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

So we're looking for a tower between Freyland, the desert, and Midgard, where we haven't been yet.

It's not this, because this fiery place in the desert can't be walked to, no matter how hard you look.

It is this, and that moon symbol on top of the tower might just be an indication of what we'll find inside!

The tower of the Zodiac comprises six floors, each of which is divided into two sections. One of the sections is just this tiny room with a staircase up and a door down.

The other features a tablet, which provides a clue to the puzzle. The puzzle is based around music, you go to a statue and change the song to the one described. The "is sung by one not human" is on all of these; it just means the melody is played by (fake) instruments.

The balls of light don't appear in the Nintendo versions. I think they hurt you a bit if you walk through them, but it's so trivial that they're barely worth noting.

These statues let you change the music. There's four on each floor, appearing in different configurations of four out of eight rooms on each floor. There's two on the left, two on the right, and four below.

On floor 6 the party is stopped after fixing the music the fifth time and this fairy tells them he'll only let them pass if "the pink-haired girl gives someone a kiss."

She seems to accept these conditions pretty quickly, and lines up (despite standing right next to her target in the first place) before Bishop intervenes.

Then they're stopped by a mysterious voice who tells the fairy to give them a spellbook. It teaches Queen "Ray"...which is still not as good as Thunder Blade.

Luna invites them upstairs and talks to the party about their quest. She doesn't really want her power to be used to hurt people, but the party convinces her that she'll be helping save the world. She agrees to make a pact without even fighting.

And she's awesome. She shoots beams of light down that cover basically the whole screen and do tons of damage.

Now time for lots of boring cutscenes! Stop me if I'm going too fast.

At Midgard castle the party gets past the guards by showing them the emblem they got for the elves. In the room, they meet the king's advisor Raizen, who explains that they live near Dhaos' castle and that he's got evil plans.

Unaware that she's a character in a 16-bit RPG, Queen seems awfully confused that Dhaos wants to destroy the world for no particular reason. Does he really have no reason? Does he really just want to kill everyone indiscriminately? As she points out about two minutes later, Dhaos is only technically at war with Midgard and hasn't attacked Alvanista or Euclid. But then there was Hamel...which was only destroyed by a pawn of his, but is still an unknown on either end.

Raizen also shows them the magitech lab; humans are going to be able to wield magic against Dhaos to kill him once and for all. Sure, it's not natural, but who cares?

Queen then decides she wants to go back and talk to her father. It's kind of far, but she says she knows a shortcut.

Picking 2 is completely idiotic. The "shortcut" warps the party straight to Lone Valley, so unless you enjoy boredom it's the only thing to do.

There's a confrontation over Queen's mother, who, as Bart explains, was forced to go with the elves when they withdrew contact with humans, and told him to pretend she had died.

Then she asks him about Rhea's parents, who were killed in Hamel. He says that they were working on a secret project in Midgard, but doesn't know anything else useful. Sooooo, it's time to go back, and...

Eternal props to whoever put this in. Seriously.

Next time: Flight of the Valkyries!

I'm guessing the option to take the long way is just there in case you feel there's something you want to take care of before you head out, like training the group up a bit or searching for secrets in places you've already been in. Always nice to have a choice, right?

Yeah, that's true, but it's a choice in which you do the same thing either way, except one way sucks a lot by comparison. If it was like "do you want to prepare before you take the shortcut" it'd be a lot nicer.

Plus this is the only place in the game where they actively mitigate the annoying backtracking, so it's a shame to let that go to waste.

Anyway, back at the castle, Morrison is confronting a demon who's holding a child at swordpoint. When the demon sees the other adventurers, he becomes especially excited-time to finish off all of Dhaos' greatest enemies at once!

Morrison teleports behind the demon, but not fooled, the monster also turns around, and skewers Morrison with his sword.

Morrison explains that his teleporting is close to the magic needed to travel through time, and if he'd just had a chance to refine it a little more he'd have learned to do that too.

