Well that's thirty-nine down...

So after finishing the last 4 side quests (two of which the party didn't make any money on), I bought a whole bunch of super healing items (at up to 20,000$ each) and sent the arty into space to find whatever it is they were looking for. It turns out that it's a 4th hidden planet that contains the knowledge of an ancient civilization, but before it can tell the arty what is happening they first have to kill a couple of boss monsters. The fight against these bosses is really hard and frustrating since not only are they super powerful but also immune to magic, so my mage is useless in the fight and I only had 4 out of 5 party members as it was. Since my mage can't heal, all he could do during the fight it give out all the potions i just bough in order to keep the other 3 alive and constantly fighting, so by the end of the fights all the stuff I bought to fight the big bad was used up fighting things on my side!

The big powerful intelligence at the heart of the planet then explains the back story of what is going on. Billions of years ago a massive power of light and a massive power of darkness fought, and in the end the light won and sealed the darkness in another dimension. To make sure that the darkness couldn't get out it placed a solar system of 4 planets over the gateway as a lock, the system that the story takes place in. once every 1000 years though the lock becomes weak enough to let a little bit of the darkness through, and this bit takes to from of Dark Force. To counter this the 4th planet's orbit brings it close to the other planets also every 1000 years and it's proximity spurs on heroes to go out and destroy Dark Force. But since the last time Dark Force showed up it managed to destroy one of the planets, weakening the lock, so this time the whole darkness can escape and the Party must stop him.

Chaz then asks where is the power of light during all this, and he's told that it basically just left for parts unknown, leaving this mess behind. He gets pissed off about learning his whole existence is just to clean up after a neglectful being and says he's not going to jump through hoops for it. They then leave for the ice planet and Rune tells Chaz to look in the basement of the sage mansion, there he finds the sword that Alis from the first game used and it contains the memories of all that fought Dark Force in the past. With this Chaz then decides it's worth fighting for his own reasons and not what some light force says (duh). The party is then told that a big black it has opened in the center of the main world and is killing everything around it, so they fly back and are meet by all the previous party members (now leveled up to the same range as the party).

Before the final battle I have to chose which of the previous party members I want in the 5th space, and since the arty has been hurting for healing since he left, I picked the Raja. The fight with the darkness was in 3 forms and not as hard as the test fights I had to do since it was vulnerable to magic and Wren's barrier spell actually worked on it (first time so far). The first from was a chaotic mass of fanged mouths and eyes, and not all that threatening since it didn't seems to have any way of moving in that chaos. The second from was a pile of thorns and claws, looking more like a plant than anything, but it did look more intimidating since all the thorns were pointed at the party. The final form looked like a humanoid female with metal spiked wings and huge green hair, what's with all these games that make the personification of all evil be a woman?

So in the end the party wins and with the darkness killed the dimension it in begins to collapses, but the power of Alis' sword protects them. Everyone then says their goodbyes, but at the last moment Rika decides to stay with Chaz.

So that's the end of the original Phantasy Star series, and the end for now of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. I might come back to it later to play the shining force games, but I have a lot more games to get through, and what better way to start off 2011 than with a game that mostly takes place in 1911!

So Dark Force, we meet again... and again... and again...

So the party flies off to the other space station, and after fighting their way through they find Dark Force embedded into the main control panel. After a massive fight they finally destroy Dark Force and regain control of the environmental systems, saving the world.

Well it was a little shorter than I expected but still a fun game... Oh, the weather on the ice planet is still going crazy.

So the party returns to the ice planet and Wren digs up an ice digging vehicle in order to get to previously blocked areas. After checking the local weather control building they find nothing is wrong with it and Raja insists that the freak storm is coming from the big evil tower that recently showed up. While exploring the group find a clan of the cat like beings that Myau from PS1 belonged to, and a giant winged one that might be Myau himself. In another village they find that something is causing everyone to get sick and eventually turn into zombies (zombies in my JRPG? it's more likely than you think). once again all signs point to the big evil tower, but before Raja can say "i told you so" he's stricken with the illness too and bedridden.

The party hears that Kyra, a local sage, has gone off to try and take down the tower herself, so they agree to go save her from the carnivorous forest (not coniferous as you would expect) surrounding the place. They show up and find her fighting the trees, and after escaping an unwindable fight (took me 10 minutes to figure that out) she joins the party. Kyra then suggests that they all go to the sage mansion and try to ask their 2000 year old leader Lutz (again, Noah in the first game) for advice. When they get there they soon discover though that even with cryo-freezing Lutz couldn't live 2000 years, instead he transferred all his memories to a psychic ball that would then transfer to a worthy successor. That successor currently is none other than Rune! So the whole time the arrogant Rune was actually the arrogant Lutz (more or less, Rune seems to be his own person, just with all the memories of the previous Lutz), much to Kyra's disappointment.

The head of the sages suggests using the Eclipse Torch (another PSI item) to burn away the evil forest. The party heads over to the temple where it's held and while trying to convince the locals to let them have it, some evil wizards steal it and taunt Rune/Lutz to come after it in the air castle. It seems that after 2000 years Lassic, the big bad from the first game, is not as dead as he once was and is out for revenge. The party find that the air castle some how survived the planet exploding and is hiding in the resulting asteroid belt. They fly off to the castle and after dealing with the 3 wizards they face off against Lassic in another long and tough boss battle. They retrieve the torch and fly back to the ice planet to use it on the evil trees (only you can cause forest fires).

After climbing the gross squelching living tower they face off once again against Dark Force, and in a very hard battle in which only the mages remained standing by the end (ironic since they are the weakest) the party defeats the evil monster! They escape the crumbling tower, Kyra says her goodbyes, they begin to celebrate... and a huge evil beam from nowhere nukes the place they got the torch from!

Looks like their job is not done yet.

The party returns to what's left of the place they got the torch from and find some priests managed to survive. The head priest tells the group that Dark Force, or some even grater evil, must be searching for a long lost place and only the Aero-Prism (another PS1 item) can show it's location. Rune says that Lutz knew the location of the Aero-Prism and it's on an island on the main planet. So the party returns to the main planet and on the way Wren arranges for them a hover craft that can travel on land and water.

After exploring the now assessable water locked areas, the party head off to the island where the Aero-Prism is located. At the entrance of the cave leading to it's location they meet Seth, a historian who was trying to check out the temple on the other side but was chased off by the monsters in the cave. Being completely not suspicions at all he's allowed to join the party, and as they fight their way through the cave system he constantly praising how strong and brave they are, again being completely not suspicious. When they finally reach the temple they get the Aero-Prism and as soon as they walk out side it shoots a beam of light straight up into space. The light also starts to burn Seth and *GASP* he's actually Dark Force! This time Dark Force is in a giant humanoid from and with excessive abuse of the save state system I managed to beat him with all the party still alive.

So now that's left for tomorrow is to finish the last of the Hunting Guild side quests and then fly off into space to see what the Aero-Prism was pointing at. I played for most of today since I wanted to get the game finished by the end of the year, I'm figuring that I'll call it quits for SUGC after that. I have already spent more time on this disc than any other game, and even though the Shining Force titles look to be interesting (Sega's version of Fire Emblem), I think I should end on the high note of PS IV and not the low note of Fatal Labyrinth.

"Wheee! A crash landing! Cool!"

Before heading to Zoi's tower I took a side trip to check out a sort of easter egg. off to the north there is a town that was recently wrecked by an meteor strike, and while investigating the impact crater the party finds out that the meteorite is actual a large space ship. After navigating through it they find the central computer and learn that it was one of the environmental dome ships that escaped the destruction of the first planet, just like the one from PSIII. Turns out this particular ship malfunctioned during take off and got stuck in the plant's orbit, after 1000 years (long after the last survivor on it died) it fell out of orbit and crashed on the town.

It's kinda neat that they actually tied in the third game like this and confirming it as canon. also this segment explains that only 40-90 of the ships continued out to deep space, most of them re settled on the other two planets, so Dark Force didn't kill them all off.

I think finally took the party to Zoi's tower where they disabled the magic barrier and descended into the environmental control system. When they reach the bottom they come across Zoi once more, but this time thanks to the magic staff he became vulnerable to their attacks. It was still a long a though fight, but eventually Zoi was destroyed and the environment systems were shut down so they could no longer make monsters. Demi though had to stay behind to start repairing the damaged done so the systems will work once the source of the crazy monster making commands were stopped. Also now that Gryz had avenged the destruction of his town he left the party to take care of his little sister.

Demi then unlocks a hidden space ship that allows the party fly to the space station in charge of the climate controls so thy can figure out what is going on. The party reaches the space station and meet Wren (different from the one in PSIII but the same model of cyborg), who explains that he's in charge of the station but a year ago all control and communications were taken over by a secondary control station. Wren joins the party and they fly off to the other station, but along the way the ship starts to malfunction. They find that a follower of Dark Force stowed away on to the ship and was attacking the engines, during the ensuing fight the sabature was killed but the ship was so damaged it began to crash.

The ship crash lands on the ice world, right on top of a temple run by the green skinned natives (around since the first game). All the refuges from the world that blew up must have spread enlish enough that now even the locals speak it (before you needed a translator spell or a mogic hat) since the leader of the crushed temple starts yelling at the party. After explaining the situation the leader, named Raja, decides to join the party since it sounds fun, he's an odd old man that always makes lame jokes but his people seem to hold him in high regard. Raja explains that there is a legend that one of the ships that took the refugees to the planet lies buried under a near by human settlement, and it could be the party's way off the planet.

