Complete text of Legend of Mystery
From Foolswiki
The young hero, mute and nameless (from now on in this text, and always in the game, referred to as “The Hero”) wakes up early on his sixteenth birthday, receiving his dead father’s sword for a present. The celebration is interrupted by his fairy, who comes in and tells him that his land is in grave danger, and that he is the only one who can possibly save it. The fairy continues by mentioning a magical land where he can learn legendary magic, powerful enough to save his land, but first he must collect the four Elemental Stones of Old, which are scattered throughout the lands in thematic dungeons.
First our hero should set his sights on going to a nearby town, named Generic Town, to collect information on the whereabouts of the first stone. When he arrives at the town, slightly scathed from the fifty random encounters he endured under the two-mile trek, he learns of the nasty bandit king, known only as The Bandit King, that has kidnapped the mayor and taken control of Generic Town, wielding an oversized sword and wearing a black cape. The Hero learns that if he is to have any hope of defeating The Bandit King, he too must learn to wield an oversized sword, so he travels to a nearby cavern to seek out the swordmaster, Eigon.
The cave is fully lit, despite the absence of torches of any kind, and filled to the brim with strange puzzles and mazes and an infinite supply of bats. The Hero fights his way to the core of the cave, where he sees a dragon attacking Eigon, the elderly swordsman. The Hero helps Eigon defeat the dragon. Eigon explains that he got hit in the head by a comet and now he has amnesia and can’t remember anything besides what his name is and how to fight with oversized swords. Eigon joins The Hero’s quest in hope to discover more about his past. Together, they head back to the town, and under the cover of darkness, they sneak into a mysteriously unguarded back door to the bandits’ lair, little suspecting that they have wandered into an ingeniously conceived trap.
It turns out that the bandits DID know they were coming, and have prepared an ambush! Having fought their way to The Bandit King’s room, they are left to fight a hideous slime beast as The Bandit King retreats in a puff of smoke. However, once vanquished, the slime beast turns out to be the kidnapped mayor under an enchantment. The mayor then informs them that The Bandit King is heading for the Mountain of Woe, strangely the only mountain on the entire continent, to get the first elemental stone, the Wind Stone of Old. The mayor sends his white mage daughter, Melony, a beautiful, strong-willed, free-spirited girl, to accompany them; she is nicknamed “Melon” for anatomical reasons. Melony is skilled in the art of healing magic, and also has ridiculously low HP. She and The Hero have a half-arsed romance that never really leads anywhere, which may be because he never actually says anything apart from yes or no.
On their way to the mountain, they come upon a town that houses a race of summoners. The only problem is, this town is on fire, because they’ve come in during the middle of one of The Bandit King’s regular raids. The party can only watch in hapless despair as he annihilates every last one of the summoners, except for one young girl, named Jasmine. Jasmine, despite a sizable amount of mistrust, is persuaded to join the intrepid band of adventurers, and they journey on until they are confronted by a wall of ice at the foot of the mountain. With no way to go around it and no one else possessing the ability to cast fire, suddenly, for no explainable reason, Jasmine learns how to cast fire! Hurray! Some would wonder why there is a large block of ice formed around a mountain on a fairly humid continent, but the party, after making note of this rather odd occurrence, decides not to question it because it must be the will of the game designers.
The party continues up the mountain and encounters the rather undead-looking Fiend of Fire, named after some random demon in Dante’s Inferno. The party survives the encounter mostly thanks to The Hero and Eigon, since the girls’ incredibly low HP kept getting them killed (after all, they are only females). Another question arises about why the Fiend of Fire is defending the Wind Stone of Old, but once again, the party doesn’t dwell on it. After getting the Wind Stone, a small part of Eigon’s memory returns to him, and he remembers that he used to be a headmaster. He cannot, however, recall what he used to be headmaster of, and so they realise that they must collect all of the elemental stones of old to completely restore Eigon’s memory.
For now, the party decide to go back to Generic Town to rest. During the night, their camp is infiltrated by a stealthy ninja, who turns out to be none other than The Bandit King, who wants all of the Stones of Old for his own nefarious purposes, in disguise. The Bandit King tosses dream dust into the air, ensuring the party will not wake up as he steals the Wind Stone of Old and runs away into the night. However, Jasmine had forgotten to return her last summon, an ancient beast of earth, before going to sleep, and this summon spots The Bandit King attempting to escape. Lacking any initiative — for a summon cannot, whilst summoned, do anything not directly ordered by the person who summoned it — the summon declines to wake the party, and simply watches The Bandit King flee into the night.
Upon waking, the party questions the ancient earth beast about the whereabouts of the wind stone. But all he can tell them is that he is in fact The Hero’s long-lost uncle, who had lived his life in a peaceful mountain stronghold until a group of jesters infiltrated, sent by a mysterious figure who may well be the same mysterious figure who is manipulating The Bandit King to gather the Stones of Old. In a tear-jerking grayscale flashback we learn of how the jesters tricked the uncle into shutting off the ventilation system and turned everybody to stone, but forgot to escape, turning themselves into stone as well. In a rare moment of intuition, Melon realises that their journey will eventually take them to the Chamber of Stoned Jesters where they will learn a shocking secret about… well. That comes later.
For now, their task is to retrieve the Wind Stone from The Bandit King. But some random NPC has told them that The Bandit King has only one weakness. And to exploit that, they need to find the hideout of the clandestine semi-terrorist resistance group that is opposing the bandits, under the name of “The Rocksliders.” The hideout is only rumoured to be located in the East Marshes, but remembering the magical law that all town rumours must be true, they immediately set off for the marshes. First, though, The Hero has a sudden memory of the Slum Seven Orphanage, where apparently all the party except Eigon lived their childhood. They spend many hours pondering and reflecting over the fact that all of them appear to have some kind of amnesia. They also marvel at how decrepit and devastated the basketball court is that they are sitting on. After concluding that The Bandit King must be their old nurse, they continue the journey.
Of course, they first have to engage in a boss battle that has nothing to do with the plot other than to fill in the time between battles with big, ugly monsters. So they encounter a huge rabbit with the name of Roger who seems grumpy for some reason and decides to fight the party. For no apparent raisin. However, Roger is very quirky and vocal, and is sure to be back later in the game as a recurring side-villain to mess up some kind of musical performance.
At last our heroes arrive at the Eastern Marsh, where they hope to find the hideout of the Rocksliders, and they realise that Jasmine is not yet on a high enough level to use her new summon. So they run up and down at the edge of the marsh, hoping to find a way to battle the monster they must fight in order to obtain Jasmine’s new summon. While they have little luck finding this monster, Eigon does recall that while they were all members of an orphanage, he was the party’s headmaster. Armed with this new (and shocking!) knowledge, the party conclude that the other people who will help them save the world are the other people who were members of the orphanage with them, and thus they resolve to start out their broad, 108-character recruiting quest before advancing the plot any further.
The party start out by returning to town once again, to check the local social records for any past members of the Slum Seven Orphanage. But they stumble upon an awful, um, discovery: someone has marked, in red ink (made from blood), little skulls-and-crossbones on the member list, and is ticking off names — a death list! Someone out there is killing off all the old members, clearly in the purpose of wreaking some unimaginable havoc on the world using gruesome black magic performed with the blood of those who are supposed to save it. No sooner have they made this discovery than they encounter a messenger from the Rocksliders, who brings a message telling them to get a freaking move on already. But he is WOUNDED, and collapses on the doorstep while dramatic music plays. The party hold a council, discussing the old legends of magical machines, when a messenger from The Bandit King arrives, telling them that if they continue on their quest, they will meet the same fate as the messenger from the Rocksliders. The party move to kick his ass, but before they can land a single blow, both messengers disappear in a puff of smoke.
