Oh! Emperor Vandole is a DOG. - Let's Uncover the Secret of Mana!

♪♪ Calm Before the Storm ♪♪

And convenient!

Truffle: Let me guess, you want to know HOW I managed to get here, right? {Well, that and WHY you came here. Were you just sightseeing and noticed the exploding castle?} It was Flammie! He grew like a weed, and started to fly! I didn't know what to do, so I just hopped on, and he flew all the way here! It sounds strange, but I believe he may think you're his parents! I guess he wanted to help you. Here, take this Flammie Drum. It's one of his favorite toys. Use it anywhere outside a cave or building and he'll come right to you! But enough chit-chat, let's get out of here! Take me back to Matango! It's to the south-west.

Okay, I call so many levels of bullshit. So that little white dragon we saved, what, 2 days ago at most, is now big enough to carry us? And it just somehow KNEW we were at the Imperial castle and flew here? That is not how biology works! I dunno, maybe Truffle was giving Flammie huge doses of rBST or something...



Oh shit dragon outta nowhere RUN!



He got us!



♪♪ Flying Into the Unknown ♪♪

And we're... flying? Yes, we are! The flight system in Secret of Mana is about as unintuitive as they come, so bear with me as I explain. You get two modes to work with: overhead and classic Mode7 slanted map. In the slanted map mode, you also get a compass, which is kinda handy but not as much as a map would be. There IS a map, but it takes for-fucking-ever to render and is completely worthless since it only shows you what you can clearly see for yourself by spinning in a circle in Mode7. And that would actually take less time. The map loads THAT SLOWLY.



Anyway, let's just drop off Truffle and get on with it.



I will say this: that Flammie sprite is damn impressive. And cute.



♪♪ Dancing Beasts ♪♪

Time to break the fourth wall! Ready?

Boss: Yeah, but I almost got lost. How can we tell where everything is?
Truffle: Whenever you get lost up there, use his special powers to locate your position. All you have to do is press START to see the map, or the L/R buttons to change modes. You'll find the Lofty Mountains to the southwest. You'll find Sage Joch meditating up there. Visit me again, okay? You'll always be welcome in Matango!

Yeah, we're never coming back here again. Just FYI.



Dragon Drum activate!



Flammie was flying in the sun! Clever little dragon.



♪♪ Flying Into the Unknown ♪♪

And now we have full access to the entire world map of Secret of Mana! Come back next time as we break the game's intended sequence so hard, it actually starts crying in pain! We'll also discuss some of the oddities about the world map and the further evidence that Secret of Mana was not only cut down, but also rushed for release. See you soon!

Hades can refer to the god or his realm, but the Hades sounds like a club or something.

Lovin' it. The desert theme, too.

Finally I no longer have to wonder who Fahna is.

No one has mentioned it yet, so I'll point out that this game has Returners vs. the Empire, including a character named Geshtar and a power-hungry magic general that ends up being the principal villain.

It hasn't been detailed yet, but the world was also destroyed a thousand years ago because people abused the magical forces of the world. The main character has blood ties to those magical forces, but doesn't know who his parents are.

Also, there are moogles.

Flammie is the most adorable thing ever created! And thats with moogles in the world.

This song is not only completely awesome it's also one of the ones that suffers the most from the downgrade from CD to cartridge. I can only assume the SNES CD addon was going to add more sound channels (or have dedicated audio ones?) because this track uses all eight sound channels meaning that the treble samples cut in and out when SFX play. At least they put in the right stuff to cut in and out, because the bass track is pretty wicked.

Sky Render insists that I mention that I am a sadistic bastard. Sometime around Matango I intended to upgrade my equipment, but forgot before I could afford it all. I then proceeded to plow straight through to the Empire before being all "Oh yeah! I guess I should do something about that.". So I trek on up to the top of the Lofty Mountains and proceed to do my usual one-hour grind to buy all the Gold City equipment, prepping myself for a cushy ride for the rest the game. All in all, I went from level 24-37, and upgraded my equipment from Power Wrists from Dwarven Village, Quill Caps from Upperland, and Fancy Overalls in Matango. With the Gold City armor that's a defense increase of 4-35, 10-78, and 22-139 in the best case. I didn't even really notice, I just kept healing like crazy.

