wish i could summon taverns
Amusingly, in Lennus the Summon Tavern was “The Smell of Liquor”. Clearly Chezni wafts it on the air and the desired mercenary zooms on down to grab it out of his hands because he is a minor and he is not allowed.
We now return to Karon and go back into the inn.
How very nice of Garana. We had a bit of a time in the tower so a free night of sleep will do us a world of good.
We go up to our room…
And now Garana and Joyce are gone. Huh. Well, I’m sure there’s nothing suspicious about that.
Or it could be that we were fooled right from the start and Garana was a filthy liar and a filthy traitor to the cause. The urgency of the scene is a bit marred by the awkward substitution of “Hostage” in place of “Sacrifice”. We then have to fight a Hood, an early game enemy who dies with trivial ease.
Talking to these guys will trigger a fight with two hoods. It is still not a challenge.
This is actually the first time that I’ve stopped to talk to the specters flanking Joyce. Interestingly, the three on the right all say the same thing as the guy on the top left. Feels kind of like they weren’t really expecting me to stop and talk to them.
And there you have it. If he makes us “hostages”, things will get really bad.
Garana gets the butcher sprite from over in Conshuito. He has no special abilities in battle, he just hits hard and he hits three to five times a turn. The sound effects they use for him hitting you really makes you feel like you’re being run over by a truck. Still, between Bury and the Gomutai, it only takes us a few turns to finish Garana off.
Zaygos will Likely crush us? You need to work on your hype talk. But you can’t.
Because you are dead and your specters are all gone.
Its okay Joyce, we were all fooled. We’ll just get you down from that not-cross and…
After this she falls silent. We interact with her again…
For all that Paladin’s Quest has a clunky translation, this is a moment that, much like what happened with Smash back in Hagudo, works. A big part of that credit has to go to the soundtrack; the haunting deathly tones of Karon’s theme makes the feeling of death inevitable.
And since Chezni and Midia just had to dig this grave themselves, I think we should give them some time to process what happened before continuing on.
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Alas, the revolution must continue on, and so Chezni and Midia must follow Joyce’s final request and meet with the resistance to the southeast.
Gunny and Bean gain a level on the way.
In the southeast we get some new enemy encounters, Specters and Freezers. Specters are fire-type enemies, but with Bury it is a simple thing to return all to their grave.
I also head back to the rope network to confirm that indeed, we can’t go back to Misuto.
A sneak attack on the Snowsaur and Snowprey means they don’t get to do squat. Its good to be very very powerful.
Also good is Midia gaining a level. More speed means more Bury going off before the enemy can do anything about it.
This guy is now on the world map and he has a simple question for us. Let’s say yes.
His logic is sound. We talk to him again and this happens.
After that he will step aside and there will be a hole in the ground that wasn’t there before.
But what if we said we weren’t spies from Zaygos?
I think saying yes was the more fun route.
Upon dropping through the hole we find this group of resistance fighters who inform us that we are running out of time.
But were any of them wielding the almighty Gomutai, or had the invincible Midia on their side? I don’t think so!
We’ve run into Fiery again; hopefully he won’t run into as ignominious an end as Joyce did.
I’m doing as little grinding as I can get away with, its not my fault that Zaygos is still one step ahead of me.
A bit late for a tutorial on equipping stuff you buy.
Apparently things have been happening in Naskuot while we’ve been gone. I wonder if we’ll see any sign of that when we go back?
Combat Skates go right on Chezni. Just picture a kid with rollerskates on his feet and a giant fuck-off sword in his hands.
This guy will not just sell items, but he’ll do so at market rates, no mark up here!
Following that advice, we go through the door to the southwest.
We enter the house as indicated.
And here we get the Water Spirit! That makes six spirits now for Chezni and Midia!
The Water-Water spell is Defense Up, and I didn’t feel like making a whole nother screenshot just for one spell. Defeat A is a bit of a misnomer; rather than targeting all foes with the possibility of instant death, it instead targets a single foe. Probably a typo.
Midia’s unique spell is Wall, which can make us very tough to damage when leveled up right.
But we’re not done yet, we’ve got some mercenaries to possibly recruit!
Checan has an interesting variety of spells and good equipment, including his own High Bottle. Can definitely recommend.
The Rasav brothers come as a pair, and as you can see GRasav is very weak. However, there is an exploit involving the Summon Tavern that we can use to make GRasav even more powerful than his brother.
So, the time has come once again for the board to vote; who do I recruit and who do I kick out? As mentioned the Rasav brothers are a set so if we recruit them we are saying goodbye to Gunny and Bean. If you vote for Checan, please indicate if you want Gunny or Bean to leave.
