Hundreds and hundreds of randomly generated floors! Lufia: The Legend Returns

Melphis dumps some backstory: Gohl, like Deraf, used to be a good guy and she doesn't understand why he's gone off the deep end. Seena's says they need to go do something about the Ultra Weapon, but I personally think the Sinistral should take priority. Unfortunately, Minim refuses to continue up the Tower of Illusion, so I guess it's off for "the showdown" even though we all know the showdown is going to take place at the top of this tower.


Music:Kingdom of Alstadt

Over in Alstadt, it appears they've beefed up security: Now they have three more guards than they had before, and apparently that and the cannons are just way too much for the party to handle. This is gonna be pretty amusing by the end of this update.



Melphis proposes that they enter the castle by sea, but warns that path is probably heavily guarded. So... dungeon? Boss fights?



Aima says that the security won't be as tight as it is here at the front gate, with their five guards and two cannons! Lord have mercy, I have never seen such an insurmountable challenge.

Dei points out the obvious: They need a boat. Randolph says they can probably borrow a boat in Cobe.



Minim refuses to even attempt the front entrance, so he Warps back to Cobe. Most of the people seem apprehensive because they've somehow found out that Alstadt has got ahold of the Ultra Weapon.



Oh, what's this? Nicky isn't a liar? I suppose this means he really does know Deckard. It also means that Deckard is probably going to be putting in a appearance, because Minim is about to head out to sea and Nicky is the only fella with a boat in this entire town.



He somehow instinctively knows that Minim is headed for Alstadt. He asks for an unspecified, but steep, payment. Minim is a bit wary of this, but Nicky tries to assure him that Deckard will come to their rescue if something goes wrong.



Minim's like, "Yeeeeeah, no, we can't really count on your imaginary friend to save us," and starts to walk away. Nicky, for whatever reason, doesn't want to let Minim get away, and convinces him that he'll be fine without Deckard.



Somehow, completing a trip to Alstadt solo would prove that Nicky isn't a liar. I... I don't know how he made that connection, but whatever.


Music:Cave #2

Nicky's boat doesn't get too far before they encounter an Alstadtian battleship. The ship orders them to stop, but Nicky is unphased, because they've never fired before and now that the player characters are involved things will definitely not be different.



Once again, the battleship orders them to stop, but Nicky just teases them.

Then the battleship opens fire on them.

Nicky starts to shit his britches, and the battleship continues to fire (and miss).



Nicky isn't sure what to do (during this scene, you can hear cannonballs firing and landing in the water and the screen shaking... it's a pretty neat effect), but then Seena sees something behind them.


Music:The Noble Pirate

It's Deckard! Watching silently! Nicky is happy that Deckard is there to save their bacon, but he's all like, "Yeah, you're supposed to be a man, and you can't be expecting people to bail you out all the time."



For what it's worth, Nicky asks Deckard to take the party on his ship for their safety while he handles the battleship. Deckard asks the party if they want to get on his ship, and "naturally" the choice falls to Minim. He declines, because he has faith in Nicky.



Nicky says that they're probably not gonna make it, but as we've learned, Minim is a bit suicidal and isn't leaving no matter what. He asks the rest of the party, and they follow his lead.

Because they ~believe in Nicky~ (the cannonballs are still firing all through this, too). Even Mousse chimes in! This is pretty much the extent of Mousse's character for the rest of the game.



He manages to pull off some pretty neat evasive maneuvers.



And then he gets hit by a cannonball.



With the captain down, the battleship pulls up alongside them and orders them to surrender. Minim and Seena are revving up to dish out a little physical violence, and Deckard jumps on board to help out.



First thing's first: Deckard moves up to the upper right position and Randolph switches to the center. Now he has two characters feeding him Green SF waves. Deckard is the final Red SF character, and I boosted his up to 20 from like 6 or whatever it was. Between Deckard, Minim and Randolph, Aima's got about 60 extra ATP, so bully for her.

He comes with the IP Attacks Charge, which we've seen, and Jump Slash, which deals 3x damage and is effective against flying enemies. His equipment is whatever he was wearing when he left the party last, so it's a good idea to upgrade that with whatever junk you have lying around in the inventory (In my case, it was the Absorber, a Bronz Shld, Holy Cap, and Angry Rng).


Music:Boss Battle

Boy, I sure am glad we decided to take our chances out at sea instead of beating up like five guys and two cannons!

The Btl.Ship is a tough cookie. It has high DFP (Vital Aim is incredibly useful here), can heal itself with Armor Repair (the amount it heals itself for becomes lower with each use), and it has some straight up nasty attacks. Missile is like the [b]Oaks'[b] Oink, Oink in that it doesn't seem to do anything and immediately precedes a Checking the Situation message. It has a Machine Gun that appears to hit one row twice for a relatively insignificant amount of damage. Incendiary Shell, which is probably a fire-based attack, hits a column for a little over 130 HP. But the Btl.Ship's big, "fuck you" attack is Teflon Shell, which is more or less a guaranteed to kill one column. You can see it hitting Minim for 510 damage up there. Rest assured, neither he, nor Melphis, nor Mousse survived.

Miracles aren't really necessary, because Teflon Shell is likely the only thing that's gonna kill you. Revives and Rally, combined with GoddessTears and Champion X can handle it.

I believe it's classified as a "hard" enemy, so weapons effective against hard enemies would probably be useful. I didn't test it out, sorry!



After the battle, Nicky wakes up. He says he fainted, but I don't think it counts as fainting when you get hit in the face with a cannonball. He immediately asks what happened tot he battleship, but Minim lies and says that they lost it and Seena furthers the lie by sayign it was thanks to Nicky.



Lies, lies, so many lies. Minim thanks Nicky (even though he did nothing) and says they can take it from there.



Minim tells him to go back to Cobe and rest, because he got hit by a cannonball, but Nicky asks them how they plan to get there without a boat.

