I Smite for the Trees! Let's play... FAXANADU!

For some reason I love this game, even though deep down I know it's not very good at all and seems to actively hate the player at points.

I think it's because it oozes atmosphere, despite its repetitive and terrible map structure. The broken down town at the beginning is clearly on its last legs, a lot of homes and dwellings are broken apart in the misty area, the dungeons are creepy and have torn curtains and cobwebs hanging in them, etc. The music is also very good in places and alternates between being depressing/creepy and upbeat, conquering adventurer tunes.

My enthusiasm for the game always falls off a cliff as soon as I reach the Town of Victim. The "inside the tree" atomsphere isn't as fun and then the game gets downright masochistic with the enemies and mazes.

I could never resist farming dwarves in front of Apolune to get the Death magic super early. Looking forward to seeing if you do the same.

No, I'll be the one to class this thread up:

Exit...Stage Left

Nope. I looked it up:

I'll admit I unapologetically love this game and all it's shades of brown. I replayed it about a year ago and still think it is great.

Well, except for the passwords which can go straight to hell.

So when do we get to the part where you fax an Adu? Granted, I don't think Mr. Adu will appreciate being sent through an outdated telecommunications device...

Hey Kids! Octos back! Its been... months since I played that last bit and so I had to restart the game and get back into the groove of things. Ain't that swell of me? Yes. Yes it is.



Anyhow, once you get past the Jack Door, Faxanadu breaks into hithertoo-undreamt of territory; the muddy earth-tones have been set aside for a fancy Blue Sky! AMAZING! Well, its still a darker, muddy kind of blue sky, but still! We're also greeted by another bouncy-head dwarf, who is defeated and thus the way is open.



Just past the bouncy head is an impossible assortment of step-ladders leading to a passage into the sky, and also another little flesh-cactus. Here's a lovely snap-shot of The Lummox setting it on fire with magic.



The rest of the pathway is pretty uninteresting; a few Pogoheads that you struggle to defeat, new Blue Zombie-dwarves which drop no money or bread, but move slowly and steadily enough that they are easy to dispatch. Which makes them my favorite enemy in the game BY FAR. There's also a door;



This Andrew Dobson only sells two items; both of which being end-game strong, and being way, WAY too expensive to consider buying right now, short of spending all of eternity grinding on Pogoheads. Though the Magic Shield here is appreciably cheaper then one you can buy later in the game, this shop is really just here to taunt you. Thanks for nothing, Andrew Dobson.



Past Dobsons shop is the town of Apolune, where the people are worried about the FILTHY DWARVES moving into the nearby tower of Trunk. "There goes the neighborhood" they think, "soon we'll be having our cats stolen for their disgusting food-meals!"

The Key Shop just sells more Jack Keys, which I stock up on, but this Tool Shops Dobson has an exciting new item:



He sells Small Shields! Which is a significant improvement over The Lummoxs current shield (that being his raising his hands in front of his face shrieking "please no, don't hurt me"), but I can't afford it just yet. So it looks like defensive-wounds are the order of the day once more.



Next door is the town pub, where we learn the Elves clever plan for keeping the Dwarves at bay (Build a wall that seperates this town from the next town, leave them to fend for themselves) and also that buying a shield is useful if you wish to not-die any faster.



The east-side of Apolune contains another Church, a Hospital and a house.



The towns doctor is a bit of a defeatist. It`s not like you`re going to succeed in refilling the Water of life, so why bother trying. You`ll just die tired.



The people in the house aren`t much more helpful. "Items are helpful" she says. Thanks for that.

Nothing overly fancy in the outskirts of Apolune; a few Pogoheads, a couple of Flesh-Cacti. Usually arranged in such a way as your Deluges will hit the Pogo instead of the Cactus, or the Pogo will have you moving around so much that you bump into the cactus. A kinder LPer might say that this enemy placement is "devious" or "an interesting challenge".

This is because they are very polite.

Anyway, there is also a door that leads to a castle which seems to be hewn into the side of the Tree. Unsurprisingly, it is the Tower of Trunk mentioned before.



It is also a locked by Jack-Brand Door Locks. Well, Lummox don't feel like openin' no fancy inventory screens in order to equip a Key! ON TO THE EAST!



