Lagoon for SNES - the blind leading the blind

Out the gate, this thing seems nice. The graphics are really quite beautiful and animated pretty well. I don't really see what the consternation is about so far.

Pressing start a few times leads to this old man telling me to go on a quest to un pollute the water. Seems straightforward enough. Let's do this thing!



Right off the bat, movement is slow. So slow. I decide to set up my controller with a fast-forward button set to 3x speed so I can move a little more tolerably, and proceed to the largest central building which is a church. I check out the menu after discovering I can also jump (huh).











There's just a priest inside the church, so I wander around town a bit after saving.



Truly inconvenient. Every single person talks about the water in this town, by the way. I get that it's a big deal though.



You could serve beer I guess.



As far as you or I know, yes.



Buuuut... I was just at the church! Considering the comments made so far, I'm absolutely positive this is indicative of more trigger shenanigans to come.



Raggafragga... My mom used to drag me to church every week. This is bullcrap.



So far everyone seems intent on screaming my name when they talk at me.



So I gathered.



Manbearpig?



YES ACTION i mean, oh no, a problem? However can I help?



What yo?



Oh, bad screencap there.



What does this look like, a gathering of community leadership? The camera fades to black and we are now in the cave in question, dying man before us in all his ellipsis glory.











I forgot that when the old man told me to battle demons, since he raised me to be the Champion of the Light, that I might eventually have to battle the demons. I guess all that training never entailed owning a sword. Lucky for me I can now go back into town and buy one, but apparently first I have to hunt down the Mayor again.



Lady, if you tell me he's not here...

Uhuh. Sure. You tried to go into the cave? Did you try?



OHBOY, are they greaves? Gauntlets? A pair of fancy shoes to match my cape would be cool.



All the fanciest heroes wear gold coins.



Don't have to tell me to spend your money twice. Hopefully now the weapon shop's open.



Shenanigans.



Oh, I gotta buy my sword from the armor guy. I guess I'll go back to the weapon shop later for lunch, then hit up the restaurant for a nice hot bath.





Exactly enough cash to buy these three items, and I can't find an item shop, so I buy all three. This game seems intent on wasting my time as often as possible.



On the way back to the cave a guard reminds me to equip my junk. Duh.



Cool slime!



Nice demon!



Aw, ffff. At this point I've had my first encounter with the combat system and I gotta say it stinks on rye. The strategy seems to be: Swing your pathetically short sword with pixel-perfect timing so you can hopefully hit the enemy while they are bouncing you back, probably hurting you (but not always, which is confusing) in the process.



Getting back to where I was isn't hard. I kill a few enemies, resting with the fast forward button after each battle to refill my health, which regenerates slowly. I find a few chests, two with money and one with a potion.



A door! This is one of two exits, but the other one's sealed up.



The second area, and all following areas, look identical to the first area except now there are also skellingtons. They're worth a bit more XP and are a little easier to fight, actually. I find more money in chests and eventually...



Ah, sweet fresh air. I must be close to the wounded man.



There you are!







Pff NO. I mean yes. Damnit. Here you go.



Fetchy McPrincess is now supposed to follow me back out of the dungeon. Somehow he manages to walk slower than I do, but at least he's invulnerable to enemies. On the downside he's as smart as a rock and keeps getting caught on edges and stuff. Is there nothing redeeming about this game?









How many religions does this town have? I find the ostracized holistic practicioner in the southeast corner of the town.

Sweet. Back through cave to that sealed door and...













That boss fight was nigh impossible. I'm assuming it's because I skipped out on grinding all the annoying enemies, so I savescummed my way through it. The strategy is that he'll jump and slam onto the ground, and you have to be in the air jumping to avoid being stunned. If he jumps to you and stuns you he'll shortly follow up with a devastating swing. Be midair when he lands and then stick your face into his shin and mash attack six or so times, most likely taking damage because you're using Raphael's sai as a sword and it has a range of -3.

And thus concludes this update of: Blind LP of Lagoon for SNES. Thanks for reading! I apologize.

Originally Posted by Falselogic

Damn this game is ugly. Was it made with an early version of RPG Maker?

Last update I'd just defeated Sampson, the first boss. Let's see what happens next...





Not even a tiny bit surprised, I find myself in the Elf Plains.



