No Happiness Will Dwell In This Kingdom! Let's Play Rolan's Curse 1 & 2

So, on the topic of Lane’s capabilities.


She has the Shield spell, which reduces damage from enemy attacks for about ten seconds. She also has a staff, which is like DURN’s sword but worse. I’ll probably stick to Pit for most of this area, especially since he’s currently our hardest hitter.


The first screen here introduces the Dark Knight, who shoots single fireballs at us.


He’s blocking my way to this chest, which has a Level Icon for DURN.


Killing him makes a Flying Helmet spawn. That can float over walls and shoots fireballs in two directions. Not actually a good tradeoff!


I can kill this Dark Knight (and the Flying Helmet he spawns) through the wall before walking around.


The scenery in this game is significantly better than in the first. Check out this statue!


Here we have another new enemy for this area, the Tentacle Mass. They ooze around and occasionally shoot fireballs if you come into their line of…sight? Sense? Something.

They’re also insanely durable to boomerang hits and better off being dodged around. This is an important lesson for both games in this series: Killing enemies doesn’t give you XP or money, so there are plenty of times when you’re better off just going around them.

Which is not to say they’re unkillable—repeated and careful applications of DURN’s sword (especially when he’s up to level 6) will do that job nicely. And when killed, they can drop Large Potions and large fruits. Grinding a stack of Large Potions from these guys can be very useful later.


I end up having to take a hit from one that boxes me in when I go here to grab Lane’s first Level Icon.


This room is full of Demon Heads, which are faster than Flying Helmets but don’t shoot fireballs. They accelerate towards you when you catch their notice, and they’ll swarm you if given the opportunity.


Looping around to the top of this room gets us another Level Icon for Lane.

And going south snags one for DURN.


This waterway area has a lot of Tentacle Masses that we can’t feasibly kill, so there’s a lot of dodging around them and waiting for them to get out of your way.


This chest is only a mini-potion, but at this point, I’m not objecting much to that.


Irritatingly, killing Demon Heads with the boomerang sometimes causes mini-potions or small fruits to spawn in inaccessible areas. Pit’s boomerang, unlike Link’s, can’t retrieve items.


The next area is a castle, which features a couple of new enemies as well.


Down here is the Smilin’ Pot, which sits in one place and spits fireballs at you. They have a decent mini-potion drop rate, which is useful. They can take a 30 HP chunk out of a character of they hit you, which is much less useful.


Up here is the Wacky Dwarf, which spins around a lot and is unreachable at the moment.


And in the next room is the Sage-Clops, which will rapidly increase its walking speed until suddenly stopping and shooting out fireballs. I kinda like to think of it as building up the magical fire but going “Ah! Ah! Hot!” And getting progressively more frantic until it can throw it.


Going left down here gets a Level Icon for Lane.


Going up through the breakable blocks gets one for Pit.


This chest here has a mini-potion. I think, though I’m not certain, that mini-potion chests are intended to hold Level Icons for characters not (yet) in your party. Nothing stops you from doing other areas first, then backtracking and doing this sidequest.


Dodging around this corner gets us another one for Lane.


A defeated Sage-Clops drops a Fairy’s Tear, which is another storable consumable item. It restores MP. Sage-Clopses can also drop Magic Balls.

Destroying this rock (and the Wacky Dwarf behind it) with a bomb nets us another Level Icon for DURN.


And this teleporter leads to the area boss.


This is what my party looks at with our current collection of stuff. Note that Pit’s still my best character in a lot of ways.


Also of note: At level 6, DURN’s sword range expands, adding these slashes to the end of it. This actually is helpful in fighting the boss.




Here we have the Joker’s Ghost. He’ll float around the room slowly in a predictable figure-eight pattern, so collision damage isn’t a big problem. The real threats here are 1) the mini-ghosts he summons, which will charge at you (including making a turn as necessary) and eventually de-spawn themselves, and 2) His screen-flashing attack that seems to cause un-avoidable damage.