Then Minim says a poorly translated line where he asks Deckard to take them to the castle. And he will! Sure if you had joined up way back when, we could have skipped this and the Copley Forest and just sailed straight from Pirate Island to the Alstadt Kingdom, but hey, better late than never, right? ...Right?



Deckard tells Nicky that he was awesome, even though he screwed up and Aima had to punch a battleship to death. Deckard dubs him a Man of the Sea. Apparently the qualifications for being a man of the sea involve having peg legs, because Nicky is no doubt crippled after being hit with a cannonball.

We cut straight over to Deckard's ship, where Minim and his crew have already boarded. Deckard asks Minim why he didn't play it safe and come with him and instead chose to let a young child get horribly maimed by a cannonball. Minim says he didn't want to break his promise, and so it was all about teaching a kid learn self-respect and gain some confidence and learn what it means to be a man etc etc etc. Funny how whenever Minim tries to help a kid learn what it means to be a man they end up getting hurt pretty badly isn't it?



But Deckard's ok with Minim's method of teaching and decides to join up for real. And with that, they arrive in Alstadt. What dangers are waiting for them inside?

Next Time: A dungeon. A dungeon is waiting for them inside. Also we meet a Sinistral.
Random Floors covered: 112



JP art



NA art

If Melphis was kind of an expy for Selan, Deckard is a straight up expy of Dekar. The tigery skin shirt doesn't look that piratey to me though...

What is that round thing in Seena's character shot? It looks like she's idly tossing a blue hacky sack into the air.

Actually, she probably is doing that as a distraction from Minim's weapons-grade stupidity. That hacky sack is all that keeps her from snapping and going all Lizzie Borden on the party.

I call dibs on driving the axe-boat!
*Sees instruction manual* O_o nevermind

It's a crystal ball... because she's a fortune teller. But I like the idea of it being a stress ball quite a bit better.

Dude was hit in the face with a cannon ball and is completely fine afterward?

Screw Deckard, you need Nicky in your party.

He only is immune to cannon balls, a fist would kill him.

S... Surely they mean 'Orcs', right?

Right?

Booooooooooo.

Chapter 11: Minim asks, "No really, why didn't we just go in through the front?"

Geez, has it really been a week? Sorry y'all, last week sort of got away with me what with Halloween and Persona 2 Innocent Sin being announced. I've actually had all the Lidal continent events screencapped for a while now, I just haven't felt like sitting down and editing them. But hey, buck up! After the next update, there will actually be a chance for reader participation! I know right? Aren't you excited?


Music:Kingdom of Alstadt

When we last left off, Minim had just arrived at Alstadt by sea after he and the party destroyed a battleship. With their swords and fists. Because it was easier that way than walking through the front doors. JRPGS!

Anyway, as soon as they arrive at Alstadt Castle's underground port, they're accosted by a single Guard. Melphis tells him to back off. He's a little bit surprised to see her, because she's supposed to be up in her room. Randolph suggests that the girl in her room is a decoy. Wouldn't it be an exciting twist if this Melphis was the fake, and the one in the castle was the real one? Too bad that isn't happening.



Seriously, alls it takes is Randolph getting all huffy to convince the Guard that this is the genuine Princess Melphis. He's happy to hear it, even though he has no proof that she isn't fake. For all he knows, she could be the Sinistral of Death!

...



He begs her to save them, because Deraf has gone crazy. I don't... I don't understand why it has to be left up to the princess. There is literally a castle full of guards, many of which are basically saying, "Deraf is crazy, someone should stop him," but they all need a twenty year old woman to save them.

Melphis says that she'll take care of Deraf, and for some reason, this further confirms her identity as the princess. Remember kids: As long as you enter through a secret passage in the basement of a castle and tell the guards you're going to kill the country's prime minister, people will believe you are truly the rightful heir. People respond to confidence.



The hallway splits in two directions: South leads to the armory, where the Guard says he can sell weapons. First of all, this is Melphis's castle and therefore all the items belong to her anyway. Secondly, he has no proof that this is actually Princess Melphis, so it's entirely possible he's selling weapons to a group of assassins. Third, they really keep a stash of weapons and a man who sells those weapons to anyone who passes by right next to the royal family's secret entrance?

Whatever. Melphis gets a Sleep Rod (+70 ATP, +30 REG, allows her to cast Sleep I think), Deckard gets a Trident (+180 ATP, strong against aquatic enemies), and Aima gets a Spike Fist (+70 ATP, +12 SPD). Dei and Deckard get Rub Coats (+80 DFP, resists thunder damage), and Randolph gets a Metal Mail (+85 DFP). Seena and Melphis get Gem Robes (+80 DFP), and all the menfolk get Plate Caps (+40 DFP, prevents instant death).

Stuff I forgot to mention about Deckard, I think: He's 32 years old. His weapons are a mix of swords and (two-handed) spears. His armor class is mostly the same as Dei's, but he can also wear some of the heavier stuff like Minim and Randolph.

To the right is a Pastor who can save the game, teach some new spells, and heal the party. The only new spells are Dread, which lowers the enemy party's DFP, and Perish, a single-target instant death spell and... hey, wait. Melphis is the only one who can learn Perish? I mean I get that she's a cleric cut from the cloth of クリフト Cristo Kiyrl, but I just kinda thought Seena would... but I guess I was mistaken. Hmm.

Anyway, Seena gets Dread and Melphis gets Perish. She will more than likely never cast this, but Dread will be pretty helpful against bosses.


Music:Ensnaring Maze

Taking the stairs beside the Pastor leads to Alstadt Dngn. B11. At least it has the decency to immediately tell you how long this dungeon is.

You see that blue little kid below the treasure chest? Yeah, even though that's the NPC kid sprite, that's no NPC! It's a Sprite. They can cast Sleep, Trick, use Hammer to inflict some pretty heavy damage to one character (~150), and vie for Horrifying Fanart Thunderdome Supremacy.

