Let's Play: Wild ARMs!

I would ultimately chalk it up to it coming before FFVII. I honestly think part of its enduring quality and playability is due in part to that it didn't piggyback on FFVII's popularity. Where everyone else rushed in to one-up and me-too Square's game, Wild Arms did its own thing and several months before. It wasn't chained to a fad or expectations. It was a 32-bit rpg before the 32-bit rpg became its own genre.

While I've never beaten it, Wild Arms is one of those really fuzzy nostalgic memories for me. I downloaded it when it hit PSN and got through probably a quarter of it, but I pittered out after I got stuck somewhere.

Welcome back for the second of the Secret Updates (probably won’t be one every week, but there will be one next week to show off the item duplo trick.), this time covering SHOOT’s misadventures prior to hitting the Berry Cave on his child rescue op.

Since I’m just explaining why this is slightly important in context to the other two intros, this’ll be pretty brief!

Anyway, the main difference between SHOOT’s intro and the other two is that SHOOT can go to the World Map while the other two cannot; OZZIE reminds SLASH that they’re at the Temple of Memory for a reason, and one of the nuns stops SPELL at the Curan Abbey gates. The game sort of assumes that you’ll choose SHOOT’s intro first, as it’s placed on top, and it also happens to be nice and straightforward without SPELL’s little dialog quest or being stuck in a trap-filled dungeon like SLASH with no source of free heals.

This means if you’re even a tad devious you can game this in a few ways; the first being that all three characters have a shared inventory and money pouch even in the intro segments, and two, SHOOT has access to Adlehyde and the next tier of weapons and armor (along with an item shop). There’s also a ton of loot you can pick up in Adlehyde too such as extra gella, stat-boosting apples, and various healing items.

In short, it’s just very easy to cheese the intros, although you don’t really need to, and you can do it in two ways; do SHOOT’s first and grind out the gella necessary for everything (really don’t recommend that, takes forever when all of the intros take a half hour tops), or, save SHOOT’s for last and use the accumulated cash to buy SHOOT’s upgrades and maybe upgrade his initial ARM a little (although I skipped that last step).

Doing the first way makes the last floor of the Temple of Memory much easier for SLASH, as the increased ATP and DTP from the new gear makes it easier to survive a multiple-Skeleton battle, and makes SPELL’s entire intro a cakewalk. Since you’ve probably gained six or seven levels for SHOOT while doing this in addition to his own gear, ditto for him too.

The other way makes the normal enemy encounters for SHOOT a cakewalk too (as the difference between the starting gear and the next tier is incredible for low level characters), and if you blow some money on upgrading the Hand Cannon’s ATP even once, it makes the Zombie fight that much easier, as its strongest attack is actually a magic attack (the breath attack I mentioned), and SHOOT’s armor doesn’t affect his MGR very much and he has naturally low MGR to boot.

The only real reason to do it is simply because you can, and I imagine if there are any speedrunners or 100% completionists in the audience I’m sure they know what I mean by that.

And that’s that! Just a big block o’ text for a mini-update.

------------
As a parting note, I’ll just leave a general schedule I’m going to try to follow, although there won’t be any solid dates, just me telling you how I’m going to portion out the game for the next few weeks. Just guidelines, and I can already tell I’m going to regret this.

Adlehyde Arc:Part 1; Three’s Company, But What About the Rat? [Probably
late Monday, early Tuesday]
Part 2; Is This a Festival or a Gun Show? [Probably Wednesday]
Part 3; Hostile Takeovers, a Funeral, and a Nature Hike [Next
Monday]
Guardian Arc:Part 1; The Puzzles Are Only In Your Head [Next Wednesday]
Part 2; Because Where Else Would You Put It? [TBA]
Part 3; The Path to a Girl’s Heart is Paved With High Explosives
Part 4; Wait, True Romance Can Only Be Found Through a Maze
of Death?

Mythology Updates:

I’ve been doing some digging around in the game as I play it, and there are a surprising number of not only mythological references (stuff like Nelgaul/Nergal [Thanks Nich!]) but the underlying mythos of the game itself is actually fairly in-depth for a JRPG; it’s not anywhere close to something like real-world mythos of various extractions of course, but it’s still better than the cut-and-badly-pasted stuff that you get in FFVII and most of the Tales games.

The underlying Guardian/Demon/Elw mythology is something of a cross between Japanese Shinto-Buddhism, some of the Vedic myths (seriously) all mixed with a dash of sci-fi high tech as magic. Then there’s the hints that peek through the bad translation that WA3 might actually be a prequel to WA1 (WA2 seems to be its own thing, although the horrible translation hinders any sort of coherent connections that there might be, beyond practically copying 1’s themes and mythos anyway). That’ll obviously get its own post once we hit a certain part of the story though.

For now I’m just going to cover Nergal and Zombie (no, that’s not a grammatical error, either) in this post, and bring up the others as I go along. While most of the monsters are based off of traditional western mythos of various sorts along with the bosses, there are a few oddities and those who do come from Eastern sources.

Nergal:


Nergal’s pretty old, we’re talking Sumerian times here, which places him around 3000 B.C.E., or about 5,000+ years ago. He’s the son of Enlil and Ninlil, the chief god of the Sumerian pantheon and his “wife/escort,” and is primarily the highest God of Death in the Sumerian pantheon (as is fitting given he’s one of Enlil’s kids). An interesting thing about Nergal is that he’s also the god of high summer in Sumerian mythos, as the ancient Sumerians believed that the height of summer was a time of death, which makes a certain amount of sense if you think that for a civilization that farms heavily, high summer is traditionally the slowest and most inactive time of the year unless you were working on a building project. Most animals have already calved at this point, you’re not really harvesting anything, old people and animals die in the heat, etc etc. Keep in mind that the Middle East in this period wasn’t really very arid in terms of weather conditions, as the Middle East was one of the greatest breadbaskets in the world until the last few thousand years.

So why’s he guarding Stoldark (who himself is an alias/analogue for a certain Japanese/Chinese god)? The easiest answer is that in Christian demonology he’s typically associated with the element of fire (summer god, natch), so he’s perfect to act as a seal on a water-aligned god like Stoldark. Then you can get into the aspects of his mythos where he’s the king of the realm of the dead (which might be another clever way to label a sealed library filled with monsters). Also important is the De Le Metalica book (which is most likely supposed to be De Re Metalica, a very famous work by Agricola on medieval mining and metalworking techniques. I’m not entirely sure why that book’s referenced here, but given some of the turns of the plot later on I’m surprised by how spot on that is. It’s important enough that I’ll talk about it more much later when it becomes important again.

Zombeh: (heh, sorry)


I could give you the Vodou-history (or Voodoo, as it’s otherwise commonly called), but it doesn’t actually appear to be actually based off of that particular mythos, and the basis behind WA’s Zombie seems to be more derived from medieval demonic mythologies involving ghouls and vampires, what with the whole unkillable and eternally regenerating aspects, the weakness to holy power, and using a dark and enclosed spot as its haunting ground. More than a bit of Lovecraft to it too, I’d suspect, but it’s been a while since I read through the Necronomicon (which will also make an appearance here as one of SPELL’s book equips, provided I get lucky with the monster who drops it).

…and we’re back for this regular, if shorter, main update due to the infodump above and the secret update that’s going after this one. It’s just going to cover the team’s meet up and looting of Adlehyde, but that means I can knock out Lolithia’s Tomb tomorrow and write it up…well, not quick, but it’ll be up tomorrow.

But let’s pick back up with SHOOT. Last time we left him, he’d just gotten kicked out of Surf Village for saving their bacon:



World Map Theme: Lone Bird in the Shire (yes that is the name, and is probably a LOTR reference, given this damn game references so many odd things in comparison to each other)

Since he knows his way back to Adlehyde, he hightails it right on back afterwards, but this time is just a bit different. For instance, there’s this wagon set up by the mountains by the Berry Cave and Memory Temple which sells basic Heal Berries and a few stat-restoring items, not that SHOOT needs anything at the moment.



He also notes a sign that he missed the last time:



(SHOOT doesn’t know this, obviously, but the Memory Temple’s also that way, although you go up and to the left instead of down and to the left)



Adlehyde looks a lot like he left it, though it doesn’t look like there’s any sign of any damage from the earthqu—



“Man 2: Let's find Emma, this is out of our hands!!!

Man 3: No. You're both wrong. The injured are our first concern.”

I smell plot! Also, for those who like to keep track of weird graphical quirks, the third guy who speaks does so in the clear text box usually reserved for internal monologues, Guardian-speak, and narratorial asides to the player.

SHOOT decides to go over to this “Emma’s” place later after he checks out Adlehyde some more than his brief visit earlier, as he smells a job in the offing.

And there is a ton of stuff to loot, do, and look at here too; Adlehyde is big, probably the biggest of the towns we’ll go to eventually. It doesn’t come across in the screens much, but the town proper and the Ruin Festival exhibition grounds each occupy one screen each (the castle’s different, but it’s also much ‘bigger’ than the other two areas), and all of the houses you can go into have transparency effects that fade out the roofs as you go into them, and layer on the second floor as you go up. It’s actually a really nice graphical trick that I don’t think I’ve ever seen employed on this scale in other latter day sprite RPGs.