On my playthrough yesterday I only used one combination of weapons for the whole game: axe on Randi, sword on Purim, spear on Popoie. This way all three characters do roughly equal damage with the weapon strength balancing out the character's strength. It's repetitive, but I never had to grind for weapon skill and I saved a lot of money by not even upgrading the other five. It saved time for spell grinding.

This is the right way to do it, but because the axe actually has slightly higher attack power than the sword, it's better to put it on Girl so she dishes more damage.

Spear on Sprite turns him into a death machine, thanks to its high weapon power and frequent upgrades. Not that you're ever letting him attack anyway, when you can stunlock.

Hey, you know what happened to me in the sewers that I could never duplicate ever again?

The Sprite ceased to exist.

Seriously.

He got frozen by one of those ice slimes, he glitched out, and his sprite got garbled, and he vanished. He was still on my status bar, but was not even there.

I proceeded to the next area, and the sprite's status bar vanished, leaving me just Boy and Girl. I still kinda wish I had saved that file somewhere so I could have proof this happened and wasn't a hallucination.

What does Mara keep in her box? Yeah, she has a key, but lots of characters without boxes give larger items.

Why can't we see the Empire's blocked road that forces the heroes to take the sewer?

Who else was intended to be a playable character? Dyluck? Phanna? Morie? Chrissie?

Was each temple, not just water and wind, intended to have a human keeper?

On my latest playthrough I noticed a real whopper of a possible vestige on the world map. Sky Render, I'm going to wait and see if you catch it in the next few updates before I name it.

It's implied rather heavily that it contains some sort of memento collection of her husband. Possibly her husband's ashes too.

Because they never even made a road between the two cities. I'm not kidding, there's 50 miles of forest between the two. We'll be going into more detail about the world map's oddities next time.

Definitely, possibly, not likely, and almost certainly not. Sergo, however, was definitely supposed to have a bigger role than prison-breaker and exposition source for why the game lacks a ship.

Possibly. To phrase it the other way, was it intended that those two temples have keepers besides the spirits originally?

There's a more-than-decent chance that I'll at the very least mention whatever it is you're thinking of. I went over the world map with a fine-tooth comb for this next update in search of oddities and evidence of the game's inherent incompleteness.

Here's what seems like a pixel-perfect world map you can use in case you want something that looks better than screenshots.

Might wanna fix the permissions on that bad boy, son.

It's the bottom map on this page.

I appreciate the gesture, but I actually already got a pixel-for-pixel accurate map of the game. In fact, I'm pretty sure that was the page I got it off of.

Part IX - I've Got That Wanderlust Spirit!

Last time on Final Fantasy VI ver. 0.5Secret of Mana: the Tomato Crew infiltrated the Empire for no apparent reason, trekked through a snore-worthy sewer, met a resistance they had only vaguely heard about before, helped stop Thanatos from enslaving all of Northtown in exactly the same manner he tried to enslave Pandora, and then had a meeting with the Emperor that did not go well. The aftermath of said meeting is that they've got a white dragon to fly, though, so it all worked out in the end.



Before we begin, let's take a look at the world map of Secret of Mana (apologies for the large image). There's some very curious traits about this map, wouldn't you agree?

First of all, most of it is forest. As in, 60% of the world is one gigantic woodland! Even the islands are all forest-covered! That seems unlikely. Almost as if "forest" was the default tile type...

Second, there are HUGE sections of the world map that are never used or visited at all. Ice Country? The entire western third is never seen (including that patch of grassland in the south). The desert? The entire eastern half is never once explored. The Upper Land? Everything west of Matango is a no-show. The Pandora area? Ringed by unused forestland, and almost everything west of it 'til Tasnica is empty space! The Imperial continent? The entire southern half of the continent is never explored! And a good chunk of the northern half is untouched by the game as well.



Third, there's some very cool-looking map features that are never once explored. See that? Carousel in Northtown. Doesn't even exist outside of the world map. The houses on Gold Island all sparkle (for reasons we'll see in a bit) and are supposed to make the place stand out as a result, but someone asleep at the switch also made one of the houses on Turtle Island do the same thing. Did you know there's a waterfall cave south of the Empire? Can't land there! A set of islands all around the Empire that look interesting? No go! An island with a clear shoreline east of Tasnica? Verboten! A freaking FACE in the sea east of Ice Country?



