‘The Retro Play Show’ #6: “Rockman & Forte” (SNES, Part 1)

As a special gift for my friend @ActWon1 for his birthday, this is the first of two episodes of the show set around “Rockman & Forte” (1998) for the SNES. It was live-streamed on June 13, 2013.

“Rockman & Forte” (aka “Mega Man & Bass”) is my favorite of the classic-series Mega Man games, ranking right up there with “Mega Man 3.” It offers outstanding gameplay, great graphics, a high level of challenge, and an outstanding soundtrack and is probably one of the best Mega Man games released by Capcom…Ever. It’s also a bit longer than the others, especially once you consider that there are 100 CDs that you can collect (as part of a 10th anniversary celebration for the series at the time) that tell you about different characters in the series, and we aren’t even worrying about that for this run.

I cut the run off right before the fortress stages, so expect a second episode sometime in the future!

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‘The Retro Play Show’ #5: “Soul Blazer” (SNES, Part 1)

An impromptu 5th episode of ‘The Retro Play Show,’ recorded live on June 12, 2013!

I randomly felt like doing a retro stream on June 12, so I put up a quick message on Twitter giving a short-list of games I was willing to play and “Soul Blazer” (1992) for the SNES won hands-down! Apparently, a lot of people really like this game and I can’t blame them. I loved “Act Raiser” when I was young and this game is a true sequel to it. It keeps many of the aspects of the first game, though while town-building is part of the story, it is mostly automatic. Instead, the real meat of the game lies in your exploration and dungeon crawling, and Quintet and Enix get it right in this game.

There will be at least another episode or two involved to get this game fully played, but I did have a lot of fun playing it!

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[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 9

~SUKO FOREST~

When we last left off, our party had finished searching the pyramid area for Red and Blue’s father, unfortunately to little avail, and now the team has found themselves stuck where they are.  The professor’s device has left them with a blocked tunnel and no quick way to get back to the Babel Dome, but, as you might recall, there was a forest to the southwest of the pyramid that led back to that part of the continent.

Sadly, Suko Forest is pretty much a bust.  The roadways are blocked by downed trees that, oddly enough, we can’t just, you know, step over.  Weird how that works, right?  Ah, silly RPG mechanics!

Anyway, since we obviously cannot take the easy route back to the dome, we opt instead to head to the forest to the southeast.

~ARA FOREST~

No sooner than after taking a few steps into this new area do we meet a new bad guy who seems off his rocker.  Identifying himself as “J-Elf” (seriously?), he boasts about being the man who “relit the fires of Hell itself.”  Although the party doesn’t know this, J-Elf is the guy who supposedly tampered with the Dark Crown and brought the Dark Lord back to this world.  We really don’t quite know what motivates this guy, other than that he’s certainly off his rocker, but naturally, he challenges us to a fight!

J-Elf himself, however, isn’t all that bad.  He can hit decently hard, but he only attacks one person one time per round, so most of his damage is easily mitigated.  However, the challenge is that he has two wolf-like henchmen with him and, ironically enough, they are stronger than he is.  They can attack twice each turn with a whip attack, hitting two spaces in front of them.  Their attack is about as high as J-Elf’s (about 50-65 HP per hit), so in theory they can do as much as 130 HP of damage to two characters in a single turn…And there are two of them!

I found that the best strategy here was simply to focus on them and take them down as quickly as possible with Red’s powerful melee attacks and Ponga’s Meteo 3 attack and then crush J-Elf as quickly as possible.

Once he is defeated, J-Elf runs away like the coward he is, and we can progress through the forest and into the southeastern part of this continent.

~OVERWORLD~

The southeastern part of this continent gives us several new options as to where to go next.  West of the exit to the Ara Forest is the eastern part of the Suko Forest, but traveling that way is of little avail as all the roads in that section are blocked too.  To the east of Ara Forest is a new town we haven’t been to.  Southeast of that is a rather large and impressive castle, and then further south is yet another forest and what appears to be a house.

Since the town is right here and it always seems like a good idea to gear up when you can, I opt to take us there first.

~RIVA TOWN~

In a way, Riva Town seems sort of like a footnote on our journey at present.  There are a few shops that sell items that could be useful, but honestly only a couple weapons and a couple pieces of armor really need to be purchased, and at this point in the game we’ve got so much money that none of it really dents our coffers just yet.  People here seem generally friendly and a couple of them mention some ruins in the forest north of the nearby castle, called “Stonehenge,” but they all tell us to be quiet and not say anything about it.

While it isn’t exactly clear, it seems that the authorities in this land don’t want people talking about it for some reason, and if you head to the northern exit of the town the soldiers won’t let you pass.  So, obviously something is up, and it does sound like Stonehenge might be a good place to go searching for another OPART at, but for right now, it looks like we can’t really go there.

Although I was tempted to visit the castle next, I decided to head south and into the woods down there.

~UI FOREST~

Right near the entrance of Ui Forest we encounter some thugs beating up a helpless man who is lying on the ground.  Red tells them that all bullies are cowards when they face a group by themselves (an apt choice of words), and they decide that they want to engage the party in combat.  These thugs are pretty easy to defeat and once one of them goes down all of the decide to flee for cover.  It turns out Red was right after all.

The bullied man rises to his feet and thanks the party for helping him.  He says that he lives in a house to the east and asks them to stop by for a visit and then heads off.  Meanwhile, we find another crystalline structure in this area, and this time it plays memories of the past for us, showing us what appears to be a cataclysm in Atlantis.

From what the vision shows us, it looks like the people of Atlantis were trying to harness some of the powers of the Earth and, in turn, the balance was threatening to be disrupted (note here that earth is rendered as “Earth,” which might mean this is supposed to be on a fantasy version of our planet).  The city seems to be falling under attack from enemies and fireballs from the sky, and it appears that very few people survive.

Perhaps the fairies are trying to warn us of what happened to Atlantis?  And I still cannot help but wonder if Rain knows more than she is letting on about.

After the vision subsides, the team heads to the east and to the small house there, hoping that they will be able to speak with the man that they just saved and find out why he was being persecuted like he was.

Will he know anything about their father, or at least something about the Stonehenge ruins in the north?

Hopefully we will find out more and visit the nearby castle in Part 10!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 8

Yes, I know what you are thinking: Doesn’t Game Travels usually get published on a Tuesday?  Well, you are correct!  However, since The Gaming Goddess podcast got a bit off-schedule due to having to do two episodes in a row, I decided to get this edition of Game Travels out this week so that next week wouldn’t be absolutely crazy for me publication-wise.

~SMALL PYRAMID~

When we last left off, our party was beginning to explore a pyramid on the northern part of the northern continent.  Red and Blue’s father’s notes suggested that there was an OPART hidden somewhere within, so this made sense to be their next destination.  Besides, Dr. Hello said that their father had recently left his care and traveled in the direction of the pyramids, so the pair hopes that they can catch up with him.  Given their father’s supposed condition, this seems like something they should do sooner rather than later.

