nikita is my wife
I want to let the thread know that I have been playing more Lennus II and I will start doing updates again on Wednesday.
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Episode 33: Chekov’s Gun Fires, Killing One.
Today’s installment of Lennus II brings us to the mansion of Jubal, the wise man who fled his life of opulence and decadence to live a life of honesty and guidance among the poor and downtrodden. It would seem that his wife misses him dearly though, so it would be the appropriate thing to do to see if there’s anything we can do to help.
The wife blames herself for him leaving, feeling that she pressured him too much and drove him away. I think we’ve all known someone like that, if not having been that person at one point in our lives; we want wants best for those in our lives, and sometimes we get so caught up in what that means for us that we don’t see what that means for them.
The children of the household are divided on the issue of their father. On the top floor is presumably Jubal’s room, and all that we could find here were the Preyer Tears.
The commuter’s pass makes getting back to the slums a breeze and Jubal’s little home away from home is right close by. And after we are done talking to him, we are even given a prompt to return directly to the mansion. This is a quest that respects our time.
The wife is devastated, but maybe now the son’s words will be able to convince the old man that his family needs him back more than ever.
Jade confesses to some pretty serious stuff here, but Jubal will not move; whatever was behind his decision, we haven’t found it yet. Perhaps talking to the daughter will reveal the truth?
Well, we just got some heavy stuff dropped on us her; the daughter cursed the father, and Granada was somehow involved in this whole affair. Jubal is not just some old wise man, he’s an old wise man who knows something important! Now we really need to get to the bottom of this!
Jubal is not even mad at his daughter who cursed him, directing the fullness of his righteous anger at Granada. But with his entire family showing him how much they want him back, he sees now that it is time to return home.
Jubal is deeply apologetic for his role in things, his mistreatment of his family.
Jubal knew too much, and so Granada exploited the family’s animosity to eliminate a potential threat to his plans.
And so the curse takes its cruelest turn, transforming Jubal into a hideous monster, a threat to the family that he sought to protect from himself.
The most noteworthy thing about this fight is that every time you damage Jubal, there is a short animation of his tears welling up. They want you to remember that this monster was once a man.
We prove victorious, Farus gains a level, Cheche gains 2 levels (not that this will alleviate his fundamental uselessness but like I said, Nikita and Iris are so stronk that the fourth party member at this time really does not matter), and we get some good spirits.
Lennus, now that’s a name we haven’t heard in quite a while! Looks like Jubal’s dropping some lore on us with his dying breath!
Alas, Jubal passes away before he can share the full story with us. It would seem that Farus is not just any old young Raigan, but the full significance of this reveal will have to wait for another time.
In the end, our prize is the Life Corsage, which like in the first game can be used in battle to heal the whole party. Pretty useful if you are running low on medicine.
We conclude this tragic chapter of the story. Next time, hopefully happier and wackier hijinks await us.
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Episode 34: No Wonder The Housing Market is a Sham.
This won’t be important for this update, but this will be relevant later on. I think so anyway. I’m not entirely super clear on what the exact trigger is for being able to get the Abel’s bread. I probably could have used this LP to get a lockdown on that, but that would be if I were a good LPer.
What I am good at is belatedly remembering to set up my spirits and using all my stat boosting items before I leave town to do a pretty interesting side quest.
We leave town through the southern gate and go to the southwest, something I would love to show you but alas I somehow failed to screencap it even though I swear I did. At least I got to screencap the new enemies for the five seconds that I encountered them before Iris and Nikita obliterated them with magic and martial arts, respectively.
There needs to be a D&D knockoff called Martial Arts and Magic.
So here is how this little minigame works; you go into the water, which will be pushing you down at all times. At random areas in the water, whirlpools will appear, and then shortly after an egg will go flying up in the air. By pressing the action button, Farus will jump and hopefully you will be able to get him to jump into the egg to catch it. I say hopefully because this minigame is more than a little awkward. It is entirely doable but it does take a little practice.
This was what I got on my first attempt. You can feel the condencsension.
I reload my save because each attempt costs 1000 gold and I don’t want to get less than 10 eggs on any one attempt. As established earlier, we need 40 eggs in order to make the big fancy house. No, I do not understand how one uses eggs to build a house, we just do.
So I end up getting 50 total eggs, overshooting what I needed considerably. You don’t get anything extra for getting more than the 40 eggs you need, but its nice to have that little security blanket going.
And so now we will get our fabulous new home with no complications whatsoever.
And then the game pulls a bit of a dirty trick here; Gannet does not reveal this until after you have committed, which means that if you came to him with exactly 40 eggs, he would pocket the 40th egg, leaving only 39 which would only get you a regular sized house. So really, you need 41 eggs in order to get the best conclusion for this sidequest.