Yes, really. And it's also a no-visit. The world map of Mana, once you get down to it, is about half-empty of any sort of content. The other half is ludicrously spacious for what is there. And there are a few serious oddities (like the river bisecting the Upper Land that doesn't exist outside of the world map; see that plateau east of the river? That's the Cannon Travel Center on the east side of the Upper Land! You sure as hell don't cross any rivers to get to it!). There's also the insanely out-of-proportion scale of pretty much every location compared to the non-world-map version. The only area that seems to be even close to scale, in fact, is the Potos/Pandora/Gaia area! And it looks incredibly out of place too!



♪♪ Flying Into the Unknown ♪♪

But enough about the world map. Now that we have Flammie, we can actually engage in a rather interesting bug! You may have noticed that Nasir's coding work on this game is not the most stable. Well, we're about to take a look at yet another of his delightful glitches! It all starts with this little island that Flammie is over in the above screenshot.



♪♪ A Wish ♪♪

Remember this spot in Ice Country? We're gonna abuse the hell out of the game's dodgy code here! Save and soft-reset (L+R+Start+Select).



♪♪ Crisis ♪♪

Now, start a new save file and get up to this exact part. It's best if you don't fight any Rabites on the way. Do another soft reset (L+R+Start+Select) without clearing this dialogue box! You also have to hold down the buttons for at least 5 seconds, for some reason.



Load up your save file at the ice grove and suddenly you're fighting Mantis Ant! Without music, too. He's a bit of a pushover with a full party, of course.



Defeating him nets you (you guessed it) another Sword Orb!



♪♪ Calm Before the Storm ♪♪

Immediately use Flammie's Drum upon doing this to get out, and then go find Watts to upgrade your sword! Please note that 1. we won't be using this glitch for this save, and 2. it's pointless to do it before the Grand Palace since that's where the last sword orb chest is (and as we've discussed, weapon orb chests don't appear if your weapon level is too high for them). Or you could just do this glitch twice, I guess. But after Grand Palace... Well, we'll talk about that when the time comes.



♪♪ Flying Into the Unknown ♪♪

Fun Fact: You can go basically anywhere in the entire game now! This includes Gold City, where the next-to-best buyable armor is for sale.



I really like that Flammie sprite...



♪♪ A Curious Tale ♪♪

When in a new town, you must talk!

Moneybags McScrooge: It's too expensive to live here! The over-abundance of gold has created hyperinflation! The local economy is RUINED!! {And yet, items sold here are all priced the same as anywhere else...}
Lady Rischebische: The whole island has been turned into gold! Roads, trees, grass, houses...even the garbage cans! {Guess they import all of their food. And water. And breathable air.}
The Famous Shillingsworth: The island is sinking under the weight of the gold! At this rate we'll be joining Atlantis! Many people have already left and gone north to some paradise in the Ice Country. {And probably came right back after we threw a monkey wrench into THAT scheme, too!}
Security Guard Pennyton: Beyond me is the Tower of Light. No one may enter...since we lost the key! {But you're okay with someone going in if they have the key? You're the worst security guard ever!}
Security Guard Nickleton: This is the residence of King Mammon. The 1st floor is also a hotel for travelers. {Shouldn't his name be Midas? That'd be more appropriate...}
Old Man Gemingsworth: Where could King Mammon have possibly found all this gold?
Security Guard Dimeton: King Mammon sealed off the Light Palace, right over there at the northern edge of town. The tower key was stolen by a spy from Tasnica, although we later caught him in Southtown. But the key was never recovered, so he was executed! What's in that tower, anyway? {You have to talk to this guy to get into the tower, and he's a pain in the butt to reach. Yeah, more efforts by the developers to prolong the game, go figure.}

In a Cafe
Mrs. Bankruptz: Welcome! Oh, what am I saying? Running a business here is almost pointless now. Gold is so common it's worthless!
Ms. Bankruptz Jr.: I'm jealous. Nearly all my friends have moved to the resort way up north, and I'm stuck here.

