Part 12: One Last Bug For The Road

Update 012: One Last Bug For The Road



Alright, we're doing this. We're finishing this game. Ahead of us lies Cet's imposing pyramid and, honestly, the approach(if you're coming in from the right angle, otherwise it looks like shit, because of course it does), is kinda cool-looking.







See, they only bothered putting a bit of ruins out front on one side, on every other side it's just a half-buried D4 that you can walk up the sides of.



Oh and the most important bit of prep before entering: Setting the goddamn spawn rate back down to "Seldom" after crab-hunting.





Three slots for three tablets.






Clonk, clonk, clonk and the doors open, admitting us into the interior.







Once again, the pyramid largely looks nice, it's relatively atmospheric for the most part even if most of the interior is just filler chambers with a couple of chests(spawning loot you won't give a fuck about) and some trivial combat encounters. A few of the rooms, however, actually contain something interesting. Like the first one. You step inside into the darkness...







Look around into the shadowy corners and BOOM, a bunch of the wall murals start sliding up, revealing Scarab Mummies that spit spells at you. Once again, like frankly 90% of all ambushes in this game, it's undermined by the fact that the damage they do is relatively negligible, so the party just climbs into their little hidey holes and beats them until candy comes out.



Once they're done, the door out of the room opens.





Starting off the first room with a trap was, in fact, a pretty clever design decision even if it wasn't really a super nasty trap, because I notice that every room afterwards I step inside carefully, because I expect that there may be some other, nastier, trap waiting to spring on me.




All this room has is a secret door, though, they're so hilariously obvious in this janky lighting engine.





Lever's hidden behind one of the big boy statues but, once again, it's just full of random loot. Though all the chests in this room also contain a surfeit of empty flasks. I grab a couple, there's no obvious need for them at the moment, and by the time you know where you ultimately need them, it's too late, but if you remember the snake temple it should be obvious that the game wouldn't give us empty flasks without some sort of need for them. However, I wouldn't blame anyone for skipping all chests by this point, expecting nothing but random, useless junk.





By far the most common enemies inside the pyramid are imps, demon lords and pit fiends, who're pretty much just palette-swapped, size-varied types of the same enemy. At this point, I've got such insanely large mana pools and mana regen, as well as a huge stock of mana potions that I don't end up digging even 5% into by the end of the game, that the answer to every combat encounter is relatively simple.



A meteor, ice or firestorm followed by a couple of whacks from the melee guys and just about anything is dead meat.





Exits on either side of the room, and a fountain/pool on the far side.



We fill up a couple of flasks of Holy Water here, though I'm rather amused that Cet has a hand wash pool for his cronies to wash off any lingering holiness they might get stuck to them, like holiness was an industrial pollutant or something, the demonic equivalent of asbestos fibers.





A good few of these screenshots are just gonna be me looking at the nice-looking level design from time to time. Gotta give the game props where they're due.





Next room features a hellhound in a pit. Not wanting to find out why it's there, I nuke it from orbit and continue around the edge of the room.





Yeah these traps are pretty well-engineered for someone of my IQ-level. Though, as per usual all they'll do is phys damage and falling damage, which are... really weak, so none of them are ever actually a threat. Even dumping me down to a single hellhound is comical, at least spawn in like a dozen demons or something if you want to threaten me.




And before you ask, no, I never get that chest because the only way to it is to climb the stairs up there, and jump from ledge to ledge to reach it, and I fuck up the jump every time.





This is also about the place where the dungeon starts turning into a spaghetti-like muddle of corridors without any obvious pattern to them. I get lost multiple times going to and from places, especially because they love letting you enter a room, then having two corridors out on the same wall you came in through, so unless you were paying attention it's easy to pick the "wrong" one going back out.





This corridor had me super worried about this suspicious slot at the end, expecting it to shoot fire or lasers or something, but nope, far as I can tell it does nothing. Even the walkthrough I found is confused about what purpose it has, so I assume it's supposed to do one of those things but they fucked up the implementation.



Just imagine me breaking the party's shin's and femurs like five times on the floor below.




Hmmmm...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm60C-2XvgA

Behold, my sick acrobatics.

