Save a Tree, Kill an Elf; Let's Play Tales of Phantasia!

Rhea thanks the party, then dies.

A spirit leaves her body, then the pink-haired girl gets up again. Predictably, it's Bart's daughter Arche. The party returns to his house, where they talk for a bit, then she comes outside to join the party.

She also relays a couple more pact rings, which Bart gives to Rook as thanks for rescuing her.

While most of the characters just get extra skills on level-up, and Rook gets his through pact events (most of which are story-based, but a few are optional), Queen kind of has a combination; she learns some spells from leveling up, but most of the good ones come from spellbooks strewn across time and space the world. For example, in Rook's house in Euclid, the book for Ice Tornado is sitting on a shelf in the corner.

Anyway, this is a full party! Hooray!

Next time: The game starts to be really, really easy! Also, the plot pretty much goes away for several hours.

Arche's introduction story is possibly one of my favorite character introductions in any RPG.

I played the GBA version and definitely gave at some point during the interval when the plot went away. The laggy battles in that version didn't it help it either. I should try to play the PSX fan translation at some point now that I've hacked my PSP.

I'll go ahead and warn you that it'll crash in battles on occasion if you play it on a PSP, even if you change the pops.

It only happened to me in a few specific areas, but it was pretty obnoxious getting through those places.

Egh. Martel's introduction bugs me, since she's not the same type of "Spirit" as Sylph and crew. It's also sort of hilarious that your crew saving Yggdrasil/Martel is probably the single most important thing they do in the course of the game despite the whole Dhaos angle.

Of course, that only really makes sense if you've played Symphonia.

Well, in the present, the tree is dead and magic is entirely gone, but Mint can still do her stuff and the world didn't end. I mean, I suppose I can see some sort of Princess Bride-type "it's only half dead" shenanigans, but I got the impression that the crew in Symphonia was overreacting and didn't actually have any idea what would happen if the tree died.

Plus, Lloyd is stupid and there's no way he'd be right about it. Because he's stupid.

Then how did Dhaos use his magic or Tornix's time travel spell for that matter? How did Tornix use magic in the parents' fight against Dhaos?

It doesn't really make sense to say that the World Tree is dead by the time the story starts. Almost dead, sure, but not quite I think.

Plus, since it borrows so heavily from Norse mythology, including the damn squirrel who runs along the Tree's roots (Ratatosk *cough*), you'd think the existence and continued well being of the tree is necessary for the existence of life in the world. Symphonia was pretty adamant about that, with the commentary early in the game about how mana was necessary for plants to grow healthily and all that.

Here's what I think:

(Hey guess what, these are spoilers that go through various parts of the game including the ending)

First off, about the healing powers: I think they're intended to not be mana-based, at least in the same way. There's that church in Hamel that I didn't point out, where everyone is praying to some "God," who never comes into play again. So I have no idea if there's actually anything to that in this game. Either way, Mint saves the tree with her powers but I don't think this actually indicates much about the nature of them, because the mana tree's problem is that mana is being depleted too fast...so I don't know if she's giving lots of mana back, or just plain "healing" it.

Then there's Dhaos. I agree that he's not the more threatening force in the world since all he ever does is kill a lot of people, and even that is not really part of his main plan. At any rate, I've always taken that his powers come not from the mana of the World Tree, but from Derris-Kharlan, which is also what he calls out to at the end when he starts changing forms. But of course, he does need a mana seed, so that itself is not independent either.

I think the real answer is that I don't know and I liked this game's plot better before I started looking for holes.

Just be glad we didn't make you draw up a Zelda Timeline for the entire Tales series.

Oh, lol. Spoilars abound though.

Hey, this is back. Oops. I was separated from my PSX-emulating computer for a while, and also I didn't really want to play this part since it's pretty boring. Sorry!

Anyway, there's some chests in Demitel's chamber that we couldn't pick up last time since we got kicked straight back to Bart's house. I thought there was also a spellbook there but there wasn't.


Just so mentioning this wasn't a total waste, here's a picture of the funniest spell in the entire game, TRACTOR BEAM. It lifts people off the ground and drops them on their heads. It doesn't work on Queen, since she fights flying on her broom.