This provokes The Hero into mindlessly setting off to warn the Rocksliders that they’ve been found out. The party has no choice but to follow, trying to hold him back, but The Hero is blinded by rage and also the stylish bandana obscuring his eyes. They arrive to find the place in smoking ruins, with no sign of the Rocksliders anywhere. They do, however, see a rather stylish looking dragon which immediately advances upon the party, and, despite the fact that The Hero draws his sword and begins making threatening gestures toward it, makes no further signs of aggression. Jasmine realises the dragon’s actual intentions, and in order to prevent The Hero from outright attacking it and destroying its enchantment, she distracts The Hero with a new summon of hers, Random Naked Woman. The distraction successfully averts The Hero’s attention, but also causes problems with Melony because she wants to be the only big-breasted female around these parts (they don’t call her Melon(s) for nothing, you know). To solve this problem, she gets herself a new, much more revealing costume which also has the power to grant her the ability to kick some hardcore ass. Although The Hero finds Melony’s new outfit attractive, he moves on to defeat the dragon regardless. Jasmine and Melony have an argument over who should date The Hero after they complete their mission, but it seems that The Hero isn’t currently interested in either of them. He seems more interested in the loot they got from the dead dragon, which includes the key to the Dungeon of Earth — the entrance to which magically rises from the burnt-down hideout in front of them!
Excited that they are now one step ahead of The Bandit King, they enter in pursuit of the next Elemental Stone, and they encounter a merchant hiding inside. The merchant tells them that his entire stock was stolen by the bandits and taken to a cave nearby. If the party would be kind enough to retrieve his stolen goods, he’d give them a big reward. And so, forgetting about their main quest, the party sets off to this cave where they have to engage in a mini-game involving dodging bandits up on the rafters that are for whatever reason present in the roof of the cave. His goods returned, the merchant — named Yuri — offers to join the quest. Their party having exceeded four members, one of them is compelled by some bizarre law of physics to stand behind and guard the entrance, and they decide on Melony, because she has the lowest HP. This only fuels her jealousy further, but seeing as the mute hero is too mute to say anything other than “Yes” or “No,” there is really very little he can do to defuse the situation. Eigon tells her not to worry; The Hero will come around.
In any case, the party enters the cave and stumbles upon an intricate earth-themed puzzle involving shifting sand and falling stalagmites, which is being defended by the Fiend of Water. After vanquishing the fiend with a complex strategy involving not attacking during the turns when the Fiend has her hair in a slightly different style (which would result in her countering with a nasty generic water attack) and lots and lots of lightning, they claim the Earth Stone of Old, only to find that a minion of The Bandit King teleports in as soon as they have done so. After a lengthy battle involving some quirky dialogue exchange — for the minion is none other than Roger the Recurring Rabbit — they can escape the dungeon and meet up with Melony, who has a shocking message to deliver; that Roger, on his way out, stole the Earth Stone of Old from them with secret ninja magic without their noticing, all as Melony looked on, horrified. The party, crushed by this revelation, decide to call it a day.
However, first thing in the morning, they are approached by another dragon! It is a messenger from The Rocksliders, gently chiding them for toasting the first messenger, and proposing to escort them to their new, relocated hideout and join their party. Seeing that the Rocksliders managed to evade a stealth attack from the enemy, which is more than they ever managed to do, the party decides to accept his invitation, and all six of them fly on the back of the dragon to the Rocksliders’ new hideout, which is located in a semi-ruined but still functioning hi-tek facility left behind by an ancient, technologically advanced culture, hidden beneath a talking tree in the forest of the elves (of which only a handful remain, residing in a secluded village). The dragon, whose name is Larynx, takes them down into the facility, scaring the small cat who was napping immediately below where the dragon ended up making its landing.
The party is immediately greeted by the Rocksliders’ leader, the charismatic Ginza, who gathers all the Rocksliders and the party of heroes for a very long meeting around a rectangular table in a room full of maps and weapons, while music which gives you the feeling that this meeting is really important for the planet’s survival is played in the background. They agree on sending a spy group to infiltrate The Bandit King’s stronghold, to investigate what he is planning, but more importantly, make sure he’s not manufacturing some ghastly WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!! Having declared war on the United Rebellious Groups, the party start to walk around randomly and the party suddenly realize that they finally have control over themselves again. They walk around talking to the Rocksliders who say things like, “We trust in you! Go and infiltrate The Bandit King’s Stronghold!” or, “Be careful, no one knows what you might encounter there!” but more importantly, decide that they’ll have tea and crumpets for a starter, then on to the fish and chips. Afterward, they all go to the pub to have a pint.
Satisfied they’ve made the right decision, they all settled down again to decide on what three brave infiltrators shall accompany The Hero on the perilous mission; Ginza insists on going, despite his poor combat skills and the fact that him dying will result in an instant Game Over, and the other two characters selected in the fancy "select your characters" menu are Melony and Jasmine because the player likes females has a death wish. With this party selected, the party then proceeds to have a series of romantic interludes that go nowhere fast, followed by a good round of cursing in the general direction of The Bandit King. They head off then, to The Bandit King’s stronghold, conveniently marked with a sign that read “Bandit King’s Stronghold — No Non-Bandits Allowed!” Melons asks, “So is this the place?” and Jasmine, wise beyond her years, replies, “No, it’s probably a ruse.” Melons replies, “It very well may be, but just in case, we should start searching for weapons of mass destruction.” Taking up the initiative, The Hero begins searching and soon discovers a very suspicious looking chest. Could this chest hold these fabled weapons of mass destruction? Very carefully, The Hero opened this chest and found an incredibly versatile potion of healing! The party sighs and continues the search.
Eventually the search for the WMDs brings The Hero, Jasmine, Melon and Ginza to the top floor of the Bandits’ Lair, where they stumble upon and defeat one of the standard machine-core-engine type bosses, only to find that it supported the entire stronghold (which was just a decoy)! The lair begins collapsing, and with an ominous countdown timer snapping at their heels, they run all the way out again and get annoyingly many random encounters, which they just run away from because time is running short!
But when they finally get to the entrance on the first floor, they encounter The Bandit King himself! Strangely, however, he falls before The Hero can even swipe his sword. Then a huge monstrous blob begins to grow out of the ground where The Bandit King stood, and attacks the party with tentacles while the world seems to stop for a moment and zoom into a battle screen. The Hero orders Melons and Jasmine back because of their shitty HP and the potential distraction of the girls being attacked by a tentacled monster. Ginza runs and hides, so The Hero is left to a duel with the monster, and The Hero gathers energy for his extreme, extraordinary breaker of limits, the Limit Break! But since he must get himself hit a lot before he can use it, he just stands there getting his head smashed by the giant blob boss. Melons, Jasmine and Ginza all decide to hit The Hero so that he can use the Limit Break! However, before doing so, the giant blob casts Confuse on Melons, Jasmine, and Ginza. This makes their job much easier to hurt The Hero, so they continue to beat the crap out of The Hero until he is a bloody mess. Unfortunately, just as his Limit Break bar fills up, the party stabs him one time too many, and The Hero is KO’d. Oopsies! Suddenly a faerie appears from The Hero’s sack, reviving him to life. The Hero returns, and knocks some sense into the three companions, who then bitch-slap him for attacking them because they have Black Belt enabled and have no other choice. However, now that The Hero’s Limit Break bar is fully filled up, he can finally use his Inverted Flurrying Tri-Meteor Blade for great justice.
The monster is left in a steaming heap of justice, which after steaming a bit congeals back into The Bandit King. He dangles like a puppy held by some ghastly invisible force holding him up by ghastly invisible strings, and a ghastly invisible voice, which no doubt belongs to a Mysterious Adversary, says: “I have no need for you anymore, Bandit King… Now I will abandon you to the mercy of these well-meaning but slightly less than intelligent heroes. What they do to you now is none of my concern.” So The Bandit King stares at the party. And the party stares at The Bandit King. And The Bandit King stares at the party. And with an evil grin on his face, he asked them “When last did you save?” The Bandit King prepares to attack the party again; however, the fake stronghold at this point collapses in a very flashy cutscene, and the party and The Bandit King are flung in different directions.