1 Like
I say it is Rasav Day!
on one hand checan is kinda hot, on the other hand i want to see what kind of gamebreaking silliness the rasav brothers can bring to the table.
hmm…
i vote for the rasavs
sorry bean, rasavs are here now
I’ve kept you all waiting in suspense long enough, time to reveal the exploit!
We must first part with Gunny and Bean, and Bean was very happy to have been part of our lives.
The first half of the exploit is now complete!
This guy goes through a long-winded explanation that Noi Gren is in Zaygos’s temple, but he’s holding a festival to celebrate Noi Gren’s completion so we have to go to Roki, infiltrate that festival, and then go into the temple. He also tells us that we will not be able to come back here once we leave. So after we talk he gets out of the way and we get on the boat.
Someone needs to teach Chezni how to dock a boat.
In any event, now that we have left the resistance base, the next step of the exploit is to kick the Rasav brothers out of the party.
Now we use the Summon Tavern.
We pick JRasav.
Apparently that short boat ride we took was a real life changer.
And life changer is right; our boy GRasav jumped from level 20 to level 55.
His stats are all accordingly much higher, but that’s not all that’s changed about G.
He has magic now! He’s got a good array of spells that can serve us very well in this game. AT S, or Attack Self, is a spell that makes the enemies focus their attacks on the caster, and with how beefy G is now, that’s not a bad idea.
On our way to Roki we have this preemptive strike against new enemies, the Firesaur and Zip.
This damage comes from JRasav’s Wind Sword, which is the only weapon in the game that attacks twice.
And this is the damage from GRasav’s Seed Sword. If anything shows how much stronger G has become, this is it. In addition, the Seed Sword can freeze an enemy that it hits, so that’s even more useful.
Less useful is Chezni’s LStorm spell. Much like how Bury starts at the bottom and works its way up, LStorm starts at the top and works its way down, which means that for the time being it will not be very helpful. That said, once it is decently leveled and starts getting more of the screen, LStorm will become one of my go-to spells.
This fight ends up being the only one we get into on the way to Roki, so we go straight to town.
We are once more greeted by the peaceful Saskuot town music.
Somehow I don’t think this will be as simple as going to the town hall and registering as citizens.
And so are we, but for very different reasons.
This is the building up above the item shop. As soon as we enter we are greeted by the jaunty piano music that was playing in the bar in Hagudo. Good times.
Heh, this is the kind of thing that can happen if you talk to someone in the middle of them moving around.
I wouldn’t be so sure about that.
Ha! Told you!
She’s just reinforcing the good mood about town.
A worried mayor? In a JRPG? This sounds like an opportunity for strangers like us to swoop in, do a thing, and get a reward!
Or blow it up in his hubris. One or the other.
Yeah, you guys have been pretty cheery about your despot seizing control of the entire planet. Good for you.
This person in the building to the upper right is in for a rude awakening when she finds out that we are the resistance!
Oh, um really? Wow I had no idea, I wonder what those Naskuot fools could be thinking? You don’t suppose Lord Zaygos has heard these rumors? I bet he has better things to be doing with his time anyway.
For no particular reason I’m boosting Chezni’s defense.
I would imagine so.
I’m not entirely sure what was supposed to be there, but miscreant does not seem like the right fit. Thoughts?
Now we’re in the mayor’s house.
Now we are robbing the mayor’s house. You might think this not a good idea, but consider that those water levels are going to be critical for getting LStorm to be useful.
A weapon that I’m not going to use.
Will do.
The mayor’s so depressed, he doesn’t even notice us robbing him from five feet away. This is serious.
To make a long story short, he wants something called the Spirit of Raiga for the festival, but the spirit is in a temple to the south and is guarded by a horrible monster, so he needs us spiritualists to go in and get it for him. Also, he calls us the second advent of Gabnid purely for agreeing to help him. Better hope Zaygos doesn’t find out you said that, could get dicey.
Over in the tavern we meet this proud father of the year.
Cider, yes. That is what the barkeep is serving.
Hmm, curious. Wonder what’s keeping him out?
To save a lot of time, you will need to buy every piece of equipment at the weapons and armor store to get her to join the party.
Upon purchasing everything, which will cost a pretty penny, you then return to Lillie and select the appropriate piece of equipment from your inventory to give to her. This is a bit tedious, but…
She can now join the party.
Lillie is a very strong character, and if we weren’t using the Rasav brothers I would highly recommend Checan and Lillie instead. Still, there may come a time where we will come back to Roki and recruit her then. Keep that in the back of your mind.
But for now we rest and next time I will go to the southern temple to get the Spirit of Raiga and with it we can finally confront the monster of Noi Gren!