Back in Venezzia, Elwen and Nancy have a confrontation with his father, which ends badly. Afterwards, as they wonder what to do, one of the party members has a suggestion.

This pointless sidequest is almost finished! Yes!

The party wants to meet with the king of Alvanista, but they need to take a boat out of Venezzia to get there. But the captain doesn't want to sail the route, because he's afraid of Dhaos.

She has an "offer" for him, which, in showing him how ridiculously desperate the party is, convinces him to start the ship going again. How fortunate! It's 170 moneys a person to ride the boat, which is absolutely nothing at this point in the game.

The boat scene is the most infamous moment in the brief-ish history of video game fan translations from the DeJap patch for SNES. Sure, having that line be "I bet she fucks like a tiger" is crass and juvenile, but at the same time, this scene really isn't that funny, so I'm personally okay with wringing a few laughs out of it with a bit of surprising shock value.

If you somehow don't know about this scene, it's Klarth asking Cress which of the girls he wants to get with. Cress denies that he's been thinking about it.

"But what about Miranda?"
"She's just my assistant!"

Also, a weird green-haired man introduces himself as "Mayer." (In the other translations it's "Meia," but for once I totally agree with this version, since Meia is kind of a girly name. I actually thought he was supposed to be a woman the first time I played because of that. And of course that's the girl's name from Alundra, too) Then everyone decides to get some food.

Inside the ship's dining hall, there's only one open table, the one where Mayer is sitting.

So they drink, and drink, and drink. Eventually, Mayer reveals that he's secretly on an intelligence mission to Alvanista, because Dhaos is controlling the prince to prevent Alvanista from allying with the other major kingdom, Midgard. Also...

Dreams are odd things.

The next morning Rook has a hangover and Mayer has been possessed by an evil minion of Dhaos. Knight goes out alone to stop him.

There's a fight on the deck. It's really easy, since you can basically spam any move until he dies and use items if you need to heal.


This is the boat sailing animation. It's a hell of a lot fancier than the Nintendo versions. I think it may also take longer :/

After getting to Alvanista, Klarth suggests staying at the inn to talk over plans. They plan to sneak into the prince's room and stop whatever's controlling him. The only trick is getting there in the first place.


From this balcony, the prince's room is very close, but there are guards patrolling the hallways, so it's time for a Super Short Stealth Sequence!

You only have to get past two guys, but their sight ranges are really weird. (though I intentionally walked into that one just so I could get the picture) They can see behind themselves at certain ranges, and...well I'm just glad it's short.

You can see two things in the Prince's room. Then he wakes up, the lights turn on and he says he's calling the guards. The party has to quickly find out what's controlling him, and...

Okay, I guess that couldn't be much more obvious. The bird dramatically turns into a weird flying she-demon and tells the party that they're going to die. Pffffff.

There's two minions in this battle, who are decent punching bags but not dangerous. A few spellcasts will take care of them, and then it's onto the boss, Jamir. Jamir has some pathetically weak spells, and then Summon Demon, which hits everyone on a screen for 700 damage or so. Which isn't very much anymore.

She also has this shield thing, which hurts a lot on the original version. Here, not so much. She doesn't move while using it, and spells will knock her out of it easily, so it's no threat. Some Ice Tornados and lots of Tiger Blade finish her off easily.

Afterwards, the guards still come in and take the party to the dungeon, but they continue to Positive Thinking, knowing that because they saved the kingdom they'll be pardoned. And so they are! The king understands what happened and gives them some crazy treasures.

The ring is another pact ring. The Gungnir is a spear. I'm not sure what that other thing is for.

The party can also pick up a permit to explore the Morlia mines tomorrow; Rook wants to go so he can find the pact ring for Luna, who's believed to be one of the most powerful spirits.

However, what they don't know is that they won't be able to reach the bottom of the mines without all four of the lower spirits: Sylph (wind, of course), Efreet (fire), Undine (water), and Gnome (earth). We DO know that, though, so we're going to get those three spirits first. But we don't have to do them in any particular order. So I ask, which of the three should we visit first?

Undine's the best spirit. Ergo, get her first.

Daaaaaamn. She happens to be the most annoying to get first, but I suppose I can deal with that.