Returning to the Rocksliders’ hideout, the party meets up with Larynx and Yuri, who deliver terrible news: during their absence, Eigon got possessed by some ghastly invisible force, stole the Earth Stone of Old and ran off! He was apparently heading for a waterfall in the middle of a desert. And the desert itself was surrounded by a huge mountain range. And the only way to pass through this mountain range is through a Mysterious Tunnel, which, despite being a naturally occurring phenomenon, is still very well lit for a long tunnel that runs under a huge mountain with no freaking air vents anywhere along the way.
But first the party need to upgrade their equipment. So they head for a nearby town, newly accessible now that the Bandit King’s hideout has collapsed, and spend their life’s savings on golden versions of their current silver equipment. Against all laws of physics and metallurgy, the new equipment is much stronger; however, according to sensible market laws the new equipment also costs insanely much more. The Hero gazes longingly at a Diamond Sword on display that the party couldn’t possibly afford without using a GameShark, before moving on to decide who his party would consist of for the long labourious trek through the Mysterious Tunnel. The Hero, growing decidedly weary of Melony and Jasmine dying every few seconds, decides to go with brute force by bringing Larynx to protect the two girls. Once his decision is made, any auxiliary party members fade into nothingness, to be summoned forth at any point. Where they’ve gone, no one knows, but The Hero decides not to worry about it overly much.
A thought occurs to The Hero, however. “Aren’t you pretty big to be able to fit into a tunnel?” he asks Larynx. “I mean, it’s probably all… little…” He makes a gesture with his fingers to suggest the infinitesimal nature of the tunnel. With a deep rumbling timbre characteristic of his breed, Larynx replies, “Oho, but you underestimate me, pitiful little monkey. I can assume a humanoid shape and still retain most of my power! In lieu of devastating claws, I wield a large stylish axe that magically vanishes whenever I become my true form once again.” “Awesome!” The Hero exclaims. “Indeed,” Larynx replies disparagingly, and let out a muted growl as his features whip and twist rapidly into what reminds one vaguely of a more intelligent orc, with intelligent feline eyes, muscular features and reptilian hide. Just as he had promised, a shimmering golden axe appears in his outstretched hand. The blade is easily twice as big as his head, but he swings it experimentally with ease. Melony and Jasmine shoot surprised glances at The Hero, and Jasmine declares, “I thought you were mute!” “There are no plotholes,” a disembodied voice explains.
Melony opens her mouth in surprise, but after a few seconds her memory fades and she isn’t entirely sure of the last few minutes, let alone a disembodied voice that referred to strange things. The monsters encountered throughout the abnormally long tunnel consist of bats, tigers, and geese, their names prefixed handily with “underground.” After fighting these monsters ad nauseum, because everyone knows bats love to attack random passerby, they encounter a strange old man picking red mushrooms. The Hero blinks. “Who are you?” The old man jumps his full height off the ground in shock, like all surprised NPCs do. “Why, uh… I’m Staygo the Mycologist.” The Hero tries to figure out what a Mycologist is, and fails. “So what are you doing in a tunnel like this?” The old man jerks his thumb in the direction the party was travelling. “Why, I… collect mushrooms… for the museum back in Anthock.” The Hero says, “Anth—”
A finger prods him in the back. “Huh?” he says, turning around. A gnome with a wrench stands there, looking sheepish. “I’ve got a boss fight scene for this tunnel, with a certain… ‘The Hero.’ I dunno if I’m in the right place…”
The party disposes of the gnome fairly easily, since he is an obvious filler boss, and proceed to ask Staygo the Mycologist whether or not he has seen a possessed swordsmaster walk by this way. Staygo remarks that he saw a bright-colored mushroom before, and asks the party to find it for him. They realize he’s crazy, because he did not answer their question properly and blocks a passage that obviously is the only way out of the tunnel. For some reason they cannot move nor kill him, so they have to find the damn mushroom for him and hope that he moves. The party searches all the winding side-tunnels for the blasted mushroom, half-heartedly fending off some mushroom-themed enemies, and opening a couple of inexplicable treasure chests along the way. Finally they find the mushroom and bring it back to Staygo, who says, “Aha! I have the mushroom. But now you must bring me… a SHRUBBERY! Okay, nevermind, I’m just fooling.” Having received what he was looking for, he lets the party through. He then jumps six times his height, uses his fist to break a block out of the ceiling of the cave, and disappears to unknown regions, presumably on a quest to save some random monarch’s daughter. The party exit the tunnel, to find an elaborately designed and beautifully tiled valley, with a huge thundering waterfall cascading down the northern wall. Dramatic yet harmonic music plays. This must be where the possessed Eigon was headed!
The party approaches the waterfall and enters the obvious cave beneath it, filled with green palette swaps of the fungoid enemies encountered in the last cave. About half way through the cave they find a chest containing a Bag of Holding. The party rejoices, for at last it seems that they will be able to overcome the obstacle of their painfully limited inventory space, but alas, it seems to be merely another of Yuri’s useless “coin pouch” weapons, and they soon throw it away to make room for yet another hi-herb, which they will doubtless need in a coming battle.
Deeper into the cave they come across a familiar-looking pair of merchants. The one offers the party a place to rest and replenish their HP and MP. Oddly enough, the merchant seems to have brought some beds with him into the cave. The other merchant has several items for sale, including a seemingly infinite supply of tents, potions, nice fluffy sleeping bags and mediocre defensive equipment. He also carries postcards captioned “Visit Sunny Valleyfall Cave.” The cave leads further into an impressive subterranean temple with complex yet apparently pointless locks, valves, pipes and water spout puzzles, and, thankfully, the sentient mushrooms have decided to stop harassing the party. Instead, they have been replaced by hordes of rats. Big ones. And red bats.
After arranging the pipes and valves in such a pattern so that they shoot a jet of water underneath a platform that then rises up to take the party to the next level, they stop to wonder how Eigon managed to get up there without going through these silly puzzles. They come to the conclusion that his possession by the Mysterious Adversary has granted him new amazing powers, such as flying, shooting beams, and mutating into interesting and innovative new boss forms, like The Bandit King did. These kinds of things don’t require explanations. Having reached the final floor, which houses the Water Stone of Old, they immediately start searching for the save point that would mean a boss battle is coming closer. However, their search reveals only a thematic warping whirlpool that takes them back to the World Map at will, for saving and tenting and campfire sing-songs. Having geared up for what horrors lie ahead, the party warps back in, and approaches the big hall with the ominous altar in the middle, where they are attacked by the Fiend of Air, who has the shape of a very well endowed female and has an obvious crush on the main hero.
After vanquishing her with their nifty earth-elemental weapons that they bought at the previous town, thinking that they were ordinary gold weapons, they find that the Fiend of Air had played a nasty trick on them by stealing the Water Stone of Old before they could lay their grubby mits on it. When the Stone vanishes along with the defeated Air Elemental, the party realise that their actual goal in this cave was to locate Eigon. So they enter a secret passage in the back wall of the chamber, which they located by pushing every single block in the wall to see if it would give way. Inside, they find a note from Eigon saying that the air elemental attack was entirely of his own design, and that he is currently somewhere far, far away with the Elemental Stone of Water where the party will not be able to find him, thanks to his secret ninja stealth techniques, and he is perfectly alright, thank you very much for asking.