It’s also the only town besides Saint Centour to have multiple town themes depending on what point of the story we’re in.

Town Theme: Town (which is also the track’s name…oddly simple given how wordy the other titles are)

SHOOT’s loot consists of a bunch of Heal Berries, some ailment healers, gella and stat apples—the usual for most towns. Wandering around also nets him some interesting spots:



The elaborate grave marker will be important fairly shortly, the Guardian statue will be so much later on and at the end of a rather spendy sidequest, and IMO, the Rune we’ll get out of it will be already outclassed by the time we’re supposed to be able to get it. I think Zeldukes is supposed to be a take on Hachikō and the traditional guard dog statues in front of Buddhist temples in Japan, whose official name escapes me at the moment. He’ll get a Mythos Update once we actually get his rune.

Now for the layout of Adlehyde: It’s actually fairly centrally located, as far as all the important stuff is; there’s a cathedral off to the left below the graveyard and Zeldukes’ statue, the item/weapon shop is off to the left along with a building that’ll be important for the sidequest that starts here later, the inn and pub are off to the right (you’ll notice that SHOOT’s refilling his Hand Cannon as extra bullets are 10 gella a pop, and all regular inns have a bullet refill station), and Emma’s workshop is above the inn, and her workshop also doubles as the ARMs Meister’s house. I make a stop at the weapon shop and pick up the next level of gear for SLASH and SPELL, and sell off my extra copies of the starter weapons I’ve picked up as drops for some decent cash.



Now, that conversation with the kid on the far right screen is important, as it’s the basis for the one long running “joke” in the entire series (I think even Emma ‘herself’ in WA5 delivers it, making it doubly annoying). In this game, Emma’s a crackpot genius scientist (who happens to be a stacked glasses-girl if you’re playing Alter Code: F), whose main claim to fame is the titular (and variously acronym’d in later games) EMMA motor. It’s a fairly important plot device here in a couple of spots, but it only gets really annoying in subsequent games because an EMMA motor invariably pops up as the power source to the party’s airborne vehicle or otherwise important bit of plot machinery. The joke, as you might expect, goes something along the lines of one of the party members pointing out that the EMMA-acronym sounds a lot like a regular name, and the NPC tech head in residence forcefully denying it by saying no one would be crazy enough to name an engine after themselves.

It gets slightly more annoying every time you see it.

Anyway, up on the second floor of Emma’s workshop is Emma herself and her ARMs Meister apprentice.



“Emma: Oh no! Tell me what's going on.

Man: We broke through a wall damaged by the earthquake and unleashed monsters.
Some of the workers were injured by one of the monsters.

Emma: Gather anyone with military experience!

Man: No way!! No one here has ever fought monsters before. There are so many
of them. You couldn't pay us enough to go in there.

Emma: All right then! Get to work on the repairs. You hear?! I'll do something
about the monsters.

Man: OK!”

[All three men leave.]



Sounds like a job to me!

“Emma: Glad to hear that. I'll pay you after the excavation. Trust me! I'll be
waiting for you. You must get prepared. Don't underestimate [Lolithia's Tomb].
Bring friends.”

This is the first of..three(?) segments where you have to deal with the party split up like this, although this is solved easily enough by application of parrot powers. At least, I think there’s three, been too long.





Doing this lets you switch between the trio, although the later dungeons that also use the split party trick have their own devices for swapping around. Up next is SLASH, who wanders on over from the Memory Temple.



As he’s doing so, he runs into three Tatzelbelms, which would’ve made me a tad nervous if he hadn’t been at level 3 and had the next level of gear on him courtesy of SHOOT’s shopping trip in Adlehyde. They’re tough and strong enough that they could’ve killed him at a lower level or at a lower DFP. As it is, he walks away barely scratched and hustles on down to Adlehyde.





Now, I just find this feature genuinely cool, because this also pops up in the other separated segments. Whatever the sequels may have been, at least WA1 was quality. The PiP doesn’t really serve much of a purpose except to remind you where you left the other two, but it does look cool, and pops up with no slowdown whatsoever.

SPELL has it pretty easy, as it’s shorter to go from the Curan Abbey to Adlehyde as it is the other places.



She only has to bash a few Balloons on the way, and she spots a bottle way out on the waves. Maybe it’s a note of some kind?

You’d think there be some kind of nostalgic reminiscence or cutscene once SPELL enters Adlehyde for the first time in ten years, but the game is remarkably sparse and there’s no comment at all once she enters the town.



D..double PiPs!





I skip the part where SLASH asks SHOOT about Lolithia, who silently replies somehow about the Tomb, the earthquake, the accident, and how it’s SHOOT’s fault. Mute heroes bug me sometimes, they really do.

GET NEW PARTY MEMBER: ONE HALF OF A HEAVY METAL DUO

Oh, and he also says that OZZIE doesn’t bite after he introduces him, for a bit of a laugh. No sarcastic one-liner from OZZIE in response though. :/

GET NEW PARTY MEMBER: THE OTHER HALF OF A HEAVY METAL DUO



SPELL’s conversation goes much the same as SLASH’s, only she says that Lolithia’s Tomb “sounds interesting” which is an ‘interesting’ way of putting a commandment to go seek it out from the drug-trip turtle god she freed.

GET NEW PARTY MEMBER: SECRET PRINCESS OF TELEPATHY AND GLUTTONY

I’m sorry, I seem to have failed to achieve that basic level of wit required of an LP. :’(

I couldn’t think of something witty, so I went with the Jack Black route of random factoid bullshit strung together in the hopes of sounding clever.



There’s the status screen for the crew, taking note that SPELL gained a level on her trek back to the city, and here’s the inventory:



And the tools screen (which you access with Start):



And on that note, here’s the end of this regular update, though stay tuned for the Secret Update after this one, because it’s chunky.

I’ll leave you with a “Shit Getting Real” shot:

The update in which I become a dirty cheater!

If you remember the first Secret Update, you’ll remember that SLASH lucked through security on account of his Uncle E-something or other, but ran into a door with an odd teardrop-shaped crystal in it and couldn’t go any farther.

Now that we have SPELL in the party that’s no longer an obstacle, if you’ll remember that one similar door in the Sealed Library.





It’s sort of funny to notice, but only SLASH can access the security system with OZZIE’s help, the other two just get that message. Sneaking through the still-open door from last time, and with a quick application of the Tear Drop, we enter this room.



Now, I could’ve sworn that there was another specially locked door in here for me to open, but I guess not. This room is something that we’re not supposed to be able to access for quite a ways into the game, and serves as a bit of a NG+ present from the developers since the password for the system is a static name that’s important in the backstory: Emiko, and we only have up until we finish Lolithia’s Tomb to access it until much later in the game for other reasons too.

The Crest Graphs are handy just as a matter of course, but the Holy Parasol is something else:



It’s a left hand accessory that when equipped, absorbs enemy magic…which makes it pretty damn handy in certain cases, although its 7500 gella resale tag is also something else to consider (as is the fact that SPELL can use Mystic to cast Absorb [spell with same effect] with it too). Most of the left-hand accessories are pretty worthless compared to the defensive boosts you get from the character-specific gear, but the Holy Parasol is one of the few that can be worth the swap out.

Now, for the SPELL-end of the spoils from the secret room:


You’ll notice I added Zing (revives from KO) and Scan (No DQ equivalent, so I went with FF), and swapped out Bang for Dispel (no player alternate in DQ from what I remember, so FF again). Pretty obvious choices, as we won’t run into anything that can resist fire for a while, and the support spells are more important. If I had another Crest Graph, I’d pick up the DFP-debuffer spell, but this’ll work for now. There’s at least one Crest Graph in the Tomb as I recall, but we’ll find out shortly. SPELL’s initial staff gives us the DFP-boosting spell, and the Holy Parasol gives us the magic-absorbing spell, negating the need for the MGR-buff spell at the moment.

Now for the second half of the update; the Item Duplo Glitch.

It’s pretty easy, actually. See, the developers probably implemented the menu systems as a whole across field areas, battle, etc, so you can still move items around in the inventory screen, even in battle. Those of you who are familiar with how memory buffers work might have figured this out to an extent already just from that. :P What basically happens is that you trick the game into thinking that you’ve somehow gotten -1 Heal Berries, which can’t happen as the minimum value is 0, so the game resets the quantity of the item in the Heal Berry spot to the maximum since it doesn’t remember the initial quantity, just that it’s subtracting 1 each use of an item. Now, since you can swap items around in their assigned locations in battle, if you have 1 of an item you wish to copy…

The first step is to make SHOOT and SLASH use a Heal Berry each:



And once you get to SPELL’s menu you swap the item you want to copy (very important that you only have 1, as if you have 2 you end up with 0, 3 you end up with 1, etc) like so:



Finally, you just back out of the item menu and have SPELL defend to finish out the turn and then proceed as normal (the pillbugs ran away that same first turn, which made me a little nervous that it would screw it up somehow).

