FF12 ER .2: Kastam Bhadra!

Another 5 hours of gameplay and I feel like I’ve entered a totally different world! I am now 11 hours into the game. The first day I played at midnight for 2 hours and then the rest 3h another on another late night run.

Its seems like “late night” is the best time to do anything now.. be it playing games or sitting and writing this thing.. everything else just doesnt seem to get finished by near mid-night now a days. So, lets get on to the juicy details!

The first DUNGEON!

My First marathon session (6h) ended with me getting back all my stuff at the Nalbina prison. I just saved and stopped at that point.. and it happened to be a good time to stop too! soon after continuing from that point I found that… BASCH IS ALIVE!!! Also.. someone who looks JUST LIKE.. BALTHIER.. is supposed to be Basch’s twin brother and impersonated him. The whole explanation of the events sounds crazy, but the fact that even I believed that it was actually Basch who killed the king makes the story feel much more immersive!

Later I escaped to the dungeon along with Basch as a guest in my part and started the “great escape”

*The Great Escape

I spent atleast 30minutes sitting and changing all my gambits and equips, getting licenses and buying stuff from the merchant at the entrance gate of the dungeon that leads to the exit.

After preparing well and everything, I found out there is this battery level and that things will reduce it. I thought I will have to open many gates but it turned out to be only TWO I found the flans and batteries quite hard to defeat.. they were quite large in number. But luckily all the “ally <30% = cure” gambits that everyone had helped in not dieing.

Although, the practically naked, flank punching Basch got KO’ed in the beginning and that was the first time in life I got to use… ‘Tuft of PHEONIX DOWN” ooh yeah! I only heard of it till now.. but finally got to use the thing

The only problem I had was during the opening of the last gate, when the power went down to 40% something and there were many skeletons, zombies running towards (makes no sense) Instead of wasting time and fighting everything I just Ran away.. rather FLED from the fights to safety. Which was the best decision IMO.

*The Second Boss Fight!

Late in the night… around 2 AM I came to the final boss fight.. I wasnt too sleepy, but it was apparent my brain was not at its best.. It took a LOT of time for me to BEAT the boss.. I succeeded to beat the boss, Queen MIMIC, in my First try itself.. but had to use 4 Phoenix Downs! That was too much I felt! also.. at the end there was only 1 alive.

So after beating the Boss.. I just shut the PS2 down, without saving, and left for bed.

*The Boss fight for the Second time!

This time I was ready, I knew how the Boss worked.. so I first sat for 5 minutes and adjusted all my Gambits accordingly. Now I went around beating the small mimic’s first, all the three were focusing on the Queen.

The whole boss fight was done in under 5 minutes! No Phoenix downs, no nothing.. the gambits helped me beat the thing flawlessly. was quite happy with my performance, felt 1337

The Great Eastersand Journey

*Finished in FIVE-TY minutes

Now I was left on the “Eastersand” Place and had to go back to Rabanaster. All those Orange Wolves were so easy to beat, they were dieing with just one shot from me and one from an Ally. So I took the liberty of killing EVERYONE of them, haha.. good for earning LPs and EXPs!

I then went to this Beach type place and there was this small village that thing had this “Teleporting stone” I saw that and I realized that I could just end the “huge journey” just now as I had 3 Teleport stones with me.

I used it and voila! *cutscene* However, I didnt feel I did the right thing.. it felt a bit like cheating.. also I thought that something interesting might happen if I walk and go via the “intended path”

So I saved in another file and then returned to the old teleport save stone and I took the advantage of my awesome party and traveled each and every small part of the Eastersand. I saw the Nalbina Fortress , Went through ALL the connecting paths, even t0 Giza plains

After exploring the whole Eastersand and NOT screwing around with the “friendly” dinosaur. I ended up reaching Rabanster in 50 minutes. This journey took me 10x longer than before.. BUT now I had LOTS of items gained a lot fo experience and had that inner peace feeling that I Explored EVERY corner possible

Hard Head Hunting

*Roaming and Talking..

When I was in Nalbina Fortress I saw the Hunting board and noticed the new hunt for “Thraxen” . When I returned to Rabanaster, instead of searching for Penelo I first went to the Tavern and talked to the person for the HUNT. Then I went and roamed all of the City SEARCHING for Penelo.. I even saw the whole Bazaar for the first time. I went to the Aerodrome and talked to each and everyone in there. All that was again about an HOUR or so… all that roaming and talking, I somehow do it like a bot.. no feelings that I am wasting time.

The Moogles with their teleporters and that dude asking me “Whats in it for them?” made me think the moogles have some kind of super secret plan where they steal all the brain data or get energy whenever someone teleports.. I mean, really What’s in it for them?