The party despair of ever possibly ever being able to save the world, but it is at this moment that The Bandit King catches up to the despairing party, indicating to them that Eigon taught him his secret ninja magic. Offering to join the group, Magus-style, he reasons that if he uses the same ninja magic as Eigon in the same fashion, then they should end up in Eigon’s hiding place! They give it a shot, and it actually works. They arrive in a distressingly organic-looking dungeon that has lots of bizarre tentacled plants (more fun for the girls, no doubt) and no sign of Eigon anywhere. Is it because Eigon is wearing his Invisibility Cloak, waiting, even now, to strike on the party when the time is right? Or has he somehow transported himself, yet again, into a far away location?
The party, Bandit King newly amongst their ranks, barely have time to ponder these questions before being attacked by an outrageously hard and outrageously hideous boss emerging from the wall in a fancy cutscene. The battle rages on throughout, screams of frustration and one revival item being used after another. However, it’s all in vain as the party is soon defeated. But, much to everyone’s surprise, the party isn’t dead. After looking around in a very confused manner, the party come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a real boss battle, but one of those annoying, impossible-to-defeat story bosses that are only there to introduce some plot element and can only be defeated much later once the party has gotten much stronger. As the hideous boss is laughing hideously at the party’s “defeat,” it gets interrupted by Eigon leaping into view to righteously cut the boss in half with his shiny oversized sword, to do a few finishing slices and dices among glorious pixellated somersaults. Finally landing in a jaunting pose, sword over shoulder, Eigon smirks at the party.
Melony dashes forward to greet him, glad that he’s come to his senses, but everything flashes (the TV screen at least) for a second, and Melony flies back toward the party, screaming. The Hero takes out his sword, but Eigon just laughs. He says, “You people are so gullible! And now that I’ve disposed of your healer, I can finish you once and for all!” That said, he’s a very gentlemanly evil person, so he heals the party before the battle ensues, accompanied by a special and very important-sounding boss theme, which is immediately followed by a Super Über Death Attack of Doom that renders everyone in the party paralyzed (yes, it’s two unwinnable battles in a row, folks). As the party watches, helpless, Eigon takes Melony’s unconscious body and exits from the cave, prompting many “randy old man” comments and necessitating the inevitable Rescue Teh Hero’s Main Love Interest side quest. “Well, that was shit,” the useless merchant whose name everyone has already forgotten says, “what do we do now?” Realizing that now is probably a good time to catch up to speed on what exactly has been happening to The Bandit King, the party reacquaint their wits and they all realise that they have to move quickly. Eigon might be leering evilly over Melon as they speak.
But first they have to find out where she was taken. So they discover that, for some or other reason, their inventory now contains carrots. Lots of them. Completely puzzled, they proceed to the outside of the cave and trek further into the desert. Where, against all logic, they discover a small garden with a sign that says, “Smells like rabbits,” and right on cue, in a flurry of quirky character theme, Roger appears, brandishing a carrot. “I come to you with a message from Eigon,” says Roger. “Bring us the last remaining Stone of Old within a week and you can have Melony back. Otherwise, you’ll never see her again. Ta-ta!” he says, and disappears in a puff of smoke. With this latest revelation, the party, instead of wondering how Eigon could send Roger to them so quickly (lazy game designers), ponder their options. “Well,” says Jasmine, “we should probably go to the nearest town and replenish our supplies.” So they bugger off to the nearest town to do so. Well aware that they have only a week to act, they start to think that they shouldn’t waste any time, despite the fact that time does not behave in anything remotely approaching a logical fashion in their world. Indeed, no matter how much time they spend battling and sleeping at inns and arsing around, the clock only moves forward once they enter a new area.
Upon arrival at the town of Foursome, they soon discover that it’s time to acquire their next party member; the ten-year-old genius inventor girl named Lesko, suitably kawaii and also excrutiatingly whiny. Lesko has a forbidding old sage grandfather taking care of her, after her parents (who were the only surviving remnants of an ancient and powerfully magical race) were persecuted and drained of their energy by an Evil Multinational Power Corporation. They first meet Lesko when she comes running up to the party, in tears. When asked what was wrong, we are treated to a tearful cutscene showing how a giant alligator came up from the sewers and ate Lesko’s dog. Waving his sword, The Hero indicates that this clearly indicates that they need to go down to the Foursome sewers to defeat this evil alligator fiend. But the rest of the party aren’t so sure. They’re not too keen to take a trip to The Sewers. However, using a complex series of gestures, including several shoulder shrugs and a number of hops on one leg, The Hero manages to convince them that it doesn’t count as a real role-playing game if it doesn’t include at least one trip into The Sewers. (Insert multiple Gamingforce Forums references here).
So they go to the hole that leads to The Sewers. When they are there, they see that there is no ladder. Mr. Merchant-guy whines and says that if they were to jump down there, they would not be able to get up again. The Hero stands there, looking down the hole for a minute, then suddenly pushes Yuri down it and jumps down there after him, without thinking about the consequences (broken spines and such). The rest of the party shout The Hero’s name in horror and jump down after him (they, too, without thinking). The player says: “WTF! NO!” They fall through a number of whirling pipes and end up, safe but displaced, in a dark room far down, but since they’re all able to emit a certain amount of light from their own bodies, the party is surrounded by a perfectly circular (apart from the edges, due to a certain amount of pixellisation) area of illumination that follows them wherever they go.
Before they can wonder about this, however, the giant alligator emerges! They finish it off easily, and obtain a mysterious item from the remains of the body, which happens to be the key to the dungeon that contains the last Stone of Old. Armed with this equipment, they resurface (via the convenient ladder just beyond the alligator’s hiding place) to tell Lesko that they have avenged her beloved puppy. She takes them for tea, and her grandfather inspects the key, realising that it is in fact their long-lost family heirloom. An argument arises, seeing as the party want to take the key to unlock the Dungeon of Old, but at last the grandfather agrees on the condition that they do him the favours of ridding his basement of rats and babysitting his granddaughter indefinitely (as he has recently taken ill, and does not expect to live much longer). He then shares with them a legend passed down in his family, explaining that once every thousand years, evil will flood the world, monsters will increase in numbers (even in daylight!) and an ancient power will be released, but one man with an oversized sword will stand against the evil and, possibly, be victorious. The party realizes that babysitting his daughter indefinitely will mean they need to take her with them on their quest and protect her, so Lesko joins the party, promising aid with her strange quirky weaponry and brilliant deus ex machina machinery skills that can solve any pestering plot hole.
They talk some more before leaving, recapping their journey thus far to the grandfather, but when they mention the orphanage mystery, the old man does an overly surprised pixellated face, jumping high. He fetches from the cellar an ancient prophetic book, telling of how, once all the children of the fabled magical orphanage are reunited, they will unlock an ancient and all-powerful force that might be able to save the world from some unspecified evil force. A great protest is heard. “Why should we be the ones to save the world?” The grandfather replies by giving The Hero a bicycle and a baseball cap and telling him to seek out eight mysterious melodies that will help him to… oh nevermind. The grandfather says, “Look at your hero. He’s young. He has a big sword. What choice does he have?” “But it does not make sense.” “It doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to be true.”
Contemplating this for a few seconds (this is one of the longer scenes in the game, you see) while saddish yet determined music plays (The Hero kinda music), the party then proceeds to recap their current situation. The Mysterious Adversary, by proxy of Eigon, is in possession of three Elemental Stones of Old — those of Wind, Water and Earth — and Melony. The opposition will have to bring them the final stone, of Fire, within a week, so they turn their attention to finding the last survivor of the orphanage. To this end, they set their sights on the Island of Starch, across the Ocean of Usmatar, to find the only remaining orphan, by the name of Erwic. However, for this they need a boat, and to get a boat they must journey to the port town of Fnårfjøllen (don’t ask), which is of course situated in mountainous fjörðr country with lots of berserkers (and Vikings). Therefore, they reassemble their forces and set course for Fnårfjøllen in the cold and rainy north.
