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This session wasn’t too long, but a lot has happened anyway.

The first thing I did was to clear my inventory a bit and then go get all of the quests at the local notice board. This made me realize I actually missed a very important location – the local inn. I found Dandelion there and gave him his lute, after which I did some fighting at the local boxing ring.

I got a few quests, got some information and then meditated until the evening, when I the party I was invited to started upstairs. A lot of the quests at the party I already knew from before, or at least Geralt knew from a role playing perspective. There was a lot of talk about politics and it was clear the game was trying to convince me that I won’t be able to stay neutral for a long time.

The Witcher, The Princess

There was some “fun” involved.

After all of that was done, I decided to go to the swamp, where I talked to Kalkstein and started doing some of the grindy quests which sometimes make the game feel a bit like an MMORPG. I’m talking about the quests like “kill X ghouls” or “get Y monster parts”. Luckily, most of the quests are far more creative than that, so this is just filler I don’t mind doing along the way.

Soon, I stumbled into the two named monsters I had to kill for the royal huntsman. Both encounters happened right after each other, so I was in a bit of trouble. The game tries to be realistic, so it won’t let me carry large items, like weapons, armor and trophies in my bags. This means I can only carry one of each at a time. Since I killed both named monsters, I had to leave one trophy on the ground, hoping it would still be there when I get back. It was also nighttime, so I couldn’t find the huntsman back in the city.

I decided to leave one trophy stored at the inn and then come back for the other. While I was there, I also managed to enter the local brothel, where I met a girl I was looking for who might be a vampire. After “spending some time” with her, the quest advanced and it was confirmed that she was the girl in question. She was definitely bitten, but it wasn’t clear if she turned already. I also had to beat up a body guard to get to the second floor of the brothel, where the female boss who apparently knew Geralt was. She’ll probably be important for some future quest, but for now, I got nothing from her.

I got back to the swamp and took the second trophy, before I explored the rest of the area. I skipped on the cave and got to the brickmaker village, where I spoke to their elder and got another quest. They want me to get rid of some Salamandra boss who used the villagers for forced labor.

I saved my game here and called it a night.

The Witcher, Skill Tree

There’s plenty of complexity in the system.

On a side note, the combat is starting to get a lot more fun. I’ve learned the fourth level of the strong steel style and can now use a power up move which looks great, but also adds a lot to strategy, since it can stun the enemy. Also, that orb indicator in the upper right corner of the character screen is just two orbs from being full. I’m not sure what that means, but it’s possible I’ll stop getting bronze skills at that point.

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The Sephirots were the first thing I needed to deal with. I actually had to make a trip to each of the ten obelisks in the swamp area and leave a sephiroth there. Once I was done with that, I was able to enter the tower, while “Raymond” waited outside. I expected a larger area to explore, but it really was just a tower, with a single room.

There was a circle of power there, which taught me what I think is my last sign, as well as a chest with some gold, books and various other items, including the magical book “Raymond” was after.

As expected, when I got out, it turned out Raymond was Azar Javed in disguise. He first summoned an Ifrit to fight me, but that part was easy to deal with. Once the Ifrit was gone, he used a portal to bring in the professor into the fight, so I had to beat both of them. As soon as Javed got to about 25 percent of his health, I got knocked out in a cut scene and both of them used a portal to escape.

The Witcher, Chapter 2 Boss Battle

A single Swallow potion was more then enough for me to beat these two.

I should probably also mention that there’s a teleporter in Triss’ room, meaning I can now travel from there to either Kalkstein’s laboratory, or the swamp tower. Of course, I can also travel from any place of power to any of the three locations.This ended the second chapter and started the third, where I woke up in the bedroom of Triss Merigold. There was another cut scene where the game gave me a reason to be a bit suspicious about Triss to, followed by a lengthy conversation in which I got a quest involving those weird wall reliefs I’ve found at the temple quarter and the graveyard. There are a total of three of them and I need to place beacons in them to help Triss with a detection spell. Finally, I got an invitation to a banquet and that was pretty much it.