The blue turtles running around are SeaTurtles. They're slow and can use Dash to hit one column. Despite having "Sea" right there in the name, they don't seem to be particularly weak to Deckard's Trident. In fact, it looks like they're actually strong to it, because he was hitting for considerably less than Aima and Minim.

The red-robed buggers are DeathMstrs. They're the first set of enemies we've encountered that'll chase after Minim. Well, that's not entirely accurate. It's more like they seek him out as soon as he steps into a room. They can't enter hallways or anything, but they'll wait at the entrance to a room if you step back into the hallway to avoid them. At that point I guess you could just throw a wave at them to push them back and paralyze them and walk past them. DeathMstrs are really, really, really quick. Aima is faster than them, but they'll act immediately after she does, and they can act twice. Usually they'll waste their first turn casting Mirror and then use a physical attack. They can also use Dark Laughter to deal about 50 damage to one character or instantly kill them. I have written down that they can Call Companion, but I actually don't remember them doing that.



FalconDance is an amazing little attack. When Aima uses it, it boost her SPD and then deals damage using her SPD multiplied by 4... and since she has the Cat Ring, this is a not insignificant amount of damage. Since it required Aima to have Yellow SF, Dei traded places with Seena so she could learn it.

Grounder is far less impressive. It attacks twice at 1.5x damage, which isn't so bad except that it also needs Yellow SF, and right now we only have Dei. Randolph learns it, for that day he has to cast off his MultiBlade for a more powerful weapon that only hits once. I guess having spare copies for Minim and Deckard to learn later on wouldn't be too bad, but it's certainly not living up to Aima's newfound power to smite things at the speed of light.

With this new party layout, Aima also learns the every important TyphoonToss, while Dei picks up Assassinate (lol like he'll ever use it), and Deckard gets Drive and Ice Attack thanks to being on Seena's Blue wavelength.



The red froggies are Poison Frog. They can Call Companions and use that Ribbit, Ribbit ability, and I imagine their regular attacks can inflict poison.
Flies appear as green bats in the dungeon and they can cast Dread. They are exactly as intimidating as you would expect flies to be.

It occurs to me that I've probably written more about enemy behavior in this game than anyone else has on the internet. Collectively. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

You can see Aima's FalconDance in action up there. Her SPD was raised by 170 and then she hit the SeaTurtle for 1221 damage. You go, you go, you got it girl.

Fun fact I neglected to mention (because I did not know it): Mousse can use Headbutt and Dash. I think his Dash hits all enemies, too.


Music:Kingdom of Alstadt

Finally, Minim reaches the castle. There's a Big Boomer right behind the stairs to the dungeon and a BoltBoomer in the painting in front of the door leading to the castle proper. There are a few Lady Attendants here. One says that Deraf is acting weird, and the other exposits at the party about how Melphis got sick after her father died and had been staying in her room since. She is very happy that the princess is doing better now though, because I guess we don't have enough time to explain the princess in her room is a fraud.

There are three paths to take: A small hallway up to the top, the stairs up to the second floor, and the front exit. Let's take the back hallway first.



The room on the left is some sort of office. The Grandpa inside immediately realizes that the girl in the room upstairs is actually a fake. He wonders if Deraf is trying to take over the whole country, by which I guess he means continent. Continental Conquest seems to be his stated goal, yes.



The room on the right is a treasure room. Surprise! All of the treasure sucks. The only remotely interesting thing is a Prtec Ring, which raises DFP by 20.

All the way in the back of the hall is the chapel, where the Pastor wonders if other Gods allow invasions and has two new spells: Release, which removes paralysis from the whole party, and Thunder, a very powerful single-target thunder (...) spell. And by "very powerful" I mean "hits about as hard as Minim does with his regular, AlumBlade'd attack except it costs 20 MP to use." Melphis learns Release and Seena learns Thunder.



Next let's try the front door. One of the Guards says that Melphis's companions look like ruffians, which is a pretty poor choice of words when referring to a Giant Woman who can snap your freaking neck with the speed of a falcon. Much like the guards in the secret passage, he's really bad at his job and just lets the band of ruffians go about their business. The other Guard asks if Melphis is feeling better. Minim refuses to enter the actual town.



Which leaves us with the stairs to the second floor. The first Guard Minim meets says that Deraf ordered him not to let anyone beyond this point, but since he's standing off to the side and not in front of the one tile wide hall he is completely incapable of stopping Minim from entering.

To the left is another treasure room, which contains slightly more useful treasure than what was downstairs: A GoddessTear, Miracle, another Sanity Rng and another Witch Ring. You can never have too many Sanity Rngs. This one goes to Deckard, so now Minim, Aima, Deckard, and Melphis all have Sanity Rngs, and Seena has her Ame Ball to protect her from confusion. This is important.



The room on the right is Melphis's room, which has no actual door or anything, so it's not like Fake!Melphis is exactly locked up or anything. Fake!Melphis is taken aback to see Real!Melphis, and Minim comments that they're the spitting image of one another. Seena wants to know how they found an identical clone of Melphis, but her question will be unanswered. Let's hope it's not because they're in the Eternal Sphere.

Real!Melphis asks who she is, and she tells them her name is Rino and she's from Northland. Northland is, as you'll recall, where Seena is from and where the events of Lufia II took place.



She says she was deceived by Deraf and brought here, and that she wants to go back home. Much like Melphis's incarceration in the lighthouse, the specifics of how she was tricked is never elaborated on. Let's just assume that all persons who look like Melphis are kinda stupid and easy to manipulate.

Melphis assures her that everything's gonna be fine, and that she'll handle Deraf and Rino will be able to go home soon.



Rino thanks Melphis for promising to help her. Minim can take a nap in Melphis's bed, in case the party is still hurting from the dungeon.