This is the worst drawn enemy so far. When this game first started they front loaded it with some decent art. I thought, wow, at least it will have interesting pictures to look at. This was reinforced by a decent first enemy, an electric looking blue slime with cool transparent bits, and pretty smooth jumping animations for the main character.

My illusions are finally shattered on the Elf Plains. Fighting my way past badly drawn enemies, I arrive at the northern exit which leads to a village. An elf greets me and starts talking about his obsession with a ruin nearby.



That's so fascizzz zzzz zzzz.



...DRACULwait, sleep? Oh shit, REVERSE DRACULA!



...So you're the laziest elves ever. No wonder Santa won't hire you.



Wait so you've seen the tablets? What's the spell then?



But you said they were...



Did you notice that? How observant... and it's weird of you to have the nuts to ask me, a stranger, to get them but not to ask the man in blue for the apparently uncopiable tablet he apparently stole from 'around the village.'

Right, so I'll fix this problem for you I guess. Nobody's mentioned a reward or motive, but obviously as the Champion of Light it's my job to wake up a building and save the incoherent elves trapped inside. But first, shopping!

...Except nobody's selling. A thief apparently stole all the shopkeeper's stuff. But the Mayor has some items for me. He talks about the trapped elves.









And I get a staff and a quest item! The staff doesn't seem to do anything yet. Maybe I have to be outside the village first.



Oh, that girl from the intro turns out to be a dude with a cool name.



No, I asked if you knew where a Starbucks was.



Well if you insist.



Thor wanders uselessly around in square patterns while I look for the other two tablets...



...one of which is literally a dozen steps outside town. The other tablet is in the castle area...



Hm, bridges.



Huh, bridge is out. But it's not like I can walk off any of these other edges so...





...Dang. I forgot I could jump. REWIND!

I get the second tablet which is in a chest over another broken bridge. Thank goodness that was easy. I return to town to find Thor.



Yeah. Go us. The elf history nerd reads me the spell and I return to the castle.



Here we go!

I'm already sick of this tile set.



Statues, bricks and carpet. Miles of it. This maze is pretty big and sparsely populated with interest.



These guys are a little tough, but I suddenly remember that staff I got and try pressing R. FIREBALL! BAM!

HOLY THOR! THAT WAS ACTUALLY COOL!



...but these guys are immune to fireballs. Whatever. Still cool. Might even redeem this whole game.



I opened that chest with my hands of fingers.



Nice. Damage is cut by about 1/3 with this new armor.

Eventually I save the elves. Here are some random screencaps of the events following this:









My only reward is a bunch of useless thank-yous. I guess nobody ever actually asked me to help anyway, so whatever!



Oh, did I miss a boss? Ok then, back to the castle!

I find a door I missed leading to an area full of fireball-spitting mages and jellyfish. Both of them are weak to fireball so I spam them liberally and level myself rapidly.

To be continued...

Originally Posted by hafrogman

I think we're all overlooking the most important question about this game.

What the hell is with the 'f's in that font?

Last update I talked about these mages,



...and these jellyfish. They are both weak to my newfound NOT SUCKY fireball spell which manages to somehow make this game playable in spite of the many things wrong with it.

By killing hordes of these enemies while wandering the equally as massive as the prior area maze they inhabit I powerlevel up to 10 in just a few minutes.



The next area has a third tile set. It's filled with cloud monsters and those guys from the original Gauntlet games who suicide into you and sap your health, only these guys don't die when they touch you.





At the end of their area is the boss known as NATELA whose name makes me crave nutella and whose chamber prohibits my fireball.



Not only is the only way to hit this guy with my tiny ass sword, but my health doesn't regenerate in this room either! The boss has a pattern of charging forward and releasing 5 fireballs, 2 of which go off to the sides and 3 of which blast forward in a spread (pointlessly since if you're being hit by those 3 you are also being slammed into the wall by NATELA and taking constant damage). You have to juke him into running toward you then dodge left or right, get beside and above him to avoid the sideways fireballs and then you have zero chance to hit him with your sword as his hitbox is smaller than his threatening hitbox.

The only solution I found was to leave his chamber, which you can do at any point during the fight, and level up until I had a sliver more health than him, then, when he charges into me, slash like the dickens until he backs off. This has about a 1 in 3 chance of working, so I used rewind liberally during the battle.

Hey, I said blind, not fair.







Oh happy days! A bigger sword?! I open the menu...



This is looking so promising! Can it be that this game is just slow to start, and in fact NOT an utter piece of butt?!