6 Likes
On the way to the southern temple, we get a Preyer’s Tears after a battle and use it on Chezni to buff his defense.
And now we are at the temple itself. A pretty snazzy looking place.
And here we see the gimmick of this dungeon; we will need to lower the water levels in order to advance. How will we do that?
Well for starters we need to kill these jerks. Ms. EX does fire type magic including the Heat spell, while Dogfish do regular attacks. Between Midia’s Bury and the Rasav brothers incredibly powerful swords, they drop in no time.
And Chezni gains a level.
And now for the rest of the enemies in this dungeon. Cornfish can do electric attacks, Knockers can do lots of physical attacks, and the Stenka can summon more of themselves.
The one time I get an encounter where I can show LStorm’s damage, and it is pitiful. This will change.
And here we see that by activating the console we lower the water. We just need to do that at each level and we’ll reach the bottom in no time.
Midia earns a level with her amazing Bury power.
See that chest to the right? I could have picked that up earlier if I’d gone to the right at the start of the dungeon instead of the left. We’ll pick it up on the way out.
For now we’ll give a big Sky boost to Midia.
And another level for Chezni.
We are just swimming in S Taverns. Also, make sure that you’ve healed yourself before activating the next console. Why?
Because there’s a boss fight here!
This is Bubbly and he can cast Storm. I don’t know why he calls himself an eagle but I bet he’s killed a lot of people who pointed that out to him.
Storm is no joke, it does a lot of damage.
His physical attacks are no joke either, and he can do a bunch in one round.
Fortunately with STR UP being applied to everyone, we’re able to deal well over two hundred damage to him. He only lasts three rounds under that onslaught.
I also failed to screencap it, but by this point Chezni’s LStorm is now high enough in level to hit enemies in the middle of the screen, like Bubbly here.
J and Midia both gain levels here.
And there’s the treasure we came for. But we’re not done yet.
On the way to the treasure I missed I gain another level for Chezni. The big 4-0.
Not as good of a gain as I would have liked, but every point counts.
Midia also gains a level before we leave the temple.
On our way back to Roki, we encounter these jerks.
LStorm has gotten a little stronger, but it still has a long way to go before it reaches its true destructive potential.
We go back to town, rest at the inn, restore our medicine, then go to see the mayor.
He is so excited about this that he agrees to our request to be in the parade without issue. In fact, we get to be at the front of the parade!
And so we are greeted by the supremely festive Shimrek Parade theme!
Most everyone will say one of these two lines, but there is an exception.
Awww, its the guy from the bar talking about his daughter getting to be in the parade. I have never seen this text before, I was just talking to random guys waving and cheering us on in the parade, and I stumbled on this. I love how even with as many times I’ve played this game, I can still find happy little moments like this. 
Our parade is represented by two dancing girls and two shiny machine things I am rightly unable to name.
By going east, we eventually find ourselves in this cheery landscape. I’m sure the giant sword architecture is actually symbolic of how Zaygos is burying the hatchet.
If we’d tried coming here earlier, the guard would have told us that Zaygos had closed the temple doors and was refusing entry to everyone. Oddly enough, the peppy festival music would be playing.
That’s the brainwashing kicking in.
This guy seems to have a bad case of stage fright.
This man is easily impressed.
And there’s the man of the hour himself. I wouldn’t worry about the platform right in front of him, I’m sure we can just stab him as soon as we talk to him.
Oh we’re here to celebrate all right!
…Um, we’re the Chezni and Midia from Saskuot?
Shit. Well, that’s okay. Just because he knew we were coming doesn’t mean he can do anything to stop us!
Or he could drop us down below the floor with the suspicious line in the middle. At this point the cheery festival music stops and in its place is this.
The ground opens up and Chezni looks around.
Hah, you fool, this is exactly what we came here to do in the first place! You’re falling right into our clutches!
They’ll get to revel for five seconds before Kormu’s sword cuts through Lokiarn like a hot knife through butter!
…This could not get any worse.
Zaygos is a dick. He puts the Dick in Dick-tator. I’m Chezni and I’m making immature dick jokes as my final revenge before we are horribly murdered by a giant unkillable super monster.
As Lokiarn approaches, a thing happens that I wasn’t able to fully capture. Basically Midia steps out from Chezni, and then Chezni interposes himself between her and Lokiarn. Its a little thing, but its the little things that go a long way.
This is Lokiarn who enters the battlefield in the same way that Jarmlu did. I have no idea why this animation is applied for them and nothing else in the game.
Incidentally I forgot to equip Kormu’s Sword before triggering this event. I wonder if the Gomutai will fare against Lokiarn?