Aside from the sets of stairways, this pyramid really only consists of one large chamber.  However, the chamber is covered in stone sarcophagi and the puzzle here is to maneuver the party from one side of the room to the other, via crossing these stone coffins, without triggering a bunch of enemy attacks.  This, though, is much easier said than done because there is a set path that you have to take from one side of the room to the other and stepping on any sarcophagus that isn’t in the path will trigger an enemy battle.  While the enemies here aren’t incredibly difficult, battling wave after wave of them does slowly wear down on the party’s SP, so it’s best to avoid most of the fights if you can.  Ultimately, the room requires a lot of trial and error to get through, but eventually they make it out and to a second base camp.

~LARGE PYRAMID BASE CAMP~

Honestly, there’s really not a whole lot to the second base camp area.  This place only has two small tents, one of which functions as an inn and the other which has someone you can talk to in order to find out a bit more about the area.  Apparently, these ancient pyramids contain writing in a language called Enoch that is believed to hail back to Atlantis.  Perhaps this connection to Atlantis is why their father is seeking the OPARTS?  Well, whatever the reason, Red and Blue are pretty adamant about wanting to continue forward in order to find their father, so after a quick rest and a few brief conversations, we press onward, climbing up and into the next pyramid.

~LARGE PYRAMID~

The Large Pyramid is pretty straight-forward.  After falling down into a large chamber upon entering (apparently the door opened into a hollow area, possibly due to gradual decay of the structure), the party has hardly any option other than climbing the nearby stairs and making their way to the rooms on the top.  Here, rocks randomly roll down the stairs in a style befitting Indiana Jones, and running into them triggers a battle with living rock creatures that drop confusion clouds on the ground.  They aren’t terribly hard to take down, but the fights can be annoying and at this point it’s better to avoid them by running down the stairs when they come and letting them pass.  The next area is a maze-like chamber filled with mummies that ultimately leads to the room containing the next OPART.

The puzzle in this room is far less obvious than the others we’ve seen so far.  The room has four pillars, a flame in the center, and a sign on the far wall.  When Red interacts with the sign it says things like “Turn it back a little.”  At first I had no idea what this meant, but taking a shot in the dark I decided just to run around the torch a few times.  After three laps, the flame flickers.  After a bit of head-scratching, interacting with the sign a second time yields another command, and upon completing it, a final one.  Once the puzzle conditions are met, the next OPART, the Eye of Ra, appears.  With it in hand, Red interacts one final time with the sign, which now tells him to get out of the way.  Finding this odd, the party walks into the sign, revealing a hidden door that leads into a massive chamber beyond.

As the party makes their way towards the large sarcophagus on the far side of the room, the dark chamber lights up revealing a woman we’ve never seen before.  She identifies herself to be Mary and, after a bit of bickering with Blue after he says that she stinks (real mature, I know!), she says that she believes these pyramids are the key to sealing powerful monsters.  She says that when monsters first appeared, the Ancients erected the pyramids we are currently in.  Obviously, she isn’t hear to find a way to contain the world’s monsters.  Rather, she is looking for the seal so that she can break it.  Concluding that the seal lies in the sarcophagus of the king in this room, she shatters it, which releases the seal on two large cockatrice that we passed earlier as stone statues.

The cockatrice aren’t quite as dangerous as they look.  Each one has attacks that can affect about half of the room, so the key is focusing on one of them at a time.  Since they have such a large surface area, hitting them is pretty simple.  Most magical attacks don’t do anything special, although Ice-based spells seem to do a bit more damage than the others.  During their phases, they either unleash a powerful fire spell that does about 25-50 HP of damage per character, confuse a party member, or cough up rocks that cause a small amount of damage.  They can attack twice per turn, so Red, Blue, and Ponga should focus on attacking while Rain heals them as needed.

With perseverance, they cockatrice both fall, enraging Lady Mary, who attacks us next.  She is even easier than the cockatrice, however.  The party quickly dispatches the mummies that are with her (to avoid them healing her when her HP gets low) and just unleashes on her each round.  Her attacks are single-target focused and while they can do a moderate amount of damage, using potions or Cure magic each turn can quickly mitigate the effects.  Once defeated, she teleports out of the room (much like Hel did before), although this time the pyramid begins to fall apart.  With no other options, Blue takes the Spiral out of the rucksack and uses it to teleport back to the base camp area.

For now, we seem to be done here, so the party runs back through the Small Pyramid and makes it to the Pyramid Village where Dr. Hello greets them.  Hello seems rather uninterested in hearing what they’ve been up to at this point, but tells them he will listen to their stories when they make it back to the Babel Dome.  He introduces them to a new contraption that he intends to use to drill through the ground and open a tunnel back to Babel, but the machine quickly backfires and nearly self-destructs.  So, with Dr. Hello and his parrot working on repairing the device, it looks like we will have to travel on foot back to whatever our next destination is.

Fun times!

Hopefully you are having fun with our adventures here!  Be on the lookout for Part 9, and please know that I look forward to your comments and feedback!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 7

~AKRASS SEWER~

Last time around, our party reached the northern continent and made landfall in the Port Town of Akrass, but their whale friend, Kujira, had been injured in a fight at sea.  Knowing that it would take another Hi-Potion to help him out, they ask around town and find a drug dealer in the inn who says he can make a potion for them if they bring him one of the frogs that lives down in the sewer below town.  I decide to look around town for some upgraded gear, and much to my surprise, one of the item shops in the town has a hole in the wall of the back room.  Since we were already dealing with some pretty seedy folks in our quest to save our whale friend, I decided to grab all of the merchandise that I could and run through the hole in the back (so I got over 2,000 Giv worth of items for free!).  Naturally, the shopkeeper is upset about this development the next time we go into the store, but he doesn’t have a clue that it was us that stole all that stuff.  Instead, he actually pays us if we agree to help him find the suspects.  And, since he pays us an advance, we just pocket the money, take the gear, and head for the sewer.

The sewer is a pretty straight-forward place.  It simply consists of one very large chamber to explore and a few random encounters.  The local kids seem to hang out down here and get mad at us for intruding on their hideout, but another kid gives us a ball of crap (yes, literally!) that we can use in battle to confuse and daze enemies.  Yuck!  Some of the storm drains in the sewer are blocked by grates, so we have to find and activate various switches to open them.  And, of course, we have to fight in a rather large battle near the end to capture the frog and keep it from being killed by various enemies.

As a note, the sewer looks quite modern to me.  It makes me wonder if this game’s world was at one point a bit more advanced than it is as we explore it.

~PORT TOWN OF AKRASS~

After bringing the frog to the drug dealer at the inn, we are given two Hi-Potions and quickly run back to where Kujira is…Only to find him completely unresponsive.  Blue had been worried that he would swim away rather than waiting for them to get the potion he needed, but apparently he trusted the party to find the potion and actually help him.  He waited around, it seems, until finally succumbing to his wound and bleeding to death.  Try as they might, they cannot seem to wake him up and they cast blame at each other.  Blue is upset that we spent time dilly-dallying around in town before going to look for the frog, but they finally face the truth of the matter – it wouldn’t have mattered how swift they were as he probably would have died anyway.

