Let's Play: Wild ARMs!

So....let's say that you've played this game before, and you know where most everything is, etc etc, and you know where some sweet loot can be had way before you're supposed to get it.

The only obvious response is to go get it, right?



So let's say you're this Treasure Hunter by the name of SLASH, and as you walk out of this one ruin, you get hit by this flash of inspiration. So you stride back up to that computer and put in the name of your long-dead and frozen uncle E...Em, something, and to your great surprise it works!

The door in the back opens, and you stride through it with the happy knowledge that you outsmarted OZZIE for once, and find a glowy spot much like the ones you encounted just a little while ago. You have the odd feeling that it'll just take you back to that one room with the dead guy made out of light, so you just mosey on over to that door on the other half of the room.



Well, shit. There's no keyhole in the door or anything, no door handle, and there's just this odd blue crystal in the form of a teardrop on the door. And so thwarted yet again in your search for some vaguely defined Absolute Powah you head out into that vast land in search of lolis in tombs!

Thousands of years ago, a friend of mine hosted an IRC channel called #elw_dimension. I got him on the phone one day and asked him how to pronounce that.

Eee-Lew was our best guess.

Elw seems obviously pronounced like Elf, but with a soft w, as in with.

Welcome back to Let’s Play Wild ARMs!

This is the second of the three prologues; this one belonging to SPELL. It’s probably the longest of the three, and more involved simply due to the massive amounts of stuff you can do in it. Since SPELL is a schoolgirl at the moment, her intro starts at her magician’s…abbey(?) and goes on from there, so we get to talk to lots of NPC, do a little dialogue flag quest, and read lots of books for informative and highly foreshadowy bits of knowledge and pseudo-philosophy.

It’s actually fairly surprising just how tightly put together these opening sequences are; most of the NPC chatter isn’t aimless at all, and some of the books in the dungeon half of SPELL’s intro tease sidequests and secret bosses that we can’t get to until the very end of the game. I’ll expand on that later, but for now, DREAM SEQUENCE!

Extra Theme: Taboo Storyteller

*cough*



Guardian’s/SPELL’s Theme: Oh, Abbey Maiden...

‘Innocent One’ is an odd title, though I probably shouldn’t complain since SLASH’s partner is a talking mouse.

"Girl: Me...? Are you calling me...? It's dark in here. I can't see...

[lights began to flash around her, and the voice begins to speak to her
once again.]

Take my wishes to your heart,
Innocent One...

Tell me your name...
We will again be bound by
the ancient contract.

Girl: Who are you? I'm not the one you want!

Hurry...
Tell me your name.

Once again, the world is being
engulfed by darkness.
Tell me your name."

Nothing to see here, just your standard drug trip, move along.



You really shouldn’t give your name to drug-induced hallucinations, y’know.



"SPELL...
Let go of your ego...
The power is in the book....

[The form disappears in a flash of light]

SPELL: ... Who are you...?

SPELL...
SPELL...
SPELL... the Innocent One.

SPELL...
...SPELL...
...SPELL...
...SPELL
...SPELL...
The class is over...



I think this is the part where I point out that it’s rude to fall asleep during a class, but I’m hardly “innocent” of that myself, haha…ha.

I’ll, uh, be over in the corner if anyone needs me.

Things I’m ignoring here: SPELL’s classmates chatting up how much of a nut she is, to wit:



Town Theme: A Monastery

After chatting up everyone for meaningless bits of info and mild slanders against SPELL’s mental condition, SPELL heads on over to the library for a bit of light reading and possible nap space. The demands of plot are never far behind however, and she finds a gigantic mess and a lazy-ass librarian who made an absolute mess of sorting things, who wants SPELL to go find a magic watch to turn back time and fix it.



Which leaves me with the question of how turning back time would fix that exactly, as presumably the books were already disorganized?

Anyway, after receiving her first mission as divinely anointed something or other, SPELL hops over to the classroom to the right of the library, and chats up the teacher/nun for a free Crest Graph. Ssssscore?



[Current Graph Count: 3]

She then makes her rounds through the bottom half of the Abbey talking to NPCs, finding out that talking to the church nuns showers you with some sort of curative white light (cures stat ailments, not that you’ll ever really need this), and hitting up the magic shop:



I’ll be going with DQ names I guess for now, and bind the non-elemental group attack spell, Blast (now Bang), and rename SPELL’s fire spell Sizzle. I don’t have to do anything to Heal. :P

By this point, SPELL’s completed her rounds of the first floor of the Abbey, and has only heard the odd hint about the statues in the courtyard. But there’s still those staircases at the front half of the abbey, and going up the lefthand one reveals the student dorms and a parrot?



It even talks. How strange.