You know how I said Undine would be the most annoying in the post right above this one?

Yeah, I forgot something:


The witch here also sells the Tractor Beam spellbook, which, amusingly, has the same initials. Tractor Beam is kind of weak, and fails to hit flying enemies (which aren't too common) but it's fun. Thunder Blade is sick though.

This place, by the way, is the magic research department at Alvanista Castle. They're trying to develop "Magitech" for unspecified reasons, but one of the researchers notes that the tests have caused problems in the nearby areas.

The people here also know where to find the three summon spirits.

I know you can't get to Undine's cave without getting this text, but I think the other two are open either way.

The boat captain back in Venezzia who helps the party sail to Demitel's island can now be commissioned to go to the cave in the north where Undine is.

The monsters in the cave are mostly watery creatures like huge squids, slugs, and my favorite, starfish with crazy teeth (unfortunately I didn't get a picture of their bite attack).


It's easy to make dumb jokes about monsters dropping silly things in RPGs, but this was just too awesome. The squid monsters drop Squids, but they also...


The point of this dungeon is to hit three bright blue switches.

However, many of the rooms are flooded, and flipping levers changes the water location so that the party can walk through the dungeon.

It might sound little complicated, but it's pretty blatantly linear. A pond in the first room leads to the first switch, so changing the first lever lets you get down there (and pick up a couple chests too, but they contain cheap junk you can buy in stores). This fills a pool blocking the next room at the same time though, so the party has to flip the lever back to progress.

This leads directly to the large central room. The two pools are effectively the same, both with a switch under them, but only one can be emptied at a time. In the last room, which is north of here, there are two switches.

The top one toggles the two pools in the previous room. The bottom one fills the pool in this room with water, which does nothing until finishing the puzzle.

After flipping the third switch, a hole appears in the middle of the room for some reason.

Filling the pool now awakens Undine, and she attacks immediately.

This battle starts with six enemies: Undine, two Squids, and three Sea Slugs. One squid and two slugs appear behind the party, while Undine and the other squid and slug appear on the right.

Undine casts Ice Needles and Ice Tornado. Ice Tornado is pretty good, just like Arche's version, while Ice Needles does completely trivial damage. She also likes to deal normal sword hits and has a shockwave move that comes out instantly and sweeps across the entire party. It'd be her most powerful attack if she used it very much.

The battle mostly comes down to managing the extra monsters; the party is pretty vulnerable from behind with three spellcasters and Knight's attention needs to be dedicated to stopping Undine from casting Ice Tornado. However, Thunder Blade takes out the Squids in two hits (or one, if someone hits them a little beforehand), so they quickly become a non-issue.

Klarth makes another pact. Nothing special really; there's going to be a lot more through this game. In fact, another two are coming right up! Do you want to see Efreet or Gnome first, tyrants?

Gnome.

I usually prefer to do Efreet first, so Gnome. Plus, Gnome is pretty hilarious in his own way.

So, to get to Gnome's cave, which is in the south near Belladem, the party doesn't have to walk all the way from Venezzia; they can ride a boat back to Alvanista, where the harbor also houses two boats.

Instead of the "ride this boat to whichever useful location" in the other place, there's just one that takes supplies for work that just happens to be near the cave. (Unfortunately, it only goes one way)

The door to the cave is blocked like this. I forget how you're supposed to figure out the password (it's "kikurin" in the original version, and as I recall the GBA translation as well), but you give four answers, each one containing one to three letters. Well, the right ones are all two, but you get the point. In this hack, the password is "PA SS WO RD". I'm so glad they made it easy!


Inside this cave is a Clay Idol, which I'll be henceforth referring to as gnomes (with a lower case "g") because that's what they are. He's looking for his friends; accept and the thing will follow you around. It's a little annoying because it's very slow, and will also block your path.

See, not only did I walk all the way from behind that rock over here, but I also decided about 10 seconds later to take a picture of him being really slow.

The gnome that's not following me is aggressive, and pretty fast. The party dashes past them and waits for the good gnome to catch up.

If you do run into one, it starts a battle. The gnomes are, for all practical purposes, invincible, so the only thing to do is run.

