I head back to the resistance to ask for help with Thanatos and his constant escapades. They brush the matter off, instead talking about how the evil emperor wants a truce with them. Why? What did they do? The empire was going pretty strong last we saw it, and I'm fairly sure we've done nothing to impede its march.
Oh. Of course. Then they get dropped into a mantis ant recolor, but well, it looked decidedly unimpressive against three attackers, and was fried in record time.
The dungeon's guards fared little better, with even the obnoxious slimes going down quickly. Talk about a wobbly power curve!
Soon they faced the emperor and his gang of colorful losers. The emperor lets Gesthar fight a "honorable" duel. He's a reskin of the imperial bike rider, and Kard fries him in about two thunderbolts. Yep. Next!
Geshtar threatened to blow up the imperial palace, taking the team out with it. Luckily for them, the mushroom king came in, flying on Flammie. It had matured enough to carry them all on its back! And, with flight finally unlocked, I didn't expect the game to take much longer.
Flammie was a little hard to control, as there was no button to make it land, and the overworld icons didn't make its destinations clear. Eventually, I figured it out, and steered it over to Matango, the mushroom kingdom and also the place the mushroom king had directed me to. He gave some basic instructions for steering it, and then directed me to the south western mountains. Umm, alright then.
The south western mountains had a town that sold better gear and candies. Finally! The darn things had almost disappeared entirely, and with the game's strict consumable stack size, their loss was felt quite a few times! The townsfolk themselves spoke mainly of a mountain sage nearby, with one hinting at the Dark Palace being within the vicinity.
The local temple held little besides bizarre video recordings from a presumably far more advanced age, and a cryptic warning about the sage only seeing people who could "conquer themselves". Hmm.
The team had an uneventful path up the mountain. At its summit, they were directed to the Dark Palace, which would frankly be better off not being screenshotted - it was a simple, ugly reskin of the regular palace tileset, with lots of pathetic enemies who completely failed to stand up to the trio. If it wasn't obvious that this portion of the game was rushed earlier, it sure as hell was now.
The dark spirit, Shade, was a bizarre little fight, taking the form of a huge slime that often shifted colors. Its attacks inflicted all sorts of status effects, and hit fairly hard, but they were all single target, and so easy to deal with. Unfortunately, Kard's magic was ineffective here, so the team had to settle for a long drawn bout, but it wasn't particularly threatening. For their efforts, they earned a new spirit and the power of a fifth seed. Shade, for some reason, didn't give Luna any new spells. Guess he's the offensive elemental or something.
Unfortunately this didn't earn them a visit with the sage, because he went out again! This time, he travelled to a Golden Isle northeast of his shrine.
The Golden Isle was a recolor of the empire's cities. To its credit, the recolor actually worked decently, and it actually felt like a city made of gold. Unsurprisingly, it was also ruled by King Mammon, I mean, Manmon. It held a palace, but the palace was locked, and the key was stolen by a spy in the empire's capital's southern portion. Ugh, don't make me go fetch questing....
Thankfully, it didn't take much time to collect the key. The palace was a quick affair, being a largely pointless dungeon with recolors of the tiger and the minotaur. Yep, the developers were clearly phoning it in at this point. They acquired the light spirit, Lumina, and its seed. Apparently the king was using it to make gold...somehow.
Of course, the sage had travelled yet again, this time to the Moon Palace.
The Moon Palace was another short affair, with much of it being a starry void. This was kinda cute, but at the same time, my patience was being drained by having to go through so many halfheartedly built dungeons. Thankfully, they had collected their seventh spirit and seed with this temple, so there couldn't be much of this collectathon left.
Oh, and the sage left for Tasnica this time.
Amazingly, I somehow found a sea hare's tail while furiously crossing the world! It does restore the town's water, and makes everyone happy. The team's reward is...an accessory that can turn them into moogles. Huh? Why would they want to do that, ever?!
They run into Jema in Tasnica! Man, it's been so long since we last saw him! Of course, he doesn't do anything useful, just tips the team of an imperial spy attempting to assassinate the king. The king almost has them arrested, but Jema catches him. Turns out, he was the spy all along!
Then they have a fight with him, but, well, they have his weakness, and he doesn't have much health. Doesn't take much to deduce the outcome, lol. Jema sends them back to the sage's place, hopefully for the last time, and they stock up on supplies from the Tasnican shop, which is somewhat hidden and has all of the consumables available.
Thankfully, the sage is actually in his shrine, and decides to teach the party "true courage" to face the Mana fortress...after a test. The test involves going through a long, winding dungeon with enemies that don't take any damage...
...and a battle with their clones! Alright, finally we're getting somewhere. Or not, because the clones were really easy and only killed Kard. Then the sage reveals himself to be his bird disciple, and finally gives them directions to the location that matters - the Mana Fortress itself!