And once you get out of battle:



255 Holy Umbrellas! And all you need is 3 Heal Berries.

Now, selling 254 Umbrellas rounds out to something like 1.9 million gella. Or 1,900,000 give or take the pocket change I had on hand at the time. Over the course of a normal game, that, plus what I’d take in monster winnings would be mostly enough to carry me through gear upgrades and a sidequest later on (the Adlehyde one I keep hinting at).
The problem is that SHOOT’s ARMs get stupidly expensive to upgrade at their higher levels; each category for the arm can be upgraded something like eight times. The initial Hand Cannon ATP upgrade is 500 Gella. The final upgrade is something like 35,000. And each category gets nearly that expensive for just the initial ARM he gets. The last two ARMs are insanely expensive to upgrade at all, let alone max out, and I’d have to repeat the duplo trick a few times just for the raw gella. Doing the three intros netted me 1500 gella or so just in straight cash, and another 6-700 in extra gear to sell. Normal play only really nets you close to enough money to upgrade the gear and weapons for everyone, but not the ARMs.

So the easiest way to get the gella necessary to utterly and completely break the game is to do the duplo trick with the Holy Umbrella or some other high value late-game item, aside from grinding for hours.

Now, I won’t play that way for this LP because that’s not fun, and watching me go “Oh, cheesed that boss with that max-upgrade ARM again” gets old to write, let alone read. But as a matter of comparison, here’s the initial stats for the Hand Cannon at Emma’s ARMs Meister:



And here’s the fully upgraded stats (Not what I’m playing with, again):



For my real playthrough, I’ll probably bump up each category an upgrade or two with each dungeon, as that’d represent the grinding I’d normally do for it, as you really do want to max out the Hand Cannon at some point early on. It’s a centerpiece for most boss strategies.

Anyway, that’s it for this Secret Update. See you next time for the dungeon half of the last chapter!

So that's why my copy of the OST is missing half the damn tracks in the game!

Apparently there's a separate soundtrack collection called Wild ARMs Complete Tracks out there that has everything on it!

Grrrr.

What about what pops up when you use the Zenithian sword? "Devestating Light" or some such.

I don't have that much space. :P

I'm pretty sure that some jerk brings this up any time someone talks about Wild ARMs, so this time that jerk is me! I still dig it as world map music, though.

Hehe, yeah, but there are other songs on the OST that are as good or better though.

Okay, now that I have the expanded track list in hand I can add in and fix links for the music where necessary (I did add a song each to SLASH and SPELL's intros, and corrected the incorrect dungeon theme for SPELL's intro [it's actually Way of Illusion, which is foreshadowy again!], and just gave SHOOT's intro the link for Cold Darkness.

Remember that at the bottom of the OP you can find links to all of the music and updates that I've had time to update so far; I will be editing the OP here in a second to update up through yesterday's stuff.

Welcome back for the dungeon half of the first main game update (although we’re still technically in the prologue portion as you’ll see next time).



This is Lolithia’s Tomb, just a short hop north of Adlehyde. If you were still in SHOOT’s intro you could jaunt in and swipe some treasure out of the first few rooms, but you couldn’t proceed into the actual dungeon itself because the earthquake at the end of his intro triggers an event flag that opens up the interior (and unleashes the monsters, as per the first half of the update). It’s fairly linear, although there are a number of hidden corners and extra chests that can’t be gotten unless you’re paying attention and do a little puzzle solving. This dungeon also marks the first appearance of yellow chests, which I think are unique in the series; they’re normal chests that explode upon opening and deal a smallish chunk of damage to the trio in the process. They can be safely bypassed by using a certain tool however.



“So, you're the one. Emma is waiting for you.”

This central open area and the next room beyond it are the only two areas in this dungeon that don’t have random encounters as the monsters aren’t in this section. This is also the part of the ruins that SHOOT can access early, not that there’s much for him here beyond one item in particular. Going past this man and into the next room leads deeper into the ruin proper, although the rest of Emma’s crew prevents us from going inside until we speak with her. The door on the left leads to a little room with a trio of stat-boosting apples, and the door on the right leads to this little area:


Just a simple little block puzzle to let you know that there’ll be, y’know, block puzzles later on in here. The chests are a Heal Berry and Potion Berry, the latter of which is the next level of healing item and restores 1000 HP, not that we’re anywhere near that yet. The big dude in the left shot is merely repeating what I said above.

Going back out to the main room and up the staircase puts us on the second floor landing:



It just wraps around the bottom half of the room and ends in a doorway to Emma’s “office:”



“Emma: The three of you together can probably break the seal. Past the room with
the spooky demon statue lies a*missing sentence fragment, sorry, and the online script is missing the same thing*. If the three of you work together, you should be okay. You'll be fine! With confidence, one can even learn to fly.”

An odd choice of topic for a pep speech, but okay?

SHOOT blows open the wall behind Emma like so, as his loot senses are tingling:



And doing so he finds a Buckler, SHOOT’s initial left-hand gear. Where SLASH’s vambraces will boost his PRY more than his DFP, SHOOT’s items are the opposite; they boost DFP over PRY. SPELL’s items boost mostly MGR and then SOR by a small amount. While we’re talking about left-hand items, I have to issue a correction on the Holy Umbrella; it can’t be Mystic’d, although testing SPELL’s Breeze Cape gives us the Air Screen spell, which increases a character’s PRY by 25% each casting for the duration of the battle—this is far less useful than it sounds, at least early on, as it’ll be a while before anyone but SLASH breaks double digits on PRY.



Hmm, that’s just a drop ledge to go down to the bottom, which means I can’t use OZZIE to get the chest, and I don’t have anything else that would be of use here, which means we have a future backtracking trip. These are easily the most annoying chests in the game, as most every major dungeon we can go back to will have a chest or two tucked away like this that we can’t access until later on with more Tools. I’m pretty sure this one’s a Crest Graph though, though it’ll be a few updates until we get the right Tool for this.

The dynamic duo down below are the ones who wouldn’t let us further into the ruins without Emma’s approval, though now that we do have it they let us pass without incident.



The rooms beyond the base camp are mostly like this, requiring Bombs to clear out the wreckage, and it’s just a nice touch to remind you that the earlier earthquake did stuff.

Going up past the cleared rocks leads us to a forked path, we can either go left or right, although SLASH’s ruin-tested instincts make him point SHOOT off to the left, as there’s always loot off to the left. Of course, the developers knew about this too, so they just do things like this to irritate you just a bit:



The way the screen cuts off doesn’t make it extremely obvious that there’s an easy way to hit that switch, which also just as obviously lowers the barrier, but the way the second floor landing wraps around is your clue.

So the crew heads right this time, running into their first encounter:



This is by far the most desirable of the encounter groups in the Tomb; four Pillbugs give a ton of Gella compared to everything else here but the other important monster batch, and their tendency to run away means that fighting them goes pretty fast too. For most of the battles here SPELL will either be defending all the time, or chipping in with her base attack where necessary—her MP’s still spare enough that I don’t want to waste it on run of the mill fights, and while her physical stats suck, she can still do enough to let SHOOT or SLASH kill whatever she hits. Continuing on—



SHOOT goes into the door on the right, leading to this little arrangement, this time another nod to what kind of puzzles we’re going to face inside, as stepping on the switch drops the purple spikes (we don’t have to worry about pressure switches yet, as those are always blue as seen in SLASH’s intro), and off to the left is this little curiosity:



The gold color of the box alone is a tipoff that something’s different, and if you talked to the man in that one room earlier, then these might be those trapped chests he was talking about. So if you can’t open them directly safely, you do this:



OZZIE’s the key, as he can run away before the chest explodes (or just as, actually, and that was a Heal Berry in the goldie). Since we’re now on the second floor, we can loop around the side and find a drop ledge just above that switch in the earlier screen shot, and a door on both the upper and lower floors. As fenced off areas are usually important, SLASH and group jump off and trigger the switch, lowering the spikes so that we can get a move on in a second.

The lower door leads into this room:



You can either push a block onto the semi-concealed switch, or you can just push one out of the way and step on it yourself, but either solution opens up the door leading to the prize behind Door A:



A goldie containing a Crest Graph!

Crest Graphs Collected: 6/64

~Boom~

That’s what happens with Gold Chests. Most of the time in later dungeons they’re nothing more than gimmicks to remind you that what’s inside may be pretty valuable.

Here’s the other two important enemy groups that pop up within the Tomb:



En(should be ‘Em’)puse are just really fast physical attackers, most of the time they’ll outrun SLASH for first go in a turn. Aipeloss or whatever it’s supposed to be is that big ugly chicken ball thing that is extremely freaking strong and also has a special attack that eats MP. They have commensurate rewards though, and give a ton of XP and gella. Rat Monkeys are just cannon fodder, although they do inflict disease in rare cases.

Aipes have high HP totals and stupidly high ATP, regularly dealing 50+ damage to SHOOT and upwards of 80 to SPELL, but the tons of XP they give is handy obviously. Keeping SPELL alive to do heals is the hardest task in dungeons and boss fights usually, as her low HP and abysmal DFP make her painfully vulnerable. We’ll eventually go from level 3 to level 6 over the course of this dungeon, mostly from fighting Empuse and Aipes.

