Dark Lord rules! Let's play Sword of Mana!

The first part of this update is us traveling to Wendel in video form. Once we get there, though, we'll have a TON of sidequests we're going to do. Wendel is the first big city in the game, and it shows with its sidequest selection. And since these are on the generous side when it comes to intuitiveness/grinding, I'm gonna do all three we have access to at present.



This guy's not giving us a sidequest, but he IS a way to fail a sidequest later. Technically, it's an "alternate ending" to a sidequest, but if you care about Li'l Cactus' diary entries, solving it this way won't get you the entry. It'll still reward you, though.



This guy here, Dohmi, he actually does have a sidequest for us. He wants us to pass out leaflets around town.



We've got 15 of them here, so we better get to work.

If you're curious, our other Event Items, in clockwise order, are the barbecued newt we're supposed to give to Marco, the wood geode we got way the hell back at the start, our cactus essence for building the hot house, a Mana Pendant you didn't know we had, and in fact we didn't have it when we first started playing because this game is kind of badly designed, and the Moon Mirror.



Anyway, the key to the leaflet quest is that there are different people in Wendel at different times of the day, including morning and evening. A good chunk of people will take a leaflet when asked, but this lady won't because reasons.



Anyway, going into this random house, we find someone who might have a lead on Marco.



Okay. I was gonna stop by the blacksmith anyway to explain how tempering works in more detail, but that works for me.



In the middle of Wendel's town square, there appears to be a green-hair/hatted minstrel playing a harp!



He's singing about someone else with a magical voice.



I... guess he means Granz. Who, in his time, was a famous peacemaker between the Realm and Mavolia. Good for you, Granz.



He finishes his song and the crowd parts. Hansel recognizes the song as one of Lord Granz's songs or something and walks up to talk to him...



At exactly the same time as this guy.



Meet the worst character in the game. Not for plotline reasons, but for reasons I am mercifully spared of because I'm not playing as Hansel. I'll explain them later.



Apparently, Lester is headed to Granz Castle!



It is a little known fact that Dark Lord hosts the best damn parties in the Realm.



Oh, right. The guy talking to Lester here is called Devius. No points for guessing who he's linked with.

Anyway, Devius warns Lester not to sing about Granz in the presence of Dark Lord. Evidently Lord Granz himself is no longer the leader of his realm.



Anyway, back to leaflets. A fair few of the townsfolk will mock us, and rightly so, for doing this.



Those that don't want to take leaflets will instead talk about Cibba. Also, size isn't exactly something I attribute to sages, kid.



arghagrhaghgar stop overlapping each other you cocks



We head into the blacksmith next, and who should we run into but a character who's actually one I like! But he's not originally from this game, so it's a wash.



Watts here is divvying up the spoils from... something. Not sure what.



Anyway, because he likes us, he'll help us forge weapons and armor later on!



To prove he's honest about that, he even gives us a weapon right off the bat!



A weapon he literally can't get rid of any other way but oh well!



He tells us not to tell our boyfriend over there, and then laughs like a maniac when we deny it.



And then he leaves, and we raise our sickle above our heads!

Hansel doesn't get this scene. He meets Watts in his own dungeon, a mine, complete with minecarts, and even adventures with him! Inside the mine (or maybe the cave near the mine), Hansel fights some Insectaurs, and loots a sickle from them instead. Since Gretel won't ever visit the mines outside of sidequests, she needs another way to meet Watts and get the sickle, so she gets this scene.



Anyway, the sickle itself is an interesting weapon. I remember once seeing a kid playing Final Fantasy Adventures and using the sickle. This was on the original Game Boy, and back when I had barely played any games myself. Closest analogy I had was Link's Awakening, so I saw this kid using the sickle, and my mind was blown that he could do Link's signature spin slash ALL THE TIME. See, the sickle, in that game as well as this one, spins a circle around the wielder, damaging everyone nearby.