Which is where that wall the bar-patron in Apolune mentioned can be found. There's no way to bypass the funny-lookin' rocks without the aid of some kind of funny-rock-digging-machine. But where OH WHERE can we find one?

You may also notice on the status-bar that Lummox has nearly one-thousand experience points, so rather then using one of those Jack Keys I bought to open the Tower of Trunk, I'm going to head back to town and visit the priest.



Y'see, even if you have enough experience to level up, you won't until you visit a priest and he gives you a new job-title. The only benefit to leveling up, as mentioned earliar, is that it gives you more starting-money when you input a password or continue. Still, its nice to know that we can aspire now.



I also had enough money to buy one of those Small Shields I mentioned earliar, which you COULDN'T determine if you were some kind of weirdo who pays attention to the status-bar, due to some save-state malarkey. But I did. And I bought one. And now, certain enemies deal less damage to with certain attacks.



Okay; NOW we brave the Tower of Trunk. The Pogohead is as annoying as ever, but the Flesh-Cacti are pretty harmless; they can't leave the platforms they're on, and you have to go out of your way on another screen to even have them anywhere near you. They're just there for ambiance. The pulsating, spiky equivilant of a potted fern.



However, if there is a ladder on the platform that the cactus is on, they CAN climb down. It is best not to think too long or hard on how that happens. I took the shot too late to actually show that happening, but you can see the bread it contained falling to the ground. How did the bread get there if there was not a cactus that did not fall? It couldn't have. There's your proof!



Another path upward guarded by another cactus. Nothing fancy needed here; just a couple of Deluges and you can hop along. The difficulty being Faxandus awful jumping physics; it took me about eight tries to hop those tiny gaps.



Up that ladder we find a BRAND NEW ENEMY DWARF! Its not brown or anything! The Blunitaur walks back and forth, until it sees you at which point it starts running like crazy, and then leaps clear over your head. You can pretty much stand still and shank 'em as they descend. They hit hard, but its easy enough to take them out so long as the terrain stays level. In this first screen, the ground is uneven enough that the Blunitaur isn't quite the pushover he is on... every consequent screen.



A few uninteresting screens worth of Blunitaurs and Flesh-Cacti later and we've got another new interesting fellow; The Frog Man. He's actually not interesting at all. He just walks around and occasionally jumps. Then you stab him a bunch because he is not very fast.



The second frog has some nice varied terrain with a couple of Cacti patrolling around beneath it. This makes an incredibly simple exercise in platforming more dangerous, since a mistimed jump can easily knock you into them. Good for you, Faxanadu; for doing the bare-minimum to make this dungeon more interesting!

Next is the games first boss; the Gargoyle. It has an extremely simple pattern thats extremely easy to exploit. It flaps around the top of the screen a couple of times, then drops and horks up three Deluge fireballs, one at a time. Its only vulnerable in its face, and every successful hit causes its pattern to restart. And if you are not on the ground, his fireballs can't hit you. So long as you make sure not to have it land on you (which is easy due to its slow speed) the fight is pretty laughable.



Or, if you have at least a quarter of your Magic bar full, you can just stand at the entrance to the room and toss out Deluges and win easily without even running the risk of accidentally taking damage.



Deafeating the Gargoyle nets you a boatload of experience and over seven-hundred gold, and more importantly, a Mattock. I WONDER what in the WORLD that Mattock can be used for!

The Lummox should keep his Mattock handy, it'll be useful if he ever finds himself in legal trouble.

There's more smorking going on in that bar! Reprehensible! Won't someone think of the children? Not only is this smorker in a bar, but is probably turning tricks for cigarettes, because only a male prostitute stands like that against the wall.

His foot isn't actually on the wall though

It's a slippery-slope

It's hard to lean one leg up on a slippery slope.

Hi Party People! Last time, the incorrigible Lummox went into the Tower of Trunk and cleaned up a nasty Gargoyle infestation, walking out with a shiny new Mattock for his troubles!



The trip out of the Tower of Trunk is pretty uneventful; you can bypass most of the enemies, and those you can't are easy pickin's.



