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

Oh wait, he's being a self-pitying moron.



Yeah yeah we get it.



A bird nearby flutters off, and Bogard hears Gretel as a result.



Why are you talking about Mana as if it's a person? That's dumb, you're dumb.



Yes you did, you were hiding behind a tree and everything.



Either Bogard doesn't tell she's lying or he doesn't want to harp on it.



Suits me fine, you'll resolve your psychoses in your own time.



Anyway, Bogard rejoins for the next while, in which we're going to have a whole buttload of dungeons ahead!



We also have Luna the moon spirit now. Moon magic is in the running for the worst magic type in the game. It's still useful, mind you, due to the enemies it can hit. In particular, it's highly effective against plant enemies, who are immune to both light and bashing damage, so we have an alternative if axes are unfeasible. However, moon magic's support spell and ailment are both so totally without merit you should just not bother.

Mooglemorphosis is another stealth spell, in which Gretel turns into a moogle. For some reason, moogles can only be detected by sense of smell. And we already mentioned how useless stealth spells are. As for the status effect moon magic causes? It turns enemies into Wimps, like what the mimic enemies did to us. Difference between player Wimps and monster Wimps is that monster Wimps are actually Shadow Zero recolors. Y'know, those fast, high-agility Amorphs? To make matters better, monster Wimps are immune to magic and have agility that makes the Shadow Zero look sluggish. In theory, monsters in this state flee from you. If they don't, though, then you're kinda hosed, aren't you? Screw moon magic.



I also go make us a new flail. I think from now on, you can just assume I upgrade stuff whenever I find fitting materials for it. If I find something like the Marble that leads to sidegrades, I'll show it off, but most of what we get will be like this.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Vegetative State

Man. This part here is where all my replays die. From the Medusa fight to this point, the game is just awful. So illogical, nonsensical, pretentious, and overall insufferable.
It was! It was absolutely fantastic for 1991. It was the first time I saw the trick where you can't advance the game until you, the player, actually push the button to kill Amanda. And it was necessary that she be bitten and transformed (gorgonism is like lycanthropy or vampirism I guess), because it's not blood you need (plenty of that on the monster you just killed) but Medusa's tears. Which the monster Medusa didn't shed, being a monster and all. They're insistence in making everyone in the remake related and giving them "character depth" (and I use the term loosely) really hurt the game here.

Undermining the original seems to have been Sword of Mana's overall goal. They tried to make every character sympathetic. Every last one. I'm surprised the heroes don't give an Alas, Poor Villain speech for every single boss in the game, as that seems to be about in line with how they were going with this remake.

Square's writers forgot at some point that sympathy is earned, not given. And that it's far harder to write a sympathetic villain than a purely evil one, especially when that villain was never intended to be sympathetic.

There sure is a lot of talking in this game.

So, since Lester played the song that made the Grudgies calm down, we can go to Miasma Glen now, and Cascade Cave beyond it! The glen itself is short, but brutal if you lack poison resistance. As for the cave itself, most of the enemies there are Flora types. Which would make Moon magic a pretty good weapon here, if not for the fact that between axes and fire magic, either style of character, physical or magical, has a viable mode of attack here.



We enter a clearing, and Julius' voice taunts us from out of nowhere.



A shadowy form coalesces before us, bearing his countenance!



He spews some nonsense about rebuilding the Vandole Empire here, as well as us joining him.

...What? What would ever give Gretel, whose people have suffered endless persecution due to the Vandole Empire, and who you personally have tortured to near-death, cause to join you? Are you being sarcastic or just flat-out idiotic?



Gretel demands to know what his goals are, and he states that he wants Mana power. Not like we couldn't have deduced that on our own, but whatevs.



Yeah, yeah, badly-written themes of breaking vows of pacifism or something.



Gretel runs up to wallop him with her staff, but he just phases out.



He then mockingly states he'll give us plenty of opportunity to do so.



And in doing so, summons a boss fight!

The Poison Vine has two forms. The first form is so piss easy that it may as well not exist, but the second form is stupidly tedious. There are two parts to the boss' second form: the root base, and the flower up top. The base isn't hard to kill, Bogard's sword (assuming direct control, anyway) or Gretel's axe will kill it right quick. However, the head constantly hovers out of reach of all your weapons. Kind of like Mindflayer, except where you can only hit it with bows or magic. And better yet, to even get close enough to hit, you have to get on a tiny platform that makes dodging its attacks, which are easy to see coming, all but impossible. Said attacks can inflict poison (which kills Bogard) and sleep, which is annoying. So our best strategy is to spam arrows when it gets within range and opens up, and to do nothing else but heal for the whole fight.

