Part 45: YOU CREATED A TIME PARADOX! (Part 2)

At the end of our search, we stumble upon a squad of Magi soldiers out in the woods. Note that this is the only time in the second game, as far as I recall, that they’re referred to as Magi soldiers. When they appear again in the present they’re called Yshrenian soldiers.

Because Grazel standing on a balcony and yelling that his kooky cult was now an empire because he has the Sun King now apparently made it so.


Leonard: HEEEEEROOOOOO!!!
Orren: YO GUYS! KILL THIS IDIOT! I WON’T EVEN STOP YOU!!!


Once again we’re fighting human enemies, who have no weaknesses and take half damage from everything but magic, which your AI party members can’t use properly. So to make up for that, I switch over to the Avatar and break in a brand new axe/hammer skill specifically designed for dealing with large numbers of human enemies all bunched up in a group like this: +Aftermath.


+Aftermath is absolutely bitchin. It’s an area-of-effect physical attack that has an absolutely monsterous range. It takes 2 AC to pull off, but, well…


Orren: [Slow motion hover in air with doves flying past camera for no reason shot]


EXPLOSION!


Orren channels the sheer maddening rage of being stuck with Leonard once again for the rest of the game into a massive fiery shockwave that knocks all the Magi soldiers down to half health in an instance and knocks them all off balance, allowing you to score a few more hits on them before they have time to properly recover.

At higher levels and with better axes/hammers equipped, +Aftermath is a one-hit-kill "fuck you button" attack against most enemies.


Let da baw-dies hit da flo.


Orren: Hey, guess what?
Magi Soldier: I have a wife and kids!
Orren: Then you shouldn’t have joined a death cult, dickhead!
[SPLAT]


However, in the midst of our gleeful murdering of Magi mooks, the bullest of shit mechanics of game 2 is introduced right under your nose.

Those Magi Officers, the ones with the big smokestack helmets we’ve been encountering up till now? In game 2 they transform into gigases when they die.


This one here died and transformed while I had my back turned to him, that’s how unexpectedly the game drops this card on you (no pun intended).


As I land the killing blow on officer #2, the Avatar was stunned by the now-transformed gigas and I’m unable to move or act.


So I hop back into Leonard to whip out the White Knight.






Anything you can do, I can do better…


But not as good as Caesar, or Kara, or nice try.




Leonard: Verto!






And now we do the same thing we do to all gigases ever in this game: stabby stab stab.








I take out the Alphatria Gigas (the yellow one) quite handily, with enough MP left to finish off the weakened Alphapente Gigas (the red one)…


But because I’m too far away from it, the game decides there are no more enemies around and kicks me out of Knight mode. Although, if you think about it, it’s totally in-character for Leonard to demorph within spitting distance of a still-active mortal threat, so I can’t be that mad at the game.

Actually I can be. I was furious with it.


To my surprise, however, I noticed that while I was in Knight mode, Eldore had actually used one of his equipped skills and lowered the gigas’ magical attack power. Because Longsword users have skills that can nerf enemy magic attack and defense stats.

…Too bad generic gigases don’t use magic attacks. But hey, you tried Terrible Level-5 Party AI Programming, you tried.


So Leonard runs up to it and stabs it in the knee a few times.


And then it died. And its club/sword thing fell onto Leonard so hard it clipped right through him and launched him ten feet off to the side when the game’s derpy collision detection coding kicked in (not pictured, sadly).

One last thing of note for this fight: in this battle they’re just background props, but later in the game and in certain online quests, those tents are actually targetable enemies that spawn an endless number of Yshrenian soldiers every few seconds until they’re taken out.

The more you know.


Lucius: Sorry to press you into service like that, but I appreciate the help. You fought like demons, you did!
Orren: Just remember to completely forget about seeing the White Knight out and running around when it’s still clearly sealed in the castle vault, just in case like giant tentacled horrors start devouring reality or something.

You weren't there. In the final days. You never saw what was born. But if the time lock's broken then everything is coming through! Not just Madoras, but the Online Degradations. The Horde of Plot Contrivances. The Nightmare Child. The Could-Have-Been Queen with her army of Meanwhiles and You-Lack-The-Required-Materials-To-Bind-Thats. The war White Knight Chronicles turned into hell!

Lucius: Anyway, a promise is a promise. Let’s head back to Parma and I’ll tell you what I know about burglary.


We return from our fade to black having been warped directly into Lucius's living room.


AREA MUSIC: “Parma Village” (Disc 1, Track 6)

Lucius: I didn’t think we’d run into the Magi, though! It’s a damn good thing I had you for backup.

Why do I get the feeling that in the original timeline, Lucius did happen upon the Magi and was killed. I don’t want to go back and replay the start of the first game again to find out if he’s in Parma when you visit the place, but I will check to see if he’s there when we return to the present, so let’s just say “yay time fuckery?” and move on.

Lucius: Anyway, I suppose we should talk about breaking into Balandor Castle.
Lucius: There’s a secret entrance by the side of the canal. Just do down the stairs and you’ll see the door.

Doesn’t sound that secret to me.

Lucius: It’s an old passage that almost everyone’s forgotten about, but we guards always kept it in the back of our minds.
Lucius: It’s designed to be an emergency escape route, although I think they transported a giant suit of armour through it once.
Lucius: Kinda like that one you—
Orren: [Angry glower]
Lucius: Nevermind.
Lucius: Anyway, that’s what I know. I can’t speak to the condition of the place, but I’m not worried. You can clearly handle yourselves.