Such easy pickins, in fact, that The Lummox hit Level 3 and now the Priest decided that the Lummox likes battling things, and is thus a Battler. Being a Battler means you get eight-hundred bucks when reloading a save. Woo.



Back on the path outside the Tower of Trunk, the Lummox returns again to that off-colored rock that the Elves erected to keep the Dwarven Scourge away from their home and children and.. err.. force the next town over to deal with them. Anyhow, hasty Elven Construction proves to be little match for a dude with a pick-axe, and so the obstacle is quickly removed and the path onward is open.



Defeating both Pogoheads that were being stymied by that crappy wall causes a Red Potion to appear on a small pillar, because this is a video game, and things like that happen. Might as well take it.



The mushroom-headed fool on the top of the screen isn't particularly interesting; he scampers left and right, and occasionally bounces, and don't even pay you for the trouble of killing them; just drop a crummy ol' loaf of bread.



These little flying jerks, however, are awful. They zip all over the place unpredictably, and are crazy-ass fast. That, combined with how crummy Faxanadus hit-detection is, and the relatively slow speed of the Deluge fireballs make them an exercise in PAIN to fight.

However, killing them yields bread, which is an exercise for Pain.

You see; because... in French, Bread is "Pain". This is a very funny joke if you aree bilingual. You may wish for a moment in which to compose yourself. In fact, take two, this was likely the funniest joke you've ever heard.



Moving right along, this room has nothing of interest besides an unreachable Squishy Cactus and an all-too-present Mushroom Boy. Also a glove up on a brick. Oh well, can't have everything, moving on.



Next room has these mysterious folk wearing Babushkas. Or possibly Astronauts. They lump themselves back and forth and occasionaly stop to spread their arms and toss a Deluge at you, like most Russian peasants. They also drop a pretty large sums of money because, like Astronauts, they are very wealthy.



Anyhow, using that ladder we could double back and grab that glove. Well, in theory at least; The Lummox takes to the air like... well... a lummox, so making those two tiny hops is an exercise in futility. I wound up killing Mushroom Head and Astropeasant SO MANY TIMES before that second screenshot appeared.

Anyhow, the Glove upgrades your attack power. Its not MUCH of an upgrade, mind; the Astropeasants take five hits to kill instead of six. But hey, I bet the games stuffed with these things and, after a while the upgrade gets really noticable.



Or else the upgrade is temporary and will wear-off before I got past the next screen. So the upgrade is awful, but the portions are wonderful!

Next up is the town of Forepaw, where The Lummox learns how he can go about saving the Tree... water... thing; all we have to do is find three springs and BAM, fresh Fountain Water.



Coincidentally, there's some city-wide rumors about a fountain built in the sky somehow.



More importantly, however, is the fact that the next tier of equipment is available in the tool-shop; the Long Sword is roughly twice as powerful as the dagger, and the Studded Armor is almost twice as powerful as the leather armor. Which ain't too shabby. There are also Wing Boots which let you fly like a birdy.



With a minimal amount of grinding, I can afford the the Long Sword and Studded Armor; which, makes The Lummox a lovely shade of grey instead of a shade of brown. It also makes him twice as good at fighting!



In fact, he's such a good fighter now that the towns Priest decides that he's more of a Fighter then a Battler now!



The Lummox celebrates his newly bestowed title by fighting Astropeasants and those Effin' Ghosts until he refills his wallet enough to buy the Key Shops latest innovation in door-opening technology; the Queen Key.



And, it seems that The Lummox spent so much time murdalizing Astropeasants and Effin' Ghosts that he was also proclaimed to be Adept at killing the damn-shucks out of monsters.



Which is handy since I wound up blowing most of my money buying that key and I still need more gear, so, savvy fella he is, the Lummox just stampedes into the Astropeasant until it kills him, letting him appear in the church with 1600 bucks in his wallet.



And smashing those critters until he can afford the Wing Boots also means that The Lummox gathered enough experience to level up YET AGAIN reaching the plateau of Chevalier. The whiny guy from the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon was one of those, wasn't he?

