Part 4: Grind Canyon

Chapter 3 –Grind Canyon

Where we last left off, Lang had set out from Nohl in the direction of Gale Canyon.

Now Playing – Advancing to Far Away Places

(Technically could have been heard a few times by now but I chose to plonk it here)



We could go there right now.

Or we could just go back to Nohl.



Aston doesn’t mind that we left without saying a word.



Dein is naturally less than pleased to see us again.



Maxell introduces us to the first of a number of minigames in Legaia 2: Side Jumping.



He gives us a tutorial. It is….strange. To sidejump, you must first move the opposite analog stick from the direction you want to jump in the direction you want to jump. Then you move the other analog stick in the same direction. Then you have to release the opposite analog stick, and finally the same direction analog stick. Sounds like fun?

Rather than following the game’s directions, however, I just decide to mash the keys.



I destroy Boerto at sidejumping.

For winning, we get the “Sidejumper” nickname. What’s a bet you forgot those were a thing by now?

We also get “Boost Oil”, an item that boosts all statistics by 10% for one battle. This is actually useful for boss fights and stuff.



Turns out Shaun really does have dementia. I must have been right about the barn.



Talking to Nancy initiates a small scene.

“I was so worried about you! Are you all right? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“And….The Aqualith…Did you find it?”

We can either answer honestly or “pretend to have a lead”. Pretending is just pathetic, so Cocky Lang chooses honesty.

“Uh…Actually I haven’t found much of anything…”

”I know I’m great and all, but even I’m not going to catch up to that demon guy on foot. Probably no harm in letting him go back to his base and THEN finding him.”

“I see….Father sent you off with such confidence…”

“But are you really going to get the Aqualith back from that terrible man? You might be killed, Lang…”

“That’s true…But I can’t just sit here and do nothing about it!”

”Also he said he didn’t want to kill me before I passed out, so I might be safer than you think.”

“…You’re right! You’ll never achieve anything if you’ve already given up in the first place! Uh-huh!”



Galvan’s here too, but he doesn’t warrant a scene.

“Did you find the bastard? And the Aqualith? Did you get it back?”

“I’m sorry…I, I haven’t got it back yet…”

“Oh!...N, no, it’s all right. I should be the one apologizing. I’m just a little edgy right now.”

“There’s no need to feel bad about it, boy! I know you’re doing the best you can. What matters most that is you’re safe.”

Basically, every time you get through a major plot event or dungeon or what have you, you can go back to Nohl (and other towns) and see optional scenes like this. As we get more party members there will be more scenes involving them too.

This kind of stuff is my jam. Games that take the time to let you get to know the characters you’re playing as always earn points in my book. But we shall see exactly how well Legaia 2 handles this in the future.

Anyway, it’s time to finally go to Gale Canyon.



The moment we step inside, we find a chest with a charm item.

Equipment in Legaia 2 is pretty standard stuff for the most part. You have armour to equip for different parts of your body: the chest, the arms, and the legs. You also get slots for extra items, such as this Pickpocket Charm.



As you can see here, equipping certain stuff increases your “Weight”. If equipping something would take you over your weight limit, then the game won’t let you. It adds a small measure of strategy to what equipment you use, but it doesn’t matter much in the long run. As I will show you when we reach a certain point in the game, it’s not so hard to trivialise your equipment worries.

As you might expect, the Pickpocket Charm lets us steal from enemies. But it doesn’t do so merely by equipping it.



Skills must be equipped. You have Offense Skills, that activate upon attacking, and Defense Skills, which are passive. You can only equip one of each.

There are other kinds of skills that don’t need to be equipped, and instead enhance the character wearing the accessory, but we don’t have any of these yet.

Now enough about items and skills: let’s get into the canyon.



Lang stands in the middle of the big tunnel of wind we saw coming in.




(It did make that sparkly effect, and Galvan told me I’d need it…..but then again, correlation does not equal causation, right?)

Now we are free to traverse Gale Canyon.



Or not. Our attention is called to a scene elsewhere in the canyon.

Now Playing – Eri and Mari



“Yes. That’s the only place we haven’t searched yet. What’s the matter, Bubba?”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared? For a big, brawly guy, you sure are a wuss sometimes. Hee hee hee!”

“It’s not his fault, Marienne. After all, he’s not a Mystic like us.”

“Hee hee hee hee! You’re right of course, my brother.”

“He may be big, but he’s just a regular human!”



This is it. This is what makes me want to puke.

If it wasn’t obvious, if I had not slapped my avatar there, you would be able to see Marienne’s underpants.

