of still cinematic images of the party members, each framed with a single word, and a short phrase summing up part of their character or history. Alright, so far so good.
The game opens with another cinematic, this time depicting two cloaked people caught on a tiny boat in a storm at sea. Flashes of lightning briefly illuminate their faces, and then it's revealed to have been a dream as a young woman in a white dress wakes up, sitting in a chair beside a window, who could be either of the people from the dream sequence. The facial designs are too similar to tell them apart without seeing their hair.
We're then treated to a sweeping vista of a medieval city as a flock of doves leads us to a gigantic airship cruising through the clouds, held aloft in classic Final Fantasy fashion by about half a dozen tiny propellers pointed directly up and turning slowly. #65, check.
This is one of those elements of the series that just doesn't really hold up following the switch from the NES/SNES era to the Playstation era. One of the drawbacks of more realistic graphics is a greater strain on willing suspension of disbelief.
Entering the airship, we see a skinny blond guy with a tail go through a door, and we take control. We find ourselves in a pitch dark room holding a match in order to ward off lurking grues. We're supposed to light the candle in the middle of the room, but a quick exploration of the room beforehand yields a handful of gil and a potion. One thing I always appreciated about this game was that a little thought bubble will pop up above the main character's head whenever you approach something you can interact with, like hidden items. It's much more convenient than just hammering the X button while you walk.
Upon lighting the candle, we're given the opportunity to name our character, one of the benefits of an RPG without voiced cutscenes. The default is Zidane, and despite my childhood habit of renaming RPG protagonists after myself, we'll stick with that. Three of Zidane's friends join him, and the group is promptly attacked by some kind of dragon-man creature out of nowhere.
All four of these guys are thieves, as evidenced by all of them having the "Steal" command. I've always been a fan of thieves being able to steal stuff from enemies in RPG combat, so making the protagonist a thief is a bonus for me. Making the main character a thief, and therefore guaranteeing that you'll have a thief in your party throughout most of the game, allows stealing items to be a much viable option for gearing up your party. Anyway, the dragon guy has a potion and a Mage Masher dagger, and occasionally trips and falls on his face when he tries to attack.
After a few rounds of attacks, the dragon splits in half, revealing the group's boss, Baku, in a dragon hat. Man, I thought I'd had bad bosses before, but at least none of them ever jumped out of the walk in freezer with a giant sword, tried to murder me and all my co-workers, and then played it off as a joke when we kicked their ass.
Apparently this is pretty routine aboard this ship, because no one makes any comment about it again. Instead, they just follow Baku into the next room to discuss the plan for kidnapping the princess.
Huh. That's an... unusual way to start a heroic fantasy adventure.
Cinna, a guy who looks like a two-legged pig who spent his entire clothing budget on model kits of Alexandria Castle and the team's airship, explains that they'll be committed the kidnapping under cover of a theater performance. Marcus, a burly guy with no eyes, is playing the lead, while Blank, a red-headed nudist who also has no eyes, causes a distraction with a swarm of bugs, allowing us to commit the actual abduction of, as Baku puts it, "the most babe-ilicious beauty in all of Alexandria, Princess Garnet."
Note that Garnet is 16, and Baku must be in his 40s, at least, on top of being another species, if that pig nose and dog ears are any indication.
Another brief cinematic shows the airship flying over the city, barely above the rooftops, and we're treated to the title as it pulls in to dock at the castle. A black mage named Vivi is in the streets, watching the airship go by, and we take control of him as he faceplants on the cobblestones. The entire city seems to be shutting down in preparation for the upcoming play, so there's not much to do other than explore, talk to people, and engage in that classic RPG pastime: looting innocent strangers' houses right in front of their eyes.
Huh. Maybe starting the game off by kidnapping a princess isn't so out of the ordinary, after all.
There's also a jump rope minigame that's just a matter of mashing the X button in the right timing, and after getting tired of not being able to get past 26 jumps, I head to the ticket booth in the center of the town square. Unfortunately, it turns out there's been a lot of fake tickets getting circulated, and Vivi's is one of them. The ticketmaster, feeling sympathetic, gives Vivi some playing cards for IX's card minigame, and tells him to talk to a guy named "Alleyway Jack" to learn more about it. Hmm. On second thought, maybe he thinks we're the one spreading these fake tickets around, and is trying to get us killed.
Feeling suicidal without the prospect of a theater performance to brighten up his life, Vivi takes his life into his hands and heads into the alley to end it all at the mercy of this scourge of the Alexandrian streets, but instead meets a rat-kid who says he can get Vivi into the show for the low, low price of Vivi's indentured servitude. After helping the rat steal a ladder, we're introduced to this game's version of save points, the moogles, and the "mognet" side quest, where we are tasked with delivering mail from moogle to moogle throughout the game.
Vivi and the rat kind, named Puck, sneak into the castle from the rooftops, and another cinematic plays. We're shown the airship parked in the middle of the castle, two moons in the sky, and a hippo with two brooms mounted on her head as pigtails. This is Queen Brahne, and I suppose it's actually a bit misleading to call her a hippo, seeing as we actually did encounter several hippo-people while exploring the town as Vivi. Brahne is not actually a hippo; she's just obese, blue, and ugly. Princess Garnet is sitting at her side looking miserable, which I suppose is only natural when you have every reason to expect that you're going to go from "the most babe-ilicious beauty in Alexandria" (I think I might actually be too old to use that phrase without being just as creepy as Baku now...) to the sewer monster in an ermine parka you call "mom" in a few years. At least Brahne's enjoying the fireworks.
