One Girl Army: Let's play FARIA, A WORLD OF MYSTERY AND DANGER!

Hey cats and kittens! Remember me? I'm Octo and I did a WHOLE LOT of these, then I plum ran out of stuff I wanted to LP, and then I played Faria and I said "Oh! I guess not!"



Faria was an action-RPG made by Game Arts (which you may remember with some fondness as being the same clump of chuckleheads which brought us Lunar, Grandia and, to my own surprise, Super Smash Brothers Brawl) and Nexoft which, if Gamefaqs' release data is accurate, went on to release nothing else, ever again.

A cursory Googling does not really reveal anything more, so... I guess that's all we got for background data. Sorry fans of INTERESTING TRIVIA, you got bupkis this time. Don't worry though, I'm sure that within about two pages Kishi or Parish will pop in to say "Oh, the lead character designer went on to be a famous train robber" or "the games soundtrack went on to inspire Micheal Jackson, who was struggling to score the soundtrack to Free Willy"

Now, would you like to see what lies behind the title screen? I sure hope so, if you clicked on the thread just for the greater history of NES RPGs as represented by Faria, I would be awfully disappointed with what I gave you.



We get Six Letters, I normally name the guy you play as "Octo" when given the choice, but that won't do at all since The Soldier (as the file-select calls the unused data slots) is, in fact, a LADY, and "Octo" is PLAINLY a dudes name.



So I had to gussy it up and OCTINA it is.




Boy, I hope this is not an ominous portent of things to come.



GAH!



Also, I did not skip anything there, the game went straight from "Something ominous and prophecy and such" to "Horrifying innkeeper saying good-morning and shoving you out the door and into ADVENTURE! I've LP'd games with abrupt openings before, but GEEZ. Okay, time get some bearings here. Get all my eggs in the one basket and such.

As you might reasonably expect from a JRPG, the red-haired lass is our Hero, OCTINA. In addition to being red haired and not speaking overly much, she also is good with a sword and will save the CRAP out this WRETCHED world! You know, once she figures out whether or not it's in any kind of danger. But it probably is, Octina is always ready for ADVENTURE, and ADVENTURE always finds her!



Most of this is pretty much what you might reasonably expect it to be, HP is Life, Str is how hard she CRUSHES EVIL, DP is how poorly evil winds up crushing her, Gold is Money, Arrows are Arrows, Battery are Batteries (like... 9-volts), Bombs, SABA and SEDE are maaaaaaagic. And she is presently equipped with nothing but the shirt on her back and two fists full of HEROISM! And, like, two hundred bucks in solid gold.



Okay, thats enough menu poking around, lets see what the people of town have to say;

First things first, let me say that I have never loved any status portraits more then I love those in this game. LOOK AT THESE PEOPLE! LOOK AT THEM! The Soldier has a Number Four stamped over a helmet like a Tele-Viper, the Wise Old Sage is a Teletubby, Sad Princess Girl is the only one dressed in clothing!

Secondly, we have some sort of actual goal now! Here's what we know: OCTINA is a from Foriegn Climes, her Present Climes are the largest city in Faria, the Local Princess has been kidnapped by the Evil Wizard who is in the north, and OCTINA is going to save her because THAT IS AN ADVENTURE AND ADVENTURE IS WHAT SHE DOES!

Anyway, that's all the gabbing about around town, time to hit up the shops since... there are some, and I am pretty sure that without any sort of gear that OCTINA is not going to survive long. ADVENTURERS GUMPTION is all well and good but, you know... a sword or something would also be pretty cool.



Besides selling equipment, the Weapon Store Man also reveals the wonderful prize one will get if they save the princess from that Evil Wizard! A Princess Marriage! Presumably, the Princess herself is pretty okay with this?



Shop menu is pretty sparse from a visual standpoint. Luckily, Gamefaqs has an equipment list so I can be a Savvy Customer.



OCTINA breaks the bank and buys a Knife, Pelt Armor and Wood SD (which I am assuming is stands for "Shield, but prefer to think of it as being a Sickly Dude who you pay to intercept attacks) which, all together, make her significantly less... prone to death then she was a moment ago.



The Beautifully Mustached Green-Grocer offers hiking advice ("Don't! It sucks!") and sells Batteries, Flashlights, Wings (transports to previously visited towns) Flashballs (for running away from monsters) and Hyperspeed1 (which lets you move CRAAAZY fast for a short time). I choose not to dwell on why a grocery store is selling flash grenades or Superspeed Serum.



The Mysterious Mister Magic Man (who also showed up in the intro, remember?) also sells Magic Sede and Shadow. Sede Magic gives you VORPAL EYES! Shadow turns you invisible.



