Part 17: Days 35-36 - Rude Goldberg Villainy

Days 35-36 – Rude Goldberg Villainy

”Grantus was a pretty cool guy, wasn’t he, Pattimo?”

”Sure was.”

”Sucks he’s dead now. But you know what I’m gonna do?”

”What?”

”I’m gonna buy flowers and put them on his grave.”

”Eh, he didn’t seem like the type for flowers.”

”I’m doing it anyway.”



”That store on the beach said these flowers can grant wishes.”

”Okay….”

”If I could wish for anything, I’d wish for Grantus to still be alive, so he could help us beat up Xelpherpolis.”

”Right right, can we get on with that now?”

As per Grantus’ dying words, our new goal is to rescue the Princess with the key he provided us with.

Pattimo said we could go at 18:00 hours at the latest, but this doesn’t mean we can genuinely do this earlier. If we go to the palace early, time will skip forward to 6PM, no matter what. If we wait for 6PM, we get forced over there.

Anyway, we head over to the palace to get this show on the road…


Now Playing – Kick Off
(This theme plays through the whole event, even during battles)



“It’s probably best to attack with 3 people, at the most.”

Translation: the game needed an arbitrary reason to enforce the 3 character limit here. There will be nothing subtle about our assault, I assure you.

“You’re right. I’ll go, so, Mouse, choose one other person for the attack.”

Another reason why you should build up Rummy: she forces herself into the party here. Anyway, we pick Beak as our third member and head on in.



“Yep! It’s showtime folks!!”

“Until we bring the Princess back, the rest of us should stay here and take care of the palace guards.”

“Now that Grantus is gone, I bet the enemy’s defense system has been weakened.”

What defense system? The demons? Cause they’re still here in force. And nobody seems to be cognizant of the possibility of Xelpherpolis teleporting in to stop us.

Suddenly, there’s a sharp whistle sound.



These guys never stopped anyone walking around the palace before, so why now? Also, we have the general of the entire army and the Royal Guard Captain, so why don’t they tell these guys to buzz off?



Logic is not on the table, as usual, so all we can do is rush inside.

Once we’re inside, we have a time limit to rescue the Princess. We have to get her out before the time of the wedding.



The time demons are still here, like I said.



We also now have to fight Pandule soldiers of various types. We saw the Paladins in Rummy’s dream sequence. We also saw Magic Armor Soldiers, but not these female variants, who are naturally sexualised to high heaven.

Seeing as Grantus claimed we were erasing his demons and other flunkies from the timeline without even knowing we were a KANON, is it possible we’re engaging in wholesale slaughter of the island’s inhabitants right now? Think about it.



Despite being in the midst of storming this palace with all the subtlety of a brick, the NPCs do not acknowledge this. Lazy lazy.




These enemies are annoying. The floating spheres are called “Bull’s Eyes” and the wee cannons are, well, “Cannons”. While they’re not all that threatening, they take minimal damage from physical attacks, and I’ve already mentioned how much this party set up sucks with magic. Mouse’s Dirge spell is the way forward here.



Otherwise, it’s a brisk run up to the Princess’s room, where we use the key Grantus gave us.



“We have no intention of harming you. Please stand down immediately.”

Maybe you should say “I’m the captain of the guard, the Princess is in danger, let me take her somewhere safe”, Rummy?



The court ladies move out of the way after some hesitation.




”A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one!”



“We’ve gotta get out of here, now!”

“Exactly! Let’s hurry!”

Just want to point out that for no discernable reason, the rough sketch version of Plosi’s ugly portrait is here.



Now the time limit is displayed clearly on our watch, and the Princess follows us as a pseudo party member.

If we fail to get out before the time limit, we get a single dialogue box from a random soldier like “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE!?” and then….nothing. It might be a problem with my emulator, but it just cut to black with no game over screen. If there is a sequence for getting caught here, I might not be able to witness it.

EDIT: Polsy informs me it just gives you a generic game over with no loop. No idea why it zonked out on my emulator.

Anyway, now we must escape the way we came. We can’t go out the front entrance for arbitrary reasons: it needs to be the exact back entrance/exit we came in from.




Again, you’d think Rummy could announce her identity, but no, we have to throw down.


Now Playing – Rebellion



This time, against a batch of the weakest and most generic Pandule soldiers, for some reason with a different battle theme. Like this is supposed to be special or something?



Once we win, Rummy shows us this is a secret exit to the castle.

We then cut to the others waiting for Mouse.


Click here to see the aftermath of our rescue.





“At last we finally rescued the Princess before her wedding!”

“All of us are safe.”

“Everything’s gone according to plan. It’s incredible.”






“Without all three treasures, and especially now that the Princess is with us, there’s no way…It’s about time for the wedding ceremony, but without the bride, there’s no point. We’ve won this battle!”




“Im…impossible! How could that be?!”







“Loyd-L” always makes a noise when it says something, although I always hear more of a “POCKLE POCKLE” than a “KLACK” noise.

“Her body isn’t moving at all!”

“Wha…what is this thing?!”

Voice: “I’ll tell you, as a parting gift for your journey to the underworld.”


Now Playing – Jawarro’s Theme




Jawarro: “He will serve as your guide below!”