In a Weapon Shop
Watts: He, he! No one was using this place, so... {Watts, you are seriously one weird mama-jama.}



Remember that new armor I mentioned? It's for sale at a HUGE premium compared to what we've seen thus far! But trust me when I say that it's well, WELL worth your time and effort to get this stuff now and skip the 3 levels of armor you'd have to go through otherwise before getting to this stuff.



Seriously, look at that difference! With Gold City armor, even just one piece, we're effectively untouchable for the rest of this update.



You can also tackle the Gold Tower immediately too! Which we're going to do instead of going to the Palace of Darkness, because sequences are made to be broken. But as you can see, we need that key first. Who could have it?

Mara, of course!

Look! Here it is! I found it hidden in his things. If it were possible, I'd gladly exchange it to have him back. {Lady, that's not exactly a huge sacrifice...}
Tomato: I...I know what you mean. Dyluck...
Mara: ...well, here! It's yours! I'll get my revenge on the Empire somehow!
*Got Gold Tower Key!*

Okay, so, on to the tower?



Nope! Before we do Gold Tower, let's dick around on the world map even more. Here's a strange little location for you: a lighthouse!



♪♪ Together Forever ♪♪

I think I made an RPG Maker 2003 map that looked like this once...



Haha, it's funny 'cause he's bald.

To the northeast is a coral reef. Under it lies a sunken continent. The Mana Palace is really a switch that will reveal the continent! The power of the ancients must have been incredible!

That sounds like it's worth a visit!



In the far southeast of the world is the mysterious coral reef that Picard mentioned and that the Empire is so interested in. And there's a palace there! Imagine that.



♪♪ Sacred Intrusion ♪♪

I guess we could try and break sequence even HARDER than we're already going to...



Nope! Oh well, worth a shot.



This strange volcano-looking place is probably important. But we can't do anything with it right now!



And this is the oft-mentioned city of Tasnica! Maybe we can drop in?



♪♪ Lord of the Shore ♪♪

We would be so lucky!



Next up on our grand tour: Turtle Island!



♪♪ Bright Summer Skies ♪♪

See what I mean about the scale being way off sometimes? This whole island is microscopic compared to its world map presence!



Oh hey, a merchant. He's obviously an optimist.

There's nothing on this blasted isle 'cept these Sea Hare tails! Eh? You actually WANT one?
*Got Sea Hare's tail!*
Boss: I'll keep it in my pocket for the time being.

Nice excuse for why it doesn't appear on the item ring menu.



And before we go, let's do a little talking.

Mr. R.C.: How'd you get here? This island is pretty remote, you know!

Hut #2
Mr. P.R.H.: Aieeeee! Strangers! I've never seem them before! Who are they? {It's rude to refer to someone you're speaking to in the third person, you know.}
Mrs. G.G.: I'd rather be poor and alive than...
Mr. F.M.G.: I was born in the Empire, but the Emperor's gone nuts! So I escaped here with my family.

Hut #3
Young Mrs. P.: Age doesn't mean anything, as long as there's love! Some adults just don't get it! {This is a little girl, incidentally.}
Young Mr. S.: We're married! We had to move here because of the silly age laws in Pandora. {And this is a little boy. I bet they got here on a toy ship.}

Hut #4
Mrs. M.A.S.: NOTHING ever happens here!
Mr. T.H.: This here island's really one gigantic turtle shell! Pretty amazing, huh? {I'm fairly certain this is a reference to something, as this is hardly the first time a Japanese video game has made reference to an island that's actually a giant turtle.}

Alright, time to drop off the goods!



♪♪ Wild Roses and Spirits ♪♪

You'd better be grateful for all the no Lucre I spent on it.

Amar: This...? Well, this is a Sea Hare's tail! Hurrah!

He's so enthusiastic I just cannot tell you.



♪♪ The Sprite Child ♪♪

Oh hey, it actually worked. I would not have called that.



*Got Moogle Belt!*

Hooray! The Moogle Belt lets you transform an ally to and from Moogle status, sparing you a use of a healing item or spell in the process.



It sure iiiiiiiiiiis!

Amar: Mana brings the water here. otherwise our wells would go bone dry.

So, what, Sea Hare's tails are just concentrated Mana, then? Damn, should've stocked up, I bet they restore even more MP than Magic Walnuts...