Madame Mediceeny heals you, sells healing items (and... a Parapo which I can not find an explanation for online) and her store is so boring that I didn't bother taking a shot of it.

And THATS ALL in the town of Ehdo! Let's leave town and see what happens next!



The World of Mystery and Danger works pretty much exactly like how you would expect a JRPG to work; outside of town you wander around and sometimes monsters come right the crap out of nowhere to wreck your day;

Random battles, instead of being menu-based affairs like you might reasonably expect, are more Zelda-oriented. You are whisked off to a Battlefield where you fight monsters until one or the other of you are DEAD! The fields outside Ehdo have a wide variety of critters, like the crabs shown above, which move around randomly and sometimes lunge at you;



The Flying Spaghetti Monster, which moves around randomly and sometimes lunges at you



Sky-Mara, which move around randomly and sometimes lunge at you



Landodiles, which move around randomly and DO NOT sometimes lunge at you, but do hit hard and take a bunch of hits.



And if you disregard the Green Grocers advice and wander into the forest, you can also find Golems. Which are gigantic and hit hard enough to one-shot you.



Which is exactly what happened. Penalty for death is, unsurprisingly, that you are booted back to your last save point, half as rich as you were before.

Now, while we WERE told to go visit the king, and that ADVENTURE is to the north and so forth, that blue building outside of Ehdo sure looks interesting!



It's a dockyard, I guess! Staffed by SLEEPY KITTIES and another Mustachioe. Maybe he has some vital information!



Nope!



Oh well, heading to the North East from Ehdo leads pretty much directly to the Castle, which is apparently a gigantic Hexagram. SINISTER ZIONIST SYMBOLS IN A LAND OF MYSTERY AND DANGER?



Faria Castle consists of a single room and six guards who... invite whoever is walking around outside to come on in and have a chat with the King. It's not particularly surprising to find out that the princess was kidnapped, considering. Oh well, we came all this way, let's see what the King has to say;

Abrupt, but this game isn't too chatty, so okay, I can accept that.



That... is a picture of a caterpillar.



And so, with an additional hundred smackeroos in her pocket, Octina heads out to truly begin her noble quest; so save a caterpillar... from a wizard.

He LPs again!

yay!

According to a book of NES game walkthroughs I used to have, Parapo cures paralysis.

Well, if the king's daughter is a caterpillar, then you are going to save the HELL out of that caterpillar!

Chances are it's the shortened form of (Para)lysis (Po)tion.

But it could also be a pear in a pocket. Who knows?!

I like to think of her more as a grub

A new OctoPrime LP! It's like Christmas!

I remember reading about this game years ago and wondering what the heck was up with that caterpillar. I'm looking forward to finding out.

Grub Princess would be an excellent name for a game that would be of questionable legality in most US jurisdictions

Or a game about a princess who really likes eating comfort food?

It's also a pretty good name for a band.

But, what kind of music would Grub Princess play?

amen to that, nich. amen to that.

I'm going to spoiler this because I might be right and that would ruin the surprise for everybody.
The king says that's a childhood picture of the princess. I'm betting she's a butterfly by now.

Yay OP is LPing again!

Truly the best advice about hiking.

I choose to believe this with all of my heart.

Would certainly explain the Near Total Lack of information about it.

They evolve at level 10 anyway.

This LP is mandatory reading.

There is an eerily strong sense of deja vu about this thread.

I think I would have remembered euphoria like this.

Seriously, this almost feels like one of them new-retro games. Are we sure this isn't part of that Retro Game Challenge sequel we never got?

I did a bit of research. This game was developed by Game Arts, also known for Lunar and Grandia. It was not their first RPG - that honor belongs to Zeliard, a very action-heavy RPG for DOS. (Octo, if you want to do that one next I'll help you set up the emulator.)

The internet apparently knew about Faria as early as January of 2001, which is when the GameFAQs guide is dated.

I've thought about doing Zeliard before! I remember it being fun.

*little flawgic watched his older brother play it*

It's not like you can search Wikipedia. They don't even have a page. And everyone knows that something without a Wikipedia page doesn't exist.

This only serves to give more credence to the "blinked into existence for Octo" theory.

Nexoft was the American publisher, not the developer. Faria was the last game they published, following "Castlequest" and the NES version of Wizardry.

...so are we all just collectively ignoring the fact that one of the companies involved with this game was called "Colon Co."?

Are we...too grown up for poop jokes?

Ditto.

Hurrah for an Octina LP, anyway.

I assumed it was a typographical error and it was meant to be A colon.

Like, the title screen was being dictated.

Personally I just can't think of anus enough joke to be worth poosting. There's a certain level of quality to most of the posts here and I wouldn't want to disappoint you guys.
Man, if I wasn't averse to cussing this post would be so great.