I saw a bunch of deaths here, and eventually needed to grind potions and use multiple characters during the battle. He dropped a Fairy Wing when defeated, but I was standing too close to the teleporter and didn’t get to pick it up. D’oh!

Because of that, I need to walk all the way back to town. I’ll spare you the details.

Back in town, the high cleric rewards Lane for her hard work with the Heal spell. Yay, upgrades! The Heal spell restores HP for everyone in the party when used, though it costs a lot of MP. It can be useful in future boss battles as a way to recharge the characters you’ve already cycled through without burning your stock of potions.

Next Time: Dead men tell tales.

For some reason I think I want to see this boss monster's sprite turned into an icon. Or a Percy.

I like that, rather than making Lane a squishy with support magic, she's actually the most durable of your three characters by far, so she's perfect for defensive players.

That sounds like exactly what I want.

Okay, so in order to present any sort of reasonable economic system in this game, we have to make certain assumptions about the world that we’re seeing: Namely, that it’s incomplete.

First: I generally assume that towns in jrpgs all suffer from “townspeople shorthand”, where the only people you can interact with are also the only people you need to interact with, so while we only see six people in a town, there could be 600 or 6,000 who live there. (After all, six people is not a sustainable town. It’s barely a sustainable family farm.)

Second: Though we have a map screen, we don’t have a “world map” and there could be vast amounts of the countryside we just never see. This also makes sense, since DURN knows basically where he’s going and would try to take as straight a route as possible, only going off that path to be a good Samaritan. The fact that we don’t see any cornfields doesn’t imply that there are none, just that our journey doesn’t cross any.

Third: We don’t pass through anything that appears to be a major city, port of trade or capital; and given the relative size (one screen) of each town to dungeon areas like the Haunted Castle (half a dozen screens), it seems reasonable to assume that these towns are hamlets and villages near the frontier, and Barius’ castle is far from civilization at the ass-end of nowhere. (Because who’d want to live near it, anyway?) The additional areas we’ll travel through and the increased scarcity of habitation would support this theory.
So I’m going to start with the idea that the major inhabited parts of Rolan are all south and east of Virgin, and DURN’s journey has really begun as he reaches the frontier where Barius’ monsters have just recently reached. That would also explain why they get more dense and stronger as we travel—we’re getting closer to the source.

So the towns we’ve traveled to are small frontier towns. They need to each have some sort of value-generation to exist for any length of time—farmlands we don’t see, a logging industry, tourism, something. Usually this influences the location of the town when it’s settled. Cadal is next to the Mushroom Forest and they seem most concerned about the monsters there (as opposed to the monsters in the other forests surrounding them), so perhaps their main industry is related to that—are they mushroom farmers? Similarly, Baroa has more clerics than other towns and at least one trainee, and is near a very large set of waterway ruins and a castle. Perhaps that’s a holy site that people make pilgrimages to?

Does Rolan have beast of burden? We can’t tell, as we never see them. (Though a later segment does imply that very large animals roam at least part of the frontier.) Does it have water travel? Yes, because we saw a massive ship graveyard in the first game. There are also rivers near every town we’ve seen so far in the second game, so we’ll assume that their trade is mainly via water transport. Although DURN doesn’t fight a lot of water-based monsters, NedJim did, and there’s no reason to assume Barius wouldn’t try to unleash the krakens again.

So what these towns are concerned about is not necessarily their immediate safety, but the cutting off of trade and major industries, which will choke their towns to death slowly but surely. If Virgin is a farming town and the monsters prevent access to their fields through a planting season, they’ll lose the entire year and probably everyone’s livelihood—anyone with wealth will flee to the cities, and poor people will starve to death. It’s basically a famine. If Cadal is selling mushrooms that grow without cultivation, they have a better chance of surviving, because they’re probably living a bit less hand-to-mouth. (They’re taking advantage of a natural resource that’s in demand elsewhere, kinda like having a mine.) Their problem will be when everyone’s savings and supplies dry up and trade remains blocked. Baroa has similar issues, though they’d have the best chance of bouncing back after a prolonged siege, because of the religious connection. Heck, if there’s a major church they’re connected to, there may be ships full of clerics and paladins guarding shipments of supplies for them, and who would have fought the ghosts eventually if Lane hadn’t.

