Zodi Plays: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Road Trip to Save The World!)

[LaZodiac]

And so we end our third year. Let's go.

Zodi Plays: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles [9] A Windy Cave

Video Length: 40:41

Starting off this episode, we have a brief run in with the whole "side quest" thing regarding Knocfelna and the mysterious obvious princess. Moving on, we enter the Selepation Cave, our next dungeon. A massive cave system, labyrinthine and confusing due to everything mostly looking the same. It's just like if we revisited the Mines! Only far more brighter and far more blue. I cannot overstate how gigantic this area is, passageways stretching on for quite a long time. There's a ton of enemies in this dungeon, and all of them are pretty powerful. We have the occasional Lizardman of course, plus their giant variants. We've got Killer Bee's back, as well as the Electric Jellyfish. We have the Cockatrice, a horrible bird who's name is gonna be censored on one of the forums I post this on (oops!) which can shoot petrifying blasts, can cast a slow spell, and has poison breath. A nice little bundle of status effects. We've also got the sehagin, fishmen that can spit water at you, hit your face, and cast ice spells. Then we have the Blazer Beetle, which has a variety of horrible deadly stabby moves, and finally the Gigas, which has frost breath and can do some dangerous punches. All in all, the enemy spread here is quite vast and all the foes you must face down are pretty dangerous in groups. I kinda like it. Gameplay wise the cave doesn't have much going for it. There are two doors that you need to hit these crystal switches at the same time to open, and there are three elevators that can be used as a sort of short cut, sort of bridge to get some more loot. All in all this dungeon is more compelling for it's combat than anything else.

So, let's talk about the boss! The boss is the Cave Worm, a massive goopy looking face in a hard chitin like shell. As an immobile boss it has the "come closer" sucking move, it has a long range slow orb attack and can spray some kind of mud or poison as a breath attack. Those are it's only ranged options, and they're very weak. Up close it can swing it's body back and forth, and after awhile do a brutal ground slam. These attacks will DESTROY you. They're very powerful, and I am in constant risk of death throughout this entire fight as a result. REALLY feeling that lack of a ranged focus attack right now, hahaaah. The Cave Worm's adds are Electric Jellyfish, but I can easily dispatch those since my blizzard ring means we've finally gotten three orbs of Blizzard! Blizzaga is surprisingly useful, if I do say so myself. Not against the boss though he resists ice. After a long and hard fight, we finally win, melting the Worm's body to go. We get our final drop of Myrrh for the year, and can finally return home.

While we were getting the Myrrh though, I noted in video that the chalice and the worm's shell had kind of similar feels to them, art wise, and I feel that's a topic worth bringing up, because thinking on it...all of FFCC kinda had this great feel of looking like it's trying to directly look like some of Yo****aka Amano's art. Who is Amano? Well, he's the artist behind a lot of rather iconic Final Fantasy designs. Designs so elaborate that the in game sprites of the older games often didn't even try to emulate them, going in completely opposite directions. He also does the logo for each game. I bring him up because, as said above, I feel like FFCC is the only game to try 100% to emulate his art style. I don't know if he did work on this game, but the chalice and the Myrrh tree are things that he would definitely just draw, and they've put it into the game without changing a thing. His work always has this beautiful kind of look to it, ranging from strange curly armoured men/trees to fairly gender ambigious heroes to landscapes that I genuinely cannot tell you what they are, even though I know the game they're about intimately. His artwork is beautiful, and the designs in this game all feel like they're trying their best to show off his style of art in a more "real" 3D sense. Look at the Lilty and Yuke races, especially in regards to the Lilty's tufts of onion hair. They seem straight out of Amano's art. The Chalice, too, has this fascinating design that so clearly looks like various Final Fantasy title logos, which is a shame since the logo for FFCC is the Myrrh Tree. Missed opportunity, that, though still good looking. In summery...art is good, and for some reason due to the art I'm now thinking the Chalice might have some connection to insects(?) like the Cave Worm, due to the patterning and art looking similar.

At any rate, my miniessay/rant/whatever about Amano's art aside, that's the end of the video, and the end of Year 3. I hope you all enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time.