I felt the urge to check out Gaia's Navel again for some unexplained reason. I guess I'm just naturally drawn to navel-gazing.



♪♪ It Happened One Moonlit Night ♪♪

That's what we used in the show!
*Received Midge Mallet!*

Oh hey, glad we stopped by! The Midge Mallet (really, Woolsey?) transforms you to and from Pygmy status. It's a lot like the Moogle Belt.



Almost done with the detours... Next up is the mountain village of Mandala! I wonder if there's any sand drawings there.



♪♪ Bright Summer Skies ♪♪

Nope! But there's plenty of talking!

Ben Holiday: Welcome to the Lofty Mountains! This is Mandala.
Abernathy: Go down the mountain a bit, and you'll see a cave where monsters are dwelling. But it's really the Palace of Darkness!
Questor Thews: The Mana Tree grows in the Holy Land... It is watching over us! {So glad that this world's deity figure is an immobile tree. It just inspires so many feelings of security.}
Nightshade: I was impressed 'till you said you FLEW here. Ha ha ha ha ha! {Yeah, laugh it up. At least I can LEAVE, unlike you.}

Percy: Hey look everyone, it's one of those cone-headed people!
Man: No, I'm really a monk! People from all over the world come to our ancient temple and study past civilizations. {Sounds like the place to be! Let's check that out too.}

In a House
Eretria Ohmsford: Joch and his disciple Jehk live on the peak.
Wil Ohmsford: Enjoy our lovely town!
Watts: Whew! That's some climb, huh!?

Yep, I've definitely run out of names.



Let's get around to upgrading a few weapons already! I forgot to do the glove, but the other three I remembered. The ever-lagging javelin has become the Fork of HopeSilver Pilum, which does (shock, gasp!) bonus damage to evil and undead enemies! Totally outta nowhere, I know! The Morningstar is good against insects (all 1 types of them), and the Golden Axe is also a bug-crusher (as well as an unintentional reference to a Sega franchise).



Further along, we find more people to talk to! Hooray.

Monk Monkington: That girl always brings flowers and talks about clouds! She's such a young dear!
Monk Monksworth: This temple dates back to a time even before the Mana Fortress war... The orbs inside store data from that period, which we study extensively. The ancients called these devices something like "Veedio", I think. {Ironically, they're all audio-only.}
Girl: It seems like whenever I sell a flower, I dream of a knight to come and take me away. Then we fly through the clouds...or...is the knight's name Cloud? I can't remember!! {Thanks for the blatant FF7 reference, FuSoYa. So very subtle.}
Old Man Oldmanne: Don't bug me while I'm thinking!
Monk Monksbane: Oouum...oouum...oouum.. But I thought those were CANDY flowers she was selling! Oooh, my stomach! Oooh! Oooh! {And again with the stupid changes.}



Had to go to a lot of trouble to find this guy, and he just tells us a generic "overcome yourself" message? You weren't worth the effort, dude.



Let's take a look at those lauded recordings, shall we?

Gzz...zegazega... This one's broken! {And Woolsey didn't know how to translate static noise!}
But don't tell my heart, My achy breaky heart, I just don't think he'd understand! {Damn it, FuSoYa!}
...evening news. At dawn Lorima launched missiles at the Empire......which threatened to take Lorima's capital by nightfall. {That should really be Lorimar if he was trying to keep with later game naming conventions. Which he clearly was not.}
THERE! You can see the Mana Beast! Just moments ago it hit the Mana Fortress... Oh no, it's coming right this way! Ladies and gentlemen, we're going off the air... {Field reporters had a lot of balls in this world.}
...Who was Abe Lincoln? Correct! That makes you our new champion...! {I'm still not sure if Woolsey inserted this or if it really was like that in the Japanese version. Probably it was a reference to a Japanese game show originally.}
We absolutely must restrict and conserve the use of Mana energy! "What utter nonsense!" But we're using it up! "Ha! You can't USE up Mana!" Argh! You don't understand! {COMMENTARY!}
Whoa! Exploded! {It did, too!}

Overall, disappointing. Onward!

Next stop: the Palace of Darkness! Oh, not to enter it. We're actually going up to see Joch, just for the hell of it.