After spending the night at the inn, we regroup ourselves and are determined to press onward and find out where the other OPARTs are located.  The townspeople keep mentioning something called the Babel Dome, located in the north, and say that a giant black bird recently landed there.

That sounds a lot like the Ferric Falcon, if you ask me.

With no where else to really go at this time, we decide to head north from Akrass and enter the dome.

~BABEL DOME~

The Babel Dome is a strange place and is apparently where the mysterious Dr. Hello resides at.  It is also a place that really seems out of place in the current world.  Rather than being some kind of ancient tower or the like, the dome is a strange, metallic, and mechanical structure filled with gears, elevators, and even robots.  Immediately upon entering, we are greeted by a series of doll-like robots who tell us that Dr. Hello cannot be disturbed.  We can pay them a bribe (the first one wants a Hi-Potion and the next pair wants a toad), or we can opt to fight them.  I ended up giving them one of my potions but did not have a toad and was forced to fight the second set.  They are decently powerful, hitting a character up to three times (sometimes upwards of a total of 90 damage!), but it is certainly manageable given how many potions and healing skills we have now.

It really isn’t clear where we have to go, but through trial and error we figure out that we need to head up the tower and through a series of strange, mechanical rooms.  Most of the enemies here can be avoided if you simply don’t bother to talk to them or get in their way, so it isn’t an awfully challenging area at all.

Part-way up the tower, we encounter a strange turtle-like person with a sword who seems to know who we are and says he will get his revenge…But as he jumps and tries to attack us, he ends up falling down to some unseen location below.  Of course, Blue decides to dub him “Leonardo” (break the fourth wall, much?).

As we reach the top of the dome we find Dr. Hello and his talking bird.  Hello seems to be a strange and arrogant individual, insisting that when we refer to him we call him “the world’s last Mad Scientist, Dr. Hello.”  What a strange man, yet you cannot help but wonder how he is so incredibly advanced compared to most everyone else in the world.

Before we can really get to the meat of our reason for being here, a bunch of security alerts go off and Hello believes something is going on down in his lab in the basement. We quickly follow him via elevator to the floor below and must fight some of his strange robotic animals to get them to calm down and stop destroying things.

When things finally calm down, Dr. Hello explains that the Ferric Falcon did indeed touch down at the Babel Dome.  Red and Blue are very surprised by this because they think that it was too badly damaged to make it that far after it crashed into the mountains earlier, but Hello says that their father was here and was badly injured, but he helped to nurse him back to health.  Yet, one day, their father left the dome before his wounds were healed, mumbling something about the pyramid to the northeast.  Sadly, Hello explains, the path through the woods that lead towards the pyramid is blocked, but he claims that there is a secret passage that will lead to the pyramid underneath his house back in Akrass.  He goes to fix up his lab and his bird escorts us to the entrance, and he tells us to come back later on when the doctor isn’t busy.

~HELLO’S CAVE~

With the key to Dr. Hello’s house in Akrass in hand, it doesn’t take us long to find out which house is his.  Inside, there are a bunch of mechanical-looking devices, but no obvious cave entrance in sight.  Yet, poking around at a boiler-like thing in the middle of the room activates it, summarily causing it to explode, and thus reveals the entrance to a cave below.  Enemies inside the cave are a bit stronger than any we’ve faced yet, so the party has to be careful as they make their way through the tunnels.  Fortunately, there is a save point that isn’t to hard to get to as the statue that restores our SP and HP, so when we get in trouble it is quite easy to go back and heal up again.

The main challenge here, besides the stronger enemies, lies in finding the correct path without having to fight every enemy in this place.  Sometimes clearing the rocks that block a certain path will cause you to get attacked by monsters, so you have to pick and choose what direction you need to go quite carefully.

Once the party is out of the cave, they find themselves in a strange, snowy camp.

~PYRAMID VILLAGE~

Calling this place the “Pyramid Village” seems a bit misleading as it is little more than a base camp used by explorers and archaeologists who are excavating the ruins in this area.  However, it does work out for our purposes as there is a tent that sells weapons and items, one that serves as an (expensive!) inn, and even a tent with a priest-in-training who can raise our SP and save our progress.  Not too shabby!

Yet, it is kind of strange that it is snowy in this region.  Normally, we think of pyramids being in desert-like areas, but this is certainly not the case here.  Regardless, we pick up what supplies we can at the base camp and then scale the wall of the pyramid, hoping that pretty soon we will find Red and Blue’s father.

What lies in store for the party inside the pyramid?  I’m not sure, but hopefully we will find out soon in Part 8!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 6

~CARBUNCLE CAVE~

Last time around, we had recently uncovered the entrance to Carbuncle Cave during out pit stop on Carbuncle Island, only to have our party get split up.  Not knowing where Rain and Ponga ended up, Red and Blue are forced to make their way through the cave by themselves, hoping to find them uninjured.  This ultimately means we are forced to fight a few enemies on our own, but since Red and Blue are very adept at melee combat and the enemies here are a decent bit weaker than they are, this doesn’t prove to be all that difficult.  Also, the cave has a pretty straight-forward layout and isn’t very maze-like, so the only thing that makes this cavern crawl a bit slow is that there are quite a few random enemy encounters along the way.

You would think that we would be happy with all the drops we get in here, but as my party’s inventory keeps getting bogged down with potions and such, it makes it suck when we find halfway-decent items we would like to equip.  Part of the issue here is that since my characters are quite a bit stronger than most of the standard enemies, the need to use most of the items really isn’t there, so often I end up just having to waste them or throw out items I really don’t need.

Where’s a good merchant when you need one?

Anyway, when we finally meet up with Rain and Ponga, she tells us that Ponga’s legs are “all twisted,” obviously from the fall.  As far as I know, though, we never have to cure him and this is never really addressed again, but it does make one battle right after finding them slightly harder because Ponga gets a DEF penalty due to his injury.

Deeper inside, we find the path to the next OPART.  Like the one in Herman’s Cave, this one presents us with some kind of riddle that explains what we need to do to unlock the way forward.  However, this one seems much more obvious.  In the rooms that follow, there are essentially holes in the ground that lead either to the room below or which magically transport you back to the start of the area.  In order to continue on, we have to do as the riddle suggests.  In the first area, each hole in the ground has a whistling sound coming out of it as we get nearer except for one.  Obviously, this is the “unheard noise,” and so we drop through it to the room below.  Next, we notice that there are only three holes in the room, so we search for the hidden fourth one and take it below. Finally, it is simply a matter of selecting the hole that we had not had to drop in before and we end up near the chamber containing the next OPART.

After this trek through the cavern, though, obtaining the next OPART is rather simple and underwhelming.  The only thing guarding it is a Minotaur like we faced in Herman’s Cave, accompanied by some of those fire-breathing dogs, and he is quickly dispatched.  So, with the Spiral in hand, we can proceed back to the island.