He then blows up and takes the demon with him.

Inside the castle, the battle strategy against Dhaos is being explained. A large plain, called "Valhalla" lies between Midgard and Dhaos' castle stronghold. Several teams of special forces will work to cross the plains quickly and take the bridge on the other side to prevent Dhaos' forces from advancing across the plains in full force.

The party is considered mercenaries by the kingdom of Midgard, and so Rook, being the oldest member of the group by about ten years, is made the official leader for Midgard's purposes. He has to stay in the conference room for an official strategy meeting or something.

The party stays in the inn, and comes back just in time to see him leaving the meeting room. I guess the briefing wasn't so brief.

As they leave the castle to prepare for battle, a cutscene hypes up the upcoming battle, describing how totally epic the war between Midgard and Dhaos is.

Then it shows the final preparations for the battle on the southwest end of the plains. Raizen explains that the team who is the most productive on the field will be rewarded the greatest.

Vallhalla works differently from everything else in this game (sort of like our other setpiece this update!), primarily because you can see all the enemy forces on screen, and try to run around them.

Their collision detection is pretty bad in this version; it seems to be possible to run right through their bodies on the field as long as you touch their backs first. Conversely, it's not possible to escape from them in this version either if you do touch them. If you run from a battle, you'll be thrown back into it before you can actually move. Most battles are surrounded! attacks anyway, so it's less annoying to just kill them while you have the chance. The ones that aren't pit you against a single, pathetic enemy.

I said Ray sucks but most of the enemies here are demon and undead types who are weak against light, so it actually dominates in this stretch of the game.

The battle of Valhalla lasts five days. You can see time pass as the shading of the field and battle screens changes, growing red at dusk and deep blue at night. At midnight you'll be prompted to rest. This is useful! You get a free tent, fully fixing up the entire party.

I don't know how the battle could last five days though. I'm not sure if the game counts battle time as part of the time until nightfall, just field time, or something more arbitrary like the number of screens you've crossed or steps you've taken, but in any case, you'd have to be awfully lost, if that's even possible, to take more than three days. I've always reached the other end in two days, because the screens are simple and your target is essentially always up or to the right. At the far end of the field is a save point, which means...boss!

Ishrant casts spells and has some dumb lackeys. Ray and Luna destroy all of them pretty quickly, but hitting him with Knight is problematic because his main attack is to place a fireball in front of him that deals constant damage (~300 per second) to anyone who touches it. It's actually high enough that it doesn't hit as long as Knight doesn't jump, though, but that often means dragging Queen to close to it, so it's probably safer to stand back.

After capturing the choke point, the party returns to the castle despite the apparent lack of friendly soldiers nearby. The king, happy with their bravery and productivity, gives them a reward of 50,000 Gald. Then there's another panicked announcement; with his ground force defeated, Dhaos now advances from the skies!

A sort-of-anime-styled FMV shows tons of dragons and ghosts flying in. Alvanista's engineers turn on the Magitech cannon, and the party heads outside to figure out if they can do anything.

Knight hears the same voice telling him he's not worthy to wield his weapon, and is teleported to a strange room.

At the north end of the room is a Valkyrie, who explains the spear is Odin's, and as a god's weapon, the Gungnir is not fit for lesser people. But Knight realizes that the horse she's riding is probably magical and somehow convinces her to let the horse help him for just a few minutes. He magically reappears near the party, as the freak out over his disappearance.

In another FMV, the mana cannon fires, destroying many of Dhaos' forces. There are still more, so Raizen prepares to fire the mana cannon again.

Meanwhile, a sudden trauma rocks the Forest of Spirits. A distressed Martel notices that mana is suddenly being consumed at an alarming rate.

The cannon fires again, but this time it goes nuts and causes severe damage across Midgard, without harming Dhaos' forces at all.

Knight explains his strategy; he'll go up and kill all the demons, or at least their leader, and Midgard will be saved.

And then he was a zombie.