The human town turns out to be named after Tyler, the rogue pilot that saved the party in PSII, apparently he played a big part in saving the refuges and even became chief of one of the settlements. His space ship remained hidden under a passage behind his tombstone for almost 1000 years and now it's the party's ticket out of there.

Now that I can freely travel space, I returned to the main planet and did a couple more Hunter Guild side quests, after that I returned to the space ship and prepared it to go to the secondary space station tomorrow.

A turn for the worse

After finding a way into Zoi's tower the party find a stair case leading down protected by a magic shield, not being able to head that way they head up. When the arty reaches the top they find the android Demi, who heals them after she is freed, but then Zoi shows up. Zoi proclaims that he is working for his god Dark Force (knew that it would show up) and then during a very one sided battle he severely injures Alys with a dark energy beam thing. The party manages to teleport away and brings Alys to the near by village that Hahn is from, but nothing can heal the dark power that is slowly killing her. Hahn and his fiance stay behind to look after Alys while the others try and find out how to stop Zoi.

Demi explains that the environmental controls are located under Zoi's tower behind the magic shield, but the source of the problem is the core AI located on a satellite in orbit on the other side of the planet. Since the only one who knows about magic is Rune the party sets off after him to find a way past the barrier. Rune was last known to be heading for a tower far across a quick sand field, but to get across the party needs to recover a Land Rover from a near by underground base. After getting the vehicle, the party crosses the quick sand and comes across a town having problems with earthquakes, starting a new side quest. The lab controlling the earthquakes was full of rather though robots so I decided to head back after I got Rune.

The party finally catches up with Rune in the tower it was said he was heading for and explains the situation to him, he then explains that he's at the tower to get a magic staff that will destroy the magic barrier. Along the way up the tower one of the party members gets mortally wounded (this game's version of KO) and so I teleport them back to the nearest town and heal at the inn (no need for churches or cloning houses since KOed characters don't die). Since i'm there I decide to tackle the earthquake side quest now that I have Rune, and along the way I net some good upgrades Demi.

The party then goes back to the tower and makes it to the top where there is a boss fight against a giant fly monster working for Zoi over the magic staff. After the fight they get the staff but then Rune suddenly sense something and they all teleport back to Alys. Alys' condition takes a sudden decline and after saying goodbye to Chaz and Rune she dies. There's then a touching cut scene where they bury her and Chaz deals with losing her, the next morning Hahn returns to the academy to explain the situation and the party heads off to explore Zoi's basement.

Working without a net

PS IV continues to be such a huge improvement over the previous ones that I'm playing through it without using a walk-through. in the other games (especially the first) the instructions as to what to do next is so vague and random (like most early JRPGs) that it's almost impossible to know what to do without a guide, but in this game the story is so clearly explained that the next step is easy to find. Even if you get lost you can talk to the party members to get tips on the next objective, something I only ever saw in Dragon Quest XIII (made 11 years later), so other than finding obscure hidden things there is no need for a guide. Also, the game is just so much fun that I keep playing straight and don't want to keep stopping to see what a walkthrough says to do.

Another thing that makes the game feel like a much more modern title is that it even has side quests, where the party can take assignments from the hunter guild and go on story lines not related to the main one.

The Party's search for a cure to people turned to stone lead them to a village of the Jawa like beings native to the planet from the first game. There Rune leaves the party (no more powerful mage) but Gryz, a member of that race and a fighter class, joins the group seeking revenge for Zio killing his village. After finding the cure the party returns to the village of stone people and cures all of them, but before they can head home a monster bursts out of a near by ruin. They kill the monster and investigate the ruin, which soon transitions into an technologically advanced building. There they find a giant artificial intelligence that explains that the remaining environmental systems (on automatic since mother brain died) have recently began to malfunction and produce monsters like crazy, just like Neifirst had them doing in PSII, so the party has to shut them down. The tricky part is that only the android Demi can shut down the environmental plants and she has been stolen by Zoi (how convenient), so the party has to first get her back from Zoi before saving the world. To help them though the AI gives them Rika, an artificial life from that is the advanced version of Neifirst (and less evil I hope). After the party leaves the AI then self destructs so that it could not be used any more to make monsters.

So with a full party of 5 tomorrow I'll be heading off to find a way into Zoi's tower.

Now this is how you make a sequel!

Started playing Phantasy Star IV today, and right from the first sound effect it's clear that it's much better than III. Sega took everything that worked in the first two games and greatly improved them, so just how II was an upgrade to the first this looks like a direct upgrade from II. The only thing I could tell so far that's from III is the 5 party member system, everything else from that game was left behind. Some of the things from I and II carried over are:
-Narrow small character sprites while walking
-Party members displayed on screen during fights
-Backgrounds of fights change with the location
-Well animated monster attacks (and idle animations too now)
-Same anime art style for cut scenes (but much more detailed and full screen)
-Great music and sound
-Good use of the limited color pallet (no purple everywhere!)
-Great writing and dialogue (and not limited to a sentience at a time)

Also they finally made it so the A button triggers talking and looking at things while the X button brings up the menu, though I got so use to the backwasrs controlls that I still hit X now and then to talk to people... Plus they redid the menu and inventory system to make it much easier to navigate and use, and they added a option to talk to the current arty to get information on the next objective.

The story takes place 1000 years after PSII and after the loss of Mother brain and the destruction of one of the planets, life on the planet is in a downwards spiral. Now monster attacks are on the rise and some shady guy named Zio claiming to be a magician is starting a cult and turing people into stone. So the monster hunter Alys and her young partner Chaz is hired to check out the increase in monsters, along the way they team up with the researcher Hahn and the mage Rune and folow the trail of Zio.

I didn't play for too long today since I did some boxing day shopping and picked up 9 new games for cheap. I tested them out a little to get a feel for them, normally to the first achievement (which was often on finishing the tutorial)
Red Dead Redemption: Changes the mood a bit running around in his sharp poker suit.
GTA IV Complete Edition: Virtual Ricky Gervais!
Batman Arkham Asylum: Just like the demo so far.
Assassin's Creed 2: Looks nicer than the first one so far.
Fallout New Vegas: Back to the familiar wasteland.
Alan Wake: Came with a free card for the first DLC, which I already bought for 2.50$...
Final Fantasy XIII: Eh, it was 20$ and far from the worst JRPG for the 360.
Dead Rising 2: Digital watch! Also, Chuck's kid is adorable.
Crack Down 2: Fastest achievement, got one when first booting from playing the demo before.

Also I got all the Mass Effect 2 DLC on sale for 7.50$ so I'll be returning to that at some point.

Well that's 38.3 down...

Well after suiting up the party with all the top gear the walk through suggested grinding up another 5 levels, I figure I would grind along the way to the big boss and if it was too strong I would grind my way back to town. Turns out that it wasn't all that necessary since I beat Dark Force my first try...

This game really is the weakest so far, Dark Force slaughtered my party first shot on the other two games.

So Dark Force says "whatever, I'll be back in 1,000 years anways" and disappears. With that ship clears it's crash course with a black hole (which I didn't know it was on) and everyone lives happily ever after.

So tomorrow it's on to Phantasy Star IV, which I hope is better than this one, and also I plan on picking up a bunch of new games on boxing day sales!

We are the sages that say Nei!

Well the earth quake turns out to be the result of a similar space ship firing on their own (before being blasted with auto canons). Through more dungeons and towns the arty finally learn how this game is connected to the other two. It turns out that Palm (The main planet in the first game) got wind that Dark Force was planing to destroy their world (well it was the earthlings under DF's control technically) so they built 400 of these domed environment ships and buggered off just before it was nuked (guess they weren't as dependent on Mother Brain). A part of Dark Force got on board one of the ships though and turned it evil, then systematically went around destroying or corrupting the other 399 until all that remains was the one the story takes place on.

Now the party has to collect up several magical weapons/armor, just like in the previous games, before they can go off and take on Dark Force one more time. So far I have collected up all the items, now I just need to get a bunch of sages to bless them with the word of power "Nei" to super charge them and then and kill the big bad.

Along the way the android Wren has turned out to be quite handy, I collected several items that allows him to turn into a jet, a boat, and a sub, all large enough for the rest of the party (mass shifting any one?) which makes running around for all these items a bit easier.

7 Worlds, 7 Stories, 7 Days?

So after more dungeons and more towns, the party finds a message from the hero of 1000 years ago left for her sister Laya. She reveals that the war of 1000 years ago was actually due to the manipulations of some dark power (most likely the same dark force behind the other games) and in the end the two sides joined together and went off to find the evil. With this information the party goes off to find Lune to tell him his reasons for fighting are false.

Turns out though that Lune is, as per his name, on the moon. So the party tracks down a rocket from 1000 years ago and launches it to the moon. After leaving orbit they discover that their worlds are actually part of a massive space ship of 7 domed environments! Also the moons are artificial satellites as well. So the party then beats some sense into Lune and he finally realizes that he's been crazy and stupid and apologizes for everything.

Finally Nial is informed that not only does Lune's sister (who he rescued earlier) Alair want to marry him, but also Laya does too. They are both technically over 1000 years old, but Laya did actually help the party out several times (being another white mage) so I chose her. The two get married and have twins, Gwen and Adan, and live peacefully for 15 years until a massive earthquake (spaceship quake?) sends the twins and the cyborgs off on another adventure.

With the 2nd generation finished there is only 1 part left, and looking at the FAQ it seems to be rather short. I'm guessing that even with grinding I should be finished PSIII by Christmas.