Music:Nightmare

Deraf is waiting in the throne room. He's surprised that she's alive, and she, once again, credits all the meat shields in the party for keeping her that way. Deraf scoffs at the notion of friendship, and, well, this is a JRPG, so you just know we're going to be teaching him the power of friendship right here in a second. Melphis asks why he's changed. Apparently while her father was alive, he was an honest man.



Deraf says that it was the night the lightning struck he realized he was capable of being more than just a flunkie for the king. You'll recall that the lightning he speaks of was something Randolph and Melphis talked about back when Mousse joined in Copley Forest: Lightning struck the Tower of Illusion and everyone started acting all crazy and of course there is a Sinistral there.

He goes on to say that he started poisoning the king's food. He expected the king to hold out longer, but he kicked the bucket pretty quickly.



Melphis is not taking this well at all, but Deraf is just lamenting his own incompetence. He thought that locking Melphis up in the tower would have been enough, and it's like, dude, really? You knew there was a noble, pretty princess with a strong sense of justice and healing magic in the kingdom you were trying to take over, you had a girl that looked exactly like her in your possession, and you decided that instead of taking an axe and beheading her with your own hands you decided to just lock her up in a tower? I don't think you're really committed to this whole "Evil Usurper of the Crown" thing.

Melphis orders Deraf to beg for mercy, because she's kinky like that, but he just laughs it off. He won't be laughing for long.



But for right now, he'll laugh.


Music:Boss Battle

The fight against Deraf is going to go one of two ways, depending on how you equipped the party: He will use Final Theory and confuse/mute the whole party and you'll be fucked, or he'll use Final Theory and five characters will be immune to the confusion effect because they equipped Sanity Rngs and the Ame Ball.

He'll also cast Ice Valk, which is the next level ice spell. It hits the whole party for around 75 damage, and for some reason was hurting Seena and Melphis harder than anyone else. After about half his HP are gone, he'll say Huh, losers... and start draining MP from characters.

Drive, Vital Aim, Grab Loot for a Miracle, Scatter Hit, etc, etc, etc. Aima's Seal Palm should knock off all his MP, causing him to use ConfuPowder on a single row and spamming Final Theory.

Deraf can also call Guards, but I ended up killing him on the same turn he summoned them. They can, at the very least, use GoddessTears to heal themselves and Deraf, but that's nothing to worry about.



After the fight, Melphis orders Deraf to surrender. He compliments the party on their mad skills, but says he'll never lose as long as he has the Ultra Weapon. Then he uses TLR's favorite escape method of casually walking away. Melphis waits until he's out of the room before yelling for him to come back.

There's a Crown on the throne. The Crown boosts DFP by 50, and SPD, MAP and REG by 5, and only Deckard can equip it. It's almost as if he's the long lost prince of Alstadt and Melphis's brother!



You don't have to go back to Melphis's room or the chapel to heal and save, there's a heal spot and save point conveniently located up a couple of flights of stairs. Deraf is waiting on the fifth floor.



With the Ultra Weapon! I'm not sure what good it's doing in a windowless, empty room on the fifth floor. They could have at least, like, put it in front of the castle or some place where they could actually use it in their campaign to take over the continent.

Deraf believes that the Ultra Weapon makes him invincible, and I just love Seena's reaction. It's like at this point, anyone saying they party can't defeat them causes her to just shake her head and say they've gone off the deep end.

But he's not listening to her, he's still caught up in his delusional fantasies. Melphis says she's going to defeat him in the name of her father.



But he says he's gonna be the one to finish her off, just like he did with her father. I dunno man, I don't think he's going to eat anything you give her because you already told her you poison folks.


Music:Boss Battle

Ultr.Wpn is highly resistant to thunder-damage, so things like Bolt Attack and Seena's thunder magic are useless against it. Aima opens up with FalconDance for a cool 1133 damage, and Seena hits it with Dread to make sure it'll go down quicker.

But let's talk about what this Ultr.Wpn can actually do. The truth is, not a hell of a lot. It has an ability called Idling, which shaves off 20 MP from every party member. Melphis and Seena both have 350+ MP, so it's gonna need to spend a lot of time Idling to get them down to where that would even remotely be a problem... and even then, I have a sackful of GoddessTears and MP-restoring items, so running out of MP isn't a real possibility and even if it were I have other stuff for my HP-restoring needs.

The other thing it can do is Gattling Gun, which hits three random party members for about 120 HP apiece. Which, ok, that's pretty hard on Seena, but everyone else, including Melphis, can take it no problem.

WarMech, Arsenal, BeamEdge this is not. A reminder: We had to rush up to Tower of Illusion to try and stop the army from getting their hands on this thing, then we had to rush to the castle instead of continuing up the Tower and fighting the Sinistral because it was so dangerous we couldn't let them use it. Alstadt's battle ships are more powerful than this thing.

Anyway, once most of its HP have been knocked off, it'll commit Suicide, and whatever remaining HP it had is distributed equally out to the party as damage. Now, Gattling Gun will realistically only put one character in danger of dying. It'll use Suicide when it has less than 1000 HP remaining. In best case scenario (for it), the damage will be 1000/7. Yeah, 143 damage is definitely going to take Aima, Minim and Deckard out. w2g Ultr.Wpn.



It blows up. Deraf is stunned that the Ultra Weapon lost. Like, babbling incoherently stunned. Deckard pops out to say that the only thing you can count on is your body. This is poor advice and I urge any of you reading not to take it to heart. Machines are very helpful and can sometimes do things your body cannot, like math and spelling.



Deraf collapses after being condescended to by Deckard, of all people. Melphis tells her father that she's avenged him, and asks him to rest in peace. Minim says that she did it, and she says, "Yes," but before she can say anymore the screen begins to flash black.


Music:Sinistrals of ______ and Death

Melphis wants to know what's going on, and a yellow figure floats down into the room. The being berates Deraf for being so incompetent. Minim wants to know who the guy is, and I'm wondering if any of you have figured out his SUPER SECRET IDENTITY.

...

Go on, think about it for a while. I'll wait.