There's only one screen of guys like this though, so once the gnome reaches the border like so you can walk together onto the screen where his four gnome friends are. They run of for some reason as soon as this happens. There's also a stairway down ahead.


There's gnomes blocking a couple doors over here, and if you talk to them they'll just ask if you want to fight. Not really! Fortunately, the gnomes have a completely random lever that causes a siren to sound when it's pulled.

Doing so causes them to all run over and see what happened, so the party can walk into Gnome's room.

If you've only played the GBA version there's a good chance you wasted Gnome in less than 30 seconds. His health's not very high. Thunder Blade hits for about 1,000 damage and Sylph goes for 400-500.

However, he's really, really annoying in the original version, and even more so in this one. Gnome has one attack. Behold:

Gnome is four pieces, which means he turns into four missiles that rain down on the party. Over and over. Eventually they'll stop after a random amount of time and the four parts will group up in the middle. Each character has time to score one hit (if that) before he starts firing off again.

You can tell where he's going to reform based on where spells appear and where Knight runs to when you give him attack commands, but this information isn't too useful.

Fortunately, you can keep the casters alive better and save their MP by switching their commands to "Defend yourself!" during the rocket phase, then going back at the right time (or manually casting their spells) to land them on Gnome when he reforms. You won't get many heals off though, since the rockets hit everyone a lot if they don't move (especially the character who hovers in midair) so it's a good time to use all the Apple Gels that have been in chests. They're pretty much never going to be useful again!

Gnome gives up, so Klarth pacts with him. He's also guarding a treasure chest with the Glaive spell (it's not very good). And checking the other room the gnomes were guarding?

It's...empty. For now...

But who cares? WE HAVE GNOMEROCKETS.

Bishop looks so happy there =D

That's because she actually got to do something (even if it was a pointless something). It doesn't happen much yet, you see.

At least one night has passed, because the party slept on the boat while hanging out at Undine's cavern, so the Adventurer's Guild pass is available. The guild is in the basement of an item shop in Alvanista.

One of the characters is a stand-in for series composer Motoi Sakuraba. He offers to sell you a secret password, which would be the one for Gnome's cave.

Mayer dropped a sword when Knight fought him, which I finally identified. In the original version it's the awesome (for the next dungeon) Ice Scimitar, but I forgot that in all the remakes it's this useless "Fame Face."

I actually forgot how to get to Efreet's dungeon, so I wandered around the world for a while. Probably the most notable location is a house in the middle of the woods to the southwest of Alvanista.

The conversation with the woman doesn't lead anywhere, but we'll be seeing her again.

There are also a couple of tents where swordsmen will offer to teach Knight more combo techs. I doubt these will be useful, but it won't hurt. Even the one that costs money, since it'll be overabundant soon enough.

Further to the southwest is a small camp of performers.

I've never seen these guys before and I have no idea what the hell is going on here. (It's not in Japanese, it's just a bunch of noise)

Also, I figure now is a fine time to talk about the world map a little.

Aselia's geography is really weird, and I don't just mean that in the usual RPG sense that ERAU QSSI DLRO WEHT. If you look just to the left of the center, the smallish green island is where Alvanista is. There are two bridges connecting it to the larger continents on either side, though. The large continent in the west is where Belladem, Euclid and Venezzia are. In fact, right near that bizarre camp I just mentioned, you can look across a "small" bay and see the dock near Gnome's cave.

However, there's a big mountain range here that separates the Alvanista section of this continent from the main part. In the east, there's a similar deal, so the whole thing ends up constructed as three main land masses that are cut by mountain ranges out of two continents. (The desert in the southeast is connected to the large continent above it) It's never as noticeable with the standard overhead, 2D maps from the SNES and GBA versions, but on seeing this, I thought the design there was really odd.

Anyway, there's a dock near the eastern mountains that looks more like a busted bridge on this map. The boat takes trips to "Freyland," that desert. The desert has a village and Efreet's cave. All right!


Olive Village is mostly notable for the weird blur effects designed to look like it's really hot. After quick prep it's time to hit the cave.

The party is around level 20 now so their level 20 titles are slowly coming in. But this one is the best, obviously.