That said, it will take time for him and his crew to complete the house; I’m not sure if its in-game time or how many battles you’ve had, but either way it’ll be a few more updates before we see the fruits of our labors here. Next time, we’ll be visiting the Earth Temple to gain new powers for our protagonist.
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house eggs are a delightful concept, but i gotta wonder how they smell…
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Ideal scenario? Brick and mortar.
Worst case scenario? …
Episode 35: The Earth Temple
On our way to the Earth Temple, we encounter some new enemies, the Field Walkers; presumably no other animals in the field walk and instead leap and skip and other such means of locomotion. They do have a lot of hit points, but absolutely nothing that Nikitia and Iris can’t handle. They also drop spirits useful to our entire party.
That little landbridge there is to the south of Camron, the town where we took down Gilray Zork. Make sure that you’re not like me and turn around before you see the landbridge come into view, since you need to go a little past where the bottom of the land comes into view in order to see that the bridge is there. Bit of a time saver there.
The dungeon is pretty straightforward, just activate switches to lower the lava as needed to progress to the next level. As for our new enemy friends, the Mold Mist, Mold Spray, and Earth Pillars here are all recolors of past enemies, but they drop really good spirits. Everyone is getting substantial growth in all their elements, so this is an excellent place to do some grinding if you feel that your elements aren’t high enough for your liking.
We grab a treasure that will be very useful in a short while, and then we clear out the lava.
Cheche gains a level for what little that’s worth, we grab a Spirit Orb that we will also be making use of very soon, and we go down a couple levels. This segment here is just a long hall with nothing interesting going on. Feels a bit padded.
I’m showing these two encounters because I was getting so many encounters of the first type we got into in the dungeon that I was starting to think that it was the only kind, despite knowing that this could not be the case.
And in very short order we reach the bottom of the dungeon. Not nearly as involved as the Gold Temple was.
As long as you have decently leveled Kekan or Lelan magic, this fight will be a breeze. Like the Gold Spirit before him, he has only one attack and with Nikita’s Bottle spell there is no reason to ever be caught off guard by his output.
And so with our new Earth Spirit we now have a new selection of support spells to consider in our arsenal.
Heal: Earth’s own unique spell, cures status ailments. With how rare status ailments have been in this game, this will likely not be cast more than a handful of times, if that.
Bottle: The Gold-Earth spell, used by Nikita a lot, extremely useful.
Hire: The Air-Earth Spell, the same effect as a Summon Tavern. Not that useful.
Escape: The Light-Earth spell, the same effect as a Flight Door. Not that useful.
Peace: the Fire-Earth spell, the same effect as a Pro Ball. Not that useful.
Bottle is the clear winner of this selection, so if you are going to make active use of the Earth spirit, pair it with Gold, have a high quality bottle, and you will never die.
That said I pick Air to go with Earth because those are the elements that I want to level up at this time.
After a whole lot of encounters where we earn a whole lot of Earth spirits for Farus, we see that progress has been made on our fancy house, but there is still more work to be done. Perhaps after the next dungeon we will see the completion of our home.
Next time, we will be going North to the Great Tree in order to obtain the next of the seals of the Great Union.
4 Likes
Episode 36: Watch Out For That Tree!
We begin our trek north to the Great Tree for the Fourth Seal and encounter some new monsters, the Baba-baba and the Oil Insects. As with all other enemies up to this point, there is nothing they can do before Iris and Nikita horribly slaughter them all, and Cheche who happened to be standing nearby at the time gains a level. These enemies also drop Air, Light, and Sky spirits.
Another encounter with more new enemies, the Armored Slapper and the Barrage Bug, who can hit pretty damn hard when they feel like punching your face in. And that’s all that they can feel. Fortunately, I get incredibly super lucky and these guys drop the Martial Clothes, a really good piece of armor for Nikita that increases her attack and speed substantively with only a very slight drop in defense. Well worth it.
At the base of a massive forested hill thing there is an inn that we can stay at, but oddly enough no medicine refill as far as I can tell. Climbing up the forest hill/mountain thing, we discover that the Great Tree has a more than passing resemblance to the Air Ship from the previous game. But the significance of this, if any, will have to wait for another time.
We get the drop on our first encounter, which is very good; the enemies here are both strong and fast and this is a pretty long and involved dungeon so we will be taking quite a bit of damage by the time we reach the end.
Every doorway inside the Great Tree leads to a kind of loading area that is exactly the same every time. Well, there’s actually a difference between these loading areas; if there’s two ramps you’re going up a level, but if there’s only one ramp you’re just moving around on the same level. That is something helpful to know as you navigate this place.