When I could've just walked straight across since the black stone edges of the middle pit are part of the stable ground of the room. All that's below if you drop down is an empty hole, in any case, that you can just walk out of. There's no ambush, no traps.





More neat rooms.




And more traps. In this case I'm like "Hmmmm, big bloodstained pressure plates... it can't be that obvious. Clearly something's gonna happen if I go around them."




The plate promptly shoots out of the floor and crushes Rondor against the ceiling. Negligible damage, but I figure he's gonna be owed a lot of insurance money at this point. I'm glad I ended up having him, and not someone fragile like Gizzord or Trap Option, in the back row.





Okay so that's clearly the Black Flame font up ahead, but I gotta check out that library first. Lemme just take this side door.




These renamed vampires are probably the most dangerous enemy in the pyramid, because unlike the other enemies, they replace raw damage with being able to turn party members Insane, and I still only have two of them who can cure that. Thankfully, I can just walk out until I'm almost at the end of the dungeon, but it would still suck to have to walk all the way back to town.



The library itself has nothing important(aside from the last elemental tome for becoming Zenmaster, which I yoink) but, oddly enough, some of the shelving has hinged away, exposing a secret passage. I wonder if I triggered it opening by accident or if it was always open?





Hmmmmm... because I'm not a moron, I save before I dip the party's toes in. Can you guess what happens?



Sometimes this game can still get one over on me and make me doubt my own judgment. Fair enough, game, you got me with this one.

Anyway, back to the Flame.





Huh, I thought Cet just killed you. He's got some dialogue for us, but I have some trouble getting it to trigger, so here it is transcribed:

"Help me. Look what has been done to me. Lord Cet’s Demonic Champion has ripped out my heart, and chained me here to suffer for all eternity. Please help me. Find my heart and put an end to my agony... The infernal Lord of Darkness has summoned two powerful Demons to safeguard his Pyramid Tomb. One fiend serves to challenge intruders. The other keeps vigilant watch over my Heart. As long as it still beats, I cannot die... My heart must be burned in the Black Fire, to destroy the Dark Lord’s Spell of the Damned."

I mean, we could just shove his heart back in his ribcage and he could live again to watch us beat Cet's dumb ass. But whatevs.






So you jam the Mavin Sword in and it becomes the Mavin Sword + with really badass stats and a new limited-use power. What the game doesn't tell you, but which you really need to do, is also slam the Staff of Death in there for the same boost.

The game never documents what the Black Fire power does, but from testing it seems to ignore some enemies, and on the two potential bosses of the game, it does about as much damage as just hitting them and also unaccountably blasts the entire party for a good chunk of damage. So, uh, I guess my advice would be not to use the fucking thing.

This is a good combat upgrade, though, and means that a lot of smaller enemies just get the choppy rather than needing to waste my mana.




On the way out, a reasonably clever trap. If you stick by the walls it'll definitely get you. Damage, as usual, just physdamage, but I'll allow that it's moderately smart. Just run right through the middle and duck left and you're good, on the far side there's a lever to disable it.




I'm skipping over some generic rooms to show you these demons caught-mid animation that look like they're dancing. I'm easily amused so I thought it was funny.




Every room you come across otherwise is pointless until you reach this one, which is a "hub" room of sorts for completing the game. You need to go left to be able to complete the game, and after which you go straight. I think going right is completely optional, despite what Anephas and Kerah may have told us, but it does have some actual content, so we'll be hitting up that branch, too.




The branch to the left suddenly looks more like a Doom level than the Egyptian aesthetics we've had going on for a while now.





It also feels like the most enemy-dense part of the pyramid. It's not just the colours that change, either, everything looks... rougher, crumblier, and there are a lot more floaty platforms and the like. It looks more like a videogame level and less like a place. I wonder if it was intended to look this way as "oh no! Cet's evil is reshaping the world into something more hellish!" or this was just slapped together real quick at the end of everything else.

Another interesting fact is that this part of the pyramid has some unique spawns.



I encountered these guys, reskinned elemental imps and reskinned elemental demons, which were all tougher than anything else non-named inside the pyramid. The interesting part of that is that you've got top-tier elemental enemies, the four tomes of the elements to become a Zenmaster and the Oracle of Water back in Colassium and I wonder if some draft of the game, at some point, had less focus on a Jesus vs Satan conflict and more instead something more Might & Magic/early Final Fantasy-y with elemental crystals/planes/lords or whatever.