In the basement is the Tales staple item, the Sorcerer's Ring, in a chest. It shoots fire at things!

Like these targets here.

All you need to do here is wander through the doors, shoot all the targets, and get the Magma Key from a chest also in the basement. The basement mostly goes one way though, aside from the last room (which has the Ring), so the party needs to grab the ring, then run all the way to the front side after opening the door in the way by hitting the first target.

Monster-wise, the place isn't very interesting. I'm pretty sure this cave is supposed to be the first one you visit, so the monsters, mostly "Burning Dead" (red-tinted skeletons, basically) and these "Azar" fire spirits are pretty easy.

The Azars are annoying since they have bizarre hitboxes and cast the Eruption spell. Eruption causes fireballs to fall from the top of the screen, dealing about a hundred hits of roughly 15 each, spread over the screen (so many of them miss). It's more annoying than dangerous...like most things in this game.


There's also these lizardmen, which are overall the most dangerous monster type in the game except for one thing: they almost never attack above ground level, which means the witch is generally free to blow them away with spells. I'll be complaining about them more later, when they actually matter.

The last room before Efreet contains all these pillars. (The door at the bottom is where the Magma Key goes) You just have to hit all of them with the ring. *yawn*

Finally is the battle against the fire spirit himself. Undine deals two hits of 500 or so damage with each cast, so he gets destroyed quickly. He mostly uses a melee attack and throws some fireballs, with occasional teleports.

Ice Tornado hits for about 500 damage itself, which isn't too shabby, but the Summoner is the clear MVP in this fight. Aside from potentially a few battles very late in the game, that really won't be happening again.

Efreet agrees to make the pact because he got his ass kicked, and another treasure chest contains the Eruption spell for Queen to use. It's good on single, large enemies who cover most of the width of the screen. Too bad none of those exist!

Next time: Maxwell, the Mighty Molecule of Morlia Mines!

The reason why the geology is so screwed up has a lot to do with the series' backstory, and gets explored in the Symphonia games.

Out of all of the spirits, I'd have to say Efreet has always been my least-favourite design-wise, honestly. He's just a big, floating fiery dude, which isn't really as interesting as the Valkyrie-esque Undine or the Gnome Rockets. Ah well, at least he hits stuff hard I guess, so at least he doesn't take up space.

Yes he does. His animation is reaaaaaaaally freaking slow in this game, though, since he coalesces out of fire for like eight seconds before even starting to attack.

Morlia is a pretty boring dungeon, with standard RPG dungeon gimmicks strung together for a process that takes way too long.

At first it's totally standard, just step on the buttons and flip switches to open doors. Then you start getting stuff about dragging statues, low visibility, and camouflaged switches. On B5 is the first thing that requires visiting one of the spirit caves.

After a short scene the party will decide they need something that can shoot the switch. Fortunately we have this Sorceror's Ring! I forgot to mention that in Phantasia, somebody has to have the ring actually equipped, unlike most of the other games. Since Mint isn't really in the min/maxing game (as long as everyone's alive she can't be doing her job much better) she's usually the best person for this.


On B6 there are spikes. Some of them you have to walk over, and the others you still might as well, since walking around them is slower and they don't hurt too much.


On B7, Knight tells a lie. This torch looks exactly like the secret switch on B4...at least on my screen. Anyway, since it's unlit, you just have to shoot it with the Sorceror's ring, and a teleporter shows up.

Between the party and that chest is an invisible teleporter that sends the party back to the previous room. They have to walk all the way around the room, then step on it to progress...four times, each time with the chest in a different position relative to the party.

B8 features more torch-lighting, and then a trick puzzle where you inspect the last set of torches because there's actually a switch to open the door. If you try to shoot that last torch the party will be shot by an arrow trap and lay on the ground for several seconds dramatically, before getting up to exclaim, "Like that would ever happen!"


There's a floaty switch somewhere to get over this huge spike bed, but I always forget where it is and it doesn't matter anyway.

On B9 the party has to cross to the northwest portion of the floor through some obstacles that are extremely repetitive at this point and hit a switch, then backtrack most of the way to another staircase. On B10 there's a Turquoise pact ring in a chest, and two switches that open up two more teleporters.