Triss’ house was in the trade district, which meant I now have access to this new area. I decided to do things a bit differently compared to the temple district. Instead of visiting the merchants, I went to explore the area first and basically pick up anything that wasn’t nailed down. I did the opposite in the temple area, so I ended up finding a lot of books I’ve read already, because I bought them from the merchants.

The Witcher, Trade District

The Trade District was a bit laggy for me.

While exploring, I made a quick stop to the graveyard to leave the beacon at the relief there. I also found a relief within the trade quarter and finally, when the exploration was over, I went back to the temple district to leave the last beacon at the sewer entrance there. At this point, I saved my game and decided to take a break.The decision to switch it up turned out to be the right one, because I’ve found several books and even traded one for an extra red meteorite I have. I also got a bunch of quests and a couple of items which will probably allow me to instantly solve a few quests I might get in the future. One of these is Dandelion’s lute, which he left at a girls room because he got chased out by her father.

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I did some selling, which got me back up to 1738 oren. At this point, though, I don’t think I’ll be buying that armor I want any time soon. It’s currently priced at 5000 oren, so maybe I’ll be able to buy it at some later point in the game. On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer books left for me to buy and read, so at one point, I might be able to stop wasting my money on that and actually get rich.

The Witcher, Raymond

It turns out Raymond is the big baddie in disguise.

Kalkstein was now actually speaking to me, so his quests opened up again. It turns out; the quest with the swamp tower might not be a side quest after all, since he gave me advice to take Raymond, who’s probably Azar Javed in disguise there, because the surrounding water might weaken his powers.Now that I knew Raymond was the guilty one, I had to tell all the remaining active suspects they aren’t suspects anymore. Vincent gave me his guard captain’s ring as a token of gratitude, which would’ve allowed me to leave for the dike and get to the swamp before, instead of me having to bribe the guard. A bit late for that, but if the ring turns out to be useless; I can always sell it for 50 oren.

The only two quests I had left were the one with haunted widow and the one for Kalkstein, which requires me to get three “servings” of alghoul marrow. I meditated until midnight and went to the graveyard. The wraith of the widow’s dead husband was at the entrance to the graveyard, fighting a couple of ghouls. I killed of the ghouls and then attacked it by accident, which forced me to kill it. It was blue before the fight, so I could’ve probably talked to it and solved the quest differently. There’s nothing I can do about it now, though.

The Witcher, Wraith Dead

Games like these need an “I’m sorry” button.

Finally, it was time to face Raymond/Javed. I went and spoke to him, and decided to act as if I don’t know anything. He said Ramsmeat was guilty and sent me to kill him. I waited a few seconds and spoke to him again, claiming Ramsmeat was gone. For an amazingly powerful sorcerer, he sure wasn’t too bright to fall for that.Getting the alghoul marrow was annoying. I had to wander around the graveyard and the crypt at night until enough alghouls appeared. I actually had to get out of the area, rest for 24 hours and get back in, before I got all of it. Turning in these two quests made me realize the trouble wasn’t worth it. I got 150 oren from Kalkstein and another 200 from the widow. Too small a reward for so much trouble, if you ask me.

In any case, I managed to convince him to meet me at the swamp. I immediately followed and took the ferry there. Now, all that’s left for me to do is to put the sephiroths in the proper obelisks in the swamp and kill Javed. I’m not sure which one of those I’ll need to do first, but I’ll find out tomorrow.

The Witcher, Swamp

This is where the chapter finale takes place.

By the way, in case you’re interested, I’m level 17 now. I’ve mostly been increasing my combat skills with a couple of points in Quen for protection. I’ve also made all the special potions made from major enemy “pieces” apart from the one made from the golem’s obsidian heart. I ran out of people to buy top quality alcohol from, so that one will have to wait. Other than that, I’m sitting at around 2000 oren and that’s about it. The Witcher is a game with complex gameplay, but the character builds are relatively simple.

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I had to fight a boss before I left the mountain path. Thanks to me having two healers, the fight was easy, but it took a while, especially since my only dealer of larger amounts of damage was busy stealing. I eventually ended up resorting to Vivi’s magic and Dagger’s Ramuh in order to kill it. Even with the long time it took, Zidane didn’t manage to steal everything from the boss. I’m starting to remember why the stealing mechanic sometimes annoyed me on the first play through.

