Part 1: The Village of Assholes

Alright, let's do this thing.



After a bit of history we get a nice Mode 7 zoom in to our starting location. They really loved the whole Mode 7 scaling in this game.



The fat guy is Elliott. Elliot is a giant cock, and that's really all you can say about him.



Timothy, on the far left, is rocking a dunce cap. No indication if this is by choice or not, but he wears it well.



Elliot ain't afraid of no ghosts, but can be motivated by greed and the search for treasure.



Just like any ill-planned expedition that involves coming near a waterfall in this series, this ends badly.




Despite falling upwards of 30 or 40 feet our hero is absolutely unfazed and picks himself up. This is another common trait of heroes.



Might have spoken too soon about that unfazed. He's hearing voices.



Continuing onward we can see that the path here has been improved and has an obviously manmade bridge. We've also found our shiny object, which will come in handy.



You see, like many JRPG heroes Boy is stymied by things like waist high bushes that most people would just walk through. Say what you will, our Boy is a problem solver.



You don't have to tell me twice, head injury!



Unlike many RPG heroes, Boy actually notices that there's something weird about this whole sequence of events.



However, that moment of curiosity lasts less than a second as he goes back to work on the sword.




Head injuries, bright lights, and phantom voices. Diagnosis: severe concussion. Either that there's actually something supernatural going on here, but how crazy would that be?



At any rate, the ghost vanishes and the sword comes free with a flash of light. We're armed and dangerous now!



Boy is in a new stance, and down at the bottom we have a hit bar and our HP being displayed. After each blow the bar will go up to 100%, signifying a return to full power. You can attack before that, but the effectiveness will be correspondingly reduced.




Cutting through the bushes we come upon our first enemy and commence the butchery. The game is kind enough to display numbers when we hit things, but it doesn't really matter very much.



Our enemies occasionally drop treasure chests, which are opened via the simple expedient of slamming them on the ground. This one had a piece of Candy in it, which restores 100 HP. Considering that you can probably beat a Rabite to death with a stick and they are an easy source of Candy I'm surprised that the local children haven't hunted them to extinction.



It's possible to get a critical hit, which is displayed as you can see above. One way to look at it would be that we hit this Rabite so hard that there's nothing left.



After a few kills we get our first weapon skill level up. One change from the previous game is that you've got multiple skill levels to grind on.




Getting to Weapon Skill Level 1 with the sword allows us to execute a charged attack by holding down the attack button, but it's sadly rather limited by the fact that the first level attack is a very linear move that has a tight range. Later levels can be accessed once you have the skill levels by continuing to hold the attack button, but you have to decide if you want to trade speed for potential power.



There are quite enough Rabites to get us up to a general level of 2 as well, resulting in our HP being completely refilled. In SoM a level is a level, so there's no choice of how you want to develop your character.



Shortly afterward we return home, only to find that there's no real way that Boy's going to be able to conceal his sword-thievery for very long.



Turns out that Boy has a bit of a reputation around town. It's tough being a lovable scamp.



The big gameplay innovation in this game is the ring menu, rather pathetically displayed here. It will be a bit more clear what's going on when we have more options.



We can use the menu to check out our stats and character info, but as of right now it's not exactly helpful. Considering that we can't do anything to change our stats, all this tells us is that Boy is strong, fast, tough, and about as dumb as a brick.



There's a merchant in the village, but we're too poor to buy anything. More on that later. You might notice that we're kind of avoiding the Elder at the moment.



I can only hope that this guy isn't freaking out about the plague of Rabites around the village. If so, this village is doomed once anything bigger shows up.




The village pub (really, why does a village with all of about 4 houses in it have a pub?) has a mysterious visitor who speaks in ellipses. The jury is still out on whether he'd slit his mama's throat for a nickel.



Elliott and Timothy ran back home to spread the story of Boy's demise, blaming it on his clumsiness and playing up the accident story.




It seems that there's a bigger problem, however.

The Mana what now?



Why am I just hearing about this now?




Elliott loses his shit and starts punching our hero. Re: Elliott is a huge cock.




Our beating at his hammy fists is interrupted by a small and curiously localized earthquake dumping us down a sudden hole.



At the bottom Elliott is curled into a ball begging us to save him. Unfortunately, we're between him and a giant monster so just letting it eat him isn't exactly an option.

Boss Battle: Mantis Ant

Boss Video




The Mantis Ant, who was a mid to late game boss in Final Fantasy Adventure, returns with a trio of attacks that are extremely annoying. He's got a sickle attack that never seems to miss and leaves you unconscious, a spell attack that can easily take a third of our HP, and a fairly ineffective acid attack that I failed to screenshot.



It's actually quite impossible to lose this fight as the knight above will cheer you up back to full health if you get down to 0. I could have let that happen in the video, but I'm not about to go out like that even if it does eat into my candy supply.



It's not really worth using charged attacks on the boss, as after a few regular attacks he'll start exploding. Monsters are inherently unstable, you see.



We'll hear more about these later, but this is our reward for beating the first boss.




The knight pulls us out, and Elliott runs home to his mother screaming.



How is it that I have it and you don't, then?



So you're saying it's obviously broken?

Boy tries to give it back, but the knight (who introduces himself as Jema) won't have any of that.




Jema makes the excuse that only the person who pulled the sword out can re-energize it, but it's probably just the fact that going around and doing that sounds a lot like actual work. Luka's been around for 200 years, so Jema's pretty confident she'll have something to tell us.



Oh no, not again!



Luckily for Boy there are witnesses this time...




Although unluckily for him, they appear to have reached a decision about his fate.

You know, if any of you had said something along the lines of "Hey, if you find any swords stuck in tree stumps around the village don't pull them out or you'll doom us all" this could have been avoided. I'm just saying.




The Elder is the only one to show any remorse, and tries to salve his conscience by giving us some hush money. It's not a bad sum, but would probably be more meaningful if we hadn't just gotten 100 gold for defeating the Mantis Ant.




Everybody else has left, and the Elder has a few words regarding boy's mysterious past and the fact that he's either abandoned or an orphan. Not much of an explanation at all, really.



We can use our newfound funds to make some purchases from the local store. The invisible item we're currently selecting is a bandanna, which you can tell from the boy's icon being displayed in the center of the circle is something he can use.



Once you talk to the gatekeeper, you're summarily driven out so that they can try to save themselves from the Rabite Horde. It's not the best showing for a hero's hometown.

I Say Poe-toes, You Say Pot-ohs