Queen offers to fly up too, but her broom won't last long enough. Pegasus grants it a spot of extra magic power so she can also come, but apparently not enough for anyone else to ride on it too.

And so, in the most high-concept sequence in this game, you control Knight on a flying horse. Pun so very intended

Battles on the horse are a pain though; techs are disallowed, and the horse's movement is a bit wacky, not to mention it about triples the size of your hitbox. Worst of all, there's no Bishop. It's easy to spam items still, and there's all those Apple Gummis that are useless when she's around, so it could be a lot worse, but it's a bit annoying.

A short sequence of easy battles ensues, against weak birds, slightly more dangerous flying demons, and some ghosts. And then...

The same boss, again. Except he's got less people, and so do we. That works in his favor. Plus, as I mentioned, the taller horse makes it all the more dangerous to get close to him thanks to his fireball move, even as it's more important to hit him so he doesn't hit the party with devastating long-range spells.

Ray still wins the day, though. It's all good.

Back on the ground, they thank Pegasus, who takes back the spear, and leaves them something oh so much better, as well as a letter from Morrison.

Morrison's letter explains how he's probably dead if they're reading it. He starts by explaining a bit of what he knows about Dhaos, including something Dhaos said once:

Then he tells them that even though humans can fall to their evil ways, the human spirit has very much the opposite potential as well. (This kind of sounds like my other Let's Play!) He's come to trust that the party is fighting for the right reasons, and that they'll beat Dhaos, so he gives them a spellbook to help them along.

Queen has learned Indignation.

It is a good day to die.

Hell yes. Heaven's light, shine!

To get to Dhaos' castle, you have to cross Valhalla again. It's empty this time though, without the special on-field battles or new random ones.

Dhaos' castle starts with a rather expansive ground floor. The left half of the floor just has some assorted treasure, most of which is redundant, including the best item, a "Mecha-Halberd" sitting discreetly on a weapon rack. I know I always ended up with two of these on the GBA version at least, but I don't know where the other one came from.

This is a simple puzzle. The first time you step on the button, it opens that door directly above it, but locks one that leads ahead. Walking through another door lets you back over the button in that way and swaps the door locks back.

Like the Morlia mine puzzles, you just step on the buttons in order. Easy.

On the other hand, this is the most annoying puzzle in the game, and EVEN WORSE in this version. The large table here has four buttons on the sides. Queen insists on doing it with Knight, but she's a spaz who doesn't like to walk in any sensible manner. She stalls randomly between each button and does some weird pacing. It's always the same, and always annoying.

After each failure the game will give you a "hint" which isn't all that helpful until the last one, which mentions that you can just run over each button repeatedly until you get lucky. In the other versions, after ten failures, Mint and Klarth will offer to just do it for you, but in this one, you have to keep going until it works.

A few rooms later, a button controls a door; there's nothing in the room to put on it, but just upstairs is a statue to push down a hole above.




This room has no such convenience. Somebody has to stand on the switch. I left Queen since she was running low on MP; Indignation completely destroys things, including her mana pool. As compensation, it's her third best spell in the game, and second out of the ones you get during the main game. It's fantastic against every boss except one.

Above is a series of rooms leading to a mini-boss, who guards a "Mysterious Hand-Mirror." Taking the mirror below to other rooms with mirrors will summon evil spirits, and killing them leads to alternate mirror worlds.

The first couple just have little chests, but the last leads to a relatively expansive mirror world containing a Golden Key. The key opens the room with the statue and the pit from the other side...

which lets us put Arche on the switch again and have her fly up to meet with everyone else.

Finally, in the room with the save point, is a locked door. Fortunately, it's simple to open.


Behind the door is a minion of Dhaos who tells the party they won't lay a finger on him.

The three evil lords are easy to stall so they don't summon any huge spells, and easy to kill. Since there's been so many of these guys already, there's nothing interesting to say.

Then the next room has Dhaos. The party is aggressive toward him, but Dhaos seems oddly passive.