I haven't really been able to find a post-mortem from anyone in the industry, not DW Bradley himself or anyone else involved, which is kind of a shame. I would've been interested to know more, because occasionally the game shows glimmerings of having intended more than what we actually got.




Anyway, it's up and down red corridors, nuking demons, until I get to this unusual-looking door(also one of the only sliding doors in the pyramid. Unlike the rest of the game, most of Cet's pyramid has swinging doors, and I quickly see why they're not common in the game as they regularly physdamage-bonk the party or get stuck on the omnipresent roaches and other vermin until they crush them out of the way.




It contains Almanon, a named demon that we gotta kill for his loot drop to complete the dungeon.



Killing him also opens the altar behind him, a hole we need to jump blindly into. But first, let's get that loot.




Do you see it? The small necessary-to-beat-the-game brown quest item on a brown floor?



I do not want to think about how long I could've spent running in circles looking for that fucking thing before finding it if I managed to overlook it the first time around.

Anyway, I skip the blind drop down for now, not sure if it's a one-way passage or what, to look around a bit more, and I almost find something I need to beat the game. Almost.

And yes, consider it a spoiler that I beat the game without even knowing I missed it until I looked over the walkthrough after beating the game.




Figuring it has to contain something important, and being quite right about that, I pop on lavawalk and hop into this lava pit to look around. All I find is the treasure chest down there, though.




According to the walkthrough's maps there's a door, openable somewhere, somehow, on the same wall as the chest is at, which leads to a second named demon holding a second key.

I applaud anyone who figured that out on their own.

Anyway, I go own some more mummies and demons and then return to the Mystery Hole.






It goes down, then sideways, and deposits the party on this little ledge.

Now, I'm not 100% sure, because it just seems so kludgy as to be unintended, but this seems to be for the sole purpose of jumping across the corridor to land on top of a wall.




To reach this elevator that seems otherwise inaccessible.





To walk five steps to another otherwise-inaccessible elevator.




To ride up to a room containing this dainty little set-up with the lich's heart which we can then pry off the spike and head back to him with.



Good to see that he's still hanging in there.




And, of course, as soon as we incinerate the heart he just kind of topples over, dead. No horrible animation of him being burnt to ashes by the Black Flame or anything. Nothing that would require effort.

I then head back to town, a boring adventure I'm cutting because it involves nothing of interest except me getting lost in the pyramid for 20 minutes on the way out and then again on the way in, and promote Gizzord to a Zenmaster. I would have promoted Sophia to a Valkyrie except I realize much too late that I had Kuros incinerate the heart instead of her, and of course I hadn't saved for like an hour prior.

I am bad at videogames.

Anyway, back to me being bad at videogames.





Back to the hub and heading forwards rather than left this time.







One of many reasons why learning Lavawalk before promoting your Wizard(s) is necessary to complete the game.





This is the door to Cet's inner sanctum, which I don't know yet. I just see a lock and use the key from the named demon on it, find it gets used but does nothing, and see that the door has two locks. I reason I'll find the second lock later. Also the right end of the magma moat leads to nothing, the left end...




Leads to a shitty jumping puzzle involving the game's jank-ass "physics" that allow you to suffer repeated falling damage to get an extremely generic amulet that you've probably already found five of.

I actually suffer through it for like three minutes before managing to grab the amulet off the platform in mid-air since I don't think it's actually possible to get on to it as intended because the ceiling is too low to permit for the kind of jump that would be required.



Then back to the third branch off the hub, since I figure that's certainly where the missing key is.



Peering down through the floor I see a Portal of Isis. Didn't Kerah and Anephas mumble something about activating one in here so they can come help me out? Cool. I could just jump down there, but I expect that's a dumb thing to do and look for a way down that involves stairs or ramps. Oddly enough the devs seem to have realized how terrible ladders work in the engine and I haven't seen one since the Dragon Spire where there was, I think, one.




These platforms rotate 90 degrees every couple of seconds, you can prevent them from rotating by pulling the lever at either end to make crossing easier after the first one. So either you can engage in a painful jumping puzzle OR cast lava walk and skip across.



