During Ryan’s fabulous recap, we learned many things about this game: CT is a pedophile, Teepo has gender issues, Capcom like drugs, and, most shockingly of all, the dragons in this game, unlike those in its sequel, actually resemble dragons. Take a few moments to calm down after hearing that. Before I go on, I’d just like to make something clear: something will become very obvious in this recap – the three current members of the party are…well, they’re not very bright. They were last in the queue when brains were given out. Chances are, they’ve worn a dunce cap more times than they’ve worn underwear. They’re DUMB. They’re the stupid that keeps on giving. With that little fact established, let’s recap on!
At the end of the last recap, a certain AWOL Hogwarts teacher sent CT to Mt Glaus for, well, apparently no reason at all, and his two li’l playthings decided to follow him. Before entering Mt Glaus, I pass through the random valley beneath it, stopping only to examine a not-at-all-randomly-placed sign which tells the poor widdle orphans to respect the environment. Breath of Fire III, brought to you by Greenpeace! Of course, after reading said sign, I spend ten minutes randomly hacking at assorted bushes and trees, because I’m a big jerk. I’m also a 12-year-old gay Brit who whacks off too much and can’t get any, but that’s another story.
I assume trees and fluffy forest creatures don’t count?
Cut to Mt Glaus, where, as usual, Alf is silent and Teepo is bitching about tearing a hole in his/her miniskirt when fighting a random battle earlier. Okay, I made that up. It soon becomes apparent that Mt Glaus is, apart from a small river near the entrance and a few trees around the perimeter, like all other RPG mountains – bare, barren and brown. Cast your eyes over to the purty pink box if you don’t believe me. Jeez, C(r)apcom, use some imagination. Not all mountains are as dry and desolate as a spinster’s nether regions. How about adding a few bushes, some grassy knolls here and there? No? Too much like hard work? Okay. At least the strangely-catchy background music is a little more interesting.
Alf and Teepo make their merry way up the mountain with ease…well, with as much ease as can be expected from a miniskirt-wearing, ambiguously-male dragon brat and a mute dragon orphan with spiky blue hair. Maybe one day, Capcom will give us a playable character who has some degree of normality (as ‘normality’ doesn’t include having wings, being anthropomorphic, a dragon, or a talking onion – I’m not shitting you here – pretty much every playable character in the entire series is screwed).
The BROWN!!! How it burneth mine eyes!!!
The monster set for the mountain is made up of various weak-ass Goos, purple dogs that spit chlorine at our poor heroes (nice), and Gongheads – a BoF trademark monster along the same lines as FF’s Tonberries and Malboros, only far less dangerous and memorable. Drat. I’m soon sick of the sight of these spiny blue balls, since I stumble headfirst into a random encounter with one every five steps. Capcom, it’s always a bad sign when your players spend twice as much time fighting random battles as they do exploring or developing the plot….yeah, the plot. Apparently there’s one here somewhere.
A little further along, Alf and Teepo come to a steep slope. At certain areas on the slope, there are item bags waiting to be nabbed, should I choose the exact right place to slide down from. Needless to say, I don’t waste poor Alf’s energy by spending the best part of ten minutes trying to collect shitty items which can be obtained with far less time and effort from any respectable item shop. One useful item here is a Cloth Shield, which I equip on Teepo even though he isn’t going to be around for much longer.
After crossing a bridge, Alf and Teepo reach the summit of the mountain. The screen pans up to show the time change from pleasant afternoon to sunset in the space of five seconds, complete with crappy-looking squawking birds flying across the horizon. Hell, by the time I’ve finished this paragraph, it’ll probably be midnight in BoF Bizarro Time. As if we (and Alf) can’t figure the time of evening out for ourselves, Teepo ‘helpfully’ remarks: “Hey, it’s getting dark…” Yeah, and water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and Tidus is a wanker. We all know those things, too, and Alf may be mute, but he isn’t blind. Got that?
Teepo continues that they should probably call it a day and go find another man-tiger-love-beast who’ll give them some of CT’s special hugs. He and Alf walk up to a conveniently-placed hut, by which is an equally conveniently-placed save point in the form of a Dragon Statue (you can relax now, BoF purists). “Maybe [CT]’s staying here too…” remarks Teepo, as if there are any other random huts dotted around the mountain. Silly Teepo.
Sure enough, CT is inside the hut, standing, in the shadows, next to the unlit fireplace. And the shack is in darkness. And there’s a dirty-looking bed in the corner. Christ on a cracker, even Michael Jackson handing out candy outside a school playground couldn’t scream “PEDO!!!” louder than this scenario. I swear, if I had the option I’d change CT’s name to Reimour. Teepo squeals with joy at seeing his Sugar Daddy again, no doubt waiting to show him his gorgeous new designer purse.
Teepo tells CT that he and Alf decided to follow him because, and I quote, “I was worried about you being out here all alone…” “Well, I made sure to keep the bed nice and warm,” CT replies creepily, except not. Don’t laugh – I’ve read one or two CTxAlfxTeepo fics in my time (purely in the name of research, you understand), and they’re scarier than anything even my twisted mind could produce.
‘…I could really use one of your special handshakes right now.’