These parrots are how you save in towns in Wild ARMs, and you can also change your active character through them too, although it’s sort of pointless since you can just do that with the start Tool menu most of the time yourself.

Talking to the girl by the beds acts like a free inn stay, recharging your HP and MP as usual.

Talking to the girl, Lily, in one of the beds, gets you the lowdown on the gossip about SPELL and her apparent title as ‘Gluttony Woman.’



I, uh, wow. Most of the students are apparently incredible jackasses in public to their apparent princess, something that didn’t really register with me until this playthrough somehow.

Having had enough with the mean spirited comments of her fellow students, SPELL goes back and tries the other staircase and finds Anje, owner of the magical watch we’re looking for and who is also something of a Guardian fiend herself.



"According to my studies, the
[Tear Drop]has some connection to them. Push the Tools button near the
desk and use the [Tear Drop]. The [Guardian Stone] should respond. If
you do this for me, I shall give you my [Pocket Watch]."

Following Anje’s instructions, SPELL goes over to the stone and raises her Tear Drop Tool over her head as little sparkles of light gather towards it.



So making a random rock glow orange is a sign of a connection to the Guardians? Wouldn’t the fact the Tear Drop draws little bits of light into itself be more of a hint that it’s more than a pretty crystal?

In exchange for making her rock turn orange, Anje uses her mystical powers to swap the rock for a wrapped present on the table all the way from across the room, and it even unwraps itself and opens up so that SPELL can grab the magical watch inside.



And so we get SPELL’s second tool, the Magic Watch. Its usual purpose is to reset the room’s puzzle in case you screw up somehow, though we’ll be using it to rearrange a library in a second.

Getting the watch changes a lot of the dialogue around the Abbey, though none of it is particularly informative in any sense. More people start talking the courtyard, which is suggesting that it’s important somehow.

Anyway, SPELL hoofs it back to the library where the librarian is waiting in the doorway for her.





Wuh, uh-oh, she’s hallucinating again!

"I am...
trapped within the...
[Sealed Library]...

SPELL: A book spoke to me. The same voice as in the dream. What is the
[Sealed Library]? I wonder if it's located somewhere in the abbey?"

So our new quest is to find a way into the Sealed Library! This means we have to investigate or something, and the easiest place to start is SPELL’s teacher, Sister Mary:



"SPELL: Yes, it's not a dream. A shadow spoke to me and asked me to release
him from the book. Sister Mary. I thought you might know.

Sister Mary: A book which speaks. And a large shadow? A library in which many
forbidden secrets are stored does exist. Where the [Sealed Library] is.. That
I cannot tell you. You were summoned by the Guardians to search for the
[Sealed Library]. If you are the chosen one, you must do this on your own.
The [Sealed Library] may hold many monsters. Please be careful.
May the Guardians be with you."

That’s not particularly helpful. So SPELL makes the rounds, talking to a few select NPCs she thinks might have the lowdown on the library (a big hint is to talk to all the people who mentioned the courtyard statues before), and eventually finds her way to the courtyard where she starts poking around.

She’s certain that one of the girls said something about the statues having small switches some—



Huh. She repeats the process on the other statue and proceeds to make them face each other by swapping their spots, each statue locking in place as she does. Just doing that does nothing though, so she stands between the two statues, somewhat puzzled about what to do next. She has the Pocket Watch, so she could put the statues back if she needed to, but she doesn’t. The only other thing she can do is hold out her Tear Drop, and—



Oh.

SPELL hurries after the light sparkles, wondering if she blew another hole in the wall again, and walks inside the abbey proper to find a Tear Drop shaped ornament on the walls. Deciding to go with the flow, she holds out her Tear Drop again and is teleported away—



Dungeon Theme: Way of Illusion

--to some sort of dungeon. It doesn’t look much like a library though.

SPELL heads down the stairs and looks at the oddly familiar door there. There’s no handles or anything, but there is that Tear Drop shaped crystal in the door.

She holds out her magic crystal again, and the door dissolves into light revealing the passage beyond.

It leads into a room with boxes in the corners, and SPELL quickly indulges her destructive urges by throwing the boxes around and finding a switch to the closed door in the process.



Since we’re about to enter combat with SPELL for the first time, I’ll take a moment to show her status screen.



The first things you should notice are her absolutely crappy STR and VIT. She’s not one for direct fighting, although the enemies she’ll face here are weak enough that she can do it without wasting all her MP at once. The fact that we also have a free inn available here is a huge hint as well, since clearing the Library dungeon usually takes two trips as by the time we get to the end SPELL will likely have leveled up at least once and also be pretty much out of MP.

Her high SOR score means that her basic attack magic is also heads and shoulders above anything SLASH can do at this point, although there is the caveat that for most of the game we’ll be needing her MP for other things than blasting baddies. That’s SHOOT’s job.