Don't get too excited, though, because the Sword of Mana sickle is nowhere near as fun. It's about as slow to swing as Gretel's flail, and the hitbox for it is barely larger than her own sprite. And the stats... well, as you can see, they're staff-levels of bad. However, the sickle has three redeeming factors that make it useful for Hansel OR Gretel as soon as they get it. First, it's our very first slashing weapon that isn't Hansel's sword. Second, the deathblow for the sickle is INSANE, and covers an area larger than the Vampire's entire sprite in one swift swing. And third, the magic trajectory for the sickle is a ball of magic that orbits the caster twice. It's useful to Hansel as a casting weapon, and it's useful to Gretel as a slashing weapon, as soon as you get it, although later weapons will outpace it on both counts.



Anyway, the real point of the blacksmith isn't to get the sickle, but to temper your weapons/armor if you so choose.



How it works is you choose a piece of equipment you want to temper, and then select a fruit (for armor) or a veggie (for weapons) to temper with. Doing so kicks up a single attribute for that weapon or armor, at the cost of one point of limit. No limit, no tempering. Which is a fine system on its own.

However, Sword of Mana screws this up in two ways. Once we meet up with Watts, he'll be able to forge entirely new weapons/armor out of material, which doesn't preserve the bonuses of tempering. And most importantly, tempering not only costs a fruit/veggie, but a second piece of the material the weapon/armor is made of. So I could blow two chunks of bronze on our flail to make it stronger (if I didn't only have one vegetable), or I could wait until we get, say, steel, and then forge a steel flail, with base stats that blow the base bronze flail, tempered or no, out of the water. And then I could temper THAT, but what if I get the rarest type of material later? In short, screw tempering.



As for Marco... he's in the next town over, Menos. Great.

The other dwarves are wondering where some guy named Dofar's gone off to. This will surely not be relevant later.



Next stop is the inn, where we talk to a little girl named Emerilie. She lent out her best kitchen knife to someone. Not that she can recall who at the moment, though.



Therefore we will find it.



This guy, on the other hand, we will ignore the hell out of. Vega here is part of a chain of sidequests. He wants us to find a Glittering Sword so he can apply to be a knight of the Realm. The Glittering Sword is found as a random drop from... some enemy nearby, I forget. Whatever, we won't be farming enemy drops.

Vega will make no fewer than three other appearances past this point, I think. Each time, he'll ask for a new piece of Glittering gear, which can only be found as a random drop by enemies in the area. And don't go getting any ideas: you can't use glittering gear. Even if it drops and you haven't taken his quest. Screw this guy and also glittering gear.



Anyway, here is a completely trustworthy soldier. Umberto here wants us to hunt down Mana believers in Wendel.

So, to recap. Gretel, a 100% Mana Woman at this point, had not one, but two of her families ruined by Granz Realm. Persecution of her people and faith has made living safely a total impossibility, and Hansel is in much the same boat as her. Why would EITHER of them deign to work for Granz Realm, hunting the same people as themselves?



Because the sidequest expects you to. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-



FFFFFFFFFFFound a dwarf in the inn room who refuses to be a dwarf any longer. Somehow.



Devius is staying in the other room. He doesn't live in Wendel, actually.



He meant that Dark Lord would kill him for singing about Granz? Not too hard to figure out, Gretel.



Also... minstrels are going to lead a revolution. Um what



Yeah! He's worried Lester might try to incite an uprising against Dark Lord!



Me? No. I don't think that because where the hell is this even coming from



At least Devius is being sympathetic here. Also, dude sure has a lot of birds.



Anyway, the dwarves. The sidequest here is initiated by talking to the guys at the blacksmith after meeting with Dofar (and Emerilie, but you don't know that).



Anyway, Dohel... isn't exactly being very supportive here.

Just like I'm growing a thick pelt and quitting humaning.



Dohel really doesn't care.



Uh... dwarves are pretty much the manliest fantasy race there is. Don't really see how quitting... being a dwarf... makes you a big man.



For some reason, Dohel breaks out in tears. Manly tears. Because dwarf. Dwarf dwarf dwarf.



But no, Dohel isn't crying over Dofar's big dramatic whatever. He's crying because he's using a little chef girl's kitchen knife to do it.



And with that, Dohel takes off.



Dofar changes his mind and gives us the knife back.



This had better be of value greater than or equal to the awkwardness we just witnessed.



No, it is not a pie made of cat meat. It is... actually, it might be. All I know is it's a fruit or veggie.