Of course, the emperor had beat them to it already, and sent one of his other general clowns to duel the team. But by now they had even more levels and the power to imbue their weapons with life draining. Newsflash: it didn't go well for him. He did deal a lot of damage though, especially to Revi and Kard, who were still wearing dated equipment, and that caused me to go back and grind the money out for buying up to date armor. Guess that's the game's way of "challenging" me now, huh.
Unsurprisingly, the team failed to stop the evil emperor from raising the fortress. Jema then tasked them with assaulting its basement while he took care of the upper levels.
The basement was certainly pretty, and finally brought back some sensible combat with properly calibrated enemies. There was also a boss, but meh, it was a recolor of the lame two headed dragon Geshtar had sent back in the Water Palace, and the team had thoroughly trounced it even back then. Besides, I think we've seen enough recolors already.
The rest of the dungeon is traversing these non descript, vaguely "hi tech" floors. The buttons here are part of a very elaborate and intricate puzzle haha, got you.
Eventually the team reaches some sort of...metro train? Meh, whatever.
Ahead, they run into the thieves again! They attempt to coerce the team to surrender the Excalibur, then send...get this...a recolor of their robot! Yawwwwwnnnnnn.
The team finally enters the fortress proper. Which looks exactly like every other temple. Behold its majesty!
It's boring as sin, consisting of lots of overtuned enemies and requiring a circuitous path to light up eight elemental orbs. It also has an overtuned swallowing lizard as a boss, and no shops or saves whatsoever! Good grief!
They finally catch up to the emperor, only to find him dead! Turns out Thanatos had usurped him at the last possible moment. He leaves his companion to fight them, and flees to take control of the fortress.
She turned into a giant lamia, which left me concerned, as the team was starting to run low on supplies. Thankfully, she didn't have any serious moves, settling for gimmicks like dispelling the party and turning them into miniatures, and after a long, gruelling battle, they prevailed.
Oh, and as a final fuck you, Thanatos summoned yet another recolor, which wasn't hard, but nearly killed off the team, as they had run out of supplies.
But, at long last, the fortress was over. I could go restock and save my game! And even better, the sky changed into a cool color, and the music into a cool track!
Phew. This must have been the worst session I've played. And I didn't want to be so negative, but like, holy shit, the game just thoroughly falls apart here.
Anyway, this is where I end. Next time, I complete this game, hopefully!
Oh. Of course. Then they get dropped into a mantis ant recolor, but well, it looked decidedly unimpressive against three attackers, and was fried in record time.
The dungeon's guards fared little better, with even the obnoxious slimes going down quickly. Talk about a wobbly power curve!
Soon they faced the emperor and his gang of colorful losers. The emperor lets Gesthar fight a "honorable" duel. He's a reskin of the imperial bike rider, and Kard fries him in about two thunderbolts. Yep. Next!
Geshtar threatened to blow up the imperial palace, taking the team out with it. Luckily for them, the mushroom king came in, flying on Flammie. It had matured enough to carry them all on its back! And, with flight finally unlocked, I didn't expect the game to take much longer.
Flammie was a little hard to control, as there was no button to make it land, and the overworld icons didn't make its destinations clear. Eventually, I figured it out, and steered it over to Matango, the mushroom kingdom and also the place the mushroom king had directed me to. He gave some basic instructions for steering it, and then directed me to the south western mountains. Umm, alright then.
The south western mountains had a town that sold better gear and candies. Finally! The darn things had almost disappeared entirely, and with the game's strict consumable stack size, their loss was felt quite a few times! The townsfolk themselves spoke mainly of a mountain sage nearby, with one hinting at the Dark Palace being within the vicinity.
The local temple held little besides bizarre video recordings from a presumably far more advanced age, and a cryptic warning about the sage only seeing people who could "conquer themselves". Hmm.
The team had an uneventful path up the mountain. At its summit, they were directed to the Dark Palace, which would frankly be better off not being screenshotted - it was a simple, ugly reskin of the regular palace tileset, with lots of pathetic enemies who completely failed to stand up to the trio. If it wasn't obvious that this portion of the game was rushed earlier, it sure as hell was now.
The dark spirit, Shade, was a bizarre little fight, taking the form of a huge slime that often shifted colors. Its attacks inflicted all sorts of status effects, and hit fairly hard, but they were all single target, and so easy to deal with. Unfortunately, Kard's magic was ineffective here, so the team had to settle for a long drawn bout, but it wasn't particularly threatening. For their efforts, they earned a new spirit and the power of a fifth seed. Shade, for some reason, didn't give Luna any new spells. Guess he's the offensive elemental or something.