Final Fantasy IX, Mountain Path Boss

Eiko starts out with Auto-Regen.

The Iifa Tree was accessible from an alternative route in the Mountain Path, so I went there and finally reached the tree itself. The route through it was long, and it was soon obvious that the tree is what generates the mist on the Mist Continent. Eventually, I got to the bottom and was soon attacked by a boss.I finally got to Madain Sari, where the story advanced a lot. To put it short, it turned out Eiko was an orphan, living with just her moogle friends there. Dagger also realizes that she must be from Madain Sari to, because she has vague memories of the place. Eventually, the story focuses on the Iifa Tree again, and Eiko agrees to guide he party to it.

I guess an undead boss appears at least once in most Final Fantasy games. Soulcage was one of these bosses. For a moment, I thought about killing him the legitimate way, but after I’ve seen how much damage it does, I promptly used on elixir on it.

Final Fantasy IX, Soulcage

Soulcage is really tough, unless you use an elixir on him.

As you can probably tell, this game is a lot more focused on storytelling and I’d even say it treats battles and dungeons more as filler than anything else. In most JRPG’s, I’d have a problem with this, but somehow, the game manages to keep all the talking and storytelling fun and interesting. I’m really starting to see why a lot of people considers Final Fantasy IX the best one in the franchise.The boss was gone and the tree stopped producing mist, but there wasn’t much time to be happy about it, because Kuja flew in on his silver dragon. Brahne and her fleet followed, so there was a huge battle scene, in which Brahne got killed. Eventually, the screen went black, and the story shifted to a short time later, with everyone back in Alexandria.

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Once out of the Fossil Roo, I didn’t really have a direction to go to. However, the only place I could really go to was Conde Petie. Conde Petie is a town of dwarves, which is basically just rest stop between several important game locations.

Final Fantasy IX, Conde Petie

It’s been a long time since dwarves appeared in a Final Fantasy game. There’s a whole village of them in Conde Petie.

Anyway, before I got to the village, I decided to spend some time learning new blue magic with Quina. I got a few new spells, but nothing really important. I also summoned Choco at the local tracks and used him to open up a Chocograph treasure chest. I’ve spent quite a sum of money to buy fresh gear at Conde Petie, so I also used the opportunity to get my cash supply back up, since I knew the mage village has an amazing synthesis shop. With all of that, my four characters got to around level 25.The first one was the village of the black mages. You get there by stumbling into a black mage who has been trading with the dwarves. He runs away, showing he’s extremely afraid of humans, but the dwarves point you in the right direction – “deep in the forest, where the owls don’t fly”, or something like that. I’m not sure if this is a reference to the Final Fantasy VIII rebel password or if I’m just reading to much into it.

Final Fantasy IX, Ramuh

Ramuh was very useful during training, since Zidane was the only physical damage dealer.

Anyway, after that, the game took me back to Conde Petie, where I found out someone’s been stealing the dwarves’ food, and a hint of a new character is shown. This subplot got a bit postponed, though, due to a new problem arising.I finally got to the village, where some storytelling happens. It’s revealed that some of the black mages sometimes gain sentience, which is how that group wound up on this continent. It’s also revealed that they have an extremely limited lifespan, with most of them simply “stopping” after about a year of activity. No one ever explicitly states that the same applies to Vivi, but there’s no reason not to think that, since he’s a black mage to.

The only way to get to “The Sanctuary” on the other side of the mountains is through Conde Petie. However, the dwarves only let through people who are on a kind of honeymoon. This makes for a nice, comical moment, but also leaves room for Zidane and Dagger’s relationship to grow a bit. Overall, Final Fantasy IX handles these things in a much more lighthearted manner, compared to the other two games on the PlayStation.

Final Fantasy IX, Wedding

Dagger was really eager to “get hitched”.