It does not. Only Kormu’s sword can damage Lokiarn. Every single other attack option in the game does nothing to it.
And here’s his primary attack animation. He swings his swords at you really fast in a way that you can’t catch in screen shots and hits one person for a lot of damage.
His other attack animation is to take one really big swing with one sword. Note that he killed Midia first. Prick.
Just like with the monster of Dal Gren, our first fight with the monster of Noi Gren ends with our painful defeat.
And yet we are somehow alive.
Show of hands, who is shocked that Zaygos is locking up political dissidents?
This guy gets it. Zaygos is a dick.
When we move down to this corner, there is an explosion and someone comes running out of the wall.
Yay, the much teased at Fiery has joined the party at long last!
Fiery is a woman on a mission and she’s got a pretty interesting arsenal to make it happen.
This guy will refill our medicine for us. Its good to know that the resistance still has our back.
This is Blades. He can be pretty good, especially since he has the Water and Air levels to really make LStorm work for us. But its up to the thread to decide if we want to pay for his services or if we want to keep this act a trio.
Finally if we go to the south we find stairs leading here and can talk to these guys.
All right everyone, what’s it to be? Will we recruit Blades, or perhaps we can use an S Tavern to recruit an old friend to fight at our side once more? I leave the decision to you.
2 Likes
Let’s see what Blades has to offer
Congratulations Blades, welcome to the team just in time to save the world.
New enemies, the captain and the G. Sage. The G.Sage buffs his allies and tries to apply status effects to the party. They never succeed at the latter at any point in this run.
Fiery’s poison needle has good odds on freezing an enemy in place. Pretty useful, especially against a certain enemy type we’ll be running into soon.
I like the architecture here. Its really science-fantasy the way I like it.
And here we have the Patriots; they have an Attack Back effect on them, meaning trying to hit them with physical attacks can mess you up real bad. This is where Fiery’s Poison Needle can be very handy.
Following the path we will find a series of rooms. This first room has nothing in it, though there’s something about the machinery in the middle that seems awful familiar…
More new enemies, the Rackgorns. Nothing too special about these guys, they are beatsticks.
Upon entering the next room we find Kormu’s sword! That…was very simple and easy. Huh. Still, I bet the Armor and Helmet will have way better security, this Zaygos guy has shown us he knows what he’s doing.
Or getting the Helmet back is just as easy.
And here we have more new enemies, the Fighter and the Hermit. The Hermit can heal allies and summon more copies, while the Fighter gets a ton of attacks every turn.
But at least Chezni gains a level so that’s good.
And with that we have recovered all of Kormu’s equipment with nothing but random encounters in our way.
I sold my Fire Shield after getting the Gomutai and so Chezni can let one arm rest easy, I guess.
A level for Midia, and just in time too.
This building is a different color from the rest, so we know this one is a big deal.
Remember, the only thing that can hurt Lokiarn is Kormu’s sword, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the game checked to make sure all three pieces are equipped before letting you do damage. I didn’t check myself because I didn’t feel like it. If you want to test that in your playthrough, let me know how it worked out.
Up ahead is Noi Gren. I like all these orbs with swords sticking out of them. Feels very Revolutionary Girl Utena.
I wonder if that was Lokiarn shouting at us. Some mysteries will never be solved.
Since Chezni is the only one who can do any damage in this fight, everyone is going to be on buffing duty.
Here is the damage Chezni does with Kormu’s sword normally.
Here is the damage Lokiarn does to Chezni after his defense has been buffed.
And here is Chezni’s damage after his strength has been buffed. Despite his imposing appearence and vicious attack animations, Lokiarn is not a real threat; he only hits one character at a time and as long as you keep Chezni healed with Midia’s high bottle, you will win in four, maybe five rounds.
Hooray! Now we just need to do the exact same thing at Dal Gren and Lennus will be saved!
Say wha?
Yeah, that’s right. The legendary Kormu equipment that we spent so much time gathering and stressing the importance of, is now destroyed. I’m going to present my fan theory here; this was Zaygos’s plan all along. He created Noi Gren and Lokiarn so that he could destroy Kormu’s equipment so we couldn’t use it to destroy Dal Gren. He puts on a big show in front of his people to give them something to enjoy, but after that makes sure that we will be able to do the real fight with minimal interference and no one watching.
In any event, everything’s starting to blow up now.
In any event, whether this was all an elaborate plan or just happenstance, Zaygos wants us dead for real now.
Fiery, being awesome, runs down to face the man who killed her brother.
And with the bridge destroyed, she’ll be taking him on alone.
If we press down at this point, Fiery will shout at us. There’s no actual time limit here, but we may as well get a move on.