Oh, and it is here that I should point out that some of these OPARTs actually have useful functions for us.  In the case of Spiral, accessing it in our inventory allows us to teleport to the outside of the current dungeon, much like the “Exit” or “Teleport” spells might in some other games.

Back outside the cave, the Carbuncles thank us for helping clean up their island for them and then we get back on our whale and head into the open ocean, presumably this time heading for the northern continent.

~THE OCEAN~

At sea, the party seems very excited to be heading north in order to find the other OPARTs there and figure out what happened to Red and Blue’s father.  However, the ocean seems to be much rougher than usual, although the waves seem to make it easier for the whale to travel.  The party converses on some random musings as they go, and yet, as they progress, the skies seem to grow very dark.  Then, out of no where, a massive wave strikes them and, from the waters rises the ghostly visage of Hel. Apparently, Hel went down into the underworld somehow and came back as this ghostly creature with powerful magical spells and, just like before, she challenges us to a fight in the hopes of taking our OPARTs from us.

This fight is strange compared to the other boss fights we’ve had so far in this game. This time around, the goal isn’t to actually hurt Hel herself, but rather we have to destroy these magical orbs that she uses to attack us and as channeling objects for her magical attacks.  So, in each round, it is best to focus the characters’ attacks on one or two of the spheres, hoping to destroy it before Hel gets a move.  When it is Hel’s turn, the spheres are drawn to her and then used to cast one of a variety of attacks.  Some of the attacks create status ailments (such as poison or confusion) while the others can do pretty heavy damage to a single target.  After a few of the spheres are destroyed, however, Hel kicks things up a notch and begins summoning tornado-like attacks that draw the characters in, do a moderate amount of damage, and then fling them all across the playing field, making the next round of movements much more difficult.

With Hel once again dispatched, the party sighs a sigh of relief and has no trouble continuing north in order to reach the northern continent.

Meanwhile, we are treated to a cutscene in which the Dark Lord seems disappointed that Hel failed him once again.  However, this time his Elven minion tells him about the faeries that are awakening.  He promptly tells him to go and deal with the matter and then we are returned to our party, which now has arrived in a new location.

~PORT TOWN OF AKRASS~

Finally on the northern continent, we seem a bit unsure of what our next destination should be.  People in the Akrass, the port town we’ve arrived in, seem nice enough and most of them are talking about some kind of show that has been delayed due to monster activity in the area.  So, it looks like the situation up here isn’t any different than down south.  However, it seems like our whale friend was injured during our oceanic fight with Hel and his tail is rendering him unable to swim as fast as he’d like.  The solution?  Track down another Hi-Potion.  In the town’s inn we meet a drug dealer in the attic (yes, seriously, we do), and he tells us about some awesome frogs that live down in the sewer.  Guess what?  That’s likely our next destination (yuck!).

Meanwhile, I make sure to check the shops in town to see what kind of equipment is being offered for sale.  There are several stronger pieces of armor for sale as well as a few weapon upgrades, so I spent a bit selling off items that are of no use to us, selling old weapons and armor, and using that profit in order to purchase some new gear.

One annoying thing about “Treasure Hunter G” is that the item stores won’t actually allow you to sell anything in them, unlike most RPGs.  Instead, we have to find a trader in town who wants to buy our equipment, and thankfully there was one here in Akrass.

So, next time around, rather than immediately heading to the overworld to explore, it looks like we will instead need to slog our way through this town’s sewers in search of an elusive frog because, you know, no one sells Hi-Potions in this game!

Stay tuned for Part 7!

[Canon Questions] Is the Blue Planet in “Final Fantasy IV” Earth?

Normally, when one thinks of a Final Fantasy game, they don’t consider the possibility of the game taking place on some version of our real world.  While some of the games are actually related to each other (even distantly, as in the links between “Final Fantasy 7″ and “Final Fantasy X”), outside of  a very few rare exceptions (like the movie “The Spirits Within”), these games usually take place on completely different worlds that are in no way related to a fictional version of our planet Earth.

“Final Fantasy IV” and its related games presents a strange exception to this.

At first glance, FF4 seems to be a typical fantasy RPG set in a fantasy world with made up nations.  Even the geographical layout of the world has nothing at all to do with our planet Earth, yet as you progress through the game’s story you start to wonder about a few things.  There are several mentions of the planet itself being called the “Blue Planet,” yet you might consider this a coincidence if it was simply a one-off reference. Besides, the planet seems similar in its overall topography to Earth and therefore calling it a blue planet would make sense – the planet likely does look somewhat similar, continental layouts aside, to Earth from outer space.

But, the references don’t stop there.

The Lunarians, who play a vital role to the game’s story later on in the player’s adventure, mention that they came from a world that was once located “between the Red Planet and the Great Behemoth.”  These planets are generally thought to be Mars and Jupiter, and as such this comment seems to be a reference to the asteroid belt between those two planets.  At some point about 1,000 years prior to the events of the main game, the Lunarians realized their planet was on the brink of total destruction.  It is never made clear to us what exactly happened to their world, but  their race was saved from extinction through the construction of an artificial moon, called the Red Moon, which they moved to and used to travel to the nearest inhabitable world.  Yet, when they arrived at said world (the Blue Planet), they found that it was way too primitive for their two populaces to coexist, so the Lunarians entered a deep stasis on the Red Moon, placing it in the planet’s orbit, and awaited a time when the people of Earth were more advanced. It was their idea that when the people of Earth were advanced enough, they would visit the Red Moon and make first contact with the Lunarians and, until that time, the majority of them would remain in stasis.  It was only radicals like Zemus who wanted otherwise, thinking that rather than wait it was best to use their technology to destroy the people of Earth and claim the planet as their own.

As stated, we don’t know what happened to the Lunarians’s world, but the  general consensus seems to be that it was destroyed in some horrific war.  This conclusion is reached by the sheer amount of sealed off weapons located in the Lunar Subterrane and the presence of powerful devices like the Giant of Babil.  Thus, the Tower of Babil as well as the Tower of Zot were at some point created by Lunarians for reasons that Zemus later uses in his attempt to destroy the people of the Blue Planet.  Also, the crystal chambers on the Blue Planet resemble the ones seen in the Lunar Palace, although this link might be a bit less tenuous in itself.

When traveling via the Lunar Whale from the Blue Planet to the Red Moon, the player is given a glimpse of the real-world Earth.  Likewise, the chapter cover for the first part of the final chapter in “Final Fantasy IV: The After Years” clearly shows an image of the planet Earth and we can see North Africa and the Middle East in the image.

“But the layout of the Blue Planet looks nothing like Earth!,” you might be screaming now. This is true, of course.  However, the graphic for the planet Earth has been used in all remakes and versions of “Final Fantasy IV,” “Final Fantasy IV: Interlude,” and “Final Fantasy IV: The After Years,” so I would be hard-pressed to say that it wasn’t canon.  To me, it seems that the layout of the planet in the game is meant to make the game more fun and interesting, yet we are meant to assume that the games take place on a fictional Earth.