“Panty shots” are rather ubiquitous in certain types of anime-related media. They’re often used as a cheap form of soft-core pornography under the assumption their viewers will enjoy such things. For anyone that doesn’t, they can be especially uncomfortable, not just because they’re examples of gratuitous sexual content, but because those getting their panties shown aren’t necessarily adults. Take Rosario Vampire: it’s all about high-schoolers that start at age 15, and it doesn’t once shy away from showing you their underpants.

Marienne’s age is not explicitly stated, but she sure doesn’t look 15 (not that it would make this better). Lang is canonically 17, and Marienne will barely come up to his waist. One could make some argument about how she could just be exceptionally short and totally of a reasonable age, but that’s opening a whole new can of worms I don’t want to get into.

I will fully admit that I don’t think the developer’s intention here was to fetishize a little girl (but I won’t rule it out entirely). My best guess is this is meant to be a joke. Like “Haha, she’s fat and ugly, her underpants are showing, and you have to look!”

In the Simpsons movie, there is a scene where you see Bart’s penis. I didn’t find it very funny personally, but I can at least see the comedic elements: it occurs in the midst of a long scene where they go to lengths not to show you, only to casually reveal it as a shock. But we had no reason to expect to see a little girl’s underpants today. There’s no timing or exceptional circumstances here. The game just presents fat little Marienne’s underpants like it’s no big deal. And Marienne’s underpants will be shown far more than in just this one scene.

The best I can say about this is it’s a really tasteless and stupid joke. The worst I can say, well…

I think I’ve ranted about a little girl’s underpants long enough now. Let us move on to less creepy things.

“And that nasty, little pet of yours! What do you call it? Elfa…Elfin?”

(Pet!? Elfin’s not just a pet! Oh, now you crossed the line!)

(You’re gonna get it, you little pig! I’ll make you pay someday!)

“Hmm? You’ve got something you want to say, Bubba? I didn’t think so. Well, go on! Start searching!”

“My sister and I are tired. If you find a Mystic, come back here and get us, OK?”



“Didn’t you hear my brother?! I certainly hope you haven’t forgotten who saved you from a life in the dungeons, hmm?”




Bubba and Elfin head into the canyon.



And so does Lang. The translation is accurate as far as I can tell.

Now Playing: Inaccessible Road



The most common enemies here are these “Baki”. They’re quick little things that can steal from you. But you can just get your item back by killing the Baki that took it.

Interestingly, Baki come with different weapons. Some have clubs and swords, like the ones pictures above.



Others come with axes, like this one.

Let me briefly explain a small game mechanic: blocking. While many games have blocking in some form, in Legaia 2 every attack in a chain can potentially be blocked. This includes Art attacks, so even if you hit every other attack, the Art can be blocked and you’ll do significantly less damage.

Baki have a high chance to block attacks, but have such low health it’s not terribly annoying. They also hit like wimps.



Vultures hit a lot harder than Baki and can poison you.



Rock Golems are the meanest of the bunch. They take a lot of damage and hit hard. If there’s a generic enemy in this canyon that could give you a game over, it’s these assholes.



Curious. But we have no way of interacting with this right now.



This thing runs away from us as we approach.



But when we cross the gap, it suddenly wants to fight.




Or not.

Lyps is a monster from Legaia 1, originally called a “Lippian”. Even if you’ve played Legaia 1, the Lippian was so insignificant it’s unlikely you’d remember it.

Lyps will occasionally show up in Legaia 2 as random encounters. If you kill them, you get a valuable item, but as demonstrated they run away ASAP, so you have to be fast enough. It is nigh impossible to kill one here without grinding, so beats me why they made whole scene for one. Maybe they just felt it was that important you understood what a Lyps was all about?

Eventually, we move on to the end of the canyon.




Now Playing – Elfin

Elfin, Bubba’s “pet”, blocks the way.

If you look up anything about this game, you will discover Elfin is notorious. She is the whole reason this chapter is named “Grind Canyon”. In a nutshell, Elfin will destroy you unless you grind to a certain level or get really damn lucky.

Even if you buy all the armour you can at this point in the game, Elfin will still commonly deal 100-150 damage with every regular attack. Note I said regular attack.



You best guard every time Elfin uses this, or you’ll probably be destroyed in one hit. Even while guarding, Elfin can deal close to 300 points of damage with Maiden Passion.



This one takes away your AP, meaning you can’t use Super Arts until you get more.



Try as I might, I cannot defeat Elfin without grinding, and so grinding I go.



This area right here is burned into my memory. I spent so long as a kid, running between these two trees, trying to reach the level I needed.