...GAMEPLAY!



The Dryad we save from the poison vine meets up with us back at the regenerating vines.



Apparently it can solve the problem!



And boom, passage open.



Oh HELL no you're not.



GET BACK HERE, I FOUGHT A STUPID AND TEDIOUS BOSS TO RESCUE YOUR PUN-MAKING ASS



Thank you, Bogard.



Between what I had to do to get you and your love of puns, there's no way in hell we're going without you.

And it agrees! Good, I was about ready to make you walk the plank.



Anyway, Dryad! Dryad grants the user wood magic, which is almost totally unremarkable in every possible way. The PsychicShield doubles magic defense, which is really situational, and the status effect it inflicts is sleep, which can be useful. However, most enemies resist or are immune to wood magic, making it pretty impractical. It's good against Oddities and Amorphs, I guess. Still, pretty much every character build in the game can safely ignore it.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Place This Mace In Your Face, Ace

The way I've always read this scene (in the original) Amanda needed you to kill her not for the tears (because that don't make no sense) but because she's going to be become a horrid monster with no control over herself eventually. Of course you can also collect her tears.

So having some back-story for Medusa could be good, just to foreshadow what happens to her, but a screen of text where a random villager tells you some half-remembered rumor that she was once human would be enough.

This LP is delightful as always, Kalir, but I'm keeping quite because I really dislike this version of the game (and SoM, for what it's worth).

Thanks to this LP, I now know that my copy of Final Fantasy Adventure is totally missing.

On the serious side, I'm sorry for your loss.

Well, I meant necessary for the plot; I didn't mean she intentionally got bitten or anything. You have it right that she prefers death to monsterhood.

Continuing on from where Dryad opened the passage, we climb Mt. Illusia on our way to Granz Castle. The gimmick of the mountain is pretty obvious: stone faces everywhere, punch them until they all have the same expression to progress. Kinda like the bells in Devius Tower, except a bit expanded because different matching expressions can open different areas. It's not enough to make the area truly remarkable, though. As for the enemies, there are Amorphs, therefore it's annoying. I realize I could've used the flail, but I want to get some practice in on my light magic, for reasons.



Anyway yes. This is Granz Castle, home of Dark Lord.



Psh, no, they got eaten by breakdancing wolves.



Ah, yes. Gladiatorial breakdancing. The most deadly kind of dance there is.



Anyway, moving right along. For reasons unknown, the front gate is open and unguarded.



It's guarded by Isabella here. What's that, you can't see her? Well, that's because she only guards it in Hansel's path. Don't worry, you're not missing out on anything relevant. You don't actually fight her, it's just a small cutscene.



Bogard is dead here because I got paranoid and tried backtracking for a Goddess statue. Didn't really work, but hey, there's one right there.



Oh hey Goremand.



So yeah, we's locked in Granz Castle and Goremand's going to devour our souls! Oh no he'll be a formidable boss to fight!



Oh and we got a mace I guess. Common opinion regarding the weapons in Sword of Mana is that the sickle is the worst weapon. I disagree: the mace is worse. The sickle, at least, has a brief period of usage when you first get it. The mace has no redeeming value not already covered by another weapon. When swung, either normally or as a deathblow, the mace slowly hits a small area right in front of Gretel. The magic of the mace is a kind of frag grenade sort of spell that takes way too long to resolve. Its base power is great, even better than the axe, but that's all it has going for it.

If you want bashing damage, you already have the knucks. If you want high physical power, you already have the axe. The deathblow and magic are easily outclassed by both of those weapons as well (and a few others to boot). There's not even a class that grants a bonus to it. No player has any reason to use the mace. Screw maces.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Do Not Touch Willy

Man, there's something else they ruined from FFA. The mace was pretty good in the original. And the best part was that it could break walls so you didn't need to carry around stacks of mattoks anymore. I think it had good range too!

Instead they made it the Dryad of weapons. Not good enough to use when you have better options, and received so late in the game that you already have those better options. Poor Dryad. Never gets any love.