Anyway, once we go back up to the second floor, the next room is oddly reminiscent of Snakes’ n’ Ladders—just a lot of ladders and alternate paths blocked by explodable rocks and purple stakes, which means there’s a control switch in here somewhere.



Going along the right side is the path to the top, although the exit out into the next section is also blocked with stakes. I also pick up a Revive Fruit on the way up, it just revives a KO’d character with minimal HP like Zing does. There’s four levels in the room, the way out is on the bottom, the second has a chest blocked by stakes on the left side and is divided down the middle by stakes, the third section has the switch for the stakes, but some of the ladders are blocked by rocks at the bottom, meaning we can’t hop off unless we blow them up somehow. The switch is also surrounded on three sides by lowered stakes.

You can’t just step on the switch though—as the stake lines around the switch rise and block you in, so you have to use OZZIE and trigger the switch which lowers the rest of the stakes in the room.



The chest on the second level just has some gella in it (sigh) and so the group forges on ahead and finds the mid-dungeon save point. After a quick save, we continue on again into the next room:



The left side of the room is higher than the second half, and we can’t directly get there from the left anyway, the only lower spot is that underpass with the chest at the end, and to the north is a chest surrounded by stakes:



There’s no switch here, so that means its somewhere else in the room, and that leaves the door on the right our only option.



The top room has this Tear Drop-door, and the two chests on the sides, and three exits on the bottom half. We’ll get to the chests in a second, and head down the stairs behind the sealed door first.



Hmm, a hint of some kind and a rather ominous sounding warning.

Going back upstairs we solve the block “puzzles,” as all you have to do is shove each block to the side, netting us a Magic Carrot and Heal Berry.



The bottom right entrance has the switch to the earlier stake-blocked chest, so we can go back and get this:



More cash. Woo?

Going out the middle bottom exit lets us out in the right side of the room, and also gives us access to that golden chest on the left:



Continuing onwards we run into this guy:



Is that just me, or does that statue look a lot like the ones decorating Magus’ castle in Chrono Trigger?

Anyway, running around back reveals a switch like it did with SPELL’s Abbey courtyard puzzle, netting us this little deal:



Four blocks with no immediately obvious places to put them, unless those corners by the statue aren’t just decoration.

Turns out they’re not, as they settle into place with loud clicks and rumbles like so:



Pushing the last block into place causes the statue and blocks to dissolve and a rampway to rise out of the floor and connect with the raised exit.

Big double doors sealed with magic that are way bigger than anything a human would need to go through…I think this is the door mentioned on that plaque.

Since we only have one tool that dissolves magical seals, SPELL whips out the Tear Drop and opens the door.



What is it with the giant monsters popping out of things that have been sealed for centuries? Have they been on the monster form of the Atkins diet or something?

Boss Fight: Magtortous [Magtortoise?]
Boss Fight Theme: Battle Against Mid-Boss



This is Magtortous, the first real boss of the game, and it shows. Where Nergal was just a chump with high HP and the Zombie was mostly a bullet sponge, Maggie here can seriously kick your ass if you’re not careful, a theme which most of the bosses in the game follow quite regularly. Most bosses from here on out will have an attack or two that deals severe damage to one character (think around 1/3-1/2 of SLASH or SHOOT’s max HP a pop), and a party nuke which deals heavy damage to everybody, but not quite as strong as the single attacks.

Maggie’s one of the reverse cases though, as her single physical attack is about half as strong as her party nuke which can put you in pretty desperate straights if you don’t have a lot of Berries to Mystic or the FP to use it regularly. Her nuke is sort of pretty though, if you like staring at purple rays of doom raking your party with lightning of death.



Assuming you haven’t cheated and maxed out SHOOT’s Hand Cannon, this can be pretty tense as you hope that she doesn’t spam the nuke too often. The problem with most bosses is that they generally have higher MGR values than DFP, making SPELL not quite as useful and SLASH’s Fast Draws weaker than normal, as they seem to be based off his SOR score and not his ATP…all of which means that instead of dealing 80 damage with a physical he deals around 90~95 with Psycho Crack, and that’s not much of an improvement. Once we start unlocking his more powerful single target skills, this’ll change, but until then he’s not the main damage dealer in the party (not that he’ll ever be assuming I keep upgrading ARMs little by little).

SHOOT is.



A single upgrade to the Hand Cannon’s ATP and a few levels essentially doubles the damage output of the ARM, and I only have to use it four times between the ARM and SLASH’s chip damage, but I had to survive to get there first.

The problem is that even though I had access to Buff in the form of the Mystic command, most of the bosses are so ludicrously strong that a single application of the spell only cuts about 10-15 points out of 120, and since Maggie’s nuke is a magic attack, that wasn’t going to help me here (Poor SHOOT took around 250 every nuke) either. So I basically just had to hold on with Mystic’d Heal Berries to do party heals and hope that Maggie didn’t nuke me too often.

Short version: She didn’t.



It took around 10 turns, but I did emerge victorious in the end, mostly because Maggie spent most of her time headbutting SLASH and I waited for SHOOT’s FP to build up enough to use ARM Lock On instead of gambling on just shooting it.

The spoils:



We don’t even have to walk by Maggie’s corpse, seeing as she exploded into itty-bitty bits, which leads us into this room (the chests are another Heal Berry and Magic Carrot).





I take it that the “loli” in Lolithia isn’t to be taken literally, eh?

“SLASH: What?

OZZIE: That's the golem.

SPELL: The same golem written about in the legend?!

OZZIE: Probably. In the ancient days, when Filgaia was surrounded by forests, it was said that there were eight weapons of the ancient giants. They were sealed away in some secret place after they nearly destroyed the world. Some of these weapons were found in ruins in this area. I had no idea that a golem was hidden near Adlehyde.

SLASH: I wonder if the power in this tomb is different from the [Power] that I have been seeking all this time?

OZZIE: The power we felt here is probably the golem.

SLASH: Geez! How am I supposed to use this? It's huge! I can barely lift it!

OZZIE: He's mad!

SLASH: Let's get this over with. There's nothing here for me!

[OZZIE steps forward and turns to SHOOT, SLASH, and SPELL.]

OZZIE: We must notify the professor about the golem.”

If you don’t have the Escape spell, this turns into an Indiana Jones-esque race back to the base camp as you’re probably low on HP and MP like I am. At least the developers were kind enough to put in a sequence of jump ledges in the ladder room to make your escape that much faster. I almost die to a triplet of Aipes though. :/



“Emma: Really?! The golem truly exists! Then I was right in picking this site. I'm a genius! Oh. you guys are great, too! We can't just sit around here. We must excavate it now! Take some of my crew with you to the site where you found the golem! I'm counting on you!!!

[Emma leaves]

SLASH: Gee, she's bossy.”

I believe the word you’re searching for is “obsessed” SLASH.

Anyway, we get the benefit of a scene cut back to Lolithia’s chamber, where a little cutscene plays out as Emma’s crew pulls out the Golem.





Please to be noticing the lack of capitalization on Emma-Motor! This is the foundation of that joke from the last update. Everyone else capitalizes it like a proper acronym.

“--was effective here. Thanks to you and my Emma-Motor, we were able to pull her out. Yes, this is [Lolithia]. One of the eight golems. Isn't it cute? This thing is unbreakable. It's still in mint condition and it's completely dormant. The reward of 500 gella will be ready for you, but you must come by tomorrow. I'll be too busy preparing for the festival today.”

And with that we get plunked back on the World Map, and so finish this segment of the LP!

NEXT TIME: IS THIS A FESTIVAL OR A GUN SHOW?

The bosses of Wild Arms mark the very first time in an RPG where I learned the value of debuffing magic, since each shot dropped stats enough to be really appreciated.

Yeah, the only problem is that you don't get access to the ATP-debuffer until late in the game, which can make things interesting though.

It's an absolute godsend against some of the later bosses and required for the optional guys.

I used the dupe trick to cheese my way through this game. Everyone had max stats and junk. It was pretty awesome.

Welcome back lads, ladies, and all permutations therein to the Wild ARMs LP! Like the last one, this will be split into two updates, mostly because it’s a lot of material to cover, and because it also works much better split into two halves.



Anyway, this is the group post-Tomb raiding segment, and everyone’s level 6. This is important, because the boss coming up in the next segment is very nearly going to royally ream our asses anyway, and you need to be at level 5 at least if you want a chance to win just for the HP counts alone. If you guys are paying attention to the status screen shots (I’ll post them every after every dungeon from now on), you might notice that both SLASH and SPELL’s HP scores are going up way faster than their MP scores, by about twice the speed in SPELL’s case. This is because HP and MP growth is mostly determined by base VIT and SOR scores—since SHOOT and SLASH had practically tied VIT scores for a level or two there, SLASH was actually ahead in max HP for a while (this is rare-ish), and the higher you have of VIT or SOR the faster it grows to the cap (9999 for HP, 999 for MP). The cap for stat scores is 255 since it’s a single-byte variable; the derived stats like ATP are very probably two-bytes since I think they cap at 999 (been a while since I pulled what Brickroad did, and I’ve never been terribly interested in picking apart the game like that. Also remember that hex is base-16, hex bytes are represented by two hex bits, which go from 0-F (F=15), so 8C is equal to 8 x 12, or 96.