It is worth pointing out here that some fans say that the eight crystals on Earth in the games were brought to the planet by the Lunarians and that this explains why the crystal chambers seem so similar to those seen in the Lunar Palace.  This is a decent theory, but this must be considered: Kingdoms come and go, and buildings are built and destroyed. If the Lunarians first came to Earth 1,000 years before the events of the main story, and they gave the those crystals to the planet, how is it that they exist within modern castles and buildings?  It is possible that as the crystals traveled from place to place, the owners of these crystals designed rooms that were very similar to the ones they might originally have been placed in, but that would purely be conjecture.  It is very possible that the Earth had its very own crystals.  After all, this makes sense: Earth has eight crystals (four on the surface and four in the underworld) and the Lunarians have eight of their own major crystals, presumably saved from their planet when they departed it in the Red Moon.  Perhaps each world visited by the Creator (the main “villain” seen in After Years) or other members of his race, long ago, was given a total of eight crystals.  Seeing as how the crystals possess the ability to encourage (perhaps even generate) evolutionary life on a planet and to record said evolutionary history, if the crystals were simply brought by the Lunarians to Earth that would mean that the Creator could only see the past 1,000 years of human history.  However, he seems disappointed in the entirety of humanity on Earth, implying that it was a planet seeded by his own people and he is sad by how it turned out.  Additionally, he targets the Lunarians, not because they themselves turned out poorly, but presumably because they have protected the people on Earth, inhibiting the natural growth of that planet’s own evolution in an unfair way.  So, to me, it makes more sense that we consider the common link: The Creator.  If both the Lunarians and the people of Earth have crystals, and they have crystal chambers that look very similar, and the Creator is coming back for the crystals, then likely the Creator is the one that placed them on Earth and the Lunarians’ home world and this explains their similarities and why their chambers have similar styles of architecture (likely because their original holding places looked the same and, even if they were relocated, their owners simply recreated this look).

Within the scope of the original game, however, we do know that gathering the eight crystals on Earth at the Tower of Babil can result in the summoning of the Giant of Babil – a powerful robot that could be used to destroy the world.  As a result, theorists have said that the crystals are Lunarian and that they were brought to Earth for one of several reasons: To help speed along evolution of the human race, to help keep the world in balance with the presence of two moons, or to serve as keys to activate the Giant. However, why would you put the keys to summoning a weapon of mass destruction right there on the world that it was aiming to destroy?  Thus, going back to the theory in the previous paragraph, it seems more likely that the Giant was simply designed to make use of the crystals located on Earth, rather than the crystals having been brought there for the sole reason of activating the Giant – something that most Lunarians did not want to see happen.

Of course, the philosophical topic of the Creator, his crystals, and how that all ties together could very well be the topic for a whole separate article, yet there are a couple more things to muse about (but which might make for other topics too): The Lunarians and the Creator both possess the ability to create and travel on large, artificial moon-like ships.  Perhaps these races have visited other worlds within the Final Fantasy series by traveling in deep-space.  This is somewhat implied in the final area of After Years when you can face bosses from FF1, FF2, FF3, FF5, and FF6.  Thus, it is possible that the events of those games were before FF4, although at an indeterminate period of time (from a matter of months to thousands of years).  Perhaps this means that the Creator or his race had visited those worlds at some point in the past?  We know that the Lunarians and their Red Moon travels off into space to places unknown at the end of After Years, with Golbez in pursuit with the Lunar Whale, so it is possible that they or their descendants later arrived on other worlds and either created populations there or became known as Ancients or something to that effect on new worlds.

Lots of food for thought, don’t you think?  As always, I would love to hear your thoughts!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 5

~NEKO FOREST~

When we last left off, we had gotten the OPART from Herman’s Cave and returned to Oceania in order to find a whale now residing in the waters nearby.  It turns out that the whale can talk, but he doesn’t seem too keen on taking us to the next continent.  After a bit of persistence, it is revealed to us that his tail is injured and his turtle friend (affectionately referred to by Blue as “Mr. Turtle”) claims that if his tail is healed he may regain the confidence to swim.  Knowing that a pharmacist is in the inn in town, we talk to him and he tells us he can make a healing potion if we find a special frog that lives in Neko Forest – a strange wooded area to the northwest.

The forest turns out to be a very strange place.  There really isn’t a lot we can do here in terms of exploration and we end up at a dead-end with some kind of strange man-eating plant.  As it turns out, the ever-mysterious Rain can speak with plants and determines that it wants to eat us.  If we let it, nothing really happens other than it spitting us back up.

So, with no idea what to do, we head back to Oceania to see if anyone there has any suggestions.

~PORT TOWN OF OCEANIA~

After talking to some of the various townspeople in Oceania, one NPC tells us that there is a medicine that we can use in order to become slippery and, as such, be able to be spit at a great distance by the plants in Neko Forest.  While this doesn’t sound very appealing, it seems to be the only way to progress further in the forest because, you know, we don’t have the ability to cut down bushes or whatever that is in our way. Typical RPG stuff, right?

Well, it turns out that one of the villager’s grandmother, who resides down in Sebia Village, can make the stuff for us.

So, the party leaves Oceania, runs back down through Irato Forest, and arrives in Sebia…

~SEBIA VILLAGE~

Other than looking for that guy’s grandmother, there’s not a whole lot for us to do here in Sebia Village.  Thankfully, the old woman isn’t very hard to locate and she seems to be very cooperative with us.  She hands us the medicine and wishes us good luck and we decide to head back to Neko Forest, but not before taking a quick pitstop to our hometown of Rouen.

~ROUEN VILLAGE~

As you will recall, Rouen was burned to the ground in the onset of our journey and most of the people ended up heading to Sebia.  Well, apparently that was some time ago in game time and the people of Rouen have returned to their village and are planning to rebuild it.  They say they are going to build a giant house for them all to live in because they are tired of living off of the generosity of other people.  So, it’s nice to see that they are making something of themselves again.

With all of these pleasantries out of the way, the party treks through Irato Forest one more time and then heads northwest to Neko Forest.

~Back to NEKO FOREST~

This time around, our trip to Neko Forest is a bit more eventful.  The plant we encountered earlier does indeed take us in its mouth and spit us way across the forest, allowing us to progress.  Not only is Neko Forest a strange place, but it is designed to be a maze of sorts.  While the general layout of the areas you can explore on foot are fairly straight-forward, the main puzzle here is figuring out which plants will send you where. At first, it really isn’t clear what the goal here is, other than finding that frog, but as we explore we realize that there is a castle located in the middle of the woods.  It appears to be an odd, spooky sort of place, but being the only identifiable landmark here, we seem to have no choice but to head for it.

The tricky part of the plant puzzle here is that some plants will send you to little traps – dead-end areas where you will get ambushed by a bunch of enemies.  Thankfully, now that our party is at a decent level and has some pretty nice skills, none of these enemies are a particular threat.