Other than that I’ll be trying to hang on to her staffs and sundry other items as I go along, as her Mystic Force command makes them come in handy when I don’t want to spend MP on certain spells.

The fact that her HP is so low along with her DFP means that it is entirely possible to die in SPELL’s intro unlike the other two if you’re not careful though, which has happened to me on occasion.

Anyway, as SPELL runs downstairs, she runs into her first encounter with a Blue Book. The fellow college graduates in the forums reading this should laugh, as they can use two magic spells, “Freeze” (basic water spell), and “Slow Down” (think Slow from the FF series), which is not entirely unlike how blue books work in real life. :P



And their Freeze spells do hurt quite a bit, as while SPELL’s RES is quite high, it’s still not enough to completely block the damage. Most of the time Blue Books will spend their time trying to slow you or just whacking you with their bodies though.

The next room SPELL runs across has two chests and an odd crystal blocked off from everything else in the room. In her mad dash for the treasure she accidentally throws a crate at the crystal, turning it orange and opening the door to the next room.



Her spoils are a Medicine (cures the Disease status ailment) and a Magic Carrot (restores 50 MP, and are sort of rare).

Status ailments in this game are a pain, simply because most of them don’t go away after a battle, even the ones like confusion. Disease in particular prevents a character from being healed, which can be annoying but is hardly life threatening unless you get into a protracted battle with a Disease-causing group of monsters.



The next room leads into a corridor filled with crates that SPELL handily destroys except for the last as she wanders into the room proper to find two chests, a floor switch, and an area blocked off from the rest of the room with nothing in it. Slightly suspicious, SPELL steps on the switch while holding her crate, which makes another crystal switch appear in the blocked off area at which she throws her crate.

The door opens as the crystal turns orange, and SPELL loots the chests for a pair of Heal Berries and forges onward.

As SPELL enters the main library proper, she hallucinates again:



"The key is the [Flame].
Open the door and light the path."

This place is filled with bookcases, many of which house potentially useful tidbits of information about various things that may be potential sidequests in the future. The only books of real importance right now are the history books that talk about the Demon War, in particular the one that talks about a demon “Mother” who was sealed away and her heart divvied up and put in three Guardian Statues, which is odd simply by dint of detail. Most of the other bookcases only have a single box or two of text, and that particular one has four or five.



This type of battle is why I chose Bang over any other spell for the moment (as we can unbind and rebind spells for free at Magic shops), since potentially all three Blue Books could use Freeze on SPELL…which would be a tad fatal for her at the moment. Bang targets enemy groups (as noted by the Blue Book – 3 box), and deals fairly minor non-elemental damage to an entire group, not much, but enough to easily kill all three books in one shot. At level one though, SPELL only has enough MP to cast that a few times right now, and I don’t want to waste the Magic Carrot she picked up earlier. I could have chosen Zap as well, as that does lightning damage to a group, but the MP cost is the same so it’s mostly aesthetics at this point since neither of the enemy types here are lightning-resistant.

The other type of enemy in the Sealed Library is a winged imp/gremlin thingy that can cause Disease, but is otherwise fairly harmless since it can’t use magic (they also drop Medicines in case we use the one we found in that chest).



As SPELL wanders around the library hunting for books to burn, she picks up another Magic Carrot from a chest and that Capuche, which is a hairband. Each of the trio gets their own unique Left Hand and Head armors aside from the body armors, but upgrades to the former two are much rarer than the body armor upgrades, and the left hand also serves as the miscellaneous accessory spot too. The Rune slot you may have noticed in earlier looks at the equip and status screens will be explained in a bit.



She eventually finds the third book and tosses it to the flames, which reveals a hidden stairway down on the main floor of the library. Feeling somewhat tired and worn out, and having a bit of a bad feeling about that stairway, SPELL runs back to the dorms for a quick rest, hitting level 3 in the process, which is fairly important at the moment.



SPELL makes her way back to the staircase, and goes down it to find what looks like the head librarian’s room. The bookshelf on the left has a book with an interesting title in it:



…but the book’s protected by some sort of magic seal and can’t be opened. Since that’s the only book in the library that we can’t read, it almost sounds like we’ll be coming back eventually!

She eventually makes her way over to the book on the table and opens it.



I’m going to assume that monsters popping out of books when you open them isn’t a good thing, what with the whole thing about the library already having just plain old monster books.

"SPELL: You're not the shadow that calls me, are you?"

Hmm, how does “no” sound to you SPELL?



D: That’s not the sort of thing you say to a young lady!