Another hex-code related quirk is that the soft cap on inventory quantities is actually 99, but since you need a single-byte variable for any quantities over 15 (keep in mind that 0 is a number too), and the hard limit is 255 due to the size of the variable. Since the game does both on-the-fly bookkeeping of the items you use in combat and also calculates it at the end of a combat turn, and since the game’s inventory is a pointer based system (i.e., each slot in your item bag is an individual pointer which is associated with an inventory value for a particular item [and yes, an empty slot is an “item”]), it can be tricked in combination with the above.

The key is that the game only cares about what’s in a particular pointer spot whenever you use the item being “pointed” at (hence the term) and just ticks off “SLASH uses 1 Heal Berry from memory address 0xFFFFFFFF [or whatever]” and deducts the item from the quantity pointer linked to the item bag pointer for the Heal Berry. That’s what happens when you normally use the item. But, something quirky happens at the end of the turn. See, the game’s inventory system plays the item usage game both ways; it tells the pointed item’s address that it’s being used x number of times, but it also tells the linked pointer for quantity to deduct x at the same time too. If you just use items normally, there’s no risk of being doublecharged on item usage, but, if you keep in mind that the game doublechecks each memory address flagged for usage at the end of each turn and that it doesn’t care what’s in the address, well, you get a memory bug.

Since you frontload all of your combat commands into the system memory at the start of a combat turn, you can abuse it remembering that you can’t have negative number values in standard hex coding for single-byte integers (goes from 0 to 255, or 256 possible values [gotten by multiplying 16x16 or FF], and yes this isn’t really true at all, but it is here) and having the third character in your lineup swap an item with a single quantity in the stack with the item that was used twice. The game doesn’t care what’s in that memory address any longer since it’s already done what it needs to with it, and once the end of turn inventory maintenance hits it detects that the memory address in question wasn’t deducted properly and fixes that, which creates another bug which the game engine then resolves by just resetting the quantity pointer for the item to the hard limit since it doesn’t keep track of the initial value, only that it had to subtract two from that particular memory pointer’s linked stack pointer.

Whew.

[Disclaimer: I could be entirely wrong about that, but it jives with what I know about hex coding and tinkering with around with game code (admittedly very little) since I haven’t cracked the .iso and gone code hunting.]

Back to the “real” world:



You’ll notice I kept the money, which is mostly due to the fact that I saved over my file that I hadn’t done the duplo trick in. It will be spent though, mostly on a sidequest that opens up halfway through the game (and yes, this is the last time I’ll mention it, until it comes up again that is).

Another quick little hop takes us back to Adlehyde, where this little scene pops up as soon as we enter:



“SPELL: We're parting so soon?

SLASH: It's the life of a [Dream Chaser] you know. Let's get back to the inn, the festival starts tomorrow.”

Huh, this might take a while if we keep having to do this little separate scenario bits (Hint: We’re not), but before going to the inn and pushing the plot forward I make a few stops, one to the item shop to sell all the extra crap and copies of various armor and weapons (it appears that only SPELL’s gear can by Mystic’d), netting me about 4000 gella with the proceeds from the Tomb, another to the spell shop to pick the dungeon escape spell, Evac;



And a final stop to Emma’s ARMs Meister assistant to blow all my cash on two ATP upgrades for the Hand Cannon. That’s going to be pretty normal for me, at least until I max out the Hand Cannon, as there’s only a few ARMs worth the trouble out of the eight total we’ll pick up, and it gets stupidly expensive, as the second level ATP upgrade is 1000 gella, and the third level is 3000. The normal shopping pattern will be me 1) buying equipment, 2) upgrading an ARM), and 3) sighing in despair at my empty wallet.

Now that I’ve got my final errands out of the way, I push the plot forward by purchasing an inn stay (so you need at least 30 gella or otherwise feel stupid and go outside to slay a few Balloons or something), bringing up this conversation with SPELL:



“--but I have to get going now. I have no idea why I was summoned to the north ruin. But, I'm glad to know I was of some help.

After I go, I might not be able to travel with you. But I will never forget our adventure. I hope you guys will treat me the same way I've treated you.”

And with that she leaves (keeping in mind the guys don’t know she’s a princess yet).





Indeed it has! The start of this festival brings a few changes to Adylehyde; a new theme that plays in the festival grounds (linked below), and confetti flying everywhere, and all of the townies talk about how awesome or creepy the Ruin Festival is (you’ll see why the difference of opinion in a second). The game starts us off in the second floor of the inn, which follows the amusing jRPG tendency to put the exact number of beds to meet party size requirements since there is one of those waking up bed and everyone hopping back into formation bits ala FFIV.



The Festival grounds are out the right exit of the town proper, and once we enter the town theme changes and the confetti increases in density (the screenshots don’t really convey it very well, but it’s there).



Town Theme: Ancient Civilization Exhibition (This is the real name of Ruins’ Fest ’97, btw)

I can’t decide whether that guy’s just making some random comment, or if this is some strange brand of foreshadowing out of the middle of nowhere.



This is the first of this one time only minigames (they disappear afterwards since the Festival’s over with), which isn’t exactly Whack-A-Mole but rather Pick-Up-And-Throw-A-Mole, made doubly frustrating that you have to be lined up pretty close with the mole sprites to pick them up, and they get faster each time you do the grab and toss. I forget what the highest prize tier is, but I got a Heal Berry out of it, and since the game cost 100 gella I essentially lost 80 gella.

One of the nice touches the game offers is an item buyer in the main courtyard of the Festival grounds; he doesn’t sell anything, but tells you he’s there to buy any extra crap you have for spending money at the fair (as all the prize games cost 100 gella a pop). Not that I need to, or would ever really, but I just really appreciate little touches like that in a game—it means the dev’s paying attention, usually.



These are the displays on the left hand of the fair, which constitute some kind of humanoid skeleton, a flamethrower ARM (with a hilarious translation inconsistency that’ll show up in the next screen bunch), and a mysterious bit of technology that may be applicable to the big guy on the right.

I’d like to think this adequately illustrates why some of the townies might be a tad uncomfortable about the Fair; it’s merely a collection of various bits of extremely high powered weaponry and lost tech from the Demon War period, all capped by the three Golems in attendance. Sure, it’s all either inactive or broken but would you want something like set up next door?

More to the point, is gathering a bunch of bunch of highly dangerous things together like that really a cause for a party? “Huzzah! Look at all the weapons of mass destruction!” isn’t exactly, well, safe?

Random NPC girl tells the duo that this is all because the King’s something of an archaeology buff, which sort of stretches my sense of credulity a bit. Sure, that’s certainly possible, but we’re talking about the big guns of the humans that helped save their hineys a long, long time ago. I’d be quicker to think that maybe the guy’s got military ambitions or just wants to revive the shiny tech.

Then I remember we’re the good guys and that can’t happen (not when aliens are the primary bad guys, anyway). Siiighhhhh.

Anyway, Golems:







Some of that information may be mildly pertinent in the future, but I just think they look sort of neat.



The meteorite entry’s hinting at something that took me a long ass time to figure out, but it’s just a bit of story-building material that’s not very important at all in the long run—I’ll bring it up when the pertinent bit gets mentioned again. As a bit of a hint, the meteorite may be related to that bit of metal somehow, which is in turn linked to all of the technology developed post-Demon arrival on Filgaia.

The rest of the entry on that bit of metal just says that they (current Filgaians) can’t do anything to the metal scrap at all, not even scratch it.

That’s it for the displays, although there’s two more prize minigames and a little running course for bragging rights against the developers and one particular NPC. Most of the stuff you can win isn’t terribly special, just more stat apples, but if using the duplo trick violates some kind of gaming ethos you might possess, I would note that stat apples can be sold back for 255 gella, and all of the prize games cost 100 gella.

Moving along, the heroes spot Emma, who coughs up their pay:



“Here is the payment. (she gives you 500 gella) Take it easy. There's a lot to see here. I'm sure you'll see something that interests you.”

SLASH and SHOOT spend some time chatting up the locals, at least until they run into this lady:



“Woman: My son is missing. He just disappeared into the crowd. Please. Can you help look for him? He may be in trouble. I'm going to stay here so I don't miss him on this road. If you see him, please bring him back to me. He has a red balloon. Please!”

Well, sure, why not, it’s not as if we’re drifters who go from place to place raiding them for treasure or slay monsters for money or anything, right?

Oh, right, I forgot. We’re the good guys.

Dammit.

We basically just have to chat up a couple of the NPCs here out of the dozen or so wandering around in order to trip the event flag that puts the kid back in Adlehyde proper (I hate these, hate hate HATE them).



And here he is, after five minutes of chatting up NPCs and looking for him all over the damn place.



Hah, serves you right you little turd, now go ba—



???





Special Theme: The Sky Is Being Torn Apart

Shit just hit the fan/got real/*insert corny Action Movie phrase of choice*. Most everyone on the streets is dead, stupidly powerful monster packs are roaming the streets as sprites, and there is nowhere to heal until we get to the next segment. Otherwise, this would be an excellent space to grind (well, save for the fact that most of the monsters that show up here also show up in the next “dungeon”).