I wish I’d connected the dots on that a bit sooner in my run but that’s neither here nor there.
We encounter the Revoker, who has very high defenses, and Iris is getting really close to maxing out her Light spirit. Really, she’s already gotten to max level with it so the remaining points will be an incremental improvement at best, but still!
Kekon is such a delightfully impressive looking spell. A shame that the actual damage for it is so low. Maybe when Sky is also at level 8 it’ll do a lot better, but that won’t be for a long time.
As far as the Unique Shovel goes, no one in our party can equip that, so I can’t showcase its effectiveness one way or another.
Cheche levels and we get Middle Boots, nothing special as we continue to rise up in the Great Tree.
We’re starting to get some crossroads and intersections, making it a little trickier to sort out which way you should go for optimal treasure pickups without getting into too many extraneous fights that can drain your resources fast.
I pick up a Thunder Cane and decide to equip it on Farus for right now so that he can have a Light element attack while still working on Air and Earth.
The High Bottle goes onto Cheche, as it represents his only possible use in battle as an emergency medic, and the trumpet will let us progress on the musician sidequest, which I will be doing all at once after I’ve gotten all the rest of the instruments.
And finally we get the last of the new monsters, the Hades Mage and the Balenka. The Balenka inflates to explode, while the Hades Mage is heavily resistant to most spells so its best to go with physical attacks on them.
Our continued exploration yields a Red Hot Cane, which can be used for a Fire attack if you don’t have a Fire Spirit on Farus.
I get careless and almost let Farus die, but fortunately I not only win but gain a level for him as well.
…Whoops! I thought I’d screencapped that treasure, but it would seem I had not! It is in all likelihood a Spirit Robe or Indigo Whip. Nothing major.
And it is at this time that I remember to use all the Earth cards I’ve accumulated.
With the way things are going, Farus is going to max out Earth before we’ve even found all the seals.
We thus find our way to Ganda, the boss of the dungeon whose sprite on the map is uh…I’m not saying. I’m sure you noticed.
Physical attacks work well on him, but beware his draining attack. Or you would, if the healing didn’t pale to the damage you should be doing at this point.
Grava works incredibly well at shutting down his physical attacks, but Light will not even scratch him.
Physical and air attacks both work really well here, but don’t get cocky with Grava; Ganda can use Light attacks of his own that the big beast can’t do a thing about.
This battle is also important as its the first time I get to showcase something about how the magic progresses in Lennus II: When your spirits rise to certain levels, the scope of those spells targeting can change. We already saw this with Momrick going from targeting one enemy to a group of enemies, but this is a little different; Lelun previously targeted a group of enemies, but now will hit a group of enemies for a fixed number of times, which at this level is 4. That is to say, Lelun goes from being good for wiping out groups, to being amazing at wiping out single targets due to hitting them multiple times. And this isn’t even close to the cap for Iris. Trust me, the damage will get nucking futs.
Iris gains a well deserved level for that battle.
I could just leave straightaway after grabbing the seal, but I want to make sure I grab all the treasure first.
Iris is getting so close to her full potential. Getting her as quickly as we did is doing so much good for making the rest of the game so much easier.
Since Iris’s light spirit is maxed out, her Kekan spell does splash damage onto the other enemies in the group.
Meanwhile Kekun is hammering enemies a whopping six times for nearly 3000 damage! Iris’s damage potential has just exploded over the course of this update!
Iris’s Sky magic has also leveled up to where her Gubo spell now throws five cows at the enemy for much higher damage, letting her clear random encounters much faster.
All in all, this trip to the Giant Tree has been very fruitful. Next time, we’ll be working on grabbing the fifth seal. See you then.
3 Likes
Episode 37: Everyone Loves the Sewer Level. Everyone.
Upon our return to Lejune we discover that our big fancy has been completed and is ready for us to enter!
Its a bit difficult for us to rob our own place when you think about it.
At least we’ve got a nice selection of books to peruse.
We go check in on Gannet and see that he and his crew are very happy.
Upon revisiting our cozy home, we get to hire a maid.
And so, after all the work of getting the House Eggs, going out and fighting until construction was completed, and having to hire a maid on top of all that, we now have a free inn and free medicine refills. Of course it took us 5000 G to get to this point, but its the principle of the thing!
Plus, our characters get to play video games, and video games are fun!
Especially when those video games have us fighting jellyfish in the sewers!
Hey, at least they dropped a Gubo Milk, that’s awful nice of them.
This kid here has the ring that we need for the chain of deals for the Sixth Seal, but we don’t have what he wants, so we’ll have to come back down for him later. Fortunately he’s right near the entrance so that won’t be any trouble at all when the time comes.
Remember the Earth Temple? This place functions the exact same way. That is the real sin of this dungeon, recycling so soon.