BOSS FIGHT: Nelgaul
Boss Theme: Battle Against Mid-Boss

Nelgaul’s a pretty easy fight, as all he does is hit you with criticals, which is why level 3 is sort of a necessity. You can do it at 2, though it’s sort of chancy, as SPELL needs the extra VIT points along with the HP to really stand up to Nelgaul’s crits without healing. I also cheesed it some by using SPELL’s Mystic Command. Mystic’s SPELL’s level 1 Force command, and it basically brings out the hidden abilities in items; recovery items turn into full party heals and cures, using accessories turns them into single target status restores for their particular ailment, and using certain weapons (mostly SPELL’s wands) lets her cast a spell associated with each wand for free. Most of the wands you get are all support spells, and SPELL’s initial wand, the Mage Staff, casts Protect (or Buff, I guess).

I was lucky enough to snag a few as drops from Blue Books, so I spend the first two rounds defending to build up enough FP to use Mystic on a Mage Staff (neat thing about using equipment with Mystic is that item itself isn’t consumed, although you can’t equip a Mystic’d item in that same turn). Buff increases a single party member’s DFP by 50%, which doesn’t quite halve the damage SPELL takes (actually comparable to defending), so it lets her spend the next four turns blasting Nelgaul with Sizzle. Doing so nets SPELL a bunch of EXP and Gella, and completes the circle by not only burning books with fire, but also burning book monsters with fire. Always one for completeness, that SPELL girl.



Once Nelgaul, er, explodes, a second monstrous thing pops out of the book, but this time the shape is rather familiar.



How do you even pronounce that (this will be a trend, a very annoying trend)?

"For ages, the demon
Nelgaul has locked me in this terrible book. I have waited a long time for
the Innocent One who would receive the Guardian Spirit.

SPELL: The Innocent One? Me?

Stoldark: The world is at the turning point of darkness again. Innocent One.
can you hear the anger of the land and the wind? The screams of the sea and the sky?

SPELL: ...

Stoldark: Wear me as your armor, Innocent One. I shall protect you in your
fight for life. The battle for Filgaia begins again. Everything begins with
[Lolithia]."



RUNE GET: GET EQUIPPED WITH STOLDARK
# of Runes Acquired: 1



Truly, a question deep in the minds of all good men and women of this world.

Also, I believe this is the only time in the entire series where we actually see a rune and not just an icon of it.

Stoldark does us a favor and teleports us back to the Abbey, where Sister Mary is waiting for SPELL.



Town Theme: A Monastery

"Now you realize the responsibilities of the women in the Adlehyde family. The female descendants of the Adlehyde family share their thoughts with the Guardians.

They must carry the burden of their destiny with them for the rest of their lives. No one can understand the pain and pressure which you must endure. But, they can help you cope with it and make your life easier.

SPELL, they will never understand the burden one's destiny brings. Walk proudly from the abbey. You must travel your own path from now on.

Go! You are the Innocent One, the Guardians have chosen!"

That sounded suspiciously like one of those “Don’t worry, you’re the Chosen One, you can’t screw up” speeches, and we all know how those turn out in the end.

Once Mary’s done talking to us, there’s not much for us to do in the Abbey at this point, as I’ve already filched the Heal Berry and the Mystic Apple from the Magic Shop and kitchen barrels, so SPELL just ladies up and walks right out that door and into another monologue.



"The path she followed in the past
was guided by her surroundings.
She knew someday she would have
to pave her own path to the future.

The Innocent One, whom the Guardians speak of...
It may be too heavy of a burden to be the sorceress
of the ultimate power at such a young age."

And that wraps up SPELL’s intro, leaving us with our mute blue-haired protagonist’s intro.

That can’t be good.

-----

Now for a bit on Runes.



Runes are special accessories that embody a particular Guardian. Each Guardian has its strengths and weaknesses, so Stoldark only enhances SOR and MGR, and the other Guardians we pick up will enhance other stats too. The various elementally aligned ones all tend to enhance certain groupings of stats, and you can loosely group most of the Guardians into tiers, of which Stoldark is a tier 1 Guardian. Water Guardians tend to enhance magic and magic resistance, Earth Guardians boost VIT and DFP, etc etc. Most of the Guardians are squirreled away and have to be hunted down, and some are better hidden than others.

Equipped Runes also have another use, but that won't come up for a while yet.

------

NEXT TIME: THE ROAR OF HIS GUN IS THE ROAR OF HIS HEART (SHOOT’S INTRO)

You can use Mystic to have equipment cast spells? I did not know that! I only ever used it for healing items.

Also!
Maybe it's just me, but about half the shots in Slashs intro are missing.

\m/


Two things I now remember liking about Wild ARMs:

1) The shadow effects

2) The Guardian Summons. They were primitive compared to Final Fantasy VII, but they still looked pretty cool and were mercifully short.

In Wild Arms XF for the PSP, they voiceact the word "Elw" a couple times. It comes out almost two syllables but slurred more or less into one, "ellyew".

This would be great if 60% of your images weren't missing :/

They're showing up for me on Opera 10. Odd...