Unfortunately this didn't earn them a visit with the sage, because he went out again! This time, he travelled to a Golden Isle northeast of his shrine.
The Golden Isle was a recolor of the empire's cities. To its credit, the recolor actually worked decently, and it actually felt like a city made of gold. Unsurprisingly, it was also ruled by King Mammon, I mean, Manmon. It held a palace, but the palace was locked, and the key was stolen by a spy in the empire's capital's southern portion. Ugh, don't make me go fetch questing....
Thankfully, it didn't take much time to collect the key. The palace was a quick affair, being a largely pointless dungeon with recolors of the tiger and the minotaur. Yep, the developers were clearly phoning it in at this point. They acquired the light spirit, Lumina, and its seed. Apparently the king was using it to make gold...somehow.
Of course, the sage had travelled yet again, this time to the Moon Palace.
The Moon Palace was another short affair, with much of it being a starry void. This was kinda cute, but at the same time, my patience was being drained by having to go through so many halfheartedly built dungeons. Thankfully, they had collected their seventh spirit and seed with this temple, so there couldn't be much of this collectathon left.
Oh, and the sage left for Tasnica this time.
Amazingly, I somehow found a sea hare's tail while furiously crossing the world! It does restore the town's water, and makes everyone happy. The team's reward is...an accessory that can turn them into moogles. Huh? Why would they want to do that, ever?!
They run into Jema in Tasnica! Man, it's been so long since we last saw him! Of course, he doesn't do anything useful, just tips the team of an imperial spy attempting to assassinate the king. The king almost has them arrested, but Jema catches him. Turns out, he was the spy all along!
Then they have a fight with him, but, well, they have his weakness, and he doesn't have much health. Doesn't take much to deduce the outcome, lol. Jema sends them back to the sage's place, hopefully for the last time, and they stock up on supplies from the Tasnican shop, which is somewhat hidden and has all of the consumables available.
Thankfully, the sage is actually in his shrine, and decides to teach the party "true courage" to face the Mana fortress...after a test. The test involves going through a long, winding dungeon with enemies that don't take any damage...
...and a battle with their clones! Alright, finally we're getting somewhere. Or not, because the clones were really easy and only killed Kard. Then the sage reveals himself to be his bird disciple, and finally gives them directions to the location that matters - the Mana Fortress itself!
Of course, the emperor had beat them to it already, and sent one of his other general clowns to duel the team. But by now they had even more levels and the power to imbue their weapons with life draining. Newsflash: it didn't go well for him. He did deal a lot of damage though, especially to Revi and Kard, who were still wearing dated equipment, and that caused me to go back and grind the money out for buying up to date armor. Guess that's the game's way of "challenging" me now, huh.
Unsurprisingly, the team failed to stop the evil emperor from raising the fortress. Jema then tasked them with assaulting its basement while he took care of the upper levels.
The basement was certainly pretty, and finally brought back some sensible combat with properly calibrated enemies. There was also a boss, but meh, it was a recolor of the lame two headed dragon Geshtar had sent back in the Water Palace, and the team had thoroughly trounced it even back then. Besides, I think we've seen enough recolors already.
The rest of the dungeon is traversing these non descript, vaguely "hi tech" floors. The buttons here are part of a very elaborate and intricate puzzle haha, got you.
Eventually the team reaches some sort of...metro train? Meh, whatever.
Ahead, they run into the thieves again! They attempt to coerce the team to surrender the Excalibur, then send...get this...a recolor of their robot! Yawwwwwnnnnnn.
The team finally enters the fortress proper. Which looks exactly like every other temple. Behold its majesty!
It's boring as sin, consisting of lots of overtuned enemies and requiring a circuitous path to light up eight elemental orbs. It also has an overtuned swallowing lizard as a boss, and no shops or saves whatsoever! Good grief!
They finally catch up to the emperor, only to find him dead! Turns out Thanatos had usurped him at the last possible moment. He leaves his companion to fight them, and flees to take control of the fortress.
She turned into a giant lamia, which left me concerned, as the team was starting to run low on supplies. Thankfully, she didn't have any serious moves, settling for gimmicks like dispelling the party and turning them into miniatures, and after a long, gruelling battle, they prevailed.
Oh, and as a final fuck you, Thanatos summoned yet another recolor, which wasn't hard, but nearly killed off the team, as they had run out of supplies.
But, at long last, the fortress was over. I could go restock and save my game! And even better, the sky changed into a cool color, and the music into a cool track!
Phew. This must have been the worst session I've played. And I didn't want to be so negative, but like, holy shit, the game just thoroughly falls apart here.
Anyway, this is where I end. Next time, I complete this game, hopefully!
Prev: Part 10: Deja Vu
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