However, at their insistence, he decides they're just being pawns of Midgard and should be killed.

Dhaos starts the battle with two Evil Lords, and unlike the original version (where he was extremely difficult to target) starts casting immediately. Dhaos has a pretty simple but potent moveset:
Melee - Dhaos does a crouching sweep at the nearest person, which has a fairly high stun chance, but is easy to jump over.
Tetra combo - a series of punches that ends by knocking the target in the air. Comes out more or less instantly, is interrupted by spells.
Tetra Spell - Dhaos casts the four low-level elemental spells (Lightning, Ice Needles, Fireball, Glaive) all at once. They hit pretty hard but don't all hit the same people. Still dangerous.
Dhaos Laser - Long casting time spell that sends a huge beam across the field. Since he basically only gets time to cast this when he's already winning, it pretty much means game over.

Tiger Blade and Lightning Tiger Blade are good enough to avoid his melee; Swallow Kick is fine too, but it's so bad at this point that I have no idea why anyone would use it. He also has a sort of spell shield that frequently absorbs spell hits, but they're still far more effective than Knight's attacks. The entire strategy is pretty much to keep in his face, since it's a lot easier to just keep Knight healed than try to keep up with his damage otherwise. Since he ends up stuck in the corner all battle though, Luna doesn't work well, and Maxwell becomes the best summon to use. After a couple minutes of wailing on him and enough damage, he'll turn into the spark, like at the beginning of the game, and disappear.

He still gives experience, thankfully.

Knowing they won't see him again in this time period, the party returns to Midgard, where they receive yet more commendations. And talking to Lundgrom...

I never really thought about this before, but it's kind of funny that Morrison wrote two different letters for the party in the one day between meeting with him in Midgard and when he was killed.

The letter instructs them to go to his house.

Next time: Pure white!

Also I guess it's about time to talk about Symphonia, because this is the part when they actually tie together.

I hated going through Vahalla in this version. (I don't remember it in any of the other versions)

This is totally about to come back as long as at least one person can prove they really want it.

I have no idea what that means, but it shouldn't be very hard.

Bring it back, and I'll update my LP!

- Eddie

So the party heads to Edward's house and asks Sif if they can enter his study. She says they're welcome, but that it's locked. Fortunately, Edward left them a key for this purpose.

The city, called Thor, has long since sunk under the ocean, but the book suggests where they might find it. The party can also have some slightly heartbreaking conversations with Edward's kids, but that about sums up what's to see there.

Before they go looking for Thor, they have another problem to solve; if the tree dies there won't be any magic to fight Dhaos when they meet him again. So they head for the forest of spirits again.

She's going to try healing the tree. Cutscene logic dictates that usually, this will not work. And it doesn't, but in an attempt to keep things positive, Queen says "I think I saw it perk up a little bit." They return to the village, where the Elder invites them to stay again. They tell him about defeating Dhaos and ask if he has any ideas about the tree, but he doesn't. They stay over again that night, and Bishop has a plot-important dream.

In the dream, she's a young child again, and asks her mother if she can have her earrings. She can't, but the earrings are explained to be in the shape of the Unicorn, the symbol of their healing-powers-that-aren't-"magic."

Stupidly, I didn't get a picture of her wearing the hat either.

She tells everyone about the dream, and they start to wonder if they can actually find a Unicorn. But suddenly, half the world's population can't stop thinking about Unicorns either, so they're probably on the right track.

Also, the legend says it'll only meet with pure maidens, which like in the movie Hocus Pocus, is only mentioned for the sake of being "funny"

At any rate, after hiking across the world to Midgard, a girl says that it's supposedly in a forest to the north. You know what else is to the north of Midgard though?

Fortunately there's still no battles here, so you just kind of wander in the opposite direction from before and eventually you'll get dumped out on the opposite side of the plains.


Inside the forest, Klarth suggests that the two girls go looking on their own while he and Knight wait at the entrance.

