Part 8: Escape Bike

Update 7: Escape Bike

Alright, it's about time to go up to the fourth world of the tower which many of you have been talking about so dreadfully. In a lot of ways this is the longest of the four worlds, but it does have some good rewards to be had.

Before that, however, it's time to climb down a bit.



There's an option to buy HP 600 potions in this game, but if you do that you must have a lot of money to waste. An HP 600 potion costs 5,000 gold and will at most get you 20 HP. An HP 200 potion costs 100 gold and will always get you 1. With that in mind, it's just matter of funds and patience as to where you want to put your HP. I have plenty of both, so I go up to 800. That exhausts my money but not my patience. I'll get back to it later.



Climbing up from the unsealed door of White, the first treasure we get is the SAW. I'll talk more about this later, but many of you are already familiar with it. It's a critical item for this playthrough, so it's hanging out in our inventory.



A little bit further up the tower we can find this sub-world, which acts in many ways like the desert world in FFL 2. You move uncontrollably in lines when you step forward, and can try to get treasure chests while you're at it. I get an elixir and call it a day. There's nothing I really want here anyway.



On one of the next floors we come upon a bunch of octopi who seem to be having a bit of a drought...



While these people are experiencing record amounts of flooding.



I'm starting to get a picture of what's happening here.



Dammit Bob!



You can fix the problem by stepping onto the whirlpool/drain. The fact that none of those people thought to do this even when they knew what the problem is just kind of shows that they're too dumb to live. You don't get anything more than a warm fuzzy for this, but it's kind of funny. Moving on...


Ooh, nice. It'll be available to buy, but free armor is always good.



A recovery pool surrounded by spikes. Yeah, they're just screwing with us at this point.



There's also spikes on the way to the door up, which is locked by the power of the final fiend.



Hat and Tails tells us that if we run into Su-Zaku we should run away from him. What are the odds of that happening?



...good enough that I don't even get a shot of the world before he shows up, evidently. A lot of people have mentioned what a humongous pain in the ass this guy is, and it is true that he shows up a lot in here. There's a few tricks to make this as painless as possible, however. In the meantime:

Su-Zaku

Su-Zaku is the Red Bird of the South, and represents among other things summer and fire. It's often confused with the Feng Huang, a bird of similar appearance that has links to the Imperial Court. In this version Su-zaku is a mindless beast who I don't believe has a single line of dialogue and who attacks the players constantly. This ties in well with the association with fire.



Evidently in this world the Tower takes a shape similar to Tokyo Tower, which in sharp contradiction to every other Japanese post-apocalyptic scenario is the last structure standing rather than the first to go. The first key to avoid Su-Zaku is to use the underground passages, so let's duck in here.



A young girl immediately tells us to follow her, and is even so helpful as to come and remind us of which direction we should be going if we should stray off looking for treasure.



She gets accosted by some fairly pathetic monsters and, once we've rescued her, runs off without bothering to tell us her name. Vyse appears to be disappointed.



Exiting the underground passage we come out within steps of a town, one of the few surviving sets of structures in this world.



There's another town around, but evidently Su-Zaku is going to eat you if you go there. Naturally, we'll be visiting it later.



This is the single most sensible thing I believe anyone has said to us in this game. Naturally, we'll be ignoring it.




Taken together, these three tidbits all point to a sewer level at some point, but it's nowhere near as painful as in any other game that has one. In fact, it's barely even noticeable.



This is good news, although it's already been discussed. I feel very sorry for anybody who got to this town on foot and had to find out this way. This kind of makes me wonder if the game checks to see if you rescued the girl in the tunnel...



Unfortunately we can't go Grand Theft Auto on this bike.



Going into the bar nearly gets us into a fight...



But the girl we rescued earlier stops the whole mess and helps make an arrangement with her brother. It's incredibly quick, but essentially we've agreed to recover parts they need to break Su-Zaku's magical field so that we can kill it.



We receive directions to two places we can go to...



And this bit of information, which I contend is an errant fraud concocted of piss and ink.



On the plus side, hoverbike!



Testing the ineffectiveness of the bicycle, I decide to also check Su-Zaku's supposed invincibility. It'd take a while, but I think I could kill him right now if I really wanted to. Wouldn't help matters, but it could be done.



I actually took the bike all the way out here to this building which I can't get into. That'll come later, but that trip...wow.



This is what we're actually looking for, the library which you can see is conveniently located next to a tunnel.



Rather than having to check every single book, if you step on a particular square at the beginning of one of the rows in the library it will zoom through and take you straight to the book you need. I'm convinced this information is a trap meant to torture players who think that the bike will actually protect them. Hell with that.



It's worth looking around, however, as there are treasures to be found.



A short trip through the tunnels ends up with us finding the hidden village, which is located among a bunch of white things that look like the tops of water towers. It's deserted, however.




Luckily they didn't take their loot with them. The ROM is what we need, but the Catcraw (blatant Engrish there) is a nice bonus being about the best agility based weapon in the game. The X-Potion isn't so valuable, but it can be of some use.

Now that we've got the ROM we need to do something with it, but that's a story for another time.