Eagle eyed viewers will see that I’ve switched in Light for Air so that I can take full advantage of all the Light spirits that get dropped around here. The Sewer Rats and the Dengue Midoro are both excellent sources.
Another new enemy, the Cannibal. They can jam you in their mouths to keep you from being able to act, which is only really a problem if they go for Iris or Nikita.
The Bonebreaker is probably the hardest hitting and nastiest enemy of the bunch down here in the sewers, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about today.
Look at that damage Iris just did with Lelun. Over 6000 points of damage. Maxing out Air and Gold has resulted in an absolute juggernaut of death and destruction in the form of a sparkling girl. Lennus II knows where its at.
We drink some milk and pick up a jacket for Cheche so he won’t catch cold here in the sewers.
There’s going to be an incredibly hilarious joke to me picking up this Heavy Shield from a random encounter.
We just find a Heavy Shield, so our random drop saved us like five minutes, tops!
Things get a little dicey with Nikita, but the very next fight I get an Earth Card for Farus. The game has a funny way of balancing things out for me.
Game, enough heavy shields! I have skinny noodle arms, I can’t carry that many heavy shields!
…Okay, fine, thanks to all the Gubo Milk I do in fact have the strength to carry all these Heavy Shields.
After gaining a level and the fourth and final High Bottle of the game, I decide to take a look at how everyone’s stats are stacking up. As we can see, Cheche has barely more power than Iris, and that’s it. Despite all the levels he’s been gaining, he is still just plain objectively the worst. Thank goodness for the power of hot girls to save the day.
And we now confront the Sewer Master, who is in fact some manner of cyborg tank!
Iris’s Kekun is the way to go. Just…just look at that damage. Soak in it. Appreciate it. This girl is broken AF and we live to see it.
Hmm, that’s funny; Iris didn’t get any spirits for Light or Air after winning the boss battle. How curious, I wonder why that happened?
Ah. She has, as of that fight, capped out three of her four spirits. She won’t be getting much stronger than this now, but damn if that isn’t enough spirit magic to rip the forseeable future of this game a new one.
On the way back out we pick up a Great Sword treasure that I’d missed, max out Farus’s Light spirit, and after that get a Light card. I’ll have to hold onto that for a later mercenary, but it’ll be a little longer before we recruit one such character.
But that is it for the sewer level. Next time, we are going to do the chain of deals to earn the Sixth Seal.
2 Likes
Episode 38: It Turns Out I Had Some Soap All Along.
We begin our day by getting in line to get some bread. The screen fades out several times to imply the passage of time, until we are informed that the baker is all sold out and we’ll have to try again tomorrow. Naturally if we try it like that we’ll just fail again, but as far as I can tell you have to do this at least once to be able to progress.
We check with the man named Cornelius at the front of the line and then go to the nearby home to find his family wanting to know where the heck he is.
We tell Cornelius and he gives his place in line to us, thus allowing us to finally get that dough.
Now we can get this dang show on the road.
Right after we check in on the family we’ve just reunited. Also, I’m sure that mention of conflict between the two major religious orders won’t be relevant to us in the next update or anything.
After a rather long and detailed process of watching the old lady eat the bread, we get Indra’s Statue.
By handing that over to Garulus, we get the Reverse Pendant, the one item in the chain where the game does not give any explicit clues on who you are supposed to present it to.
We go into the sewers to trade with Stork, and now we can finally put the domestic abuse situation to rest.
I’m sure no one will mind me truncating this part of the chain down to its minimum components.
The old man tries to fake us out by not offering us anything for the cane, but all you need to do is to talk to him again.
We now have a book, and books are full of knowledge, and knowledge is power, so as long as we hold onto this book we are invincible!
Or we could hand it over to the foxy teacher so we can progress the plot. That works too.
Our goal is now within sight.
And with that we have finally obtained the last item we need in order to obtain the Sixth Seal.
And with that we have completed the chain of deals. Next time, we’ll make a quick stop at the ghost mansion and then we’ll find out what we need to do to obtain the Seventh Seal.
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Episode 39: The Most Awkward Place to Put an Important Plot Revelation
Having gained three new seals in short order, we go to visit the Ghost Mansion and pick up some new items. The first is the Fist of Anger, which is the weaker version of the Fist of Fury that we already got for Nikita thanks to our frugality and use of Cheche.
The Sage Cane is an immensely useful item; using it in battle will cast SkillsUp, buffing all of any one character’s attributes. Farus will be taking that.
The Thunder Saber will do an electric attack that is weaker than the Tsunami Sword, so I will not be using it.