A lot of what this comes down to is how long DURN’s journey takes. If he makes the hike to kill Barius in a week and the monster evaporate, everyone’s fine. If he takes several months, and it’s the wrong several months, chunks of this area’s economy could be devastated for years.

But then, that's just my initial thoughts based on what we've seen so far. I'll probably come up with other comments as we reveal more of the world. And I'd welcome anyone else's commentary here.

You're correct. It takes a few trips through the entire game, but it's possible to get every character up to the level cap (16!). It's been a while but i'm prrrrrretty sure it saves their level when you switch party members in and out.

That was great, Beowulf. More LPs need unnecessarily in-depth analysis like that.

I think it's important to keep in mind (and this supports your water travel theory, I think) that a society doesn't necessarily require beasts of burden to function. Pre-Spaniard Mesoamerican civilizations did pretty well with just their feet, as I recall.

This was a cute LP until the economics-of-RPGs analysis, which is when it became a brilliant one.

I would love to see you giving that sort of consideration to other games when this LP is done...

Rolan’s Curse 2, Post #4 – Get a Thunder Rod From the Graveyard Duck To Live Longer

I’m surprised people liked my economic world-building wankery, but if I’ve found an audience for that, I’m not going to turn it down. I should write up a post on why we should have all seen the twist ending of Final Fantasy Legend coming from halfway up the tower.


Last time, we recruited an apprentice cleric named Lane and hunted down a particularly nasty ghost.


Today, we head north from Baroa.


Slimes, Spinys, Wizards, Shadows and Monkeys all inhabit the path, but they’re old hat by now.




We take a roundabout route, as there are Level Icons for Pit and Lane to be found. It’s pretty quick, though.


That brings us to the town of Keepers.


Not all of the first game’s sensibilities in NPC comments have gone away.

Apparently a wizard stole their prized possession, and their mighty warrior Kyle got killed trying to retrieve it. Think they’ll let me keep it if I defeat that thieving wizard?


Spoiler: The fact that it does things that are useful to me point to “yes” as the answer to that question.

West of town is the Graveyard. We get our first glimpse of a new enemy, the One-Eyed Ghost. Their gimmick is that they’ll de-spawn, then appear swooping by in an invulnerable form three times, then re-spawn as vulnerable again.


North along the path, there’s a Level Icon for DURN just sitting there. (There’s also a Wizard and a Sage-Clops here.)


Then we find this strangely peaceful stretch of graveyard. With a talkative dog.


And a friendly zombie!








And here we have Kyle’s sidequest. Kill the evil wizard, retrieve the Thunder Rod’s lost power.

Kyle is kinda crappy right out of the gate—his bone is similar to Lane’s staff, and his “play dead” spell eats a bunch of his MP to shake the screen and make him immobile and invulnerable.


Fortunately, this chest on the way back holds his first Level Icon.


And backtracking a little to this chest (outside of town, which previously held a mini-potion) gets me his second Level Icon. (I suspect I could backtrack further, and one or two of the other mini-potion chests would also provide Level Icons, but this will do for now.)


Back in the graveyard, there are a number of these destructible stones. We can work our way around them if we need to, but Pit makes it easy to just go through.


This is a Corpse-Head, which are kinda generic floating enemies. They float at you and die in one hit.


Looping back to the first screen, where we saw that One-Eyed Ghost, there’s yet another Level Icon for Kyle.


The Nevermores, on the other hand, both swarm and have a tendency to change speeds and charge at you, like Demon Heads. They can be a problem. Fortunately, they don’t hit very hard.


Breaking through some rocks, I can pick up a Level Icon for Lane here.