They seem to fade in and out for me. Occasionally I'll see Photobucket messages about certain images being removed or moved. But there's nothing there about a TOS violation or a bandwidth problem, so I don't know.

Ah, yeah, some of them are missing on the previous page now for me.

It's not broken links, it's Photobucket saying "LOL bandwidth exceeded."

Are you sure? Photobucket has a special image it uses in this case (see Boojum's LP; he's currently got these troubles). And I'd think this would nuke all the images, not some of them (again, see the DCSS LP)...

OFFS Photobucket! Hang on, I did some organizing last night and apparently Photobucket doesn't do redirects. Egh.

I'll fix em.

EDIT: They're all fixed, though I could've sworn I already did this this morning when I did a bunch of organizing in my photobucket account. eh, sorry all.

I gave up trying to keep my Photobucket account organized. I just label my files in such a way that it's easy to know which file belongs where, such as battle05_08.jpg. Messing with directories just seemed to be asking for trouble.

- Eddie

I think I just need to give up on updates at 3 or 4 in the morning when I've been working on them for a few hours. I just keep making stupid mistakes like that.

I always figured you pronounced it like Cary Elwes' last name, except not plural.

Or "Elf" because who are we kidding?

The wheels of destiny turn. It is not the beginning but it is a beginning. In a monastery the wind ruffles the hair of a young princess named SPELL...

I... actually read through almost the whole of Jack's intro yesterday by having another window open where I fixed the photobucket links by inserting the missing sub-directory. I may have problems.

I assume a teutonic w, so "elv."

Well, they completely botched the Quarter Knights' names too (whoops, spoilers), although I can't remember the name of the Boomerang guy offhand, and I don't think Lady Harken's name was screwed up. Also screwed up the name of Ziek's (Sieg's) lance too...though I can't remember that either. Heh, been too long since I played through last.

Ziekfried = Siegfried

Alhazred = Al Hazard

Berselk = Berserk

I continue to claim this is the best localization Sony ever delivered. Sadly, this isn't because I disagree with all these corrections, it's just that the competition is really that far behind still.

Haha. This LP has been active for four days and has already used up a GB of my photobucket bandwidth.

That's...somewhat scary actually. I think I'll get Photobucket Pro for a month or two to see how the usage stacks up.

The hilarious thing is that the entirety of my LP images so far is only about 15 MB or so.

Welcome back to Let’s Play: Wild ARMs! This time it’s the last of the three prologues, followed by a second installment of the Secret Updates to explain some cheesing that’s going to commence once I hit the dungeon part of SHOOT’s intro.

But first! A rather boring and mildly informative monologue!



“Slowly, but surely,
the destruction of Filgaia continues.

A devastated environment filled with ferocious monsters
plague the people of Filgaia who desperately try to cling to their land.

Those who dare to venture out are called [Dream Chasers].

There is a boy in the village of Surf.

It's hard to believe that this boy has the potential to become a Dream
Chaser. What does he seek?”

Before I continue any farther, I’d like to clear up this rather glaring plot hole. For starters, it’s (going to be) established that SHOOT’s been a Dream Chaser for quite a while, though he’s only been solo for a short while. Whether that’s an error in the original Japanese or something introduced in the localization (something else I wouldn’t be surprised about) I don’t know, but it’s there. That, and the rest of the intro makes it abundantly clear that SHOOT isn’t actually from Surf Village (oddly named as it’s actually pretty far from any shore).

Anyway:



Town/SHOOT Theme: Hope

“Townsperson: We're calling it a day, kid!
Thanks a lot.
The barrels are all sorted.

[The boy approaches him]

Townsperson: I hired you at the recommendation of Mayor Pifer...
You turned out to be OK. By the way, what's your name?”



“Townsperson: SHOOT, you're stronger than you look. The horses seem happy.
Here's today's pay. Sorry kid, this is all the village can afford. You
should see if the mayor has any more work for you. Thanks again! See ya.”



We got paid with only a Heal Berry for a hard day’s work?*

Feeling a bit happy that he got paid at all, and that this village isn’t kicking him out on his ass yet for merely being a Dream Chaser, SHOOT wanders back into the town proper, but not before running into a talkative kid.



The line I missed here was Tony asking SHOOT if he wanted to know why he was busy, and since Video Game Logic means that any named character saying anything might be somehow important, I get the feeling this is going to come back and bite SHOOT in the ass somehow.



SHOOT goes exploring, talking to various people, harassing chickens, and breaking crates and searching barrels for loot; he makes out fairly well actually, nabbing some pocket change and a few stat boosting apples (which I am saving to show off something) and the odd Heal Berry.