It is, in fact, the exact same length exactly. Not even a pixel longer. This game finally managed to raise my hopes and dash them again despite the great care I took to remain disappointed.

Beating NATELA does indeed open a new path at the entrance to the whole mess of mazes, so I walk back outside and to the newly opened door.



Hm.



And it's an empty room. Wonder what would happen if I stepped...



WOOOAAAAAAAHHHHHHH WARP TIME! rfdkla;sfd



First the Elf Plains and now this. Something something racism.

The enemies here are these white foxthings that can absolutely MAUL me in seconds when they dash up from behind and chain-juggle me into a wall or across the sand.

[WHERE DID MY SCREENCAP GO LITTLE GREEN GOBLIN IN MY COMPUTER!]

They also take a whopping seven fireballs to kill!



The other enemies here are immune to the fireball. Not surprising since they appear to be lava spitting rock balls.



A lot of these enemies are ball shaped. Someone's a lazy artist.

At the northern edge of the Dwarf Desert is a town entrance.





I'll Dene your gull, shitty game.

I think Lagoon is making me angry.



Denegul is full of, you guessed it, dwarves. Dwarfs? Whatever. Another flavor of little people.

You don't have to tell me that, dwarf standing at the entrance. Armor shops're the only thing towns are FOR in this game other than getting fetch quest hints!



Speaking of...

That's not a book, THAT'S ANOTHER STAFF! OH YEAH BABY!!

I'm not sure if this game's awfulness is making the prospect of a new spell artificially exciting or not, but I'm excited regardless!

But it's really NOT a book. Books are a different thing, dwarf elder.



Yeah, ok, I'll make a new sword. And I'll probably make it too short. I just bet.

Oh hey, it's that Thor guy! What's up Thor?



No.



Did this jackass just call me a knave for refusing to find his jewelry?


knave

/nāv/

Noun

A dishonest or unscrupulous man.

Synonyms: rogue - rascal - jack - villain - scoundrel - scamp


...no seriously, fuck right off, Thor.



...oh all right.





You and everyone else around here. At least this guy has the courtesy to ASK me to help, even if he's a jerk about my initial refusal.

I hit the armor shop like a dump truck full of anvils.



Get dem chilidogs



Can't afford both yet. I'll come back after some other VERY IMPORTANT business I have with some white foxes outside.



OH



HELLS



YES

The new fireballs kill white foxes in just two hits. I'm unreasonably stoked.

Then again I bet a hamburger would taste pretty darn great after a 20 day salad clense, so maybe it's all relative.

Originally Posted by Guild

No.


Did this jackass just call me a knave for refusing to find his jewelry?


knave

/nāv/

Noun

A dishonest or unscrupulous man.

Synonyms: rogue - rascal - jack - villain - scoundrel - scamp

Originally Posted by Guild

Huh, bridge is out. But it's not like I can walk off any of these other edges so...

Originally Posted by Torzelbaum

Sounds about right.

Sure enough, just like the elder told me, there are rocks blocking the entrance to the area I'm supposed to get the Moon Stone from. I decide to try the book out.











Well that wasn't useful at all. I go back to the village and talk to everyone there, including a man who wants to see the Moon Stone (more on this guy later) and Thor still wants his pendant. With nothing else to go on, I decide to go find Thor's pendant.



An elf in the prior town had it. Thanks game, for once again making me traipse around gathering stuff for no apparent reason.

See, usually when a game has you go back to a previous area to get a thing there's some alternate stuff to do, or perhaps a side-boss or some kind of justification for the backtracking. Not in Lagoon. In Lagoon there is often no reason whatsoever for the shit you have to do. Just like real life!









No problem dude! If you lose any of your other stuff be sure to hold my progress ransom for it.



Yay.



This area, you guys. First two sections are enemy-free jumping hallways.



They're not very long, but I had to traverse them at least six times figuring out what to do in here.



This whole entire stinking sulpur pit of shame and torture, you guys.



These golems spit 5 fireballs, but they telegraph the move so it's not so bad, and you can leap over the projectiles. They're immune to my fire staff of course so I simply ignore the hell out of them, a mistake I'll regret in about 40 screencaps. But that's not the part that makes this area literal hell.



See, there are some firey dragon heads that appear in the lava and then zoom toward you, piledriving you into a wall our out into the lava. If the amazing amount of constant damage from their teeth doesn't kill you, hopping back to shore likely will, Sometimes they'll combo you, passing you around on the lava like rugby players. I died a total of 92865349 times (rewinding each time) in the six total trips I made between here and Denegul trying to figure out what to do in this goddamn area you guys.