It turns out, once they arrive in town, that the first prize for the Annual Dueling Tournament that is about to roll around is a prime magic-powered steam dinghy. Naturally The Hero has to apply for the tournament, but he’s not worried. He knows that the laws of grand tournaments states that should The Hero lose, he’ll just wake up in a nearby inn and be granted the chance to try time and time again until he wins. But only a hero with a big sword is granted this privilege. So, with the rest of the party cheering him on, The Hero takes his sword and enters the arena to find a series of weak monsters from the beginning of the game, followed by progressively harder and more recent monsters, and finally a mysterious swordsman, who particularly diligent fans will recognize at once as a cameo appearance of the protagonist from Legend of Mystery Zero, the original game, which was never released outside Japan, aside, of course, from pirated (and poorly translated) ROMs. After his defeat comes the tournament’s final round, and before The Hero is able to ponder who he is next to face, how his predecessor was able to turn up again out of the blue for an unimportant semi-boss battle after being dead for almost a thousand years, or even what exactly it is that any of these decidedly non-sentient monsters could possibly want with a boat, the battle starts, and he finds himself pitted against another one of those damned sentient mushrooms that they faced in that cave a while back. Puzzled, The Hero thinks that something must be wrong here. This pathetic creature can’t be the final tournament challenge. There must be something special about this mushroom.
However, before he could draw his sword, a mysterious cloaked figure drops from the stands and slices up the mushroom with a series of slices with a big knife. Turning towards The Hero, he says, “I will be your final challenge.” The Hero realises that he is facing the Optional Really Cool Ninja-Style Character, named Hattori Hanzo! The character designer had no imagination you see, and he thought that since there already are so many games out there starring historical characters, he might as well rip off another one.
A chaotic turn-based battle begins, and the first thing Hattori Hanzo (called Hanz for short) does, is to paralyze The Hero with The Technique of the Scorching Moon Fist! Then he laughs scornfully and proceeds to unleash a Super Miracle Bomberman Attack of Doom on him for 9999 damage, defeating The Hero. This provokes the party to realize that this is obviously one of those side-quests that can’t be won until later in the game, so they go to the local café for a cup of tea. At the café they meet Hanz, with his dog, Interrogator, standing at the counter. The café owner whispers to them to stay away from the shadowy ninja, but the party don’t listen. When they speak to him, he says “…”, and when they speak to his dog, he says “Stay away from Interrogator. He eats strangers.” The ninja’s shadowy song plays, and the mood in the café is generally shadowy (nó pún intendé).
The party sits down at a table to discuss how best to get a boat if the tournament is as of now unbeatable. Yuri then raises the point that perhaps an airship would be even better. Of course, they are aware that there is only one airship in the world, and it lies in the hands of the notoriously foulmouthed pilot, gunslinger, womaniser and gambler, Siren Gabbiani! (Yes, folks! A female womaniser. This should get interesting). Rumour has it that her one weakness is for Spanish rock opera. And, luckily for our heroes, the famous travelling Spanish rock opera touring group have just arrived in town. Their massive tent, complete with inflatable stage, has just been set up. So the party prepare for this by having Jasmine take the role of the lead singer to get Siren’s attention. All goes well, until Roger appears and lets a real dragon onto the stage, a real, purple dragon. With a 20-ton weight strapped to its head. For no apparent raisin.
The rest of the party, watching from the stage, realise that they have to act quickly. And the audience have completely disregarded the fact that it was impossible for Jasmine to learn to sing in Spanish in such a short period of time. Probably because the bar opened early. From somewhere, a clock starts ticking as the party race to try and throw the dragon off the edge of the stage (since the play takes place, in fact, in the airship theater), via a trapdoor which is operated by an offstage switch. Sadly, Yuri falls down as well and becomes mute, but nobody really cares. Roger, agitated, runs onto the stage just as the trapdoor opens, but he and two henchmen save themselves from falling by forming a bridge which the party can use to get to the castle that the airship is moored to.
Vowing revenge as they’re being walked upon, Roger and the two henchmen decide to act. Dislodging the centre henchman with a quick shake of his feet, Roger causes the party to fall (just don’t ask why they wanted to cross that bridge in the first place). But while they’re falling, the party have to face a battle. For some reason. It’s Siren Gabbiani, who steers her ejectable one-man airship down to face them, guns in attack mode, and shouts, “If you can beat me in air combat, I am at your service!” And so they fight for a few minutes, without ever actually reaching the ground, and the party emerges victorious. Then they fall to the ground in a hilarious slapstick sequence.
Now having had Siren and the airship added to their ranks, our heroes technically set sail for the isolated Island of Starch, to find the last orphanage… person. However, along the way there are now several interesting sidequests available, such as the obligatory “Siren Seduces Yet Another Woman” sidequest, which features the obligatory girl-on-girl action (think X-2’s boob massage scene) to please people like Joel. In this sidequest, Siren has steaming animal sex with a random town NPC, except of course in the translated version they merely hold hands and go to the movies. There’s also a sidequest involving a talking sword, five spread-out optional bosses, and a series of intricate crossbreeding of birds along with tempting rewards, such as a broken sword that can later be reforged to become The Hero’s penultimate weapon. But first they need to capture a couple of sparrows and try to breed them with crows to create some sort of oversized racing pigeon that they can then use to ride around on a plain during a lightning storm and catch butterflies in a net. Along with other such tempting bonuses.
The sidequests keep our heroes occupied for a while before they finally land — in the nick of time!! — on the Island of Starch, just outside the capital, imaginatively named Starch City, which is a happy-go-lucky-style market town with casinos and games and funtimey stuff. After asking around they find Erwic’s (the last remaining orphan, remember) house, but he is not home. He has in fact gone off to the nearby Burning Tower of Fiery Flames to find his little sister, but the tower is locked. And the key to the tower can only be won as a prize at the Starch Casino. (The Man note: Didn't we already get the key to the tower in Foursome when we beat the alligator? Maybe this should be a second key or something).
So the party heads off there to cash in their hard earned gold for casino coins. And the handy save point right inside the casino allows them to gamble without the risk of ever losing money. Soon, they accumulate enough coins to buy the tower key, several collectible plushies, a large chunk of the game’s concept art, and three more identical keys. They stuff the lot in their infinite paradimensional bag of holding and trek back to the tower.
Inside, enemies are quite fierce, and a sizable amount of healing items is used. The puzzles in this dungeon include stemming and reopening lava flows, hot steam spouts, flames blocking doorways and redirecting the infinite water supply from the local dam. However, about halfway up, the party runs out of healing items. So, after a quick teleport spell to take them back to town to restock, they start all over again at the bottom of the tower. And all the puzzles that they solved have reset and need to be solved again. But that doesn’t bother them. They will not give in.
After another hour of trekking up and gaining one level after another due to constant battling, they finally arrive at a huge pirate ship in the middle of a field of flowers. Not knowing why it’s there, The Hero and the party began to investigate the pirate ship, and realise that they are in the Far-Fetched Plane, where lost souls come to walk the plank and drink lots of grog. Approaching the mysterious ship of puzzlement, they are approached by some sort of Pirate Captain. But this captain won’t allow them on board the ship unless they prove themselves to be a part of his crew. They need to undergo… THE THREE TRIALS!
The first trial is that of swordfighting, where The Hero has to duel a rowdy pirate. Fortunately, this is his forte, although Siren has to finish up the trial with an insult duel afterwards. The second trial is that of treasure hunting, where the party simply dump all the worthless trinkets they’ve collected on their journey with the pirates, making their inventory much easier to navigate. The final trial is that of thievery, where they have to make their way to a nearby mansion, bypass the guards and steal a very valuable black orb with which to control the magical sunken pirate ship, sail through the river of lava and reach the Fire Stone of Old!