We are now free to go to Tranquiil Hill in pursuit of the Seventh Seal. The music that plays here reminds me a lot of the Dragon Shrine music from the original Breath of Fire; I’d like to be able to share that with you, but someone decided that we can’t have nice things.
I am left wondering if Lennus II had been localized, would this section have gotten past Nintendo’s censorship policies or would it have pulled a Breath of Fire II?
Man, two Breath of Fire references in a row, I’m on a roll!
As one would expect of an organization called Black Cross, there are unsavory rumors. It would also seem that, as per JRPG tradition, we’ve arrived just in time for some unusual religious activity.
Logically we should go to the order of the White Cross after talking to that guy, but in my defense remembering which hand is the right hand and which hand is the left hand is really hard! Oh well, may as well check the evil church out while I’m here.
And these guys worship the big bad. How unexpected.
And that’s as far as we can go. It might be possible for us to explore more, but I don’t recall. It’ll be a while before I can test that, so let’s see if I remember to do so.
Somehow I don’t think that’s why Petro is letting the Black Cross do its thing unimpeded.
A test from the order of the White Cross? I wonder if it’ll be multiple choice.
It is! The multiple choices are all the ways we’re going to kick this Acolyte’s ass! 
The Acolyte uses a variety of elemental attacks to hit everyone.
The Sage Cane shows us how easy it is to get everything buffed in one go.
And then we just wreck him completely on the second round thanks to Iris’s incredibly OP spirit magic. I can’t imagine what it would be like to do this part of the game without her.
And so we are then dragged on our way to meet with Bishop Pasko, as we are apparently part of a prophecy.
Now that we’ve been brought to the big man himself, let’s find out what he’s got to say that’s just so important.
To save on a lot of screencaps, he wants us to go to the Temple of Duran Duran (I’d make a music reference here but my music knowledge consists of JoJo references and I don’t remember any Stands or Stand Users named Duran Duran so there you go) to get the Seventh Seal before the Black Cross can do so.
Talking to everyone else in the rest of the room does provide some useful information on how to actually get to the temple of Duran Duran.
Alas, the punchline is ruined by the guy not realizing he broke his vow of silence. For shame game, for shame!
We get some free wind-based equipment here, better than a sharp stick in the eye as they say.
We also pick up a couple cards which for some reason I don’t use right away.
But I do remember to use them after I change up my spirits for the next segment of the game.
Finally, we get to hear what the dang prophecy is! You’d think the bishop would have told us instead of this random guy in the hall that we had to go out of our way to talk to, but there it is.
That’s right, Granada’s our father! And we find out by just…talking to some guy. Bit of an odd place to put a revelation like that. Its not even locked behind a sidequest or anything.
In any event, we now have our prophecy in total, which alas is vague on helpful details on how to fulfill the prophecy but then again prophecies rarely do.
No worries, we’ll be making all the right choices.
With that our business is resolved. Next time we depart for the temple of Duran Duran and retrieve the Seventh Seal. And there will be no flashbacks to a certain sequence from the previous game. Nope. No way. Not gonna happen. Absolutely not. Nada.
4 Likes
Episode 40: War Flashbacks
A quick trip south takes us to the temple of Duran Duran, and despite appearances the marshy squares will not slow us down.
No pressure or anything. Besides, its not like this place can be that bad.
A place where you cannot save, those are pretty rare in this game.
I have to go alone, in a place where I cannot save, and I have to reach the middle in order to get back out.
…Nope, doesn’t ring a bell!
The order of the Black Cross is not afraid, but they will learn. Oh they will learn!
…
…
…
The layout is different, but this sequence is an homage to the maze of Doth from the first game.
Fortunately, the temple of Duran Duran does not have the potential to shut down your entire run.
While there are multiple Black Cross acolytes running around in the maze, you don’t have to worry about any of them reaching the seal first; even if they do, they just turn around without taking it, despite that being the entire reason they came here.
As for fighting the acolytes themselves, they are just like the White Cross acolyte we fought earlier on, so while they can put the hurt on Farus, they are far from being unbeatable.
That said, the way the game prevents you from saving is by keeping you out of the menu entirely, so you can’t heal out of battle. Also, even if you defeat a Black Cross Acolyte, they will be replaced eventually so you can’t just clear the entire map.
That said, no one gets in the way again and we grab ourselves the Seventh Seal and are warped back outside. Very very very simple compared to the nightmare that was the Crystal Maze.
With the Seventh Seal in tow, we are now directed to Petro back at Nigel Castle.
The only thing to do before visiting the castle is to make our penultimate trip to the Haunted Mansion and get the treasure of the Seventh Seal, a Fist of Fury. If we wanted to, we could now run two martial arts characters at once. If we had two martial arts characters that we could use.