♪♪ Eternal Winds ♪♪

Palace of Darkness? Mo' like Cave of Darkness! Then again, FF12 had the Sochen Cave Palace, so I guess you can have it both ways.



Another "new" enemy! Bomb Bees shoot explosive stingers at you and instantly jump up if you hit them while they're unconscious. Otherwise, they're boring. Also, they can't hurt us because we have uber armor from Gold Isle. Nothing can hurt us. MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Ahem.



And another "new" enemy! Trap FlowersBlood Pansies cast Sleep Flower and Spoit, and are generally just annoying.



Heyhey, a genuine new enemy! EggatricesCockatrices can and will petrify you if they hit you. And they probably won't, since they tend to just sit there doing nothing. Great AI!



Whippin' it good...



And again! See Niccolo there? He wasn't there when we passed that area the first time. Such wonderful programming!



This must be the top! Odd that the scrolling background still have nothing but trees... Actually, when you exit the cave, the background shows sky instead. What, a buggy bit in Secret of Mana? NO!



♪♪ The Legend ♪♪

Ahh, so this is what Jecht used to do before he was a Blitzballer!

Jehk: Sage Joch has gone to the Palace of Darkness. You saw it on the way up here.
Tomato: I think he means that old cave close to the village. Guess we'll have to backtrack.

You would think that, but you would be wrong. You see, we're not going to visit Jehk or look for Joch. Screw the Palace of Darkness!



♪♪ Sacred Intrusion ♪♪

Alright, time to stop dicking about and get on with it. This is Gold Tower, which is infested with Beast Zombies. They're a slightly less gung-ho variant of Howlers, and of course can't hit us with our Gold City armor on.



Fun Fact: this chest can hork out as many as 4 Spear Orbs if you skipped all of the Spear Orb chests earlier in the game!



The tower appears to be infested with Ninjas too...



And more Beholders! Jeez, re-use enemies much?



♪♪ Crisis ♪♪

Up on the next floor, we find a Spiky Tiger palette-swap! Blue SpikeBiochimera, as his friends call him, isn't nearly the threat that his little brother was.



Mostly because we actually have magic this time around.

Fun Fact: Most bosses are not immune to Fire Cocktail! Casting that on Biochimera makes him 100% unable to hit us with physical attacks!



Finally...



But it was a fake-out! Yes, for some reason this boss blows up TWICE. You have to do about half again as much damage as you've already done to off him for good.



Like so!



Suits me fine.



♪♪ Sacred Intrusion ♪♪

After the fight, the way up appears!



Remember that Spear Orb chest from earlier? Well this one can hork out as many as 4 Axe Orbs!



Aha, the last type of trap chest! This is the worst kind. It tries to KILL you!



Luckily, it can miss.



Really getting sick of these repeat enemies...



♪♪ Crisis ♪♪

How appropriate, a repeat enemy! This minotauros is metal. Ooh. His friends call him Gorgon BullGorgontauros.



Yeah, physical attackers aren't really a problem any more.



REALLY not a problem.



And then he died. The end.



More goodies!

♪♪ Everlasting Cycle ♪♪

Ack, too much bloom!

He was forcing me to make gold! My power should not be used by anyone but you! Take my powers, before evil engulfs us all!
*Gained Lumina'sWisp's powers!*

Well that's cool.



Ack, even more too much bloom!

*Received the Seed's power!*

And blindness!



Let's get out of here before our retinas explode.



And how about them upgrades! Yeah, I forgot to upgrade the spear and boomerang. I'm bad... The HeavyMetal Glove is good against insects (what, again?), and the Were-Buster is good against animals and beasts.



Hey, guess where we're going now? That's right, we're going to get ShadeLuna! Oh yes, sequence is our bitch today. Shade gets to sit this one out and be ignored until we've got ourselves some moon power.



♪♪ Secrets of the Scorching Sands ♪♪

The way to the Moon Palace is now open!



For some reason, there's a sand cruiser here. But it's in a sea of stars. So does that make it a star cruiser?



What an embarrassing name.

And like I keep telling everyone, no you won't find FuSoYa, Saber Moon, or green cheese in there. In fact, you won't find anything... anything at all. Whatever you do, just don't get lost. The boat tends to be unsteady. Don't move around too much.