Lloyd: “Klack!”



We cut to the wedding proceeding without a hitch. You may notice Xel now has a bunch of generic stones where the other treasures used to be.



Jawarro: “Yes. I plotted the entire scheme. And you guys fell right into my trap. Of course the 3 treasures are necessary for the ceremony, but what’s essential are the powers of the spirits on the island, not the treasures themselves. At this very moment, Sir Xelpherpolis is using magic gems to replace the 3 treasures in his wedding ceremony. So time will loop around once again! And there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it.”



Jawarro: “Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!”



Jawarro: “It was easier to fool you all if he didn’t know.”

To summarize, this entire plot hinged on:
-Feeding Grantus false information about how the loop worked (when? From the beginning? Did he not know anything about it until Mouse turned up on the island?)
-Expecting Grantus to challenge Mouse to a duel and give him the key to the Princess’ room
-Expecting Mouse and Co. to storm the Palace despite overwhelming opposition and Xelpherpolis still being seemingly immortal and invincible

All this, just so Jawarro could engineer a really specific place to trap us with her paralyzing magical robot. Maybe Jawarro should have just kidnapped Rinna herself? It would have saved her a lot of time and gotten Mouse alone.

Jawarro: “I manipulate the islanders with the time spell. And Twinboom governs the loop. As long as we are both still around, we don’t need any of the others.”






Jawarro raises her arms, and Mouse rises into the air.





Jawarro: “I’ll make sure you forget all about him! The same goes for all of you. Starting tomorrow, you’ll be starting the first day as if nothing happened. You’ll totally forget that this troublemaker ever came to this island. In order to do that, this meddler will be sent to the outer limits of the farthest dimension!”




Mouse is slowly lowered into the black whatever.



“Don’t make Mouse disappear!!”



The dagger Ano gave Mouse slips from his pockets. The one he gave him as a memento of Gallhint.



Gee, I wonder who that could be?





It’s hard to appreciate by screenshot, but Mouse unceremoniously plops to the ground here.



The voice extols us to attack. We get to pick two party members, and then…


Now Playing – Rebellion



We face Lloyd as a boss. He’s not hard to beat. He doesn’t even get a hit in against my team.



Lloyd’s limbs fly off in a very low key explosion.




Jawarro: “Ah, no matter. The wedding ceremony will be over soon. I’ll see you again, on the next Day 5. And next time, I’ll banish you to eternal nightmares Mouse!”

Jawarro walks off.


Now Playing – Defeated








“Time will repeat once again.”

And so it does, and Mouse awakes at the start of a new loop.





We all know what they’re hinting at, but the real question is how did they find the time to sprint to the docks, leave this cryptic message, and then leave without being seen?

“Mouse!”



We cut to Claire’s basement.




“That’s right. It’s “Lloyd”. It’s a mechanical doll built by the enemy. I discovered it right before time looped, so I stored it in the Time Vault at Claire’s shop. I thought it might hold some clues about them.”

Seeing as we were seconds away from time looping, Ano must have discovered his latent power of teleportation to get this thing into the Time Vault before we looped. And we definitely saw him still crouching as the pillar of light shot up from the palace.

“Well? What was the result?”

“….I got depressed. One look and I lost all my confidence. There are so many components I’m unable to analyse. It was created with their dreaded technology.”

“Hey, hey, isn’t Magic Science your field of speciality? Are you saying there’s stuff you can’t understand here?”

“Rather, I’m saying I can’t make heads nor tails of it. Let’s say it was made by Jawarro. If that’s the case, her scientific knowledge is far superior to mine. Even taking the treasures didn’t change the situation at all. To have been held up as the island’s top Magic Scientist and played that role all these years even though someone far superior existed….I’m so embarrassed. What a fool I’ve been!”

“What are you saying, Ano! Don’t lose your confidence over something so trivial. Hang in there and keep up your research! Don’t you think we’re all embarrassed?!”

“That’s right. Besides, among us, you are the top Magic Scientist.”

“Uh…that is true. Thanks, everyone. I’ll mess with it some more. I’ll analyse it and attempt to restore it. It’ll take 3 days…no make that 2 days.”

“OK. Then we’ll come back the day after tomorrow. We’re counting on you, Ano.”

“Well, gotta give it my best shot.”


Now Playing – Claire’s Flash




Everyone looks at Claire and the now glowing part.






“Amazing…! How’d you figure it out!?”





We’re given the chance to set ourselves up for an excursion. If by chance you didn’t think time would loop after rescuing the Princess, this is where you’ll discover you’ve lost all your stuff. Dick move, Ephemeral Fantasia.

This is also the only chance we’ll get to use the Time Vault and select party members (by mirror at least) before Claire and Ano shut up the shop to focus on Lloyd for 2 days. That means neither member is available, of course. No great loss in terms of Ano, but Claire is a mainstay of my parties at this point. Fortunately, there’s nothing important for me to do after this, but other players might consider using the time to challenge the dungeons they didn’t get to beforehand, or just plum explore the island. Not so fun if Claire’s one of your best people.

Anyway, we shall leave things here for now.

Join me next time, where Pandule changes forever.