Thanks again.

The two of them walk across the rooftops, getting into several crazy shenanigans involving LBM’s fear of heights and Rat Kid’s lack of caring. At least LBM gets to steal stuff from people’s rooftops. Finally, at the end of the rooftops, I get to name LBM. Since every game needs a character named PUGGY!!, I name him PUGGY!!. The Rat Kid’s name is Puck. It’s so very close to the word “Fuck”. Can I resist calling him that? No, it turns out I can’t. PUGGY!! and Fuck reach the castle walls, and we fade to black.

The type of woman fanboys are more likely to end up with in real life.

FMV time. Impressive overhead views of the castle and ship, once again. People in chairs, PUGGY!! and Fuck sneaking into the back. Cut to a terrifying close-up on Queen Brahne, who is exactly as hideous as Baka originally said. She’s played for laughs in this first scene, exactly like I predicted. Garnet/Rinoa clone, who for ease of typing I shall call “Garnoa,” sits next to her mother, looking depressed. It’s tough being a beautiful 16-year-old princess, I guess. Close-up on a funny-looking knight with too much eyeliner. At his signal, the play begins. Fireworks, people cheering, band playing. No, the game designers didn’t go all out or anything. Garnoa still looks depressed. The only one who seems to notice is too-much-eyeliner knight guy.

The play begins and we’re back in gameplay mode. Baka, dressed in a kingly costume, is narrating the story. Blah blah, Princess Cornelia in love with Marcus, blah blah, her father King Leo opposes the union. How handy that the lead character of this famous play has the exact same name as the guy who is playing him! Baka’s narration ends as he announces “Tantalus proudly presents ‘I Want to Be Your Canary'” and the dramatic music starts up. Blank, Zidane, and Cinna, dressed in the exact same outfits as in the beginning of the game, are playing the parts of Marcus’s friends. They are going to attack King Leo. Marcus is onstage in his regular outfit, facing off against the only guy in the whole damn play who is playing and dressing as not himself – Baka as King Leo. There’s lots of inane dialogue with “thee,” “thou,” and “thy,” and we fight another battle. Cinna gets his ass kicked yet again. Buddy, put on a shirt, for the love of God.

King Leo retreats up the steps, and then some really cool music starts. The dialogue is pointless, but Zidane and Blank (the characters, not the actors) get into a swordfight in the audience. It involves pressing certain buttons at certain times, which means that I suck at it. Depending on how well I do, a certain number of nobles are impressed. Only 66 were impressed with my sad performance. Queen Brahne was not impressed. Did I choose to do it over again? Nope. Blank and Zidane run into the castle. Real subtle, people. I thought there were supposed to be oglops in the plan somewhere.

Anyway, inside the castle, Zidane and Blank beat up the guards and take their uniforms. I don’t recall that being part of the plan. I guess they like to improvise. Okay, the oglops are finally mentioned. I’m still confused. Zidane runs up the stairs where he almost runs into a young woman wearing orange pants and a white mage robe. After some “witty” banter, the girl runs down the stairs and Zidane yells to Blank that the girl is Princess Garnoa. They run after her. Fade to black.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of another set of staircases, two jesters run in as some mischevious music plays. They are the obvious comic relief. One says the sentences in a normal way, the other flips the subject and predicate around. AHAHAHA!!!…or something. Their names are Thorn and Zorn, and they banter for about ten minutes about reporting to the Queen that Garnoa has run off. Finally, they run out to where the Queen is sitting. The eyeliner-wearing knight, who, incidentally, is the Captain of the Knights of Pluto (whatever they may be) stops them. “Her Majesty is busy! Come back later!” A woman named Beatrix who is wearing an eyepatch, a light-colored cape, and a swordbelt asks if it’s an emergency. She says she’ll talk to the Queen. Eyeliner Knight gets mad. He and Beatrix are rivals, apparently. Beatrix tells the Queen that Garnoa has run off with “The Royal Pendant,” which pisses Queen Brahne off immensely. Ah, Beatrix is a General, and Eyeliner Knight is Captain Steiner. His armor rattles when he runs. I wonder how quickly that will become annoying. Queen Brahne tells them to find Garnoa.

I spend the next twenty minutes as Steiner, hunting down the Knights of Pluto, who would be more appropriately called “The Knights of Comic Relief”. There are eight total, and I manage to find all but one. I looked over the whole damn castle, behind corners, outside, etc. I can’t find the knight named “Dojebon.” All the knights have some “special skill.” Dojebon’s must be invisibility. This is irritating. Finally I give up and just go up the tower. I probably missed some special item or something by not getting them all, but this isn’t frickin’ Pokemon. I only found the “double super-sleuths,” Blutzen and Kohel; the inspirational writer, Laudo; the town pimp, Weimar; the “knight with the knack for navigating the neighborhood,” Haagen; the winner of the Cannonball race, Mullenkedheim; and Breireicht, the guy who is giving me all this expositional dialogue. Maybe Dojebon is hiding up someone’s ass.