They triumphantly return from the Far-Fetched Plane, summoning the ship with them. It has this cheesy dragon in front, and a few strange wing-like sails that seem pretty redundant since it sails underground and is powered by grog and fire. Breaking through the fiery waterfall of lava, they arrive at the final Sanctuary of Old, named Caerbannog, where they are promptly attacked by a small flesh-eating rabbit. After two party members are wounded, the merchant, Yuri, who never does anything, suggests that they use the Holy Hand Grenade, which has magically appeared in their inventory for no reason in particular (it's not accessible in the inventory before the battle and no one in the party can remember how it came into their possession). Therefore, they engage in yet another mini-game where they have to control the hand grenade’s angle of firing and power to try and get it as close to the rabbit as possible before the count of five three.
Once the rabbit is disposed of, a small girl climbs out from beneath the rock she was hiding from the rabbit… beneath. A voice calls, “There you are, Hannah” and a young enchanter whom the party realises must be Erwic rushes forward. They explain the situation to him, how they are all from the same orphanage, and how they must fight evil, and all the other crap, when suddenly, from the roof fall the limp bodies of Eigon and Melony. An invisible ghastly voice tells them, with a certain amount of scornful laughter, how convenient things have turned out, for lo and behold, the legendary orphans are all gathered, which means the REAL ultimate power will manifest itself! Come forth! And so on.
The party, shocked and embarrassed not to have understood the foe’s cunning plan, suddenly fall to the ground as a swirling storm of magical fire and intriguing 16-bit special effects fill the chamber. And there, on the top of the altar, stands the Mysterious Adversary revealed at last, sucking in the dark energy like an awful human sponge. And there he was. None other than The Hero’s childhood friend. The one that always used to steal The Hero’s lunch and push him into the mud. The one that was always jealous of The Hero’s ability to wield a big sword. The one known as Proddington. But of course such names do not befit villains, and he refuses to answer to it. From this point onward, he declares, he will be referred to as the Dark Lord Exdoom, because of the exceeding doom he brings to everyone! In fact, his name is a mistranslation of the name of some Biblical book; the translators put their misguided explanation of his name in the manual so that it made some semblance of sense. Exdoom swings his hand in the air, creating a flashy, sparkly shimmering in the air. This gradually siwrls around and takes on a more solid form — that of a giant hybrid crab/locust/frog/elephant monster. With a great chuckle, Exdoom gloats and challenges the party to defeat this great beast while he goes off to wreak havoc upon the world in pure malevolence. And this he does — after absorbing the last of the Unholy Power and morphing into a form twice as large and twice as in charge, his old robes ripping and falling to the marble floor.
Erwic helps the party defeat the horrific monster — Whatma — and they all then proceed to exit the tower, after collecting the Fire Stone of Old and Exdoom’s robes, which contained the other three stones. When emerging outside, they’re greeted by the sky darkening, the ground shaking and a cutscene showing Exdoom invoking great suffering onto the world, covering large parts of the planet with suffocating masses of a mix of lava, various acids, glaciers, black holes, hideous monsters and laser rays. Everything accompanied by powerful end-of-the-world music. People are seen flying in all directions, houses and castles being turned into dust, and on the ground cracks are being created from which great tentacled beasts pour forth to devour everything in their path. Strangely enough, although many people die during this time, the number of NPCs in each town remains constant.
And while the party are watching this from a safe distance, they realise that the Fire Stone of Old has mysteriously gone missing from their inventory. This leads Jasmine to the inevitable conclusion that they must immediately head for the Holy Land as quickly as possible so that they can get there before Exdoom does. “The airship’s ready,” Siren explains, so they take off. On their way to their destination, they encounter a huge, spooky looking flying fish, named Deathstare, whose head is a purple skull. They defeat it after a tough battle, and find out that Jasmine now can summon the greatest dragon of them all, Mielikki, who consumes inordinate amounts of MP and — as an obligatory obscure religious reference — is named after an ancient Finnish tree goddess.
In the Lair of Evil Rabbits, which is hidden between a few strange rabbit-shaped landmarks on the world map, the party encounters Roger the Recurring Rabbit in their greatest battle to date, flanked by his Ninja Badger troops. They manage to reclaim the Stone of Old, but upon emerging from the rabbit lair, discover Trogdor burninating the countryside that the sky has turned to an ominous crimson because of Trogdor burninating the people in their THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!!!!1. It seems that Exdoom has gained significant amounts of power simply by being Exdoom. Realizing that their only possible way to defeat Exdoom lies in the Holy Land, they decide to use the newly collected Stones of Old on the double, so they head for the strange chipset formation in the north known as Haggler’s Point, where they place the stones in the mysterious indentations in four stone pinnacles, and watch as a huge shimmering pink portal appears in the sky.
They pilot the airship into it, and end up in the Sacred Land of Gaia, a strange and disturbing mushroom-style world with gross enemies and uneasy music. Deep in the innermost sanctum of this world lie the magic weapons required to defeat Exdoom! The party advances, and after a while they walk into a mysterious village inhabited by dreamy-eyed creatures called Cromosomies, one of whom, a female with breasts even larger than Melony’s, immediately moves to introduce herself, as Elizabeth Bathory. While The Hero is slack-jawed, which elicits a well-placed slap from Melony, Elizabeth’s self-introduction elicits a gasp from The Bandit King not because it is identical to the name of an actual woman from our world’s history who allegedly bathed in the blood of virgins in order to maintain her beauty (in fact, none of them know anything about our world’s history, since they don’t live in it), but because the sight of Elizabeth suddenly makes him recall his past — how the two of them and The Hero (who were brothers, the twin sons of the Cromosomie archmage Exdoom) were raised as the ultimate Cromosomie warriors, and how he and The Hero were sent to earth to exterminate its people while Elizabeth stayed behind to train the Cromosomie invasion army; an army which was scheduled to attack during the Lunar Sneeze, a phenomenon when the moon catches a cold and snots monsters down to Earth. The Lunar Sneeze was to be triggered by The Hero and The Bandit King through unlocking an ancient seal, and the combined forces of the monsters and the Cromosomie forces would end humanity and make way for a Cromosomie reign. However, both The Hero and The Bandit King lost their memories on their way to Earth when the meteors they were travelling in crashed, and as The Hero turned to good, The Bandit King turned to small-time, er, banditry.
All this heavy knowledge suddenly manifests itself in The Bandit King’s poor brain, and after a few seconds’ consideration he realises that they are all in knee-deep shit now, as Elizabeth will be wanting to know what the hell is going on down on Earth, and therefore decides to distract Elizabeth by having Jasmine perform her most recently learned summon, Cookie Monster. :monster: This summon doesn’t actually cause direct harm to anything, but it makes cookies rain from the heavens. Since The Hero just loves cookies, he puts 153 “Cookie” items in his item bag, to be used in the future. But Elizabeth happens to HATE cookies, and disappears from the scene in much the same manner that Terra flies off from the fields above Narche. After a time, she returns from what proves to have been a murderous rampage to bathe in the blood of five human corpses, which she claims were all virgins. With Elizabeth’s true colours shown, The Bandit King tells the party to take battle positions, and off they go.
…The party wins, wouldn’t be much of a point otherwise…
Lying in a crumbled, defeated pile, Elizabeth says a few well chosen, scornful words; she lets The Hero and The Bandit King know what fools they are to have chosen the wrong side, and that even now the Archmage Exdoom is still alive to trigger the Lunar Sneeze, finally ending the pitiful race they have allied with, and so forth. Melony dashes forward and begs of her to tell them where the Magic Weapons to defeat Exdoom are hidden, and Elizabeth (admitting that she likes a challenge) vouchsafes that they are located beneath the *hack cough* t…e…m…p…l…e…o…f…d…:dot:
“Aw, fuck this shit,” says Melony, and casts Cure 935. “Don’t fucking swear,” says Eigon, “it’s not fucking ladylike.” “Sorry," says Melony. Elizabeth, now healed, says, “What the fuck was that all about?” The Bandit King explains that they occasionally have flashes of uncontrollably violent rage, which, by the party’s own accounts, have also caused them to kill a dragon in the past. “So the people who by legend are supposed to help us are a bunch of psychos,” Elizabeth says. “Capital!”