Wing Boots purchased, there's nothing of interest left in Forepaw, so off to the East-side exit of town with us! And with it, more Effin' Ghosts! And I say "The HELL with fighting these stupid things!" and ignore them in favor of scampering up yonder ladder.



More Astropeasants and Effin' Ghosts at the top of yonder-ladder, nothing fancy there. But past that is a RATHER CONSPICUOUS statue, and a door locked by a Jack-Brand lock. The Lummox still has a Jack-Key in his inventory, but I feel like some more exploring is in order.



Which is where The Lummoxs strong knees come into play; by leaping off the top of that ladder, I get to bypass quite a few screens of Effin' Ghosts and Peasantnauts, landing on top of a door locked by a Joker-style door. We DON'T have one of those, so whatever. Off to the right (since the left is just a passage leading back to this room from Forepaw).



After a couple screens of Peasantnauts and Frogmen, there's a dead-end. HMM!

Well, there's a Red Potion as well, but otherwise, you know, nothing. Nothing but a tree reaching up high into the sky, and some sky.

Hmmm.... a lot of open skies here. And I got some Winged Boots... kind of gets me to a-thinkin'



Huzzah! Wearing the Wing-Boots lets the Lummox take to the air like... well... not a bird, or a plane. Or a Superman. More like a helicopter. You may notice the "T" in the status-window is now displaying a number; thats how long it is until the Wing Boots wear off and you drop like, well, a Lummox. The higher your level, the less time the Boots last, which isn't all that sensible, really.



Directly above that dead-end is another dead-end, with another bottle of Red stuff, as well as an Effin' Ghost and an Astropeasant.



A little aimless wandering brings us to our actual destination; the Fountain in the Sky (with Diamonds) complete with a wise old sage with a glassy thousand-yard-stare. Better hold on to your hats, folks, HERE COMES SOME EXPOSITION!

Ooooooo.....kay?

I'm willing to accept that thats some high-quality, late-80s localization in effect, but, frankly, given how high in the sky the old man is, the situation could just as easily be that the old man is just gone loopy due to the thin air. Or possibly Space-Madness.

Now I guess there's a guy (?) named Guri in the Tower of Fortress with a Key, and also a First Fountain that hasn't been discovered, and the water used to be poisoned, and is wrong, but whatever, we'll open it up anyway?

So... thats next-weeks job, I guess?

I'm watching you, game... You're on my list.

That was kind of weirdly amazing.

I was not expecting to see a post from 2003 Solid Sharkey in this thread.

Truly, Octo LPs are filled with wonders.

I was thinking, "You know, there must be 'real' names for each of those monsters, like listed in the manual or something." Emuparadise has a scan of the manual, and it turns out, no, there are no names for the monsters.

I think that makes Octo's names for them canon.

I better be more careful with changing the Astronaut-Peasants name then. I got a lot riding on this!

I always called it the Eskimo as a kid.

HEY FOLKS! Remember me? Octo? Last week we actually got some kind of direction in our NOBLE QUEST to water a plant by learning that we have to first find three fountains, and then an old man with altitude sickness kind of said that there was a key in the Tower of Fortress that we needed. So... I guess we go there.



Anyhow, that door locked with the Jack Lock from the last update? That was the entrance to the Fortress.

Nothing fancy in the first couple rooms; the Frogmen are much easier to deal with with The Lummoxs new upgrades, and a single Astropeasant is a weeny.



This is a pretty great room, though; not only are all the enemies are wimps, but they all drop loaves of bread. You can go from "dead" to "alive" in no-time flat! And the new sword means that the Lummox need not waste any precious MP dealing with the fleshcacti.



The Fortress is the most expansive area yet; stretching in two different directions with; off to the East with us, for now!



The east path leads right to another crazy old man standing in front of a brown fountain! Or possibly some brown drapes. Kind of hard to tell. Anyway, we're looking FOR a guy in front of a fountain, so I guess mission accomplished! Kind of a waste of such a huge dungeon if the thing we're looking for is so close to the entrance. Oh well...