After very carefully picking the correct plants, we make our way to the center of the forest and to the entrance to the castle located here.  It seems kind of odd that the castle was not visible from the world map and that none of the NPCs mentioned there being a castle in the deep of the woods, but as strange as this place is, maybe no one bothered to venture in this deep in order to know about it.  We can only hope that it is a peaceful place rather than some hell-hole filled with dangerous creatures!

~NEKO CASTLE~

Oddly enough, Neko Castle is actually a peaceful place.  While certainly dark and spooky inside, it seems to be inhabited by some anthropomorphic animals of some sort.  Many of them seem kind of dark and brooding, going on about the nature of life and death (and commenting that they think death is final and that there is no afterlife…Thanks for the philosophy, horse man!), but talking to a few of them reveals that they were once human. It isn’t perfectly clear what happened to them, but a couple of the soldiers here in the castle mention something called the Hilbade Tsunami – apparently a magical ecological event that transformed them into what they are now.  And, apparently, they are cursed to remain like this for eternity (although in most of their cases I can’t see why it would be bad for them to be immortal).

There are many vases to break that contain helpful items like SP Potions for us, but some of them contain annoying monster battles.  Here, some of the grids contain magic vases that have genies inside.  The genies will randomly teleport any player or enemy nearby them, so it is best to break the vases early on in order to prevent any further annoyances.  The guards also joke about how they can glue back any vases you destroy, likely meant to be a out-of-character reference to the fact that the player is going to bust as many pots as possible!

One of the guards mentions that the princess would likely be able to help us obtain the frog, but he suggests that she would never want to speak with the likes of us.  Still, we seem to have little choice, so we head to the second floor throne room and seek an audience with her, only to be accosted by her in battle!

The Princess of Neko Castle is an anthropomorphic cat as it turns out, but now the name of the Forest and the Castle makes sense.  Neko is a play on the Japanese word for cat, so basically the forest and the castle were meant to be the “Forest/Castle of the Cat.”

Anyway…The Princess is no push-over.  Her battle grid is filled with those fire slime enemies, so the best thing to do is to take them out early on so that they aren’t much of a problem.  However, during each of her turns, the princess will cast a fire spell twice, either hitting one person two times or attacking two separate characters.  The attack deals 35-45 damage per hit, so we definitely have to watch our health during this match. Getting close to her though is tricky because she will cast a confusion spell on any nearby enemies, wasting several of their turns if no one has a remedy spell to use on them.  Thus, the best strategy seems to be to either use magic against her or to have a melee character attack her and then retreat at the end of their turn.

After several rounds of fighting (having cleverly used Meteo 2 in order to quickly dispatch of the slimes), the princess is defeated and seems more keen on talking to us.

As it turns out, the old feline was once the Princess of Atlantis.  Having apparently been cursed by the Hilbade Tsunami, her and her court seem to have taken up residence here in Neko Forest, away from the rest of general society.  She seems to have accepted her fate and wishes to remain in peace for now, and as an apology for the trouble she gave us by attacking us, she reveals a hidden staircase beneath her throne that leads to a marsh behind the castle where she says we can find the frog we are looking for.

Things like this are never that easy, of course, and upon reaching the plant we seek, we are attacked by an immense, evil looking flower!

Despite the upbeat and epic boss music that plays, the plant isn’t quite as scary as it looks.  During each phase it has several different things it can do.  Sometimes it will summon ice-themed slimes to attack the party, sometimes it will release spores that have a chance to put people to sleep, and other times it will release one of a couple different AOE attacks to harm the party.  If everyone is of a sufficient level, though, none of these are too terribly dangerous, especially if someone (like Rain or Ponga) has a Remedy spell to use if things get tough.

The plant ends up being weak against ice-based attacks, and since I equipped Ponga with an Ice Boomerang, he ends up being the star of the show in this fight.  The other characters join in for some melee and support, and within a few minutes the plant goes down, revealing the frog we were seeking all along.

Now all that’s left is to leave the forest and go back to Oceania, right?

If only it were that simple!  We use one of the plants nearby to get blasted near the entrance, but as we try to leave we are attacked by Hel and her minions once again!

While you might think that Hel would be the dangerous part of this fight, as far as I could tell here she had the same general stats as she did in our earlier fight.  So, given that we have become quite a bit stronger since then, she isn’t a real threat to us.  Instead, her two friends are the problem, but the best way to defeat them seems to be to simply have everyone focus on one of them at a time.  They each have a few hundred HP to them and fairly reasonable attack levels, but after a few rounds they go down and then we focus on Hel.  Aside from her annoying knock-back attack (which only affects one character anyway), she isn’t a problem and is quickly dispatched.

After her defeat, we are treated to a cutscene where we see her kneel before the Dark Lord and beg for his forgiveness.  She says that she does not fear him because she feels that if he kills her, her death will simply mean her rebirth as one of his servants.  He decides to spare her life and tells her to head to the Old World immediately, but at present we have no idea what this means.

Anyway, with everything seemingly finished here in Neko Forest, we return to Oceania.

~Back to PORT TOWN OF OCENIA~

A quick visit to the pharmacist at the inn produces the Hi-Potion, but the whale seems pretty stubborn and doesn’t want to take it.  Exasperated for now, the party decides to spend the night at the inn, only to have Red woken up by the sound of the whale in pain. He goes to speak with the whale and tries to get it to take the potion, but the whale pretty much refuses.  As Red is about to give up, the rest of his friends join in and Rain finally convinces the whale to take the potion.  Apparently, as expected, the potion really helps him and, in his renewed vigor, he agrees to take us across the ocean to the northern continent.

So, after picking up a few final supplies from the shops in town, and selling off goods we can’t use anymore, we hop on and head out into the open sea!

~THE OCEAN~

The whale talks to us as we journey across the sea, explaining that the reason he can talk is because his grandfather’s grandfather fell into a rift in the open seas and, upon awakening, somehow had the ability to speak with humans.  He claims to not know about this rift or what caused it, but he does say that he suspects that it is a mystery that our group may one day be able to solve.  One cannot help but wonder if the whale was from a distant world and fell down to this one somehow, or if perhaps this rift sent him to a mystical place (which is what seems to be implied).  So, apart from some random battles at sea, the journey continues until the whale gets tired.  He suggests we make a pit stop at Carbuncle Island so that he can rest and we can stretch our legs.

~CARBUNCLE ISLAND~

Lucky for us, Carbuncle Island is a location that was marked on Red and Blue’s father’s map, so perhaps it was fate that they ended up here because the whale was tired. Carbuncle Island also seems to be the home to a miniature race of gnome-like people called…*drum roll*…The carbuncles, and apparently they have a rat infestation here. Rain, who can also speak with them, learns of this and we quickly dispatch some rats hiding in the clearing.  As a reward, they offer to show us the secret entrance to the cave on the island, hidden beneath some thick bushes.