And so we fall very very far down. Its a good thing fall damage is not a thing in this game.
And now we find ourselves here, in this very different place with a very different musical theme playing.
In any event, let’s check out that statue right above us.
Well isn’t that nice? We get some clues on how to proceed, and some lore about Gabnid and Sophie.
Examining the door with the fire crest on it gives us this message. So, what do we do now?
We go into Midia’s inventory, select the Sophie’s Crown, and open the fire.
And on our way in the next room we encounter some robots! The needles can do a single target break or a multi-targeting physical attack, while the Flybot can do a single target status effect or physical attack. Their positioning makes them perfect for smashing with LStorms.
We get on board this transport thing here…
And we get zooming along. Note that at a certain point there is a flickering barrier effect at the front of the transport, but it seems I was not able to capture it.
But I was able to catch the music for this part.
We get dropped off here and the transport returns whence it came.
By leaving that room and moving to the left we find an Earth door, meaning we will need Sophie’s boots to open this one.
Moving on up we find a robot. A friendly robot who will sell us medicine. This robot is my new best friend.
This is the Save Robot. He is my sometimes friend.
To the left is the Air Door needing Sophie’s Ring to open, and to the right is the water door needing Sophie’s Dress to open. But that old man in the corner with the amazing beard. Could that be…
It is, its Mouth the mercenary mentioned oh so long ago as the greatest of all mercenaries!
I would bet there are many secrets about this place. After all that, the dialogue ends. Its a bit awkward, but in order to ask him to join us, we need to talk to him again.
Usually its the character’s portraits that are superior to their sprites, but in Mouth’s case the opposite is the case. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that he has amazing equipment, including our first Mega Bottle that can heal you back to full no matter how much damage you’ve taken, and a very strong assortment of spells with all his spirits at high levels.
This is not up for a vote, I am recruiting Mouth. He is one of the best characters in the game and one that I would take to the endgame every time if it was up to me. But in the end it will not be up to me, it will be up to you what party I use.
With no way of using any of the side doors at present, we go up the northern stairs and proceed on, hoping to find Sophie’s equipment.
On the way we meet a very interesting robot named Nails!
Nails, as he notes, is very powerful but he can’t be healed by anything other than his Energy Draw weapon, he has no magic, and he can’t gain any levels.
So, here is my question for you; do we drop Blades in favor of Nails? Blades can get very powerful with his LStorm, but that will take a while, and this place is very big and long with lots of treasures and monsters to find. Cast your votes, and I will comply.
Edit: I forgot to mention this before, but this is where my original run of this game ended. This dungeon is so massive with so many twists and turns that I just got lost and couldn’t move on. Fortunately I’ve done this many times since, so I know I can avenge my 11 year old self. I think I was eleven, I’m not sure.
6 Likes
Woah Nails is cool
No healing sucks though. Can robots be poisoned?
I don’t believe he can be poisoned, but then again poison is not something that comes up very often in the first place. Perhaps if I add him to the party, I can find out the answer to that question.
I vote Mouth because his name is Mouth.
i gotta vote for the robot
I wanna see if Nails really is tough as nails.
Goodbye Blades.
Hello Nails!
Just looking at the next floor, we start getting an inkling of how things are going to work here, that we are going to have to go up and down the stairs to access different sections of the same floor in order to get all the treasures. And we want all these treasures.
Like this one here, the Psychic Beam. It is a weapon that I can equip on either Chezni or Midia, and not only does it have good damage, but it also has a strong chance of inflicting confuse on whoever it hits. Right now its going on Midia.
This damage comes from Nails’s Energy Beam weapon in his head slot. Not very good. It can inflict a status effect I believe, but with damage that bad he has better options.
Chezni and Midia gain a level.
And more importantly, Sophie’s Gown which allows us to open the Water door. Also if used in battle it will cast Magic Wall. We will be equipping that on Midia and never taking it off.
This is the damage from Nails’s missile weapon, which hits every enemy on screen. Much much better.
With all these little sections being cordoned off, that’s going to be a lot of up and down the stairs to get all the treasure.
This is the damage from Nails’s Flamethrower, which acts as the Fire All spell. These enemies are very fire resistant, so this was not the best showing for this weapon.
And now we get Sophie’s Sword! Not part of the set that we need in order to move around the underground, but still a nice weapon option for Midia.
And this is the Energy Draw healing Nails. Note that the Energy Draw will target a group of enemies, so if there are a lot of enemies in one group Nails can heal up a lot off of them. Oh, and also this enemy is called a Wirearm and they can do a regular physical attack or hit everyone with electricity.