...

I mean, it's pretty obvious, because this guy's been in all the games and his MO has been the same in all of them (sitting on his ass and letting his minions do all the work).

...

You still don't know? Really? I mean, sure, he's easily the most forgettable one, but come on!



The man isn't listening though, he's still bitching at Deraf for sucking. Minim calls him out on ignoring him, and demands to know if he was the one that made Deraf go crazy. He admits that he is responsible for Deraf, and now Minim wants to know why he would do something like that.



The Bad Guy shrugs and says that he doesn't really need a reason. Minim starts to say, "What in the hell is that supposed to mean?" but stops because he remembers he's heard something vaguely like that before. He's getting smarter, I tell ya! Seena says it was Gades who talked like that, and Minim uses his ever expanding brain power to deduce that this must be a Sinistral.

It's Amon, Sinistral of Chaos, the one that everyone forgets because he is not Gades, the Sinistral of Showing up at the Beginning of the Game and Stomping the Hero's Face, Erim, the Sinistral of Being the Only Girl, or Daos, the Sinistral who is also the Ringleader. He's just... the other one, y'know?

Minim is ready to take him on right here and now, and wouldn't it be great if we could do that instead of having to go back to the Tower of Illusion and climbing all the way to the top?

Amon admits that he is responsible for all the mistrust going on here in Lidal, but then he says that he's not the one who's causing people to be mistrusting, he just supplied the opportunity. I think he's trying to say that he used his mojo to create a situation that had the potential to lead to mistrust, and let people take over from there.



Because humans can never trust each other. That's human nature. You know, if he was aware that he is a JRPG character, he would not be saying stuff like that. Telling an anime teenager that people can't trust each other and that friendship is pointless is like signing your own death certificate.

Naturally, Minim ain't having it. He trusts his friends! Amon invites the party to come to the Tower of Illusion, so he can destroy this foolish belief that people can trust one another. By that he means he will fight them. You know, in case you were expecting it to be some sort of "Minim and Seena get into an argument" debacle like in Copley Forest or "He shows the darkest secrets of the other party members to try and make them lose trust in one another" thing.

He teleports away, along with Deraf's body. I don't know why he takes Deraf's body, it never comes up again. Probably it was just to get rid of his sprite.



Yoink.

Next Time: Voting Times!
Random Floors covered: 123

He WAS expecting him to be pretty incompetant, in other words.

...

The Ultra Weapon looks a lot like a Ride Chaser in battle.

Yeah, but I don't think he was expecting him to like, put the UNSTOPPABLE ULTRA WEAPON up in a closed room at the top of the castle where it can do absolutely nothing to take over the continent.

It's really kinda cute. <3

Chapter 12: Minim versus the Sinistral of Chaos

Reminder: There's a Voting Time at the end of this update!

Last time, Minim and friends had just stormed Alstadt Castle and defeated both Minister Deraf and his Ultra Weapon, only to be confronted with Amon, Sinistral of Chaos, who invited them to return to the Tower of Illusion for the final showdown.



Everyone's changed their tune around the castle. One Guard does something that no other guard has ever done before and asks to join the party so he can actually, you know, do something. Melphis declines the offer, telling him that he needs to save the people of the kingdom from monsters. We all know that if monsters attacked Alstadt, Minim would be the one doing the fighting, not the guards.

Rino is grateful that she can return to Northland, in case you were wondering about that particular plot point.



Alstadt has an actual town, too, filled with all sorts of tricky hidden items. Why would you hide an Awake in a bed? It's also time to load up on new equipment:

• A Fire Bow (+180 ATP, Fire-elemental) and Lt Jacket (+95 DFP) for Dei.
• Deckard gets a Glaive (+210 ATP, two-handed) and Lt Jacket (+95 DFP).
• Minim and Randolph get Plate Brsts (+100 DFP).
• Melphis and Seena pick up China Skrts (+90 DFP), Hard Buckls (+50 DFP), and Red Berets (+45 DFP, nullifies fire-damage).
• Aima gets a Brnz Cape (+90 DFP)

I went ahead and bought Seena an Emrld Ball (+60 MAP, nullifies bolt-damage), which she'll equip once we finish Amon off.



More items! The cannons out front have X-Bombs hidden inside. Come to think of it, my party probably wouldn't have been able to handle being blown up by two X-Bombs in a single round, so maybe it was a good idea we went in through the sea.

The store in Alstadt sells a Tite Turban (+48 DFP) that Aima can equip, but I opted to Warp back to Caan and buy her Bunny Ears (+45 DFP, +25 REG).

During the walk to the Tower of Illusion from Cobe, I ran into a group of Blue Cores, Lidal's core-type monster. Aima wasn't strong enough to get a one-hit kill, and so they all ran away. Sigh.


Music:Tower of Illusion

There is absolutely nothing new or exciting on the first ten floors of the Tower of Illusion. The 11F and onward has new things to kill and new ancient texts to find though.

Medusas are represented as green spirits on the map, and like the DeathMstrs from the Alstadt Dngn., they chase Minim down. They can cause paralysis with their regular attacks, cast Perish, Absorb, and Madness, but the worst thing they have is Cursed Gaze, which tries to paralyze the entire party. Remember, we don't have any accessories or equipment that makes us resistant to paralysis, so we're at the mercy of the RNG. Medusa seems to be resistant to physical attacks, but Aima's Typhoon Toss will kill them just fine before they get the chance to act.

The blue lizardfolk are MageLizards, and can cast Dread and Ice Valk. Are lizardfolk a new brand of enemy? I can't remember. Anyway, their sprites are similar to oaks and goblins, except they have big lizard tails.

Yellow oak-type enemies are FighterOaks, who can Call Companions to bring in Mage Oaks to the fight. Mostly they just die quickly before they get the chance to act, though.



Lizardman have green lizard sprites. They are yet another brand of nondescript melee-based fodder like Oaks and Goblins.