Then we hit the area break, though it’s not nearly as dramatic as reaching the haunted castle last time. The new area is just more pillars and fewer tombstones. Nevermores, Wizards and Sage-Clopses remain the common foes, with the occasional On-Eyed Ghost.


(And this first screen after the transition is a really unpleasant Nevermore swarm.)


And there are more stones that I don’t desperately need to destroy, but it’s helpful to do so.


Heading west nets me a Level Icon for Kyle, then north of there is one for Pit.

And a Sage-Clops is kind enough to drop me a Potion.


In the middle of this spiral of graves is a Level Icon for DURN.


Then looping around gets us two more for Kyle in quick succession.


This screen has a giant One-Eyed Ghost party, with something like six of the things that spawn. Plus a Sage-Clops, to make things more exciting.


That’s because this screen has the boss teleporter. Note that if Pit has enough MP and we wanted to avoid that gauntlet, we could just maneuver around and break those rocks, instead.



Here’s a look at my current party before the boss fight. Kyle’s range with the bone is still terrible, but he can hit pretty hard.


Here we have the Lich-King, the evil wizard who stole the thunder rod and drained its power. He teleports around the room, and makes an L-shaped charge at your character. Contact damage is his only attack, but he hits pretty hard.

Defeating him is a matter of dodging a lot, switching characters when necessary and (in my case) making use of DURN’s ability to attack on a slight diagonal. Lane’s healing spell can be useful instead of (or in addition to) Potions, because it heals everyone. He drops a Magic Ball when defeated.


Returning to the area where we first met Kyle, we’ll meet the Lich-King in a more human form.


He’ll fauxpologize for his folly.


Checking the tombstone next to him gets the Thunder Rod for Kyle.



It’s absurdly powerful and has an impressive animation (the charge-ball, the crash of lightning, then the explosion), but it takes a long time to charge and is hard to aim. Like Pit’s bombs, it can function as a path-maker.


And the townspeople have some reactions to us retrieving the Rod.

Keepers is an interesting case in terms of economic significance, because what would a frontier town next to a gigantic graveyard be producing? The name of the town tells us everything: It was founded for the gravekeepers, to tend to the graveyard. Why would there be such a large set of marked graves way out in the boonies? Because this is where all of the veterans and victims of the last war to take place in this area are buried. That’s right, folks: Everybody who got a “Game Over” against Barius during the first game is resting in the cemetery we just fought through. And the people of Rolan are so respectful of that sacrifice that they carved an individual headstone for every one of them, and founded a town here (just up the road from a noteworthy religious site) to tend to it. This town is a tourist area, and the Thunder Rod is probably used in peacetime for doing a light-and-sound show for the visitors.

Which means that unless they’ve got significant government funding, when the tourism dries up (and it obviously already has), they’ll begin a slow decline and probably won’t recover—what areas are “dangerous” to visit always lasts longer in the minds of the public than the actual danger. So even if DURN defeats Barius next week, it’ll probably be a few years of “Should we go visit Keepers this summer?” “Oh, no, there might still be monsters there. Let’s go to the capital instead.”

Anyways, for next time, we have a very important audience participation decision to make! In order to take our next member into the fold, we’ll have to leave either Pit, Lane or Kyle behind! Who stays, who goes? Will it be Pit, our mischievous bomb-throwing elf? Lane, our strong feminist healer? Kyle, our lightning-welding zombie buddy?

Hey, Talking Time, who gets voted off the island?

Having never played this game, just the original, I have to say that it has a lot more flair than I was expecting. The first Rolan's Curse was an extraordinarily generic fantasy romp, and this one is pretty similar... and then it comes out with a crazy zombie party member. That's pretty sweet.

Seeing as how our new skele-buddy has the important part of Pit's skillset covered, namely "breaking through obstacles," I say we vote the little scamp off. It'll be more interesting seeing you make use of other characters anyway. Plus I totally love the idea of having an undead party member. The lightning is just a bonus.

