As I said, the ship crashed into a forest nearby. The problem was, it was the Evil Forest, mwahahaaha!
Zidane was thrown out of the ship to somewhere nearby, so he went back to it immediately. Garnet and Vivi weren’t so lucky, which the game tells me through a unique new feature I wish they’d bring back in other games of the series – the ATE.
ATE stands for Active Time Event. Basically, every now and then, you get the option of pushing select to see what’s happening in some other place or what some of the other characters are doing while the main character is separated from them. Most of the ATE’s are optional, so if you’re just in a hurry and want to move on, you can skip them. If you’re interested, though, the feature allows the story to be told a bit differently compared to the rest of the series.
Every new location gets a nice looking title screen.
I gained a level or two on the next screen and then continued on to the second screen, where I met Vivi and Garnet. The thing chasing them was an evil plant and it took Garnet away before I could kill it. Before anyone could react, another one arrived and tried to take Vivi, but we managed to kill this one. It infected us with something, though, so everyone fainted to wake up back at the ship.In any case, through an ATE, the game tells me Vivi and Garnet are in trouble, being chased by… something. I couldn’t get into the ship yet, so I went in the only direction available – into the forest. Before that, I saved the game with the help of the moogle who explained the ATE feature to me.
Zidane decided to go after Garnet, so I had to speak to the boss, Baku, to get permission. I actually had to fight him, one on one, but he wasn’t to hard to beat. I took Vivi and Steiner with me and continued past the screen where the last battle was. Soon, I got to a pond where I could restore my health for free and had a moogle available to save my game, so I took some time to train for a bit.
Moogles help you save the game.
The boss was dead soon and a bunch of smaller plants started chasing us. I managed to avoid most of them, but some battles were unavoidable. Luckily, the plants were easy to deal with. Soon, a sequence began where the forest starts to petrify entirely. Everyone runs, but Blank decides to stay behind, to hold the monsters off and gets petrified to. Before it happens, he throws the map of the Mist Continent to Zidane.A few screens later, I finally got to the boss. This was another plant, this time bigger and stronger than the last. Zidane spent most of the battle stealing the monsters items, while Vivi used Fire and helped Steiner use his Fire Sword ability. This is another cool feature of Final Fantasy IX. Whenever Steiner and Vivi are both in the party, Steiner gets access to the Magic Sword set of abilities. Basically, whichever spells Vivi has learned, Steiner can use to give his attacks an elemental affinity.