Anyway, I head to the inn for the night.



Not for the stat buff, mind you, but because I want to set the game to morning, because as mentioned earlier, we need to hand out leaflets at all times of the day.



Sodje here (no I don't know why he gets a name) says we should've just chucked out the leaflets and said we handed them out. Believe me, man, I'd do that if the game would let me.



Anyway, once we make it night, we go back into the house where we first heard Marco was working at the blacksmith. Why? Because SIDEQUEST LOGIC.



Yep! This is the only time we get evidence of the leader of ZE RESISTANCE. Presumably because Arnold stops to visit at night.



The resistance leader, known here as "Guy Who Won't Work", doesn't seem too bothered.

With that, we get to report back to Umberto. Only, he's not at the inn at night because reasons. So instead, let's talk to this Unkempt Vagabond.



He's in such bad shape that he flat-out eats the leaflet rather than reading it.



Dohmi not only rewards us with lucre, though, but some Dudbears' gold as well. Think of these as the Frog Coins of Sword of Mana, although there is only one place we'll be spending them, and I only intend to spend three total. You can only get Dudbears' gold from sidequests, so there is a mandatory amount of sidequests I have to perform... to complete another sidequest.



Anyway, let's report back to Umberto, and then lead him to the site of the resistance. Which, thankfully, we are not roped into joining.



Take THAT, you filthy heretics!



Arnold is freaking right the hell out, but the leader is pretty calm about the whole thing.



Wait... Uncle?



So... you were working as an undercover agent in the Realm's army...



To find your old mentor...



Who is the leader of the Wendel-based Resistance...



And your best idea was to send Heretic Hunters after him?



This is dumb. This is the dumbest thing.



I'm not even listening to you chuckleheads anymore. Can I go now?



Before we do, Arnold gives us another piece of Dudbears' gold. And all we had to do was be the dumbest people ever.



Anyway, we can't go to the hot house just off to the side here, because of the main plot. But I'll get all those diary entries eventually.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Your Princess is in Another Airship

Oh god, these sidequests. Thanks for taking one for the team with this LP, Kalir.

Indeed. You are doing a great service to all of us who bought Sword of Mana expecting it to be something different.

I was really excited about the prospect of playing a simple remake of FFA with gussied-up graphics. At first I really enjoyed how this game added post facto rationalizatons for the story beats of FFA, while also bringing it more in line with the aesthetics and tropes that were codified later in the series. I think I got to Jadd before I realized I was no longer having fun, only playing out of nostalgia for FFA and a desire to see the re-imagined graphics for each area.

Aside: So it wasn't until I read a Brickroad FF1 LP that I realized the Four Fiends appear as bosses in FFA (I was aware of the more overt Chocobo/Moogle references). When the time comes, I'd be interested to hear about how Sword of Mana handles these FF connections; does it try to paper over them, or play them up?

Edit: While trying to remind myself of the name Jadd, I found this bundle of commentaries on Sword of Mana that cover a lot of how it failed to replicate what was so great about FFA.

Is this game really as incoherent as it seems to me right now? I've never played it so maybe I'm just not getting everything but man...

I especially like how this game's plot, writing, and dialogue manage to be substantially dumber than Final Fantasy Adventure's, in spite of the advances in the industry in game writing and localization. Plus the writing's much more present and thus harder to ignore!

I told him dogg, I told him about Sord of Manana.


YES

Sword of Mana was released at the height of Squaresoft's (by then Square-Enix's) "pretentious nothings" phase. Just about every game released between 2000 and 2004 from Squaresoft featured scripts that, when you actually broke down what was being said, didn't actually say anything deep or meaningful at all. They were effectively masking their systematically poor writing technique with purple prose. Some would argue that they never really escaped that phase, but mostly that sentiment stems from the fact that Alexander O. Smith is the lead translator for Square-Enix now. (Smith is very fond of pretentiousness, and will insert it even when it wasn't there originally.)

As of the start of this update, before I delete any screenshots, there are 254 screenshots in the library. There is not a second of actual gameplay among them and no chance to save until the very end.

To that end, I'm going to allocate each post in this update to a single section of the cutscene. We'll start here, at Wendel Cathedral, where Gretel intends to meet Bogard, and Hansel intends to meet the sage Cibba.