Whoop de doo.



Yep, still useless.



Here's me dying to the new worst enemy in the game...



...formerly this guy whose screencap I earlier lost.



Hm! A few minutes of experimentation later, this ring turns out to be really quite useless! When you equip it, your mana will start to drain. When your mana is fully drained, it unequips. During the mana drain period you take half damage. Since that means I die in 7 seconds instead of 3.5 seconds, that's sorta useful, but not when I have to recharge my mana and then reequip it each time. I make a mental note to try using it during a boss fight and move on.



Hey! That's looking very interesting. I bet now I can kill these fire enemies!



Yep, it's true. This version of the spell throws out a boomerang of green energy that goes straight ahead and offscreen. It's basically the wind version of the fireball.



This spell is a bit more expensive but it pauses time and causes a ring of green energy to swirl around me, damaging anything whose hitbox is close to it.

I proceed to wreck golems and fire dragon heads for the remainder of my time in this hellish pit of evil - you guys, this area.

Here's a view of the green boomerang. This is called LP filler.



Here's the green energy whirl that goes around NASIR. Filler makes you feel like you're getting more for your money.



This cave was a pain in the ass to find and reach. But it's sorta pretty! Stockholm syndrome aside, it reminds me of Earthbound a little.

I take the Moon Stone back to town, and who should I meet?



Hey, it's my dad or whatever! Hey dad, how did you train me when I didn't have a sword? I've been curious about that for a while now.



You know, I bet if we just talked to these people something might be worked out. Nobody in real life is pure actual evil, you know. In fact, people who do impactful things usually have justifications for their actions, maybe if we work something out with them we could...



Well when you put it like that it sound's sorta evil I guess.



DAMN IT NO

NO NO NO

I HATE THAT AREA OLD MAN

SCREW YOU AND FORGET BEING CHAMPION OF LIGHT

It's at this point that I broke the only rule I set out having when I started this LP. I checked a walkthrough. I did so because I literally spent 3 hours real-time trying to figure out what the heck to do next. I don't know how in the name of science I was supposed to figure out to 1) talk to this guy with the moon stone equipped on the L button and 2) use the pot he gave me on the odd-looking lava flow in Dwarf Cave.

I mean, I guess lots of people might have figured it out if they'd managed to not die 534257524 times in Dwarf Cave and subsequently smash the cart with a rock in a fit of apopaleptic rage and instead called Nintendo Hotline. Good thing I have an emulator or I'd already be done with this pile of Scooby poop.



I could have shown you a quartz and you'd be this excited I bet.







This right here. There's no entrance blocked by lava in all of Dwarf Cave. There is, however, a strip of odd looking lava at one point and I really feel a little ashamed that I needed to read a walkthrough to figure this bit out.



This area you guys.



(unenthusiastically) Yay.



Inside the room I'm met by two new characters, first this princess who seems to have temporarily escaped whomever is kidnapping her...









In the time we've been talking we could be halfway out of here by now, so come ON, move your princess butt and let's get...



gdsafd



Your eyes appear to be migrating down your face.



I don't think I want to stay alive! The things I've seen in this game... the lava, the pendant retrieving, the Mayor telling me to wear money...



Instead of pummeling her in the back with green boomerangs and fire, I watch as they leave. Wandering around in this new area reveals it to be utterly empty save a single door leading to...



This looks like another boss!



Oh joy.



Here we go. *state save*

This boss is invulnerable except when he sticks his head out to shoot three glowing rocks downwards. He's easy to avoid and moves slow, but every hit from him while I'm trying to get close enough to hit his face results in me taking MASSIVE damage. Luckily, as with the previous bosses, I can leave his chamber any time, so I do that and gain 3 levels then return.



This takes about 30 minutes in fast forward, so I can't imagine how long it would have taken had I been playing on a cart considering how often I died doing it.



He's sorta easy. Just jump over the rocks and while landing, slash his face twice before he retracts his head.



HOORAY another boss defeated. My only reward is an open door leading north.



This concludes this update of Not Blind LP of Lagoon for SNES. I really feel like someone owes me an apology. Why am I doing this. I somehow care less than the 0 people reading it.

Originally Posted by Guild

Why am I doing this.