Thursday, September 13, 2012

TEXT PLAY: Legend of Mana (PlayStation; 2000): Issue #31: Castle Pandemonium

Going for a Final Fantasy II reference here. It was the castle where the final battle happened.

And let me tell you, getting through this thing is hell. Not necessarily because it's difficult. I've prepped myself well enough to handle the challenge well enough. It's Sierra and my pet zombie Ed Frid that kept dying on me. That was partly because I kept getting turned around and walking into this one room in the castle where a pair of dragon-type monsters would ambush us with fire breath. I can understand Ed not making it through that. Undead monsters are naturally weak to fire, after all. I would have just thought that Sierra would have been better-able to handle it than she was. She'd been tasked by her master to go to Hell and save her brother, who served the Devil, after all.

But the place is a maze. No surprise there. The Flames, as it's officially called in the game, is the palace of the Underworld, so that's to be expected. Lots of dragon-type and undead monsters, too. Also to be expected. And so are the four mini-bosses. What surprised me in the end is that it wasn't as hard as I had expected. This is not to say it wasn't hard. I did wind up losing both Sierra and Ed on multiple occasions going through here. The good thing is that so long as the avatar character survives, the game goes on, and as close as I came to dieing myself a few times, that never did quite happen.

But after all the trap floors and switchbacks and multiple trips through floors, I finally got to the fourth mini-boss, stationed on a balcony. Apparently this is Larc again. It sure looks like the same monster. And Sierra says something about “Here he comes!”, too. After this fight, there's a choice of three doors, with one in the middle, one on the left, and one on the right. The right door to go through is dreadfully obvious, especially if you've seen the MST3K episode Quest of the Delta Knights. It's quite literally the door on the right.

From there, it's not far to the boss fight with Drakonis. Drakonis does his whole “I'm the Devil and I'm going to devour your souls because I need the love to survive” bit, and naturally, Sierra responds with the whole “We're the good guys so we'll win instead.” bit. With that, the fight's on.

I gotta say, this fight wasn't as hard as I was expecting it to be. Don't get me wrong here, either. It was hard. Drakonis's dragon form took out Sierra and Ed and knocked my health down to half before I got a decent weapons lock on him. But after that, it was just a matter of standing there and stabbing him in the foot until he died. That really kind of sucks, because I was actually expecting a more epic battle than that. At least the ending's good. Larc's back to normal, if in bad shape, and Pademonium implodes back into the Underworld. Once it's all over, Vadise astral-projects in and tells Sierra that she can't touch her brother because she'll be tainted with the same curse he's got, and he may need another thousand years to get a chance to break free again. I'd use the “go to hell” clip I found here, but really, we're still building up to that. See, after Vadise gives us that little kick in the nuts, Larc says he's got one more trick up his sleeve that's going to get him out sooner than that.

In the meantime, however, Sierra, Ed, and I go restore Jajara and Akrivator, the dragons we killed while helping Larc and Drakonis, and return their Mana flow to Fa'Diel before going back to the White Forest. Once we're there, it becomes clear that all this is an epilog, because we've finished the Dragoon arc, and we should consider ourselves amongst the privileged few who get to know of the brother and sister separated by the curse of war and then reunited with the help of a greater hero. I guess this means we won this part of the game. I'm just not sure what the hell happened. I do know that Drakonis is sealed again, but is Larc free now? Has he turned himself around? I am confused, and can only turn to the words of Captain Spockat the end of Star Trek 6.

I guess all I can do now is run around a bit and look for clues as to what to do next. First things first, I gotta stop at home to put Ed back in the barn, talk to Lil Cactus, and get some produce off the tree. I think by this point, I've talked about everything that comes off of there, so I won't again.

While I was at it, I went and got some more off the other tree. More of the same there, too. When I got back to the house again, there was a clue as to what might be coming next. Seems something's up with the Sproutlings in the area. There's been the one hanging out around the front door the whole game. Now he's got two buddies and something's going on with one of them. He doesn't look good. I guess he's going back to the Sproutling dimension or joining the all-mother or some such thing. The two Sproutlings that are on better ground are explaining this to Lil Cactus, who somehow got out of the house when he saw what was going on. The Sproutlings tell Cactus that he'll be joining the giant root ball at some point himself. I know there's a quest about that coming up in the near future, but I'm not sure how soon. I guess it's time for a little running around while I get this all sorted out.

In the meantime, I may even get a little Final Fantasy in, as well. At any rate, see you soon, folks! Stay safe, have fun, keep gaming, and as always DFTBA!

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