And so they do!

This fellow is Cibba. He looks awful, but he's a clever and powerful wielder of light magic, and a true sage.



This is also where Hansel meets Bogard for the first time since his childhood. Bogard apologizes for causing the death of his family, and Hansel says to him that it was Dark Lord's fault, same as with Gretel.



Gretel reintroduces Bogard as one of the Gemma Knights of legend, who helped to defeat the Vandole Empire. I'd complain about having never been told this prior to this point, but this cutscene will explain everything as much as the game ever will, so hey.



As for Hansel, he came to Wendel to ask Cibba about the Sword of Mana, figuring if he had the legendary holy sword, even he would be able to fight Dark Lord.



For this, Bogard and Cibba make fun of him for thinking "im gonna be teh hero guys!" Which is kind of hilarious.



Hansel takes it badly, even going so far as to knock Gretel on her ass when she tries to apologize on their behalf.



What pendant?



Oh, this one? The one that showed up in our inventory at an undetermined point in time, yet Gretel claims it's an heirloom of her mother's?



Yep. Cibba casts a spell of some kind...



And a mysterious warm light flows into the pendant. Cibba advises us to keep the pendant safe.



Bogard prepares to leave, and though Gretel wants to come with, he insists she stay in Wendel, hiding from Dark Lord and living a safe life.



Gretel takes some offense to this.



After some persuading, in which Gretel insinuates they're like a certain vampire we've already met, Cibba takes her side and agrees to let Gretel travel with Hansel.



And so she will! Well, that went nicely.

Suddenly, a mighty turbulence shakes the air and ground around them. Welp, so much for living a safe life.



In related news, Hansel's knocked flying through the door of the cathedral.



The impact shatters the Moon Mirror into a million billion tiny fragments! Oh no! That might've been useful maybe not really!



The shards in the air do momentarily reveal a kind of shadow around Julius, which Cibba recognizes as Vandole. So... I guess it was kinda useful.



Dark Lord enters and makes his terms: hand over Gretel, or Wendel gets destroyed.



Bogard objects to this. I know I said I'd shrink down the cutscene for this, but I just like Bogard's battle stance.



Gretel steps forward and agrees. Cibba really does have a point, we can't afford to get the whole town exploded. Dark Lord even expresses that he hopes for a peaceful ending to this.



Hansel does not.



He suddenly lunges for Julius, but Dark Lord parries him away.



The sudden clash of swords brings a trio of soldiers in.



However, we don't get to see what happens, as Julius knocks us out.



FALSHBAKC TIEM



We can't feel when we're unconscious!



We wake up a short time later in a high-tech looking place, with an old lady watching over us.



Before we can be told where we are, Dark Lord and Julius enter, and Gretel's kill instinct takes over.

Yep! We have been captured on the airship of Granz Realm!



Dark Lord ignores our death threats and says that's all in the past, he's changed his mind, and we should set aside our differences.



When Gretel point-blank refuses, Julius offers an alternative method of coercion. Probably torture.



And Dark Lord tells him off. Which is a bit surprising, given how vehemently he hates Mana folk like ourselves.



Anyway, we're going to be watched over by his maid while we head for Granz Castle! no injokes here, satonakaja and asema



Well, for starters...



Yeah, that. Marley, of course, can't allow that, what with us being high in the sky.



Anyway, Marley can't help us escape, but she can give us information.



A ton of information. In fact, this is about as straightforward as the game will ever be about the facts of the setting. So rather than screenshot the ten or so options provided, I'm going to transcribe them. Feel free to skip these if you don't care.



After that, Marley advises that we should get some rest. So we do.



Some time later, a bout of turbulence rocks the ship. Dark Lord rushes in, concerned about Marley.



Is that so? Maybe we can escape while we land for emergency repairs.



Westlake, eh? Never been there.

And if we did go there, we'd find another geode. Only we can't go there until we hit the endgame and unlock the fast travel mode of the game... unless we played Hansel's route. Hell, people playing as Gretel might not even consider there's an entire area of the game over there.



In any case, Dark Lord apparently doesn't trust Julius too much, after that one outburst.