This area also features some nice-looking rooms.



But I'll be honest and say that I rushed through them because there was literally nothing interesting or challenging in them gameplay-wise, and in these deeper parts of the pyramid a lot of the rooms are just yellowy brown, without any of the marble or statues of the earlier parts that made them pop a bit more. Now let's go poke at the portal and see what happens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUXQ6pd3gAo

So we activate the portal, Cet pops in, blows it up, announces he's shut the pyramid, Kerah pops in, tells him not to kill us, he mind controls us and the holy water de-mind controls her. All in the span of like five minutes. Also the pyramid is now sealed, so we're locked in for the last bit of it.

You might think, "Purple, you have a spiteful hate of this game, why not kill Kerah when you have the chance?" Because she's actually unkillable and can only be brought down to 1HP, not slain. Plus in some versions of the game it crashes if you try to fight her after she asks for the Holy Water.

A very effective But Thou Must.

So at this point I'm a bit stumped. I feel like I've been everywhere in the pyramid, but I'm still missing that second key! I stomp back up to the hub and decide that maybe if I go look at the door, I'll get some ideas.




...huh.

I legitimately have no fucking idea what happened here, but it cemented in my brain the idea that one key had been enough, but the door had just bugged out since I unlocked it before activating the portal, and it wasn't meant to open until after.

Unfortunately that bar is also... uncrossable, since I think the door still technically exists where it's meant to. I try to mash my way past it for a minute and then I get an idea.



I mean. It couldn't possibly work, right?





I'm starting to suspect that Vanish either has an explicit end-point for each given area of a dungeon OR just warps you forwards in a cone or something, because it's weird as shit that I've cast it twice and both times it's worked exactly as intended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6mp6Zs4lAg

So I want to note that this fight is absolutely intolerable garbage. Cet and Anephas are both immune to any damage that isn't the Staff of Death+ or the Mavin Sword+ which means that two characters get to swing away at them while everyone else casts all their buffs on round one, then bangs off for a smoke break and casts the occasional heal. They also have huge HP pools that it takes like three minutes real time of frantic swinging to clang through.

Now, Cet isn't a huge threat, he supposedly has the Deathstrike ability that allows him to sometimes one-shot a character, but that's quickly resolved by a Resurrection and I never saw him do it. Otherwise he does minimal fire damage to people.

Anephas, on the other hand...





Seems scripted to always lead with a Firestorm or Icestorm. If you don't see it coming and get the hell out of the way, it WILL one-shot your party. After that, it's much the same and either enemies have mana pools, too(though I doubt it), or his script just has it as a very random roll, because I only saw him follow up with a second *storm spell once.




Once you kill him he just... vanishes, and after a few moments of confusion the end cutscene rolls. Sadly I haven't found a way to record it as bigger than a postage stamp(or rip it out of the game files), myself, so here's a link from another brave soul who's put it on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Y_NEkg3MU#t=277s

It should be timestamped where the evil end cutscene starts.

What, however, if you don't side with Cet?



I call him insane and tell him to go pound dirt. He gets angry and launches a magma bomb at the party for negligible damage, and once again the chip race is on. It's really not worth recording as it's literally just 3 minutes of me whacking away at the attack button until he deflates like a big balloon and we get a final convo with Kerah and Anephas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFyVzuKxsxQ

Funnily enough, despite Anephas trying to BUT THOU MUST the party out of their magical superweapon, the Mavin Sword, nothing about the ending cutscene changes if you choose to keep it. Hell, Anephas' dialogue hardly even changes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6Y_NEkg3MU#t=717s

And with that... the game's over. It dumps everyone back to the town screen in Valeia and you could, if you were sufficiently insane, reset the game data(but not the characters) and fight through the entire game again as an NG+ sort of thing, but considering that the game doesn't feature enough randomness, or really any choices, that would make two playthroughs significantly different, I'm going to pass on that option.

Thank you to everyone who's put up with this terrible experience through one of my childhood nemeses in the world of jank-ass RPG's.

I expect to return on the far side of Christmas with yet another terrible RPG from the era, for everyone who enjoys my suffering.