Next time, we go to the castle, chat everyone up, and find out how we’re going to get the final Seal since it is apparently stuck down in Andel according to the Lejune Library.
3 Likes
Episode 41: There’s No Place Like Home
We return once more to Petro’s castle and this time we get to talk to the staff of the castle, finding out just how they feel about the man who came to power under mysterious circumstances. Thus far, they feel pretty good about that.
You’re just being a worry wort my dude, there’s nothing to be concerned about here.
An interesting possibility. Then again, with the evidence we have that Petro is in fact Chezni, I can’t help but wonder if those scars might not be from when he first released Kaymat.
On the one hand, the continued existence of the slums does throw how well he’s treating the people into question. On the other hand healing the sick does count for something.
Oh you ridiculous chef, that’s absurd, name even one other world that’s been established in this game.
Free healing is always appreciated.
So that’s why the seals are important. It’d be nice if we could actually do something with them to make ourselves stronger, but that would just be silly. Sure, The 7th Saga did something like that and look how that turned out!
You need to get out more my man. Andel’s not going to be around forever.
He realized he was no longer the JRPG protagonist of his youth and is feeling his mid-life crisis coming on.
This guy will tell you where the first seven seals are before admitting he doesn’t know where the last one is. The game is being very thorough in making sure you can figure out where everything is.
With everyone else spoken to, we now talk to the big man himself.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if we’d been able to collect the Eighth Seal before leaving Andel the first time? Oh well, at least we get to see what’s become of our old stomping grounds.
And so we find ourselves back in Gwanji, where the urgent panicked music urges us to act quickly. Next time, we’ll find out how the people of Gwanji have held up this whole time, and begin the search for the Eighth Seal.
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Episode 42: Bright Eyes, Burning Like Fire.
Note, this is going to be a bit of a longer update.
I’ve decided that I won’t be showing every bit of dialogue, as a lot of it is just people screaming in terror and begging you to help them, but there are some worthwhile bits of conversation to have. For example, that there are refugees here.
Its the little details that make the despair come home.
Don’t worry Kai, I’ll save you just like I saved you from that fire monster that possessed you.
Also, there are a whole bunch of new items to find in town. Not sure where they came from but I’m not complaining about more stats!
The old man is unfortunately not entirely wrong about that.
All these stat boosters might help us to save the day, maybe! And seriously, I don’t remember ever finding these treasures before, even to this day I am learning new things about this game!
Our very first mission in the game has been undone. Even so, we must press on and do what we can to save all who are left.
In order to advance, we go behind Ben the Eagle’s house and discover a new cave has opened up that wasn’t there before. We are warned in advance that this is going to be a long one, so we prepare in the best way possible.
By chugging down all those stat boosters of course! And we got some good bonuses going on too. We’re as ready as we’ll ever be for this dungeon…literally, since we can’t leave Andel to go level up elsewhere.
We get our first encounter of the dungeon, and its all palette swaps.
Iris’s Gubo spell will absolutely wreck house with how we’ve leveled up her Sky spirit. Alas, this encounter set will not give her more Sky spirit, and I don’t believe there are any encounters down here in Andel that will give us Sky spirits. Makes sense, but still inconvenient. At least Farus will be getting plenty of Fire and Air spirits.
Entering the next room we get another new encounter, this one much nastier than the last one; the windshakers do heavy damage and the Walking Rock has high defenses that make taking them down a little tedious. Once again I am super thankful for Iris and Nikita doing everything in their power to make clearing these encounters so much easier than they would be otherwise. Even with that though, we will be taking a lot of bruises along the way.
We progress some more, finding some treasure and gaining a couple levels.
Oh, and like all the rest of Andel, we will not be coming back when we are done here so make sure you don’t miss anything.
So many Earth Spirits dropping in our laps, we are going to be maxed out on Earth in very short order.
More progress, more treasure, more levels.
We continue deeper into the depths, every fight a chance to grow but also a drain on our resources. Its the classic JRPG challenge, balancing growth against loss and trying to come out ahead.
I am getting so many Earth Cards in battle, its ridiculous.
I do some wandering in this mazey section to make sure that I don’t miss any treasures.
Look at where Farus’s spirits are at. Earth is almost maxed out now, and I don’t even have it equipped right now!
I showed this fight in particular because the enemies manage to do some unique things in them that they usually don’t get to show off on account of how quickly I kill them. The Wind Thrasher can stun you to force you to skip your turn, while the Walking Rock can erupt like a volcano all over the party.
At least Cheche gets a level.
This nerd is here to let us know that we are near to the end of our long journey in this dungeon. I could stop here…but we only have that little bit more to go.
We arrive in the center and this jerk warps in behind us.
Gege beckons Goad, this lion dragon thing, to block our path on both sides.
