You know, I may have said at some point
that this game was liable to give noobs the wrong idea about the
series it was titled after.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time
something like it had happened in series history, of course. The
Legend and Adventure
offshoots for the Game Boy were like that, too, but they eventually
evolved into the Mana
and SaGa series on a
variety of consoles. Same concept, just for different reasons than
the ones I'll be talking about here.
So,
what am I going to
talk about here? Well, I'll be starting with the Battlefield that we
left off last time. Since it was between the Volcano and Focus
Tower, it was full of Iflytes and Stenthoses. So, basically, things
Ben and Reuben had been facing quite a lot of already by this point.
And it was established earlier in the game that the characters are
aware of these Battlefield things, and therefore should have at least
some concept of what goes on there. Yet, virtually every battle I
had in this one started as an “Unexpected Attack!”. I mean, come
on, really? Am I suddenly to believe that our heroes are the sorts
who would repeatedly try to grab pans out of a hot oven without a
potholder and wonder why they're getting burned? What's worse is
that I wound up getting killed a few times about halfway through
because of rotten luck surrounding these supposedly unexpected
attacks. And all that for 1068 XP.
The
way through the Focus Tower is kind of circuitous, but that's to be
expected, given how oddly the thing is designed. Gotta go back in
the way we came out to get to Aquaria to get where we need to be this
time. Once we get past the door with the Fire Crest on it, the Old
Guy tells us to hurry to Windia but keep an eye out for Captain Mac.
They're sure building him up, that's for sure. But the payoff, well,
there's good reason to think it's a little dubious.
In the
basement of the Focus Tower, there's a room with the Aero Spell in
it. It's Ben's fourth and final Black Magic spell, and it's gonna
come in handy. It's a wind spell, of course, which makes me wonder
why the monsters in the wind area are weak to it, but hey, it's cheap
entertainment, so I'll take it in this case. The biggest challenge
here is that it's guarded by a trio of monsters: a Shadow, which is
an upgrade from the Ninjas we saw before; a Zombie Minotaur, which I
think we've seen before; and a Chimera, which I think is new. The
challenge here is that for once, we're slightly outclassed. And this
still went better than the last Battlefield, as I didn't get my ass
beat, simply because it wasn't an unexpected attack, for some reason.
Back
on the path to Windia, the first thing we gotta do is get across a
Rope Bridge. A few steps in, a Mummy jumps the party, but instead of
going in as a team to face it, Reuben decides to have a go all by
himself and gets knocked onto a ledge below the bridge. So, now,
Ben's on his own, but fortunately, the Areo spell is the Mummy's
weakness, so we can one-shot this thing.
We
won't be alone for long, though. Soon as Ben gets with Reuben and
sees he's alright, Tristam shows back up to help us for a bit. Going
across the bridge, we'll get a few supplies. The most important
thing is a handful of seeds. We've still got some from what I bought
in Fireburg, but I did use some along the way.
But
the way things have been going, I'll just stop at the next dungeon, a
place called Alive Forest. It's kind of a more advanced version of
Level Forest from the beginning of the game. It'll be fun once we
get into it, but that'll be for next time.
Until
next time, stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
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