To start with, a bit of clean up. Last time I wrote that the prince they met is the son of the sage they were looking for, this isn't actually accurate. This bit is really confusing for many reason...
Marcassin, the prince, is the person they were looking for, but says he has no magic (which i learn later is a lie). Marcassin's father, the emperor, was also a sage (as are all rules of Hamelin), just not the sage they were looking for. This isn't made any more clear by the face that Marcassin looks to be at most 15, when he's actually in his 30's. Likely this was made more clear in the original Japanese, but some of the nuance was lost.
I didn't figure this out until late into this session, when all the things being said didn't add up to my original theory. This also shifts when then were sent back in time to about 15-20 years, not the 30-40 I thought. This also makes Swaine (going by my theory, which has been 90% proven) Marcassin's brother.
Getting back to the game at hand though, when exiting the castle, I was kinda surprised that the town looked just the same as in the future. This should have been my first clue that they didn't travel as far into the past as I thought.
The lack of pig masks is an improvement.
One cute touch that I was kinda surprised they included, is that the quest board in this time period is blank. I half expected to see a little of quests available to me in the future listed there.
Time paradox avoided!
With nothing to do in this past town, it was off to save the princes. Along the way the party ran into a few fights, barely scraping by, but came away with a couple new familiars.
Off to the box with you!
With all the levelling that i was doing against these harder monsters, I figured it was a safe time to evolve Swaine's familiar Celestia (which I forgot to blog about when it got it ages ago). Fighting these powerful monsters, it should level back up to a usable state in no time.
Now don't get me killed!
Reaching the map marker indicating where the princes are at, I see that it's a mine entrance. Figuring that i'll have to travel through a mini dungeon to get to them, which means a save/restore point, I charge in despite having a nearly dead party. No such luck! Turns out that they find the princes right away and dumps me into a boss battle.
Oh look, we're going to die. I blame you Celestia!
Oliver had 1 hp and dropped like a stone before i could shove a restore item into his mouth. Esther has a bit more HP and I manage to get to to eat a restoring sandwich, but this doesn't improve our odds much since none of her familiars can take on a boss (Oliver's group has been the tanks). At this point I was really worried that i'll have to restart back at the start of this session, since i haven't been saving.
Then out of nowhere, Swaine's default familiar (who's been the only one fighting so far) some how manages to grab a power up orb! It unleashes a massive volcano attack on the boss, one shotting it! It was an insane last second save, likely prevented all kinds of weird time paradoxes.
You the real MVP!
With the princes, miraculously, saved, it's time to have a little chat with them. Marcassin seems glad for the help, since he was struggling with trying to cast magic as the party showed up, but Gascon can't help but be an ungrateful ass. He claims that they didn't need any assistance, despite being moments away from being ogre chow, and tells them to piss off for getting in the way.
An odd thing through this whole segment is that Gascon's names is shown as ???, despite being said at least 10 times so far. Does the game some how think it's a mystery as to who this guy is during a quest to save Marcassin and Gascon, with Marcassin already named?
You were 'escorting' us! Ass.
After the jerk and little brother ditch us at the palace gates, Oliver starts to wonder why Gascon seems so familiar. Swaine quickly shoots any discussion on it down as just his imagination.
Really subtle there.
Back to talking with the emperor, the party is told that there may be away to get them back to the future. There's a powerful spell known as Breach time that would do the trick.
Breach time? I thought that was only 6pm on weekends
Before the emperor can explain in more detail, Gascon barges in with Marcassin. He's pissed off that the emperor decreed that he wasn't allowed to teach Marcassin magic any more, since nearly getting him killed and not even knowing how to do magic. Both valid points, but Gascon stomps off pissed and says he'll teach Marcassin any ways.
You dense little twerp!
With that out of the way, the emperor goes on to explain that Breach Time was hidden away in a dangerous place known as the "Tombstone Trail". Also there is the super powerful wand needed to cast the spell, Mornstar.
