FFXII: Revenant Wings (13) – Ch. 6 – Fran Is Whelmed

Last time on Let’s Play Revenant Wings, we scurried around playing sidequests in the shattered remnants of the Skysea. Now, at last, it’s time to catch up with the leading man and his long-suffering copilot!

Their ship, the Strahl, has moored beneath a vertical village named “Heaven’s Vigil”:

The strahl tucked under a cliff at the edge of an island

The northern sky island is called Arda, Heaven’s Pillar. “Arda” is from Tolkien, although in his world it means, well, the world.)

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FFXII: Revenant Wings (11) – Ch. 5 Cont’d – Love Triangle Goes Ping

Last time on Let’s Play Revenant Wings, Clan Potholder crashed on a beautiful paradise island. Then the game decided to make up for lack of character development by foisting a half-hearted love triangle on us.

Which caused me to run to the hills and waste a lot of time grinding. But it turns out we won’t have to suffer this tedious trope for too long (spoiler), so bear with me as I bear with it.

I still wanna know what that not-quite-police-box object is hanging in the sky.

Island of Tswarra with strange shape hanging behind it

All right. Plot beckons.

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FFXII – Revenant Wings (10) – Ch. 5 – Vaan Loses It

In our last Let’s Play Revenant Wings, I predicted we’d fail to save another hugely significant crystal from the Judge of Wings. Boy, was I wrong. It was an island approximately the size of Australia that bit the dust. Also, tomboy and all-around go-getter Filo was put in her place with a well-timed Damsel in Distress mission.

Now that that’s out of the way, Clan Potholder can get on with the business of trying and failing to save the world. Go us!

Airship lying on jungle

Chapter Five fades in with our airship resting on some jungle treetops. The camera pans down to show our party scattered around a grassy clearing, sitting or standing in a daze.

I wonder if anyone in this crew knows how to repair an airship.

Chapter 5: Stranded. Location: Tswarra, Isle of the Lost

Signs point to “No.”

The music of Depressing Things Just Happened kicks in. I never thought I’d say this, but I feel a sudden pang of longing for Ondore’s lies. He’d be alliterating all over the aftermath of Bahamut’s smackdown with his florid prose.

On the bright side, I can now stop checking every few lines of this playthrough to make sure I haven’t accidentally written “Sandsea” in place of “Skysea.”

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FFXII Revenant Wings (2) – Chapter 2 – Flap, Flap

So, this week, I’m back from a convention and have 5000 more words of a novella draft to write, and…

Dog from Up movie saying "Squirrel!"

Revenant Wings is proving to be surprisingly distracting for such a lightweight game. Apparently I was in the mood for mental popcorn.

An exultant FMV makes us feel like we’ve achieved something despite the blasphemy of not having a world map. (Just kidding; I played far too many early games without world maps to care.)

I should stop yik yakking and sit back to enjoy the most uplifting, pretty FMV that a teeny tiny DS screen can manage. In 2x magnification, but still.

Woo hoo! Wave at Bhujerba (?) as we fly by!

Airship flying past Bhujerba

No idea what we’re flying into here… Mist? Balthier’s aftershave? Exploded sparkly vampires?

Flying in golden sparklies

I love the refreshing Phon Coast theme; I can almost hear that blue jay sound effect that someone must’ve imagined sounded like a seagull.

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Final Fantasy Dimensions: A Half-Assed Playthrough

I have unfinished FFVII and FFX Let’s Plays, I haven’t gotten to Lightning Returns, I was wasting time playing Kingdom Hearts for the first time, and I’ve fallen hopelessly behind in Final Fantasy fan discussions and game commentary on  [community profile] moogle_university. My FFX novella, Love Her and Despair, is languishing with the last five chapters in a messy and forgotten state.

What a PERFECT time to start a new game playthrough!

FF Dimensions Title Screen

Zencribnotes on Tumblr inspired me to try Final Fantasy Dimensions again. It’s an iPad/Android native Final Fantasy game that came out in 2010.  When I last tackled it, I couldn’t fully appreciate how much it was a homage to the early FFs. Now, by golly, I’m going to play Final Fantasy Nostalgia Bingo, because that’s the main virtue of this game.

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Fixing Game Freeze in FF7 Kalm Flashback on PCSXR for Mac

I ran into a glitch playing Final Fantasy VII on my Mac Playstation emulator. I found a fix!

Cause: The instructions for PCSXR tell us to load a pack of BIOS into the BIOS folder. This is wrong. There should only be one BIOS in there.

Fix:

  1. Create a spare folder on your desktop.
  2. Go to Folder  ~/Library/Application Support/PCSXR/Bios
  3. Drag all the BIOS out of that folder into the spare folder on your desktop.
  4. Then select and drag SCPH1001.BIN back into the PCSXR/BIOS folder.

Before fix: FF7 freezes at the end of Sephiroth’s battle with the dragon during the flashback to Cloud’s past, right after this:

sephiroth fighting the dragon in nibelheim

After fix: there’s a looong black screen after the battle, then the game pops back to the inn in Kalm:

Cloud: Sephiroth's strength is unreal. He is far stronger in reality than any story you might have heard about him.

My other, less-desirable solution was to pick up a saved game file from here shortly after the glitch, but then I’d lose my limits and overleveled party.

I still have a working PS2 and a back-compatible PS3 that plays the game discs. If all else failed, I was just going to go back to the PS3. But emulating on my Mac allows for screencaps.

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Final Fantasy VI Recap, Ep II: Are We There Yet?

Before I launch into the next leg of my Let’s Play Final Fantasy VI playthrough, I’d just like to note that FFVI’s washed-out chocobo design is redeemed by its music of pure techno awesome:

I defy you not to bob your head while listening to that with headphones. Or, to quote a couple commenters on the above video:

question: What is it about riding giant chickens that restricts random battles? ~ The Zeldaniac

Picture this, if you’re an enemy and you hear this song, are you going to interrupt it by attacking the guy riding the chicken, or are you just going to dance? ~ hoodedbro1001

Now back to our regularly-scheduled playthrough.

So, in our opening FFVI sonata, our heroes Edgar, Locke, Sabin and Terra had reached the rebel hideout of the Returners. We had just imbibed our first Backstory Dump courtesy of Banon, the rebel leader, when news arrived that the town of S. Figaro was under attack and that imperial forces were headed our way.

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Final Fantasy III Recap, Episode II: Roaming Sheep

Aside: I was tempted to call this episode “Oh. Okay.” in honor of Sev’s recurring response to all the WTF incidents during her playthrough of Final Fantasy III.

However, it turns out there is a supreme moment of WTFery involving a sheep in this episode, so… just keep Sev’s Mantra in mind.

Now let us roam as sheep.

Off we go with Desch the Fifth Party Member (uh oh, we know where THIS is going) to find the Gnomish Village! Poor Arc is hoping he won’t have to use the Mini Spell…

Arc protests Mini Spell

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