And now we have a Flamethrower! Note that unlike with Nails, this will take up both of Chezni’s arms and he can already cast Fire All so its not that great. Still, we have a Flame Thrower now. This place is amazing.
Finally, new armor for Chezni! The Cosmo Clothes I like to imagine look like shiny future space pajammas or something like that.
Much much better defense now.
More space age armor for Chezni!
And a new shield for Chezni, the Rift Shield. With this the Gomutai will go on the back burner so that Chezni can equip it along with the Psychic Beam and thus have much better defense going for him.
I just like the way you can see the floor below you here.
And now the Cosmo Helmet!
With this Chezni is suited up like a hero from another world. Its a very neat cumulative effect after spending so much time in a largely sword and sorcery environment.
And here we have Sophie’s Ring; in addition to opening up the Sky Door, it will also cast Bolt Single in battle. It also serves as Midia’s shield.
All we are missing is Sophie’s boots and we’ll have a full set.
We encounter a water door at the top, use Sophie’s Gown, and…
We are back at the Throne of Immortals! And say, is that Jo-An down there?
It also doesn’t help that there are now a pair of rocks blocking our way down. Sometimes the game is very unsubtle about not wanting us to be able to go somewhere.
On our way back down Midia and Chezni gain level again.
And so we’ve made it back to the medicine robot and despite all the enemies we’ve run into, Nails is still at almost max health thanks to the Energy Draw weapon. Nails is indeed, tough as Nails.
I will continue our exploration of the underground in the next post, which I will be starting on right now.
4 Likes
We use the ring on the sky door.
Take the high speed transport.
Broken glass tubes the size of people in ancient super advanced underground complexes is never a good sign.
What is a good sign is this very potent Air Card we find almost immediately.
That is very interesting and also concerning. Why exactly did they want to adapt Raigan life forms to Lennus? And given all the broken tubes here, how many life forms have we run into that have their origin from these labs?
Midia has now maxed out her Sky element. Just water and air left to go for her, just like Chezni!
You can’t see their names, but these guys are Ball and Stick. They are decently dangerous on their own, but if a Ball has a Stick right below them, they can join together to do a very powerful area attack on the party. Prioritize killing the Balls.
Even with one miss, Nails’s Missile is putting in the work.
Mouth has gained a level. I haven’t really shown it, but his LStorm and Bolt All spells are both every effective at clearing out enemies.
The Facewall is a bit of a goofy enemy.
When he attacks, the three parts of his face will flicker, and his final expression will determine what kind of attack and how hard he’ll hit.
When he says that Gabnid wanted to control the life forms, did he mean the ones here in this lab…or the ones that were already on Lennus? Given that Kormu and Sophie were not on board with this, I lean to the latter. Alas, this poor robot does not know that these guys are long long gone.
More really good gains from these cards!
Huzzah, a Mega Bottle! Now Midia can heal any one party member to full health regardless of damage.
More level up fun.
An Earth Card. We don’t really have a use for that right now, but we will eventually.
After taking the elevator up to here, we pass through a secret passage in the wall. What treasure was hidden away here?
Sophie’s Boots!
Now Midia has the full ensemble. Its so nice to be able to coordinate for once.
New enemies, the Trickart and the Catcher. The Trickart does attacks by rotating its facial features, while Catcher can absorb your HP.
More importantly, I can now show off LStorm’s third and final tier of development. It will now hit every enemy on screen and there is very little in the game that resists this damage type. A maxed out LStorm barrage is incredibly potent and if you have an entire party with maxed out Water and Air spirits, you can easily smash your way through most random encounters in a single turn.
I don’t know if we have enough Summon Taverns. In any event, we step outside to find out where we are.
Hey, its that place in the mountains by Daphne’s home! So the underground complex extends from Saskuot, to the Throne, and all the way to Naskuot. The underground is very big.
We return to the base and use Sophie’s Boots to open the Earth door.
Our high speed transport takes us somewhere very blue.
Midia gains a level almost immediately.
And another Earth Card to save for later.
New enemy, the Skygazer. There is…nothing remarkable about them at all. Just smash them out of the sky.
At least they give good experience.
With both of our sky spirits maxed out, we don’t have much use for this. Maybe if we get a merc who needs more sky spirit.
Another Mega Bottle! With this, I officially retire the Bomb Bottle. I got more use out of it than I thought I would, but in the end magic is better than bombs.
More lonely robots. The Underground is a depressing place.
Yes, please play it! Time to get some messages straight from the source!
That’s an ominous start! Not that on each text box, a set of scratchy sound effects play, as though the recording has degraded. Its a good touch.
