Or Tropicana,
which is a little expensive for my tastes.
Either way, the boss we wind up
fighting towards the end of this one makes me think of fruit-flavored
beverages, and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe it's because I did a
review of one of their
products earlier this year and should maybe do one of the other brand
if I can find it.
That aside, I've got a game to get on
with here. To start things off this time, we need to find the back
rooms of the Dwarf Village, which is essentially a two-room theater
sort of area. This is accessed through an unmarked door towards the
center of the town. It leads to an area with two other entrances on
it. The one on the right goes to a room where a guy in a green hat
says he's the village elder and suggests that you check out what's in
the room on the left. There's a stage in there, where the same guy
comes out, claims to be somebody else, and asks the party to fork
over 50 gold to see a show. I had remembered there being more to
this than there was this time, but that may be because I usually just
have the hero in the party at this point in the game. In this case,
though, the elder says he's going to show us Rabbiteman, and then has
a man carrying a Rabbite come out on stage. Naturally, our heroes
call bullshit on this, to which the host brings out the Sprite who
will be joining the party in a bit. They do this sob story bit about
how the Sprite got washed into Gaia's Navel after a flood tore
through the Sprite's village and now he needs like 50,000 gold to get
back home. Since the player avatar's supposed to be the kind of guy
who helps others, we get the pleasure of forking over another hundred
gold, and with that, the show's over.
Coulda sworn there was some sort of
audience participation thing between the Rabbite guy and the Sprite,
but that may be for when it's only the hero in the party. I've still
got my file where it's just the hero in the party at this point in
the game, so I'll have to check that next time I do this.
Anyway, once the show ends, we can go
just about anywhere, but I usually go straight back to the left
entrance, where we overhear the elder and the sprite talking about
how they played us for suckers and that they're going to make a
fortune off their little act. Confronting them on it makes them fess
up that it was just an act to get our money and give back the 150
gold that they got from us. That'll come in handy in a bit, but for
now, it's time to head on out to the rest of the town.
When we get there, there's one hell of
a tremor, and Tropicallo, the boss monster I was joking about above
pops out. This is a big, funny-looking plant monster who can grow a
tentacle minion. I kind of like having the spear on the hero for
this one because it's got a better reach than any other weapon we've
got right now, which comes in handy. This is not to say that Rose
didn't get in a few good hits with the sword as well, of course. That
probably helped with making this boss so easy to beat.
When Tropicallo goes down, the green
hat guy and the sprite show up, saying that the Sprite needs to join
the party for at least the trip to the Underground Palace, because
their little act wasn't all
bullshit, on account of there being an actual flood that brought the
Sprite there, and now the obnoxious little dude has no memory of how
to get back to wherever his home was. The theory here is that maybe
interacting with a Mana seed will change that.
But
since this is an Adventure RPG, there's gotta be the usual 53 steps
to success, which means, in this case, going where Rose wants us to
go so we can have a word with a witch named Elenie, who just happens
to be the same one that Dyluck and his men were going after for
Pandora. It's a damn pain in the ass getting through this part of
the game, but now that we've got all three party members and most of
the weapons in the game, it won't be quite so bad.
I say
most of the weapons, because when the Sprite, who I named Mickey, to
continue with the Doctor Who theme, joins, we get a boomerang and a
bow and arrows, which are our truly ranged weapons in the game.
These will really come in handy from here on out. We're also
supposed to go see Watts again, and he gives us the axe because we're
the only ones who can use its Mana power, which lets it break
boulders. That's the thing we're after, of course.
The
elder explains we need to go to the witch's castle in the Haunted
Forrest to clear some lava blocking the entrance to the Underground
Palace because the dwarves say she's got it sealed. Even if that's
not the case, we've got a couple reasons to go there now. Since it's
all nine more kinds of trouble than it needs to be to get through
that, I'll save it for later and maybe finally do a little Final
Fantasy 9 beforehand.
Until then, stay
safe, have fun, keep gaming, and DFTBA!
And
Tampico
Beverages?
No comments:
Post a Comment