Nuke is quite underwhelming for an "ultimate" spell. It's faster than Thunder, and it definitely deals a lot of damage, but it lacks the homing of Fire or the direct projectile control of Ice, and also costs a hefty 3 MP. Further, there are enemies which resist or even negate it completely, much to my chagrin. It's supposed to be an immensely powerful ancient spell, why can things resist it?!
The chocobo may not be able to enter villages or cities, but it can enter the various tiny shops dotted around the land! Gaze at my proud steed, random wolf shopkeeper!
Revi eventually finds the one correct piece of crystal and blows it off, revealing a staircase. The staircase leads to some sort of buried fortification, perhaps a palace in its heyday? Either way, it looks quite impressive.
This room introduces us to conveyor tiles, which are basically ice tiles without the ice. It also introduces a huge, bulky bird that fires lasers and doesn't seem to be affected much by anything. Actually, right after I typed that, Revi destroyed it with a star flail. Huh, odd.
The rest of the dungeon was uneventful, and soon enough Revi ran into an oversized mantis in an arena surrounded with deadly magical traps. Rather than risk himself, he simply sat back and hurled axes at it until it died. Yep.
Sadly, the game still forced him to walk twice through the traps to progress.
Revi then released the rusty sword's mystic power by stabbing a button tile.
This caused an enormous tower to emerge from the desert's depths! Well, I can't say this made much sense, but it certainly provided quite a spectacle.
Inside, he runs into Marcie, Bowow's forgotten research robot. It refills his MP instantly upon being ASKed, making it the best companion so far, and immediately turning the dungeon into a cakewalk before it can even begin! It can also fire lasers, but who cares.
Mana producing bot aside, the dungeon also has tablets detailing the nature of the Mana tree and the events that befell the former evil empire. Apparently, the tree reflects the nature of the world, and the more corrupted and evil the world is, the more...evil it turns. Also there was a hero with the Excalibur who had taken down the earlier evil emperor, but he had been tested before getting to wield it. I say Revi has been "tested" enough already, give him the Excalibur! Yes, despite unleashing its mystic power, the rusty sword is still rusty.
This ice puzzle looks neat, it's not often that you see vegetation inside a dungeon! Unfortunately, Marcie's lasers and Revi's own strength made the puzzle itself a bit finicky, but thankfully, it could be reset easily. Honestly, it's not too bad really, as the required pieces are on the tiles and merely need freezing. I'd take that over most of the ice puzzles, which involved randomly placed enemies randomly moving to inconvenient locations!
The tablets conclude, revealing that Julius was the last survivor of the former evil emperor. And we were told that the Dark Lord picked him up and raised him. I'm still not sure what this backstory adds, exactly. He's still one of the big baddies and we're still going to kill him regardless.
A roc awaits them at the top of the tower! Unfortunately for it, Revi has infinite MP, nuke, and a murderous research robot. Not that it's a particularly interesting boss even without those crutches, heh.
After beating it, we discover this roc is Garuda, the very same roc that delivered the pendant to Glaive! That's an interesting callback, good to know it won't bother us again. Its death causes the tower to collapse, because videogame.
Marcie throws Revi across a chasm ahead, then elects to stay behind because it had an emotional attachment to the tower. Huh. Didn't realize Bowow could program emotional robots, he's way ahead of his time!
Revi finally gets to climb the reversed waterfalls all the way to the top, reaching a big wide lake. Time to go looking for the Mana tree!
Next time, he finds and saves the Mana tree, hopefully.
Prev: Part 11: Hot and Cold
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