Part 13: True Eye for the Metal Guy

If we're still doin' the volcano thing, we need better weapons.

Totally. My axe is on its last legs.

Do axes have legs?

Well, we've seen swords with them, soooo...










Hidy ho. Here for some weapons?

Yup!

Great! We got sabers, battle swords, bows...

What is that WHAT IS THAT





State of the art mêlée technology, that's what. A dilithium battery charge sparks a minor fusion reaction, generating superconductive plasma from the—

GIMME





...

I won't lie, this is probably going to affect the sale price.

Aw. Can we get a little more off if I buy this thingie too?





No.

That looks kind of painful. Should I get you some water, or...?

Why bother? Until the four of you leave, it'll just happen again.







Oh man, I'm savin' this bad boy for a rainy day. Psi knives for now!

You know, I'm pretty proud of beating Dunatis. We've come a long way.

Yeah! Apollo's going to flip when he sees all the magi we've found.

Look! Another cave!





Well, adventurers gonna adventure! Let's just head on over and—

...

...

_{I'm watching you}

Well that's not unsettling at all.

I'll handle this creep. Hi YAH







...

I DIDN'T MEAN TO I DIDN'T MEAN TO I'M SORRY

Make sure nobody shakes her hand from here on out.

Got it.




Certain boss fights are high enough on the food chain that your mutant can pop ridiculous abilities after you beat them. For example, when we beat Dunatis, Sara picked up Touch. Touch is a drain attack that does non-elemental damage. You don't want to start spamming it all over the place without thinking---for example, hitting undead with it will give you a nasty surprise---but it's a fine ability otherwise and does 80-100 drain damage *without* being backed by magi. It's nowhere near the best we could've gotten, but it'll do quite nicely!







Alright, for real this time. In we go!





ACK










WE NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE I CAN'T SEE

WHAT I CAN'T HEAR YOU I'M BLIND

SHUT UP ZERO







Ugh. Now I have a migraine.

WHAT?

I can hurt you. Don't make me.

Jeez. Be that way.

The barista in Cape Town warned us about this, right? He said there was an artificial eye somewhere that would fix it.

Well, the only place left to look is the volcano submarine.

Submarine volcano.

Isn't that what I said?

We're kind of ignoring the obvious here. How are we going to get to the volcano? It's underwater!

Wait! The townspeople said someone walked into the sea after a mermaid, right? Maybe he found a way to breathe underwater!

And you guys think I come up with bad ideas...







So, how does this work? Do we just wade right in, orrrrr...?

He did say the guy walked straight into the sea. Might as well give it a shot.

Should we stop them?

No. This is going to be great.







Nothin' to it.

What.

Well, he finally did it. His dumbness broke reality.










There's griffins underwater? Sure, why not.

Actually, it's a manticore.

A what?

A manticore! They have the body of a lion, and a snake tail, and...

DIE DIE DIE





...blunt force trauma from Heather slamming her head into them.

That's using your—

No.

Aw.










Man, just our luck. This thing's been out of operation for years.

Zero, I don't think—

Let the man live his dream, Sara.








hot foot hot foot

why are we on fire underwater it doesn't make any seeeense




By law, all RPGs before 1998 are required to have at least one dungeon stuffed full of damage squares. Here's FFL2's. For your adventuring pleasure, you'll be walking over lava this time. It does 1 point of damage every step. It's more a nuisance than anything, but it can catch up to you if you're not paying attention.

No, I don't know how our guys are breathing underwater. It's never talked about and never explained. I see no reason to discuss it further.













*peer*

Roy?

I swear I've seen these guys before.

Like, why are we talking? Why are we not killing?





Looks like you're really getting ahe—

No.

Aw, c'mon!




Headbutt is a very good attack at this point of the game. It's third-tier cost---6.8k, comparable to a spellbook or gun---and after 5 or 10 uses, it's dishing out hundreds of damage. Sure, it's only 65 here—but I want you to keep in mind that the Tortoise was using Shell and Heather jammed her head right through his shell to kill him.














There's also some quality gear in here. It doesn't really make up for the lava, but it's something, at least.







Ooh. What's that thing?

What thing?

That thing over there! The one with all the water!





ow ow ow ow ow





Hey, it's a spring!

A spring in an underwater volcano. It's way too hot for—

Mmmm. Mineral water!

Will you please stop drinking random things?

It's for science, Heather. We won't know what'll happen unless we try.




As far as I know, this is one of the very few springs in the game. A mainstay from FFL1, these things recharge all your HP but none of your abilities. It's put here as a courtesy since you're walking over damage squares non-stop. However, if you stop and think for a moment, you'll realize this is a SaGa game. And, as such, the other shoe should be dropping riiiiiiiiiight about...










You know, you learn a lot about yourself after you've been adventuring this long.

Yeah?

For instance, I've learned that I hate volcanos.

Same.

It'd be a lot less hot if its engine was still online to run life support. But who can repair that kind of tech these days?

One of these days, Zero, I'll figure out if you're a genius or an idiot.

If you do, let the rest of us know.







ow





OW





OW

Hey! I can see the exit!

And treasure chests! One of them must be the True Eye!











Great. Now let's get the hell out of here and never mention it again.








Reeeeally don't know how that worked. At all.

I've heard the speed of light can actually bend when measured underwater.

Yeah?

So I'm just gonna assume all laws of nature don't apply down here.

You know what they say: Once you go underwater, all bets are off.

I've never heard anyone say that.

Uh, I just did? Try to keep up, Heather.







Alright, let's try this again.

Wait! Let's equip our true eyes first!









Okay, this should help.

Does anyone else feel ridiculous?

No way, this is dapper as heck.







It's working! I can see... I can see...





...Zero puking everywhere.

IT'S LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF MY WORST FEVER DREAMS

This whole adventure has been pretty grody, y'know?