There's no battles here either, but you can pick up mushrooms that are useless. I'm not sure if they're cooking items or status cures or what, but whatever they are I've never been in a situation where I thought "damn, it's sure lucky I wasted a few minutes in the Unicorn forest picking up some mushrooms"

When you get close, Arche runs off, giving a non-explanation.

Sure enough, just another screen up is the Unicorn.

She tries to explain the situation, and when she finishes, the Unicorn seems to be thinking. Then three Evil Lords drop from the sky and she screams.

Hearing that, the two males head through the forest to rescue her. "We have to hurry!" says Knight. (You don't actually have to hurry.)

I have no idea why these guys talk like this either. It's pretty silly.

So you have to fight three Evil Lords without either of the girls. It's easy, just spam Lightning Tiger Blade or something so they can't cast spells, but unfortunately it didn't really leave any chances for me to think about taking pictures.

I didn't even have to use any items.

The unicorn is dying, but it tells Bishop that her heart is honest and pure, and it offers her its power. It turns into a staff, the Unicorn Horn. She can equip it, and it's pretty good, except her equipment is completely irrelevant anyway so really it's just a MacGuffin.

So Rook asks why Queen ran away.


anyway, it's time to go back.

I'm not sure this one is here in the other versions, but I'm certainly grateful.

This time, she tries healing the tree with the Horn, and there's an EXPLOSION OF POWER which she can barely contain. But it works, and the tree is healed.

With that taken care of, the party wonders why Dhaos was attacking Midgard anyway.

Not only is this a typo but it's also the most important line in the scene, so yeah. Of course, the obvious reason for why he wants to destroy magitech is just so the humans won't be able to kill him, so that really may not be much of an explanation. Regardless, nothing remains to be done right now, so it's time to head Back To The Future! Klarth suggests stocking up for what will "likely be our last battle." Obviously.

I mean, certainly, the reason I put this on hold for so many months was just because I wasn't ready for it to end, right?

This part's quick (if you have turbo anyway =/ ) and easy so there's no reason to not get it out of the way.

Finally, the second-to-last walk to Venezzia! The random commission boat captain offers Thor as a destination now. After sailing out a bit, the boat stops, Klarth summons Undine, and asks her to take us underwater.

A bubble containing the party floats (unfloats?) down to the huge ruins. On the ground, there's only one building open. The party finds a small card sitting on the counter.

In this version there's this disorienting water effect, while the others just have the outside of Thor tinted slightly blue-green. At another door, the party tries again to open it, then uses the card in the nearby slot. It unlocks the door.

This large room is essentially the whole dungeon. It's laid out in a 9x3 fashion. There are nine doors at the top of the room, nine non-random encounters with "Jann," a pathetically weak genie enemy, and nine chests, one of which holds a "Common Key."

The key opens three of the doors in the room, but they randomly shuffle each time you re-enter. The other six can't be opened at all. It's also used up each time you open a door, so if you get the wrong one you have to start all over.

The three possible exits lead to a small room with the "Judgment" ("God Breath") tome for Arche, back out, and of course, the way to progress. I found that room on the first try so I decided not to bother getting the book right now, I will later if I feel like it.

Walking forward sets off an alarm, and five robots come out to attack.

One of the smaller ones begins behind the party in an attempt to make this battle not pathetically easy, but it's such a minor annoyance. Indignation will wipe out the small robots in one hit, leaving just the two punching bags to finish off with all we've got.

On the floor afterwards is the Diamond pact ring. Sort of like Persona 4 starting the last S. Link in the apparent denoument following the regular ending, we're obviously not done yet! Going forward, the party's presence activates what seems to be a central computer.


Medical Treatment heals everyone and restores TP, of course, and the party talks about how amazed they are as it happens. Asking for the Time Warp initially fails as the computer claims there's insufficient power, but it then decides you're the closest thing to the mayor and can therefore authorize it to to reactivate the entire city. And so it rises from the ocean.

Doing it again then causes it to ask the party when they want to be, and after explaining that, it begins. And through the vortex we go.

