Since Sabin is no longer alone, Shadow can and will leave the party. That is, unless you run away from every battle in the Phantom Forest, use save states a lot, or order Shadow to throw a shuriken upwards and clonk himself with it.

Ungood Scary Ghosts! First turn, they use fire. Second turn, they use either fight, pause (which inflicts stop and is nowhere near as evil as stop in Final Fantasy XII), or Fire Wall, which does around 150 HP of damage.

Poplium is that vaporite thing. They occasionally use cling to slow you down.

Always go to the next exit at the top; anything else will just result in walking in circles.

You come across a mobile apartment with no rent that was damaged in the war between Doma and the Empire.

Sabin expects it to work. Cyan's uncomfortable about it. I mean, it's a train. It probably has machines the size of gorillas and Zell being hyper and Selphie singing impromptu train songs.

Unfortunately, it's just filled with undead. Like these guys. The bestiary calls them warrior zombies possessed by an evil spirit. They attack physically and use Slip Touch to cause your HP to drain away.

Not only is it monster infested, but it's really a train that leads to the afterlife. What have they gotten themselves in to? I must say that I love the music here. The place must be ruled by Hades.

What does happen when someone living reaches the Other Side? Do they just assume he's dead, or do they tell him he isn't and kick him out like they did with Orpheus? Shouldn't Cyan want to be here, since it would give him a chance to rescue his loved ones?

????? has no name. If you don't have a name, what do people call you? I mean, do they just wave, or do they jingle little silver bells or what?

You don't want my name. Trust me.

Yes, thank you, Sabin figured that out on his own.

Check out that book. The Impressario probably keeps his poetry in there.

And my pen fell between the two cars of the train. And since I'm dead, I can't use my own blood.

No I'm not, the machine is evil and tried to kill me.

Final Fantasy XII describes Bombs as a manufactured weapon. They're just floating around the forest and occasionally end up on the phantom train, but they're not undead or anything. They can use Blaze, and they can use exploder, which hits you for the Bomb's current HP. You too can make your own blaze by coating pine cones in copper chloride and lighting them on fire!

The ghost can possess things, which removes both from the battle and causes you to lose your ghost. He's undead, caused by a Relic Ring, which means healing him causes damage and phoenix downs miss. Unless, that is, you heal him outside of battle. Clever, huh? Once he's KOed, you lose him anyway.

If you lost Shadow or never obtained him, you can get another friendly ghost, who is about as useful as the Ghost of Rydia Past.

Whispers are described in the Bestiary as emissaries from a magical world. Clool. All they do is attack and cast Demi, halving your current HP. They can't kill you with it, of course, but it leaves you open to anything, even someone throwing a stuffed tonberry at you. One of them is casting Demi right now.

Whispers have inherent seizure status, which was supposed to make them regenerate, but all it does is make them disintegrate and fade away from the mortal world due to a bug.

Hazer is not undead. They use drain and the reason you want to fight them has nothing to do with the experience or anything you get from them.

Why this ghost needs money in the afterlife I do not know. Perhaps he needs to pay the impressario. Perhaps the Ungood Scary Ghosts are ransoming him. You can buy phoenix downs from him. How useful for you, how remarkably useless for everyone else on the train.

A swarm of ungood scary ghosts! Spoot!

Uncouple the cars and you'll ditch the ungood scary ghosts at the cost of maroooning many an innocent soul in the space between the mortal world and the sunless realms of death, including that nice ghost who tried to sell you phoenix downs. Hey, I wonder what he's trying to pull, anyway, making the rest of the ghosts look like chumps. He can go rot.

Your punishment is the Over-Soul, the coolest looking enemy on the train. They're described as a coalescence of hatred by, I assume, the bestairy. They'll use dread to petrify you and Wild Touch to muddle you. Depending on who gets muddled, it can potentially be more dangerous than Dread. Make your own coalescence of hatred with some Solvent Blue 35. Make your own Wild Touch by slipping some datura in the cheese vats at McDonalds. Dread, well, I don't think there's a realistic way to do that and even if you could petrify someone, it's more illegal than the McDonald incidents.

Sabin, having never heard the story of Persephone and what happened when she tried to eat pomegranate arils in the underworld, asks for everything here.

In fact, yes. You are fully healed and suffer no ill effects afterwards.

Sabin's quite a messy eater.

You can get a different reaction if you use different characters. Try it. After all, what could possibly go wrong?

So much for being stuffed. He's lucky the Pale Man doesn't come after him.

Shadow orders a glass of white wine, a light salad, and an omelette for himself and some dog biscuits for Interceptor.

After you've eaten all their food, it's time to move on and meet Ziegfried. He calls himself Mr. Me in the Japanese version.

Part of the quotable Sabin. The treasure chest, by the way, contains a Zodiac Spear.

Yes, that is a revolver he's holding. He's out of ammunition, so he just attacks you for eight times paltry damage each. Interceptor might kill him, but if he doesn't, you can just attack him for a green chery.

You only get a Green Cherry for your troubles. There's a sniper sight somewhere. It makes you hit 100% of the time. But Yama, don't you already hit 100% of the time? you're asking. I suppose.

Another chest contains MONSTERS! A unique monster named Spectre. Well, he's unique in that he doesn't appear anywhere else, but he's still a whisper with his colors inverted and the brightness and contrast messed with. Anthology sez: He's the ghost of a murdered person. He casts Ice and Raid (a drain spell, basically, but one that works with undead)

The friendly ghost leaves you and the train itself talks! I think I can I think I can I think I can...

I THINK I CAN KILL YOU! MWA HA HA.

At this point, Sabin would snort derisively at the train's really bad imitation of The Evil Engine That Could and how he ripped off Stephen King. And then proceed to suplex him, for he is Sabin, the Strongest Man in the World!

So you fight him. This battle is either ridonkuliciously easy or assrapingly hard, depending on how ethical you feel and whether you have Shadow or not. You can cheat and use a Phoenix Down to instakill him. Or you can do things the hard way and suffer Evil Toot. It sets one of a bunch of status ailments on you. Blind is fine. Condemned isn't so bad, and neither are seizure or slow. Muddled, Imped, and Berserk are not your friends. Berserk can be your friend, if you can deal with the fact that you are unable to use AuraBolt, suplex the train, or heal, but Berserk won't be your friend if Evil Toot confuses you as well.

He also does this. This is Scar Beam, it's holy, I mean Pearl elemental. I'll admit that I like the name pearl for a spell, but calling it pearl elemental? Come on. Fuck you, you fucking moral crusader fuck. Doesn't surprise me, though. They eliminated muff diver from Maniac Mansion. For those of you who don't know, which means most of the readers, muff is slang for pubic hair. It's even funnier when muff diver is a response to thrill kill.

Anyway I ask, why not moon elemental like Secret of Mana. Although moon and light technically aren't the same thing...

He uses wheel as a counter, which consists of launching one of its wheels at a high velocity. Nnnnnyeah. By the way, if you want to watch Sabin pick up a train, use Suplex. He can really do that. He's Sabin, the Strongest Man in the World.

Now that he's defeated and Cyan is bidding farewell to his wife and little Viking, on a scale of one to Zodiark, I give Phantom Train an 8. Negative a million if you used phoenix down, you cheater.

This means jumping down a waterfall. On the way here, you won't meet up with anything you haven't seen before.

I hope you remembered to deequip Shadow... As you've noticed, this arc is much, much longer than the other ones.