While running, she ends up stuck on a cliff, her faithful friend Mog ditches her and Zidane ends up saving her. This starts another funny subplot, where this six years old ends up having a crush on Zidane. Quina chases Mog, so Eiko replaces him/her as a group member. At this point, though it’s still unclear what Quina’s gender is, most of the characters in the game refer to it as “him”, so I will to, from now on.The ceremony is quick, and it’s time to get through the city, but not before I encountered the infamous food thief. The thief turns out to be Eiko Caroll, the new playable character. She’s a summoner, which means she uses White Magic and Summoning, just like Dagger. However, she learns her spells in a different order and her eidolons are different to.

Final Fantasy IX, Meeting Eiko

Mog ditching Eiko is a recurring joke.

Eiko invites the group to her home in Madain Sari, but I still had a ways to get there. The area I was in was yet to be explored and a boss was waiting for me. Before that, though, thanks to the PSP’s pause function, I was able to end my session here

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I got to the Marsh and met up with Quina again. It turns out she backtracked all the way to here from Cleyra, all on her own. She rejoined the party and helped me find the entrance to the tunnel I’ve been looking for.

Final Fantasy IX, Chase Boss

I’m not sure if this boss is beatable, but I haven’t really tried anything other than running.

The tunnels involved some track switching puzzles. The location was full of untamed gargants, which I could lure with flowers and ride from one area to the other. In order to make them go in the right direction, I needed to pull various switches, which changed the track layout. Some switches led me to dead ends containing treasure, but I’m absolutely sure I didn’t get all of them before I got out.Soon after I entered, I started getting chased by some weird machine. I’m not sure if I could’ve killed it, but after a few chases, it fell down a hole and that was it. In the room after that, though, I met Lani. She and some red haired guy got hired by Brahne to get Dagger’s pendant back, so I had to fight her. Again, the fight wasn’t to difficult and I used the standard tactic. Zidane was stealing, Dagger was healing and the other two, Vivi and Quina in this case, did the damage. The fight was over soon and Lani ran away. I went into the tunnels.

Final Fantasy IX, Fossil Roo Exit

Light at the end of the tunnel.

In the central room, I also met Stilzkin, the traveling moogle, who got his usual tree random items for sale, which I bought. One of the rooms also had a treasure hunter which let me dig for items in exchange for a potion, but I didn’t bother with it. Eventually, I found the exit and I was outside, at the Outer Continent.

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With all three of my neighbors eliminated, I now had the whole eastern side of the continent for myself. I decided to stop with the war and start focusing on achieving a victory condition. Since domination, unlike in Civ IV, requires me taking all of my opponents’ capitals, I decided to go for the cultural or diplomatic victory. I basically didn’t care which one it will be, so I went for both. I made a beeline for the UN, while building up cultural buildings in all of my cities.

Civilization V, Golden Age

The golden age was still active when the game was over.

Thanks to the faith income I had and the religion “elements” I’ve picked, I was now able to buy great artists at an insane rate. I was basically able to stay in a perpetual golden age from this point until the end of the game, so, of course, I decided to go for it. I used the extra income to buy favor with all the city-states and basically dominated every aspect of the game from now on.

Eventually, I researched the required techs to build the UN. I’ve built it around the same time I was able to begin construction of the Utopia project, meaning both of my goal victories were competing against each other. Finally, two turns before the Utopia project was built, a UN vote began and I was forced to vote for someone. I picked the Celts and the game was won.

Civilization V, Diplomatic Victory

It’s sort of bittersweet, since the Celts actually won. The game counts me voting them in as a victory, though.

I’m thinking Civilization V is much, much easier than Civilization IV, so any future games I play will be played on a higher difficulty. In fact, I’ll be raising the difficulty after each game I manage to win. I’ll see where that takes me.

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The Gargant Roo was traversed even faster this time. In fact, it all went a bit too fast. As before, the gargant got attacked by a monster, but this time a stronger one. It was easy enough to kill it, but once we got back into the cart, it came back and the gargant started running like crazy.

We passed Treno and crashed at some mountains near Lindblum. Now, the queen extracted Dagger’s eidolons before we got to her, so she was a bit shaken up. Not all hope was lost, though. We met an old man in the hills, who turned out to be the eidolon Ramuh. He offered to give her his powers if we get all the pieces of a story his five copies scattered around the hills have and create a complete story out of those pieces.