Some choice bits of dialogue that may be important:



Summarizing the rest of this quickly:

“Way back though, this zombie terrorized the town and couldn’t be stopped because it would regenerate every time it was felled. Eventually a Dream Chaser passing by got the idea to use a Holy Berry seed on it as it was regenerating, hoping that the holy power of the berry would stop the monster. The problem was that there was only one Holy Berry seed left, and the Dream Chaser used it to seal away the Zombie.”

Some other bits of immediate foreshadowing and future importance:


Remember the name, as she’ll be popping up regularly in about two months at the rate I’m going. :P

Also please to be noting that Tony’s Dad (heh) is injured in bed, and that SHOOT was hired to replace him.

Hmm.

Busy kid + Macguffin of infinite healing + unkillable monster = I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

At any rate, after SHOOT finishes his looting spree, he moseys on over to the Mayor’s house, noting that the Mayor’s wife on the first floor will let him rest for free before going on to the second floor.



I skipped the conversation where Mayor Pifer basically says SHOOT looks like a nice kid, so he gives him high explosives that magically replenish themselves. Just how irresponsible is he? I mean, you could do really mean things like blow up chickens and crates and and *huff huff*

Sadly, you can’t actually blow up the chickens, although letting off a bomb next to them does make their sprite flash and jump in the air.



I believe that is the smell of the plot thickening.



“Mayor Pifer: The Berry Cave is full of monsters. There is not much we
can do. I must talk to the townsfolk about this situation. Please keep this
quiet. We can't have people panicking.”

Wait. Let me get this straight. The Berry Cave is the source of the town’s income, yet it’s also full of monsters and you just gave SHOOT your excavation tools and possible monster extermination weapons. The random Dream Chaser kid? Whaaaaaa?

On a slightly less bewildered note; do berries of any kind actually grow in caves? I don’t think so.

But it’s no matter, since SHOOT’s gonna save this kid anyway, possibly because SHOOT just stole Tony’s Dad’s job and also possibly because he’s just a really nice guy. It’s sort of hard to say for certain since SHOOT seems to be mute, but I’m going to go with the latter.

SHOOT has no fear, since he not only has the power of unlimited high explosives at his disposal; he also has the power of APPLIED SCIENCE!

…No, wait, that’s not quite right. Let me try that again.

He has the power of BOOMSTICK!

That’s right kids, SHOOT, uh, shoots things, and will be our primary damage dealer once we upgrade his guns some, though we won’t be able to do that until we hit the game proper.**



You’ll note that SHOOT’s raw STR is a few points lower than SLASH’s was at level 1, but also that his VIT is much higher. His SOR and MGR scores are practically non-existent right now, and his RES is pretty middle of the road too. SHOOT and SPELL will be fighting over who gets to go second after SLASH for the rest of the game, although in terms of natural stat growth SHOOT barely nudges ahead from what I remember, though it’s been awhile since I’ve played this last.

Once SHOOT gets the bombs and listens to this little conversation between the Mayor and Random Villager A, we’re free to go off exploring in the wide world of Filgaia!

Map with Prologue locations

Let me know if that’s not legible, as my Paint/Gimp fu is rather weak.

*Not actually all that bad, as Heal Berries retail for 200 gella, and an inn stay in Adlehyde runs 30 gella.

**Unless you’re me, and in which case you were hoping that you could put SHOOT’s intro last so you could do a bit of demi-sequence breaking and general cheesery, although I didn’t tinker with his ARM any. Details in the Secret Update following the regular one!

This is the world map, and don’t worry about the zoom, it does that whenever you get close to an enterable location (this feature’s actually used to let you know about secret world map spots where a few Guardians are hidden, along with some less than obvious plot locations). The Berry Cave is just a short jaunt to the south, although if you’re so inclined you can go to any of the other prologue locations, Adlehyde, and the first plot dungeon (although you can’t go any further inside than the first screen or two). I don’t know why you would though, even if you did have a small pile of money from the other intros that you could maybe blow on the shops *cough*. I mean, it’s not like you can actually sequence break or anything (you really can’t).

Moving around the world map is much like any other field or town segment, save that you can’t use Tools and you can’t save (though I could’ve sworn you could like pretty much any other RPG out there), and to enter a location you just walk up to the entrance so that the location text displays and hit confirm. None of that funny scanning for locations crap that the later games make you do.

Battles out here feature mostly the same assortment of monsters that SLASH’s intro had, with a few major changes. You can’t run into skeletons out here thank God, but Balloons and Pillbugs make an appearance along with a new Goblin-type enemy. The other major change is that the Balloons and Pillbugs on the world map seem to actually be different monsters than the ones in the Temple of Memory, as the Balloons have more HP and the Pillbugs have much higher DFP. It makes the first few fights sort of tense as you don’t want to use SHOOT’s ARM charges yet without any way of reloading his Hand Cannon. No screens for the overworld fights because I was A) an idiot, and B) up way too late and tired while I was actually playing through this segment. You’ll get some along with more looks at the world map in the next Secret and Normal Updates, I promise.