Right here? This is the sole bit of honest-to-Cheibriados gameplay here. And all it is is examining things and talking to Marley. No Mana Goddess statue in sight, and man I wish there was.

We'll start with this diary here.



Apparently it's a former military ship repurposed as a sky yacht and it also has a bunch of secret doors so whatever.



It belonged to Granz's wife, whose name has been cursed. Uttering the Lady's name will cause weakness.



More relevantly, the asp symbol on the diary... might it be related to the secret passages?



Fortunately, continued reactor mishaps draw Marley's attention, and she wanders off, leaving us to test the passage ourselves.



Fancy that, it opens! Also, military warship repurposed for the usage as a yacht and your first thought about secret passages is that they're for his kids? Weird train of thought there.



Wisp, our light spirit, shows up here! Master Cibba... told it to tag along? But it's already with us at all times, and we were neither disarmed by Dark Lord, nor abandoned by Salamander or Undine, so... whatever.



In any case, Wisp was the one responsible for busting up the reactor, so there's that going for us.



Anyway, where's this doohickey take us?



To Dark Lord's personal quarters, of course. And Isabella is there, of course. And we're going to talk about his mother Medusa, of course.

Also, the lady Granz's name is Medusa. It's cursed, so you can't say it. But I'm typing it so I'm okay. Isabella and those can say it, because Mavole Mavole Mavole.



Dark Lord is more than a little displeased about Medusa being cursed. See, human/Mavole relations are forbidden in Mavolia.



And that's Dark Lord's motivation, really. He wanted Mana power to save his mother, but the Mana clan wouldn't spare any or something.



This, pretty much.



Busted. Good thing we closed the closet door, and nobody has apparently checked the closets for secret passages in Dark Lord's entire tenure as ruler.



And Julius has taken Marley to his room. Grand, just grand. Even Dark Lord doesn't have time for this nonsense, and sets off immediately for Julius' room.

Since we can trust Isabella to keep quiet, we hop out. And a dumb insinuation was made.



Yes, we get it, you're a Mavole and not of this world and far beyond the understanding of mortals, shut up. She's only with Dark Lord because she's interested in strong rulers.

...So why the hell were you shacking up with Lee, of all people?



Yeah, we gathered.



Buuuut Gretel is still guilt-ridden over Hansel's family. More relevantly, Julius has Marley in his room and he's been proven to be a backstabbing unreliable snake. Can we go do something about that now?



He's a backstabbing unreliable snake that defies all conventional definition, even! So get a move on!



And no sooner do we step outside than we're spotted. Despite how we're going to fight through hordes of soldiers later.

This would be screenshot 168, i.e. on the tail end of a normal big update coming from me.



Rather than fighting past him to get to Marley, she boldly declares that the soldier take her to Julius' room at once. Conveniently, Dark Lord shows up to do just that.



When Dark Lord asks, Gretel explains that she stopped hiding to save Marley, since she doesn't deserve any of what's going on.



Dark Lord thinks we're being preachy, but concedes to our wishes and leads us to Julius' room.



And when Gretel explains this to Julius, including that she escaped without Marley's help, Dark Lord backs her up.

This is actually one of the better-written parts of the game, seeing as the motives of the characters all line up in their own ways, and while they don't agree or even consider each other allies, they work together naturally.

It just so happens that this is also a scene in which we start sneaking around and then let ourselves get caught in cutscene mode. So the quality is wasted.



Julius still wants to punish Marley. Mostly because he's a dick.



Even Marley reprimands him. Seriously, Julius, you are a dick.



Anyway, they're talking about destroying the Mana Clan as well, and so Gretel boldly challenges them to kill her now.



Julius clarifies that they're no longer trying to exterminate the Mana Clan, but rather find the key to Mana Sanctuary that was passed down through the generations. Which... might be our pendant. The one Cibba just charged with the light of Mana.

WELP.



Anyway, Julius makes his plea to get information out of us once more, and Dark Lord agrees, although not without another reprimand.

Seriously dude, why do you even work with Julius?

And the first thing Julius does after Dark Lord and Marley leave is shoot us with dark magic.