At the top of the tower, Steiner spots Zidane chasing Garnoa….at the top of the other tower. FMV time. Garnoa shocks the hell out of Zidane by falling backward off the tower. Turns out she grabbed one of the decorative flag rope thingies. I’m shocked, too. A female character who actually did something on her own, without needing a man to rescue her. Zidane follows. Steiner tries to, but ends up flying headfirst into the tower. Zidane and Garnoa land on the ship.

Chase scene through the ship, Garnoa pisses off a Tantalus chick named Ruby who talks with a Southern dialect, and finally Zidane catches her, or more appropriately, she allows him to catch her. Cue sappy music. “Do you….do you work on this theater ship?” she asks. “As you have no doubt suspected…the truth is that…I am actually…Dojebon the Pluto Knight!!!” I lied. But that would’ve been priceless. Nope, it’s Princess Garnoa, of course. She asks for a favor. “I wish to be kidnapped…right away.” That’s called irony. Get it?

The next several minutes involve Zidane and his colleagues trying to keep Garnoa away from Steiner, who is trying to rescue her. Many hijinks ensue, such as Steiner attacking Blank and accidently setting loose all the oglops. Looks like Garnoa is the only person in the room who isn’t afraid of the little buggers.

Cut to onstage, where King Leo is giving a monologue. Marcus (the character in the play) is going to be executed. Cut back to the ship, where Garnoa and Zidane “escape” by standing on the lifts and going onstage. Uh-oh, Steiner also follows them. Luckily, Garnoa has studied drama and knows all the lines. Convenient, huh? Steiner has no idea what he is doing. Hey, this is just like Final Fantasy VI with the opera scene!

In the play, Cornelia leaps in front of Marcus as he tries to kill the king, and is killed herself. Marcus kills himself, too. Queen Brahne loves this. Unfortunately, the dramatic moment is ruined as a couple of Pluto Knights chase PUGGY!! onto the stage (Fuck deserts him early on). PUGGY!! does a fire spell and ends up setting Garnoa’s robe on fire. She leaps up and throws off her robe to reveal an ugly orange jumpsuit and the fact that she’s the Princess. Now Zidane, Garnoa, Marcus, and PUGGY!! must fight Steiner again.

No, seriously, dude, look behind you.

FMV time. The Queen is still immensely pissed and fires these chain harpoon things at the theater ship as it tries to leave. Suddenly a giant cannon shoots a bomb at them. I’m talking the typical Final Fantasy monster bomb, here. The party has to fight Steiner yet again. The joke in this scene is that he doesn’t realize the bomb is behind him, and every time someone tells him to look behind him, he thinks they are trying to play a trick on him. The bomb grows and grows, of course. At last, when the thing is about the size of the damn ship, Steiner turns around and sees it. FMV. The bomb blows up but the ship still flies. Of course, parts of it are on fire and fall off onto houses, setting them on fire. The Queen is still pissed, and in case we didn’t quite get that, she lets us know by breaking her fan in half.

The damaged ship flies for a distance and then sinks through the clouds. There’s a five-second scene in regular gameplay mode where Cinna screams “We’re gonna crash!!!” Sure enough, they do….in FMV mode. The ship blows up, too, in true Hollywood movie fashion.

Meanwhile, back at the castle. Evil music plays as Queen Brahne commands Thorn and Zorn to use their “little experiment” to re-capture Princess Garnoa. Uh-oh, I sense a dastardly plan.

Zidane has been thrown clear of the ship, and he surveys the wreckage. They’ve crash-landed in a forest. Inside the ship, Baka says, “Just our luck to crash into this forest…It’s gonna get interesting…” Cinna replies, “What do you mean, ‘interesting,’ Boss? I hear no one’s ever made it outta here alive.” And we have “Evil Forest,” folks. Some of the Tantalus guys get all the wounded and all their possessions off of the ship before it burns up, and it turns out that no one can find Princess Garnoa. Oh gee. Will Zidane end up having to rescue her in the big, bad forest?

A conveniently stationed moogle explains about Active Time Events, which allow us to see what is happening at the same time elsewhere, kupo! The first ATE features Garnoa and PUGGY!! lost in the forest. They’re running away from something, and a shadow swoops down onto Princess Garnoa just as the scene ends. Yup. Looks like Part II is going to be a rescue mission. I can hardly wait, and I’m sure you can’t either.