Part 11: Easier Than You'd Think

Bogi. Never forget!



Once you leave the island, things go from bad to worse. The game doesn't seem to care where you leave from, as I believe that I teleported back to Bon Harbor and then left from there.



Take that, old man who wouldn't just hand over his boat for the good of the kingdom!



Speaking of which, we end up on the beach near old Yoda's house. That's certainly better than some of the alternatives. Of course, we didn't get there ourselves...



Lucky I came along or you'd be fish food by now. My name's Layl. I brought you back here in my submarine.

I imagine this is short for Layla, but there seems to be a four space limit for character names. And as you'd imagine from her unique portrait and the fact that she rescued us, Layl is our next party member. Wait, did you say submarine?



I'm Prince Theo Hennesy, and this is Mute Collin.

It probably never gets old introducing yourself as "Prince so-and-so." Theo's obviously appropriately grateful, but if you look at it's kind of funny that he emphasizes his title and completely short sells Mute.



Layl's a total bro-ette about it, though. I can't help but feel that there's something vaguely familiar about her..something about the attitude and the headband..




take me to dinner last night, and never showed!

Oh. This is going to be awkward.



Sigh... I'm sorry Layl, but he perished in the flames of the Nekojara Fire Dragon.

There's never a good way of telling someone that their boyfriend died literally a few minutes ago.



he said he would. I'll miss him...

The whole development changes Bogi's character a bit, since he was evidently off trying to kill a dragon for the express purpose of getting laid. The man didn't do anything by halves, that's for sure.



giving up his life to a higher cause. Now it's up to us to avenge those who are gone, and bring Zakdos to his knees!

I can't tell if Mute's supposed to be 10 or 70 sometimes. Technically, I think we pre-emtively avenged Bogi before he was even dead. Zakdos wasn't even really involved in his death, since the dragon was the guardian of the shard.



But you're right. Theo, may I join your quest? My submarine and I are at your service.

Yeah, she'll fit right in.



Theo might be getting a bit obsessed here.




Layl's not a bad character at all, and considering that she's level 13 her attack and defense are better than decent. We'll need to get her some equipment, however, and she's going to need to learn some spells. She starts off with no magic, but picks up healing and support spells later.



Steampunk submarine. Where it came from, who made it, and why Layl is in possession of it will never be explained. It works just like the boat, and is even pulled up to Bon Harbor. This essentially means that Layl rescued us, parked the boat, and then took us out to the beach before we woke up.



Now that we have transportation, it's time to explore some of the islands. Farb island is a small but necessary stop over that's mostly town.



The local wildlife wander about attacking people in the street. Behemoths attack or use a special pounce attack, and Torne Mages die before they can actually do anything. The behemoths look kind of sad.



The Inn is amusingly broken here as well. We definitely need a night's rest after the dragon fiasco.



armor Theo sees on display here.

This blacksmith shop sounds fairly interesting, but before that let's take a look at the goods.




Almost everything here is a substantial upgrade from what we had, but it's definitely expensive.



Grrr! Whadda you want?!

Holy shit! That's a bear, not a blacksmith




9,000 gold is a pretty nice chunk of change. We'll take it!



This is even better news, but the only problem is that by "make you" he means "make and hand over to the weapon's shop so you can buy it if you want."




The dragon scales get a similar treatment, although seriously.. they couldn't spell out protect gear? The text restrictions on this game are strange.



This is probably my second favorite reaction to hitting someone in this game.



Suddenly the whole "I'll buy that for 9,000 gold" seems a lot less generous. The profit from both materials is enough to buy one item.



We've got enough money to outfit one person right now. The Armor and Shield of Speed are actually preferable equipment, despite having lower defense. Dragon armor penalizes your agility (wearing both pieces Theo would have an agility of 48) while what Theo is wearing raises it. The difference in defense is about 12 points.



A bit of compulsive gambling will solves our money problems. While selling things off, Layl gets her first level and starts picking up magic.




Much better. Layl is FAST and has great stats all things considered, especially since she's 7 levels behind us.



I get a very "Eric and the Dread Gazebo" feel for this scene for some reason. What could this be for?



He must be a very famous inventor indeed, if a trio of hicks from the sticks know who he is.



I'm busy now! Shoo!

Naturally Dr. Normal is anything but. Persistence pays off, however:



Really!? You want to know what I'm building now? I'm building a flying ship to fly to the moving island... the problem is, I need a mysterious stone called the Hishoseki to finish the ship.

We haven't heard about this floating island before and have no reason to want to go there, but... sure, why not? You can say that you aren't a fan, but all that happens is he hustles you outside.



but I do not know where, so the airship remains grounded.

We were planning to investigate Nuku island at some point anyway, right?



I'm so smart, it hurts!

This is my favorite response to hitting someone. So, to Nuku Island!



Or not, because fuck letting the plot push us around. We're headed to the other island we haven't been to: Skuner Island. I don't believe it's actually a place you can visit before you get the submarine.



By this point, the player should feel an instinctive dread anytime they approach an urn.




Messing around with it blinds you and darkens the screen until you get back to the entrance. Some people speculated that you can somehow get ahold of the octopus trap back in Bon Harbor and use it here.



The only enemies in the cave are Specters, which aren't terribly difficult to bring down. They look like enhanced versions of the ghosts that gave us so much trouble in the beginning.



Layl needs to get serious about this magic thing.



The dungeon on Skuner island isn't big, so you'll stumble on this sooner rather than later. The gem on the pedestal looks intriguing, but we can't get it yet.




The only other room of interest is here, where hitting at the circling shadow results in a little boss fight.



This might be the silliest and least threatening looking Kraken I've ever seen in a video game. He's not terribly tough, since even this attack only does about 40 or so damage to Theo and we've got several people who can heal.



Returning to the pedestal room once the Kraken is gone nets us the Water Shard. This game starts to pull these kinds of "Go back to a place you've already been and find something has changed for no apparent reason" shenanigans more and more as time goes on.




Well, that was easy. I suppose next time we should see about that Hishowhatsit that Dr. Normal was bugging us about.