Purple, teal, and green...

so after wandering around a few more towns and dungeons the situation seems to be that some guy named Lune, from a world that was frozen for 1000 years, has gone nuts and is trying to take over all the world and kill off all cyborgs. So Nial has added to his party the leader of a resistance movement aginst Lune and the sister of some heroic character form a war 1000 years ago (who has the same name as her sister) who has been in cryo sleep.

The game is really starting to be the weaker of the 3 so far and not really much of an improvement over the second. The graphics try to push the abilities of the genesis, but wind up just showing off the limited color pallet it has. Also the music tries to be more complicated, but ends up sounding bad and annoying (and I normally don't pay attention to game music) to the point that I normally play with it off (may be an emulation issue but I doubt it). The animation of the monster attacks are much more limited than even the first game, I guess due to them not being symmetrical, where just the mouth or eyes of a monster would flash 2 frames compared to PS1 monsters being fully animated at times.

The first game looked like a great 8 bit game (master system was more powerful than NES), the second looked like an upgrade to that, while this one just looks like a bad 16 bit game. Sega should have stuck to the simpler art style of the previous games since the system can't handle what they were trying for and just fails to look or sound good. On the up side, this game has much less grinding so far, due to the random encounter rate being almost at Skies Of Arcadia levels and the best weapons just being available for free in dungeons.

At least this seems to be the shortest of the series to play through, due to it having 7 possible story lines. It's intended to be played through many times to experience each different generation, but I'm only going through one path and I think I'm already half done.

Phantasy Star: The Next Generation

So Nial, the son of Rhys and Lena, goes with the androids from the first part and checks out the kingdom of his mother, and fortunately a handy bridge has been built in the past 18 years so it's easy to get to. Along the way I quickly figure out that over time the massive poisonous rat population has been weeded out by an influx of stronger, yet not poisonous, lizards! if nothing else, this shows how much the land changed for the better.

The kingdom is totally destroyed though and the surviving guard says the attackers came from a cave far to the south. The cave turns out to be a space bridges to the planet Elysium, and apparently that's where all the poisonous rats first came from, since they are more numerous and stronger there. I could only hope by the third generation the lizards will continue to spread and rid this world of poisonous rats as well.

I managed to get the party to the nearest city, after being attacked by 4 star fish and 2 giant naked cyclopes, then healed at the in and saved my game for the night. Tomorow I find out why this act of hostility happened.

Glad you're safe. Well, see ya!

So it turns out that Lyle (the mysterious guy who is helping Rhys) is the prince of a kingdom close to the one that kidnapped Rhys' bride to be, and Lena (the woman who helped him escape the castle) is the princess of a near by kingdom. The game dosen't do a good job making this clear, I had to check on line to find out who exactly they were. So after fixing up the moons the party finally makes their way to the kingdom of the ones that kidnapped Maia (the bride), and it turns out that she was the princess of that land (everyone in this game is a price, princess, or android!) and had lost her memory. He father was pissed that she was going to marry into a kingdom that he had a feud so he kidnapped her and fought against the party to keep her (big mistake).

So after trouncing the king he gives in and offers Rhys the choice of marrying his daughter or the Lena. Since Maia has been nothing but trouble and has the personality of a sack of potatoes (and her people are jerks, even after we took them out of an ice age and fixed their moons), I chose the princess that actually saved Rhys and even fought along side him (and is much cuter). So they got married and had a son called Nial, and lived happily ever after... Until 18 years later when some force attacks Lena's kingdom...

So the saga continues tomorrow with a very predictable title...

Dude, where's my bride?

PSIII is rather different than the previosu two, it's almost like a difretn game that just ahd the PS title slapped on.

The graphics are very different, the characters are fully detailed, the monsters are in dynamic poses and not just straight on, even the buildings are to scale within towns. The menu system is very different, in stead of super imposed on the main view, now the whole screen changes to a 2x3 grid of windows looking like playing cards. The number of party members has been increased from 4 to 6 and monster encounters now happen on 2 rows with several kinds at a time. A really odd thing is that the poison status effect now does not slowly drain your health (like in every RPG) it only prevents the character from healing. Also the magic system has a random element to it, so half the time a revive spell won't do anything but drain MP.

The story starts off as prince Rhys is about to get married to a blue haired woman that washed up on the shore mysteriously a while ago. Before they can tie the knot though, a dragon kidnaps the woman and teleports her to a distant world. The prince then travels from world to world through space bridges found in caves, and collects party members along the way while solving obstacles in his way to his fiance.

Currently the arty consists of Rhys, two cyborgs made 1000 years ago called Mieu and Wren, a mysterous man named Lyle, and a female thief called Lena that helped Rhys escape his castle to find his bride. They all are off to activate a weather controll tower to put the moon back in it's right lace so that they can advance to the next world.

Well that's 38.2 down...

It took most of the day but I finally finished Phantasy Star II!

The party set off to meet the guy who has been reported to be immortal, and it turns out that it's Noah the wizard from the first PS (going by the original Japanese name of Lutz)! Not long after the events of the first game, Mother Brain showed up and gradually started making the worlds fat and lazy, so Lutz went into hyper sleep and would only wake up for a short time every 10 years until some one who could destroy Mother Brain showed up. After this was all explained to the party, they are told that they have to go to 4 towers and collect the 8 powerful weapons/armor needed to stop Mother Brain.

I was not expecting to have to go thorough 4 more dungeons before the end of the game, and all of them were super complex and filled with most of the hardest monsters in the game. The worst of the lost were the Shadows, two hits from them could kill Rolf, my strongest character! Never did beat one.

After much dungeon crawling the party finally returned to Lutz with the 8 items (3 of which I couldn't even equip to the current party members), and after Rolf is given the most powerful sword in the game they are sent to the space station that contains Mother Brain. By using the save state feature I managed to navigate the whole station with out any fights so I would have full health and MP for the boss battle. Before the fight with Mother Brain though I had to face Dark Force, the giant evil power named DarkFalz in the first game...

And he kills half my party in the first hit!

After trying many many times to win the fight with save states, it becomes clear that the party is too under leveled, even with all the grinding I did, to even stand a chance. Fortunately the space ship is an idea place to grind since it's full of the most powerful monsters in the game and I can teleport the party back to Lutz for full healing at any time. So after about 2 hours of grinding most of the party members were around level 30 so I took another shot at Dark Force. Several attempts later, and using save sates like crazy, I manage to destroy it and then went back to Lutz for some final healing. Then the party went back through the space ship. avoiding all fights again and faced off against Mother brain!

It appeared as a giant hologram, thankfully looked better than it's Metroid counterpart, and it had two attacks, one would talk off half the health of the whole party, and the other would take 10% off one person. Needless to say that I restored from a save state whenever it did the first attack and saved when it did the second. After a while the party defeated it and discover the true curates behind everything... Earthling!

The head of the Earthlings explains that humans used and abused the earth too much and eventually it was destroyed, but a few hundred managed to escape in a space ship. They later found the solar-system the game takes place in and set up Mother Brain controlling everything so that eventually the inhabitants of those worlds would not be able to resit a few hundred humans taking over everything. The remainign humans then attack the party as the game ends with dramatic shots of all the party members fighting for their lives.

So tomorrow it's on to Phantasy Star III, which seems to take place in a very different medieval setting from the previous two.

Nier the end...

Spent today grinding monsters for the last time for this game. I earned enough money to get all the weapons and armor needed and close as I can tell there are no more shops for the rest of the game.

So tomorrow I may be finished phantasy Star II!

On a side note, I found a copy of Nier for 10$ new, and since it's an RPG with an average score just under 70 I figured I'd give it a shot. The up side of this is that I kept getting Nier and Risen mixed up since they were both one word RPG titles released with little fanfare winin 2 months of each other, so now that I have them both I won't get them confused.

The power of silly hats!

Well, after trekking through the maze of levles in the center of the map, I finally made my way to one of the cities. Only to find that there was no humans (other than the old women that ran the cloning booths), but also the local population did not speak my language. I then traveled to the other 2 cities on the world map and found the same thing, and without being able to speak the language the party could not buy items, use the teleporters, or even get healed. I then looked in the walk through and found that one of the weird named hats I picked up when I first landed on the planet would allow the party to speak the local language and use shops. From here on it was much easier on the planet, I would keep the party close to a city and attack the powerful monsters and robots with the strongest spells. I didn't have to worry about the SP or HP since I would get 1,000$ to 3,000$ for each monster and it only cost 60$ to heal the whole party.

The most disturbing part about grinding this area though are the zombie rabbits. They range from pale green to reddish brown and are constantly stuffing their intestines back into the hole in their abdomen. Giant death tanks are no problem, but 6 of these things in a row are as tough as they are nauseating.

So tomorrow I should be able to wrap up the rest of the grinding and make my way to find the mysterious unaging man that the locals keep talking about.

Winter wonderland

The party took the last space ship on the planet and flew off to the ice world from the previous game, and there has been some changes in the past 1000 years...

The center of the map has been dug out into a giant pit and inside of it is a giant 3 level space station that is crawling with monsters and robots. I explored around for a while but only found chests with large amounts of money and the party quickly used up all their magi, health, and healing items, so I managed to get them back to their ship to heal and restock back on the first world.

Tomorrow I'll most likely be finding a town in the ice world and grinding out monster for money.

Dayum!

After much frustration and effort I managed to open up all the dams, barely scraping through each one more than the last, to let the flood water out. Then as the last dam was opened a boss fight started up against 3 large flying robots. At first I thought it was odd that the robots only hit with about 6HP on my weakest party member (most robots on that level could hit for 30), then suddenly the fight stopped and the whole party was teleported to a prison satellite where they were to be excuted as terrorists. Not wanting to stick around, the arty quickly tried to find a way out, but soon after there was an explosion and the satellite was falling out of orbit towards Parma (the planet most of the first game took place on). Fortunately, an independent space pilot picked the group up in the nick of time. Unfortunately, the satellite crashing into the planet managed to destroy all of Parma (doesn't look like i'll be visiting familar places there)!