That's the same wand that's said to be able to stop the White witch, and that the jerk wizard removed from time and space in the present. This is most likely the reason why Oliver was flung back into the past, to get the wand that's unobtainable in the present. Likely culprit for doing this is that eavesdropping council member from before (who is possibly the soul link of Olver's dad).
Well isn't that convenient!
To help with all the undead along the way, Oliver is given an arrow of light spell, not that it will get much use. It breaks the flow of combat too much to drop out of the familiar, switch to Oliver, select the spell command, cast one spell, and then switch back to the familiar, all the while the monsters continue to attack.
At least now i can defeat Gannon!
The trip to the Tombstone Trail was filled with the same high powered enemies, but now are getting more manageable thanks to levelling. With Celestia progressing along nicely to being useful, I took a chance and also evolved Frenzy. I figure that 2 out of 9 familiars being low was safe.
Now a little more horny.
On reaching the trail, I noticed that the entrance looked a hell of a lot like castle castle Grayskull, but being actually grey and not green.
This looks totally friendly!
On entering the trail (which is a standard dungeon), the princes show up and say they've been following us the whole time. Gascon brought Marcassin there since he figures that a place taming with the hardest undead in the area is the pest place to help teach him magic. Thankfully they only show up in cut scenes and we don't have to keep them alive in fights.
I think Swain's about ready to smack himself.
While exploring i managed to catch this weird sperm looking ghost, which i named accordingly and tossed of to the box
Now it's a Boo box!
Part way up the trail, we ran into this skeleton that was blocking the way. Not sure why we couldn't just kick it's but like all the rest, but this one we had to abide by for some reason. He says that this place is just for the dead, and we would have to die to get through.
should be easy, I've died about 10 times playing this already!
The solution is to use the poison apple spell, that causes a death like sleep. They don't go with the sleeping beauty course for waking up thankfully, since half (1/3?) the available princes are jerks. Apparently being mostly dead for a short bit is enough and we're welcomed into the land of the undead. We even get a key to the casino that will be opening up soon.
Hope they get a bunch of customers, or that place is going to be dead.
Up we go along the trail, killing monsters and gradually levelling up (the light arrow spell really is pointless). at about the 2/3 mark the party stops at an abandoned house to rest. Gascon takes this time to help Marcassin with his magic again. Marcassin claims that he's no good with magic and can't cast spells, but Gascon insists that this isn't true and Marcassin used to cast spells all the time. Swaine then none to subtly points out that if Marcassin gets good at magic it would mean he would be made sage and emperor, separating him from Gascon, who can't become either. Gascon, of course, is a dumb ass and doesn't get any of this.
youdensemotherfucker.jpg
Oust side of the abandoned house is another one of those broken robots. At least here it makes sense, half the monsters in this land are mechs of some kind, but by now it's obvious something i'll need to go back for all around the world. I'll just look up on line a list of their locations when needed, since no way i'll remember them all.
A ghost in the machine? Nah, wrong franchise.
Along the way I managed to catch and box up a few more monsters. getting to be kinda pointless since it takes so long to level anything, that if i just stick with my original crew they should be god-tier eventually.
More silly names for monsters i'll never see again!
Progressing along the trail, I noticed that it was suddenly getting a lot darker. I went to take a screen shot just as Drippy pointed out the same thing. Turns out that it wasn't dodgy lighting but a little puzzle section where you had to use the lantern spell to light all the candles in a series of tunnels.
It's dark, how can you see the look of anything?
Along the way I saw something weird creeping along the ceiling. At first i thought it would be some new kind of enemy that was going to drop down on Oliver, but after watching it for a bit I figured out that it was just some mummified egg thing that some how spawned too high and got stuck. I couldn't even fight it since it was too high over Oliver's head!
Well, been quite a while without any glitches.
After that ordeal I found a save point, which means that the end boss was not far away. Since it's late and I was too tired to fight a boss, I stopped there. Looking just a bit further along the path showed that it was certainly near the end.
Next time ominous tombstone against a giant moon!
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