An Update

WARNING: This post is a little long. And full of great pictures. And awesomeness.

So I've been playing Shining Force most days, which is feeling pretty good. I've been grinding the same fight over and over to level a little, which feels less good. It should be noted that I hate grinding. I would rather run right through the story any day, but that doesn't always work real well. But anyway, the fight I was working on over and over was the last one I played the first time around; that is to say, when I beat it before, the town right after was the one where the game died. So, with some trepidation, I entered the town, having decided to grind on the next fight for a while. This is what I was met with.



A really sketchy dude in a cloak. Awesome. Every city should have a guy like that. If you go to Boston, there should be a guy in a cloak waiting for you, and if you talk to him, he says, "Welcome to Boston, a land of history, culture, and silly accents. Also we have chowdah."

I went around talking to people a bit, and was a little surprised by what I found:



The first couple guys I talked to were very apologetic about attacking me outside the town. That begs the question, why the hell did they have zombies and giant bats in their employ? And why don't they care that I killed so many of their guys? Oh well. I went on to find the King's daughter.





God damn right I am.

She was, of course, less than thrilled about the news regarding her father and our home. Considering how the LAST fucking town I was in was FULL of people, and even a PLAY devoted to taunting my destroyed home, I was sympathetic. She ran off, and the... um... blue dog guy who follows us around... I dunno what the fuck that guy is. He's like the Shining Force Band Manager or something. Anyway, he told me to run after her and reassure her, or whatever. But since I thought doing so might trigger an event or something, I decided to explore a little first. Doing so got me that egg I was so strongly advised to find and hatch, as well! Now, how to hatch it? Anyway. I quickly discovered something about Manarina. This place is fuckin' weird.



I also found this three-eyed lady, who started giving me all this advice out of the blue. I felt like my main character was saying to the rest of the party, "Listen guys. I know everyone we meet tries to kill us, but looking at this woman, with her three glowing eyes and her shadowed face under that hood, while she instructs us to all go into some sort of cave full of monsters, I think we can all agree that she seems pretty much legit."



So before talking to the princess, and before going into some sort of cave of evil, I wanted to keep looking around. I got that egg, like I said, and then I found this totally awesome machine, and this woman said she could use it to turn people into animals. She asked if I would like a try. Now, the rational part of my mind was like, "well, maybe we should figure out if the procedure can be undone first..."

Sadly, my impetuous side is very loud, and Reason only got out "well," before Impluse screamed "DUDE BEING A FUCKING ANIMAL WOULD BE THE TITS!" This is the result.



So I ran around like... Well, like a chicken for a while, trying to figure out how to change back. Fuck. I even ran into the Princess, who was like, "Oh, hey... thanks for trying to cheer me up and stuff, but I don't really like hens..." Everyone was like hey, it's a chicken! Or what the hell is a chicken doing in here? I mean, that's not an unreasonable question, but why aren't they worried about me being a TALKING chicken screaming "TURN ME THE FUCK BACK!" I ran all the way to the priest, who I hoped could help. This was the helpful response I got from him:



Great. Fucking thank you. Luckily, going down to HQ made me all better. I talked to the Princess after that, who promptly sacked up and joined the team. Awesome. I have two mages now. I also found this guy who seriously said to me, "Sorry, you can't come in here. I only let cute animals pass." Sigh. I went, got turned into a chicken again, found some lady who turned me back, and got to explore a little more. I got a little info out of the place, which was nice. The cool thing was that I found this totally sweet slide on the top floor.



It was then that I made a decision about Manarina. That place is bat shit crazy, but it's also the best damn place I've been in this game thus far. It has it all! Books, surly mages EVERYWHERE, a machine that turns people into chickens, some sort of evil cave which is full of stuff, AND a giant slide? How badass can one town get? Even that guy who wouldn't let me pass until I was a chicken agreed.



Anyway. After all that fun, I went down into the cave to kick some monster ass. The place is full of chests and zombies and evil mages and stuff, so it's gonna be my new grinding spot for a while. It's a much less annoying fight than the last one. I'll update you again when I've moved past that fight!