To makes things worse, the party is now wanted also for trying to destroy Mother Brain and the destruction of a whole planet. They do get a lead though on some on the ice world from the frist game that may be more powerful than Mother Brain, so after landing back on their world the party make plans for taking the last working space ship and heading off world.

Piano Man

Didn't play much of PSII today, more on that later, but i am one step closer to stopping the flood. With the help of the walk through I found the entrance to the building holding the flood gate control cards, which were in a non descri structure not normally visible on screen in a remote city. How the heck would I find that normally?! The using a handy map I found on line I tracked a path that wove me though the correct 9 out of 69 teleporters to lead to the store room door. For some odd reason the door was locked with a piano that you needed to use a magical music spell on, just touching the pianio would send you right back to outside of the building. So after working my magic on the piano the door opened and I got the access keys for the 4 flood gates, now I just have to find them.

Also with Neifirst gone all the monsters have disappeared, but now there are swarms of much more powerful robots attacking Rolf...

The reason why I didn't play much was that I bought "9 hours 9 people 9 doors" for the DS today (one more for the growing stack of portable games that i need to finish...). It's a rather obscure release and I had only ever seen it at one EB game, which so happened to be close to where I was temporarily assigned to work. With this being my last day asigned there, I figure I should buy it becaseu it may be gone next time I get a chance to go to that EB games and who knows when I'll see it again new (took me ages to find a copy of Atelier Annie new). The game is a mix of visual novel and puzzle solving (like the Red Room flash game) with great writing and art style. I started playing it and got sucked in, only stopping once I got to the first big choice, then I didn't have much time for PSII...

Yea or Nei?

Well after barely climbing to the top of the mountain to get the leaf to make the gum that lets the party breath underwater, figured It would be better to have Amy the doctor with the party. So without any grinding I bought the items I could from the money gained on the mountain and went out to sea to find the submerged passage to the climate control tower.

The tower was a ridiculously huge maze with 8 floors and 33 inter linking sections, I had to make a color coded map just to make sense of what teleports go where and how to get to the top. When I did manage to get to the top I found the first actual boss battle of the game, against... Nei?!

It turns out that the Nei in our party is actually the good half of a human/monster being called Neifirst that was created 2 years ago. Neifirst wanted revenge on the humans that created her so she hijacked the climate control system in order to produce all the monster. The good side could not stand to see the evil side do this, so 7 months ago she split off from her (somehow) and became her own being. So now Nei attacks Neifirst, but is quickly killed in one attack, then the rest of the party run in for the real boss battle... And were quickly killed.

Fortunately I made a save state right before talking to Neifirst and so I made sure all the arty members (except Nei) were at full health, and then removed all of Nei's items and equipment before they were lost in her scripted death. The down side of not doing all the money grinding recommended in the walk through was that I was rather under leveled to face Neifirst (she's much stronger than any other monster so far). Luckily with extreme abuse of the save state system I was able to keep two of the remaining three characters alive long enough to win the fight.

With Neifirst no longer controlling the climate system in order to make monsters, the thing goes out of control, exploding and relesing all the built u water into the surrounding area. The party teleports away, but when they go to the nearest cloning house they find out that Nei can't be brought back to life (her connection to Neifirst now broken). To mke things worse, Mother Brain has told the police that Rolf and his party were responsible for the destruction of the climate tower and the resulting flooding (they kinda were). So now not only does the party have to make due with out Nei (Kain filling her place), but also have to open the flood gates before all the cities are flooded, and all the while avoiding all the robots sent to arrest them as terrorists!

This game has already lasted longer than the first Phantasy Star and judgeing by the walk through I'm only 1/3 through!

Full House

So I brought the party to the next destination, a garbage dump, and i wasn't sure why at the time. It turns out though that one of the little jawa type creatures on the bottom floor has a boat that he dosen't need any more since he's too busy having fun sorting a mountain of garbage. This is handy for our party since Mother Brain banned all boats 50 years ago (kinda suspicious). With his new boat the party can now travel the world and and visit the two remaining cities.

The first city is a small town with the distinction oh having an inventor there that can make a gum that lets you breath under water, which should come in handy later. The down side is that he needs a sample of a tree that grows on a mountain island filled with powerful monsters, so i'll be grinding there later. Also with this new city comes a new companion back home, Kain the wrecker (a blue mage for robots), but the walk through says he's not much use until we actually face robots so he stays home.

The other city is what remains of the only rocket base on the planet, and can only be accessed by boat. Gee, with the ban on boats it's almost as if Mother Brain dosen't want any one getting off planet. Not that getting there is much use currently since Mother Brain banned rockets too as too dangerous after an accident 10 years ago (rockets that it was in control of). With the new city of course comes a new party member, Shir the thief. Since the only thing worth stealing is a item that lets you save anywhere, she is pretty useless thanks to the built in save state that the collection comes with (haven't used the in game save once in either game). So Shir and Kain will chill back home with Amy and Rudolf for now.

This game isn't truing out to be as hard as the walk through is making it out to be. The walk through says to grind out the levels before going to each dungeon (not really dungeons in this sci-fi setting), but I'm finding it easier to grind by going though the dungeon, then once I'm through I have enough money to buy the weapons I should have and going in, and then go straight to the next dungeon. This means I'm underpowered, but I get money and experience faster.

Again!?

Well no sooner than I get to the next city then the walk through says to head back home and pick up the newest party member. I thought Hugh was the new one for that city, but apparently Anna the hunter is. If this game attributed any kind of personality to the party members I would be suspicious of Hugh since he showed up not sticking to the standard of one party member per town. It's also kind of odd that this top class hunter is at level 1 and has basic equipment, but that's how the game is

So I swapped out Rudolph with Anna and reorganized everyone's inventory so the two noobs could have the most recent equipment. Not that the equipment is the best, I now have to grind about 17,000$ to get everyone the latest weapons (and have about equal levels)...

House calls

The bio-lab was rather easy with all the gear I got yesterday, and with monster giving 200$ per group I mad my money back quickly. After getting the data logs I teleported the party back to the starting city and handed in the data. It turns out that for some reason Month Brain has been diverting power from things like climate control (needed for a desert planet) to the bio-labs (not so needed, unless you want monsters). So now Rolf is tasked with checking out the climate controll center to see if any one has been tampering with it.

Helping along is yet another party member (I just got done training Amy), Hugh the scientist (basically a blue mage). Since I can only have 4 party members at a time I had to chose between Rudolf the kick ass bounty hunter or the low level doc if I want to include him (which the walk through recommends). So I left Amy at home and traveled to the next town, where I'll be doing the whole grinding thing again tomorrow...

Welcome to the party, start grinding!

In the next town the cycle starts again with a new party member and new gear to buy, which means lots and lots of grinding. The new party member is Amy, a doctor who is basically a white mage in the game. After a long time of grinding I finally got enough money to buy everyone the latest gear, which makes killing monsters a lot easier (taking off 23hp instead of 6hp), and all that is left is to explore the bio-lab that Rolf was assigned to look into at the start of the game.

Killing is badong!

So after grinding up enough money to get a bunch of new equipment I went off to explore the next village. Turns out that some gang has been causing a lot of trouble, blowing up buildings, kidnapping, and killing, so the party needs to sort them out.

At this point it's a good thing that I'm using the walk-through since with out it I would not know that visiting the town triggers as new party member being available back at the main character's house. So after picking up a tough bounty-hunter named Rudolph *snicker*, the three of them went to the gang's hide out to teach them a lesson.

Turns out though that the monsters that Rolf was ordered to check out have taken care of the gang for us, since the upper flowers are filled with dead bodies. On one of the dead bodies is a note that explains how the guy blocking the way to the lab is only doing so because his daughter was kidnapped by the gang, so he's extorting and killing people to collect the ransom. So the group them goes to a near by tower and rescues the daughter, covering her face in a veil so the angry villagers don't freak out. They then go to the passage the father is blocking, the daughter then walks up to him still wearing the veil. The father threatens the daughter (not knowing who it is) and she refuses to give him any money and tells him that his actions are wrong.

So he kills her...

Then realizing what he's done he blows himself up...

This game is dark! And this is only the first quest!

So tomorrow it's on to the lab, and hopefully a bit more upbeat story...

Too tired to grind...

Started grinding monsters for money today, some things stay the same in this series, but I was too tired to keep it up for long.

Today I also bought Star Ocean 1 for the PSP for 20$ second hand, since it's from square-enix and out of print I don't feel too bad getting it used. Now I only need to find Star Ocean 2 for 20$ or under and I'll have all the PSP games that I'm looking for that are not available on PSN. It's a good thing that all the smaller developer games that I want (NIS, Atlus, Mastiff) are on PSN for cheaper than second hand and the money does go to the devs.

Blast Processing!

Started Phantasy Star II today, and already it's a lot different than the first.

The whole plot of the first game was basically "The evil king killed your brother, collect magic thing to get revenge", while game right off the bat has a much bigger Plot in just the prologue before you hit start. The game takes place on the desert planet 1000 years after the previous game, and due to the guidance of a super computer called "mother brain" (gee, can't see that ending badly) the desert had been transformed into a temperate climate full of trees and grass. The computer controls all elements of human life to the point where most don't make any decisions any more. The main character is Rolf (name can be changed) and he keeps having dreams about the hero of the past game fighting the big end demon. He's basically a cop and his assignment today is to check out some odd experiment of the computer that seems to be making monsters. Tagging along is his friend Nei, who is a 7 month old artificially created monster/human hybrid and looks like a teenage elf/catgirl. Their path to the lab with the experiment is currently blocked though by some gang member.