The mace replaced the morning star, then?

Story Time!

There's an boss in the original game that can only be harmed by the morning star in the dungeon you get it, he lives three rooms into the dunegon. The second room has four exits, north to the boss, south to the entrance, west which loops around and brings you back through the east exit and east to the rest of the dungeon.

As a kid, when I first played the game, I fought the boss and couldn't damage him so I left, tried the west exit and assumed that the east also wrapped around.

The way they made that boss damageable by the morning star only also makes him damageable by mattocks. I'm guessing it's checking a 'break obstacles' flag or something.

So as a kid I hiked back and forth from that dungeon to the nearest shop four times, bringing more mattocks each time, until I finally had nothing else in my inventory. And that's enough to beat him.

I went through the next few dungeons without the morning star. Until near the end you hit an island littered with little floating crystal platforms that need to be broken, at which point somehow the entire thing clicked and I went back here and got the morning star.

"Youth is wasted on the young" -George Bernard Shaw.

Not even the Dryad. Between Lester on Hansel's path (assuming direct cont-- I already did that joke), and the 8 Dryad Hit that the Sage class gets, there's actual reasons to use wood magic. Maybe.

The more and more I see of the game in this LP the more and more I want to slap the people responsible (culpable) for making it.

This is the most emotionally effecting thing that has happened in this thread.

And you know what the really sad part is? The worst is yet to come...

Certainly compared to the game being played, yes. Losing your FFA cart is truly a tragedy. I remember I once thought I'd accidentally lost mine by flushing it down the toilet once. That was scary! (I hadn't, fortunately.)

Oh right, this junk.

Well, last time, we got into Granz Castle. Dark Lord's stronghold, all that nonsense. The enemies here are largely just the guards, who don't get an entry in Popoi's Notebook, because I don't know. I think they count as Demihuman enemies like the guys what drop new weapons for us.



Before long, we recognize a familiar face inside one of the cells.



Yeah, see the orange-haired guy?



It's Willy! The kid with the tough-guy accent from the village! He's been jailed up in here for ages, as opposed to executed like all the other Mana Clan members! Because... I don't know.



Bogard tries to open the door, but it's locked. While he and Willy try prying it open with one of Gretel's spare crowbars, she goes over and talks to a random bird that has shown up. Expect a few more of these as the game goes on.



For reasons unknown, the bird has two keys on it!



Welp, guess we'll go unlock the door.



The gold key unlocks the front door in the main hall.



Sure, dude. Also I can't tell if his portrait has a necklace or lumberjack levels of chest hair.



Did you notice Willy's tough guy accent? Please understand that he has a tough guy accent.



Yeah, like I said, shouldn't you be dead?



Well, he's an optimist, I'll give him that.



No points for guessing who he means.



Gretel gets no points.



Yeah, Hansel wakes up from his nightmare the same way Gretel does, only he's in a jail cell with Willy and Amanda. Co-ed prisons?



He left before you, so either he got REALLY lost or he's already here.

Anyway, Willy's pretty damn excited that he's not only busted out, but that his old friend is on his way here, and another old friend that he presumed was dead is talking with him.



Needless to say, he joins up!



Not wanting to weigh us down with twice as much stupid AI, Bogard decides to go make himself useful and free everyone else.



He tells us to make our way to Lord Granz's old room. He's dead, or a ghost, or a prisoner, or SOMETHING now, and not using it, but hey, free barrier.



Don't open any funny-looking treasure chests while we're gone.



Right, moving on. Willy here is probably the best spellcasting teammate Gretel can get, although that's not saying much, as his intelligence is his lowest stat. He does use the knucks, though, so his magic will actually connect from time to time, unlike Hansel or Bogard. Sadly, his spirit of choice is Undine. On the upside, being a Mana Clan member means he starts with a spirit, unlike a certain magic-focused minstrel who may never even get his magic in the right (wrong) storyline. Anyway, Willy will only be on our team for a small part of Granz Castle, but a good bit of the endgame coming up will have him working with us.

We take Willy for a test drive around Granz Castle.



And then we run into this place where Hansel is.



Willy is actually pretty happy to see him again.



He did say today was about the best day ever.