Where were we? yeah.. So, lastly, I went to Old man Creepy-face and followed his orders to the rebellion’s HQ and somehow, now I started TRUSTING Basch.. just because.. I dont know… because he said Sorry many times I guess.

Then I learnt what happened to Penelo and Now I had to go to the aerodrome to meet Balthier and life BURBURLand or whatever it was I thought it was a good time to finish the hunt because Westersand was just there right beside me.

*The Biiig Wolf

So I saved and went to westersand. this was the first time I entered the place so I got that Panning intro type thing, which reminds me of Zelda OOT. The Huge Wolf was there just beside me.. somehow I was the only one in the party (Basch and other were not being shown)”

But I easily managed to beat the thing.. I first cast a “Protect” on me and then a “Slow“on the huge wolf and the rest was a peace of cake. I was on top of the worrrld!

I had lots of monnies so I visited each and every shop and then went to the clan place and talked to the Clan leader and OMG he Showered Money and stuff at me. It was awesome.. one for beating each boss (even the FLANs were a boss? lol)

*The Big COCK

I learnt of two new hunts realized one was in Burburland and the other was in Giza plains.. so decided I would do the giza plains one before I go to burburland. I went to Giza plains.. accepted the hunt and then saved and started to the North bank.

After getting the habit of killing all animals, due the eastersand journey, I killed everyone in the North bank expecting the cock to pop-up but it didnt. So, I went to the South bank and killed everything there too and when I returned.

I saw this huge Harvest moon type Cock running towards me and it had protect on it.. and before I knew it.. I WAS DEAD!! and then it asked me to “select party members” at this point I realised that I actually had to select the part members first to make them appear! (I was thinking they were not there because all were waiting at the aerodrome)

But soon.. GAME OVER! I was like I mean.. I was killing everything with ease and winning everything BUT died so easily with this cock.. I was not understanding AT ALL!

*The nth Encounter with Big Cocks

I then continued and went on trying again and again to kill the huge Cock and its progeny but even after 5 times of clearing north bank and then dieing I was NOT ABLE to beat the thing.. I dont get!

The thing is Immune to my spells, its really fast.. all chicks gang up on my party.. I cant run too far away either.

I did notice some of the chicks getting lowered in health sometimes though.. but NO IDEA. I was very disappointed and left the place totally demoralised.

Is there no way I can beat them??

I guess I will have to learn some new tricks or something.. or maybe they are weak when it rains? any tips?

Off to BurBurLand!

All I know is that its Bursomething and its a SKY ISLAND! something like Skypea from One Piece? oooh yeah! As soon as I landed there.. I noticed someone say “Bhadra” it sounded very Indian to me.. and then later I talked to a guide and she said…

“SVAGATAM”

and then I was like “OMGOMGOMG that IS an indian language” Then I saw that soldiers were called “Sainkahs” which is the equivalent of soldiers in Telugu/kannada

*The Indian Language Comparator

Now I was frantically talking to people just so that I could get more Italicised words to observe and find out which Indian language they were using.

One kid says ‘Ambah and tatah” Amabah means “mother” but tatah means “Grand Father” either they made up their own mixutre of things or the kid was actually talking about his mom and grandpa being worried.

Also one lady said “kastam” which means “trouble”

Now the thing was I had to find out which language it actually was.. coz if it were only “sainik” it would be Hindi but its  “sainikah” so that means its either “Telugu” or “Kannada” ,Kastam also supports the aforementioned findings.

After seeing all this I just decided to turn the Ps2 off and sleep a happy sleep (it was 2 AM now anyways). The next day, the searching began.

My father knows a LOT of languages (Eng, french,Hindi,tel, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, marathi etc etc) so I got everything confirmed and filtered it down to Telugu or Kannada.

Telugu is my mother tongue so I felt a bit WOW seeing words from my language being used in a game that too something like FINAL FANTASY!!

I then talked to my Kannada speaking friend from karnataka and asked him the same questions.. I just had to check if “Bhadra” means something like “dude/pal/friend” because the game people were using it like that in the game.

But in kannada too.. just like in Telugu.. Bhadram is used when someone wants someone to “be careful”

Hence I clearly state here

“Obviously no Indian worked on this game”

anyhoo, Both me and my kannada friend were happy that our respective language was being used in the game! And with that I conclude this ER write-up.

E3 is coming and I guess everyone, like you.. is geared up for it! Have a nice day! Enjoy this song that has Bhadra and many other words that I heard in FF. One of my old time favourites. Listen the whole thing you will LOVE it i’m sure!