Part 14: Unbearable Tedium. There's a Boat Involved.

Now we're back here again. I like to think my transitions are seamless.



The Karagol is surrounded by land, so technically, it's not a real ocean.
What? But this looks just the way Kraden described it!

Garet is terrible at understanding this ridiculously simple concept. According to Kraden, the ocean is 1) An endless expanse of water and 2) At the end of the world.

I think I spent more time formatting that than Camelot spent planning Garet's character.



This is us buying boat tickets and demonstrating how absurdly useless money in this game is. Given that healing items and inns aren't remotely necessary while clearing out your cluttered inventory every three steps is, it doesn't take long to amass a net worth on par with Warren Buffet.

Anyway, remember that hour of text last update about how Hammet is important? He's not important anymore; now there's a boat.



I have no idea what causes this event to trigger. I basically ran back and forth like an idiot until something happened since I couldn't do anything with my boat tickets until it did.

We all knew that anyone who was late would be left behind, right? Then what's the problem? We'll miss the boat if we wait any longer!



Given how poorly Camelot tried tying things together back there, perhaps it's a good thing that they're now going to give up on any pretense of story connectivity in favor of random vignettes they found moderately interesting. Before the next lighthouse we're going to have an Atlantic City / Las Vegas homage and an obligatory tournament more or less just because. I would not be surprised if our entire party has by this point forgotten what a lighthouse is.



It's impossible to progress without getting on a random ship due to this mound of gravel. They would climb over but, as was the case inside Tret, Garet simply will not have his jeans be scuffed.

The implication is supposed to be that S&M blocked off Silk Road, but if this is the case they probably should have gotten to Venus Lighthouse somewhere around the time we were punching trees with apes in them.



If a whole bunch of...them appear while we're crossing the sea, I won't be able to handle them alone.
We'll be fine...We have a protective amulet!
Captain, get a hold of yourself! That's just foolish superstition!

I mean, come on, believing in lucky charms? That has no place in our rational scientific world where every third citizen has magical powers and trees can imprison people's souls provided they've been hit with the right kind of rocks lately.



This guy steals the protective amulet so that we can hear endless tirades about how everyone is doomed to die at the hands of sea monsters.

We have to make it to Colosso...If we're late, we can't enter.
Even if we find some warriors, we won't make it without that anchor. We're not leaving!

Read that above exchange eighteen times in a variety of voices and you basically have this section of the game in a nutshell. I am not liable if this causes you to be punched repeatedly.



As always, we get to solve problems completely unrelated to anything. What did putting the anchor up here accomplish, exactly? If the thief wanted to steal it he probably should have not kept it on the ship, and if he wanted to sabotage the voyage he should have thrown it in the water or, again, not kept it on the ship. Maybe he was planning to make the captain play a game of hot and cold mostly just to be a dick.



Well, look at that! Did you find our charm for us? [No]
You climbed up the mast to see the Crow's Nest, and there it was? How on earth did it get up there?

I feel this adequately demonstrates the problem with having both yes/no dialogue options and a refusal to write unique dialogue.

Come to think of it, I don't know your name. You want to tell me? [No] Well, I'll need to call you something. Hmm...You look like Isaac. Well then, Isaac...Well, everybody, let's get this ship to sea!

Meanwhile, I feel this adequately demonstrates the problem with your game being written by idiots. I would think it was a tongue-in-cheek option thrown in out of necessity, but the Sea Captain never calls you by name for the rest of this chapter so "you" would have perfectly sufficed.



Welcome to the worst part of the post-Vale slog. The combined text of all the dialogue that takes place on this boat is more than 2500 words. A random Youtube LP shows that this boat ride takes 33 minutes of unedited game time and that people on Youtube think Golden Sun is a good game to LP for 33 minutes of unedited game time.

The gimmick (as explained in a lengthy conversation I'm ignoring) is that monsters are going to attack a ship full of civilians. Rather than hiring professional guards to prevent this or delaying the shipride, they enlist random teenagers to fight off said monsters and force said civilians to row the ship.



Despite the infestation of sea monsters for some reason (based on precedent, I'm guessing rocks fell in the water, because by this point that volcanic explosion we never saw any evidence of may has well have been powerful enough to launch rocks to Mars), everybody agrees that seeing a tournament is far more important than not being mauled by giant squids. Thus we get to be bodyguards on the most tedious boat trip ever devised by man.


(Well, in the top three)

He's unconscious! It looks like the sea monsters got one of our rowers...There's no way around it...Isaac, go ask one of the passengers to row,



As always, Camelot punishes you for not being omniscient but does a terrible of job of coming up with a proper punishment, so more accurately they encourage you to buy a guide and then fail to offer you anything for your trouble. This exact same thing is going to happen three more times (and yes, I mean the exact same thing, down to a bunch of copy/pasted dialogue), and picking the right arbitrary combination of rowers will let you access a bonus dungeon early... Too early to get anything worthwhile there.

Camelot, you aren't really getting this bonus content thing.



If I didn't tell you otherwise, you would probably assume that there aren't any cutscenes other than what I'm showing you. Let's just say this is precisely the point and why Camelot really doesn't get this.

[The exact same thing continues to happen until finally something slightly different but still mostly the same happens]

Isaac, there's a huge sea monster on the ship! If we don't do something...we'll sink! You have to help us!



I love what this monster is doing with its front arm-tentacles. I can picture him with a monocle and curly mustache tying dames to railroad tracks in the 1930s.



As before, I know that applying logic to in-game summons is a bad idea no matter what you're playing, but it's not an incredible leap of logic to think of Garet actually deciding that having a flaming meteor crash into a wooden boat is the best way to save the people inside.



Besides having more personality than the series' main antagonists, the Kraken has the noteworthy distinction of being the boss that finally marks the beginning of this game posing any degree of a challenge. In layman's terms this means doing the exact same spamming of djinn and psynergy but having to use one or two turns to revive party members. Which is typically accomplished by spamming djinn and psynergy.

Land ho!



This is what happens when choosing an intentionally terrible group of rowers. We end up landing on Crossbone Isle, which is apparently an unexplored and mysterious island unknown to any of the sailors who regularly travel between the major cities on either side of this very well-known body of water established as being a lake.



Every city has members of the worst priesthood ever to revive characters for money, but this man is noteworthy for directly owing us his life and having the power to raise the dead but still charging us more per service than we paid for the tickets. Leo X would be proud.



Well, these civilians were ready to risk their lives to see a tournament that's starting almost immediately, but I'm sure nobody will mind if we roleplay as Richard Burton for a while. Go around and try not to get killed. Have fun.



I'm not going to go into detail about any of this dungeon just yet. Suffice to say we can only get a few items before hitting a brick wall, needing to turn around, and magically having no problem finding Tolbi from this unexplored and mysterious island nobody's ever seen.



Thanks for all your hard work. Your efforts got this ship to shore. I thank you again. Hurry, everyone! Colosso is already underway in Tolbi!

Ah, so we failed.


Sorry about taking that detour and causing you to unnecessarily risk your collective deaths yet be unable to win the prestige necessary to bring meaning to your otherwise meaningless lives.

On the plus side, it did get me some herbs.