Final Fantasy IX, Ramuh

Every Final Fantasy fan knows Ramuh.

As we were leaving the hills, a sequence started where the group noticed the Alexandrian army attacking Lindblum. Everyone ran towards the castle, hoping to get there in time, but one of Dagger’s former eidolons, Atomos, I think, got summoned and did a huge amount of damage to the whole city.The random battles slowed me down a bit and I had some difficulty getting the final piece of the story, but eventually, I got all five. I had to eliminate one piece and figure out the order of the remaining four to complete it. It was extremely easy if you understand the language, so I didn’t have any issues. Which of the two duplicate entries I picked didn’t matter either. It was more about how I feel about it than what the correct one is, which Zidane noted before we left the hills. In any case, we got a Peridot, which Dagger can wear as an accessory to learn summoning Ramuh.

Final Fantasy IX, Atomos

I think this is the first time Atomos appeared on the PlayStation.

Luckily, there’s a possibility of a tunnel in the Qu’s Marsh, leading all the way to the Outer Continent. This will be my next destination.When I regained control and entered Lindblum, it was under Alexandrian occupation. I went to the business district and met the minister there, who took me to see Cid. Cid had a plan. Since Kuja was supplying Alexandria with weapons, we need to destroy him. Cid’s intel tells him Kuja’s base is somewhere on the Outer Continent, north of the Mist Continent. Since we had no ships, air or naval, I had to find another way to get there.

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In my last session, I obliterated Ethiopia. In this one, I had a brief moment of peace before the war continued.

I started to build up my economy a bit, and managed to reach gunpowder units, before Russia decided to call me into a war with Montezuma. He only had one city left so, even though Catherine was completely useless, I managed to ruin him relatively fast.

Civilization V, Montezuma

It’s chieftain difficulty. Of course I dare.

I got his capital, which meant I now had two of Catherine’s cities surrounded on both sides. Since she started to really bug me by having her spies constantly stealing my technologies, I immediately moved on into a war against her. Thanks to a couple of cannons I’ve built in the meantime, the two cities she previously stole from Montezuma were mine in a couple of turns. Her capital lasted for a bit longer, but that to, was mine eventually.

Civilization V, Political Map

I said it was going to get greener.

Things are getting a lot greener now.

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Zidane and his group are teleported to the Red Rose, the queen’s ship. After a few cutscenes, they discover the queen intends to kill Dagger, so they use a teleporter pad to get to Alexandria before that happens.

I was put in control of the other group after that. I had to swing the cage Steiner and Markus were trapped in, in order to crash into the side walkway and get out. I was getting attacked by Alexandrian soldiers for a while here, so I decided to train for a bit, since they were easy to deal with.

Final Fantasy IX, Stairs

Every little detail in this game is amazing.

I got a 30 minute time limit to get to the princess now, so I had to get through the same a castle area I familiarized myself with at the start of the game. I remembered from my first playthrough that there was an optional boss here, so I gave it a shot this time to, but it basically killed most of my group in a single attack, so I gave up on that one.Eventually, I climbed to the top of the area, where Marcus ditched me to go and help Blank. A moment after that, Zidane and his group teleported into the room, but without Quina, who decided not to use the teleport at Cleyra. I had a full group again now, and Steiner was actually relatively close to their level, thanks to the training in the area below.

Final Fantasy IX, Zorn and Thorn

I finally got to fight these idiots.

One she saw Dagger was unconscious, she changed her position and decided to try and help her. She cast a healing spell on her to wake her up and then the group split again. Freya and Beatrix reminded behind to hold the enemy back, while the rest ran downstairs to escape via the gargant tunnels. Halfway down, Steiner decided to go back and help Beatrix and Freya.I eventually got to the queen’s room and found a secret passage to the area below, where I found Dagger and had to fight Zorn and Thorn. Once one of them was beaten, the battle ended and I could finally help Dagger. We got her back to the queen’s room, where Beatrix was waiting.

I got to the area where Dagger’s group got trapped before and it happened again. Luckily, Marcus and Blank managed to get back in time to deal with Zorn and Thorn and free us.