The first teleporter leads to this stone slab, where Arche will read a riddle written in Elven (because she's half-elf, she somehow just knows how to read it). It describes where to summon the spirits in the room from the other teleporter, in a rather vague and roundabout manner.

At each one, Rook can choose which spirit to summon at the altar. There's something about a "Maiden crying tears in the west," which is Undine. The riddle also indicates that Sylph is across from her, which means in the east, and Gnome goes unsurprisingly in the bottom, leaving Efreet for the top altar. When all four are summoned, the party hears a shout; someone wants to know who summoned him. Back in the tablet room...

This battle is really easy and fast in this version (Undine and Thunder Blade each hit for nearly a thousand damage, and he only has about 8,000 health. He can heal himself and use "Molecular Attack" where he turns into a ball and bounces around the room. It's easy to interrupt him from doing both of these things, though (but not in the original version, where he's probably the second hardest fight).

Maxwell pacts with Rook on the Turquoise ring, makes Knight's Gungnir spear stronger, and lets the party into the treasure room, where they find lots of unidentified artifacts that are all probably inferior to things that will be sold just a couple towns into the future, and two broken pact rings.

Taking these to the sorcerers who work in Alvanista castle, one of them has a suggestion for what to do.

As they prepare to leave, Knight also hears a strange voice inside his head...

(This minor storyline really doesn't go anywhere, as I recall)

Edward's house is the one that was visited earlier, southwest of Alvanista. The party knocks on the door and the same woman opens it. They show her the letter they have to give Edward.

Sif is, as you may remember from LPEP or just knowing Norse mythology on your own, the name of Thor's wife. I don't think it's symbolic of anything, but that doesn't really matter when Thor is awesome. Anyway, it turns out that Morrison is looking for heroes to fight Dhaos in Freyland, so the party hops a boat over there, and I grit my teeth in preparation for the most asinine sequence in the game. It's not that bad, it's just really, really stupid. Kind of like the Ghoul Powder thing in VP2, except worse than that.

The party asks a guy in Olive Village if he's seen Edward, and he replies thusly.

The oasis looks like this on the map, and the party arrives to see Not-Edward there. This person tells them that he's at an oasis north of there. It's easy to find, and when the party tries to ask an old man at that one about Edward...

The old man mishears Knight repeatedly before giving up the RUSE and telling them he was joking and can hear just fine, and that Edward left for a third oasis in the north. At that one, the party finds out that he returned to the village.

Edward has fallen a little ill and needs some Basilisk scales to cure himself. The scales drop from Basilisk monsters in the Freyland desert...at most, only one per monster.

The easternmost part of the desert here, especially that peninsula, is the best place to encounter them.


The basilisks rely mainly on status ailments, particularly petrify, so they're a lot more annoying than dangerous. As you can see, the Maxwell summon shoots out a lot of Maxwells that bounce around the screen and do about 200 damage per hit. It's actually bad against smallish targets like this since a lot of the balls can easily miss them. On the other hand, if Maxwell appears directly on top of an enemy, all the balls will land directly on them. It doesn't do any more damage, but the non-missing factor is pretty good. Undine is more useful in general though since it doesn't miss like that and is a lot faster. The basilisks also absorb fire, which isn't a big deal, but it does kind of suck the first time you accidentally heal one.

After getting five scales, the party takes them back to the innkeeper, stay the night (for free), and then the next morning meet Edward. Edward is Edward D. Morrison, whose quote "If there is evil in this world, it lies in the hearts of men" opens this thread and appears in the game before the title screen when you turn it on.

The pact rings, he explains, were made by the Dwarves and Elves a very long time ago. The dwarves are all dead now, but the Elves should be able to fix them, magically. They just need to ask the Alvanistan researchers for a permit to enter Ymir Forest and they should be good to go. Knight then takes Morrison aside.

He shows him the book the other Morrison gave him before sending him through time. Edward is frightened by the thought of knowing the future and asks Knight not to tell him anything. He also asks if Knight has any way for he and Mint to return to their own time, which they don't. But in all this is one source of encouragement for Morrison.

Bishop also tells the other two party members about when she and Knight are from, though they're largely unfazed, aside from Queen realizing that if they meet again in the future, she's going to be really old.