The graphics of the game are a clear step up, going from high end 8-bit to mid level 16-bit, and the whole look of the game has a more anime style to it (looking very much like Gal Force). All the main character (and shop owners) appear on screen in little windows when they talk, there are more cinematic cut scenes, and the sprites are more detailed. The fighting system is changed too, now all the monster appear on screen and there can be more than one type, and the characters are seen attacking. It also uses an odd system where the character can basically auto attack anything, or you can select a strategy of using magic, items, defense, or attacking each turn. The difficulty has been turned down a lot too, you're not risking death every fight when first starting.

The controls are a bit awkward, the confirm button also brings up the menu and a different button is used for talking. So when I want to talk to some one, I'm use to facing them and hitting the action button, but that just brings up the menu and I have to cancel out of that with a third button and select the talk button instead. I hope I get use to that soon enough.

Well that's 38.1 down...

Finished Phantasy Star today, and it ended much like I expected.

After tracking down a couple final piece of equipment, I made a mad dash to the lair of the main bad guy, running away from pretty much every monster I came cross. In the end it was a 1 to 1 battle against the evil king and the main protagonist who's brother was killed by the king's men (the other 3 party members were killed off). After beating the evil king the party (after being revived at the church) goes to the governor (the same that we bribed with short cake) to tell him the good news. Unfortunately he was possessed by a evil demon, giving a twist final boss battle (probably original back in 87). Then after several tries I was able to kill the demon and the main character becomes Queen of all 3 inhabited planets in the solar system!

The end credits were kind of odd, they were written on the wall of a dungeon, and most did not seem real (like "April Fool" as the writer). So tomorrow the story picks up 1000 years later with Phantasy Star II!

You put the Laerma in the Laconian Pot, drink them both up

Finished off that grinding today and then went to the ice planet. The whole time there was basically collecting more high quality weapons, and a few plot items (not sure how they related to the plot though yet). Turns out that magic gem I mentioned a couple days ago in my example is just another step on the long line of odd actions. I gave the gem to some guy in an ice tower in exchange for a magic torch, then I used the torch to thaw a magic tree and get a nut from it, which I put into a magic pot for some reason. By the end I hope it makes sense.

At least that's all for the Ice planet. Just two more sections of the walk through to go, I should be done in a couple days!

Play it loud!

Went all over the worlds and collected more items today, and started on a long grind to earn enough money for yet another item (a car of some kind). I have to kill about 100 sand worms on the desert planet at about 1-3 at a time to get enough money, killed about 70 before calling it an night.

An odd thing about this Genesis collection is that the bas volume seems to be really loud. Normaly to play 360 games I have the volume around 15%-20% (my TV can get really loud), but as soon as this game starts I have to turn it down to 3% to not blow out my ears. Weird.

Well according to the walk-through it's more grinding tomorrow to get that money and then off to the ice world.

Suit up!

I spent most of the time playing today just going around to various places in the worlds and picking up powerful items or equipment. If I wasn't going by a walk-through this game would most likely be super frustrating and much longer since things a just arbitrarily placed.

Want a magic gem? Well you need to find the hidden cavern. To find the cave you need to visit the city of poison gas. to get through the gas you need the gas shield. To get the shield you need to find the hidden shop on an oil rig. To find the oil rig you need a hovercraft. to find the hovercraft you need yo talk to a random person in a village on the farthest point of the map.

And what does the magic gem do? I have no idea yet, but odds are it's just another link in the line of things needed to kill the final guy. Or maybe you just sell it for a lot of money, who knows...

Thanks for the lift!

I was tired today so I only played for a short while. Mostly what I did was just travel far out of my way to talk to some guy who ditched his broken hovercraft some where, then travel back to where he left it and claim it for myself. At least now the world map opens up a little more.

Oh hai monsters

Well after much tracking across country (and lava) and back (twice due to the "fly" spell), I finally recovered the robot needed to fly the ship. so my group can now travel to any of the 3 available worlds now.

The combat in this game is kinda odd.
Right off the random encounters don't jump at you with a big screen transition or music sting like in FF or DQ, the screen just quickly fades to black and the battle music starts up as it fades into the fight. Also there can be 2 monsters for each arty member, so a full party can encounter up to 8 of any monster at a time. This wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that you can't pick which of those 8 the party attacks each turn, so most times there will be 8 monsters with low health still attacking because the party dosen't take them out one at a time to lower their numbers.
After the battle there is always a chest left over and you are given the option to open it, most games just give you the loot after a fight but here you are given the choice since some times the chests are booby trapped. So when the party is low on health I have to decline all chests I get just in case they explode and do more damage than the monster I just killed.

One thing at least is that the monster are quite well drawn and colorful (for an 8 bit game) and some even have detailed attack animation (like a sand worm coming up and striking) . At least though I'm at a point I think that I don't need to grind any more for a while.

You cost me a shortcake, so let's go!

Got farther in PS after more grinding for money. The arty took a rocket to the second planet where we bribed the governor with the short cake to get a letter of recommendation for our next party member. After descending down into a cave in the desert the group finally comes across the mage and handing over the letter he agrees to join the party. The it's back to the first world for a side quest to get a new weapon for the talking cat. Lastly the group had to travel though the sewers to a distant land and break a rocket scientist out of jail. The scientist agrees to build us our own ship for 1,200$, but now we need to track down a robot to pilot it.

On a side note, I expanded my PSP collection a little more (nearly doubled actually). I got a 2nd hand copy of Megaman Powered Up for 10$ (not available on PSN and super hard to find new), a new copy of Final Fantasy Tactics for 19$ (also not available on PSN, just the original PSX version is), Disgaea 2 for 20$ (PSN sale) and Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? for 10$ (PSN sale)

How much for a short cake?!

Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection is a odd case. Normally I would finish a game to the end or get all the achievements, but I already have all 1000 achievements and the title is actually nearly 50 games. So i'm going to treat it like the Metroid Prime trilogy and counts as I finsh the RPGs on the disc. This will include:

-Phantasy Star
-Phantasy Star II
-Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom
-Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium
-Shining in the Darkness
-Shining Force
-Shining Force II: Ancient Sealing
-Beyond Oasis
-Fatal Labyrinth

Since these are mostly low end 16 bit titles I'm not expecting too much length to them (except for the later phantasy Star titles) but due to the volume I'll be sticking to walk-throughs closely so I don't waste any time. If I figured correctly it might take up to 45 days to get through them all!

For Phantasy Star I got about 1/4 of the way through, but most of the time was unforgiving grinding. Right off the bat monster can kill you instantly if you're not careful, thank goodness for the save state feature! Story wise, Some evil group had killed the main character's brother and she seeks revenge, she first goes off to another planet and get a talking cat as a party member, and then thaws out a warrior that was turned to stone. The last thing I did today was venture deep into a vampire filled dungeon to buy some 1000$ cupcakes.

It's an odd game so far...

Well that's thirty-eight down...

After climbing up to near the top of the castle, the group is stopped one last time by that crazy assassin that keeps attacking Yuri. How did he even get up there? After a frustrating fight were the Party had to hold back half the time for the secret achievement (which I managed to get when he has a fraction off health left), the party killed him off for good. Then it was only a matter of getting up to the top of the highest point and knocking so sense into the guy trying to kill all the humans.

The first half of the battle was rather easy, but his second from (like all good RPG villains) was as tough as nails. Since this was the last fight of the game I didn't need to hold back on the healing items and boy did we need it with his attack that reduces everyone to 1Hp. In the end we manage to beat him in spectacular fashion (required for the last secret achievement), and with him knocked out on the floor the gang starts the process to destroy the world eater. The power from all the magic in the world is not quite enough so, so the guy who's butt we just kicked lends a hand with the help of his magic controlling sword. All the power then takes the from of a giant (near planet size) glowing feather that cuts the world eater in half. With the world saved the spirits go about healing the world as the credits start. During the credits pencil sketches show what happens with all the characters as they adapt to the new world, the art style reminds me a lot of Castle of Cagliostro.

At 33 days this is the longest to finish a game so far, beating out the last longest (also a Tales title) by nearly a week. But there's no rest for my 360 yet since tomorrow it's on to Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.

Have at you!

So after the distraction of the cultural festival, the party returned to the refugee camp, to find that it was now a quickly developing little town! How long was playing poker!?

The leaders got together and agreed on the plan, even though it will be hard to love with out magic any more it beats the alternative. Also it turns out that the guy who use to help us is using that big castle that flew up into the sky to drain the life out of everyone in the world to power a weapon to kill the world eater. So not only does the group have to take out a giant world eater but also a crazy guy trying to kill every human.

But before all that Flynn and Yuri had to settle their differences with a friendly duel. The tricky thing is that to get the secret achievement I need to get Flynn to use all of his powers in the fight, but I could not get him to do his super move. After doing the fight 5 times and looking up on line for help, I finally discover that Yuri has his own super move and I just needed to do that to trigger Flynn's, and then he used it 4 more times that match...

So after that unnecessarily long series of fights, the party took off for the flying castle, but it was such a maze that I only got to the second save point before calling it a night.

