Proper progress

I head off the the objective marker and find that it's a familiar egg. Turns out that familiars don't just come from your heart, but anything with a lot of life/love around it. Also that all the monsters I've been fighting are wild familiars. to assuage Oliver to thinking he's been killing off the same kind of things that's been helping him, Dripp tells them that they are not dying when you beat the life out of them, they just got to somewhere else. Or could be that Drippy is lying again.

"It's called HFIL, and is totally not the after life!"

So, finally having a use for the "renewal" spell I got, I use it on the egg to help it hatch. Out pops a little green fairy thing soon joined my party. Great, another level 1 familiar that I have to spend an hour grinding to be use full...

I named it Charm

To thank me for giving it life, Charm gives me a growth spell that unlocks new areas of the forest, so at least it's a bit useful already.

This game is kinda metroidvania in it's spells.

With access to the rest of the Forest, Oliver heads off to the magic spring that gives life to the forest. Down side is that it's all dried up, explaining why the 'forest of plenty' isn't so plentiful.

Spring? looks more like fall to me.

It doesn't take long to figure out the cause of the problem. The guarding of this forest has been driven crazy just like the last one, so it's time to slap it around a bit.

A gladiator minotaur, names Gladiataur. Cute.

The guardian not only has a really cool design, with net like horns/antlers, but also has two stages. First he does straight up attacks with his sword and shield, which was pretty tough and had me constantly switching back to Oliver for healing. Then at half health he throws away his sword and shield to focus on charging attacks. These are easier to counter, but hurt like heck when they hit. Then at 1/4 health, Drippy finds the discarded shield and flings it back at the guardian, knocking him out for a bunch of easy hit. Was not expecting that. 

Knocked out!

After that it's a quick thing to finish the fight and send the guardian packing. Apparently every boss just walks away after a fight. Weird. At least I got a new page about the guardian.

Page get!

But there's still the matter of the dried up well of life, It would take a heck of a lot to fix that- Oliver just uses the renewal spell and it works. A low level spell that takes no MP to cast restores life to an entire forest! Oliver is either OP or the rest of the world is just dumb for not fixing these simple problems sooner! Also, yet another story page! 

Forest clear!

So now it's off to the desert. There's a clear spike in the difficulties of the enemies in the over world, which Drippy even warns about. I guess since i'll be here for the next several levels, they just put the enemies at a mid point instead of scaling them.

After managing to not die when crossing the desert, I finally reach my destination, the city of Al Mamoon.

I'm betting the king is a cow...

So first up, it's side quest time! There's only a few here, transfer enthusiasm from person to another, trek back to the forest to deliver a guy lunch, and kill 10 skeletons. Not even bounty quests. Staying at the inn got me a new history page, so there's that.

More reading!

Back onto the main story line then. Oliver finds the sages that he needs to learn magic from, but it turns out that he quit the whole magic sage gig and now just sells bananas (or whatever the silly in game name is).  

Yes, we have no bananas 

Apparently, the dark evil wizard dude took a piece of the sage's daughter's heat. This disturbed the sage so much that he gave up on fighting the evil wizard and set his life to looking after his daughter and selling fruit. 

The real problem ins that the daughter's heart isn't just missing a piece, but her it closed itself off in self defence, so Oliver can't just put a new part in with his locket.The solution then is to travel to Oliver's world and find the soul match of the daughter, helping her out would open the heart of the other. And it just so happens that she looks just like the girl who was watching Oliver and his friend take their car out in the beginning.

Kinda looks familiar. 

Going to the girl's house, Oliver finds that the door is locked with no answer. A passing neighbour says that the family there is having all sorts of problems. The girl is sick, the father's become an argumentative workaholic, and the mother is beside her self not knowing what to do. In order to get to the bottom of this, Oliver tries using his unlock spell to open the door.

What's a little B&E between friends?

Oddly enough, the door has a dark power keeping it sealed, so the spell doesn't work. Oliver starts heading off to figure out another way in, but then Pea comes by and some how opens it. This stands out since the only purpose this short delay has is to show that Pea has some weird powers different or greater than even Oliver. 

Once inside, Oliver explains to the girl that he's not some crazy person (debatable) and he wants to help her. She explains that she can't go outside due to being sick, but Drippy detects that there's actually nothing physically wrong with her. The girl asks Oliver to leave and seems really worried about her father coming home.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

 Oliver heads off to talk to the father, but finds that he's short tempered and radiating purple and black fumes. Either there's some dark magic going on, or he just really stinks. His wife comes by with some lunch, but he just yells that he's not hungry and slaps it out of her hands. 

This is getting a bit too real.

The wife leaves, and the father continues to yell at Oliver until he passes out, the purple mist forming into a ball that sucks Oliver into a pocket world. There Oliver has to fight the nightmare that has formed in the father's heart due to having his kindness removed by the evil wizard. Yup, that asshole is fucking this up in Oliver's world too.

The googily eyes kinda kills it.

This is a really good fight! All the elements up to now finally come together and flows well. Attack, defence, using spells, switch between Olive and familiars, all of it comes into play in order to fight this boss and all his status ailment attacks. 

Once the fight is over (and the nightmare doesn't run away), the father is still missing part of his heart. Luckily the wife comes back and she has more than enough kindness, so a couple spells later, and he's already up and flirting with his wife.

Apparently kindness makes him horny.

Oliver returns to the daughter to tell her the good news and that she's not actually sick any more. The father also shows up to tell her he's sorry how he acted and that she doesn't  need to be afraid any more. It's all a little on the nose, since he goes on to describe the complex reason why she was preventing herself from leaving, even though he was away from home under an evil curse and couldn't have known any of what was going on. 

Don't ask how I know all this...

So the daughter gets up the courage to go outside, even doing a happy dace in the yard with Oliver. Turns out that she has so much courage now, that Oliver can take some of the extra and give it to the girl back in Al Mamoon.

The sunlight, it burns!

In the fantasy world, the girl shows signs that helping her soul linked counter part did open her heart up, then one injection of courage later and she's right as rain. Seeing this, the sage also has a change of heart and says that he'll help Oliver get even more powerful at magic. 

Finally getting some sage advice.

The sage tells about how there once was a powerful flue made by three kings that could ward off evil. likely not a coincidence that there's also 3 party slots in the options menu, so i'm betting we have to make another flue at some point.

Made by red Link, green Link, and blue Link

But the best part of this is that the daughter, Esther, decides to join your party, along with her dippy looking bird familiar! Should be interesting how this change combat, I don't know if i'll be having to juggle both her and Oliver in a fight, or if she an AI fighter.

Also she's level 10, just a few lower than Oliver. No need for grinding!

The sage then dumps a whole bunch of new magic spells on Olive, none of them i have any clue what they do.

That's a lot of magic...

So the game really seems to be hitting it's stride. The danger is getting more serious, with the wizard affecting the real world in real ways (no dumb guards not opening gates). The combat is getting more interesting and complex. We have our first party member, a bunch of new spells, and can also now transfer courage and kindness! This game is getting good!