I say we vote them off in order of how long they've been in the party, so we start with DURN Pit.

Rolan’s Curse 2, Post #5 – The Magic Tower
So, with a whole two votes, it looks like Pit is going to be our big loser. Alas, little elf-man! I over-used you in my quest for greatness.


We head east from Keepers.


It’s a short walk from Keepers to the next town, Duwane. On the way, we see a new overworld enemy, the Flying Puffer Fish. They’re fast and move erratically, which means they can spell trouble. Both they and the Monkeys on this road can drop mini-potions and small fruits, though.


There’s a large lake between the two towns. Given the abundance of man-made bridges attached to this lake, we should assume it’s of some significance to the people of Duwane—a prime fishing spot, perhaps? It makes me think of the towns in Alaska that are specifically built to take advantage of the salmon spawning season. Ketchikan, for instance, is in the middle of nowhere and is barely accessible by land (only by water), but at the right time of year it looks like you can walk across the river on the flood of salmon. I’m going to guess that Duwane is the same way, which means their survival following Barius’ defeat is entirely dependent on monsters not disrupting the cycle of salmon spawning. (Even if trade is disrupted for much longer, they’re producing a food crop, so they could survive, albeit with some likely vitamin deficiencies.)


Anyway, there’s also a Level Icon for Lane here.


Duwane really is at the ass-end of civilization. To the extent that there’s been a “road” to follow up to this point, even that’s gone.


Then I won’t kiss you, Mr. Non-Royal Frog.


…no. Actually, I’m questing for my health. That sounds fun, right?


The Tower (also known as “Metals”) is our destination, as well. Perhaps we’ll meet that sorcerer along the way.


There’s only one exit from Duwane, unlike every other town so far. The Tower is the first non-optional dungeon area—DURN must pass through it if he wants to reach Barius.


At his current level, DURN’s sword can reach through one-block walls, which gives him a range advantage over Lane and Kyle.


Returning monsters here include Sage-Clops, Magic Pots and Wacky Dwarves. New to this area are the Naughty Books, which move in towards/away short bursts and work their way towards you. They’ll die in one hit, though.


There’s a Level Icon for Kyle here. I like the desk and chairs theme here—it emphasizes that this tower is some kind of place of learning, or at least it was. Probably a haven for dark magic that the people attempted to seal up, but now times are desperate enough for the sorcerer we heard about to try to fight his way in.


Seriously, isn’t the “forgotten library” aesthetic here great?

Magic Pots are much easier to fight when you can approach and hit them diagonally.


Thunder Rod HOOOOOO!


This treasure trove has Level Icons for Kyle and Pit, and a potion that probably indicates a Level Icon for somebody else.


The designs don’t change much past the area break. This Level Icon for DURN is right in our path. (The power boost from it makes him strong enough to OHKO Wacky Dwarves.)


This orb-things are new, though they’re just a generic obstacle and I’m not really sure what they’re supposed to be.


I had to fight past two Magic Pots to reach this Level Icon for Lane, which my health total should indicate.


This signpost indicates awesome.




Jude is apparently a lousy master to his apprentice.

Sure, Jude, we’d be happy to have a wizard along.


Which means Pit unceremoniously gets the boot.


Jude’s basic attack is a fireball from his cane.


His special is the earthquake spell, which shakes and flashes the screen and hurts everything. (Even the Magic Pots that we couldn’t really see here—I got him nearly killed trying to get close to them.)


His first Level Icon is right outside his door.


Then we’re going to take a little side-trip back the way we came. There’s this Level Icon for Jude a few screens back, along with the route to this Level Icon for DURN that I had missed before.

The third chest in the treasure hoard, sure enough, was a Level Icon for Jude as well.


And there are these two even further back.


The two chests just outside of Duwane remain potions, though. I should remember these and see about coming back later.


I end up stopping in town to recharge, because why not?