I'm really starting to get sick of FuSoYa's little self-indulgent references...



♪♪ A Silent Prayer ♪♪

A new enemy! These are MarmabluesSiren Gerells. They have huge defense and suck HP and MP. I don't like them very much.



Inside the palace is...! Space? This place is just... weird. It's a "room" that loops in all directions and has only an orb in it. An orb that only responds to Wisp's power, which is why we went to Gold Tower first.



Oops, I forgot to mention Wisp's spell line-up before! Guess the excessive lighting distracted me... Poor Percy's left in the lurch this time, since Wisp is a Tomato exclusive. Tomato now has access to LucidTinkle Barrier, LightHoly Saber, and LucentSaint Beam. Tinkle Barrier is arguably the best defensive spell in the game since it makes all physical attacks miss you. Holy Saber makes you do more damage to just about everything in existence. And Saint Beam does heavy holy-elemental damage. This is a pretty win setup, on the whole! MP costs are through the roof, though...



Nailed it!



So, what's next?



♪♪ Everlasting Cycle ♪♪

Oh, that's... that's it? That was ridiculously easy. In fact, the Moon Palace is pretty much the final nail in the coffin of any argument that this game was released in any state resembling complete. There are no boss fights. There's exactly one type of enemy, which is recycled later too. There is one looping "room" with nothing but a single crystal orb in it. It just feels like a placeholder in every sense of the word. The first time I played the game, I was incredibly disappointed that the looping room was it for this palace; I'd hoped they'd run with the "reality's rules don't apply here" theme, but no. They just throw you right to the end after one "puzzle".

Anyway, Luna's got stuff to say.

Luna: I, Luna the moon spirit, have long awaited you within this vast emptiness. So sad this place has grown since... but not enough, we have no time for reflection on the past! Take with you my powers! GO!! Mana is fading...
*Gained Luna's powers!*

Luna would later become a proper cloud cuckoolander for Seiken Densetsu 3, and get a bit more screen time too.

*Received the Seed's power!*

Seed sealed! Let's go.



Yeah, rub it in that the Moon Palace is one big disappointment, why don't ya...



Don't see THAT message very often outdoors!



Well, that's 6 spirits. Let's look at our spell line-up for Luna! For Tomato, we have Moon EnergyRush, Lunar BoostEnergy Ball, and Moon Saber. Rush drops evasion and boosts attack, ergo it's not that handy unless you combine it with Tinkle Barrier and make evasion moot. Energy Ball boosts critical hit rate and is a serious blessing when cast on Boss. And Moon Saber is the best saber of them all since it causes your attacks to steal HP from non-undead. Luna gets the Sky Render Seal of Approval!



For Percy, it doesn't really matter what Luna lets him do because she grants him the single most useful spell in the game. Yep, Magic Absorb. Even at Lv.0 it draws a healthy amount of MP from enemies! His MP troubles are over! As long as his opponent's not undead, of course. The other two spells are Change FormBody Change (which makes an enemy into something weak and is a novelty at best) and Lunar MagicLunatic, which is like the Chance/Hocus Pocus spell from Dragon Quest only it fucks you over even more often than that one does.



♪♪ What the Forest Taught Me ♪♪

Needless to say, getting Percy's magic up to snuff will never ever be a problem ever again.



♪♪ A Silent Prayer ♪♪

Someone mentioned that Tomato's spells get less experience in non-combat areas, to prevent players from sitting at an inn and grinding out levels there. Well, guess what? The Wind Palace is considered a combat area AND has free MP healing! So yeah, props to them for adding a "feature" and then allowing the player to completely bypass it.



Eventually I remembered to upgrade all of the OTHER weapons I'd neglected. (Actually, I ran out of Lucre! Embarrassing, I know.) As you can see, we're now sporting the Oceanid SpearCoral Lance (which knocks enemies unconscious and is therefore awesome), Elfin Bow (which boosts Intelligence and Wisdom by 1 and is therefore boring), and Cobra ShuttleBagh Nakh (which poisons enemies and is therefore completely pointless).



♪♪ Sacred Intrusion ♪♪

Okay, NOW we can go get Shade. That's a FiendSatan Head, incidentally. It can't hurt us at all. That's a bit of a running theme for this update, did you notice?