Do you ever play a game and see a little detail that makes you smile? For me, this is one of those details. See that blue elf girl up there? They're stationary enemies, which means if you want to engage it, you have to go to it. They're Sirens, and they always have fearsome High Hydras in their groups. It's a mythology! Like, I know Sirens aren't associated with Hydras, but you know, if Sirens + Multiheaded monster is good enough for [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQc_4vI1IzM"]Ducktales[/b], it's good enough for me. Sirens aren't much by themselves, they can use Do Re Mi to try and confuse one row, which is... not that big of a deal for my current team.

High Hydras, on the other hand, are some bad mofos. Their normal attacks hit one row, and god help you if it's a critical hit against anyone besides Minim, Aima and Deckard. They can also use Tri-head Breath to hit a column with heavy (~90 HP) ice-damage. (High Hydras can also appear on the map as green bats, and they're stationary there, so no worries about being ambushed and destroyed).

Scorpions are wandering the rooms of the Tower of Illusion, but I can't say much about them aside from the fact that they're easily smushed under Minim's boot. I imagine they inflict poison or paralysis with their attacks.

The real big nasty enemies are KillerBears. They can use their regular attacks twice, and it has a chance to poison, or they can just use Bear Crush to hit a row for about 150 HP. Bears are pretty scary.



Oh, and apparently I managed to acquire 99 potions, so I decided to start using them to heal up after battles for the rest of the Tower. Considering they only restore 30 HP to one character, this is pretty much a waste of time because I could just cast Champion X and be more or less good to go with everyone.

Some other enemies: Clay Golems that appear as yellow robots and Hell Hounds that appear as red puppies. Both types of enemies meet swift, painful deaths before they can act.



FinalDance knocks off 1/4 of the target's HP, which is gonna be exceedingly useful in the future. It might be worth making sure you get two copies, because there's another character besides Aima that can learn it, and, well, let's just say that attacks that take off a certain percentage of HP instead of working off of any specific stat is more fitting for him. I decided to save this for that character because I didn't get hunt down multiple copies of it and the terribly high Green SF requirements.

Holy Sword is Minim-exclusive ability, and one of the best in the game due to its relatively low cost (50 IP) and the fact that Sinistrals are weak to holy-elemental damage.

There are additional copies of Jump Slash, one of the IP that Deckard joined the party with, but there's only one other character in the game that can use it and he hasn't joined yet.



F15 is the top floor. There's a heal spot and save point, and some strange bridge... thing... that leads to, Amon's platform.


Music:Sinistrals of Chaos and Death

Amon appears. He address Minim and friends as humans who cannot even trust other humans, and since this is the climactic final battle (against Amon), it means we get the Fiery Shonen Speech Defending The Power Of Friendship. Minim trusts everyone! Seena does too, of course! Dei can't fight alongside someone if he doesn't trust them!



Aima accuses Amon of being unable to trust! Randolph the fragile old man is not as weak as Amon thinks! Melphis is holds herself accountable to the standards set by her people! Deckard believes you can't have trust unless you believe that trust exists!



Mousse has deep, philosophical insights into this discussion! Amon makes a veiled reference to oral sex! No, wait, he just says that you can use your mouth to deceive others. Minim urges him to hurry things along so they can get to the part with the fighting, and Amon gets all huffy about it.



Oh Amon, I knew you weren't all bad.


Music:Battle Against a Sinistral

You know, traditionally, Amon carries a spear or staff and not, like, dual lance gloves or whatever he's got going on there.

First up: Holy Sword is hitting Amon for like 1600 HP, and he's only got like 8000 HP to begin with. I forgot to equip Aima's Holy Fist to see if there's any appreciable difference in her damage output compared to the Spike Fist she has on now. I guess it doesn't matter too much, because this is the only Sinistral you'd really be able to use it against.

Much like the battle against Deraf, how easy this battle is directly proportional to the number of confuse-blocking things you have equipped. Spiritual Force of Chaos hits the whole party for between 60 and 90 HP of damage and inflicts confusion. Thanks to the Sanity Rngs and Seena's Ame Ball, only Dei, Randolph and Mousse are vulnerable to that confusion. I don't think he can cast Madness or Confusion, but that would seem vaguely appropriate.

He can cast Mirror on himself to reflect magic, and before you say, "Why the hell would I even bother casting magic on him?" I'd like to point out that the holy-elemental IP attack, Blind, counts as magic and will be reflected. I learned that the hard way when I tried to have Melphis and Seena use their IP while Deckard and Minim were waiting for their IP to recharge. Magic reflection is a little odd in this game: Instead of reflecting it back at the caster, it gets reflected at a random party member.

In addition to that, he's a tricky bugger and will cast powerful magic like Thunder and Ic Valk on himself while he has the magic mirror up. Why wouldn't he just cast it on the party instead of using himself as a conduit? Because he can also use an ability called Chaos Black on the party, which is like Mirror except it hits the whole party, effectively preventing you from using healing or support magic. But I mean at this point, being forced to use GoddessTears for healing isn't a big deal.

Oh, and he can cast Reduce, a powerful dark-elemental spell that deals major (usually fatal) damage to a target if they've got a magic mirror up.

He has one other ability I saw: Silent Chaos. I have no idea what this does. It targets the entire party, and it displayed a "Miss" message on Dei, implying that it effected the rest of the party, but nothing seemed to happen.

Anyway, much like everything else that stands in Minim's way, he eventually dies.

(The rest of this update is literally cutscenes, so if you're just here for the spergy numbers)


Music:Tower of Sorrow

Despite whooping him but good, Amon is still convinced that they will be unable to trust others. Minim remarks that the supervillain-esque parting words is a very human thing to do, so once again they have made a reference to the Sinistrals exhibiting humanlike qualities, and once again this will never be elaborated on in any meaningful way.

Randolph tells Melphis that they can finally go back to Alstadt instead of spending all their time running around dungeons and killing things/being the healbitch.



