When did Disney and Square start the
Kingdom Hearts series, anyway?
I could look it up, but I'm a lazy ass
sometimes. I'm pretty sure it was in the last ten years, though.
Anyway, the Kingdom of Herat is indeed
down a river to the west of Marse. It's also surrounded by
mountains, which will factor into making this just a little more
difficult than it needs to be. Fortunately, I do remember where I
need to go to get the thing I need to finish off this mini-quest.
It's the one thing I had to look up on the Internet when I almost
beat this game in college. But I'll get to that in a bit.
It's like they said in Marse, the King
of Herat does have a piece of Alumina for us to use in fixing the
ship so it can dive. Unfortunately, he's not going to be a nice guy
and give it to us because we need it to save the world. He's busy
being something of a “gourmet” and isn't satisfied with any of
the things his royal chefs are making for him to eat. He's gotten so
bad about it that not even things a chronic overeater like myself
would never consider trying will do the trick.
There is a solution, of course.
There's a special ingredient called Purple Newt that will make
anything taste good that will probably solve this. It's in a cave
that's technically to the east of Herat, but to get to it, we've
gotta start by sailing back up the river a ways and then heading west
to get around the mountains and into the valley with the cave where
it is. This was the only thing I had to go looking for last time I
made it this far in the game.
Really, the hike to the cave is the
most difficult part of this. The cave itself isn't really all that
difficult to get around once we're in. I found what I was looking
for easily enough, and review of the map later said that the rest of
the stuff in the cave is, at least to me, take it or leave it
material. Sure, some of it would be good if I was going to use it,
but there's a good chance that I may not, and it turns out my
inventory is already pretty much full with essentially useless items
as is, so I don't think I'll be going back for any of it unless I
really think I have to.
Because we're still playing an RPG
here, just getting the Purple Newt and taking it to the guy who needs
it in Herat isn't enough. We've gotta take the newt to a guy in
Lyden to have it processed into the Magic Flavor. The guy in Lyden
isn't hard to find, either. He's in the basement of the biggest
eatery in town. He'll process it for you and send you on your way
back to Herat. Much easier than finding Pee-Wee's
bike.
Once the royal chef in Herat has the
seasoning, he makes a meal for the king and lets the party test it
first. Jerin says she doesn't want any because the jackass chef fed
her a slime-based dish earlier. Like I said, I think there's
something wrong with the king. No wonder the rest of the country's
not doing so good.
The good news, though, is that the king
is finally happy with his meal and lets us into his treasure room to
basically clean him out. There are one or two pieces of good
equipment for the hero, what I'm hoping is the last piece of Alumina
I need, and essentially a lot of other bullshit that I either won't
use or have already upgraded from.
And really, now that I'm getting later
in the game again, I'm finding out something else about it in
addition to it's similarity to the original Final Fantasy game.
You'd think this game was made five years later than it actually was,
for the amount of essentially useless shit you find or win along the
way. It's one of those things I've been meaning to do a piece about,
if I haven't already.
Another thing I should probably address
here is something I wrote about in a Video
Game Memories piece I wrote and posted to That Guy With The
Glasses. Like I said there, I do believe this is the original unit
my brother and I bought the year it came out, so the thing's more or
less twenty years old and has seen plenty of use along the way. With
that in mind, it's really no surprise that there's a short or a
glitch or something in it that makes it act like it's shutting off
for just a fraction of a second every now and then as I play. This
time, there was one interruption long enough for me to see my TV's
“weak or no signal” message, if only just barely. I'm thinking
it's something related to the console, because none of my other
equipment seems to do it, but only time will tell. We're at a point
now where it's really going to suck if I have to stop this just short
of finishing the game again, but maybe it's just fate that I don't.
But anyway, from here' it's back to
Shaia's lab at Platina, which I'm hoping to get to soon. See you
then, folks!
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