Getting a little culture

The first order of business is to tell the leader of the guilds (the grandson of the former leader) and the leader of the arena (second in command of the former leader) to meet at the refugee camp. That way representatives from the guilds, the knights, the independents, and the empire (Flynn is bringing the prince) will be in one place to talk the plan out.

Talking to the two groups went surprising quick and on the way back I noticed somethign odd. Ever since I got the boat I noticed there was a odd island in the top left of the map that looked like it had a modern building under water in the middle of it, and now the water was gone. The building turned out to be a Japanese high school populated with small cow girls and beetle boys, and they were having a cultural festival. If that wasn't surreal enough, the gymnasium was filled with items and mini-games, including:

- A new side quest for Rita
- Capsule machines that gave rare items
- A 16-bit bullet hell side scroller arcade game
- A way of viewing past cut scenes and conversations
- Background music selection.
- A play where Yuri, Estelle, Karol, and Rita got new costumes and items
- A poker game to win more chips (needed for most things there)
- A prize table to exchange chips for rare items.

The poker game was really addictive and I spent a long time building up over a million chips. The game was basically a single hand of poker that you can bet up to 500 chips at a time, but then if you get more than a pair you can double your winnings with a game of high or low cards over and over. With a bit of luck i was able to at times turn 1000 chips into 128000 by getting 8 high low cards right in a row. several times though a sure bet of the next card being lower than an ace would be ruined by a joker showing up...

So after having fun and wasting too much time there I saved and called it a night.

No, it happened during the flood!

Well I was wrong on both counts, the air spirit was neither on a mountain or the flying city, oddly enough it was at the bottom of a canyon. After walking all the way down the cliff, the party finally find the talking monster and it turns out to be the dragon that was hanging around the guy who keeps helping us. The dragon explains though that the guy who keeps helping us has a plan that involves killing every person on the plant in order to get rind of the world eater. The dragon agrees that if the party is strong enough to defeat her, she will become a spirit and help them. After a surprisingly tough battle the party wins and gains the last spirit, they then agree to go to a near by town to plan what to do next.

While in town Rita gets a bunch of supplies to make a sort of spirit bomb, to fuse together the power of the 4 spirits. Then there is a earthquake as a giant fortress bursts out of a mountain and flies into the air, and also Flynn's second in command tells the party that Flynn is trapped protecting some civilians from monsters and needs their help. So the group goes off to help Flynn and try out the spirit bomb on the monsters as a test drive. Yuri and Flynn go off on their own into the monsters and after a fight against 20 monsters in a row they deploy the bomb.

The bomb takes out all the monsters but Rita tell them they would need something 1000 times more powerful to destroy the world eater. Yuri decides that they should try using all the magic orbs in the world to boost the power, but first they need to bring the world leaders together to agree on somethign so drastic.

2 more down

Well after exploring around some more in the crystal caves, beating another epic monster along the way, I found the talking monster of the earth, and it's the same one that I fought in that ruined city. When I found it though it was in the middle of a fight against the hunting guild, and was sucking u way to much magical power while trying to stay alive, making it go mad. so the group had to kill it and then turned it into the earth spirit Gnome.

Net stop was the desert, when the party go there the fire bird was already almost dying froum wound recived while attackign the new island that sprang up earlier. So he allowed himself to be turned into a spirt too and the group gains Iffrit.

Tomorrow it's off to find the last spirit.

So get two more guys and then it'll be an even fight

The first order of business apparently after getting the first spirit is to save the arena city from monsters spawned from the world eating thing. I'm not sure how the gange found out about it sine I had no idea (may be a line of dialogue I missed), but fortunately it said in the log book that the town was under attack. The monsters were two of the same kind that attacked the group just as they were leaving the desert, apparently it was vision from the first time the world eater attacked. The first time I fought a thin g like this it was a tough battle, but that was about 30 levels ago and even with two this time it was a piece of cake. After the fight the group find out that the other spirits can be found with the fir bird in the desert, a new crystal island, and... I forget. the last one is the air spirit so it's most likely in the mountains or around the floating city.

The first stop was the crystal island, since it was close, but I only got to the first save point before calling it a night.

Splishy Splashy Water Coloured Queen

well after Yuri left his apartment, he bumed into Estelle lad by Repede and she healed his wounds up the rest of the way. Then they went around collecting up the rest of the party and talking about how relived they are to see Yuri in various ways. Since this is the first time the arty was together after a big event I checked out the onsen again and sure enough it was open. The downside is that it cos 300,000$ and only needed a short cut-scene. After that the group followed up on Rita's new plan of making the magic in the air solid so it would be stable. the process consisted of a simple rhythm game and the end result was surprisingly truing one of those big crystals into a being (I'm betting like a summon). So now with Undine controlling all water magic for us, we just need to track down crystals (or make them from talking monsters) for the three other elements. The down side is that the big word destroying thing in the sky is getting bigger.

Did I do that?

I didn't have much time to play today, basically just did one boss fight. The commander was actually just on the other side of the door I last saved at, so it was a straight trip to the fight. After getting beat up, the commander used his last bit of strength to unleash the power of the island, expecting it to give him control of the world, but the power was actually a barrier keeping locked up the ancient giant planet destroying force which is now lose. For his reward, the gigantic crystal that was powering the barrier fell down on top of the commander, and in the crash Yuri was separated from the rest of the party. Then the second in command of Flynn's knights ran up and stabbed Yuri in the gut with a dagger (since Flynn acted less like a Knight when Yuri was around), causing him to fall off the top of the island tower. Fortunately that guy who keeps saving them showed u once again and carried Yuri back to the capital to heal, and then I saved.

The reason I didn't have much time was because I finally broke down and bought a used PSP today. The prospect of getting a bunch of Atlus games (like P3P) for half price on PSN won me over. Not only are the games cheaper than second hand but at least some of the money goes to Atlus, unlike used games where the store pockets all the money. The PSP, like the PS3, does a whole bunch of things extra besides playing games, but it also has the same problem of very few good games. Aside from the 5 Atlus games I bought, there is only a dozen other PSP games have been released in the past 5 years that I'm interested in getting (almost all from Xseed, NIS, or squenix), compare this to the over 30 games each I already bought for Wii and 360.

The down side is that I now have to finish SMT: Strange journey, Etrian Odyssey III, Dragon Quest IX, Persona 1, Persona 3 portable, Crimson Gem Saga, Knights in the Nightmare, and Yggdra Union, all in half hour chunks each day on the way to work...

The bigger they are...

Cleared out the second area of the island, mostly just navigating more water level puzzles, and finished of another epic monster as a sort of mid-boss. This epic monster was a lot easier than most of the previous ones since since all it had going for it was that it was super durable, but it was slow and had a limited attack range so aver a long dull battle we wore it down before it even killed any one once.

Third stage tomorrow, I hope the commander makes an appearance soon.

Heart attack

Well I finally went to that new island, and after some puzzle solving to change the water level I made it to the mid-boss. It was the weirdo who was pretending to be the archaeology guild guy before, and just out of nowhere he changeless us to a fight, 4 against 1. Half way through the fight he reveals that he has a magic orb keeping him alive like Raven, making him near immortal, but after all the fighting he sent too much power and he dies. It's kind of odd since his two lackeys were there the whole time but he chose to fight alone, even the game characters point this out.

Tomorrow it's off to more exploring of the island.

hoy, small fry!

Didn't get much done today, traveling around to the towns a second time only netted me another box sliding puzzle and an add on to my ship that lets me retrieve items from the ocean (giving it a wind waker feel).

Tomorrow I'll finally visit the new island.

1st rule of RPGs

since visiting the new island was talked so much as "the final confrontation where they will end things once and for all" I figured this would be my last chance to go around for any extra dialogue or side quests. So I spent my time today just talking to everyone I could in every town I could, and it turned up quite a lot of things.

-rabbit side quest and bunny ears for Estelle
-fell weapons side quest
-progression on the guild side quest
-progression on the marking side quest
-several new titles
-several new abilities
-a new wearable item for Estelle
-a new recipe
-box moving mini games

And that was just going around to all the towns once, tomorrow I'll do another lap and see what the things today unlocked. One thign though is that with all these thigns I am finding I get the impression that there was a lot more that I missed since it only occurred at certain places at certain points of the game. If i didn't have 33 other games to finish I would definitely play this game all over again with a walk-through so I would miss nothing.

All together again

While crossing the ice flows the party got trapped by some big fish monster that used the magic in the air to weaken the group, Yuri just had enough time to toss Karol aside and tell him to run for cover. Deciding not to leave the group, Karol attacks the monster head on and manages to knock out it's control of the magic, allowing the rest of the group to catch up. After that fight Karol passes out form the cold and the effort of fighting the fish alone and has to be carried to the next town to recover.

They hear at the next town that the commander is using Estelle's power to fill the capital with toxic levels of magic, and also no one from the poor district Yuri came from as been seen among the refugies (but all the rich folk were helped by the Flynn's knights). So Yuri leaves during the knight to try and fix things himself, but the rest of the team have long since caught on to his "lone wolf" act and quickly catch u with him (whacking him when they do for is stupidity). The capital is over run with giant plants and monster, making the poor district inaccessible, so they make their way into the palace. After a series of odd puzzles they manage to get to the top of the palace where the commander and Estelle are, and then they had to fight a mind controlled Estelle... twice... ouch.

During the fights though the commander has enough time to use all the dense magic in the air to shoot a giant magic beam into the ocean, which causes an island to rise that has a gigantic magic crystal on top of it. He then teleports away before explaining what he wants to do with it. After the fight Estelle finally returns to normal and the team has all ti's members back, and the whale-dragon is better so they can now go anywhere again! The team then decides to head straight for the new island and face off against the commander, but I had other ideas to use the new found freedom. I flew around and took out two more epic monster (including the one I couldn't get before on the mountain), visited the onsen (they were open, but the baths were closed for now), beat the 50 monster match in the arena (not yet ready for the 80), and looked around for some more side quests (none so far) before saving for the day.