That is very unfortunate. Still, we learn a lot from this, that Sophie was an impassioned person who cared for the people of Lennus, that Gabnid all but did something to disable Kormu, and despite their opposition, Gabnid gave Sophie something that she could use against him. If only there was a way to find out what that was, it might be able to help us against Dal Gren.
And now for a more material gain.
We take the elevator up, go through the secret passage, and we get Chezni a Wind Sword, which will replace the Psychic Beam for that sweet, sweet double damage goodness.
Midia gains a level.
A fire card! Very strangely late in the game to get one of those, but there are certain mercs who could use that.
And now Midia only has one spirit left to level up!
This is right by Misuto and the Kaiyowa cave.
On our way back out Chezni gains another level.
Chezni could be the power boy for Gubo Milk.
Mouth’s Air spirit has been maxed out and the rest of his spirits are almost there. This is very handy, Mouth will achieve his full potential with minimal time investment and he’s a very strong contender because of that.
And then he gains another level on top of that.
More agility for Chezni.
Another level for Midia.
And with that we are back where we started. We are in excellent shape, we’ve leveled up and gained a lot of power with our spirits, we’ve gotten really good equipment, and now we only have one door left to go through. But that will be for the next post. See you soon!
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We use Sophie’s Gown on the Water Door, take the transport, go up the stairs and we find ourselves…
…Back at the Magic School! After all this time, we’ve come full circle, but are no closer to defeating the monster of Dal Gren than we were when we left to begin with.
Nice to have some appreciation for our hard work.
That sounds like it would be incredibly bad if he were to do that.
Oh. Well that’s good. Kind of saps our sense of urgency, but still good.
Dun dun dun! Maybe we’ll finally find out about that thing that killed half the people in Reiyold way back in the opening demo of the game, though how that’s going to help us beat Dal Gren, I don’t know. I mean, I do know, but you know what I mean.
At this point he steps aside. If you are not sure how exactly you’re supposed to go back to Chezni’s hometown, talk to the master again.
Nice and simple. And with Ratsurk right next door, we can even go see Midia’s family, show off how powerful she’s gotten, the sweet new duds she’s wearing…
Or maybe the town is in ruins and its playing the Karon theme. At least not everyone is dead.
That is very disturbing. Its not even the monster that did all this, but the people themselves driven to attack each other. This has gotten dark, and its not just the muted lighting.
That is a lot of pressure.
Midia’s surviving parent does not believe his home can be saved.
I can’t help imagining that he made sure to cough on Chezni directly.
Remember those two mercenaries in the tavern here who wouldn’t give us the time of day? Well, now they will! In fact, they’re the only ones left here.
Peppi is a solid option with good equipment and solid magic. Crush in particular can be very effective, though it does have accuracy issues.
Hawk is the best spellcaster we can ever hope to recruit. He has six spirits, all at very high levels, giving him an incredibly wide variety of options in battle.
With new mercenaries comes a decision to make. Who do I recruit, and who do I kick out? Mouth has more than lived up to the rumors about him and has proven very powerful in battle with his high level magics. Nails is also strong, but in addition to being unable to get any stronger he also lacks any ability to support the party. But the choice is yours.
Just be sure that if you decide that I should only recruit one person here, that you make it clear who you want me to kick out to make room for them. This has been a long series of posts, but I hope you’ve enjoyed them.
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nails for hawk imo
Sorry this has taken so long, but you may now rejoice, for the path to the end of Paladin’s Quest has now begun!
We say goodbye to the Super Fighting Robot Nails and bring in the Super Spiritualist Hawk. With Mouth and Hawk at our side, we have a very good endgame party.
The man at the rope network doesn’t really much care what we do at this point. Since that means he doesn’t charge us, that’s fine by me.
The rope network takes us up into this very marshy landscape. In order to reach Reiyold, we need to go to the left hand path.
This is a Destron. It can physically attack one character or use lightning on everyone. He’s got a pretty good amount of HP, it’ll take a couple turns to beat him. Status ailments and buffs can help defeat him more quickly, but with how I’ve been working on my magic, my regular magic attacks can shred him pretty quickly. Note that in this playthrough I will be having Hawk use DefeatS a lot, and sadly it never killed anyone. I swear I’ve seen it work pretty good in past playthroughs, but I guess the RNG was not with me.
These are evilrats. They attack and summon more of themselves. Bury them. Bury them good.
We’ve now arrived at Reiyold and in this place we hear the peaceful Naskuot town theme. It has been a long time since we’ve heard that tune, it feels nostalgic now. A fitting mood now that Chezni has come back home.
This guy tells us about the sea hemisphere, and that there is a strange island there. I bet there will be something nice for us on that island.
Perhaps those guys are on that strange island?
