Saturday, October 21, 2017

TEXT PLAY: Secret of Mana (Squaresoft; SNES, 1993): Issue #005: Tampico

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!


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