Oh, guess not; this fountains water is poisoned and can't be fed back to the main spring until its purified with a bottle of Elixir. If I happened to have bought an Elixir back in Eolis, and kept it this long, then HEY, problem solved. But since I did not, I need to go out and find one. Luckily, that last room, with the giant bees? It has an Elixir in it. But you need to loop allllllll around the dungeon going down the west path at the fork to get to it. Welp, off we gooooo.



Falling down that pit with the bees puts the Lummox on top of a jar of Ointment. Like the Glove, the Ointment is a temporary upgrade that boosts physical defense. Not too shabby, especially considering how hard all the enemies in the Fortress hit.



Not... sure how I came into this room; but HEY, a lightly-guarded Red Potion! Can't complain about that!



OOPS! That wasn't a Red Potion afterall; it was a jar of Poison that the Lummox just drank. Well, shotgunned, presumably. One wouldn't drain the entire bottle after they realized it was poison, otherwise. Drinking poison deals a small, but appreciable chunk of damage. You can tell Potions apart from Poison since the Poison bottle is slightly more brown, but in a game like Faxanadu, all the browns tend to blend together; expect to drink a lot of Poison.

Onwards a little bit is the Fortresses miniboss; the Naga! The Naga doesn't do anything special, it just slithers back and forth and only takes damage in the face-region. The staggered landscape makes fighting it pretty easy. The bee's complicate things a bit; they behave like the Effin' Ghosts, except slower and easier to kill.



The NEXT room, however, has the Fortresses ACTUAL boss: ...some kinda robot kicking what appears to be OPA OPA from Fantasy Zone. With every kick of the OPA OPA, the robot causes some rocks to gently trickle down from the ceiling. the OPA-Kicker is outside of attack range right now, so... we ignore 'im. Which is pretty easy since his attacks are slow and target where you ARE, rather then being random.



Just PAST the OPA Kicker is that Elixir we were looking everywhere for! Awesome!



And by using that ladder to go back, the Lummox find himself in behind the virtually defenseless OPA Kicker. Being BEHIND the Kicker is actually MORE dangerous then before; his hit box for dealing collision damage is curiously large, and the raining boulders can actually hit you there. As long as you have at least half a health-bar full, you can rip him apart before dying, though you may need to drink a Red Potion afterward.

Oh, and killing him makes him fork over a pair of Wing Boots. Neat.



Anyhow, with the Elixir in tow, the Lummox makes his way back to that old man who is happy to replenish that fountain now that its no longer full of slime. Awesome! He also says that there are two fountains left, despite the fact that I already opened one.

Good. Great. But he didn't hand over any keys, and dangit, there's SUPPOSED to some guy who gives me a key in here!



A little more wandering brings up another Gargoyle! This one is trickier then the last; if you stand on the edge of the platform, the Gargoyle drifts briefly into stabbin' range if you have the Long Sword. Getting on to the floor is way too risky; the Gargoyle deals massive amounts of damage with all its attacks.

Past the Gargoyle is a church, set up in the middle of the Fortress! You know, in case the HORRIBLE GODLESS DWARVES decide to find religion. Since the average Dwarf doesn't have a whole-lot going on in terms of piety, this is obviously a horrible idea. He even started offering Joker Keys as a gift to anyone who happens to wander in.

So hey: free Key.



The ladder just outside the chapel leads back to the entrance of the Fortress, and the bottle right underneath it is also full of poison, which the Lummox gobbles down greedily.

Oh Lummox.



Okay, back outside Forepaws, at the bottom of the cliff is that Joker door, just MADE for that Joker Key!

And just inside that Joker door is another Gargoyle; this one with NO fortunately-placed platforms to let me trivialize fighting it. And, as noted above, Gargoyles hit REALLY FREAKIN' HARD.

So anyway, it killed me, and, because I used up the Joker Key, I had to buy another Jack Key, go back into the Fortress, find the priest again and get a new Joker Key.



For round-2, I go in with nearly full Health and, rather then fighting the Gargoyle, I plow through it; collision damage be damned! Its safer then trying to fight it!



And so, cutting right to it, the last old man replenishes the last Fountain! Woooo! And trying to leave the room means that I walk smack dab into the gargoyle again, killing me as dead as I can get!