Willy is actually the super very first partner Hansel gets, for the boss fight in the intro. Hansel gets a boss fight in the intro. However, Willy doesn't actually do anything in the boss fight, possibly because his base stats blow everyone else out of the water, and you only get him with Hansel for that one easy fight. So he just ambles around, unable to attack or take damage. In my first playthrough, he walked off into a corner the second the fight started, so I assumed he was supposed to be a braggart coward. He isn't, the game's terrible AI just made that the logical conclusion.



awkwaaaaaard



"I had to slit her throat because she got bitten by Granz's wife, who is also a horrible serpent monster that turns people to birds. I stabbed her too, but she started it."



This is some pretty sobering news for Willy.



And yeah they all strengthen their resolve to go vanquish Dark Lord despite being just as evil as he is AAAAARGH.



Oh, and Lester decides to introduce himself here. Rather formally, at that.

Hey, maybe his next song can summon a thunderstorm for when we fight Dark Lord.



Lester actually plays his lute whenever casting magic. We don't know this because yeah.



Moving right along, we can't actually progress further because the door ahead is sealed somehow.



Oh just give the dual name thing a rest.



Right, hope you weren't too attached to Willy in those five or so screens you had him.



Because Hansel rejoins with us here!



We are gonna go fight Dark Lord soon, after all. It would make sense for him to team up with us.



The door seal ahead is actually locked by this bookcase with a diary. This seems familiar somehow. Bogard or Lester or someone will mention that the seal was installed with a trick bookshelf or something whatever. Here's the diary entries, because I know you guys can't get enough of the backstory.



You have to manually read it again. You can walk away after reading the first time. Just sayin'.



This is the last one, thankfully.



Yeah yeah you ruined their lives.



The game notes that there's a book missing. Which, if this line is to be believed, was the book we were just reading. Which we presumably took off the shelf.



So this works... how?



Anyway, the lance we got. Like I said, the base power for a combo weapon, while weaker than the axe, is made up for by the fact that it's pretty fast. It's also jab-type, which means it'll work on Amorphs. The magic trajectory shoots a mid-range ball in front of and behind the caster, the deathblow chucks it in the same trajectory as a bow shot, and the barbarian class tree gets bonuses to it. So naturally it's put just before the fight with Dark Lord. GUBGUBGUBGUBGUBGUBGUB.

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Gretel, Hansel, and the Deathly Hallows

Don't you know? In Japanese fiction, all bookshelves must be perfectly filled with no gaps. Any time there's a gap on the shelf, you can trigger some hidden switch by putting exactly the right book in that spot. Even if it was already there in the first place and all you did was take it off the shelf, read it, and put it back. In fact, reading it is often mandatory for triggering the reaction. How does the trigger know you read the book? Oh please. It's magic! They don't have to explain it!

Next time: things get even more sympathy-beggingly and stupidly melodramatic. Yes, it can be done.

So yeah, Hansel kinda sucks now.



Oh, and we had a boss fight with Garuda. But it's been pulling the same tricks as all the other bosses, namely long stretches of time where it can't be hit and stupid resistances. But if you think that's bad, wait until you see the next guy.



Haha wow Dark Lord is a dick.



Gretel doesn't seem to care about the key to Mana Sanctuary, though. Because, um.



Yeah, don't waste your breath. Just fight the guy and get it over with.



Back on the airship? You mean how he displayed something more than cartoonishly evil behaviour like the chucklehead Julius who is known to be going after Mana power, which he needs your pendant for, and who is known to be working with Dark Lord?



Y'know, I think I prefer Dark Lord as an unrepentant jackass.



Actually addressing her point, Dark Lord says that he's not trying to win Antagonist of the Year. Which isn't what anyone tries to do, unless you're Brickroad or something.



This cutscene goes on a while in this vein. I could probably summarize it quite easily.



Dark Lord notes that he's the son of the consul general, so he should have a more realistic view.



Yeah yeah, Mana power can be used for evil.



Or! Or we could just be idiots on our own.



He's addressing his subordinates here, of course.



Goremand and Isabella obediently vanish.



And now? Now it's time for a climactic fight with Dark Lord!

...That's what I'd like to say. The only climactic thing in this fight is how much raw stupid there is in this fight. At his most basic, Dark Lord will simply walk around slowly, vaguely approaching you. If you keep your distance, you can avoid ever getting hit. Well, except for at the start of the fight, where he'll do a sword deathblow that has guaranteed stun if it hits. He'll throw that move out a few other times in the fight too.

