Tuesday, June 5, 2012

TEXT PLAY: Legend of Mana (PlayStation; 2000): Issue #12: Fireworks Fireworks Fireworks


It would almost be cool if this dungeon were a Beetlejuice reference, but alas, it's not.

But at least there's a song by the band America called Horse With No Name that I can reference here, because at least there are plants and birds and rocks and things, and plenty of sand and hills and rings to be won in fights.

Gotta say, this is one of my favorite mini-adventures in the game, at least of the ones I've played. There are some longer arcs that I've at least marginally started that I like just as much, but haven't managed to make it all the way through.

So, anyway, the dungeon. The place the Sand Rose creates is called the Duma Desert. On arrival there, we find that a chimera named Kathinja and her students from the Magic Acadamy, “no seriously that's its name”, are looking for a rival instructor named Mephinase and his students because he apparently horked an ancient spellbook from the school and plans to use it for no good. With a name like his, I can only picture him using it to make everybody put mayonnaise on their sandwiches.

Anyway, being the upstanding guy that I am, I join up with Kathinja and her kids so that we can stop Mayonnaise, er, Mephinase, from doing whatever it is he's going to do. This is a good place to build up levels, anyway, because the monsters will generally drop XP like stink. And they drop a few good items, too. At least ones that'll come in handy when I finally get around to opening up the workshop. I should probably do that before too long. Too bad I've never been particularly great at getting through the quest that's part of.

The thing about the students is that most of them are actually pretty much working for the villain of this little side quest, and what's worse is that they're all pretty much inept pansies, even for kids. They offer little to no resistance, and pretty much tell you exactly where to go each and every time you see them. So, with little effort aside from the time it took me to comb the desert Spaceballs Style, I eventually did catch up with the sandwich spread wizard, just in time for Kathinja to catch up to me. She tells me to make sure I've got a good equipment loadout and skill set ready to go, and then we head out to confront Mephinase. He casts a spell that blows the player character to the previous screen, which was quite obviously the boss room, and Kathinja clean out of the desert.

The boss for this quest is a pair of axe-beaked birds, and for once, I wish I'd have been doing a video LP of this, because this is the first time I've made it through that fight without dieing at least once. This is a hard fight, usually, because the birds can really gang up on a guy and beat the tar out of him. For my efforts, all I got was 80 XP and 40 Lucre. Kathinja comes back once I win the fight and we charge Mephinase one more time, just as he fires off his fireworks show. Not bad, all things considered. Just needed a little John Phillips Sousa music and maybe a national monument in the background, and it would be really great.

My final reward in this quest comes from Kathinja, and is a piece of gold. From what I understand, that'll come in handy some time later, but I'm not sure when, exactly. But there's time to figure that out. There's other quests I need and want to do first anyway. And I'll probably do a little running around before then, too.

Plus, there's the Final Fantasy side Text Play I'm doing right now, too. There's something else I want to try there, too, but we'll still be following the main party I talk about there. At any rate, I'll get to that when I get to it. Until then, more random stuff. See you then, folks!

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