Part 145: Tower of Temptation 2
Petiso posted:
This tower is the only part of the game which is totally new for me, never found it when I played the game even though I had heard about it.
Honestly, aside from the loot, you didn't miss much. It's not the most exciting dungeon to play through.
Speaking of....
----
Welcome back!
Time to begin one of the more annoying puzzles this dungeon throws at us.
Many areas of branching paths that go back and forth between the second and third floors.
Just picture that screenshot, only with the camera facing different directions, and maybe some other enemies, about twenty more times.
Yeah, this game doesn't fuck around with the ultimate equipment. It lets you know right there in the description that you're not going to find a better axe anywhere.
'Course, the mace is helpful for the enemies around here who resist explosion. Milda very much appreciates having a choice.
Also, two Mage Seeds and a Life Fruit got dropped.
Yeah, this is where the loot starts to pick up.
Also, Feena and Rapp continue to reap the rewards of fighting.
Anyway, after a while we come to the next puzzle of the area. Switches that open up side paths that lead to more switches that open side paths that....
Yeah. Still, we get yet another Mage Seed from a Brain Bat.
Some of the side paths try to mix it up by having other ways of getting to the switch.
Oh. And one of those, I guess, too.
Anyway, once you pull enough switches to backtrack back to the entrance area, this statue here throws its sword at the wall to open the way forward.
Which also leads to a teleporter back to the first floor, for a quick escape. We won't be needing that. (Just yet.)
The elevator on the fourth floor also skips directly to the 7th, for our next gimmicky annoying maze-puzzle-thing.
There are these colored walls up on the seventh floor, with cooresponding switches. To get to them, we have to navigate through a maze on the fifth and sixth floors.
While contending with new enemies. Layelahs can drop Blue Potions, but they can also teleport, cast a wide variety of spells, are immune to most magic, and can dodge physical attacks very reliably.
Fuck these guys.
Toad Demons are slightly less annoying, but still not fun to fight at this level. Still, I score yet another Mage Seed from them.
And Feena picks up another level 3 spell. Protection is just a spell version of the Cone of Light: temporary invulnerability to one party member. Handy, but very expensive.
A demon-slaying boomerang? Isn't that just the cross from Castlevania?
And... something we could buy in Zil Padon.
Ghosts are, obviously, ghost-type enemies. Complete with the resistance to physical attacks.
Not sticking around to fight these assholes.
That might come in handy.
Back up on the seventh floor, we find the winner of the "worst-hidden secret passage" award.
And Gaia's brain? Oh dear.
These guys, oddly enough, are easier than their non-Gaia cousins downstairs. They can cast Crackling, but blizzard is easier to resist than explosion. Also, it does less damage.
Still, it's nice to get a breather. And by "breather" I mean "encounter that I can actually fight".
The end of floor seven brings us to floor nine, which has an interesting gimmick.
Stepping on any of the pit traps in the narrow hallways will drop you back down to floor eight, whether into the main maze, or in a separate spot that leads up to the boss gauntlet.
However, if you simply wait for it to close back up, you can walk across without incident, allowing you to collect the loot up on this floor.
Some of which may be very welcome.
Shit! I thought I was done with these assholes after the Twin Towers!
They can drain both MP and HP. Not worth fighting.
Oh, you thought there wouldn't be hidden passageways up here?
The Ruination Knife here is interesting. No attack power, and reduces defense by forty, but it adds three hits to the basic combo.
Yes, three hits. Needless to say, this can get hilarious when combined with the Chain of Gems.
The lower area has a lot of rooms like this, connected with narrow hallways patrolled by monsters.
Not to overstate things, but these two are probably the most important items I've picked up in this dungeon.
Anyway, the way back is this trapdoor back down to the seventh floor.
From there, it's a hop, skip, and a jump back up to the ninth, then down to the eighth, then up to the tenth.
This tower is not a very straightforward dungeon, is what I'm getting at.
And up on the tenth floor, we find this ugly motherfucker.
But we'll be getting to him next time.