Ah, it's good to have a healer again, I was getting tired of having to constaly pump healing items into everyone every battle. The only down side is that the secret achievement when battling Estelle needed some item that you only get in a cut-scene only if you visit a particular inn at a certain point in the game, which I didn't... So this is the first of the secret fight achievements that I was not able to get...

Raven cleans up nice.

So the explosion out side was some how connected to using a 1000 year old telepotert for the first time (it's never explained), and now Estelle and Raven are missing. The party tracks the transporter signal to that odd town they woke up in after passing out in the desert, only now there is no town. It looks like the town has been abandoned for a long time and been reclaimed by the desert, did the party time skip or somethign when it visited there? They also see there the guy who kept saving them, but he then leave on a dragon. Before they can look around much the head of all the knights shows up and basically says that he's the big bad that's been after the crystals, manipulating the corrupt nobles, making artificial orbs, and kidnapped Estelle. He then leaves Flynn to finish off the party, since all the knights have to follow him. Flynn admits that he knew the guy was behind it all but thought the reasons were right (though he didn't know what they were) but now he sees the his commander is just insane, and allows Yuri to run off and save Estelle.

They find the commander and Estelle (trapped in a magic bubble) in an old temple, and he is using Estelle as a weapon. While chasing after them they meet up again with the guy who keeps saving them, and he give them a magic sword that can dispel the magic in the air (it's also the symbol of the emperor). They catch up with the the commander just after he had killed another talking monster for it's crystal. Having lost control of the knights Flynn leads, he then orders the leader of the group of knights who keep trying to arrest Yuri to finish the job. It turns out that Knight is none other than Raven! Raven has been a double agent all along, establishing himself into the guilds and then keeping an eye on the party. Now he has his hair cut, mostly clean shaven and wearing fancy gold armor. The party has to fight him, and after they win it's revealed that 10 years ago Raven died in the war against the talking monsters, but the commander used an artificial magic orb to bring him back to life, so Raven had to do what he said or else the orb would be taken away. The commander, not wanting to take any chances, tried to blow up the temple with the giant walking fortress before finding out the result of the battle. Raven uses the power of his orb to hold up the ceiling long enough for the others to escape and remains inside as the place collapses.

The party chases after the giant waling fortress with the whale dragon as it walks across the ocean, and manages to find a small section of it to land on that isn't trying to kill them. Turns out that the section is clear because Raven not only managed to get out of the collapsing temple but also get to the fortress before a freaking flying whale! Also he's back to his old appearance, even with longer hair and stubble some how. After a lot of fight and some odd puzzle solving, the party make it's way to the control room, only to find that crazy assassin again! After the 4th time fighting the guy the controls are damaged and the giant main cannon is on overload. When the party can't slow it down in time, Flynn shows up with half the royal navy and manages to push the fortress enough so that the cannon misses the capital and just blows up a big chunk of the landscape.

The Party then gets back on the whale dragon and races after Estelle and the commander, who have now reached the capital. In a great anime cut-scene the Yuri tries to jump off the dragon-whale to reach Estelle, but the commander uses Estelle's power to blast him back. Then right after Estelle pleads for the others to kill her to stop the commander, he uses her at full force and blasts away the dragon. They all crash land and are injured, including the dragon who has to fly off to heal for a while, and then limp back to the port town to recover. Due to the huge hole in the land the cannon caused there is no direct way to to get to the capital, and flying is now not an option either. So I save the game just when the party has to travel across the northern ice flows to reach the capital from the back.

exposition and explosions

After taking care of the remaining magic cannons the the knights clear off, allowing the party to reveal the way to the hidden city. I first thought it would be some kind of mountain fortress or forest village, but I never expected it to be a giant floating city inside of a huge flying jellyfish monster! The group use the whale dragon to fly up to the city, and after talking to the elder they get a huge bunch of back story.

First off it seems that all the magic orbs are made from the large crystals that the talking monsters leave behind when they die. Basically the monsters absorb the small amount magic in the air during their life, and then when they die all that magic crystallizes into the crystals, then the elf-like people found that if they break down the crystals they can be utilized as basic magical batteries. To give these batteries function they embed a magical formula into them to basically instruct the magic as to what task it's to do. One of these formulas though dosen't need the stored magic of the orbs but can directly use the small amount of magic in the air around it, and it is this formula that is on the artificial orbs and give Estelle her healing magic. The down side of this is that the planet tries to produce more magic to make up for the amount used, if too much is taken out of the air the planet will flood the air with magic to compensate, making it toxic. To make things worse, some kind of giant magic eating monster is said to be attracted to high concentrations of magic and will eat the planet if the amount gets too high.

So hearing that using her magic can lead to the destruction of the whole world, Estelle kinda flips out and runs off. A short time later there is an explosion somewhere off screen and I saved the game before investigating it tomorrow.

Also there was another epic monster, but it was 20 levels higher than my group, so after losing several times I figured I would get it later aver I had gained some levels.

INCOMING!

To track down more information on the destructive artificial orbs, the gang try to locate the hidden city of the elf-like people Judith belongs to (she was from the city that was destroyed in the war, so she doesn't know). They get a lead that they have to use a magic bell on a particular mountain range and that would reveal the path to the city, but when they find the mountain that also find that an army of knights have set up some kind of huge magical cannons along the mountain for some reason. So the group are curently making their way along the mountain trying to avoid being blasted into dust by the cannons.

Deal with it.

Well I sent most of the time just redoing the grinding I lost yesterday. This time I would save every time I return to town to stock up on healing items. Along the way I finally get enough of the ink ingredient to make sunglasses for Yuri and Karol, but they don't look all that good and since they are solid black they block their eyes during dialogue. I was hoping they would look as good as Estelle's glasses I made, they fit her so well that it's odd seeing her without them now.

That was a waste of time

Went to see the giant talking fire-bird, and got some exlination as to why it wanted Estelle. Turns out that her healing magic, which comes from herself and not an orb, is the same kind as used in the orbs Judith has been destroying. So whenever she uses her magic all the magical energy gets sucked out of the air, and left unchecked it could bleed the planet dry. So the bird wants to kill Estelle, but Yuri convinces it to let them find a way to balance the magic power first, and then if it looks like it's going to go out of control any ways they will kill Estell themselves. So now Estelle's plot is directly linked to finding out about the artifical orbs and the fate of her and the world are at stake.

After these revelations I decided to do a bit of grinding, to get ready for whatever was ahead. I killed tons of monsters, gained several levels and abilities, and even took part in the 30 VS 1 fight in the arena. Then One group of monsters killed my party and I had not saved since before talking to the bird...

So a quick visit to the bird later I saved and went to bed, gaining all of 5 minutes in game time.

Sightseeing

With no leads on the artificial orbs, the only plot point left is Estelle wanting to meet with the giant talking fire bird, and I didn't have much interest in doing that just yet. So I used my new found freedom of movment to explore all over the world and pick up a few side quests. Some quests of note was the option of now being assigned quests by the guilds, Repede marking his territory all around the world, and an odd cow person (named Kaow) who trades your items with an ant-lion person...

One interesting thing I found was a building in the middle of a forest. What made this place stand out was that the trees around it were cleared out in the Japanese onsen symbol ♨. So, while it was currently inaccessible, I expect some bathhouse hi-jinks some where along the way!

Tomorrow I'll finally pay the old fire-bird a visit.

Dragon whale!

Do avoid having to go back to the guild city and tell it's head that is close friend is dead and it's kinda our fault, I decided to sail around a bit and expand the map more once the boat was fixed. Eventually though I ran out of open ocean and had to bite the bullet. Turns out that the reason Karol's old hunting guild was there was because the grandson of the head of the guild city got the false information that a giant monster was attacking the head of the arena guild. So not knowing that the head of the arena guild WAS a huge monster, he brought a band of monster hating psychos to her doorstep, resulting in the injuries that lead to her death (by way of our party).

The people of the arena city did not take the death of their leader well and tried to start an all out war with the guild city. So the head of the guild city took responsibility of his grandson's actions, since he was the leader, and committed sepiku (literally) to prevent the war with Yuri giving the final blow. So Yuri is now responsible for the death of the leaders of 4 places, the port town, the desert village, the arena city, and the guild city, and he's the hero of the game!

Now the remaining bit of unpleasantness is tracking down Judith and have her explain why she keeps blowing up orbs and broke the guild's laws. The group find her in the remains of a huge war that happened 10 years ago between the empire and the giant talking monsters. Judith explains that the people (elf-like being like her) in that place had made artificial magic orbs that were so powerful that they drained all the magical energy around them. Seeing this as a serious threat to the planet the talking monsters attacked the city, not knowing why the monsters attacked the empire attacked back and started the war. Some how the orbs (or the secret to make them) survived the battle and began popping up around the world, so Judith (who survived the war thanks to her dragon) and her dragon began going after the remaining orbs to protect the earth and finish what the talking monsters started.

After hearing all this the group accepts her back, calling her stupid for not trying to explain earlier, and now have a new quest to find out how these dangerous orbs are getting into circulation. Conveniently to help with this, Judith's dragon evolves like a pokemon into a huge flying dragon-like whale, that can pick up their ship carry them any where in the world. So the first thing I did was fly all over the place unlocking the last areas of the map, then saving for the night.