Meanwhile, we see the scene play out just as we left it, as Dhaos prepares to kill Morrison. Only this time...

And so there's another battle with Dhaos. It's basically just like the last one, except he's faster and stuns more. He also has a new desperation move, but it's really not at all dangerous, just virtually unstoppable if you're not already hitting him. It's still about the same though, just pinning him in the corner as much as possible.

In the fashion that would become especially common in Tales games, the apparently dead villain lays on the ground as the building starts to collapse. Everyone flees, the place breaks apart and there's obviously no way he could survive, and everyone begins to celebrate their victory/mourn the fact that they're going to have to separate.

Mint has little tears in this scene that were impossible for me to get a picture of. I wouldn't even mention this if it wasn't for Kishi, so, thanks, I guess?

But actually, before that, there's a scene where Cress stands over Mrs. Adnade's grave and talks to her, telling her he's sorry he never told Mint what happened to her. But DUN DUN DUN

This scene, by the way, is TOTALLY not in the other versions, because I know I would remember this of all things. Partly because, who even buried her? Last we saw, she was in that cell, and there's no way all those evil guys would have done it.

But anyway, jumping back to the timeline of things that happen in every version of this game, right as the members of the party from the past prepare to leave, a bunch of meteors rain down from the sky.

Then somebody else teleports in with time travel.

He explains that in a handful of years Dhaos will return and start fighting humans all over again. And he tried to kill the party just now, right before he arrived. So they quickly prepare to head off again, all together now, and Cress insists that Chester come too.

And so begins an agonizing tsundere bit between these two. Ugh.

Anyway, everyone heads back to Thor, and time travels fifty years forward, to Toltis Village. Which is now called "Miguel Village."

Harrison heads off, saying he'll tell the king in Alvanista that everyone's coming. He asks them all to catch up as soon as possible.

Anyway, with that over, two things.

First, new name suggestions. The alcohol thing seemed pretty popular way back in the first place so are we still going with that? And if so, who should be called what?

Second, there's now five party members, but you can only have four in battle. So who has to sit out? Right now, you can't vote for Cress because it makes things ridiculously hard to take him out at this point in the game.

My vote goes to yanking Klarth out of the party. Arche's always seemed more useful to me. I've got no vote on the party name thing because no matter what the result it, I'll just be confused because I know the characters by their original names.

Also, thanks for skipping over the Thor dungeon bits as much as you have (despite it being one room long). The place is annoying as fuck and I'm glad I didn't have to see the rng mess with you repeatedly. [edit] apparently I can't read!

Cless / Mint / Arche / Chester is the best way to go. Klarth's summons seem tempting, but I remember them getting outclassed hard in the endgame by everyone else while Chester turned into a beast with the Berserk Bow. Plus it's the OTP party, which is funny in its own way.

Klarth is pretty much on par with Arche at the end if you get Aska from Thor (and Origin is pretty good too) or do Moria Gallery (since they'll both get their strongest spells), and the game is really not hard enough to call for min/maxing anyway, but this is the part I tend to put him away for a while still.

I vote for using Klarth.

I like summoning. And making the LPer go the path less traveled.

I used Klarth here since Arche's two best spells (Thunder Blade/Indignation since I didn't get Judgment) aren't so good in this part, but she'll be returning for the next few.

Anyway, I renamed everyone. I'm too lazy to fix my post so I can show all the status screens (I hit the picture cap and had to take out 3) right now, but anyway.

Kahlua (Mint) Adnade
Gin (Chester) Barklight
Whiskey (Arche) Klaine

Yeah I dunno. My new system is probably just going to be having the goofy names in the pictures and using regular names regardless when talking about things.

If I had shown the others, you would notice that I haven't changed Mint's equipment ever (well, I didn't post a picture in the first place, but she's not wearing stuff in any slots after the first two). It really doesn't matter because she doesn't kill things and isn't really any more vulnerable than anyone else either. Or Chester's for that matter, but there's an obvious reason for that. Though as you'll see in the next couple parts, this is the part of the game where equipment (outside of Cress' weapon) actually starts being worth bothering with.