Unfortunately, though, the entrance is actually a hole in the ground and the party falls a great distance into the dark cavern.  While Red and Blue end up landing together, Rain and Ponga fall below down into some unseen location.

With the party now split up like this, we must try to locate the others and hope to get out of here alive, but that, dear readers, will have to wait until next time!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 4

~PORT TOWN OF OCEANIA~

When we last left off, we had defeated Hel in battle and discovered that there were seven more OPARTS we needed to collect that were spread around the world.  A quick look at the map provided by Red and Blue’s father suggested that one was located not far from Oceania, so the party heads back to the town.  Talking to the villagers doesn’t reveal much of use at this time, but speaking to some sailors near the pier to the south gives us a hint.  They go on and on about a being called Gogamba – presumably a creature they revere as the ocean god – and their captain says that according to legend, Gogamba is sealed within a cave to the north of the village, past the forest.  This seems to indicate that we ought to go there.  Not only does the map say an OPART is there (is it possible that Gogamba is the OPART itself?), but these sailors say that travel by sea will be impossible unless something calms down the waters.

So, it’s off to Herman’s Forest we go!

~HERMAN’S FOREST~

Honestly, there isn’t a whole lot to Herman’s Forest.  It seems to just be an intermediary “dungeon” that we have to pass through in order to reach our real destination – Herman’s Cave.  The forest is simply one area, yet it is somewhat mazelike in its design.  There are a few small treasures and items to pick up that reward exploration, but missing them won’t really be too much of a bummer at this point.  Also, the enemies here aren’t all that strong although there is an exception: Hornets and other similar creatures can poison members of the party, and so while their base attack isn’t very high, the residual effects of the poison can quickly lead to death.  By now, Rain should have the ability to cure poison (and you should have antidotes), but you want to kill these enemies before they poison you.  After all, you want to conserve your SP for the battles ahead.

Once we are sure we’ve gotten everything these woods have to offer, we head north towards Herman’s Cave.

~HERMAN’S CAVE~

When we enter Herman’s Cave, we find out that the sailors back in town were right: The door that leads into the cave itself is indeed sealed.  At first, there doesn’t seem to be an obvious way to open it, and the in-game dialogue is also quite unhelpful.  They key here turns out to be going into Blue’s inventory and looking at the journal in the rucksack, which mentions the “lovely Angelina” and shouting.  This initially doesn’t make any sense, but once you examine it, it seems that you have nothing to lose by simply shouting the words written in the journal.  This does, indeed, open the door that leads to the inner caverns.

Who is Angelina, and why does shouting her name open this door?  It isn’t clear, and the journal certainly doesn’t say, so for now, we just have to wonder about it and move on.

The first area of the cave is pretty straight forward and we simply need to make our way towards the next door.  At first, enemies here seem relatively weak, but this will soon change.  There are lots of slime-like enemies that are encountered here, and while they have low HP, they have a pretty decent attack that they can do and, worst of all, they can divide themselves when they want to.  So, often when presented with multiple types of enemies, killing the slimes is a good idea because you can quickly get in over your head if they continually divide themselves.  The rats in this area also have a very high level of defense and can hit for a high amount of HP.  The worst thing about the rats is that their attacks can cause knock-back, which isn’t a pleasant thing.

The big area in the cave is a large lava-filled room with a series of bridges that cross it.  While it isn’t really much of a maze, you are offered choices in what direction you want to go.  There is a definite path that you need to take to progress through the area, but going down the side-paths will either lead you to an enemy-filled dead-end or possibly a treasure chest.  Most of the items in the chests aren’t really worth going out of your way to get, but there are some nice SP-restoring potions you can get if you want (which is recommended as this area, as far as I could tell, does not have a health-restoring station like others have had).

After clearing out the lava area, we make our way to a chamber that contains a save point (Yay!) and a hole that apparently leads down to the floor below.  Once we save our progress, the only thing left to do is to jump down and hope for the best…

The room below is crawling with enemies.  In fact, this turns out to be a very protracted fight.  The usual suspects (slimes and rats) make up the standard enemies here, but there are also jars that produce an “ice bomb” spread throughout the starting area.  Apparently, it is possible to lead the slimes and rats near the jars so that they take a ton of damage when the bombs go off, but you also risk you yourself taking damage from the explosion.  So, my recommendation to anyone playing this game is to simply use part of a turn to destroy the jars before they go off.

While the volume of enemies here is problematic, the real problem seems to be the massive Minotaur who serves as this area’s boss.  The Minotaur moves very slowly, so it isn’t too much of an issue to kill most of the lesser enemies before he gets within range of causing trouble for you.  He has two major attacks that he does, both dangerous in their own right.  The first thing of note is that he is two spaces wide, so when he goes to attack people that are in front of him he can potentially cause major damage to two of your characters at once.  Essentially, he charges into them, causing anywhere from 30 to 55 damage and causing severe knock-back.  Yet, if no one is in his immediate range, he can also choose to slam the ground really hard, causing rocks to fall on all characters within a certain radius of him (a rather large radius, actually), dealing 30 to 55 damage to each person hit.

Although I did not die in this fight, I was pretty close to it and got very lucky at the end.  Realizing that his ground-pound attack could quickly wipe the party, I had everyone focus on damage-bursting him to take him out as quickly as possible.  The saving grace was Red’s attack that slashes an enemy multiple times and the fact that Rain could heal us until she ran out of SP (which is why I was worried near the end).

Finally, though, the Minotaur fell and left us with a Battle Ax that I gave to Red.

Another door ends up blocking our way ahead, yet Rain seems to be able to translate the text.  The door talks about tickling Gogamba’s feet, which sounds kind of odd, but what this essentially means is that we need to find a couple of hidden switches in this room.  Finding them opens the door, which reveals a crystal that appears to be this area’s OPART.

Is the crystal itself Gogamba?  This, too, is not clear, but for now all there is left to do is to pocket this item and make our way through a hidden staircase that opens up and backtrack through the cave, through the forest, and back to town.

~PORT TOWN OF OCEANIA~

Back in town, we see a hole in the wall of the inn that rats run out of.  Killing the rats curries favor with the innkeeper and his wife, who offer us a free room for the night.  At night, Red wakes up after hearing an ominous calling from outside and after speaking to the others, Ponga jumps up and reveals a ladder that goes to the roof.  Rain joins him up there and the two talk for a few moments, Red mentioning that he often climbed up on the roof of their house to get away from his father when he was mad at him and he even talks about his dad beating him up.  Rain isn’t sure if he is kidding or not, but says that it sounds awful.  She then tells him that she wants him to always like her, but when he asks what she means by this, she says that it isn’t important.

Teenage angst, I guess?

Anyway…A quick walk south the next morning reveals a “new island” that has appeared, but it turns out that this island is, in fact, a whale.  The party fights monsters that had congregated on the whale’s back and are surprised to find out that the whale can talk, but for now he tells them to leave him alone.

