Our update for today's play will be delayed because, well, you know. VGC being down for 14 hours and all.

That was strange. I wonder if it was maintence or something.

Probably best not to say right now but hopefully things are stable and that should be that. 

Made it onto the second disc and to the next city, the slums, will put up something more detailed shortly (next hour hopefully). Blue will do the same!

FFIX is the best FF game, so enjoy!

Yeah you've said that before

Not sure if I'm sold on it yet but I'm enjoying it a lot. Definitely moreso now it's starting to hit it's stride. Has a lot of charm (moreso than VII and VIII; VIII in particular) and no doubt it'll only get more involved from here. Also, that soundtrack! 

It did start off pretty slow but there's so many neat little features, some which I'll cover in a moment, which I just love. So, yeah. Thanks for pushing us to actually playing the game!

After our discussion earlier, I decided to retreat from Burmecia (not like there was a lot going on there anyway...don't think they needed my help) to go to the Chocobo Forest. It was a good trip, enemies feel easier with the new weapons and levels but that's what you expect. Managed to nab a couple of new magics (magics?) for Quina which is always nice, too. 

So managed to get into the forest and played a few rounds of Hot & Cold. It was good fun! Don't think I'll be buying that cloak anytime soon though . Found this strange stone...looks like a treasure map so went to have a look and my word was that productive! The others I found I can't get to yet, but ah well. Will be sure to earmark this area for freebies and goodies later on. Anyone got any more advice on this it'd be greatly appreciated because it's all a bit of a blur right now. 

Seems like I missed quite a lot not checking out that forest. I'll have to go back when I get control of the main gang, and at the same time get poor Quina some skills. She (or he?) is mostly just handles the potions and phoneix downs now that Freya hits pretty hard. Zidane (and his buddy Marcus) have been on thief duty so I have quite a lot of potions now and ore, should probably get him some more skills too.

So back to Burmecia, let's go in. Poor Vivi can't jump which I guess makes Freya a bitch? How did they manage to get up there anyway? To avoid too many story spoilers let's just say that the bad people were there with some really bad people, token love story glossed over, fight you can't win commences (learnt too late that Vivi's magic, whilst strong, was not a good idea) and then events happen which leads to...

I honestly thought "THAT" attack was just random and I just had to deal with it. It didn't cross my mind that Vivi's magic would trigger it but the bad people really hated Zidane today so it didn't really cost me too much other than a few phoneix downs. On that topic, they've been rarely useful since the AI keeps targeting the party member who was just revived, killing them instantly. Seems like it would be better off to revive them after the battle (in most cases) to avoid wasting a turn.

Disc 2! Back with my main man Steiner and his handler Garnet. I like how they reminded you of Blank, because that's exactly what I was drawing trying to remember anything noteworthy about him at all. Did remember the Black Waltz, though. Funny guy, like him. Steiner hits like he's using a paper sword but that's to be expected. Marcus looks like the typical "Guest" character so not going to have much faith in him sticking around.

Steiner was hitting quite a lot for me, OKOing most of the random enemies. Although I started off with the Iron Sword and then switched back to finish up my skills with the Broadsword while grinding. I'm honestly suprised that Black Waltz is still standing, I mean didn't his ship like explode? In any case this update was all about blasts from the past, hopefully Blank will be alright but that forest looked pretty nasty. MVP is definitely Garnet/Dagger, she's been learning a lot of useful skills recently (especially Silence and Life).

Bit of exploring, found a squirrel that wanted some Ore? There was a ghost too, fed their cravings (did noone ever tell Garnet not to give everything to everyone who asks?) and got some AP. Levelled up a bit too. What was that about Steiner having a paper sword? Not so much a problem now he's found his edge and a few levels! "Grinding" to get the abilities was made a little easier with the ghost and the squirrel though, so there's that. Looking forward to seeing the next one.

I met up with the squirrel too! Nice guy, got a few skills thanks to his help, yet to see the ghost though. I also finally encountered the clown, THREE TIMES in a row. I almost thought that he would always appear if you got his questions right but it seems like it's totally random, it was quite the suprise. Party is around level 10 now and with my new abilities I think I'm ready for the next area.

I just stopped at the gate to Treno so the update ends for me here, guess I'll either post my adventures in Treno either in the new update or I'll edit this post later. I'm definitely starting to have a lot more fun with the game now that it's picking up, was a little skeptical towards the beginning but it's starting to turn out great!

Going to tiptoe around this one a little because I don't think Blue is here, but that cave near Treno? I went there. Very interesting place...good idea to be able to heal what with those turnips in the forest really packing a punch! I think this might be a future place of importance, but let's see.

So into Treno, Garnet's run off and got mugged (she was asking for it given the activities with the squirrel earlier), Steiner's on his own and looks so very out of place. There's somewhere for card games here, but that's something for another day. Let's chase out the Moogle and call it a day before becoming master criminals. That should be fun. Just like the game, actually, which is becoming much more exciting now it's hit its stride!

Updated my section! Post is just above!

The chocographs. You can get about 11 chocographs from the hot and cold mini-game in the chocobo forest and you can find about 5 of the treasures from those in the surrounding area and around Burmecia. 

There's plenty of reasons to mess with chocobos and chocographs as early as you can. 

You can find really nice loot in the treasures from the chocographs which in turn give you better skills to use. (For example, I got quite a few spells for Vivi from the gear.)

The other major thing you get is a chocobo (no random battles while riding a chocobo) and it can be upgraded (by finding chocographs) to allow your chocobo to travel over rivers, mountains, sea and eventually fly (there's limits to it).

Indeed, that's pretty much how it looked for me. But I didn't want to do too much and progress too far ahead of Blue in that catergory, if that makes sense. 

Definitely an area to investigate further anyway!

I keep trying to steal everything from Beatrix but she's being stingy.