But that's only one of his arsenal of dick moves. Dark Lord is also virtually immune to magic. Now, he doesn't resist all the schools of magic individually. It's just that his Mind stat is so far through the roof that only wind magic, which he's weak to, can ever hope to break higher than a single point of damage per hit. So if you want to damage him, you have to rely on weapons, unless you're a dedicated spellcaster, in which case have fun with your peashooter wind magic.

So that means you have to get close to hit him. And up close, Dark Lord's high power and agility, and absolutely ridiculous hitboxes, mean you can punch him in the back of the head and he can still hit you without even swinging his sword. And if he manages to use the deathblow move, or hit you with the blinding shockwaves he can shoot, then you have to run away and do nothing (or use ineffectual magic) until the status runs out.

The only good thing about this fight is that we get to kill Dark Lord. It's not even a hard fight, because you can run away, rest, and heal pretty much indefinitely. It's just tedious as hell. Screw Dark Lord.



Why are you upset about this, Gretel? You kicked him in the face! Fatally!

Oh man, how dramatic! Does he have a giant scar over his face or something?



...Pfffhahahahaha! General Grumpy, reporting for duty!



What the hell are you talking about? It's hard not to notice a guy when he kills your whole family.



You didn't. Hansel might've.



You mean the guy you've been loathing all game?



No, what's comical is how out of character you are now.



Your adjutant? Sure, why not.



Isabella also agrees to help.



And those are his last words.



Meanwhile, Goremand arrives on the scene.



Not much of one for loyalty, are we?



Aw, but I love eating souls!



Goremand paralyzes us. Which seems less than conducive to having us "take a hike". A fear spell would work better.



Or we could just leave.



I thought Julius had it.

Evidently she agrees with us that Julius should not be given the pendant.



Goremand gets distracted shortly, though.



And she's none too happy about this topic either.



And so Goremand decides to annoy the hell out of her by talking about how delicious her hatred is.



Seems to work.



After that, Goremand quits with the foreplay and devours Dark Lord's soul.



Dude's just looking for trouble at this point.



And he found it!



Isabella takes her true form of... a cat bunny monster? What?

Somehow, this transformation causes the entire area to shake.



The battle between the catbunny and the zombie jester?



Well, either way, Hansel and Gretel apparently got Smash Bros'd off of Granz Castle and landed way the hell in the Glass Desert.



This doesn't kill Gretel, just makes her have nightmares about being captured.



This is the same nightmare Hansel gets, which makes sense for him, I suppose. I don't think the laziness here worked to their benefit, since this gives Gretel players even less reason to care about him.



Oh yes, good friends, like Medusa, who turned Amanda homicidal! And Devius, remember him? He was a mindflayer! Oh, and Dark Lord! He stabbed and paralyzed us a lot!



After this, Gretel wakes up in a house of some kind.

Yeah, like Bogard and Willy and... I guess Hansel. Lester doesn't count at all though.



Oh, and Cibba and this other woman we've never seen.



Anyway, we can't leave here unless we talk to everyone, but most of them just say stuff like "I was so worried" or "that woman over there saved us".



Good for you. You have no plot relevance aside from this, so let's get the cutscene over with.



No, but Isabella has it. Unless Goremand defeated her.



Yes we get it everyone is dead and it's all your fault except for where it's Hansel's fault or maybe theirs for being stubborn asshats.



Cibba makes a remark to the effect of "at times like this, I wish I knew everything."



This is kinda why I don't dislike Cibba as much as everyone else. He's trying to be humble and helpful. Granted, he's still in Sword of Mana, so any value his character may have is kind of lost.



Oh, and there was a sandstorm or something. We're in the Glass Desert, after all.



A bird flies in and notifies Cibba (somehow, probably sages can talk to animals) that Goremand did, in fact, defeat Isabella, or at the very least get the pendant to Julius.



So Gretel asks Cibba about their last possible option.



It's a sword. Having blood on your hands is a natural step from using a sword.



Since our motives are no longer "we want to beat Dark Lord", Cibba obliges and tells us the location of the Sword of Mana.



Oh, dang. It'll probably give itself to Hansel or something dumb like that.



We've got Willy's vote, anyway.

I kinda like Willy, too.