This is the Berry Cave.

Dungeon Theme: Cold Darkness



This is the inside of the Berry Cave.*



This is the idiot who let Tony into the cave.

The Berry Cave is a really straightforward “dungeon” with few detours of any significance, and you amusingly only need the Bombs in two spots, only one of which is mandatory, probably to prevent sequence breaking in case you left Surf before getting the bombs. The general path is squiggly too, and hard to run through due to the way it continuously angles around.

There are also vaguely nonsensical warning signs like this one around too:



Perhaps whoever made the sign meant that “Bats are Dangerous” instead?

SHOOT proceeds to blow up the sign and nearby crates, since his kleptomaniac tendencies are rising again, and warnings are for chumps anyway. He picks up a few Heal Berries from the wreckage and moves on, eventually finding himself at this little roadblock:



You flip the switch, the knight statue moves out of the way, like so:



As SHOOT moves along, he destroys more crates for goodies, and stumbles upon this chest (which I think was a Heat Salve**?), and runs into this guy:



Battle Theme: Critical Hit! (also just remembered I never linked this, ha)

I’ve been skipping over the fights at this point, mostly because I’ve just been fighting Balloons and the odd Goblin till now, but I just find how the “Tatzelbelm” looks to be hilarious along with the name. I don’t even know what language that’s supposed to be, since Babelfish doesn’t recognize it as German which was my first guess. He’s also hit level 2 at this point.

Moving along, SHOOT finds another statue and switch combo and zips along further into the cave, leaving the question as to why such devices are in a cave to men with more time on their hands and fewer stupid kids to save. This is also leaving aside the question about how Tony, a child, managed to make his way through a monster-infested cave, and solve the “puzzles” which somehow reset themselves as he went. I get the feeling that Tony could single-handedly defeat the entire village by himself.



SHOOT sees this sign next, which is thankfully rendered in some understandable form of Filgaiese:



Now, I’ve personally “run” into a bat once out of the half dozen times or so I’ve played this game, so this sign is mostly a red herring. The most annoying thing about them is the “Curse” status they inflict on you (Actually translated elsewhere as Bad Omen aside from the sign I’m about to post and it just raises your encounter rate, so it’s annoying but hardly life-threatening).



It’s this sign, which merely tells you that a Holy Symbol removes the bats’ Curse (yup, they capitalized it too).



This used to be a cunningly disguised rock face until I blew it open with bombs. Inside the hidden room were a trio of stat apples. This makes it the optional use of the bombs inside the cave I was talking about, aside from the big crates which can only be blown open.

And now for the most “difficult” puzzle in the cave!



Protip: Left switch first.



This is a Bullet Clip, the refill item for SHOOT’s ARMs. Each clip will completely refill the ammo on a single ARM regardless of how many bullets the ARM can hold. You can’t really buy them anywhere, and you only get a few through dungeon chests and the like unless you grind on the enemies that do drop them later on. Or use the item duplo trick, like I usually do. Since I haven’t used the Hand Cannon yet, I don’t have to worry about having to use it (and having to use it on the upcoming boss is lamesauce).

Hmm, save points mean trouble ahead!



Pfft. It’s just the kid, stuck in front of a dead-end.

“I have to get those berries for my wounded father! Aren't you a [Dream Chaser]? I've heard about you.

Can you move those boulders? Please, I'll be a good boy. I'll do all my chores.”

Yeah, this can’t possibly be a good idea.

*I noticed you noticing the gap in screenshot numbers too!
**Cures Paralysis.

Hmm, a grotto, a stele, and a…berry bush?

(I skipped over this, but I picked up SHOOT’s first headgear item, a Bandanna, from a half-concealed chest off to the side)



When SHOOT grabs the berry bush, Tony thanks him and says that this’ll heal his dad. As they start to run out of the cave, the stele stops glowing and an earthquake starts (switches to the world map and pans across the Adlehyde area, showing you where all the prologue locations are in relation to the Berry Cave).

…and here’s where I fucked up again, or where the screenshot tool did, because the stele stops glowing and cracks right down the middle vertically, and the next screen I took after that last one is completely black. Lame, as this entire cutscene is actually pretty cool.



“Tony's Mom: Are you two OK?!

Townsperson: What was that earthquake all about?!

Townsperson 2: I have always told you not to come here...

Mayor Pifer: You're safe, that's all that matters. Let's go home.”



?

(It’s hard to tell here, but that dog stopped going out of the cave with everyone else and turned back to face the entrance to the depths)



Uh…I think SHOOT left his extra Heal Berries back at the village, so he’s gonna run back there quick okay?