That’s the sweet spot. With 4 Art Blocks, we can now preform a whole new slew of Arts. The best thing about these Arts is they give you two hits, meaning you actually hit the enemy 5 times total. This includes a bunch of new Super Arts, some of which can cause status effects, but I don’t recall ever getting them to work.

Click here for the 4 Block Art Exhibition.

With our new abilities, we manage to take down Elfin.

Click below to see Elfin’s defeat.






“It just attacked me. It’s not my fault.”

“…Elfin….”

“Why you…I’m gonna…I’m gonna…”





“Ohoooo…? I never expected to find a Mystic way out here…”

“How fortunate we are, Marienne!”

“So true, my brother, so very true! What’s the matter Bubba? What happened to your little beasty?”

“Ha ha ha! Don’t tell me it’s dead? That’s why you’re crying?! Ha ha ha ha! Bubba, you’re such a wuss!”

“AARRGGGH! I can’t take it anymore! You little pig! I ought to…!”



“I don’t think you understand your position. You don’t ever, ever, talk to me like that…”



Marienne laughs and the siblings turn to Lang.



“But enough of him…That mark on your chest…You’re a Mystic, aren’t you, young man?”

“You’re just like Marienne and I! Surely you can see that we’re nothing like that lowly human cowering over there, can’t you?”

”Yeah, you guys are definitely nothing like him…”

“We’re looking for…people like us.”

“People worthy of living in the paradise we’re going to turn this dirty world into.”

“What do you say? You’re welcome to join us if you want. You’re very lucky we found you.”

“That’s right! We treat our slav…I mean, subordinates very well!”



I vaguely remember once getting the option to accept here, but I tried recreating it once before making the LP and failed. But as in all choices in Legaia 2, even if you accept, they just say something about how Lang looks weak and they need to test him in a fight.

Anyway, we know which option Cocky Lang is picking.



”First off, you, Purple Pants Boy? If you were to come out as gay, this game would have been cancelled for perpetuating homophobic stereotypes.”

”And you, fatty? I’d tell you to put on some pants, but I’m afraid they’d rip and I’d see MORE of your nasty underpants.”

“Oh my! Hmm…Someone needs to learn some manners…”



“Indubitably, Marienne. Don’t try to apologize now, young man, it’s too late!”




“You better be ready too, little man…”




As this battle is laden with opportunities to look up Marienne’s skirt, I am going to be showing as little of this battle as possible. There will be no full video of it to be sure.

I will, however, show you this one cut scene that plays on the first turn. No panties there.

Click below to cower and the power.









This battle is technically unwinnable. While Elliott and Marienne don’t hit that hard in general, they have special attacks that can easily destroy Lang if you’re not lucky. They also block a lot, so you’ll be doing very little damage to them.



Elliott and Marienne also introduce us to the fact that “Hyper Arts” are a thing.



Funnily enough, they’ll give you the impression these Arts aren’t very special. When we get some, however, they’ll hit for a lot more than this.







This is our introduction to Origin attacks. There’s no warning that they’re coming, unlike Elfin’s Maiden Passion, and they easily hit for 350-400 damage. This is over half Lang’s current health here. It’s very easy to get wiped out by these attacks.

This here is Elliott’s Origin attack.







However, I decided to use save states my exceptional skills to show you that you can technically win the fight.

All you have to do is take down either Elliott or Marienne. I pick Elliott because, as you might expect, taking down Marienne shows you more of her goddamn underpants.




“He’s just playing with us.”

“He’s not even using the Origin.”

“…You’re asking for it!”




“Don’t look at me. I can’t stop her.”





The last cut scene plays regardless of how you end the battle. Defeat Elliott, defeat Marienne, or just lose, and you get to see this.










I choose to just lose to them ASAP, as you gain nothing from any technical “win” you manage, and will waste a lot of healing items.



“He was certainly no match for us.”

“Huh…?”

“I think…I think he’s still alive!”




“He’s…mine! Let me finish him off! Let me avenge Elfin’s death!”

“Oh, shut up. There’s nothing left for you to do, Bubba. Just be quiet and behave.”

“Why don’t you bury your ugly little pet? I can’t stand the sight of it! Ha ha ha ha ha!”




“Hah! A lot of good it did him! He probably had it tattooed on!”

Marienne starts stomping on Lang’s chest. Once again, we see far too much of her underpants.




“We’re going to break his spirit and turn him into a loyal subordinate!”

“Absolutely! We’ll turn him into our loyal slav…subordinate!”





And there the scene ends.

We had a hell of a time. First we had to grind to beat Elfin, then we got cut scene’d to death by the siblings, and the whole time we had to be exposed to Marienne’s undercarriage.

Join me next time, where we finally get a new party member.