So, what’s next on their agenda?  Will this whale somehow help them cross the vast ocean to the lands beyond the sea, or is there more to do here on this continent first?  And what’s the deal with the foghorn in the town…The NPCs talk about the tower it is held in being haunted, yet so far we have yet to find a way in.

Ah well, I guess you will have to stick with me and wait for Part 5 in order to find out!

[Game Travels] “Treasure Hunter G” – Part 3

~ABNOBA RANGE~

When last we left off, our heroes had discovered the secret “Adventure Room” of Red and Blue’s father and, among other things, had been given a letter which needed to be delivered to “The Magician” who lives atop Abnoba Mountain.  So, after we finished poking around the village and went to see what was for sale in Oceania, we made our way to the mountains on the norther part of the continent.

The mountain range is kind of a strange place.  On the surface, it might seem like a typical place, but the odd thing about it is that it is inhabited by people who seem like mystics that have come there for enlightenment.  Whether they are seeking out this Magician person or if perhaps this person is helping them seek enlightenment is not clear, but they do serve a useful, if occasionally annoying purpose.  Talking to these individuals can often give you interesting clues as to things you might want to do soon in the game or tell you a bit more of the game’s lore.  Yet, many of them will actually challenge you to a fight of some kind.  While having to fight your way not only through enemies but also through people might be slightly annoying, you do learn some Techniques from them if you manage to succeed.  In a couple cases the battles are pretty straight-forward, but in other cases you might have to do something tricky (like, say, hit them without damaging a single other foe – a feat that might require Blue to use his Teleportation skill).

The enemies here are a bit tougher than those we’ve faced before, and the Fire Sprite creature that was the boss of the forest now returns as a basic enemy…Great.  Yet, the worst enemy you face here, in my opinion, are these clam-like creatures that open up once per round and fire ice particles into the air, doing anywhere from 20 to 30 HP of damage per hit per character.  It’s a very nasty AOE attack and essentially requires you to seek them out as soon as you can and take them down.  If you fail to do this, no matter how strong you are, you can quickly face a party wipe here.

Anyone out there like me who likes to explore dungeons and other such areas will find that there is a lot to explore here on this mountain, but you should be careful: Some paths lead you either to a dead end or to something you really didn’t need.  I ended up fighting my way past a few sets of enemies to reach a room with a treasure chest, only to find that the chest contained one single potion and I lost far more HP than that potion could even restore just trying to get there.  Of course, you’ll gain XP and pick up various items along the way anyhow, so it isn’t a total wash, but there are quite a few places that probably merit skipping.

According to some NPC you’ll meet on the way up the mountain, a lot of explorers die on the way to seeking the tower at the summit.  So many die, in fact, that he salvages their gear just to sell it to you for a quick buck.  Yeah, he doesn’t sound like a nice guy and his prices aren’t great, but he does sell a few useful weapons if you can spare the money.

As you near the top of the main path through the mountain, you reach a group of enemies that block the path.  They don’t really tell you why they are there to cause you trouble, but they are a rather unique set that requires you to adjust your combat routine.  Essentially, they are all bow-and-arrow users that attack at a distance, so every turn they will take a few steps away from you (since your people are mostly melee range attackers) and shoot you with an arrow.  They aren’t particularly strong, but they can be annoying and it does essentially serve to whittle down your HP.

With them out of the way, we are presented with a new challenge: Rock climbing.  The final leg of the journey to the tower requires the party to vertically climb the steep face of the mountain and avoid falling boulders along the way.  There are rock outcroppings that will protect the team from the boulders, but should they get hit they will be knocked all the way down to the bottom of the rise and have to begin their climb again.  The best strategy seems to be to use the dash feature to climb quickly (I’m not sure how that really works, LOL) and avoid the rocks as quickly as you can.

When we finally reach the tower (translated as “Abnoba Castle” in the save menu for some reason), we find a nicely-furnished place filled with a bunch of mystic people.  They all seem to be here to seek some kind of enlightenment, as if this wasn’t apparent from the fact that they all look like Yogis of some sort.  Various items can be found scattered around the place and the people have a few interesting tidbits to share, but the main goal seems to be to make your way up the tower in order to find the Magician…Who apparently inhabits the body of a little girl.

Yeah, I’m definitely not kidding about this.  It’s kind of creepy, especially when she (who seems to be actually possessed by a spirit that was once male in form) hits on Rain, who is hardly more than a little girl.

In typical J-RPG style, the Magician tells us that she knew we were coming and that we didn’t even need to bother showing her the letter.  It’s obvious to her that the world is in danger and that our help is needed, but for some reason all she can go on about is how cute Rain is and how she wants Rain to come to her private room after we finish talking.  She tells the group that it is far too dangerous to leave yet, and therefore encourages them to stay the night.  A quick run to the top of the tower lets us see out into the open world a bit, and after a brief conversation there the party heads down to the room to get some sleep.

In the middle of the night, Rain wakes up and is accosted by a fire-breathing dragon and has to use her powers to defeat it.  As it turns out, the dragon was simply the Magician in disguise who felt it was necessary to awaken her to her powers.  Then, the next morning, the Magician wishes us luck and sends us packing.

Before we reach the bottom of the mountain, the Magician finds us again and hands us one of the OPARTs and even tells us what it stands for – Out of Place ARTifact.  Invariably this might have to do with Atlantis and all this talk about ancient civilizations.  After another creepy comment to Rain, Mio (the Magician) vanishes and we are left to our own devices.  However, we quickly find out that our path out of the mountain is now blocked by a recent rockslide, so we have no choice but to find a new path, which apparently leads us through a tunnel behind a waterfall towards a secret exit.

Nothing is every that easy, though!  As we approach the exit of the cave, we run into the knight we saw earlier in the game near the Ferric Falcon.  Apparently, her name is Hel and she intends to stop us before we get any further.

Hel’s battle is a bit difficult and is perhaps the hardest faced so far.  Hel herself has a lot of HP and pretty high defense.  If you are in her attack range, she will hit you very hard and knock you several squares away, making it harder to approach her again.  A very high ACT rating is helpful here and is almost necessary, especially given that the squares directly around her require several ACT points when you cross them.  To make matters worse, the enemies accompanying her are zombies that hit you pretty hard but also which place teleportation traps into the grid.  If you happen to walk over one, you will be transported to a random spot on the map, which can be either good or bad (though often bad).  It takes me a long time to wear Hel down, and I only just barely pull off a victory by cornering her near the end so that she can, at most, launch one person and the others get some good hits in.

Hel is embarrassed to have been defeated by mere kids and sulks as she leaves, but the party heads back to the Adventure Room to regroup.  Blue finds a map in their father’s journal that mentions seven locations they should visit and it is assumed that more of those OPARTs may be located there.  The first top is just north of Oceania and some of the others are in distant lands, so…

Next stop – Oceania!

Given that Christmas is coming next week and the New Year is upon us, I will be out of town visiting relatives for a bit.  Thus, likely, we will resume the Game Travel series after the New Year.  But, until then, know that some fun things are on the horizon and enjoy your Holidays with your friends and loved ones!