And so the interrogation begins. He says he'll spare our life if we can answer why the Mana clan didn't try to stop the Emperor Vandole in the past.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the Moon Mirror revealing Julius as some kind of reincarnation of Vandole or something? Hahaha yeah that's never going to be touched on again.



Gretel's got nowhere to run, so she hopes that Hansel and Bogard can do all they can to stop Julius and Dark Lord.



Seriously. Julius is a dick.



When we ask why Julius hates the Mana clan so much, he knocks us on our ass again.



However, Julius' motives are somewhat less murderous. He just wants to meet the Mana Goddess. "As a woman", even.

Well, your habit of kidnapping and torturing women sure will endear her to you, won't it.



Anyway, Gretel still refuses to talk, but the flight to Granz Realm is going to be a long one.



One seemingly-pointless fade to black later, he asks us if we're feeling cooperative yet. Which, of course, we are not.



And Julius asks us... a very specific question.



Yeah, remember that plot thread from the beginning of the game? We actually have a lead on it now!



Even though Julius promises that he'll relent if we hand over the key, we refuse. Which leads to this gem of a line.



Since we won't cooperate, he prepares to deal a killing blow.



Suddenly, Hansel and Cibba, on the exterior of the airship!

See, when the airship landed at Westlake, Hansel and Cibba were in the area, the former having just finished his adventures with Watts. So they boarded then, and took a while to sneak on to this area.



Cibba wastes no time in busting out his own brand of light magic to stop Julius.

Cibba is one of Hansel's possible partners for an extremely short segment of the game. Statwise, he's pretty much a clone of Gretel, carrying a staff and sporting light magic, only his stats are a ton better than Gretel's.



Fittingly, his magic can easily disrupt Julius' spell and leave him winded to boot.

Julius immediately returns fire, knocking Cibba out cold!



Hansel follows along by busting the window with his sword.

There is dialogue here, but it's pretty meager stuff, so ACTION instead.



Julius isn't about to let Hansel escape with us, so he prepares to take out Hansel. Thinking fast, Gretel chucks the pendant to him.



Hansel declares that they should both flee, rather than just him.



Gretel's playing the odds here. A ship voyage's worth of torture has her barely able to move, so she tells Hansel to get a move on himself.



Before Hansel can continue further, Julius launches his spell.



And suddenly Hansel has no choice in the matter.



Fortunately for us, Dark Lord turns up to give Julius an earful.



Cibba recovers at this time, and figures the best use of his time is telling Dark Lord that his father wasn't as bad as all that.



Dark Lord disagrees strongly on the subject, but that's old news by this point.



This is also why Dark Lord despises the Mana clan so.



Cibba gives up, and gives an assurance to Gretel that he'll ensure that Hansel is safe. With that, he teleports away.



Julius plays too rough.



Anyway, the reactor's in pretty bad shape, so much that it's become an immediate worry.



Dark Lord says he'll check it out soon, and asks the soldier to take us to our room.

Doesn't take too long for us to recover. We're a monk-in-training, after all!



The soldier takes off his helmet to reveal... Bogard's face! While Hansel and Cibba stormed Julius' room, he snuck on by himself!



So now Bogard's with us. What's the next step?



I like this plan already.



One of the guards in the area has been entrusted with the key, so we're gonna have to bruise him up some.



And hey, we get Bogard to join us to help out!



As you can see, Bogard's stats are no joke. He's very much worthy of his title as a Mana Swordsman, and surprisingly agile for his age! However, his magical capacity is very lacking indeed. Not that it matters, because he doesn't even have any magic yet, although his skill levels do indicate that he'll likely pick up a type of magic before long.

Granted, his AI's no better than Hansel's, but his raw stats mean that any hit he actually does care to land will pack a wallop.



ASDFDFDFDFDF FINALLY A MANA GODDESS STATUE.

Seriously, I've only shown you about two fifths of the total screenshots I took. The actual gameplay will be next update.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: My Fists, They Are Made of Steel

I'm so torn on which is worse: Complete Cipher or Daddy Issues.

So, this update is, once more, pretty much all video. Since I forgot the Li'l Cactus Diary for the last section, what with being totally unable to access Li'l Cactus at this point and HALRGAHRABRARBLA CUTSCENE, here it is.