From bad to worse...

Well the town they woke up in happens to be the mysterious one written about in the ghost ship note, and then they start askign around abotu the box they find the one that it was intended for. The thing is that the note was written over 1000 years ago, but the people there say the ship has been gone for only 3 years. The box is opened and it's revealed to hold a big crystal, so they take it to the hose of the village mage, but they only find there the guy that randomly saves them now and then. The guy then takes his sword and causes the crysal to evaporate, making this whole quest oddly pointless. With nothing else to do the group heads back through the desert planning to head back to the arena city to finally deliver the letter, but while passing though the small town at the edge of the desert they started off from they find that the noble who was shipping people off into the desert was up to his tricks again. Knowing that the noble is above the law and will continue sending people to their death in the desert, Yuri sneaks out at night and indirectly kills him by luring him into a quick sand trap.

The next day they go to leave but they find that Flynn's knights have blocked off passage through the cave system they went though before to prevent any one from getting to the arena city. The gang manage to sneak through the caves and make it back to the arena city in them to deliver the letter on the new moon, and it's revealed that the head of the arena guild is another of the ancient talking creatures, like the one that Estelle has been trying to find. Before they could get many answers though Karol's old guild shows up determined to kill the being. The creature stays to take care of the leader while the party goes off to take care of the rest of the guild, and after a few fights the creature shows up again hurt. Estelle goes to use her magic to heal it, but it reacts strangely to the magic and goes mad, so the party then has to kill it. Once it's dead it turns into the same kind of giant crystal as was in the box from the ghost ship and Flynn's knights how up to arrest everyone just as Estelle picks it up. The arty manages to escape, but are stopped at the docks by Flynn, who outs Yuri to the rest of the team as the murder of the two corrupt nobles. Yuri asks why Flynn is taking over the arena city and acting like the bullies he's supposed to be stopping. This gives Flynn a pause for thought and the party escape to the boat as he thinks about his actions.

While on the boat the giant crystal reacts to the magic orb that powers the engines and puts it into turbo, causing the boat to blast past the knight's blockade. Seeing the orb go crazy Judith reverts back to her old habits and destroys it, revelaing herslef to the rest of the party as the dragon rider, she then flies off on her dragon. So the party is one short, dead in the water, know that Yuri lied about Judith and killed to people in cold blood, and everyone but Raven has somethign to be depressed about. So I saved there and Yuri will have a lot to answer for tomorrow.

Once more with feeling!

The group trudged through the desert until they came across another of the epic monster, and after a couple tried defeated it. then they found a couple of the adults that were taken off into the desert, but they were ambushed by this weird ghostly floating blob thing. After defeating the thing though they all felt weak and fainted in the desert, a short time later though Yuri woke up to find him and the others at an Inn. I saved here so I'll find out what happened tomorrow.

Even though it was basically just 2 boss fights I had to do them over and over again, for different reasons. During the epic monster fight my party kept dying off. So after a couple of tries I dragged them all the way back across the desert (leveling up along the way) and bought every useful armor and weapon I could from the shop, also stocking up on healing items. Then I went back across the desert and tried fighting the monster a couple more times before finally beating it.

With the boss monster (which Judith said is not a monster) it was more a problem that it was too easy. The first time I fought it the party killed it so quickly that I couldn't get the secret quest achievement, breaking the orb that it uses to heal it's self, so I had to restart from the last save. Then next time I tried using Judith to fight the monster since she has more jump attacks that could get the orb, but she was too different to control than Yuri and the party died while I was trying to get use to her. The third time though I used Yuri's one jumping attack over and over and was able to break the orb before killing the monster! Then I realized that I never scanned the monster for the monster book side quest, and had to restart and do that all over again, the firth time everything went right and that's when I saved.

Hot enough for you?

The group make it to a small town in the desert and find out that the mayor has kidnapped most of the adults in the village and is using them to search for the same talking monster that Estelle is after, so now the party has to not only find this monster but also save the civilians. While in the desert everyone suffers from the heat, except for some reason Raven has more life and energy than ever before. Normally he's complaining that he's tired and old (when he's only 35), but in the desert he's running around and doing back flips, is he part reptile? They finally find an oasis to take a break at and I saved there.

Not so tough...

So the group chase the archaeology guild guy into the cave system and while exploring around I came across one of the legendary huge monsters, which there is a side quest and achievement for defeating them. After a long hard fight where nearly all my characters died (some did actually) I finally beat the creature and got a boat load of experience and money for it, I may have been under leveled for it, and won for shear luck and brute force. Shortly after that battle there was a restoring save point and then the group finally caught op with the guy who took the box. Turns out though he was actual the right hand man of the evil knight from a couple cities back, I should have released it sooner since the archaeologist name was the bad guy's name backwards, but he runs away and the team is left with fighting a boss monster. After that the cave opened out to the desert they were all heading to and I saved there.

The boss fight was actually rather tricky since the monster turns into a dozen bats and there is an achievement for killing the leader bat first, so while everyone was attacking the leader bat the rest of the bats were picking them off one by one until I had to retry the fight when everyone died. The second time I managed to kill the leader bat first, but all of the fighters except Estelle (who had heal magic) so I had to gradually kill off the remaining bats while keeping her alive with jellies since the bats didn't give her enough time to revive or heal any one. In the end I managed to beat enough of the bats to revive the other party members and they made quick work of the rest.

Boxing

When the group went to deliver the letter they were told that the leader of the arena guild only sees people on the new moon. Is she like some kind of reverse werewolf that is only human when the moon is farthest from full? So with some time to kill the gang takes on a job from the head of the archaeology guild, who says some one is trying to take over the city by building up popularity in the Colosseum. So Yuri takes part in several simple fights, until it's revealed that the current champion is Flynn and they have both been set up. Before they can sort thigns out that crazy assasin from the start of the game shows up again an we have to fight him. during the battle all the arena monsters get loose and the assassin escapes in the confusion, also the guy from the archaeology guild runs off with the box from the ghost ship. So after backtracking a bit we catch up with him at the entrance to a large cave, and I saved at the save point there just in case.

3 hour tour

Well after exploring the ghost ship a bit with two parties (the back u team was really unprepared for that) everyone meets u again and they find a small box and a note that it's to be delivered to a town they never heard of to ward off monsters. Once they decide to deliver the books all the spooky goings on stop and they are able to leave. Since this is the first time I was able to explore the world map in relative freedom, I spent most of the time uncovering all the areas I could to get a better idea of the scale and shape of the world. Unfortunately I got too close to my destination and the story progression took over. Currently the gang is in a coliseum town and Raven has to deliver a letter to the head of the place (and Judith is u to her orb smashing tricks again).

I'm betting the group will have to take part in an arena fight before too long, too bad Presea is not around this time...

Now we are off to... oh side quest!

Well the first job the guild had was to help Estelle find the giant talking bird monster rumored to live in a far off desert, but no sooner did the group enter the next city than they get tied up into another quest. Turns out some corrupt knights had secrectly transfered all the workers that were building the city onto a project of building weapons, in a plan to take the capital by force. The group stops the plan and meets back up with Rita along the way, also Raven tags along since he has some busness in the same direction the guild is going, so the gang is all back together (with room still for at least 1 more). When they finally sail off they quickly bump into a ghost ship and split up to look around.

Well there goes the plot...

Got a lot done in the game today.

Since the gang knows that the person stealing the magic orbs is the leader of a particular guild, they go to the guild city to talk to the head of all the guilds. Before they can do that though the protective field around the city breaks and monsters swarm in, then after the monsters are defeated and the barrier is restored the head of all the guilds leaves to stop the monster at their nest. The party then goes to a near by over grown forest and meats up again with Raven, the guy who helped them a few time, and he joins the party. In the forest they come across a spring of magical energy that's going out of control, but after a boss battle some guy shows up and some how fixes the magical spring with his sword. The group gets back and finally has a chance to talk to talk to the head of all the guilds, but Flynn is there first to deliver a letter from the prince for the leader. The letter was actually switched out though by the bad guys and replaced with a declaration of war, the leader gets furious and imprisons Flynn.

Yuri Then trades laces with Flynn so Flynn can warn the knights about the fake letter and the leader lets Yuri out explaining that it was a trick to lure out who was plotting against him and the knights. The party then catches the orb thief and the corrupt governor talking about their plan to get rid of both the knights and the guilds. Before they can be stopped though the governor escapes and the thief flies away on a magic flying chainsaw sword thing... but the dragon rider shows up and gives Yuri a lift to the bad guy's tower. The two of them get captured though and it's revealed that the rider is actual a female elf type person named Judith and she joins the party. The rest of the team catch up and they scale the tower until they finally fight against the orb thief, who after a sound beating throws himself off the tower to avoid arrest. When they return to the guild city they find out that the evil governor has used all his political power to get nearly all charges dropped (everything from feeding children to monster to attempting to destabilize the government), so Yuri takes the law into his own hands and kills the governor while he tries to slip out of the city at night.

With the magic orb finally recovered and all the bad guys taken care of the team is about to go their separate ways, but suddenly a giant fire bird shows up and tries to talk to Estelle. Before he can say much though the knights deploy their giant mobile tank castle to shoot it down and the bird takes off. Estelle is curious about what the bird wanted with her so she teams up again with Yuri, Karol, Repede, and Judith (who just formed their own guild) to track it down.

Things are at an interesting point in the game, all the plot points that have been driving it forwards so far have been resolved and a completely new plot is starting that I don't know where it will go. It's like the past 20 hours was just one huge prologue and the actual story is just starting off now, it should be interesting to see where it goes from here.