We come out to see the Earth is a mostly barren wasteland, full of browns and dusty winds. Once again, the game refuses to tell us when we are.
Go south to one of the ruined cities, the Trann Dome. As expected, the people are huddling together, all wearing dirty rags as clothing. One guy will sell you stuff like a store. A good thing that money is still legal tender whenever we are. A machine in the corner will heal HP and MP for free, but flash a message saying you're still as hungry as before. One man will say Arris Dome up north through Site 16 might have food, but some of the monsters there are immune to weapon attacks. Yep, in grand RPG tradition, that's where we're heading.
One chest in Site 16 has the Berserker Ring, raising attack and defense at the cost of the wearer uncontrollably attacking the closest enemy. Useless in this game, as the characters' techs are more valuable than stat boosts. Elsewhere, there's a chest that gives the far more useful Silver Bow for Marna.
There are indeed enemies who are immune to physical attacks, but one use of Wind Slash or Flamethrower and they're down. More annoying are the rats (hazards, rather than enemies) who steal a potion if you touch them. Sure, I've got like fifty, but I swear the developers put those in there just to annoy you. Also, some pink mutated fetus enemies who creep the hell out of me.
With that over with, we enter the biggest Dome in this area. There are more of the same huddling masses. The old man of the Dome tells us that there are stores of food, but the computerized security won't let anyone by. Leave it to future A.I. to go berzerk all the time. Looks like it's the job of three kids to climb down a manhole and beat up a computer.
We come to a sparkling terminal, but we don't have a neccessary password. Next up are some steel girders to walk on. Here we see a surprised rat statue, with an attached note warning of intruders being attacked by the computer security.
Enter the next room and a computer pod thing comes down, giving us a boss battle. The central computer comes with two small pods. The idea is to destroy the two pods as quickly as possible. Otherwise they will pull off a combination attack with the center. Don't even think of attacking the center, as it will pull off a devastating Delta Attack to your party. Also, for some reason the center is immune to fire while the pods aren't. After the pods are gone, wail on the center. It will revive the pods after five turns, but soon enough the whole computer is demolished.
Go up and, wouldn't ya know it, Lucca notes that the food is rotted over. Fortunately, a corpse is there (a phrase I never thought I'd write), clutching a seed. Also, a note saying that the rat "statue" holds the secret to this place. Gotcha.
Go to the rat, who starts running around. Catch him and he speaks (!), telling us the code to use the terminal: hold both shoulder buttons and press A at the terminal. Thank you, fourth wall-breaking talking rat!
We go through a few rooms, fighting monsters (some of whom kill each other), and Marna learns Allure. Allure is a 1 MP spell that causes one enemy to become confused. In other words, useless.
After using the code on another terminal, we come to a room with a huge computer screen. It helpfully tells us which Dome to go to next. Also, Marna goes into "Oooooh, what does this button do?" mode, giving us a scene that EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!
Many years ago, the world looked as it does now, only a lot greener, more colorful, and less overall depressing. Then, IT struck. A huge insect creature, which the computer calls "Lavos", rose from the ground and destroyed nearly everything. My words cannot describe how horrible that must have been.
It doesn't take long for our three kid heroes to decide to use time travel to find a way to take down this Lavos. The same thing that destroyed most of civilization. Hey, we're heroes in an RPG, so there must be a way.