Out front in Euclid is some signs showing what shops you'll find here. I find it funny for some reason, like those things you'll see on the highway that tell you what restaurants and hotels are in the next random small town.

Anyway, if you do stay in the inn, there's a cutscene outside where Chester is practicing.

Chester feels like he really has fallen behind after Cress gained 20 levels in about 10 seconds (from his perspective) and he also goes outside alone to get away from it all. Watching this scene gives him a healthy chunk of experience, taking him from 10 to 18, so that's nice.

In the house in the Sylph valley that used to belong to Arche's father, there's an old guy who sells spellbooks. Ice Tornado we already have, and Stone Blast isn't very good, but oh well!

After walking to Venezzia, we find out the captain isn't willing to risk crossing the seas in these troubled times, and rather than having Arche work some magic *cough* Harrison decides to try a backup plan.

He takes the party to Euclid to meet with the head scientist of some research academy. The guy has built a set of flying machines (conveniently, enough for all the party members except Arche who can fly anyway)

But if there was a summoner who could control Volt, the spirit of COULD IT BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS then they'd have all the juice they need.

Well, thankfully we have one of those, so we just need to find Volt and the scientist gives the party a pact ring. Even more happily, he lives on the continent, in a cave that's suddenly (well, sometime in the past 50 years I guess) appeared adjacent to Morrison's old house.

Inside the house are a bunch of random, crappy NPCs, including a painter here who asks for Klarth's girly magazine that we found on Demitel's docks. WHAT. I have never seen this before.

He hands over a mirror, which when checked in the Items menu, says to look at the options in Customize. I can't figure out what it does.

Volt's cave starts pretty boring but eventually we see a little girl in a red robe being attacked by ninjas. She attempts to boss them around, but they say they'll kill her for disobeying Dhaos. This leaves only one option. She instantly runs them through.


Then she then runs off before saying any more. As the party walks up, she seems to be caught in some kind of electrical coil. And maybe this is some sort of Japanese humor I just don't get but during this part everybody in the party says the same thing in a row. It's annoying and definitely not funny.

After everyone is sure to take their turn smart-ass about a little girl being fried, they tell Cress to save her. And he gets zapped as well.


Also, I'm really starting to hate the writing in this translation. Lines like this barely feel like a step up from this.


All the puzzles here have to do with sparking coils with the Sorceror's ring or finding switches through non-obvious pathways. The coils only stay active for a moment, so you have to be quick and light them from as far away as possible to make it through some of the doors.

Then there's a scene where the girl is being attacked by more ninjas and everyone makes Cress run in again.

This fight is kinda impossible in this version because everyone STILL HAS TOO MUCH HEALTH but it doesn't matter if you lose since the next scene just has Suzu going tate on their sorry asses. Before running away again, she'll at least oblige the party's requests to find out her name (if not, we'd know she was just a minor character we'd never see again!)

One of the enemies here dropped a Damascus Sword. I didn't remember what that was, so I went to go equip it and

Oh. Well that made things a lot less painful.


Volt lives at the top of a cliff and talks like this. The fight against him is probably the most intense I've had in this version, because he can throw off Thunder Blades faster than anyone else in the party can cast. This makes things kind of messy, and I didn't get any pictures. He starts with two samurai enemies with about 8000 health each and a pathetic zombie. Still, all it takes is getting him to not hit Klarth for a bit; once he gets off a single cast of Luna the other enemies should be about dead, and then Cress can just keep knocking him into recoil until it's over. He drops an Emerald Ring and "Rice." Actually, that was probably one of the samurai carrying that.


On the way back down there's a couple treasure chests down this ledge. You'll have to take my word for it because I took the picture when a text box was covering them. Arche flies down, and after Chester yells to make sure she's not stealing anything, returns with another Emerald Ring and some piece of armor or something.