I know. Oh, believe me. I know.






Here's the Cave of Brightness and its nausea-inducing floor pattern. The motion continues the entire time you're here, by the way. It's every bit as awful as you'd imagine.

There's not much new monster-wise: ghouls, viri, chameleons, Hofuds... basically the exact same things we've been swatting down since the Mountain Cave. As always, the issue is numbers and time of travel. The Cave of Brightness is relatively straightforward---especially compared to the Mountain Cave---but there's a bunch of floors to make up for it. Also, we'll be fighting with one hand tied behind our back, because...







You okay now, Zero?

Yeah, much better.

Who knew sunscreen was an effective anti-nausea tonic?

Told you so!

Whatever.





Looks like they sent a welcoming committee!

Psh. These guys are total pushovers. Let me get my axe, and I'll—





*plink*

My monocle! I can't see without my monocle!

This is gonna be an issue, isn't it.

'Fraid so.




In SaGa, most status effects (including poison and paralyze) go away at the end of combat. Blind is one of the ones that doesn't, and it's awful. You should always carry at least one set of Eyedrops on you, because if one of your sluggers gets blinded early on, it's not going to be good times ahead. I, of course, did not bring Eyedrops. Way to go, me!

For what it's worth, Blind isn't nearly as crippling as in FFL1. In the first game, if you got blinded, your hit rate dropped to near-zero. Here, you've got just south of a 50/50 shot to hit someone. It's not good, but at least it's not a complete lockdown. Plus, spells and such will still work as they always have, so there's that.
















Your mom says hi.

Wow! Really?

Of course not, you tool.

Hey, who do you think you are? You could at least look us in the eye when you say something like that!

Sure thing.

NO DON'T







Oh well.

Look on the bright side. She'll look great in the gardenias.




A medusa actually sticks Sara with Stone, which is another status that carries outside of combat. Petrification is a time-honored bullshit status effect in RPGs, reaching all the way back to the first Wizardry and (possibly) beyond. Resurrection items? Oh, we'll give you plenty of those, and it'll be obvious which ones they are. But after you get a quarter of the way through the game, WHOOPS LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE TURNED TO STONE LOL. It's supremely obnoxious, and doubly so since I didn't bring any Soft potions. We can't afford to lose Sara in this dungeon since she's part of our crowd control, and I don't feel like hiking all the way back out to redo, so...










Wha? What just happened? Time kind of skipped a little.

Bad stuff. You were pretty stoic through it all, though.

Really?

Yeah. Completely stone-fa—

God dammit, Zero. if I hear one more pun out of you...





Pfft, what are you gonna do? It's not like you can see me.

Oh yeah?





?!

I took blindfighting as an elective. If you're gonna fight in a colosseum, you have to be prepared for anything.




Martial arts don't miss. Ever. They can be too ineffective to cause damage, but you can't straight up whiff with them—or, at least, the chances are slim. Even blinded, Heather can still pummel everything into submission with her skull. In fact, there's an argument to be made for relying solely on martial arts in fights, and it's pretty compelling. The higher tiers ramp up in damage very quickly, they don't miss, and they're completely independent of stats. You still need crowd control, but if you were to otherwise slug your way through the rest of the game with martial arts, it wouldn't be a bad decision at all.










Well now! Let's see what we have here...







Hmm. Heather probably ought to get this one.

Here you go!

Thanks, but it's just, like, a gauntlet. Isn't there anything else in this box? *shake shake*

Uh, Heather?

Yeah?

That's not the box. It's Roy.

put me dooooooooooooooooooooown




Like all giant armor, the Giant Gauntlet boosts strength---+10, in this case. Even without magi, Heather's getting kind of frightening. A lot of people will (sensibly) tell you strength is kind of a dead end as far as SaGa characters go, but I like to have one power-based character on the squad to cover all our bases. I'm always a big fan of the "point this character at the boss and stand back" school of RPG parties. It's probably my training with the original Final Fantasy, since that game mostly involved loading FGTR up with buffs and shoving him out there. Though they're not as effective here, the classics still work, and Heather's evolving into the role quite nicely.

There's a lot of other good stuff in this area, too! Besides the Giant Gauntlet, we have...







woot

nerd











So, Heather. I've been thinking.

Is this really the right time?

About, y'know, the saw. And it not working.

Seriously, we're surrounded by monsters and I'm totally blind.

And I realized something. Something important.

Alright, I'll humor you. What was it?

The saw can't fail. It can only be failed.

I knew I was going to regret this.

I think I've figured it all out. The Lady brought us all together to fight for this world. I really do believe she exists and that she loves us. But my mom... all her church friends... they've got it all wrong. They're feeding us gasoline and making us pray for death and destruction. It's a cargo cult based around a power tool. It's not right.

Omigod, finally! Good for you!

And that's how I've discovered my purpose in life.

O...kay?

I'm going to reform the Church of the Saw!

... 'kay.

You did ask her.

She was just going to tell me anyway.







I'm glad Sara's feeling better.

No kidding! This is probably the happiest I've ever seen her.

It's true! I feel pretty great!

I still can't see.

Oh, quit whining.





Hey, look! Treasure!

...

Oh, right. You can't. You're blind.

...

Sorry about that, wasn't thinking. No hard feelings? Shake on it?

Don't you drain people's life force when you touch them now?

Maybe?

Look, if none of you guys are gonna do the honors...







Not really feelin' it this time.

Yeah. It just looks like a regular ol' sword to me.

Monocles, eh?

WHAT

Omigod! The sword totally speaks!

Bit of a formal party, wot? Smashing. Wouldn't happen to have another of those fabulous eyepieces, would you?

...

This is gonna be a weird one. I can just feel it.




Next Time: Secret Agent Dad!