She makes a very ominous-sounding comment about it all being over. Dei wants to know what the plan is now that they've finished off the plot here in Lidal. He's not sure, so Melphis invites everyone over to a feast at the castle.



Dei says that he's always wanted to try the stuff that royalty eats, and I want to think he's planning on stuffing dinner rolls in his pockets to take back to the starving people in his poor village of Majari. Aima's a vegetarian, and wants to know if that's ok (and shame on you if you ever used a CharredNewt on her!), and it totally is.

Minim casts Escape and Warp to return to Alstadt. Were you expecting him to hoof it back down the tower and walk all the way there?


Music:Kingdom of Alstadt

Everyone in the city is decidedly more optimistic now. The Guards are happy that Melphis has triumphed over Amon, the people no longer feel restless, and it looks like peace has finally returned to Lidal.

In other words, everything's about to go to hell.


Music:Sinistrals of Chaos and Death

While attempting to cross the bridge into the castle, the screen does the Sinistral flashing thing, and a flickery Amon appears before the party. Seena assures Minim that it isn't really him, it's just his residual spirit. In the Lufia series, a "residual spirit" is a Sinistral's "ghost" that shows up almost immediately after you've defeated the Sinistral to cause some problems and disappears shortly thereafter so as to now force you into another boss battle.



Two Guards show up and demand to know who Amon is (You, freak.), but he seems to be ignoring them in favor of taunting Minim. He says that he'll vanish, but that won't suddenly make human nature not suck. He yells that humans will be cast into a world of chaos, and blasts the Guards with pink energy. Laughing as he fades away, he tells Minim and friends to die in disbelief.


Music:Enhancement

The Guards start flipping out and demand that Minim's party identify themselves. Minim tries to calm them down by insisting that they aren't enemies. The Guards don't buy this, and Dei says that the people in the town are losing it too. Jesus Amon, if you really wanted to do the Chaos thing, you could have done this in the first place.



Minim damns Amon, and I really should have started a counter to keep track of how many times Minim has said "Damn" in this E-rated game. Seena wants to know what they should do, and it seems to be that she's asking Minim and by now she should probably know better. He says they need to incapacitate the crazies without seriously hurting them.



So Minim and Seena do the wacky anime punt enemies off into the stratosphere thing. As it turns out, cartoonish violence against royal Guards is one of Melphis's hot buttons. Seena tries to smooth things over by explaining that they're just sleeping. Melphis screams "Silence!" and charges at Seena, and they do the little skirmishing dance that Dei and Minim did when they first met.



Seena deduces that Amon's Spiritual Force has infected Melphis, and geez, this country can just not catch a break, can it? All their leaders are driven crazy by the Unholy Living Incarnation of Pure Chaos.

A little girl who's been watching the events unfold walks over to ask Melphis what happened to her. Apparently she was a few too many steps away to hear what Seena just said. Melphis tells her to shut up and goes in for the kill. This whole sequence would be marginally more threatening if this wasn't the wussy white mage rampaging. Like, the little girl and Seena would actually be in danger if it were crazy!Aima trying to kill them. But crazy!Aima on a rampage would cause the wetlands of Lidal to run red with blood of the innocents because obviously she's unstoppable.

Anyway.



Deckard rushes in to prevent Melphis from hurting the child. He yells at her to get a grip, and explains that a ruler doesn't turn against the people. She pauses to think this over, as evidenced by the ellipse bubble, and then realizes that Deckard is bleeding. Right on cue, the familiar blood puddle spills out of Deckard. Minim states the obvious.


Music:Confession

As a playable character, large pools of blood are no big deal. Melphis is at a loss for words, and Deckard takes this to mean she's back to normal. She apologies, but he waves it off, saying that at least the kid is ok. I guess she's ok, except for the emotional scars of seeing a big bad fighter character nearly get gutted by a wussy cleric right in front of her.



Deckard tells her that since dad's dead, she's responsible for the country so she needs to shape up. Melphis reflects on his words, but before she can make any meaningful statement she realizes that Deckard just referred to the late King as "Dad." Randolph pops out and says that he's kept his big mouth shut, and addresses him as Prince Alheim.



Deckard tries to tell Randolph to put a sock in it, but Randolph's all like, "Dude, the jig is up." Melphis says that she's heard that she had an older brother, but he left the castle before she was born and has been missing ever since. So, Deckard ran away when he was eleven or twelve and has been fighting evil and pirating for the last twenty years.



She straight up asks if him he's her brother. He tells her that she shouldn't call him by that name and she wants to know why. It's because he's not cut out for the royal life, a sentiment that both Minim and Seena can agree with.

Even Dei gets in a crack and manages to hurt Deckard's feelings. They're supposed to be rubber fetishist buddies! How could Dei betray him like that?

Melphis is happy that Deckard is happy living the life of a pirate.



Deckard apologizes for being a burden because this is a Japanese game and apologizing for being such a loathsome burden on everyone around you is Japan's official national pastime. Melphis says that it's fine, because she's just happy to know he's alive. Even if he's a goofy pirate like Deckard. He can only respond by blushing and saying, "Oh... okay."



Seena and Minim tease him for blushing, but he denies he is. If you're bleeding out from an open wound, is it even possible to blush? Meanwhile, Randolph is probably cleaning up the blood puddle like Dei did back in Copley forest, because it'll be gone once everyone returns to the prison that is Minim's sprite.

Eager to change the subject, Deckard asks Minim where they're going next (they forgot about the royal feast). Minim comes up with the brilliant plan to move on to the next continent now that they've saved Lidal from becoming consumed by Chaos.



Deckard offers up his ship for traveling, so now they can explore the whole world if they want to.

Randolph asks Melphis if she wants to go with them, and she does, but she can't because she needs to stay in Alstadt and, you know, be the ruler. Well, she says protect it, but come on, she won't be protecting anything.



