Part 16: Tower of the Goddess

Update 16: Tower of the Goddess

Welcome to the penultimate update of this Let’s Play.



Since we’ve reached disk three the main menu has changed once again.



Let’s load this thing and get going.





The rocket train drops Rion and Lilia off at a station near the Mushroom Tower.





The ominous structure overlooks the entire city.





: R…Rion!



It appears the guards were expecting us.



: Rrrrargh!!





Unfortunately for them, Rion has Cutscene Competence and OHKOs the three riot guards.



: INTRUDER AT BEAGLE GATE. INTRUDER AT BEAGLE GATE.





: INITIATING PRIME-3 SECURITY LEVEL.



The final stage of the game takes place in the Mushroom Tower, Dorothy’s base of operations. It’s a very short level, and we’ll be getting through most of it in this update. There is background music, but it’s not on the OST.



The first thing you’ll notice is that Lilia is with us. We can’t interact with her, but she will follow us as we move around the area.







The ground floor of the tower is a circular room with some kind of pedestal in the middle.



The pedestal is surrounded by four lamps, none of which are currently lit.







Some of the bulbous pods around the walls are open, and will dispense various restoratives and PPECs. You can use each one twice before they run dry, which is great if you struggled against Rita.



In order to advance the stage, you need to examine one of the strange openings on the walls.





Rion strides up to the opening while Lilia examines the central pedestal.



: How does this Shooter work? There are no switches or anything. It’s probably the only way to get to the other rooms…

: Rion!



: Lilia!





Lilia teleports away. Not good!







Rabbits are also not good! But with D-Felon we can at least deal with them.



Man, I will never get tired of doing that.





Killing the Rabbits results in one of the lamps lighting up. Interesting, but it doesn’t really get us anywhere. For now we need to find Lilia, and to do that we have to examine the Shooter again.



Psychometry hasn’t failed us yet, so let’s see what it tells us here.





The orbs above the Shooter change colour when we examine them. Also…

: Rion…? Rion! Can you hear me?

: Lilia! Where are you?

: I don’t know…but the same lights as those on that Shooter are here. They’re probably our key to the other rooms! Let me try it…





Our perspective switches, and we now find ourselves in control of Lilia. This room contains one of the Mushroom Tower’s two save points, and is the centrepiece for the main gimmick of the stage.



Examining any of the lights causes them to turn off. We need to turn the lights off in the order they appeared in Rion’s reading, which in this case is Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, Red.



Once you do that the cyan panel in the middle will glow and a cutscene will trigger.







A segment of the tower lifts and begins to rotate itself, realigning its elevator tubes.



After several twists it snaps shut again.



The game boots us back to Rion after the cutscene. The Shooter, or elevator, is active now, so let’s hop on in.





We arrive in a smaller room with three more inactive Shooters. There’s clearly another puzzle here, but before we can do anything another very brief cutscene is triggered.









Surprise! It’s an upgraded armoured trooper. Aside from the swanky yellow paintjob and slightly streamlined look these guys are pretty much the same as the ones we fought back in the first stage. The only real difference is that they have more health.



That being said, fighting three of them at once is pretty tough. This is the point where I would normally bust out the Appolinar we picked up last stage and simply explode their heads, but, uh, I seem to have run out of Delmetor.



Fortunately, armoured troopers are just as vulnerable to D-Felon as any other regular enemy. Get them all bunched up together and you can stunlock them into oblivion.





When they’re all dead we get a scene of another light coming on downstairs.





Reading one of the inactive Shooters gives us another set of colours. It also asks us if we want to switch to Lilia, so let’s do that.



We resume control of Lilia, and immediately there’s a problem. The sequence above the Shooter was Light Blue, Purple, Red, Green, Yellow, but there’s no corresponding yellow light for Lilia to interact with. Instead we have a dark blue light. There’s no way for us to enter the sequence we were given.



We can switch back to Rion by interacting with the central pad.



And here we come to the main gimmick of the level. Every floor after the first will have multiple Shooters that display different coloured sequences when Rion reads them, only one of which Lilia can actually input. The rest are decoys meant only to waste your time. This tedious memory game takes up most of the level, turning the final stage into a glorified puzzle.





Here are the sequences for the remaining Shooters. Knowing what colours Lilia has available, we can tell that the second of two is the one we want.





Entering the sequence is simple enough, but when we deactivate the second colour…





Suddenly, Birdman out of goddamn nowhere!

: Aaahh!!



: So, the program Mother fears is hidden behind that pretty face of yours?

: Who are you?!

: Heh, heh, heh…does it really matter? You’re going to die anyway!



: Oh…my head aches…Who is sending out that powerful telepathic force?



: It hurts, doesn’t it? It’ll end soon. The moment of death feels so good…



: You’re not real. You’re just a psycho-illusion! If I just…close my mind…you’ll disappear.





Lilia banishes the illusory Birdman and falls to her knees.



: I feel the presence of Galerians in this tower…and they’re very powerful.



Ominous! But we can’t turn back now.





Activating the sequence triggers another scene of the tower realigning. It’s the exact same cutscene as before, so I won’t bother linking to it again.







The next floor pits us against three Arabesques.



They go down much more easily than the troopers, mostly because they’re faster so it’s less of a hassle to get them all bunched up for a D-Felon pummelling.



Right on cue, the third lantern lights up. We’re getting close now.









As on the first floor, there are also some dispensers giving out PPECs and recovery capsules. No Delmetor, though, which is starting to make me nervous.







Here are the three sequences for this floor. Now, which one is the correct one?



The third one, by the look of things. Once again, however, trying to input the sequence leads to a cutscene.



: Rainheart! How is this possible? I saw you die!

: They’re gonna make me take even stronger medicine. It’s your fault. It’s all your fault!



: No, no! Don’t play games with me! Rainheart’s dead. This is just an illusion. A psycho-illusion to try and confuse me and throw me off course!



: I know what I’ll do. I’ll scan to find out who’s behind this!



: Don’t come any closer to Mother! Stay away!!







: Was that…me? How could that be possible…?



How indeed? I’m sure we’ll find out sooner rather than later, but the implications are disturbing.



The next floor throws something entirely new at us in the four-legged Arabasque. These guys are, in a word, pathetic. They’re fast and take forever to kill, but deal pitiful damage and lack the ability to spit acid.



They also have no defence against D-Felon.



Their deaths trigger the last lamp, leaving us free to examine the Shooters.









The colours match the second sequence, so let’s have Lilia enter it. Thankfully this is the last time we’ll have to do this. As usual, we get a cutscene for doing so. No prizes for guessing who shows up this time.



: Rita? So, after Rainheart comes you?



: You can’t fool me anymore. I know that you too are only a psycho-illusion.



: Rion, wait! Don’t go any further! You’ll be killed!

: You’re not real, and I’m not going to listen to you.

: Rion, Mother is very frightening. She will surely kill you too.





: Goodbye, Rita.



First Birdman, then Rainheart, now Rita. Illusions or not, they aren’t going to stop Rion and Lilia from reaching the top of the tower.







The central panel glows, and the tower realigns. But this time something different happens when we step into the Shooter.



Instead of going up a floor, Rion is transported to where Lilia is.



: Lilia!



: Rion! Now is our only chance to reach the top!









The teleporter activates, transporting Rion and Lilia into the heart of Dorothy’s domain. What trials and terrors await us here, in the very centre of the Mother Computer’s power? Find out next time, in the final update of this LP.