And with that knowledge in mind, it’s now time to head back to Balandor Castletown, hopefully getting there before midnight this time around.

Also note how the sky now matches how it looked during the twilight portion of the first game. We’ve also managed to miss interacting with our past selves again, because the bestwain with the wine is now gone, indicating that Leonard, Yulie and Orren are corralling Raus’s drunken ass towards Balandor as we speak.


Eldore: That answers our question about the secret passage.
Leonard: Let’s head back to Balandor!
Eldore: What were the Magi doing there?
Miu: Could it have something to do with tonight’s attack?
Leonard: I’m past trying to understand what makes them tick.
Orren: Because Grazel’s a bigger idiot than you are?
Leonard: Hah, yeah. …What?
Yulie: This is all so unsettling.


OVERWORLD MUSIC: “The Continent of Nadias” (Disc 1, Track 15)

Again, there’s nowhere really else to go other than back to Balandor. Unless you want to actually run through Balastor Plain and level up some more. And no, before you ask, you don’t every actually run into your past selves at any point in this game. Ever.




AREA MUSIC: “Balandor Castletown” (Disc 1, Track 4)

Let’s head for that canal!


The canal is located in the back quarter of the city, close by the Binding Post. You can see where the entrance is exactly on the map of Balandor Castletown I posted in the OP.


First we’ve got to run through this gate into the merchant quarter…


Up the hill to the merchant alley…


Past Chester the Molester…


And here we go.


As we run down the stairs to the little dock on the side of the river, the screen letterboxes to tell us it’s cutscene time again.


CUTSCENE: The Secret Entrace


Leonard: This must be the entrance.


Erhem.


Eldore: Right. Let’s wait for nightfall. The crowds will provide cover.
Orren: As will the screaming and slaughter, and Pyre-fucking-daemos…
Eldore: Shut up, Niles.






The game asks you to confirm if you’re ready because this is another one of those “no way out till the plot’s done” dungeons that drags on for the entirety of what I plan to cover in Chapter V. There’s a Logic Stone inside the underground passage, but if you overwrite your save file inside the dungeon, you’re kind of fucked and have to just dig till you hit daylight.




CUTSCENE: It’s Showtime!
CUTSCENE MUSIC: “The Troupe Appears” (Disc 1, Track 9)

The game plays the start of the Magi attack again wholecloth from the first game, so just watch it up to the point where Eldore shows up because I’m not uploading the exact same footage twice.








Someone Who Is Definitely NOT Belcitane: Heh heh heh!

Maybe I’m being a little too harsh on the game. I mean, hey, look, at least Belcitane’s back… even if it is in the form of archival footage.

Still, it’s nice to be working with proper villains again.




Someone Who Is Definitely NOT Belcitane: Time to blow them away.


Someone Who Is Definitely NOT Belcitane: Enough charades!

For reasons that astound me, they actually changed the reading of this line for the sequel. Don’t believe me? Here, go back and check Chapter III of the first game. I’ll wait. Of all the things to change, this minor thing is just so baffling. For whatever reason, D3 either inserted an alternate take into this scene and this scene alone, or they actually brought Dana Snyder back in to redo this line for this scene.

And if that’s the case then I’m even more pissed with this game than usual because Dana Snyder’s a cool guy and he gave one of the best performances in this game and it’s criminal to waste his time like that.






Belcitane: It’s SHOWTIME!






And now you get to see something not featured in the original timeline of the LP: Belcitane actually jumping away off the exploding float.




CUTSCENE MUSIC: “A Worthy Opponent Draws Near” (Disc 1, Track 8)


DOGS AND CATS LIVING TOGETHER, MASS HYSTERIA!


Oh hey, Pyredaemos. We’ve got a date with you later in this game, and I may well kill myself over it, you goddamn shitass.












CUTSCENE / AREA MUSIC: “Infiltration” (Disc 1, Track 12)

I have the strangest feeling that this track was actually named for this sequence here, back when White Knight Chronicles I and II were a single game and before Level-5 bungled everything to the point where it needed to be broken in half.

Anyway, this is the underground waterway of Balandor Castle, one of the scant new dungeons created for the second game. It’s a nightmare to navigate and introduces the single most terrible new enemy of the second game, so of course the game will keelhaul us through it three times before we’re done.

Because we only have enough money to create like two new dungeons before Sony cuts their loses on us, so let’s reuse the fuck out of them to pad things out.


The party’s just standing around and talking about whatever, apparently.


Until an explosion and the sound of screaming catches their attention.


Orren: Heh. Yeeeeah. People are dying up there because you guys suck at this thing.


And we’re going to cut things off right there, because the next bit forms a nice little arc for Chapter V. And let’s be honest with ourselves, this game is palatable in small does anyway.

Play us out, Orren!


So yeah, that’s how I got dragged back into this insane plot. How did I know about all that stuff with Marcell, you ask? Eh, in all honesty, I’m just going off of what Yulie, Miu and Ban Lorias told me when I arrived in Faria. I’m guessing the kid’s dead because… well, fuck, it’s Leonard, that guy could accidentally murder a rock…

But if he is out there somewhere, maybe still alive, gods I owe him a drink.

…Oh, what? You want to know about the town? Gods, what are you, dense?


You walked through it to find me here on this ledge, didn’t ya?

Now sit back down. We’re just getting started with the stupid.

• 4.1 - The Retrospecticon Activates
  
• 4.2 - Back To Before
  
• 4.3 - The Secret Entrace
  
• 4.4(?) - It’s Showtime!
  

THE ARCHDUCHY OF FARIA