But first, we need to save SPELL:



Special Theme: World of Loudening Screams



This can be a little difficult, as the Lizardmen take two regular attacks from SLASH to kill (or a single turn combo effort from both of the guys), although the Skeleton is just a bit of a chump at this point (he was the toughest enemy in SLASH’s intro). The Skeleton monsters are most likely the same things as that display item from the Festival, but other than that aren’t terribly special. Both monster types are fast and hit very very hard, and I can’t waste ARM shots on them because I can’t refill it until after I finish up this arc of the plot.



“five minutes. *Summarizing* Save everyone you can!”

First off, battles don’t count against your timer, only time on the field does, and you can only run into battles by running into monster sprites.



The most annoying thing about this is that you can get some nifty rewards for saving all or most of the living townies, but some of them are hidden in the strangest and hardest to spot places. Like so:



Anyway, it takes me roughly two and a half minutes to pick up everyone I can find, and only running into a few battles along the way. As soon as we hightail it into the castle though, another cutscene starts.



“[He laughs.] There is nothing for me to do here. Well, I guess my superior power is too good to use on humans. [He laughs again.] Give this message to one of the humans running into the castle. If they don't give up the [Tear Drop], we will tear the castle to pieces.

[A lizard man steps up to Belselk.]

Belselk: (to lizard man) Are there golems here? Are they working? All junk? Good! We don't want to fight those things. (turns to his original two cohorts) We have the golems now. This is a very interesting situation. [He laughs (this is a trend with him)]”

That’s Belselk (or Berserk, actually, which is most definitely a reference to the manga), the first of the Demon Commanders (actually titled the Quarter Knights since there’s four of them, though we don’t get that officially till later). Berserk’s the muscle of the quartet, and fulfills the hotblooded and impatient villain quota (though not stupid, surprisingly, he’s just hasty and quick to violence as his name suggests). One of the nicer surprises about replaying this after 10 years of latter-day PS1 and later RPGs is that the villains are actually more than a little competent. Sure, we win in the end, but the Quarter Knights aren’t stupid and will actually be kicking our asses and generally be two steps ahead of the party for most of the game. Needless to say, but this is also one of my favorite segments in the game.

If you watched the secret intro, the white floating monster that shows up is Alhazred (or Al Hazard), who’s the Knights’ science guy and who we’ll be seeing in cutscenes long before we actually fight him. Lady Harken and Ziekfried (Siegfried, and the symbolic naming’s important here) we’ll be seeing soon enough too, and they’re the other two members of the quartet we’ll be seeing early on.

That’s it for now—I’m hoping to have enough time later in the week to crank out the last half of the Adlehyde Arc as I’ve titled it. Just got delayed with being ill due to sinus and allergy problems and work just being a general pain.

Welcome back to Let’s Play Wild ARMs, and where we finish out the prologue section of the game by not winning a boss battle against one of the game’s Big Bads (there’s even a unique “victory” fanfare for it).

Extra Theme: Against the Backdrop of World Destruction [plays during Berserk’s little cutscene in the last update]



Town Theme: From Anxiety to Impatience (As a bit of series trivia, every Wild ARMs game except for 3 has a song with this title, including XF)

We’re stuck in the castle for now, as the demons are still rampaging outside, and the castle guards won’t let anyone out (and wonder just how long they can hold out against monsters that attack from the sky).



Before we head off and trigger the next set of cutscenes, we have some looting and exploring to do: The Moon Stone is the accessory that prevents Poison (and if Mystic’d will cure it), Crest Graphs are self-explanatory at this point, and that door is a Duplicator door. The Tear Drop doesn’t do anything to it, and I don’t have anything in my inventory that does either.

Duplicator doors and chests are special cases that require Duplicator items, which are essentially one time use magic keys that we use on doors with that design, and on chests with their own design (you can tell something needs a Duplicator when it says that message). There are very typically very good items hidden behind those doors and in Duplicator chests (or at the very least more ARM Clips, Secret Signs and Crest Graphs), but there is a catch: We need a certain number of Duplicators in order to access one of the secret bosses, but the game doesn’t have enough of them squirreled away on the world map for everything and so you have to go grind on a particular enemy that drops them as a fairly rare drop. So you can already tell what most people copy when they learn about the item duplo trick, right (I won’t, since I’ll probably be a tad underleveled when I actually will need those Duplicators).

Other than that, there’s not a whole of interest in the castle; there’s a room we can use for a free inn stay, and if you saved anyone in the previous section you can talk to them in the top right room of castle’s ground floor.

No one really explains right out where you’re supposed to go next, but if you ask around the NPCs mention that the king was wounded and that we should go see him, which is great, but lack of directions means you get to wander around for a bit. Which is great actually, and also drives home that Wild ARMs has much more in common with FFVI than it does VII, say, merely due to the lack of being hammered with cutscenes every five seconds to tell you to go do something and exactly where to go. Needless to say, I like that older school of design a bit more since there’s significantly less handholding going on.

Since I was treasure hunting as I was going along, I somewhat funnily got into the royal chambers through the back door (which will be important in a sec) as you can run around the wall of the castle like a giant O and get back down to the first floor that way too.

Getting back to the action:



“King Adlehyde: SPELL, I'm glad you're all right. Listen, SPELL! The monsters are after you. You must defeat them!

[A soldier approaches with a message.]

Soldier: Your Majesty! The monsters demand that you surrender the [Tear Drop] or they will storm the castle.

SPELL: The [Tear Drop] belonged to my mother. It's very dear to me, but I'll give it up for the sake of my kingdom. The monsters can have my [Tear Drop].

King Adlehyde: I won't permit it! No. You won't do it! SPELL, the [Tear Drop] is not just an heirloom. It holds the key to unleashing the power of the ancients. Only a princess of the Adlehyde family may possess it. One who hears the will of the Guardians can use the [Tear Drop] to change the world.

SPELL: But if I do nothing, many will die because of me.

King Adlehyde: Please understand, SPELL. Life can be cruel sometimes. SPELL, stay in your room, no matter what happens.”

Keeping in mind that said magical trinket has opened magical doors and magical portals to sealed libraries with gods sleeping in them, I think the King’s right on this one.



“--Innocent people should not suffer. In the dungeon, there is a secret passage. It should still be there. When I was a little girl, I remember trying to get to the town from there. We can sneak out from there and give the demons the [Tear Drop].”

This strikes me as a bad idea, but looking at this from SPELL’s point of view, it’s either hand over the potentially important MacGuffin and maybe die, or die fighting to protect the castle and MacGuffin which are both sort of shitty options.

The only problem with her plan is that the guards (or the chancellor) are smart enough to realize that she’s going to do this regardless of if her father forbids it or not, and as such they’re stationed all over the place, blocking off the easy route outside. That means taking the route I took around the castle walls looking for stuff, and that means you have to run and constantly manage your direction while you’re doing it (which is why there aren’t any screens of this segment) since there are mobile guards who move faster than you do except at a dead run. Add into that crashing into things due to momentum and bouncing backwards into your pursuers, and this can be a frustrating little segment if you don’t pay attention to the running momentum much like me.

We can’t go out the front gate because there are guards there too, and wandering around leads us to the kitchen and the head chef:



“I understand. I'll open the door to the cellar. Please follow me. There are powerful monsters down there. Are you ready for this?”

The only way you’ll ever know about this is if you talk to some of the NPCs in the kitchen before you go up to the king’s bedroom, otherwise you have to wander around talking to everybody to figure out what to do next which wasn’t terribly fun the first time I played this.

Anyway, the chef opens up a trapdoor underneath the party, dropping us into the sewers underneath the castle/town.

Dungeon Theme: Cold Darkness



The sewers have a very confusing layout, although there’s only really one path to the exit, which you find by generally going down and right all the time. Lots of broken paths abound, lots of crates blocking off chests with infitesmal rewards, etc.



I should note that the head chef is a liar, since these guys are mostly pushovers compared to the guys from the Tomb, they have more HP, but they deal around the same damage or less than the stronger monsters from the Tomb. Since I’m still conserving resources, I generally just resort to thwacking things to death with regular attacks.

Again, nothing much to this “dungeon,” but I do find a chest with 3 gella tucked away in a corner, and the chest is blocked on both sides by a ton of crates I have to blow up or pick up and toss which was more than a tad annoying. The sewers are a one time dungeon as I recall, so you have to pick up everything you want now, which isn’t much. Just a few stat apples, some gella, and a Magic Carrot.



Ten to fifteen minutes of wandering around and beating the crap of random mobs gets us the exit, which lets us out here:



Town Theme: After the Chaos and Destruction

Potion Berries are the next tier of healing items, restoring 1k HP to whoever you use it on.

This building’s on the bottom right of the town, next to the fairgrounds entrance.



“SPELL: Are you guaranteeing the lives of the people?

Belselk: Don't worry, I'm a busy guy. Just give me the Tear Drop and you won't
see me again.

[SPELL steps forward and gives Belselk the Tear Drop.]

Belselk: Grab the prize and go through the gate as soon as it opens.
[He turns to leave]

SLASH: Wait! I'm not done with you yet! [he runs forward] You demon. I don't know how you got here, but.

Belselk: So. What are you going to do?