Moving swiftly on…the gist of this rambling conversation is that Hagrid sent CT to Mt Glaus because he was worried about Alf and Teepo. No, I don’t get it either. I mean, surely sending their ‘guardian’ up a mountain, leaving them to fend for themselves, is placing them in even more danger? Whatever. I’ve learned the hard way that logic is something that simply doesn’t exist in this series. Suddenly, there is a loud cry from, I presume, some kind of monster. As if on cue, CT exposits: “You’ve heard the rumours, haven’t you? That the monster that’s been attacking the village is here, in the mountains?” Whoa, news to me, Tigerboy. Hell, nobody told me there was a monster. Then again, that’s the price one must pay for not talking to every goddamn random NPC in the game. Shame on me for expecting Capcom to provide me with this information. I guess the whole “Hagrid worried about Alf and Teepo” thing makes more sense now. A little. Possibly.
CT continues that Hagrid wanted him to kill the monster. He doesn’t explain, however, why Hagrid didn’t kill the beast himself. Surely he could just call upon Dumbledore for help? Anyway, I’d better shut up, since I don’t want to prompt any bad crossovers between the BoF and HP fandoms. Or, to be more specific, I don’t want to read a fanfic about a half-male, half-female, unicorn dragon named Teepo who enrolls at Hogwarts to become Draco Malfoy’s love interest and then turns out to be a long-lost Weasley cousin who’s really Voldemort’s secret daughter after a botched sex-change or something. Mind you, it probably wouldn’t be as disturbing as McGonagall’s Girls. Be thankful I couldn’t find a link.
Whoa, big tangent there. Back to the game, where Teepo is all “But the monster’s, like, rilly rilly strong!”, and CT is all “Yeah, but I’m stronger, beeyatch!”, and Alf is all “What the fuck have I gotten myself into here?” CT continues: “But now that you’re here…I won’t be able to use…oh, never mind…” I etch the first big fat notch onto my CT has a big secret chart. Needless to say, we won’t find out just what he wanted to use until much later, when it will become Semi-Very Important. Given his…ahem…shall we say, young tastes, I’m not sure I want to know what he was intending to use, or who he was intending to use it on. Oh, and because we can’t have a single damn conversation with CT without him slipping his catchphrase in somewhere, he finishes with “Boy, doesn’t this just beat all…” Meanwhile, I pass the time by pulling out my fingernails one by one whilst waiting for the part when the plot becomes exciting and interesting…then I remember that it doesn’t. Shit.
Especially when it’s nicely lubed up.
Loading ...Just when I thought this fucking conversation was over, CT adds a creepy “Let’s get some rest…It’d be dangerous to go out at night…” Yeah, but not as dangerous as falling asleep whilst a pedophilic big cat is standing over the bed, asking you if you’d like to stroke him. Presumably, Alf and Teepo are somewhat more trusting than me, as they don’t object to CT’s proposition.
And with that, the Black Screen of Sleeping (not to be confused with its brother, the Black Screen of Perpetual Loading) arrives, thankfully saving us from a three-way yaoi scene. There’s a time and a place, folks…preferably when the two non-tiger participants are over the age of consent. After some generic sleep music, Teepo squeals at Alf to wake up. Alf does so to find that the monster is prowling around outside the (Underage) Luv Shack. CT yells something along the lines of “Let’s go kick its ass!”, as opposed to what he was probably doing with Teepo’s ass last night. I swear, these pedophile jokes are writing themselves.
Outside, the monster (Nue) appears. Clearly the by-product of a Capcom acid trip, it’s blue and pink and resembles a cross between an ape and a reptile. Oookay. It jumps down off the ledge above the hut, landing in front of the party and starting an impromptu boss battle (incidentally, the boss battle music is TEH KYOOL). After I inflict a certain amount of damage on the Nue, it runs away and into a cave above the hut. Naturally, being the happy-go-lucky-thieves-with-hearts-of-gold-except Teepo because he’s evil they are, our Triumvirate of Twits decide to follow it. A-hunting we will go!
The party heads a little further up the mountain, through a path in the trees that the Nue created whilst running away. A dark, shadowy cave opening beckons the party forward…actually, it isn’t beckoning, it’s just kinda sitting there, but I’m trying to make the scene sound exciting. I know, I know, impossible. Inside the cave, someone (the game doesn’t establish who exactly) remarks “A trail of blood…It must be the monster’s blood…” Okay then, the monster’s blood it is. Never mind the fact that it could simply be the blood of one of the animals that the Nue killed.
The background music for the cave is pretty addicting, despite being little more than “DUN…dun-dun-DUN….” over and over again. What would be an otherwise excruciatingly-boring dungeon is made more interesting by the random battles, which involve comical red-headed zombies that sway from side to side. At least these zombies look humanoid (or should that be zombieoid?), unlike their BoF IV cousins. And they are damaged muchly by Alf’s restorative spells, which is always a plus. The several forks in the cave lead only to various pieces of crappy equipment that are just so last recap, darling!, but at least it’s helping me build some levels, which I’ll definitely need later (the battles in the game kinda go from ‘Button-mashingly Easy’ to ‘Obscenity-screamingly Difficult’ without much warning).
The trail of bloooood comes to an abrupt end atop a high ledge overlooking a raging underground river. A cave opening is visible under the water, a short distance upriver from where the party stands. Now, what would your first thoughts be if you were in this situation? I’d put money on the fact that it wouldn’t take most of you (apart from the Tidus fangirls) very long to realise that the only route for the monster to take would be into the water. Everyone satisfied with this? Despite this being the obvious conclusion, our merry band of wankers doesn’t get it until they’ve exited the tunnel and are back in the main cave area. You know that stereotype about dumb blondes? Well, add purple and blue hair to the list.