She tells Minim that it was fun traveling with them, but this is as far as she can go. Two Guards walk up, and I'm not sure if they're supposed to be the ones that Minim and Seena knocked out earlier or not. They say that there are two more Sinistrals out there, and the kingdom won't truly be safe until they're all defeated and as the twenty year-old princess and recently crowned ruler, it's up to her to combat the vengeful, ancient deities seeking to pour out their wrath upon the world.



Her reaction is actually kind of funny, because it comes across as her being less than enthusiastic about all this. The Guards say they will protect Alstadt, and will await her return. She ellipse bubbles at this, and Randolph says that they're lucky to have faithful guards. Melphis responds by saying "Yes...", making her look even more like she's not really keen on the idea of continuing her journey.

Minim says that it's time to get moving, and Melphis says "Let us go!" because if DiC Sailor Moon dub has taught me anything, Princesses do not speak with contractions.



One of the Guards says that Deckard's boat is waiting outside because the game decided to throw us a bone and not force us to walk all the way back down the Alstadt Dngn. to get it. The boat can only be docked at a beach or a pier, which severely limits our options. In other words, the world is not yet our oyster.

Random Floors covered: 136



Amon's art

Amon has the most inconsistent hair color. Erim's is pretty much set as cerulean, Gades has the flaming red locks, but Amon's hair is rarely even consistent between his map sprite and battle. In Lufia 1, he has blond hair out of battle, and seemingly red in; Lufia 2 has him with bright green out of battle and pale blue in; and here they've set him to deep blue. It does seem that they've decided that his hair will officially be deep blue because that's what he ended up with in Lufia DS (but then Erim ended up with light blue, almost white hair, so god only knows what'll happen if they do remake Lufia 1).

Also, it appears those are bladed weapons he has, not lances. My bad.

Next Time: Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about.

Voting Time

Now that we have the ship, we can travel anywhere in the world, even do a little sequence breaking. East of Epsis is the continent of Rosplett. Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do there but fight tough random encounters: The continent's single town is blocked by a forest that Minim refuses to pass through, the Tower is surrounded by mountains, and the only other building - a shrine - is locked up tight. So that's out.

There's a whirlpool towards the center of the world, surrounded by a tiny chain of islands, one of which has a peculiar cave on it.. Deckard's ship cannot land on any of the islands. This area is also out of the running.

East of Lidal is the continent of Fante. This is where we're supposed to go. Specifically, we're supposed to be heading to westernmost beach (the one closest to Lidal) and heading to the nearby town of Elcorano. This is where the plot is waiting.

However, there are other beaches in Fante. One is located in a tiny island in Fante's gulf. It has a volcano on it. Unfortunately, I believe the volcano is either locked or Minim will refuse to enter it. On the far northeastern tip, there's another beach, and near it is a shrine. It too is locked. But! There's one more beach here. One located on a peninsula of the gulf. From there, we can reach Mologolo. We could also walk a little bit from there to get to another town known as Tanba. Mologolo is normally the last town we'd visit on Fante, but thanks to our boat, we can head there first, buy the best equipment this continent has to offer before we officially start the plot here.

And lastly, there's a small island out between Lidal and Fante. This island is home to a very special, very ancient cave. Exploring it would certainly be worth our time.

So. Now that you have a run down on the state of the world, and I really should have taken screenshots of this stuff, here's what I want to ask y'all: Where do we go? Your options are:

1) To Elcorano, so we can continue with the plot as it was intended.
2) To Mologolo, to buy the best equipment that Fante has to offer, then continue with the plot.
3) To the Ancient Cave, and then continue with the plot.

Now, don't worry, even if you choose to go to Elcorano or Mologolo, we will still go to the Ancient Cave once we get our ninth party member, so don't worry about missing out on anything.

Ancient Cave.

Why the hell did you even waste our time asking, man?

Well I wanted to throw a little reader participation out there, and I really like the ninth character even if they would end up contributing absolutely nothing to our exploration of the Ancient Cave.

You already have Aima in your party, so a ninth member would be redundant. At best.

So go see how Ancient that Cave is.

I can't even see any option but Ancient Cave.

I choose option 4: To Mologolo, to buy the best equipment that Fante has to offer, then Ancient Cave.

I vote for the ancient cave! Woo! Ancient cave!

So, wait.... Amon throws the city into distrustful chaos, and even the Princess is effected....

But then once she calms down, does everyone? Did Amon only affect her and those two guards? Will those two guards still be nutso when they wake up? Are the heroes forgetting about the civilians and just leaving the city in chaos?

What exactly happened there?

Make a pit stop in Molocolo, then the Ancient Cave, then the plot.

Amon has freakin' swordhands! If he kept his massive shoulder-pads, I think he'd be the most badass boss I've ever seen.

Lufia happened.

I don't know, really. He doesn't hit Melphis with the pink-energy, so the implication is that she's going crazy like Minim and Seena did in the forest just from proximity to him. Presumably, it's the same for the townspeople, and they all calmed down once Amon's spiritual force completely vanished.

Or

Melphis (and the townspeople) was (were) hit by his pink-energy, it just didn't show it. The rest of the people saw her snap back to reality, and seeing their Symbol of Hopetm come back restored their sanity.

Or

Everyone had an emotional confrontation with a long lost relative during the chaos.

Or

Amon's spiritual crazy force only lasts until blood is spilled, hence why both Minim and Seena stopped being pissed at each other in the forest and why Melphis calmed down after she made Deckard bleed.

Or

The scenario writer didn't even think about it.

Do you have enough cash to buy all the nifty loot at Molocoloco already? If so, Mocolomo shopping first, then Ancient Cave. If not, Ancient Cave to stock up on funds, then Momococololo.

Probably not, but I have just about every item I've found/bought/looted still in my inventory, so I can hawk most of it (given that 99% of those things are now useless) to get more cash.

ANCIENT CAVES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY
(except in Lufia 1)