O_O



Oh Shi-



Boss Battle: Zombie
Boss Theme: Battle against Mid-Boss

Zombie’s an ass, because he was difficult at level 2 even though I had cheated some and made a quick side trip to Adlehyde before hitting the Berry Cave, as SHOOT’s got some updated duds and a new sword (not that I used that much in this fight). No upgrades to his ARM though since I wanted to save the cash for SLASH and SPELL’s own upgrades.

This boss only has two attacks: a basic physical attack that hits for piddly against SHOOT’s upgraded armor, and a “magic” zombie breath attack that takes off large chunks of HP (remember that SHOOT’s SOR/MGR is about zip), which means you ideally want to do this fight normally at levels 3 or 4 just for the added HP buffer (as SHOOT also gets the highest base HP score).



How you win is actually fairly simple; you just shoot the stupid thing to death with SHOOT’s Hand Cannon.



This is the only screenshot that turned out for the entire battle, as psX’s tool didn’t capture anything I really wanted it to, but well, this is the important one anyway, as this is SHOOT’s level 1 Force Command. ARM Lock-On does exactly what it says it does, and as such is potentially the most-useful ability in the game simply because most of SHOOT’s ARMs can’t hit peanuts (weapons of mass destruction and all). He starts out with the Hand Cannon though, which has a base ATP of 10 (over some odd math derivative of his STR-determined ATP I think), a base accuracy of 85% (enemy PRY doesn’t factor into this, thankfully, but the RNG can be pretty mean even at that level), and a base bullet capacity of 8 shots.

You only need five to kill the Zombie, as even the unupgraded Hand Cannon does this to it:



The battle went like this:

Turn 1 was SHOOT hitting it with a regular attack to boost some FP, and then getting smacked with zombie breath for 30 damage or so, about � of his HP, and the added FP from the attack pushed him well over Force level 1 (or FL hereafter).

Turns 2-4 were SHOOT using ARM Lock-On with the Hand Cannon as the Zombie used its breath attack once more and then just physicaled me.

Turn 5 was me barely squeaking a Heal Berry in before the Zombie breath’d me again, and Turns 6 and 7 were the final two bullets I needed to rekill the Zombie.



And it goes down like the gigantic undead chump it is. Of course, if you talked to that kid in the town (no it doesn’t change anything, sadly) you know that you can’t really “kill” the Zombie, so SHOOT does this:



One Zombie-flambe coming right up!





Uh, I what, now?

“Townsperson 2: I know about you. You possess the [ARM]. The forbidden power!
I know I shouldn't have, but I looked through your stuff the other day. The
[ARM] has brought doom upon us all!

Townsperson 3: The Dream Chaser, SHOOT, has cursed us all...

Townsperson 4: (he steps forward) That earthquake was probably caused by
SHOOT!!!

Mayor Pifer: Be quiet everyone!!! (to SHOOT) SHOOT. Thanks for saving the boy.
But you opened the forbidden path and put us all in danger. You also possess
an [ARM]! You will be judged for this according to our village law. Do you
agree, SHOOT?

[Yes.] (This is actually a “But thou must!” situation)

Mayor Pifer: We must get back to the village at once. Rudy will be judged
there.”

Oh, hell naw.

“Townsperson 2: He's just a Dream Chaser. It may sound cruel, but he may bring
harm upon us all. When the seal was broken, it caused an earthquake that
damaged the entire village.

At this point SHOOT walks downstairs and listens in:

Mayor Pifer: We all agree then. We'll ask him to leave. I took him in, so I'll
inform him of our decision.

Der Mayor walks over and finds SHOOT eavesdropping.

Mayor Pifer: Were you eavesdropping, SHOOT? Then you know what we've decided. I
must ask you to pack your things and leave. And please, don't come back.

I believe this is one of those “You fucking little shits” moments.

SHOOT knows when he isn’t welcome though, so he makes a beeline for the exit only to get stopped by Tony.



“I know that you did the right thing and that they are wrong. I just want to say, thank you.

I've gotta get back. Thanks again!”

I’m more than halfway tempted to strangle that little kid, seeing as this is entirely his fault in the first place (or not entirely, as SHOOT was the one who actually yanked the Holy Berries from the stele, but still!).

Walking to the world map brings up a now familiar monologue and the end of SHOOT’s scenario:



“Within him is a power he never asked for... the skill to use the forbidden
ARMs. He still wanders the world in search of his soul, unaware of his inborn
power...”

---
I’d like to take a moment to really, really thank Psycho_Crack on GameFAQs for his script transcription job, as I would’ve gone insane had I had to do all that myself on the fly by screen or by my own transcription job. You sir or missus, are the best. Thanks!

NEXT TIME: THREE MAY BE COMPANY, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE RAT?