WANDER OVER YONDER

-I remembered a thing to use Crush on in Harapa. inside was mythril silver, which we can forge into cool garbage, we'll see what we get
-oh hey someone chucked a kikuichimonji overboard. no big loss. polish it up and give it to Karis
-the mythril became an armlet that boosts crits. here you go Amiti
-oh here we go, this island way to the east at Gaia Falls
-Umbra Cloak in there
-following the Kaocho generals' treasure note leads us to a ghost ship. eh, probably no worse than Wind Waker
-wait that's the Star Magician. okay never mind we are in mega danger
-the lost ship has a bunch of statues and the like moving of their own accord, because ghosts
-oh hey Clotho's Distaff, which has actual unleashes. here Rief you have a legit endgame weapon now

STAR MAGICIAN ATTACKS!

-the Star Magician has two new ball types but is otherwise very much the same kind of fight we've done before
-one of these, the Ghoul Ball, apparently eats Djinn like some kind of jackass. this thankfully just sets it to a tyoe of recovery broken by killing the ball rather than permanently removing it from the fight. they are also incredibly hardy
-the Death Ball just uses the ghostly line of status Psynergy and is therefore mostly ignorable
-anyway the constant eating of my Djinn forces my frontline to die, meaning I'm now fighting them with the people I dislike. I could've swapped people in and out to make things easier except no
-apparently the Weapon Grace buff Himi has does something ridiculous like double your attack so that's cool
-for real though, Ghoul Balls managed to make the Star Magician worse than its original incarnation. that takes talent. and hatred
-they are summoning literally nothing but Ghoul and Guardian Balls. this fight is going to end in a loss not because I run out of HP, but because I run out of psy crystals
-literally 7 guardian balls later, they summon one (1) Thunder Ball. cool, that gets to live, maybe I can kill him this century. I'm pretty sure the Death Ball in the corner ran out of PP by now
-three Thunder Balls, a Death Ball, and the big man himself. now we can win by stacking wards, having Amiti Wish Well every turn, and just going ham on this asshole
-doing so grants everyone on the frontline 4-5 levels and everyone on the backline about 3 or so. y'know how all the characters are virtually indistinguishable and fully customizable mechanics-wise? I'm not 100% sure what reducing XP gain (without telling you of course) for backline characters does aside from force you to switch out and use everyone if you want even XP distribution
-I know for a fact that it screws players over for two of the extended endgame bosses, but one of them I'm comfortable with fighting anyway and the other can fuck off into a death fire
-if you expect me to actually care about the levels of Tyrell, Rief, Karis or Himi, you are a fool

AND THEN WE GOT AZUL

-next up is Snowdrift Shrine, north of Imil. what little land remained around this area seems to have mostly gone, although a land bridge to what remains of Prox is probably still there
-it has a cool snowhill sliding minigame to it, which I manage to glitch out slightly with area collision detection
-inside are the Umbra Goggles, meaning that finding the Echo Gem was not required at all. okay bye Ryu Kou. now where the hell are the orbs we need
-sailing around the frozen area covered by the Grave Eclipse leads to an Iceberg Outpost
-of all the possible places for Ryu Kou and his entourage to flee, did you expect this direction? I sure as hell didn't. what even are you guys doing, sailing the exact opposite direction from your capital
-unfortunately, Hou Zan overexerted himself fighting off the monsters surrounding this area. bear in mind that this guy is ancient, has no Psynergy, and still had the chops to try a swing for Alex AND solo a bunch of Grave Eclipse monsters. and those suckers are tough (by this game's standards)
-his dying words are to ask us to take care of Ryu Kou and Hou Ju, which... eh, why not, I have no idea where the orbs are anyway, why not help them
-we get the Umbra Map from Ryu Kou, long after it's of any use, and are expected to escort the duo back to Tonfon. the Echo Gem was in Hou Zan's possession, formerly Hou Ju's, which would let us detect the location of Lord Kuan if he was alive, maybe
-this is all assuming Lady Hinechou doesn't have an Echo Gem and isn't a horrific liar, which I'm not quite willing to put past the writers

OBTAINED ALL MERCURY DJINN

-also reunited Ryu Kou and Hou Ju with their parents, but important stuff first, y'know
-Hou Ju gives Matthew a weird look as she leaves but that's interpreted by a single emote that looks like the same smug emote Alex uses half the time so who knows what that means. maybe she's just all like "cuz of me you're getting a reward YOU'RE WELCOME NERD". which gives her a character I approve of
-meanwhile Lady Hinechou falls over herself in gratitude and Ryu Kou admits to jealousy and wishes he was an Adept so he could fight alongside us. hey, better you than Tyrell
-while we were sailing the Eastern Seas, Alex took the time to visit Emperor Unan and fill him in on that we were looking for the Apollo Lens
-he also instructed Unan to give us the Red Orb once he met up with us again, which is one of three keys to get to the Apollo Lens
-this means that Alex is handing us the keys to undo the damage caused by the doomsday device he wanted activated. he's probably got a clever plan banking on protagonist stupidity threaded into that somewhere. probably
-Himi prophesizes the last location because she needed another reason to be a character on our team rather than a telepathic rock. that location is Yamata
-Kraden also drops a very unsubtle hint that he knows Alex and then refuses to tell the story for some reason. okay. Karis assumes that if he were to be related to one of us (Amiti), it would be painful to fight him or something
-because filial piety is stronger than a desire to avert an apocalypse that has already killed hundreds. I guess

GOTTA CLEAN THESE WEAPONS FIRST

-we get a Rune Blade (only Matthew and Tyrell can equip it, Matthew has Excalibur so whatever have fun Tyrell) and a Thanatos Mace (anyone who could equip it already has better) that we fished out of the sea
-as for our two bits of mythril silver, we get a silver longbow (weaker than Amiti's Masamune but it sounds way cooler so I'm accepting the weapon downgrade for now) and mythril clothes (Himi still has ordinary stuff. have it)
-back to tomb raiding then
-Yamata Ruins uses the ol' Venus Lighthouse circuitboard puzzles for their teleporters, it seems
-WHY IS SEARCH SO DAMN SLOW STOP BEING USELESS HIMI
-thunder crown. no sign of cleric's ring. or darksword for that matter, not that I'd bother with it when Matthew's just gonna use the Sol Blade anyway
-got the yellow gem, so I can go do that one thing now. or no, I'm missing one last piece of Umbra Gear. TELL ME YOUR SECRETS, MAP
-map ain't doin' a thing. okay so this must be... what, the Umbra Boots? where the hell are they? MAP DOESN'T SAY BECAUSE THIS IS HOW MAPS WORK RIGHT

AND THEN I SAILED INTO A TORNADO THAT APPEARED BECAUSE WHY NOT HONESTLY

-Otka Island, eh? whatchoo got for me, aside from another Sol Blade door
-Jupiter Djinni, last one. good for me, I guess
-and back to zero ideas. well now that I have the three orbs I can crack open the Endless Wall, let's try that
-the Endless Wall gets extremely dramatic music for being a section of the overworld. thats cool
-this music persists in the Apollo Ascent area but not through the fights. screw you, it's decent extremely dramatic music
-as we go high enough, we outpace the Grave Eclipse entirely, heading into gradually brighter areas. this does absolutely nothing for the encounter rate
-oooh, this map looks like a skull!
-and this takes us to Apollo Sanctum. brb new journal entry