The lava begins to rise, signaling our doom.
Fortunately for us, our old friend Igles the Giant has arrived to save us! Our past heroism has not been undone this day!
Its really handy to have a giant friend who is just straight up immune to lava, isn’t it?
…You…you are immune to lava, right Igles?
Igles, please tell me you’re laughing because you think that toying with my heart is funny.
For whatever reason I am rather fond of Igles and seeing him sacrifice himself to save us like this makes me have to stop for a moment.
…
Goad likes to attack by breathing fire on us.
Iris and Nikita like to attack with lightning and punching, and they are both very good at that.
Nikita will be using her Bottle spell every now and then to keep us patched up while everyone else lays down the hurt. And Cheche can watch, I guess.
After doing enough damage, Gege and Goad will start doing a combination attack where Goad breathes his fire and then Gege swoops in to attack one party member, getting in damage on everyone with spike damage on one character at random; its been a while since we’ve had a boss fight with this sort of unpredictable element to keep us on our toes.
Igles is now avenged.
Granada does not care about you Gege. You can rot.
Now that we have succeeded, we are beckoned back.
We have now obtained the Eight Seals to stop the Real Great Union. What will happen when we return to Nigel Castle? How will we use the Eight Seals? And what will be our next step in our battle against Granada? Tune in next time for the exciting conclusion to the Nigel City arc of Lennus II!
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Episode 43: Season Finale, Part 1
For this upcoming dungeon, we will be using Earth and Gold spirits on Farus.
When we return to the castle, Petro is nowhere to be found.
Perhaps this person who had been hiding in the ceiling might have some answers for us.
This is how coherent I would be under duress. Or under regular circumstances when I haven’t had the chance to properly rehearse what I’m going to say.
At least we have a free source of medicine without having to go back into town, so that’s pretty useful.
The Ancient Machine. Now why does that name sound so familiar…eh, nothing important.
Four dudes were bad enough to break into the castle. We are four dudes. We can take it back.
Visiting the rail station will have us getting this bit of dialogue, but more importantly we can go back into town one last time.
With the Eighth Seal in hand, we obtain the last treasure of the Haunted Mansion, the Sage Ring. I equip this onto Iris so that she can now cast the Spela spell, allowing us to summon a monster that will absorb magic damage. It also boosts overall magic damage like the Mage Ring does, but it does not stack with it.
With everything that matters taken care of, we enter the ancient machine, and familiar sounding music greets us. You will have to take my word for that. Thanks Youtube.
Most enemies in the Ancient Machine are of the mechanical variety and thus are most vulnerable to Light magic attacks. Despite that, even with Iris’s impressive wisdom and spirit levels, her Kekon spell still doesn’t do as much damage as the all purpose Gubo.
This Ancient Machine is rather long and involved.
And features enemies that are straight up recycled bosses.
At least the level-ups aren’t recycled.
The lettering for the different areas of the Ancient Machine are very helpful for keeping track of where you are and if you’ve missed anything. I appreciate that.
Our last new enemy for the dungeon won’t even get to do anything in his debut fight since we got the jump on him. Or Nikita does anyway, she doesn’t tend to leave much for the rest of us to do. Except let Farus level up. She’s nice like that.
This just triggers a random encounter, no big deal.
No world ending dragon attacks…yet.
Iris has very good timing on her level up.
Another major leap to mastering Earth magic.
See that funny little fish creature in the corner of the third screencap? That’s the monster that Iris can summon with her Sage Ring to absorb magic attacks.
Farus has now maxed out his Earth spirit. Glorious.
One last new enemy that dies before it can do anything in the face of my over powered party. I could advance to the final area of the dungeon, but there’s one thing I missed that I’m going to grab real quick.
What awaits us beyond this door? What Eltz-shattering revelations will be made? Will there be a shiny red button that we can push to doom us all? Find out next time on Lennus Ball II!
5 Likes
i’m on the edge of my seat but how many spirits do you have? i thought that if you had all 8 you could equip four, yet it seems like we’re near the end and you have two on
So did you find a bass (as in the musical instrument) or a bass (as in the fish) at the end there, or are we gonna have to wait to find out?
oh wait yeah that’s that orchestra subquest hey
I have five spirits at this time: Fire, Air, Light, Gold, and Earth. So either this game is going to have post-game content, a rarity to say the least for this era of JRPG, or else something is going happen in the area where we are not allowed to save.
And yes, it was a bass as in the instrument for the orchestra side quest.
Episode 44: Season Finale, Part 2
Upon advancing to the final room of the dungeon, we are greeted by a voice, and then a robed figure teleporting in to taunt us.
And he is not alone.