With the unspoken agreement that it’s probably best to play along for now, since no RPG party ever managed to save the world without stabbing at least one race in the back, Eigon leads by saying that they should go and fetch the Legendary Holy Shiny Weapons of Magical Mithril Glory (that’s the full name, mind you) to support Exdoom with firepower in his final assault on mankind. This is in fact a cunning plan of double-crossing, and the rest of the party silently marvel at Eigon’s cunningitude. Elizabeth agrees, after a moment’s thought, and leads the way to the temple of Swordtown, which lies just a few miles ahead and turns out, when they get there, to be made entirely of swords. It also turns out to be inhabited entirely by humans wearing ominous-looking masks shaped roughly like a death’s head, and these people turn out to say, it turns out, absolutely nothing when spoken to. Instead, they just wander around aimlessly, as if they were controlled by the cheaply programmed AI of an RPG.
Having noticed this, the party enter the temple in the middle of town, which is adorned with huge, slashing enchanted swords à la Ragnarok Online, and find themselves in a cool, dusty hallway with eerie music. Hov’ring in the air around the altar, sealed with an ancient seal, are ten magical weapons, conveniently designed (via ancient lore customer service?) for each of the party members:
For The Hero, the Incredulously Broad Sword;
For Eigon, the Ridiculously Long Sword;
For The Bandit King, the Generally Oversized Sword;
For Melony, the Comparatively Most Powerful But Still Pretty Worthless Staff;
For Jasmine, the Ditto Rod;
For Lesko, the Question Mark Rod of Mystery;
For Siren, the Long Blunt Object of Bashing and Also Lesbian Sex;
For Larynx, the Dragon Claws of Doom;
For Yuri, the Money Bag of Destiny;
For Erwic, the Rod of Fate.
However, in true RPG fashion it turns out that these weapons cannot be accessed until certain sidequests are fulfilled, none of which are accessible at this point in time. From this we can deduce that we still have quite a bit of game left to play.
Discouraged, the party ask Elizabeth what, exactly, they should do. She replies that they should take contact with Siren, and tell her to start the airship’s engine, because they would head back to Earth, and visit the Chamber of Stoned Jesters. The say farewell to Elizabeth, who mumbles something, but just as they fly through the portal she raises her head. She has an uneasy look on her pre-rendered face, and so the FMV ends. Back on earth, the party get to choose its members. The Hero (who can’t be left behind), The Bandit King, Lesko and Larynx. They go to the Chamber of Stoned Jesters, which lies inside a cave filled with mixtures of acid and glaciers. After solving puzzles and so on, they enter the main chamber.
Here, the walls are filled with scribblings and ancient paintings. The old walls tell the legend about an alien lifeform that came from the sky. This creature, called “The Crisis from up There,” had feasted on the first human, and then gone to sleep deep within the planet. A prophecy was written to the right of this legend: When the human race had recovered, and they covered the whole planet, “The Crisis from up There” would wake up, and once again wreak havoc by hijacking control of the aliens which created the Cromosomies as a science project, thus driving all Cromosomies to desire conquering the humans. In a stunning twist of fate, the Cromosomies shortly thereafter murdered their masters, but after doing that they were compelled, as if by some strange magic, to fly to the planet Earth and seek to enslave the human race in a very obvious man-versus-machine Matrix ripoff. All this chaos would only serve to benefit the Crisis, as it could then feast upon the corpses of humans dead in the struggle without having to actually kill them.
With this crucial bit of backstory out of the way, the party turns their attention to the jesters themselves. What could have cause this mass petrification, then wonder? But their speculations are cut short by an ominous laughter from what proves to be the ghost of Agamemnon, the Grand Poobah of the Cromosomies’ master race, which were quite simply called the Genes. “They rose up,” he says, “and betrayed us, and now we are all dead. Murder most foul, as in the best it is, but this is most foul, strange, and unnatural. If you continue to work with them, your race shall be destroyed as well.” “That’s all quite understandable,” says Lesko, “and it’s nothing we couldn’t have figured out ourselves, but what are we to do about it?” “You are to exact our revenge,” says the Grand Poobah, “for we are in no state to do it ourselves.” And it wouldn’t be an RPG if you didn’t have to kill at least one race, he silently adds. “Yes,” says a frustrated Lesko, “but how?” “Their weakness—” Agamemnon begins, but he is cut off by the sound of thunder, because the apocalyptic world outside of the Chamber has a definite sense of dramatic timing. “Their weakness,” Agamemnon repeats, “is their long, furry squirrel tails. In those tails they keep their power, and you can heavily incapacitate a Cromosomie by slicing its tail off.”
The Hero and the Bandit King have another startling moment of realisation where they… realise… that they must have lost their tails on arrival to Earth, which is why they do not have godlike powers of destruction like other Cromosomies do. Armed with this new knowledge, our heroes promise to avenge Agamemnon, depart from the Chamber of the Stoned Jesters and set course anew to the Sacred Land of Gaia — to attack the Cromosomies, claim the Legendary Holy Shiny Weapons of Magical Mithril Glory (thus fulfilling the prophecy made by the fairy in the very beginning of the game) and use them to stop Exdoom’s evil deeds of destruction. Fearlessly, they resolve to use these weapons to cut off each and every single one of the Cromosomies’ tails, because furries are just wrong, dammit. With this new resolve in mind, the party realise that they should return to Haggler’s Point and approach the portal to the Sacred Land. Now a dramatic scene occurs, as the Cromosomies leap into battle in their wingèd attack shapes — it’s the Clash of the Squirrel Dragons! The heroes fight from the airship, and are assisted by the Rocksliders’ airships.
However, while the rest of the Cromosomies are thus occupied, the party members resolve to head back to the Holy Land so they can get the weapons while no one’s there to stop them. They enter easily, and have no difficulty finding their way back to Swordtown, and when they get there, the seals that had been preventing them from getting the weapons appear to be gone! The party move to take the weapons, but as they lay their hands on them, each of them is magically teleported to a different location, completely cut off from the other party members and necessitating the requisite Find All the Missing Characters sidequest. The Hero finds himself transported to a little island in the middle of the raging sea. Here, he meets an old hermit who claims to know something about the holy weapons. But he’s dying, and has to be fed lobsters from the sea. If the Hero succeeds in doing this, the hermit says something he knows about the holy weapons, which is that there are even MORE POWERFUL weapons somewhere out there, and to find them you have to defeat Trogdor in battle and thereby gain him as a summon (as well as a bunch of nifty Burninate spells). When faced with this horrifying revelation, The Hero’s reaction is to run off in maniacal fear, try to take his life by jumping off a cliff, but get saved by a D-cup bra being carried by a pigeon. He recognizes it as Melony’s, and regains his will to live! *fanfare plays* Shortly thereafter he finds a speaking turtle, who carries him on his back over the sea, toward the rising sun.
And so we come across Jasmine, who has been stranded in a ruined village where she takes care of orphaned children, and is slowly discovering her abilities to love and how to knit a beautiful sweater out of Chocorly feathers. All the kids are running around and playing with the large birds, when an enormous monster approaches them and swallows three children whole! Jasmine has to enter the monster’s belly and is assisted by The Hero, who turns up on a raft booskaboo turtle. Inside the monster’s belly, which is MUCH larger than the monster itself, The Hero and Jasmine have to solve a lot of stupid puzzles, while carrying the kids on top of their heads. Finally, they get to the center of the belly, where a horrible tentacled (fun for Jasmine, no doubt), elec-type monster named Marinade has to be fought. They defeat it and the monster explodes from the inside. The children are redelivered safely to their homes, and all is peace.