The Emerald Rings reduce TP consumption by 1/3 and I'm pretty sure they stack, so putting the two on Arche should make her pretty unstoppable. But we'll see next time, because this is where I'm cutting off for now!

I thought of a better name.


Anyway, taking Volt back to the science lab, Klarth summons him to juice up the Rheabirds.

Working as intended.

The scientist explains how to fly, in a rare case of using the controller's buttons to explain how to do something in the game actually maybe kinda making sense in the context of the game. I forgot how to do what I was planning for this part so there's just some random stuff but FIRST let's get the boring cutscenes out of the way, eh?


There's a familiar face at in the Alvanista court. Lundgrom, being an elf, is still alive, and looks the same age...kinda like us! Strange how that works. He explains that since Dhaos is theoretically capable of running away from the party through time forever, they'll need a special weapon to defeat him. The Eternal Sword, created by uniting three artifacts, is supposed to have the power to control time, which would prevent his escape. The three artifacts were split between the three ancient civilizations, and ultimately all lost. So then our mission is clear.

Future destination number 1: the tower of Odin in Freyland

Remember that spot surrounded by volcanoes that I noted in the past? That's where this is.

The bottom floor is normal, but as soon as you head up stairs, the party is faced with BURNING HEAT. Unlike environmental damage in most games, ToP doesn't wuss out here. You won't go down to 1 HP and then stop being hurt by it; it will kill you outright and give a game over. You can open the healing menu every 5 seconds through this place and make it through alright, but there's an alternate solution intended.

The enemies drop these accessories, which protect from ice and water damage. Sound useful? It's not! That's why Rune Bottles exist, though! Using one turns them into a Water Charm, blocking Fire damage instead. You need at least four though if you're doing this. (The other two will die of course, but if they're the characters who aren't in the party there's no particular reason to care)

Meanwhile, Fenrir is on this snowy island that wasn't accessible in the past.

Above its ruins lies the town of Freezekill or Friezkiel or however you want to spell it. The puzzle here is ice-based, naturally. The question is which of these two dungeons we should do first. Vote or die!

Anyway, Freezekill itself is pretty awesome. It has some of the best equipment in the game! Expensive though, which is why we have to sell those mushrooms we got in the Unicorn Forest.

What do you know? This time, I am glad I picked them up! Also, nice text error there.

Even with that, all we can get right now is a LASER SWORD for Cress and a new bow for Chester. No more armor for them today though, unless we want to pawn a Star Robe for 417,000. But that goes on Mint instead. She won't die, but she's at least slightly more likely to be hit than Arche (because she flies) or Klarth (because he's not in the party right now). If anything, this is a more tempting offer:

Sold in a shack on a random, otherwise uninhabited island, the Combo command turns all techs into fighting game motions. The good side is that you can use any move any time in any battle without having to reset your techs. The bad side is you have to remember which move goes with which motion, and also you have to do a hadouken motion even if all you want is a lowly Demon Fang. If you're up to it though, it is fun so I'll probably play with it later. Though, it probably won't affect the reading experience much.

Gnome's Cave:

That room that I pointed out that was empty 150 years ago? Now has a pact ring. We're done here.

Venezzia:

Mint gives piano lessons to this little girl if you enter the Mayor's House. As far as I know this does nothing but give you a title if you get all the "Mint teaches Piano" scenes.

Alvanista again:

You need to talk to this girl to get Aska. Let's go!

Thor:

YAY. This spell is actually better than I remember =o

Asking about Aska appears in the console commands for the Thor central computer now. He explains that the spirit was found and captured, then tested on fruitlessly before being placed in cold storage. Since that means it's still around, the party requests that he let it out.

Like its partner (in Symphonia anyway) Luna, there's no battle against Aska. Klarth just speaks to it for a moment and it agrees to make the pact.

And that's it for today! Voting between the two dungeons will determine what happens the time after next, unless my plans for next time are impossible because I'm trying to do it too early.

Freezekill!