We were told that just four men broke into the castle and killed all who got in their way.
We are now face to face with Granada’s most elite agents.
And we are not going to give up without a fight.
This fight is very simple; Boozoo does wind element attacks, Balmod does fire, Bejould does Lightning, and Belts punches us above the belt.
As the vast majority of damage in this fight is going to be magical, the Sage Ring’s Spela spell is very helpful in keeping the flow of damage under control.
One by one they fall before us. Our journey has made us strong, stronger than even Granada’s most powerful and devoted.
But power is not everything, and some battles are won before the fight even begins.
They’ve got the Potentate hostage, and while there are oddities and mysteries about the man, it is thanks to him that we have made it this far on our journey.
Acti-Raigan. Jubal was trying to tell us something about that before he died. Whatever exactly it means, its clearly very important.
But thou must.
And so we have lost everything that we’ve fought so hard for.
And so they depart for Lennus, taking Petro with them.
Maybe this time around the palm-shaped cavity will work out for us.
Nope, palm-shaped cavities are still bad news for us.
The fight with the Big Machines is functionally identical to the fight we just had with Granada’s Boys. The only difference is that as you damage the machines, the heads start breaking down one by one until they are all gone. This has no effect on their ability to attack until they are totally destroyed, but it is a nice aesthetic indicator of your progress in the fight.
Also, this is the only fight in the entire game that drops no spirits whatsoever.
Defeating the Big Machines unlocks a teleporter, where we are greeted by Bishop Pasko. Say what you will about Petro, the man has backups and contingencies and knows how to react when things go sour on him.
And so we have our new mission, to meet with Midia in the Castle of Illusions. Perhaps when we get there we will find out more on how the heck our protagonists from the first game came to Eltz and kind of took over? Maybe?
As befitting of random religious references that were popular in this era of JRPGs, Belts and company are Granada’s Angels.
And on that superbly cheery note, we close on our season finale. Next time we visit the town of San Felo, gather some intel, and see if there are any new friends that we can meet.
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Episode 45: Kick up Your Feet and Relax A While.
San Felo is a peaceful little community whose main purpose is to tell us what all is in the area and what we’re going to need to do to get access to it all. This guy opens up by telling us about the other towns around these parts.
As one might imagine from a place called the Castle of Illusions, getting there is going to be more involved than just walking up to the door and knocking politely. What must we do to find a Geran?
Well…
You’ll see.
How nice of Petro to give advance warning of our arrival. No wonder everyone is sharing information relevant to our quest!
Sounds like Midia’s doing pretty well for herself. Good for her.
And that takes care of the finder’s fee for that information he just gave me.
A blocked road, that could be troubling. As could the way to get around that problem.
If you do, it’ll be slightly slower than before.
The local weapons and armor shop have nothing I’m interested in right now, but that could possibly change depending on certain decisions.
That decision is of course to be made at the local bar.
I wouldn’t worry about that, these earthquakes are perfectly natural and as we all know, if its natural it can’t hurt you!
So our next destination is clear; we must go to El Gemini and somehow obtain a Geran, which is definitely not a Chocobo, despite them not selling the Gerans.
Our sixth spirit is just within reach, but the all-powerful Geran is needed.
I adjust my spirits for the local enemies.
And now we come to the real meat and potatoes of the update, the new mercenaries available to us. And these two are a married couple, so they come as a package deal. Lovie is the magical half of the equation for this pair.
Gan is the physical half of the equation.
Let us compare them to the very powerful and capable mercenaries we already have. No point in doing a comparison to Cheche, he would lose to one of the starter mercenaries from Andel.
Comparing Iris to Lovie is an interesting one; on the one hand Iris’s highly leveled spirits means that she is a great deal more powerful than Lovie, whose spirits outside of Sky have hardly any leveling at all. On the other hand, Lovie has access to all the elemental attacks, her Sky spirit is already high enough to make Gubo effective in random encounters, and despite Lovie being two levels lower than Iris, her Wisdom is significantly greater. In short, Lovie has the potential to become significantly more powerful than Iris.
The comparison between Nikita and Gan is more even. Gan’s magic is super terrible and he has none of the utility options that Nikita has. His strength is significantly higher and so he can do more damage per hit, but he does not have access to the Fist of Fury and with it the ability to strike many times per round.
To me, the ideal recruitment would be to drop Cheche and Iris to make room for Lovie and Gan. But! My decision is not the only one that matters. I will be giving until Wednesday for people to vote on whether to recruit the married couple and which two characters I will be dropping to make room for them. Once Wednesday comes, I will take the results of that vote and play accordingly.
See you on the other side my friends!
2 Likes
please feel free to dump Cheche, he’s been haunting me like a snapping turtle on my arse this whole time