SLASH: Revenge! This is what I live for!

Belselk: Like I said, I'm a busy guy. Let's make it quick, shall we?

SPELL: No, you can't do that! You're crazy to go after him by yourself.”

Berserk’s in the middle of town, just hanging out by himself. You can run into the cronies running around for extra fights if you want, but you’re going to need every last scrap of strength you have to win this one (so no grinding here, obviously). Running full steam into situations where he’ll get his head lopped off (and mistaking this for “Courage”) is SLASH’s modus operandi, and we’ll be pulling his chestnuts out of the fire more than once over the course of the game.



“You guys don't make very good toys. We have to be so delicate with you humans. Here, how about a little dance?”

Boss Theme: Power Fighter [This theme shows up when we fight most of the big bosses of the game, except those who have their own unique themes]

Berserk is impossible to beat without grinding a ton in the Tomb, or would be if he didn’t spend two thirds of his time gloating and wasting his turn. He simply deals too much damage to win a battle of attrition with him. He has two attacks; one is a party wide ball-and-chain smash for about 100-150, and the other attack is a single attack for around 300-350. Please to be noting that the guys have max HP totals in the mid 300’s and SPELL’s is somewhat less than that.



..and SPELL takes a dirt nap from a flail-to-face impact on the third or fourth turn of the battle, which is not good since I only have one Revive Fruit, and I’m not wasting it here, so from here on out it’s basically a battle of attrition between the guys and Berserk, and the reasons why I won were because I upgraded the ARM twice and Berserk spent most of the time gloating and flailing my party for largish chunks of damage they could survive.

At level 6 SHOOT and a Hand Cannon with the third ATP upgrade deals about 400 damage to Berserk—Berserk has something like 2000~2500 HP, and using the ARM nearly every turn plus chip damage from SLASH took me nearly six turns to bring him down (as I waited for the FP charges for ARM Lock On). The boys got a ton of XP out of it, enough to bring them well into the next level, and SPELL got nothing because she spent the entire time out cold (or flattened into a pile of red goo from being hit by a giant chunk of metal as big as she is).



“I feel like I'm being assaulted by a gnat. I'm running out of patience!”

Game Over Theme: Defeated (Seemed like a good place to put it)
“Victory” Theme: Retreat




“Winged demon 2: We've got to do what we're told. We've got to get this done.”

Extra Theme: A Sorrowful Separation

“I disobeyed your wishes. The [Tear Drop] is in their hands.

King Adlehyde: .It's done. But the [Tear Drop] must not be used for evil. We must.

SPELL: Please don't talk, father. Save your strength. It's my responsibility to reclaim the [Tear Drop].

Minister Johan: Princess!

SPELL: I have made my decision. Our resources must be conserved for the reconstruction of Adlehyde! I have trusty friends. With their help, I will reclaim the [Tear Drop]. [She looks to her comrades.] SHOOT, SLASH. Please help me. I need to reclaim the [Tear Drop] for the future of Filgaia.”



“I'm sure SHOOT is with me as well. We were going to volunteer anyway, but you shouldn't come. You'll just slow us down.

SPELL: What? I don't mean to.

SLASH: If I had known who you were, I would have thought twice about working with you. I don't trust royalty. I never have and I never will. I kind of had an idea, but you still haven't told us the truth from your own mouth. Hide your identity and roam the land. eh? How romantic. You can count me out.

[He turns away; SPELL drops her head].

Minister Johan: That's enough, [Dream Chaser]!”

Also: SLASH is a bit of a shit in general.



“SPELL: [she looks up again] I apologize for my behavior. If people find out who I am, they become distant. I was lonely. But my passion to save Filgaia is no lie. How can I convince you?

King Adlehyde: SPELL. Please. Ohhh!”



“SLASH: What do you want with it? It's far too heavy for you.

SPELL: Please, the sword!”



“It's not for you! Give it back! Princess, you can't support it on your own.”







“I plead again, please join me in reclaiming peace.

SLASH: [takes his sword] Once you do this, there is no turning back.

King Adlehyde: Be strong, SPELL. Protect what is yours. [Dies]

[SPELL lowers her head in silence while SLASH and SHOOT approach the now dead
king.]

Minister Johan: We can't just sit around feeling sad. We must honor the dead. Our beloved king and the men who fought so bravely.

[Minister Johan leaves; the scene darkens. Funeral bells begin to play.]

Prologue Scroll Theme: Funeral Procession






-----

NEXT TIME: Mountain Climbing and Masculine Inspiration

SPELL giving herself a haircut is the single most shocking even anyone in that room had even seen, going by reactions.

Ah, I can explain that. Actually meant to in the update, but it's a Japanese thing. This is easier if you've seen the Last Samurai (that Tom Cruise movie), and you watched the scene where the young samurai kid gets all worked up about his long hair (tied up in a warrior's bushi) being cut off by the Imperial police.

It's not really this way in Japan nowadays from what I understand (I don't know if you know this, but I'm an expert), but basically long hair was a status symbol in the Feudal era due to the sheer amount of upkeep required to keep it clean and looking nice, etc. If you've ever seen Inuyasha or other Japanese media set in the same era you've probably noticed that all of the princesses and noblewomen all have long hair and oftentimes extremely long hair at that. That's not much of an exaggeration. So, if your long hair is a symbol of your status as a samurai or princess or whatever, cutting it off yourself would be a strong statement all by itself.

Since SPELL here wants SLASH to believe in her sincerity to join the party/save the world/not be dead weight (heh), and given his skepticism over royalty in general, the one thing guaranteed to really impress an expy of your generic hotheaded samurai idiot is cutting your royal hair off.

Welcome back to this installment of the Wild ARMs LP!

This much delayed update brought to you by lack of sleep due to severe allergy problems and working in a major grocery store in the leadup to Easter (on which we are closed, natch). I had this section played through and ready to write up pretty much right after I posted the last one, but work picked up the same time it decided to be in the 70s outside for most of the week and unleashing the yearly pollen hell that much earlier.

And maybe the combined forces of Brickroad’s FFIDoS LP and SL’s FFIII LP made me a midge envious.

Anyway!

After the funeral scene ends, the game puts us back in charge of the guys, who are hanging out in the castle’s sole guest room from all appearances (this is the free inn stay spot in the game, although it’s never really worth it as all of the inns are priced within the gains from one or two weaker monster encounters in the area).



Town Theme: Adlehyde Castle

We apparently need to pick SPELL back up, so the duo heads up to her room as that’s the only place she could be (neatly avoiding the problem common to such situations in 16-bit RPGs where nobody was ever where you expected them to be).



“SPELL: Do you like my hair? It's a lot easier to manage. This is easier to move. I can't sit and cry forever. I'm waiting for the rainbow after the rain stops. I'll be strong again. Please, take me with you.”





Now that she’s joined back up, we need an objective beyond “Find Guardians, Retrieve Tear Drop, Defeat Demons, Profit,” and in grand RPG tradition we should probably ask the guy in charge. Who to ask might be a bit difficult since the King is dead and the Princess didn’t exactly say much just now, which leaves the chancellor fellow, Minister Johan.

You can’t sequence break here either, even if you do know where to go, since the guards blocking the stairs in the castle (yep) won’t move out of the way until you do talk to the old guy. It doesn’t take long to find him either since there’s all of three rooms on this floor of the castle.



Whoa.

See, if you rescued any of the villagers in that previous segment, you get a chest for each mook you saved, up to ten (as there are only ten villagers you can save in that segment). It’s mostly a collection of vaguely useful but not terribly important items; save for the Bullet Clip, the several thousand gella in several chests, and the Missanga, which is a left hand accessory that increases a character’s Luck by one grade while equipped, and can’t be Mystic’d, anyway. :’(

We also get a Lucky Card, which doubles the exp and gella we earn in a battle (semi-uncommon item that mostly gets picked up as drops from rarer monsters). Usually a good idea to use these on powerful mobs or bosses, naturally.



“I hate the fact that you're carrying the burden by yourselves. But, our future depends on your journey.

SPELL: Don't worry. Father. For the glory of Adlehyde and Filgaia, I shall reclaim the [Tear Drop]. The Water Guardian, [Stoldark], has spoken to me about the danger. If you say I am the Shaman Princess of the Guardians, then I'm proud to be the Innocent One.

Minister Johan: The princess had a vision! There is no doubt now. You must follow your destiny, Princess. Go west, through the Mountain Pass and you will find the town of Milama. There, you'll find a large shrine. If you are the Innocent One, then you must go there.

SPELL: I don't know anything about being a shaman. But if I can be of any help, I'll deal with whatever is expected of me.”

No…no whining! Huzzah! Then again, this is before they introduced “subtlety” (read: Oh, wait, the good guys behind the PCs are really the bad guys, and the bad guys are really good/bad/patsies, and the PCs are just misguided idiots) into the genre, but I’ll take what I can get.