Anyway, the airship. It's the first area we get to play with Bogard, and I just figured I'd note that his gear is also the first non-bronze or oak equipment. Which is, as you can see, far and above what ordinary bronze can do.



Back on our own level, though, we finally obtain the knucks, the signature weapon of the grappler, and pretty much the best weapon in the game. Like our staff, it's a bashing weapon, and it has the same level of attack power as the staff to start. However, it more than makes up for that with its base stats, which are even better than the sword. It doesn't stop there though: the knucks attack twice as fast as the staff. Combine that with our class bonus, and the stylin' Hadoken deathblow, and you've got yourself an excellent weapon.

And that's still not all the knucks have going for them! The casting style for them? Manually controlled. And unlike the homing blasts of the staff, knucks magic can hit more than once. Since Hansel gets this very shortly after the sickle, he spends very little time relying on it as a casting weapon, since this is way better at it. The only real downside is that the knucks are a bit finicky to combo with, since you have such a limited space of time to input the A button right. If you input it either before or after the last frame of the attack, it fails.



As for the area itself? The goal is to reach the reactor, of course. But to get to them, we have to find the guard with the key. Which is to say, search every room in the airship until all the rooms with guards have been cleared out. And since our stats and weaponry aren't suitable for fighting the guards, we leave it to Bogard and his "freight train carrying a payload of radioactive Vikings" level of power.



The reactor itself is pretty impressive, but it's host to some dumb stuff.



Damn it Julius, leave Kaylee to her work.



Oh wait no, it's just the guard robot battle.

Remember that... thing from Vinquette Hall? This is round two of that fight. See, the robot guy can't be damaged by anything other than a slashing weapon (or magic, but haha no). And as you've seen, our current slashing weapon... well, it's garbage. Thankfully, Bogard can take it on himself with minimal risk.



We get two rewards from the fight. First, Gretel finally obtains the title of monk, kicking up our knucks skill even further and increasing the power of our healing as well! As I may have explained earlier, the second tier of class requires five more levels in what you previously invested in, plus either five random levels or five sage levels. There are two exceptions: sages, which require five magician levels instead of five more sage levels, and barbarians, which can either double up on their existing levels plus some random levels, or... take two of every level up type there is. Not sure how you're supposed to guess that, but there it is.



There's also the matter of the earth spirit Gnome that is now assisting both Gretel and Bogard! Only a handful of teammates (Gretel, Cibba, and one other character later) start off with access to a spirit. Hansel found the Salamander in Vinquette Hall, and everyone else gains the magic of the first one they come across and rescue in this fashion. Since Bogard hasn't contacted a spirit yet, he now has the assistance of Gnome.

Which isn't a bad magic type, all told. I'd rate it just below Salamander myself. It's effective on many enemy types, although it most notably does not affect beasts. Earth magic has a chance to petrify enemies it hits, effectively killing them instantly, but like burning, this grants no XP or lucre. However, the support spell buffs physical defense, which kind of loses out to Salamander's offense buff in my opinion. Still, it's a matter of taste, and both types are viable.

Anyway, we now have to prepare for the final part of our training. What class will Gretel end up with? As before, we have two choices.

• There is said to be a monastery which teaches a fairly unorthodox, but highly impressive and effective, style of martial arts. It is said that the monks of this school, when fighting, somehow make their hands shine with a pure light that burns away evil beings. Because of this, they are called god hand by the common people.
• The training of a monk is one of peace, though they practice martial arts. They hold the belief that to transcend violence, one must understand it first. Those who have lived their lives according to these teaching, true warrior monks, have honed their healing arts to the thing of legend, and rival even the great sages in their skill.

So, which will it be? God hand, or warrior monk?

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: This Seems Like a Safe Place

God Hand sounds sparkly so I'll vote for that.

Summon up the power of the God Hand.

I love you guys.

God hand sounds way more awesome than warrior monk.

I'd go with Warrior Monk for the better healing.
So throw caution to the wind and play GOD HAND. Unless one of your arms will actually be replaced with the GOD HAND. It such a case, be a GOD HAND twice.

GOD HAND.

GOD HAND

Make your defenses impregnable and your style impetuous.