You bet we’re going to go see mother, because Chezni is a good boy! We just…want to go talk to everyone else first. That’s all. Nothing wrong with that.
Ix-nay on the ide-bray, she’s anding-stay where she can ear-hay you!
Despite the peaceful music, it seems that Reiyold is also having its troubles in the wake of Dal Gren’s activation.
I’m sure the fact that our money is on screen doesn’t mean anything.
This is what happens if we say yes.
I guess this kid is supposed to be about Chezni’s age, but the use of the much smaller sprite for him makes it much less clear than I’d like.
The house at the bottom of town has a stat booster, and this guy will be important after we’ve talked to Chezni’s mother.
Upon entering Chezni’s home, his mother runs from the other side of the table to greet us.
As good as her word, we get a free night’s rest to recover from our trip here.
Now when we go back to the house down below, we can get a boat. Event flags are fun!
This game is seriously over-estimating how many S-Taverns I need.
We leave the house, go down to the docks, get on the boat…
Freedom, sweet glorious freedom! That’s right, we decide where we go in this boat! Now as intimated to us earlier, we can’t leave this little body of water thanks to those weird lumps in the ocean.
Our goal is down this hole. What is down this hole?
More science fiction, that is what is down the hole!
This is how the animation for DefeatS looks; a big black hole tries to suck the enemies in, only as I said before, it never works.
Level for Chezni.
More stats for Chezni, always a plus.
New enemy here, the Baljan1. He has two different attacks, a regular attack, and a much more powerful attack. Lightning magic works pretty well against it.
and awesomely enough, that Air card was exactly what Chezni needed to max out his Air Spirit. His LStorm is really hitting hard now.
Mouth also has two spirits maxed out, just two more to go and he’ll be at full power.
This door is locked. It is in fact the only door of its kind in the entire game, which makes it stand out in a weird way. Really this entire sequence is a bit out of place for reasons I’ll get into shortly.
Hawk and Midia gain level.
This is the key that we need for that door down below.
Gravity boots are awesome and are going straight on Chezni and staying there.
Hawk has now maxed out his first spirit. We’ve barely gotten started on him and he’s already achieved an important milestone.
Mouth gains a level.
We use our key and pass through. Upon use it disappears from the inventory like we’re in Legend of Zelda.
Chezni gains a level and Mouth maxes out another spirit. So very close.
A Photon Cannon! I never use it, but its pretty powerful and is worth trying out just for the novelty factor.
And this Thunder Saber is the weapon that we need to collect to trigger the next event in Reiyold. Beyond that, it has no importance. Its a nice sword, but that’s it. Sure, its not different from most of the random stuff we got in the underground before, but that felt special anyway while this feels padded. Well, lucky for us getting back out is a straight shot.
Midia gains a level on the way out.
These are Pitfish. They can attack or use lightning. By this point, we can reliably have everyone cast LStorm and be done with the enemies in a single round.
Hawk gains a level just before we return to town.
And right away something is very wrong. Zaygos’s theme is playing, there is the sound of fire, and the screen is tinted red.
Zaygos’s forces spared the save woman, but that’s it. It is striking after the Karon sequence obscured what was going on, the game is being much more blunt here. I guess the localizers gave up on trying to deny that the corpses were corpses.
There are a number of Alornso enemies running around, who we can kill with ease.
In so doing Chezni and Mouth’s spirits are both maxed out. With all other enemies gone and all other people already dead, we go to Chezni’s home.
If you had done this before the start of the game, that would have been one thing.
But now Admiral Alon?
After a round of strength up on Chezni and DefenseDown on you, Chezni will cut through him in no time. Admiral Alon’s attacks can hit multiple characters for about 200 damage, but we can easily kill him before that would even remotely be relevant.
He dies and Chezni gains a level.
Chezni’s mother has a lot to say as we arrived in time to keep her from being killed, though the game will be frustratingly ambiguous on this point up until the ending. To save some time, Chezni’s mother explains that she’s not his real mother, that her husband Dorga died in the big tsunami 13 years ago, and the next day she found a strange ship with Chezni as a baby in it, who she raised and thought of as Dorga brought back to her. This sounds a little awkward so its just as well we don’t dig into that last detail. She directs us to go under the bed and use that ship to go out into the ocean. She assures us she is fine and sends us on our way.
And as we take to the sea in our brand new boat, we get the sailing theme for the game.
And with this boat we are able to get past those lumps and enter the open ocean. We now get to explore the whole wide world of Lennus.
And our map has been updated to show that there’s more to this world than we knew. Next time on Paladin’s quest, I will show you all the sights there are to see now that we have our own ship.
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