And, as it turns out, I needed to talk to that old man a SECOND TIME for plot-based reasons, and so... I had to go back into the Fortress YET AGAIN and plow passed that Gargoyle a second time!

I don't care what the games text box says, I am totally having some negative thoughts here, FORGET the Mantra!



Yeah.... so thats a thing that happened.

Anyhow, now we've got a Ruby Ring that lets the Lummox move a statue. BACK TO THE ENTRANCE OF THE FORTRESS, AGAIN!

That weird-looking statue is now gushing water, and by smacking it, the Lummox smashes it to pieces, which causes a ladder to drop leading to a door with a Queen-size Door.




Beyond the Queen Door is an NEW AND EXICTING WORLD! Which you can't really see, because this is the Foggy-Region of the Wolrd Tree. How a Tree can have fog inside it, I can not dare imagine.

Anyhow, other then the nice effort with making this section look distinct, there's nothing particularly noteworthy about the Fog Branch so far; just a few Bees and Astropeasants.



Oh HERE we go: a brand new enemy! Its a Dwarf thats actually short, wearing armor, weilding some kind of digging instrument and what may be a beard (hard to tell through the mist)! Could the game have given us a Dwarf that actually fits the fantasy-stereotypes of Dwarfdom? We can't have that! Let's call this guy a Gelatinous Cube.

As you might expect, the Gelatinous Cube walks foward and stabs wildly with his horrible weapon. But he doesn't do anything else and the Long Sword has better reach then his cudgel. So whatever.




The Fog Branch has one other new enemy; a Noodly Dragon. They lazily drift up and down over small gaps and also die easily. They also drop Bread, which is kind of pointless since they are over small gaps, down which said bread drops in every single instance. OH WELL.



There's also a Castle in this branch, built on top of a hole in the ground, somehow. It can't be accessed right now, so I GUESS we use a branching path I missed taking a screenshot of to reach the town of Mascon.

I GUESS.

With the music and weirdness of the environment, the misty area has a suitably creepy vibe, but it still looks like a total mess. I think this update demonstrates the greatest villain to be found in Faxanadu - keys. Having to talk to the one guy twice is especially aggravating, as the game never really gives you any other reason to talk to people multiple times. I wouldn't have known he gives you the ring if it weren't for the little comics Nintendo Power put into their coverage of Faxanadu.

Howdy folks and gents and whatever! Last time, The Lummox found the grammatically unsound Tower of Fortress, found a bunch of Springs and used those springs to refill a different spring that restored the World Trees flow of water, which is really all that the King wanted us to do so... games over, I guess? Congratulations everyone, go home.

But then there's the fact that the Dwarfs are still hassling folks, so we might as well hunt down and kill every last one of them too. I guess?

Anyway; we left off in the town of Mascon; a town that cries out for hero!



Or else cries out "Leave them alone, you filthy vagrant!". Whatever.

But besides impolite townsfolk, Mascon is a town full of EXPOSITION!



For instance, now we know that it isn't mist in this part of the World Tree, thats smoke because a dang METEOR HIT THE TOWN AND ITS STILL ON FIRE! AND THE PEOPLE DON'T GIVE A DAMN!



And the Dwarfs took the Meteor to the TOWER OF SUFFER to Worship it as a an EVIL SPACE GOD!



And the Dwarves EVIL SPACE GOD also poisoned the Springs IN ADDITION to setting Mascon on fire!

Guys! This games story is as AWESOME as it is INSANE!



This towns Bill Dautrieve sells a BRAND NEW SHIELD and MAGIC SPELL! The Large Shield is twice as effective as my current Small Shield , and the Thunder Spell... I couldn't afford at the time and didn't think to buy on my next walk through the town. Oops. If I HAD bought it, it would have worked like the Deluge, except hitting harder and causing a lot more recoil from enemies.



East of Mascon is yet more smouldering tree, nothing fancy at first, just platforming challenges that are MUCH harder then they need to be due to Faxanadus controls, and a new enemy in the form of these little Madballz guys. They behave pretty much exactly like the Gigantic Bees and Effin' Ghosts, except much slower and they tend to bounc off objects instead of plowing straight through them.



A little further in and there's a yet-burning house, guarded by two Gelatinous Cubes.