No you're not, Bogard. You are hereby demoted to Hansel #2.



Willy vows that he'll defend Gretel. She seems a bit apprehensive about it.



Hey, fair enough. Two knucks users is probably a bit much, but it beats Hansel and Bogard whiffing with their magic every time they try to cast.



Ding!



Whatever you say chief. Don't fall too far behind, I'm nearly a God Hand.



hahaha losers



And now we're off to Subsea Volcano!

...PSYCH! Did you think we'd just arrive in a strange new town and not do sidequests? YOU FOOOOOOL

Next Time: Achievement Unlocked: Gotta Catch 'Em All

They really should have called this game Sympathy and Sidequests. It'd be a far more accurate title, even moreso if they prefaced the first term with Fake and the second with Tedious.

I look forward to your suffering at the hands of the percentage-based traps and poor map design of the Subsea Volcano. It's the dungeon that dares to ask: why reward players for trying when you can punish them instead?

So, at this point in the game, we can now backtrack to anywhere we've been, and can do sidequests in Ishe, as well as Wendel.



We're not doing this guy's sidequest though.



We will do this one. Please tell me Marco is still here.



hahaha NO



I also won't do this sidequest. I think fishy fruits are the best class of fruit in the game. I don't actually use fruits or veggies, so I can't tell you for sure.



This one's easy enough, though.



This guy just wants you to tutorial him.



i hope i dint steal from videocats this tiem



He then asks how we can view the map. Either of these works.



Our reward is a thing that should not exist in the Manaverse.



This is all in the same shop, mind.



Eh, I guess.

Apparently, if you decline to sell the feather, you can give it back to the guy who gave it to you, and then THIS guy will give you a Dudbears' gold to complete the quest or something. But screw it, I'm calling the quest complete. Any objections? No? Didn't think so.



This guy wants to see some Wisdoms.

Sword of Mana has something that uses the GBA link cable. You remember those, you can link two to four GBAs together and have their games interact. Doing so in Sword of Mana will register the save file of each player on the other's Amigos list. Do this enough times and you get a Wisdom, which is basically a magic summon that hits every enemy on the screen. I have only ever met one guy besides myself with a copy of the game. You need a minimum of five. Screw Wisdoms.



Anyway, I don't care enough to buy a new defense-boosting accessory here, but I am going to get an Agility one for Hansel, because eventually he will rejoin and I'd like him to be halfway effectual.



Surrounding the town of Ishe is the Glass Desert. It's full of Skull Drakes, seen here reflecting Willy's punch into his face.

The important thing about the Glass Desert isn't the undead, though. It's the fact that this here is a total dead end.



OR IS IT.

Yeah, at night, invisible bridges appear, letting you actually progress in the desert. Which sounds kinda neat, but in practice it just means you have to double or even triple your time to cross the desert.



This isn't going in a video because I'm just doing it to get this.



It's night when we make it back to Ishe (of course). We swing into the inn and find a lady named Asaad there.



She'll sell you spirits for Dudbears' gold. Yeah, you didn't know we could get more than one of a specific spirit, didya? Well, you can. Having more than one spirit lets you add more spirits to a spell, increasing casting time and cost, but (supposedly) increasing the power of the spell as well.



Anyway, I'm not buying an extra Undine. The spirit she sells depends on the day, so I'll swing back here on a Mana Holy Day to pick up a Wisp. She won't sell us Shade yet, not until we have one of our own.



Back at the hot house, I forge up new armor, as well as some Gator Knucks. I wanted to point out hemp gear not to make it, but to point out that it prevents you from becoming a Wimp. Keep that in mind. It might sound weird, but seriously, keep it in mind.



If we go south from Ishe, we find... this guy.



Also, a geode behind the cannon. Which blocks the sparkle geodes normally have. Because screw you.



Anyway, Professor Bomb here is the armory expert. From here on out, he'll be stationed at every armory we have access to in the game. We can reach anywhere we've already been, plus Lorimar. However, we're not going to Lorimar yet. Note that we can't actually reach Subsea Volcano from where we are, or by the armory.



However, I will backtrack to Wendel for a bit.



This seems safe!



I can't help but note the cannon is pointing AWAY from Wendel.



Also, how are we supposed to survive the landing?



Well, whatever. We go back to Wendel, and witness this scene outside the cathedral.