As you can imagine, seeing as we've gone through two full areas before this and gotten completely buffed up from them (particularly in the armor department), the Palace of Darkness is about as threatening as a declawed kitten. That enemy up there is a Dark Knight (I was wrong about at the Imperial castle; those were Armored Knights), and he likes to set up WallCounter Magic. As the name implies, it sends any spells you send at him right back at you. Not cool!



More Tarmen, and more axe-breakable stalagmites. Ho hum.



And more useless side rooms! Gotta love those, right?

This switch opened up the way forward. But we have other places to be first.



Like here, to open the entryway gate!



And here, to get more chump change!



And here, to hit another switch!



And here, to get another weapon orb!



And here, to...! Oh wait, this is the way forward. Nevermind, we're done here.



More pointless switchery... You stand on a switch, an invisible bridge appears right in front of you. I again question the purpose of putting a switch right next to the thing it changes so you can progress.



Wowza, another painful spell! Will we get this Dark Force spell from Shade? Probably!



One of the knights dropped this lovely bit of armor!



But it sucks compared to our kit, so it gets summarily sold at the next shop we visit.



Memo to Square: this is not puzzle design. This is just prolonging the inevitable! Can we just get to the boss already?

♪♪ Crisis ♪♪

Thank you. First, let's nullify your threat.



This boss marks the start of a new tactic for any boss that isn't a dodgy bitch. Instead of relying on the old stunlock magic trick, we can now use the Energy Ball/Holy Saber trick.



How it works is simple: you put both of those spells on Boss, and watch as he critical-hits the boss for massive damage every single time he swings his weapon. This will work wonders for just about every boss left in the game!



If only this spell were actually that useful in reality!



What the hell just happened?



I think I broke it.



Yeah, I definitely broke it. Sorry, game!



♪♪ Everlasting Cycle ♪♪

Whatever, it didn't crash. So that's something.

Shade: I am the spirit of the Darkness, and one of the Elementals of Mana. Few have defeated my dark servants...take my powers are your reward!
*Gained shade's powers!*

Cool.



*Received the Seed's power!*

Sealed it!



Finally, we have Shade! He's a Percy exclusive (unsurprisingly, since Wisp was all Tomato), and has... well, let's talk about Shade's magic. First up we have Dispel MagicAnti-Magic, which removes all enchantments from the target enemy. This is handy against anything that uses Counter Magic! Next up we have Evil Gate, which just plain sucks balls. It does pitiful damage and rarely (VERY rarely) instakills the target. DeathSpell this is not. Lastly, there is the surprisingly useful Dark Force, which does a considerable amount of damage for its 2MP cost. Overall, Shade's okay, but nothing stellar.



♪♪ A Silent Prayer ♪♪

And now, before we end this update, let's go and boost our magic up! Everything can go up to level 7 now, and that will remain our max for a few updates.

♪♪ What the Forest Taught Me ♪♪

Just be glad you're getting the highlights and not having to watch me do this spell-by-spell...



And a few weapon upgrades... The Imp's ForkLi'l Devil's Harpoon balloons enemies (SWEET!) and the Hyper-Fist does bonus damage to slimes and lizards (SNORE!).



And we close out this update with something we haven't really discussed before: "half-criticals". Sometimes a weapon will deal an extra 50% damage over the amount it's supposed to deal once your weapon skill level gets high enough. It's not really noticeable until about this point in the game, though. Anyway, that's the end of our little adventure in breaking sequence (and breaking the game, though not on purpose). Come back next time as we visit Tasnica again, and finally meet the mysterious Sage Joch!

Rumor has it Evil Gate deals N/8% damage, where N is your spell level. So at level 8, it should kill anything with under 1000 HP.

This is of course dumb, because at level 8, you're dealing 999 damage with Dark Force anyway, but at least the level 8 animation is pretty awesome.

Sky, you touched on it, so here's the big reveal:

See the tiny beaches? There's one on an island east of Tasnica, one on the northwest corner of Gold Isle, and one on the southern end of Ice Country. It's as if they planned Booskaboo, a rideable turtle, for this game but had to put him off until Seiken 3!

Probably an easter egg, like the similar face on the moon in FFIV.

Why did this never occur to me?