Speaking of Baku, he trots out on stage now to sum up the entire plot of the play so we can skip straight to the climax. I guess Brahne must have a short attention span. We enter a stage battle, pitting Zidane and his three buddies against Baku and two shirtless blue guys in gimp masks and metal pincer hands. Half-nudity seems to be a real trend with these Tantalus guys. The steal command is replaced here by "stage effects," which are flashy abilities like fireballs and falling meteors which do no damage. Baku and his gimps use them too, and they'd be more fun to play with if Baku's guys weren't also attacking you with normal attacks that actually do damage, potentially forcing you to use your limited cache of potions.
After the fight, the play continues, with Zidane and Blank staging a sword fight in a sort of Simon Says minigame that earns you gil depending on how fast and accurate you were. Afterwards, Blank and Zidane sneak into the castle and mug a couple guards for their uniforms. Zidane promptly runs into a girl in a white mage robe and starts hitting on her. She rushes past, Zidane realizes she's Princess Garnet, and the chase is afoot.
Cue Zorn and Thorn, two tiny jesters that constantly talk over each other or finish each others' sentences. One gimmick isn't enough for them, though; one of them talks in Yoda-speak. Another benefit of this game not having voiced lines: these guys would be unbearable to listen to if they were voiced. They alert the Queen to Garnet's disappearance, and she puts her two captains on the job.
It turns out that Alexandria has two kinds of soliders. The normal, competent, and respected soldiers under General Beatrix, who are all blonde women in armor that looks like a steel one-piece swimsuit; and the Knights of Pluto under Captain Steiner, who are an elite squad of bumbling idiots. No points for guessing which group Zidane and Blank stole their armor from.
We're put in command of Steiner, who is just a tad bit high strung, and spend the next few minutes running around the castle trying to rally the other eight Pluto Knights. It seems that men are considered useless in Alexandria, and given the quality of these troops, it's hard to argue the point. Eventually, we reach the top of a tower and spot Zidane chasing Garnet around the parapet of the opposite tower, launching us into another cinematic.
Garnet jumps off the tower, much to the two mens' horror, but instead of falling to her death, swings over to the airship on a flag string. Zidane follows suit, as does Steiner, but apparently all that armor isn't very aerodynamic, because he veers wildly off course and crashes through a wall.
Zidane and Garnet end up in the band pavilion, where Garnet knocks the entire band off their feet in her attempt to escape. The band just gets right back up and starts playing again without missing a beat like nothing happened. Dang, talk about professionals. Inside, we run into Ruby, the one Texan in the entire world, and immediately move on. Huh. Well, glad we included that vital scene....
Ending up in the room where we fought Baku the first time, the princess makes a startling revelation: she wants to be kidnapped!
Well, that could have saved us a hell of a lot of trouble.
Cinna leads the two through a secret escape hatch he prepared just in case they needed it, because he's apparently installed them all over Ponyvi the ship in case of escape emergencies, and Blank, still disguised as a Pluto Knight, stops Steiner from following them by pretending to get stuck.
The hatch leads into the engine room where Garnet reveals that she's been athletically training herself to escape the castle. Because she couldn't just walk out the front door, I guess? Anyway, Steiner cuts them off in the next room, and Blank joins Zidane and Cinna to fight him. Despite his Butt-Monkey status so far, Steiner can actually put out some decent damage, but he goes down quickly. When defeated, he proclaims that he won't go down so easily, and uses a special sword technique to break Blank's armor... releasing the swarm of bugs he was concealing inside. And, considering that Blank is a nudist, that means... ew. Steiner is apparently terrified of bugs, so Zidane and Garnet make their escape while the other three panic. It doesn't last long, though, as Steiner catches up again as they make their way on stage, interrupting the climax of the play.
The other Tantalus guys just roll with it, immediately casting Garnet as the female lead and Steiner as the romantic rival. Garnet's quick on the uptake and has apparently been studying this specific play, while Steiner just sort of... stand there and lets them do whatever they want. I guess he's got performance anxiety. Just another reason Alexandrian men are considered useless, am I right, ladies?
Meanwhile, Vivi and Puck have been found out, and Vivi gets chased onto the stage by a couple of the Pluto Knights. Wait, isn't the stage aboard the airship? And on one of the upper levels, too, considering that Zidane and Garnet entered the stage through a trap door. So how did Vivi get up there? For that matter, how can all the people seated down below the ship see the play?
At any rate, Vivi accidentally sets Garnet's white mage robe on fire, blowing the act right before Queen Brahne's eyes. Another fight breaks out, this time between Zidane, Garnet, Vivi, and Marcus against Steiner and two of his knights. Marcus and Zidane both have their Steal replaced with Stage Effects again, but Vivi and Garnet can use Black and White magic, respectively, though they only know one spell each. It's more than enough, though, as Marcus and Zidane both do enough damage with their normal attacks to make the two Pluto Knights flee after a single hit, and a could Fire spells from Vivi will drop Steiner in no time.
The ship tries to take off, but apparently airships trying to escape from the castle are a recurring problem for Queen Brahne, because she has cannons mounted all over the place that fire giant harpoons on chains into the ship, holding it in place for the coup de grace: a bomb. As in, the recurring fire-elemental monster from the series that's best known for its explosive Suicide Attack. We fight Steiner again, now with the bomb getting bigger and bigger behind him. This time it's just a matter of waiting for the bomb to blow itself up, which fatally frees the ship from the harpoons. The ship escapes, falling apart even as it flees the city, and crashes in a forest beneath a thick layer of clouds. Despite the drop of several thousand feet in a flying deathtrap, though, everyone's basically fine; even Zidane, who was apparently thrown several hundred yards away. Baku's more worried about the forest's reputation for no one ever making it out alive.
Oh, and Garnet's missing. So, that's a problem.