The Hero and Jasmine ta… Jasmine talks to the Hero about how the world has changed, and how Exdoom is randomly frying people with beams from his flying fortress (constructed from scrap, crap and body parts) and how there seems to be a lot of activity in the north. The Hero is pointedly silent, but Jasmine says that no, she can’t go with him and use their newly found super weapons to destroy Exdoom. She’s lost her will to fight because Aeris is dead. “Who the fuck is Aeris?” asks a disembodied voice from the sky, since The Hero is mute. “Some bint from another videogame, now go revive her.” “How the fuck am I supposed to do that?” asks the disembodied voice from the sky. The answer is long and wordy.
“In Final Fantasy VI, after you get the secret books in Cyan’s cave in Mt. Zozo if you press the confirm button on the books 255 times each you will see a password in the description box of the items screen where it shows the descriptions for the books, ‘a book of tools...’ or whatever. Write this password down and then go fire up FFVII. Get into battle with a character with a mastered ‘Revive’ materia. Get into battle and kill and revive the enemies in it using Life2 (weaker enemies are easier to do this with), it doesn’t matter which enemies or if it’s the same one, for a combined total of 255 times (because of the large MP consumption needed, you’ll need a lot of Elixirs or such, and the W-Item item duplication trick helps with this). After the battle you will find the Mythril Phoenix, which you take to the guy that collects Mythril. Give him the Mythril Phoenix and he will ask you if you would like to use the Phoenix’s power to see an old friend. Answer ‘Yes, I would like that’ and he will ask you for the password. Enter it correctly and he will tell you that your friend is looking for you. Go to the forests by Junon where Yuffie first meets your party and you will meet Aeris in battle much the same way, except she rejoins you, similar to the way Gau does when he joins your party in FFVI.”
The voice from the sky is infuriated. “The fuck you talkin’ ’bout nigga? I’ma bitchslap yo’ ass wit’ mah pimp cane ’less you start talkin’ some sense. I’m the Juggernaut, bitch!”
As if she had never spoken her previous lengthy monologue, Jasmine says, “Visit the mysterious cave on this island.” (Note, of course, that this cave did not exist a moment ago, but now that Jasmine has mentioned it, it will be visible in plain sight. Maybe that’s what’s mysterious about it). “You’ll find a bed of soft white chocorly feathers, several feet above which, defying all the laws of nature and gravity, hovers a slumbering girl. Despite the gaping sword wound through her chest, she is not dead, and you will find the means to revive her. Until you can do this, there is nothing I can do for you, for my fighting spirit died along with her soul.”
And so The Hero sets out for the Cave of Quests and Rumours, where as an opening boss, he fights a mad and very dirty hermit wearing a money pouch for a hat. After defeating the hermit, the Hero realises that it is in fact a dejected Yuri — who after finding himself lost and alone in a ruined wilderness decided to go mad for the hell of it. The money pouch is a legendary weapon, of course, but he hasn’t actually found much use for it, especially since it is devoid of money. Yuri becomes the first to rejoin the heroic party — as if he would make any difference — and the two heroes walk deeper into the mysteriuos cave. It’s very dark and ominous in there. After some solid twenty minutes of walking(and battling mysterious monsters), they get to a big door made out of pure gold(which should make it really soft, but remember kids; it’s just a game). They open it carefully, and find themselves inside a featureless chamber with a single plinth in the middle. The inscription on it tells them that to proceed, they will have to find the sacred Paladin Ring, which is located in the East Marshes(the lazy game developers strike again!). For some reason, it’s still perfectly intact, even though the world has been turned inside out and beaten up several times. So the party exit the cave and start their journey towards the East Marshes, which is conveniently marked on the map with a little red dot. Oh, and not to be forgotten, the marshes are now located in the far north, because of all the ruckus before.
As the party arrive, they are confronted by two statues blocking their way. No one knows where these statues come from. But there is an inscription that tells them, in order to pass, they first need to try and recruit Schala and Cyrus into their party. This feat can be achieved by trekking all the way back south to the beach where the Hero landed with his raft, and walking five times back and forth across a set of tiles there, then selling three healing potions at the store in the closest town, and saving and reloading the game thrice. However, when finally arriving at the beach (not a little grumpy), the Hero and Yuri find a very fat pigeon (named Palindrome) blocking the way. Palindrome tells them that it will not move until they find the legendary Gamma Sword, which is located on the inside of a boulder, which is somewhere on the world map. Yes, you heard it right. The party has to walk on every single tile to be able to find this boulder. When they find it, a message pops up, telling them that they found a large boulder(á la stupid entirely message driven sidequest in various locations on the world map in FF VIII). Now, the player must press the confirmation button 50 times in order to carve out the sword.
The party succeeds in doing this and the result is a small carved Mua (Easter Island) statue, which springs to life and tells them that to retrieve the sword they need to recruit Beatrix by loading the New Game+ file that was created when you finshed Legend of Mystery Zero that allows you to access the secret dungeon near the town of Triplets. However, since the chances that anyone has played Legend of Mystery Zero is very slim, this plan is doomed to failure. However, there is an alternative, and that alternative is to revive Leo so that he can help you recruit Beatrix. Reviving Leo, though, requires that you have at least fifty Small Knives in your inventory, that you’ve killed off The Hero and have Yuri as your only living party member, and that you’ve also… unlocked Golbeza and Ziegfried. At this point, the party lose their minds, tear their hair and run away screaming back to that little village where Jasmine now lives. Seeing how Yuri is trembling and eating dirt off the ground, and The Hero is signalling in angry gestures that if she doesn’t join them now, he will cut himself into pieces, Jasmine sighs and joins the party. A little fanfare is played, and all the children run out of the houses and sing a sad song.
And so the party exit the village in the sunset, but return shortly afterward when they realise that the weapon shop might have better weapons than the ones they’re currently carrying. After upgrading and selling old equipment and debating the merit of attack strength vs. special abilities, they finally leave. Only to discover that Yuri has mysteriously dissapeared. At the same time, the shop owner hysterically shouts that 99 Wooden really really Broad Swords have been stolen from his stock! Is it a conspiracy? Why didn’t the shop owner even sell these items? Was it Yuri who stole these? Is he really that worthless?!! The answer to all these questions is probably not going to be revealed any time soon. However, the party soon finds Yuri waiting for them at the outskirts of town. He mumbles something about “having to go for a walk” before rejoining the party. And, for some reason, their inventory now contains 99 wooden really really broad swords.
Deciding not to question this, they finally set course for the capital of the Evil Cultist Empire of Grandbalcony. They have learned from the townspplz that the empire of Grandbalcony is rapidly spreading over the northern continent, utilizing the commotion of the apocalypse last week and their mastery of speech. They have converted a lot of people by having the Evil Emperor himself speak to the people from his grand balcony whilst bending the laws of physics. However, getting to the northern continent may prove to be a bit of a problem since the ships that sailed there are currently lying in smouldering ruins, thanks to rampant acts of piracy committed in the midst of last week’s magic mayhem. The party realise by process of elimination that the next character they shall need to locate will be Siren, along with the airship. So :rabite:learly, their next course of action is to visit the local pub, where they find Siren, dead drunk and trashing about. The Hero, Yuri and Jasmine confront her about the airship, and she slurs something about visiting the haunted mansion nearby, within which lies a haunted train station, beneath which is a haunted train graveyard containing haunted trains, beneath which lies the grave of Siren’s…
See also Legend of Mystery.