I realize I haven’t show the map in a while. It supports my water-transport theory, if nothing else. (Though it doesn’t quite match up to the actual geography we’ve seen. I’m going to try to edit together a better map of the game screens and their relative locations at some point.)


Here’s a shot of Jude as we head back into the fray. The earthquake is pretty badass, but his fireball (despite its range) is still my weakest attack by far. It’s also slow—you can’t spam it against fast-moving enemies as much as you might want to.


So we work our way back to where Jude was (and past two pairs of Magic Pots).


To a Level Icon for Kyle that’s right in our path. Despite have the highest attack power of our group, Kyle’s bone is still inferior to DURN’s sword, because of DURN’s reach advantage.


Another level for Jude as we approach the top of the tower. (There isn’t that much tower left after we’ve collected Jude.)


And then we’re at the boss teleporter.



Here’s a look at our party going in to the fight. (I probably should have grinded a few Potions and large fruits off the Sage-Clopses in this area before I went in, but ended up not needing to and surprising myself.)

I call this fellow Hand-Eye Coordination. He’s pretty straightforward in that he slides back and forth along the top of the screen, periodically opening his hand and firing a hero-seeking eye. The eyes have several different patterns they fire at, and dodging them can be a pain.


I hit him with swords, fireballs (which aren’t very effective) and most especially the THUNDER ROD, then swap Lane in to heal the party, then resume.


He drops a Fairy’s Tear upon defeat. The second teleporter in this room is our way forward.


And now we’re in a completely new area!




But there’s one more thing to do. If we go back to the boss room, we find that Jude’s apprentice has caught up with us.


The book upgrades Jude’s fireball into a Smash Ball, which travels to the edge of the screen and does much better damage than the fireball. (It’s still pretty slow, though.)

Next time, we’ll continue our northward push into this new land.

We need another vote for who we drop! Our choices are: Lane (who’s been handy pretty much only for her healing spell), Kyle (who’s bone isn’t up to par but is worth his weight in THUNDER ROD), or Jude (who isn’t cool yet but I suspect his ranged attack might get us somewhere).

As much as I dislike making the party all dudes, we haven't seen enough of what Jude can do yet to make a judgment call on his abilities, and lightning zombie is still the best character concept yet seen in the game. Since dropping DURN isn't an option, I say that Lane has to go.

It's scary how in sync Phil and I are. Lane's been around forever and doesn't get much screentime anyway.

Rolan’s Curse 2, Post #6 – Guild and the Ancient Ruins

We left off in the wilderness at the far side of the Tower of Metals.


Rocks? Well, without bombs, our only option is to blast them with the THUNDER ROD.


That was anticlimactic.


There’s a Level Icon for Lane over here, though.


The Dark Knights on the way move the same way that Sage-Clopses do, with increasing franticness, except they don’t shoot fireballs, which makes them easier to deal with.

Then we reach the town of Guild.


Some of the townspeople actually repeat NPC comments from earlier in the game. Though admittedly, it’s the most important thing going on at the moment.


We’re getting closer to their source, though there’s still a long way to go.


A valid question, less rude then it appears at first glance: This town is pretty cut-off from the rest of civilization, basically inaccessible by foot unless you’re a badass monster hunter (it’s apparently inaccessible from the rest of the country without passing through the Tower), and probably fairly cut off (by monsters) from water travel at this point, as well. News of the outside world would be something really noteworthy.

Guild is an interesting case, as it’s the last real “town” we see in the game. There isn’t much here: A few martial artists, a bunch of people afraid of monsters, and a giant monster-infested ruin on either side of town. My guess is that these people are outcasts, possibly for religious reasons (likely relating to their study of eastern-style martial artists over western-style ceremonial religion), who fled to this relatively uninhabited area in the hopes of building an independent society for themselves. That sort of thing rarely works well (pilgrims often don’t actually realize what they’re getting into), and that’s when the area doesn’t suddenly become infested with monsters that get bolder as time goes on.