In Alvanista, Lundgrom is a little frustrated that Morrison didn't make sure it'd be okay to get a permit to enter the forest, but he gives the party an emblem that will allow them passage and warns them that half-elves are not allowed there. As the party prepares to leave, Arche says she'll just stay in the inn while they're out.

And we know she always behaves, right?

As soon as the party leaves town, the scene cuts to the Inn for about two seconds.

The Elf lands are in the southwest peninsula from Alvanista, surrounded by a huge...moat.

Inside, a guard asks them to stop, then seeing their identification, lets the party pass.

If you've played Symphonia, you'll remember that the Ymir forest section had a really weird and random puzzle here. Phantasia doesn't!

You just walk over the boardwalks to get to the end. It's a bit of a maze, but there's nothing complicated or secret about it. And so, at the other end...

After meeting more guards at the front of the town, the party gets to meet with Brambart, the leader of the elves. He tells them that beyond the village is the sacred forest Heimdall where a mysterious slate will have the power to fix the rings. He then heads toward the center of the forest and somewhat mysteriously indicates the forest creatures will guide them to meet him.

All he means is that you're going the right way if you go onto a screen with these unusually-sized rodents on it. They can be hard to spot though, especially on the larger screens, but the game isn't exceptionally mean about it; you don't get kicked back for going the wrong way, there's just a lot of screens you don't need to visit. There is some treasure but most of it's not even that good.

The monsters here are mostly bears and trees. They all have way too much health. This is something that's bugging me a lot in this version. However, this crazy combo of Rising Phoenix (a skill Knight has that turns him into a fireball that tosses enemies into the air then dives through them for a lot of fire damage) -> Efreet was pretty awesome.

There's a save point here. Usually that sort of thing is ominous but there's no boss here right now

Instead, Brambart tells a story, about the greatest spirit of all: Origin.

He says that Origin appeared during a historical war, one that's usually called "Ragnarok" by the elves. Or "Kangaroo" if you're playing the GBA translation. (This has been taken by many as a sign that the script was simply fed through Word's spell-checker or some such device at some point)

The Kangaroo ruined ancient civilization, and Origin has supposedly never been seen since, but his power can be drawn from the slate nonetheless.

Brambart finishes by telling the party that there's a "Tower of the Zodiac" between Freyland and Midgard and that they should check there for a powerful spirit. And they get more rings!

Klarth is going to be swimming in bling by the end of the game.

Bishop learned the Nurse spell at some point, which is the best. That's all I have to say about that. Also, the "Bushwhackers" are elves who like shooting bows at us for some reason. I know it's best not to question what's up with random encounters in any game, but...what is that about, seriously?

They drop these "Long Selfbow"s, which I have no idea what that's supposed to mean either.

On their return, there's an intruder in the village.


See, if they let anyone go, then there's just going to be more trouble. Though I don't remember if they ever explain why it's such a big deal in this game. Fortunately, we're spared losing a party member forever when...

As they leave, Queen realizes what's going on, but as she calls out to her mother, the guards become more forceful about getting the party out of there.

There was no time to stay at the inn, but Queen comes back with full TP anyway, which is enough to Thunder Blade the hell out of everything on the boardwalks out.

Next time: I'm the DJ of this gig!

The long and short of it is that elves are racist bastards in the Phantasia-verse. Racist against their half-breed kids. It makes NO SENSE AT ALL. Not that anything else does, but this makes less sense.

Eh, I've seen several stories where Elves have their hate on for half-elves, it's not that weird. Plus, one might remember periods in US history when half-African-Americans were not looked upon too kindly. I'm sure it's not the first time it's happened.

But seriously.... Kangaroo?!?

I remember that from GBA version. It has always puzzled me what the localization was going for.

And isn't that wrong in its own special way? That racism against half breeds is not unusual is bad enough, but not unusual /= nonsensical anyway.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I though you meant it made no sense story-wise, where on the contrary it's pretty believable, which is pretty sad.

Well, like I said:

Sure, it's not proof, but it is a solid explanation nonetheless.

Yeah, I meant racism against mixed race peeps is just wrong and nonsensical in general.