All of Adlehyde looks like this, and the town’s BGM is still World of Loudening Screams. Not much to say, other than I refilled SHOOT’s Hand Cannon and upgraded his bullet capacity with the gella from the castle chests which is important since I’m going to start running into mobs which can seriously screw me up unless I put the hurt out quickly, and since Bullet Clips are rare, the more bullets I can stuff into an ARM the better. Upgrading bullet capacity is also the cheapest thing you can do to an ARM, and I manage to stick three upgrades on it with the cash I had on hand. I also pick up MagicShell (10 char limit on spell names, which is NOT true for item listings, which makes me wonder why they implemented VWF [variable width fonts] for the item menu and not everything else).



MagicShell increases a target’s MGR by 50% with each casting for the length of a battle—this is actually more for SLASH and SPELL right now since SHOOT’s MGR is so abysmal that he won’t get much out of it (MGR is something like half your SOR score).



This is, or was really, the statue of Zeldukes, the Guardian of Adlehyde, the “Castle” Guardian. Since his symbol’s shattered at the moment, we can’t recruit his rune yet. We’d have to restore his statue somehow, which might be linked to restoring Adlehyde in some way. Not that there’s anyone here who’s offering to do so at the moment.

The way to the Mountain Pass is to basically go back to the Memory Temple and hang south where the road splits.



Going inside we find a pair of castle guards standing watch over the entryway to the Pass (although I’m not sure why you’d bother since Adlehyde seems to be the only kingdom of any size anywhere). The two roaring bonfires are a clue as to the dungeon ahead (no, it’s not a fire dungeon either), and the Pass is where the devs start to get a little tricksy with you. It’s still a fairly straight line from start to finish, but the dungeon’s gimmick and the few treasure-laden switchbacks and hidden rooms make what should just be a quick run into a bit of a slog.

Also: It is still a pass is if this mostly takes place in a sequence of caves?



Do not run into those flowers! They’re a DoT trap that sucks 10 HP from everyone every second (or sprite flash). This is more difficult than it sounds since a lot more of them pop up everywhere in later sections of the cave.



Awww, fuuuuck. It’s a light-themed dungeon. And I have no light! Now I get to stumble around like an idiot and try not to run into flower patches.

This continues for all of a room before I run into this:



That’s…serendipitous? I have this instinctual wariness about oddly convenient gifts. Anyway, the Lighter works just you’d assume a normal lighter would, except for the nearly head sized flame that sprouts from it. Maybe the last guy who owned it tried to light a cigarette and burned off his face or something.

That’s where that lantern (and the other ones later on) come into play, since the Lighter will, er, light them for a bit and brighten the entire map for a minute or so. Later segments will have multiple lamps and more flowers for me to avoid, etc etc.

“So why don’t you just on through the Pass then, since you can just light your way?”

Good question! (I was always pretty good at this) You can’t really run safely through the Pass because of these little fuckers:



If you look closely enough, you can see these little red stones on the ground. Those are not mere decorations, and if you happen to be running as you cross them you trip over them and go stumbling a few steps forward—say right into a flower patch or a wall. So you can’t really run through a series of twisty corridors as your light runs down and with little flower patches everywhere to sap your health for the monster encounters which are much tougher than the sewer guys since everything in the Pass hits for a lot.

If you listen closely you can hear the devs laughing in the background, I swear.

The door to the side leads to a save room (this is only halfway through), and going to the left reveals a door with light coming through it. Hmm, there was that save point just now, so this can’t be the exit, and I don’t think there’s a boss here (there isn’t), so what gives?

Okay, cool, we’re outside for a bit. Nice break from running into death flowers and floundering in the dark.



Uh?



HOW IS THIS A MOUNTAIN “PASS”?

This isn’t a low gap in a mountain range allowing passage from one side to the other, this is a FREAKING BRIDGE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE AIR.

How high are we anyway, I mean, for the horizon to distort like that we’d have to be pretty high up there, alhsflaksfhasl;dkfh

*cough*



Perhaps he’s calculating how long it’ll take to reach terminal velocity should he jump off here? No?

“SLASH: These gusts of wind. If I could harness the power.

[SHOOT and SPELL exchange confused looks.]

OZZIE: I agree. Why don't you give it a try.”



Far be it from me to question the methods of a “master” swordsman, but a hint from a mountain wind?



Note that he doesn’t even learn the technique that he gets from the hint right away, you have to use the “hint” in battle to unlock the actual technique (which is heavily dependant on Luck and how difficult the skill is), and if you fail to learn the actual skill when you use the hint you just do a regular attack.
Anyway, Harpies!



…that’s new? I can’t say I’ve ever had SLASH learn one of his techniques the first time I’ve used a hint. It normally takes six to ten times to pick up. The Sonic Buster is SLASH’s basic group spam, which is instantly outclassed the very second SHOOT picks up his first group spam ARM and I give SPELL a group spam spell again. That makes it useful for the next few dungeons, and by then he’ll have more powerful techs to be wasting his MP on anyway.

Since we’re not done with this dungeon yet, we have to go back into the dark again, but not before I amusingly pick up two chests at the opposite ends of a path branch (that both lead to the entrance back into the caves), placed just cunningly enough that you can’t see them from the other path.

The next few sections are just like before, only with longer sequences of lanterns and flower and stone dodging. As I have a degree in history, I found this particularly amusing:



There’s just something hilarious about putting an ancient symbol of peace-making in the middle of a field of death dealing flowers. If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say it was a statement about war and peace in general.

Not pictured: Me getting another Crest Graph in here somewheres. In the first half I think?

Bombing open a secret door I wouldn’t have found if the lights weren’t on, I find this room:



Yay, world map! But it only has the places we’ve been to (including the places we’ve been to where we haven’t had possession of this map too, amusingly). Boo!

And we’re out!



No more light “puzzles” and death flowers! ~Huzzah~

Milama’s just off to the south, near the coast (fittingly enough, as it’s the city of water, and no, no water dungeon next either)

Town Theme: Marsh Where the Migrant Birds Gather



This is Milama. Milama’s cool, if just for the mind-bogglingly number of hidden items squirreled away in every obvious and not-so-obvious spot. Even the armor merchant is a random NPC walking around and as such is very easy to miss if you don’t talk to NPCs in games anymore (me, usually). The armor merchant’s thing’s sort of funny (yet again) because he actually talks with you for a text box or two before the Buy/Sell prompt pops up.

There’s simply gobs of money, stat apples, and even equipment stashed away in random barrels for no apparent reason (well, there is one, but we’re not supposed to know about it yet). The equipment finds are the next tier of headgear for the crew; SPELL gets a Cute Ribbon *snicker*, SLASH gets a 10 Gallon Hat (or 10gal Hat), and SHOOT gets a Metal Band, all of which offer some very nice DFP boosts.



Wanton destruction! Huzzah!

That shop on the top right is an ARMs Meister, and can only be reached by walking on the top edge of the town’s map bizzarely. The entire town’s a puzzle, I swear.



I find another Crest Graph in the barrels around town, so that gives me two to play with (I don’t think there’s a DQ equivalent to Slow [reduces enemy group’s RES by 25%]), and Kasap reduces an enemy group’s DFP by 25%.



This doggy’s blocking the way into the house, which means there’s something important inside I’d bet. Too bad I don’t have any way of communicating my thieving desires to the mutt though.

Word on the street while barrel hunting is that the owner of the local pub is descended from a Guardian Priest and may know how to get inside the Guardian Shrine north of town, so we naturally head on over once we’re done looting everything in sight.


Jerk.

“Bartender: The Guardians?! I didn't think anyone knew about them anymore. I may be of some help. My father was the last keeper of the Guardian Temple. He told me many stories. Wait until the customers are gone, will ya? This isn't a temple I'm running here. Why don't you guys eat something while you wait?

SPELL: Okay, five hamburgers please.

Bartender: Wow, that's a lot of food for you guys. Who's gonna eat all of it?

[Later, after the customers have left and the three have finished.]

SLASH: I can't believe you had seconds...



Is her stomach an interdimensional void or something? Holy cow that’s a lot of food for a single human being.

“SPELL: Magic casting requires a lot of energy. That's why I'm always hungry after a battle. Plus, I love hamburgers. I learned how fun it was to eat through cooking and eating hamburgers at the abbey. Everyone loves me because I'm a princess, not because I'm [SPELL]. If people need me because of what I symbolize, then I shall do what's asked of me. I will retrieve the [Tear Drop].

Bartender: Okay, I'm ready. Let's talk about the Guardians.

[The three gather around the counter.]

Bartender: There is a room that only priests were permitted to see... My father probably wanted me to be a priest because he made me memorize the password to the room. Write this down. Light the fire at 2, then at 10. When you light the fire at 6, the doors will open at 12. Go through the temple with the light. I don't know what this means, but I'm sure you will find out. Take this with you... My father left this for me, but I don't need it anymore.

And yes, the game puts it in gold text too.

I think I know where Resident Evil got it’s puzzle “keys” from, and apparently the Guardian priesthood is the Red Cross?

That’s it for this update—next time we go hunting for gods and learn to trip the light fantastic!



NEXT TIME: BECAUSE EVERYONE LOVES DIVINE TESTS, FACIAL HAIR OPTIONAL

How... does everyone loving her for being a princess tie in with her liking to make and eat hamburgers?

Is being a princess symbolic of a love of lean ground beef?

She is the Princess of Patties of course.

Perhaps she thinks a fondness for double meat will make her more popular?