Honestly, I don’t think these people are going to last long enough to face economic collapse. I don’t think they would have made it through the winter even if Barius hadn’t attacked. If we move fast in killing Barius and getting back here, we might be lucky enough to find a few survivors and bring them back to Duwane or Keepers with us.


You think so? Okay, I’ll go have a word with him.




A martial artist, eh? Sounds like you could be useful to us.

As per the will of the crowd, Lane is sent off to be somebody else’s Smurfette.


In her place, we now have Lee, the KUNGFU. He starts off with a boatload of health and a so-so attack.


His main weapon is the Sai, which has teeny-tiny range.


His magic, the Firework, sends a series of fire columns rippling across the ground. (The problem is how expensive it is relative to his MP—I actually needed to grind fruits because I missed screencapping the first time I used it.)


Sure enough, looking right outside of town nets me his first Level Icon.


I also have a Dark Knight drop a Fairy Wing, which warps me to a town. That might come in handy later.


And in checking that disappointing chest behind the rocks (it’s still a mini-potion), I stumble upon these jumping fish, which spawn like crazy from this tiny pool and I don’t think we’ve seen anywhere else. Obviously my spawning season theory about Duwane has merit.


There’s only one exit from Guild, to the north. Though it’s technically a side quest, you need to pass through at least part of this area, the Ruins.


These Duckmen reappear. They’re only a threat in large numbers.


(We’re working our way clockwise around a basically circular area, incidentally.) I think we’ve seen these fast-moving Lizardmen before, too.


The chest he was guarding is a Level Icon for Lee.


Wizards reappear in large numbers.

This fireball-spewing Flower is also new. Having DURN take him out on the diagonal is pretty much required.


This nook has Level Icons for Lee and Jude.


There are several paths that lead into the inner ring of the circle, which has a different tileset. This one is a dead end. It’s full of flying Stone Heads that respawn like crazy and move in short bursts.


It’s worth going in, though, because the chest at the entrance is another Level Icon for Lee, and at the dead end is one for DURN.


This would have been a level-up for somebody, but whoever it is, I don’t have them with me.


In the top-center of the circle is the exit to the next area. In theory, I could ignore the boss here and just keep going.


I opt to continue the circle instead, which leads me to nonsense like this. The Flowers actually only spawn when you kill the Wizards, taking a cue from the first game’s “trap” enemies.


They guard another Level Icon for Lee.


There’s yet another one just south of there.


…seriously?


This is another dead-end path in the inner ruins. There are several ways to get in here, though this one requires breaking the fewest blocks to get the prize.


THUNDER ROD!


The prize being a Level Icon for DURN, guarded by a ton of Shadows we can mostly avoid by coming this way.

Finally, just before we’ve gone full circle, there’s another Level Icon for Lee.


The nice thing about the abundance of Wizards around here is that they (and the speedy Lizardmen) can drop large fruits, which allow me to refill all the MP I exhausted against Hand-Eye Coordination.


This entrance, just south of the exit to the next area, is the correct one to reach the boss.


I get a lot of fruit drops just before the boss, actually.


The innermost ring of the Ruins features these Moai statues, which are pretty neat. (The Stone Heads are less neat, but DURN can OHKO them, which is nice.)


Past a few more Lizardmen is the boss teleporter.



Here’s the party going into the boss. Kyle’s bone continues to lag, but the Thunder Rod is my most powerful attack. Jude is really squishy and the Smash Ball isn’t even as powerful as Lee’s (underleveled) Sai, so range is the only thing he’s got going for him. Lee is durable, but can’t deal much damage because of poor range and very limited MP for his ranged (and more powerful) attack.


This is Machine Head. He’s better than the rest. Green to red. Machine Head.


He moves slowly around the area and tries to ram you, and also fires up to two giant balls at a time.


They semi-seek and can make 90 degree turns to come after you, but they can actually be killed if you land a few hits on them at the right time.


I unload everything I have against this guy. Jude spends himself casting Earthquake, which is marginally effective (especially if I time it so it also kills the light ball).